Planning District Commission Meeting   6/29/2021

Great.

There we go.

All right, this meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held pursuant to item 4.0-01 of the Virginia State Budget Chapter 552 that allows public bodies to hold electronic meetings in the current COVID-19 emergency and that it is impracticable or unsafe to assemble in a single location and that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or transact the business statuatorily required or necessary to continue operations of the public body.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captioning and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices, to the media, website posting, and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Thank you, Sandy.

All right, hopefully this will be one of our last electronic means, but we're going to talk about that here in a little bit.

Moving forward, we have matters from the public.

Comments by the public are limited to two minutes per person.

Is there anyone here from the public that wishes to speak?

Any hands up?

I see nothing in the chat.

I don't see any public at this time.

Seeing none, I'm gonna go ahead and close that and move on to comments provided via email or online.

We have nothing by communication via email or online.

Moving forward to presentations, the Intergovernmental Review for the Housing Preservation Grant.

It is.

Background, the Intergovernmental Review for the Preservation Grant is a grant that we apply for yearly for rural habilitation in the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Nelson, feels like Louisa.

And we apply for annually, but it's a grant that covers two years.

So I'm going to share my screen, my

Intern David put together some lovely slides to go over the year in review of what we've accomplished in the past year.

OK, good.

And I'm not moving.

Oh, there we go.

It won't.

Sorry, I can't click down, so we're going to scroll down.

So basically, this slide is showing historically what we received from the grant.

In the state of Virginia, you can only apply for half of the grant.

This year, the state is offering $373,190.

So we will be applying for $161,595.

15% of that goes to admin and the rest of it is a first come first serve for the counties I named within the region.

So this graph is just basically showing you what the full grant is, what the HPG grant that goes to actual rehabilitation and what the admin is.

And last year when we applied, there was a slight dip because usually only two people apply.

Last year, three people apply, so all three got it.

So next slide.

And tell me if I'm going too fast.

So this is broken down by the sub-recipients who service our localities that use the area and how they use the funds.

So for Albemarle, we have AHIP.

Nine homes were rehabilitated over the past year.

using these funds for Fluvanna County.

It was Fluvanna Louisa Housing Foundation and 10 homes were rehabilitated.

Skyline Cap, Greene County uses Skyline Cap and there were no homes rehabilitated during this past year.

Louisa County also uses Fluvanna Louisa Housing Foundation.

15 homes were rehabilitated and Nelson County uses Nelson County Community Development Foundation where one home was rehabilitated.

Next slide.

So this graph is showing you our total for last year that we received, or for 2019, I'm sorry.

2019 is the grant that we're working off of.

And we had $100,148.

64 individuals across Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa, and Nelson were helped.

That was 35 households in total that were helped.

and this is just the demographics of the area, not of the area, but of the people that were helped, excuse me, I'm sorry.

The racial makeup, 34 Caucasian, 28 African-Americans, one Native American and one Latino.

Very low household incomes.

There were 50 that were in the 30 to 50% AMI range and 14 that were in the 30% AMI range.

And that's it.

Does anybody have any comments or any questions for Charise at this time in regards to the housing preservation grant?

I don't see any.

If not, I can only compliment you all for the hard work on the regional housing partnership.

And of course, this is gonna be great in our efforts on answering affordable housing here in our region specifically.

With that being said, we need an action on this resolution.

We have a motion from Keith Smith.

We have a second from Donna Price.

With that, Sandy, I would like to call into discussion.

No discussion.

Great.

Yes.

I'd be happy to.

Mr. Galloway?

Not present.

Ms. Price?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Bobby Act is not on, correct.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

Mr.

Aye.

With that being said, the motion passes unanimously.

Please reflect that in the minutes.

Moving forward into new business, FOIA Code of Virginia.

As you all know, we plan on July 6th to be transitioning our staff back to in-person and opening the TJPDC offices.

And so as we were reviewing the code, the state of Virginia code, there was a provision that we noticed that we wanted to just discuss with you all as far as our public meetings are concerned, as far as FOIA is concerned.

Thank you.

And along with bringing staff back next week with a staggered schedule, we've had a kind of operating policy that we've continued to look at and revise as necessary throughout the pandemic over the past 15 months or so.

So we are actually looking at revisions to that that correspondingly would take effect or be implemented with the return of staff next week.

We've certainly been trying to be

conscious of COVID and how knowledge about it and recommendations and practices have evolved throughout the time.

And this is just another, I think, example of that.

Throughout the region, I know that we have with our localities, our six localities, with regard to meetings, we have some that had continued to meet in person the entire time.

We've had some other folks who have recently

come back to having public meetings and we still have two jurisdictions that will continue through their local emergency declarations to have electronic meetings for at least a couple of more months.

So I think one of the things that we wanted you all to consider and discuss today by talking about this section of the code is what the TJPDC does moving forward as well.

with our public meetings.

The section of code 22-3708.2 was amended during the General Assembly this past session.

The changes that take effect on Thursday, July 1st, and I'm sorry I didn't give you a version in your packet that has line numbers, but if you look down at number three underneath that section of code, you will see

Yeah, you can do that.

There is a provision that was amended to allow any public body and the new language italicized.

It puts a provision that if the locality in which the public body is located has declared a local state of emergency, pursuant to 44-146.21, then that public body can also hold meetings by electronic means.

So, you know, since TJPDC is located in the city of Charlottesville, the city of Charlottesville does have a continuing state of emergency declaration pursuant to that code section that remains in effect than TJPDC and, you know, its relevant committees that are public bodies.

would be allowed to continue to meet electronically.

We can certainly continue to do that over the next couple of months.

We would certainly continue to offer the provisions for public access and public comment through Zoom, posting the recordings as we've been required to do under the budget language that Sandy read previously.

And I don't think you would really see anything different

I would have a question, David.

You hear me?

That is, under these provisions, could I continue to

You would not be able to, as you have done under the authority in the budget and tied to the executive order that is expiring.

However, there are provisions in the FOIA law that allow individual members of public bodies to participate electronically

I recall those.

I just thought that if this went beyond that and allowed for you to attend without the drive, then that would be great.

Yeah, again, it has to fit into those

reasons that are outlined in the code and then that is considered by the commission to participate.

Right, it's almost like we're back to normal.

Oh my God.

That's normal.

Yes, yes.

So one piece of this is public participation, correct?

Yes.

And I don't know how we can continue to allow that.

I think that would be a great option for many people in some way, fashion.

And I don't think the means of that would impact us too hard, would it, Christine, resource-wise?

Yeah, I think that's appropriate, as long as the code allows that.

What does the rest of the board think at this time?

Chairman?

I mean, I do agree with your comments.

I know that I think we discussed that briefly at the first meeting in June.

And I used to have two TJPDC meetings in the same month.

I know that Greene County is going to try to do that as well.

We out of state of emergency, we passed resolutions and it was ending this month.

And we're going to try to attempt to actually have virtual access for our citizens as well.

going forward.

So that'll be good.

The question I have, so this resolution basically, if the city of Charlottesville has a state of emergency declared where they are meeting virtually, then the TJPDC can meet or should meet virtually as well.

If the city of Charlottesville no longer has a state of emergency and they are not meeting virtually, then a TJPDC would meet in person face to face, regardless of what's going on in surrounding counties.

So the rule is that wherever the TJPDC is housed, that's the rule that we follow, which makes sense.

One question I have, and it's kind of getting down into the weeds, at one point we used to visit different localities to have a meeting.

So let's say that we're going to Louisa to meet and then Charles declares a state of emergency, but we're not able to house or host a virtual meeting in Louisa due to electronic means.

Do we at that point in time say at that point we do electronic meeting because we're housed at the TJPDC and we don't meet in person in Louisa?

Right.

I think that the council, we don't have anybody on from Charlottesville.

Yeah, Mr. Payne is on.

Correct me if I misstate this, but I believe the council will have to take some definitive action to end their state of emergency.

The state of emergency is an ordinance that they have to allow for the continuity of government.

That answers my question.

So I appreciate it.

And this is Michael Payne here.

So, yeah, you know, the last we had heard from the city manager is that for the city at the latest that that would go away the first week of September.

But there is a little bit of uncertainty there that

I don't have a July meeting, right?

The September meeting would be before Labor Day weekend.

We don't need a resolution.

It would just be, we're asking for direction from you all to make sure that that's a direction you're okay with us going to continue to meet remotely until about through September.

Okay.

Staff concerns that have been brought up is since the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County are not in person,

A lot of our public meetings do require their participation.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Well, I mean, we will have to pursue that direction that I imagine, you know.

Do we need, is there any actions?

It's not required to take action.

So can I ask Christine what we should do?

Should we try to recommend something with the August meeting right now today?

Sure.

You know, I say, I just assume being in person.

I mean, I truly do.

And this would create a means to allow Albemarle and Charlottesville to participate remotely, correct?

Yep.

In person.

So we would need at least seven people in person.

would not require a quorum.

This would allow us to be hybrid.

Perfect.

Okay.

That sounds good to me.

Let's do the hybrid.

Any comments?

Donna, do you have any questions?

Any questions?

But I would just say Albemarle County, we are in the process of conversations on how we're going to, excuse me one second.

We're in the process of conversations on trying to figure how we're going to go forward as well.

And so I expect within the next few weeks we will have something that we can say.

Like every other jurisdiction and community, we have the same factors and considerations that TJPDC has.

In the background, the one thing that is kind of catching my attention is the Delta variant and what impact that may end up having on us.

I hope not.

Get vaccinated, folks, please.

But anyways,

If that's the guidance you need, we'll meet in hybrid.

I do strongly encourage board members to attend in person if you can, if you're comfortable, whatever that might mean for you.

And if you got to be virtual for the August meeting, we got it.

Am I supposed to, are they going to have to give me notice or me and staff notice?

Nope.

Okay.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Rutherford.

All we need to do is to have Gretchen in our office start calling in advance of meetings so we would have a confirmation of one, that we have a quorum, and two, who will be present in person and who will be electronic.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We will continue to have, as Sandy did at the beginning of this meeting, we will continue to have that provision read at the beginning of the meeting and we will cite the

For a section of the code that needs to be cited in order to state that this is the reason that we are meeting electronically.

Perfect.

All right.

No, I sincerely appreciate you all being able to meet such short notice so that we can apply for the housing preservation grant when we

We got the notice of the application availability and saw that it was due before our next commission meeting.

We knew we wanted to be able to get it done before the end of June, just in case we couldn't do it electronically.

Christine, I do have one little comment on the first page of the pre-application.

There's a number missing.

It's page 414 in our packet where it's talking about

People Served, it's like the second line from the end.

Thank you.

Great.

At this time, this is moving on from that.

We, other business, our next regularly scheduled meeting is August 5th.

I will be attending in person.

Dale, I think you plan on to as well, potentially, Vice Chair.

So if you guys want to come, I really would encourage it.

It'd be nice to see y'all.

I hadn't seen y'all in a year and a half.

Dale hasn't left his office in over a year.

I don't even know how his sanity is at this point, but it would be really nice to catch up with everyone in person best we can, and we'll do proper due diligence wherever we need to.

So beyond that, I need a motion to adjourn if there's no other business.

I will do that, Mr. Rutherford.

Mr. Rutherford, yes.

That's weird.

It's uncomfortable for all of society.

We have a motion from Keith Smith to adjourn.

I need a second.

Second.

Andrea?

Second.

Andrea Wilkinson?

It's not a competition.

So all those, we're going to do a motion by acclamation.

Any opposition?

Hearing none, minutes reflect the adjournment was unanimous.

Thank you guys so much.

Excited to see everyone.

Enjoy your month of July.

Please go travel, enjoy some sunny beaches or mountains wherever you want to go or your backyard.

And I do look forward to having an exciting meeting this August.

Bye everyone.