Planning District Commission Meeting   10/7/2021

Nice.

Thank you, Rory.

All right, moving forward, as soon as we can get some public in here, we'll come back to the public comments.

Yes.

And I know Christine's got her hand full right now.

That's right.

I can pull it up.

Oh, sorry.

She's got this one.

And then I'm going to do something with the next one.

Gotcha.

OK, great.

Thank you.

We just wanted to give you all a little quick update tonight on the TJPDC's application for a VADI broadband grant for the current fiscal year.

Next slide, please.

No, you're good.

So I know you're aware we've talked to you a couple of times in the past to think about TJPDC being the lead applicant.

With CBEC and Firefly broadband for body application, we hit the submit button on September the 14th.

The DHCD folks within a couple of days were able to tell everyone that there were a total of 57 applications representing 84 localities across the state.

The total grant request was just under a billion dollars at 943 million.

We're expecting that between state general funds of about $50 million and a little over $700 million in ARPA funding, that there's going to be three quarters of a billion dollars available for funding those requests.

And all of the applications proposed over 300,000 passings for service.

And what I think is a really good, I guess, indication of

localities and others having some skin in the game and stepping up to the plate is that there's total matching funds of about 1.1 billion dollars.

Where we are in the process right now is that DHCD, you know, these applications are all posted online so other service providers are able to see those applications to see what the projected service areas to be covered are.

And then if they believe that they already have service or provide the opportunity for service in a particular area, then they can indicate that they want to challenge the application or that portion of the application.

So challenges will be due on October 21st.

Those applicants who have courses or applications being challenged will be notified.

And then I think there's probably around a November 20th or 21st deadline for the applicants to then respond to the challenge with any rebuttal information, I guess.

So a little bit about the project in particular.

It's called the RISE Project, Regional Internet Service Expansion.

I think since we talked about this last time, we've actually picked up another locality, just in some discussions that Firefly was having with some of the other localities.

There was just a small piece of Campbell County, in which there was some coverage opportunity.

So Campbell County is now part of the group of 13.

and of course the applicant partners are SEVAC and Firefly, Dominion Energy and Rappahannock Electric Co-op and then just some small areas that will also involve both the Southside Electric Co-op and Appalachian Electric Pedaling.

Next slide please.

So just a little bit more specifics about RISE.

The application proposes putting 4,300 miles of fiber either in the air or underground, passing over 40,000 total locations.

It's a $307.7 million project.

And there's the breakdown of where the funding is going to come from.

$85.9 million, almost $86 million is the request for body funding.

Very fortunate that across the 12-13 counties in the region or in the application area, $35.3 million in local matching funds were pledged.

And then the private investment from the Firefly and the other service providers totals over $186 million.

I think I've said before that, yeah, I think this is going to be a really competitive application.

Two of the things that I think the body was really going to be looking for that this application has and that's universal coverage, which the project is committed to, and also that it is regional in nature.

So having 13 counties that touch five different planning district commissions, I think certainly qualifies as regional in nature.

And also you see, I didn't mention the percentage numbers in parentheses, but that 40,000 passings is about 13.3% of the total 300,000 passings that are proposed statewide.

We're only requesting about 9% of the total funding that is being asked for in body grants.

I think it's also significant, and I'll put my VATC hat on for this one, that more than

We are lead applicants for VATI grants and you can see there are a couple of the PDCs that submitted more than one grant.

The request from those PDC lead applicant grants was about two-thirds of the total request and you can see that they also are leveraging a very good portion of the total amount of

of matching funds and proposing about 75% in those regional applications of the total number of passings that are being proposed.

And I think the next slide is the last slide.

So TJPDC is just a little bit more about the role that TJPDC will play.

Assuming that the grant is awarded in whole or in part, we will be administering the grant

We will be that link between the project and the folks at DHCB, the broadband team, folks at the state, and then of course handling all the financial and reporting aspects of the grant funding.

We have included administrative expenses and I can tell you that Firefly was very good to work with us.

in trying to come up with a figure and what we anticipate might be the workload and over what period of time.

We're anticipating 42 months of work that would likely begin next spring once all the paperwork is done from the grant announcement being made the end of the year.

And you'll see, and Christine will talk about it a little bit later on,

When she goes over the proposed budget, we've very conservatively estimated just over a hundred thousand dollars in administrative expenses for the first year of fiscal year 23.

So interestingly, the VATI grants typically are supposed to be an 18 month award to completion timeframe.

So this project actually, because of the extensive nature of it is requesting three years to do the project.

So again, we're very hopeful that the grant will be funded as much in its entirety as possible and that that additional timeframe for getting the work done and getting everybody connected will be approved.

So our VATI grant is how many million?

Well, the project is.

The grant is.

I'm sorry, the grant is just shy of $86 million.

And that's for all the municipalities that we have mentioned.

For the 13.

Wow, yes.

Hey, David?

Yes, sir.

If my math is correct, our one grant covers 16% of the localities

or 16% of the actual 80, in our case, I did 16 counties.

How many localities are there?

95 counties, I did not do that one, Dale.

Well, if we had 84, if there was 84, I think if you divide that by 16 or 84, it comes down to like 16%.

Great.

Yeah.

So I think I was reading just a couple weeks ago in the Virginia Mercury that the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative had kind of called off its broadband efforts as a result of that lawsuit by I think it was the Piedmont Environmental Council or their board member saying that the law that said you could use power line easements for broadband was taking.

I think there was a ruling in that guy's favor.

How does that affect this?

We had talked about that with the Firefly team before the grant was submitted and certainly they're aware of it and are monitoring the situation and that was the stance that they said they would continue to take as they would continue to monitor but for now it would be moving forward with the application process.

Any other questions?

Hearing none.

All right, great.

We now have public here, so we're going to go ahead and take care of matters from the public real quick.

Is there anybody here present that wishes to speak?

You got two minutes.

Any hands raised?

Go in the chat or just start talking.

I am not seeing anyone.

Christine, anybody else seeing anybody who wishes to speak?

I don't see hands up.

Great.

I close the public hearing for comments from the public.

All right.

All right.

All right, I'm going to zoom into some of these areas, so don't worry about not being able to see at this point.

So just a little bit about the redistricting process that's going on at the state level, which we were talking a little bit before the meeting got started.

It's been pretty hot lately.

Commission that was established pursuant to the constitutional amendment that was approved last November has been meeting pretty heavily here in recent weeks.

They face a deadline of early next week to submit the State, Senate, and House of Delegate lines map proposal to the General Assembly.

They had like four or five meetings last week.

This has been public hearing week.

There have been two hearings each day so far this week.

And then there will be a meeting of the commission tomorrow and perhaps Saturday as well to try to come up with a House map and a Senate map to submit to the General Assembly.

They're not very unanimous right now, let's say that.

And I don't know that they're going to get to the point where they're going to be able to approve anything or if they're just going to continue to remain divided along party lines.

They're trying to do their due diligence.

They're using the criteria that's been laid out in the law for them to use.

They're also

You're using some criteria that they developed as a commission, one of which is kind of paramount to try to the extent possible to not divide political subdivisions.

They're using a 2% deviation of population, crafting the districts from what they have determined to be an ideal population for each of the districts, but are allowing themselves to go up to 5% deviation.

Right, so some of the specifics.

Let me see which map I'm on.

I'm on A7.

So what I'm going to do is right now

Through the public comments period and sessions that they had this week, they've had a couple of maps out there that are kind of the commission's maps in both the House and the Senate cases.

One's a Democrat map, one's a Republican map.

There's also some other maps if you go to the General Assembly website.

There's some other maps that have been submitted by individuals.

that are posted there too.

But I'm gonna just really quickly take a look at the ones dealing with our area that are kind of what I'm gonna say, the official maps for right now.

This is one map from the House of Delegates.

You can see their District 74.

That's where Greene County is under this map with Northern Albemarle and Orange County.

If you go down to 72, you see Louisa is included in 72.

with part of the, I guess, Uchland County and on into Powhatan County, I guess that would be.

79, Fluvanna County and some others, Buckingham and others to the south.

75 is Charlottesville and part of Albemarle.

And then 76, Nelson is included with the rest of Albemarle and down through Amherst.

So you can see you've got about

Localities, you've got localities in five different House of Delegate districts under this proposed map.

All right, now I'm gonna try to, how am I gonna do this?

I don't know how that one's gonna survive.

I don't know how any of them are gonna survive.

Yeah, there it is.

Thank you.

Sure.

Okay, so that was A7.

I thought it was downloaded.

Alright, if you all bear with me, my apologies.

While we have that quick pause, if you are the last four digits of a phone number 3945, can you identify yourselves?

This is Tammy Purcell.

Thank you, Tammy.

That would change throughout the meeting.

Responding to Ms. Price, you had a comment about roll call.

Are you talking about to identify who is here at any given time?

Sure.

That would be my comment.

Yeah, we can do that whenever you want.

Okay, our other map for the House of Delegates.

Greene County again going with some folks to their west.

Louisa County still with Orange and Spotsylvania.

You can see Albemarle is divided up a little bit differently instead of the city of Charlottesville and the west of the city into Albemarle County being a district.

It's now portions of eastern, southeastern on Albemarle.

Looks like maybe some of Miss Price's district that would be with the city.

And then the rest of Albemarle actually extending over into Eastern Augusta for that district.

Fluvanna, again with folks to the south, but also with Nelson as well.

So it looks like that one is where they're divided up into four, our six localities are divided into four.

All right, so very quickly, we'll take a look at a couple of the Senate maps.

We're gonna go A5.

My apologies that this is kind of clumpy.

All right, so it's actually a little bit cleaner in my version, in my book.

You can see here, District 15 is Louisa-oriented Spotsylvania, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Nelson and Buckingham, and the city of Charlottesville would have all be together in this District 31.

and Greene County would be in District 13 with a number of counties to its north.

And that is for the Senate.

And then the second Senate map.

Otherwise known as B4.

We're still gonna go back to District 15.

And we'll see under this map, District 15, fairly consistent here, Louisa, Orange, and Spotsylvania together.

A little bit different here.

Greene is now with Albemarle and Fluvanna and Buckingham, as well as the city of Charlottesville.

And then Nelson County is paired with Augusta and some other counties across the mountain to the west.

So I guess the message at this point is the maps are kind of all over the place.

We heard that saying before.

The data is all over the place.

Again, I don't know where this is going to end up, given the nature of the work that we've seen so far, the commission being philosophically divided on where some of these lines would be drawn.

They start making changes in one part of the state.

Then it squeezes that balloon, and it starts

You know, effectuating changes in the other parts of the state as well.

But again, they're charged with having maps to the General Assembly by October 10th.

And then there are timelines that are laid out in the code by which the General Assembly has a certain amount of time to act on the maps once they're presented to them.

If they don't act to approve them, you know, then they may go back to the commission.

The commission could propose again.

I think this might all end up in the courts anyway.

And there are no timelines on the court in terms of when they would have to make decisions as well.

It's final work and presents whatever it's going to present to the legislature early next week.

Then they're going to dive in pretty heavily, I think, to the congressional districts because they have about two weeks then before they have to submit a map for the congressional districts to the General Assembly.

And so you may see the same kind of disagreements going on with that as well.

I didn't mention, I mentioned the percent deviation, but just to, so you have a feel for the size population-wise of each of the districts.

House districts' ideal population is a little over 86,000 people per delegate per district.

And for the Senate, it's a little over 215,000 people per Senate district.

Yeah, I'll tell you, you know,

We work with 11 legislators in our region right now.

You know, you look at that map that's on the screen there right now in the Senate District with Greene and Albemarle and Fluvanna.

There's no one of our incumbents that we have in that district.

Senator Hagler represents Greene.

He would be over in Augusta County.

Of course, Senator Deeds is from over in Back County.

Smith, Senator Reeves, lives over in Spotsylvania, but represents Louisa and part of Albemarle County now.

So I think that's going to be the most, one of the most interesting things to look at too is when the maps are presented is where incumbents, they've talked about where incumbents are grouped together, but where are there not incumbents?

So it's going to be interesting to see.

Any questions for Mr. Blount at this time?

Comments?

Obviously, I think, I suspect this will obviously be a court decision.

Do you, how about the congressional maps?

I've done some preliminary work on it, but they'll really jump into that next week.

That's not going to be as heavy a lift.

I bet you they'll actually get that one done.

Great.

OK.

Excellent.

Moving forward, I know, Ms. Bryce, you had mentioned doing a roll call.

Can we do that with the vote on the consent agenda?

I mean, I don't see any reason, because that will also give us an idea of who's here and present.

I'm not sure if obviously in COVID times how we should do it.

Any comments are great.

All right, moving forward into action items.

We have the minutes of the meeting and minutes of the September 21st and 3rd.

If we could, let's go on ahead and vote on both of those.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the 3rd and the 21st as presented?

So moved.

We have a motion.

Second from Andrea.

Moving on into a vote.

Councilor Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

Aye.

Had to do it for roll call though.

Ms. Wilkinson.

Aye.

Mr. Barlow.

Yes.

I'm so sorry, Supervisor Barlow.

Ms. Bishop, I believe, believe Ms. Bishop is also not here.

Yeah, he's put his thumb up for now.

That's fine.

Financial report, our net pick assets have increased again to 886,917 based upon a 12 month spending that's, or average, excuse me, that's 8.9 months of available operating funds.

As was decided by the commission, we want to have at least five months of operating expenses on hand, which leaves a capital reserve account now at 388,709.

Our unrestricted cash on hand is down to 2.96 months, which we continue to monitor.

It has not yet dropped below the two month warning phase or what we're really looking at.

But we're still trying to shoot for that four months.

Revenue and less expenses, we had another really strong month.

August was a net gain of $7,223.

It's important to keep in mind that we're down three full time

positions right now.

So that may be part of our gain is that our expenses have not been as high as we're budgeted, but it does give us a fiscal year to date net gain of 18,067.

So we're in really good shape already this fiscal year.

Our total income in August was just shy of 156,000.

We're 17% through our year and we've received 13.4% of our revenue.

Likewise, we have expended 14% of our operating expenses.

So we are just shy of where we should be both in receipt and in spending.

Our liabilities have increased significantly, but that's mostly due to deferred revenue and the way that we have changed our invoicing and receiving

Long term grants and projects invoicing at the beginning of quarters.

So we have funding on hand to be able to draw down from so our deferred revenue is higher.

And then as far as accrued revenues, the accrued revenue report is in your packet.

As of the end of August, we have more than enough to get us through the fiscal year.

For the remaining 10 months, we have 101,000 available each month, and our average 12-month spending is 99,642.

So at that spend down rate, we are still in good shape through the end of the year.

That's all I have.

If you have questions, happy to take them.

Otherwise, I'd recommend approval of

May I just make a comment that this is a real good list of what we actually have in hand signed contract as opposed to the next page, which includes some maybe income when we get into the projected budget part of it.

Is that right, Christine?

Yes.

So as something actually gets in hand,

Then it gets added to the accrued revenue report.

That the accrued revenue report is a dynamic report that every month we adjust as needed based on either additional grants received or, you know, contract changes, amendments, anything like that.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion.

All right.

We have a motion to approve.

We need a second.

Second.

Second from Mr.

Herring.

All right, any discussion?

Hearing none, moving on to the vote.

Yep.

Supervisor Price?

Aye.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith?

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

Supervisor Rutherford.

Aye.

Yeah, it's not his fault.

I just had to find your square.

Perfect.

All right.

Thank you guys so much.

The record reflected was unanimous.

Good, give me one second to share my screen.

This is very small print, but you guys were sent this in advance, so feel free to zoom in on your screen or if we sent you a paper copy, you should have this.

So for our budget for FY23, as you all know, we bring this to you before you in the fall.

That's particularly because we need to make our local funding requests.

Both Charlottesville and Albemarle have their funding requests due in October.

So we bring this projected budget before you in September or October in order to set that per capita rate and what the local funding requests will be.

The projected budget is balanced as it needs to be with assumptions of both known revenue sources and expenses, but also expected or anticipated revenue sources and expenses.

We do not anticipate an increase in the per capita rate.

However, we do anticipate including a local contribution to help support the regional housing partnership, which we've talked to you guys about in previous meetings.

It does have an average increase for staff salaries.

However, staff will be doing a little bit of a deeper dive into our compensation and bringing before you all some recommendations for looking at how competitive our compensation is so that we can continue to recruit and retain high quality staff here working on our programs.

The official budget will likely change since these are anticipated, but the projections show revenues of $3,600,000 and matching revenues of just over $3,600,000 as well.

I am happy to take questions.

I will say one thing that I did not put in my notes, because it hadn't been received yet, but since this was sent to you, has been received, we will, and the audit is not fully complete, but a draft has been sent to us.

We do anticipate a significant drop in our indirect cost rate.

It was 66% for FY22.

We anticipate that to go down almost to 55% for FY23.

That was an anticipated drop because of the significantly reduced administrative expenses we had with having a full-time administrative position not filled for seven months.

And so our expenses were lower there.

All right.

Great.

This is an action item.

Do we have any questions for our director?

Any comments?

Nothing.

We have a motion.

Mr. Smith, is there any discussion?

Hearing and seeing none, moving on into a vote.

Sorry, I thought Mr. Smith had made the motion.

I did, Sandy.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Supervisor Price?

Aye.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

And Supervisor Babiak?

Thank you guys for passing that resolution.

Moving over to the next resolution for adopting the Thomas Jefferson Solid Waste Planning Unit.

Yep.

So the 21 to 26 solid waste management plan includes a description of existing and projected solid waste needs and facilities, as well as a plan for managing solid waste generated by residential, industrial, and commercial activities.

The planning unit includes the counties of Albemarle, Greene, and Fluvanna, as well as the city of Charlottesville and the towns of Scottsville and Stanardsville.

The plan as presented meets the DEQ, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's planning requirements by describing existing and proposed solid waste management systems that support the hierarchy of source reduction, reuse, recycling, resource recovery, incineration, and landfilling.

The draft that we have before you today is not substantially different, substantively different from what we presented to you last month when Ms. Franklin was here to go through the Solid Waste Plan.

It does, however, have a couple of updates to some of the data.

We're happy to take questions if you have them.

Do we have any questions for our director?

Hearing and seeing none, I'm looking for a motion to approve as presented.

Moved.

We have a motion for Ms. Price.

You need a second?

Second.

I was.

Oh, Rory.

Gotcha.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Second from Mr. Roy.

Any discussion?

Hearing and seeing none, Ms. Shackelford?

Counselor Payne?

Supervisor Price.

Aye.

Supervisor O'Brien.

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson.

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow.

Yes.

And Supervisor Babyok.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

So we've done that.

Moving on into the agenda.

We have no new business.

Exciting in a way.

Then after that, we have executive director's report.

All right.

A lot of quick updates for you all.

It has been a very busy month since the last time we met prior to the special session.

So I do want to give you some high level updates on all of our programming.

First and foremost is staffing update.

We are still advertising for a full-time planner 1-2 and a full-time planner 3-4 transportation planner.

We've had several interviews.

We're continuing to look to make sure it's the right fit with the right qualifications.

And so stay tuned.

We are still hoping to fill those as quickly as possible.

Legislative update.

As you all know, staff have been making draft revisions to the regional program.

Staff is also working with several localities on legislative initiatives for introduction of the General Assembly.

There will be a short legislative report previewing the 2022 legislation session at your December meeting, and further staff will be analyzing state and local election results for the upcoming November elections, and we'll have information available at the November meeting with those updates.

Our housing program has been very busy, so quick ones.

We are holding a fall-winter webinar series.

There will be four different sessions.

The first session is particularly relevant because it is a regional housing roundtable, and panelists include Dr. Pethia from Albemarle, Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders from Charlottesville, Douglas Miles from Fluvanna,

and Jim Friedl from Greene County.

So there is a link in your packet if you all are interested in registering for that webinar.

There's also links for the upcoming three series after that.

So we welcome you guys to join that and participate.

Second housing update is the Regional Housing Partnership was selected to have a panel session at the Virginia Governor's Housing Conference, which we are very excited about.

The Regional Housing Partnership Chair, Keith Smith, and the Regional Housing Partnership Vice Chair, Ned Galloway, will go and serve on that panel on behalf of the TJPDC and the Regional Housing Partnership.

So we're very excited for that as well.

I'll probably ask Mr. Smith and or Mr. Galloway to report back on that once we return from that conference.

Third update for housing, the Virginia Housing PDC Grant, the $2 million grant award.

We've had some progress on that.

We are in the process of developing and revising a proof of concept request so that we can put out, cast a wide net to see how many developers, nonprofit and or private or

Government are interested in pursuing a project with that funding.

We'll use that proof of concept to then identify who is eligible and send out applications for that funding.

We will keep you all posted on that process, but we're hoping to move that along as quickly as we can.

The final stages of the Virginia eviction

Reduction Pilot Planning Grant.

It's the middle of October.

It's called VRP.

Middle of October, that planning grant will be completed.

We will submit all of our plans that were developed with a stakeholder group, as well as two different consultants.

We'll submit all those to DHCD with the hopes of being able to apply for an implementation grant.

The implementation grant is for funding in order to implement some of the ideas

that the consultant suggested and the stakeholders approved for what would reduce evictions particularly in our urban areas but mostly Charlottesville and Albemarle for this pilot.

So we are looking forward to being able to apply for that once DHCD shares the program guidelines and makes that an active application.

Fifth one is our home and HPHPG program so the housing preservation grant for the rural

and the home program for all of our jurisdictions.

The caper was submitted on September 27th.

So that has been submitted.

We're in good shape.

And then staff has been attending a series of home ARP webinars so that we can learn more about the new ARP funding that is going to be awarded to this region.

As soon as we are through with the trainings, we'll begin to stand up that program so we can figure out how to get that money out into

The community as efficiently as possible.

And then finally, we were notified that we received the housing preservation grant award for federal fiscal year 21.

It is a little bit higher than we've received in the past.

And it looks like they've made a couple of changes to the program.

So what used to be two year awards are now one year awards.

So we've previously operated where we had a two year grant and every year they overlapped with one another.

We would spend down one and start spending the other.

It looks like they're making some changes that it is one year beginning to end and that they won't overlap, which is great for administrative.

It's a little bit harder for the sub-recipients to plan for that money in such a short period of time.

For environmental programming, Rivanna River Basin Commission had their conference on September 24th.

It was a really informative presentation by Alliance for the Bay and Virginia DEQ on Local Government Guide to Chesapeake Bay.

Also for our environmental program, the 2022 Watershed Improvement Program, the WIP scope was submitted to DEQ at the end of September.

Once we hear back on that scope, that'll be another presentation that we bring forward to you all to look at the work plan for FY22.

We'll pause.

Transportation.

Transportation has also had a very, transportation and transit planning has had a very busy month.

So staff submitted two TAP applications, the Transportation Alternative Program on behalf of Nelson County.

Those have been submitted.

We're very excited that those did get in by the October 1st deadline.

Secondly, we have issued an RFP for our Rideshare Program, as you all approved earlier in the spring, to contract with a consultant to do

some marketing work and to update our outreach and marketing on Rideshare, especially with the changes and how people are sharing rides.

And then this month is Try Transit Month.

So there's a partnership between all of the transit providers, CAT, Jaunt, UTS, and Rideshare.

And it's mostly a promotional campaign to try to get people to try transit and to try a different mode of transportation than they're used to.

And then staff and VDOT held our first meeting for the North 29 Corridor Study.

It was very well attended.

We got some great community participation and some really good feedback.

There was about 60 people on the call.

So we're moving forward with that project.

And then finally, the two large transit grants, the Regional Transit Vision Plan.

Their stakeholder meeting was today.

We had about 40 people on that.

We're really excited to move forward with that visioning.

That's a lot of updates.

Excellent.

Thank you so much, Christine.

That's a lot of work already.

Thank you so much for the hard work you're doing and we do look forward to the conversation of how we can attract and retain staff.

I think that is an important conversation and

And I can share that our colleagues, other planning districts around the state, are also having a real challenge right now.

Excellent.

Well, thank you so much.

Moving into the round table discussion.

Look at this guy's brevity, my middle name.

Let's go on ahead and get started.

I'm going to try to go off of the Spike County.

I would say one thing, and it's an unfortunate designation for Greene County.

I did attend that VDOT meeting on the 29 North plan.

Gotcha.

Herring?

Yes.

Currently, we recently had a meeting and a vote on short-term rentals.

We had a SAP process which allowed short-term rentals in R1 zoning.

and unfortunately or fortunately depends which side of the fence you were on.

That was voted down after about, I think it was like three years of the process.

It turned out that a lot of investors were beginning to buy properties in R01 zoning and communities.

And that definitely created an issue for the homeowners in those areas.

EMS facility would be dedicated sometime this month.

So we have our first responders

have moved into a new location and they'll be dedicated sometime this month.

And we are still going along with the battle between us and a water authority RSA.

And there's an article in a local paper today concerning hydrants and lack of maintenance with the fire hydrants across Greene County.

And that is a big safety concern for our community.

And that's all I have right now, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

Herring.

Let's move over to Louisa.

We don't have anything really good going on.

Looks like to me every meeting we're dealing with mid-year appropriations that weren't expected, such as Sheriff's Department raises to keep up with other counties, the schools, of course,

It just seems to be one thing after the other that wasn't budgeted for.

And so now we're struggling with that as well as we just lost our deputy county administrator.

So we're looking to hire another one.

I can feel that.

Man, be thinking about you, Louisa.

Is Bob able to talk or is he just going to be able to get on?

That's okay.

Bob, we'll give you extra time at the next meeting.

How's that sound?

Thank you.

We had a really neat event yesterday where we pushed in a brand new fire truck at station 16 Pantops, which is the second busiest area of the county.

And we've worked really hard all of our own county fire and rescue.

We've added 22 positions in the last year.

Thankfully, we were able to get some grants.

But it was really exciting to bring in another fire truck.

I mean, they cost nearly a million dollars and it was about 18 months of work.

We're very thankful.

A local family donated the land a couple of years ago for that station.

And it's also going to help with Martha Jefferson Hospital because it's right up there.

Our county staff is working on our comprehensive plan as well as our county attorney working on our zoning ordinance, so between the two we have quite the workload ahead of us going forward, but we think our county staff has got a real good plan for phasing that.

It's going to take a little while to get it done.

And of course, we still have master plan work that we're working on.

And like everyone else with development, we've got those applications coming through.

But also like other communities, we are facing loss of some critical people primarily because of compensation packages.

from governmental entities that are extremely difficult for us to match.

So we're expecting our county administration is going to conduct a thorough compensation review across the board.

It has not been done in a while.

And we're, I would just as one supervisor speaking,

Anticipating we're going to have to put some more money into our labor expenses in the county in order to avoid losing some of our better people.

So that's the reality I think we're all facing, right?

Thank you.

And I would like to commend our executive director for a wonderful meeting.

Really, the reports are great.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, moving over to Fluvanna.

Mr. Rutherford, good to see you feeling better.

Yes, I'm glad to not have the code.

And I will echo Mrs. Price's comments on the executive director.

I have to echo an awful lot of what has already been said.

Just as Mr. Barlow said, because Louisa raised their pay rate for the sheriff's office, Fluvanna had to follow and turn as well too.

Obviously, sheriff's compensation, deputy compensation is an issue for many, many counties as recruitment is continuously difficult.

And certainly during COVID times, they've faced the frontline challenges as far as that goes.

So I would almost suggest that maybe the TJPDC consider doing a regional study of compensation pay because Fluvanna is certainly looking at the same thing and considering what it needs to do.

in terms of retaining and attracting talent for the county administration staff.

I think finally in the next few weeks we will finally have water flowing designs crossroads from the women's prison.

That is a small milestone in one respect in that it's

It's part of a major plan, but considering that it's been something that's been in the works for almost 20, 30 years, it is good to finally see that come to fruition.

And then we've been trying to get a burn building up and running for our fire rescue squads as well to practice.

We applied for a grant there.

We were denied that grant in part because our land costs in terms of the site development was a little

What we can do to fix that and get that burn building in place so that we have well-trained firefighters.

And I think that's pretty much it.

I guess the other notable point, I mean we've been in the news a little bit because of some kerfuffles in the high school area, but I think in talking to folks it seems like

Kids are both happy to be back in school, but also, you know, restless and maybe forgot some of their better manners, if you would.

So I think our school administration is struggling with some of those challenges as well, too.

Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Smith.

I believe I don't have too much to add to that.

That's an awesome thing.

Other than thank you for the staff, particularly Ian, as you can tell by the report in from Christine, the housing component is a pretty heavy lift and he's doing an outstanding job.

I dropped into the feed the registration for the Zoom event on the 21st.

Please come.

This is probably gonna be probably the best of them all.

This is gonna be some great information.

So please join in.

And I'm honored and excited about going with Ned to the Virginia Governor's Housing Conference and looking forward to report in.

And everybody's talking about recruitment and retention.

It's that way in the private sectors is in your side of the table.

So this is just where we are in the world today.

Fortunately, frankly, I'd rather have that than a lot of unemployment from my perspective.

But anyway, that's all I have, Mr. Chairman.

Just great to see everybody.

Can't wait to get back in person.

All right.

Moving over to the city.

We have Mr. Payne, if I'm not mistaken.

Not sure if we can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Okay.

Well, I'll just be brief.

The city's moving forward with conceptual designs for school reconfiguration, which is a pretty massive project for us, about $75 million in the CIP.

And we're really hoping and advocating for the General Assembly this session to

includes Charlottesville legislation increasing that goes directly to school infrastructure.

Excellent.

Okay.

Mr. Stolzenberg.

Yeah, those are the big things.

We do have a new Director of Neighborhood Development Services, our Planning Department, James Fries.

He joins us from Massachusetts and started in the middle last month.

So next Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, is our Planning Commission public hearing on the comprehensive plan.

This has been a long time coming.

We've been working on this comprehensive plan review since January of 2017.

So it will be good to see it finally get passed and finalized and hopefully council will be passing it.

I think they have a first hearing in November and then a final approval in their first meeting in December.

So that should be a pretty big step for

You know, getting our zoning policies together.

Following that will be our comprehensive rezoning, fully rewriting the zoning ordinance and changing our zoning map to match.

So that is expected to take probably all 2022, maybe into the beginning of 2023.

Excellent.

All right.

I'm missing anybody.

Don't think so.

Yes, I just wanted to add that Charlottesville City Council on Monday voted to approve extending their emergency ordinance due to the numbers for COVID still being at a risky level.

And so just how that affects us here is we will continue to hold our public bodies, partnerships, commissions virtually to ensure that we are

Keeping it as safe as possible for people.

But with that said, commissioners, you are always welcome to come here for our meetings.

Excellent.

Yeah, I was going to do that.

OK, well, guys, Nelson County, you know, we're we're still excited to have

We have some great movement with internet.

I think we're getting some pretty high double-digit percentages of coverage with fiber internet.

I can't tell you how many lives have been changed.

I mean, it truly is an exciting endeavor.

Moving over into other concepts, we have some very major

Conversations about potentially doing a rec facility in Nelson County.

We're starting to move forward with some studies, you know, a business park or some residential business park hybrid concept, of course, with Livingston.

I'm excited to announce Livingston is getting its first brewery here soon.

after our vote on Tuesday.

So we will be getting our first brewery in there.

That's big news.

And beyond that, you know, guys, we got an election coming up and I know some of y'all are up for election.

So I'm going to bid you Godspeed and your localities.

Obviously it's always a sensitive time and feathers get fluffy, but

You know at the same time it's part of the process and I hope to see many of you and of course I look forward to the success in your counties in these re-elections and we'll potentially have some new faces coming in the future.

And at this time, I have nothing else to add other than I am absolutely looking forward to meeting with us as a board.

And I will say I've already committed with Christine just for myself.

We're all going to have some kind of a cocktail meet and greet as soon as these flags are up and the masks are off and have a great time.

I hope this spring, rooting for it.

I appreciate you all.

I have many opinions, but not much to share.

It's great to see everything that's going on.

Congratulations, Christine.

Sandy, it's good to see you again.

Those of you that I know and those of you that I don't, I'm looking forward to getting together with both of you, all of you when we can.

And I'm looking forward to getting some quality people at TJPDC so that you all can continue the great work you're doing.

And I just really wanted to let you know I was paying attention.

Awesome.

All right, thank you guys so much.

Anything else everybody needs to add?

Hearing none, I will go on ahead and suggest that we get a motion to adjourn this meeting to November.

What is our date in November?

So May.

November 4th.

That will be two days after the election.

That's going to be fun.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Godspeed.

Good luck.

Ernie can attest to how challenging it is for me.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Godspeed to those who have opponents.

That's the nicest thing you've ever said.

That's right.

Good luck.

Good luck.

Guys, we have a motion from Tony.

Second from Keith.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Unanimous consent.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but go Red Sox.