Planning District Commission Meeting   2/10/2022

at 7 o'clock.

Thank you for recording it.

That's usually Sean's job to remind us, or Rory.

All right, this meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency.

And the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purposes, duties, and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings, 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 that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

All right.

Sure.

Counselor Payne?

Okay, great.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Mr. Smith, I believe is joining us now.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Here.

Supervisor Barlow?

Supervisor Jones?

I'm here.

Ms. Bishop?

Great.

You're here.

Very good.

All right.

Thank you, Sandy.

All right, moving on to matters from the public.

Comments by the public are limited to two.

Minutes, no more than two per person.

Are there any members of the public who wish to speak today?

Sean Tubbs, we're looking at you.

Doesn't look like it.

Great.

We do not have any correspondence.

All right.

Well, if there's nobody who wishes to speak in public comment, going once, twice, three times, sold, we close public comments.

Moving on to presentations.

Yes, and I'd like to just note three small changes on the agenda.

They're not substantive changes other than where it says I'm introducing one new staff member.

I'll be introducing two new staff members.

That has happened since I put this agenda out.

And also items 6A and 6C on the agenda are items for a vote.

I should have had an asterisk on those.

So 6A and 6C.

I'll start with staff introductions.

The person I'd like to introduce is Ryan Mickles.

He's in the UVA mask.

Ryan comes to us by way of the town of Chapel Hill, where he was in their planning department.

He has degrees in both urban and environmental planning and anthropology.

While there, he developed short and long range plans for Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, MPO.

A fun fact is that he actually started his planning career at the TJPDC some years ago as a transportation planner.

And he also worked in the city of Charlottesville's neighborhood development services earlier in his career as a zoning inspector.

So he knows the area well.

He brings strong technical skill set to the PDC with GIS and mapping support and research and grant writing.

He will primarily be supporting our transportation program through the MPO doing smart scale applications, long range transportation plan development, as well as providing technical support for other programs as needed.

And we are super excited to have him with us and know that he will be a really valuable addition to our transportation team.

Really glad to have that planner position filled.

Second, Brian, do you want to say anything?

Yes, please.

Yes, I just want to say that I am grateful to be here.

Great.

Thank you so much.

We're glad to have you, sir.

And please always feel free and outreach to the respective members if you ever need anything or guidance or thoughts on a project.

We're here to support not only our respective counties, but your success is also our success.

So thank you so much for being part of our team.

Thank you, Christine.

Great.

Another very exciting introduction I'd like to make is to Lori Allshouse.

Lori is a seasoned and dedicated public administrator who has a track record of building and maintaining partnerships and years of experience working with local, state, and federal funded programs, projects, and initiatives.

She has a master's of public administration from Virginia Tech.

She has 20 years of leadership and management experience.

She recently retired from Albemarle County.

She will be joining us part-time to help direct the body broadband program.

She'll be leading that initiative for us.

While she was at Albemarle County, she was the Assistant Chief Financial Officer for Policy and Partnerships.

A fun fact about Lori is that her first job in Albemarle County as an employee was coordinating with David Blount on the TJPDC's legislative program.

So she also has a lot of experience with our team and we're super excited to bring her aboard such a very important project.

I guess, ma'am.

Thank you so much for the introduction and the kind words.

I just want to say throughout my career at Albemarle County, I've always been super impressed with the commission, with the staff and the leadership and all it's done for its members, jurisdictions and the community, the regional community where we all live.

I want to say I'm honored to join the commission and work on this very important project.

And I just really look forward to working with all of you.

And thank you so much for having me today.

Thank you so much, Lori.

Glad to have you on the team.

The VATI program is a very recent success for those who don't know.

We're excited to see that take off.

And I guess, shoot, I think we're one of the largest grant holders of the VATI grant, if I'm not mistaken, with our number two.

That's still top three.

That works for us.

We like that.

So Lori, thank you so much.

Right, new mission members, I'd like to introduce them and then do an orientation.

The orientation is seemingly a long number of slides, but I will go through them very quickly.

This will be an overview for some of you, it'll be a refresher for others, and it will be something you've heard many times.

For the remainder of you, but I'd like to introduce them first.

From Louisa County, we have Supervisor Rachel Jones joining us.

She is in the seat that previously thought that we ought to have.

Welcome, Supervisor Jones.

For Albemarle County, we have Supervisor Jim Andrews joining us and Supervisor Price's previous seat.

and City of Charlottesville, we have Planning Commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates.

He was previously in Rory's position.

We're very excited to have the three of you on board with us as well.

I am going to now pull up my presentation.

All right, can you guys see my PowerPoint?

Not at this moment.

Yeah.

Very good.

All right, Planning District Commission.

I'll do a quick, really fast history of it.

They were established by the General Assembly in 1969.

The TJPDC was created in 1972.

There are a total of 21 PDCs or regional commissions in Virginia.

The commissions are made up of elected officials and citizens appointed by local governments and or appointed officials such as planning commissioners.

TJPDC is directed by you all, the 12-member board, consisting of two representatives appointed by each local governing board, more than half of whom are required to be local elected officials.

There we go.

The mission is to serve our local governments by providing regional vision, collaborative leadership, and professional service to develop effective solutions.

Those are three tenets that we work by.

The vision is to be the intersection of ideas, partnerships, and support creating a cohesive regional community.

I think the comparative advantage of the PDC is that we can help bring together different jurisdictions in order to coordinate across jurisdictional lines.

You guys know the six members, but that is always a part of the orientation.

Other than this month, which is definitely an exception to what we normally follow, it is the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m., except for July and January, we do not meet in those two months.

And then the annual election of officers occurs every June.

Regional Cooperation Act in 1995 is enabling legislation that set up the geographic regions.

The membership must be 51% elected.

Towns can be members of regional bodies upon request, as well as universities, but they have to be members by legislative approval.

We must adopt a strategic plan.

Ours does expire in FY23, so we will be working in this next upcoming year to develop our next five-year strategic plan.

and also we must submit annual updates of our plan to the Department of Housing and Community Development.

For our bylaws, which were last updated in 2017, it establishes the name of the commission and the members that are voting members.

It also establishes our meeting dates and our special meetings, as well as that a forum exists of seven commissioners.

Each of our jurisdictions has an equal number of votes and the offices of chair, vice chair, treasurer, and secretary exist.

The chair and the vice chair cannot be from the same local government.

At this time, the only standing committees that we have are the executive finance committee.

For our bylaws, in April, we nominate a committee for the new officers.

The officers are elected in the June meeting.

The executive director is appointed to manage the day-to-day operations and to prepare the annual budget.

We have the same fiscal year from July 1 to June 30.

And our annual budget is approved at or before the May regular meeting.

We'll go into more detail on our budget as we look at our draft amended budget later in the agenda.

A lot of different programs that the PDC started launched into their own agencies later on.

So you'll see that Jaunt, currently we still staff the MPO, the Piedmont Housing Alliance originally started the PDC, as well as the Coalition for the Homeless, the Partnership for Economic Development, and the Jefferson Area Board for Aging.

We do still staff the corporation,

which is the non-profit arm of the PDC that helps serve as crystal sponsors for funding new non-profits and then we also are the staff for the home consortium, the home investment partnership.

Commissioner's duties are to support the work of the PDC and provide leadership and strategic governance and direction to staff.

It's required that you attend the meetings regularly.

There are 10 meetings a year.

It's written in core bylaws that three consecutive absences require

Stapf to notify the local governments of lack of participation.

It is also requested that you read the materials in advance.

Sometimes they are very long and dense because we put all drafts of all plans into your packets.

You'll notice that I prepared an executive director's report.

That's a really good first place to start because that's the two to three page overview of everything that's going to be in the meeting.

So if for any reason you are not able to read the packet in advance, that's always

That's always the best place to start.

We do ask that you review and participate in and engage in our budget and financial reports.

You guys are our oversight and you are our direction, so we always appreciate that.

And then relaying information back to your local governments and stakeholders, serving as a liaison back to your own jurisdictions is a way that you can support the work of the commission.

Services that we provide.

You guys are familiar with these, but we do transportation and transit planning, land use, community development, economic development, housing, environmental programming, grant writing, technical assistance.

We work on small

Like small area planning, leadership facilitation.

So we do have a vast array of programming that we do here that flexes as the needs and the priorities of the jurisdictions change.

And whatever they ask for support with, since we serve our number of governments, our programming does seem to change from time to time, depending on what our local governments need.

Current projects, I recognize this is very small font for PowerPoints, but I did want to list all of our current initiatives just so that you had them within your packet.

One of our largest programs is our transportation program and the Charlottesville area NPO and our rural transportation program.

And then also growing and becoming very large is our housing program.

We've recently been awarded with some new grants for the agency and are very excited to administer those on behalf of the region and local jurisdictions.

There are other projects, Environment and Other.

We can go through those all.

Our newest and largest ones are the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative.

As you guys know, we were awarded the $79 million grant.

Also is the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.

We are serving as the administrators for that on behalf of eight different jurisdictions.

We are in the process of beginning to develop an application for PDA

to get a comprehensive regional economic development strategy.

However, I just received an email today that said the funding is low.

So I will be following up on that tomorrow.

Our legislative liaison, David Blount is directly funded service of the PDC.

We get direct allocation from our local jurisdictions.

He creates an annual list of regional and local legislative priorities that are followed and promoted throughout the general assembly sessions.

Annual legislative forum is held to interact with Commonwealth legislators and discuss key initiatives and members receive periodic email updates during the General Assembly and all year on key issues and legislation.

If you do not already receive David's email legislative blast, please email him directly and make sure you get added to that list.

It's fantastic.

The funding that we receive is from our member local government appropriations.

We get annual state appropriations through DHCD, and then we receive program funding grants from both state and federal sources.

We do have fluctuating revenues and losses because our programs fluctuate based on the grants available and the priorities of the jurisdictions.

Usually it ranges from a loss of 50 to a gain of 100,000 in any given year.

However, we have since 2015 seen net gains consistently across the last seven years or so.

Last year our net gain was the largest we've had.

That's because we had significant staff and leadership transitions and held positions vacant in the short term.

So we ended up with a larger net gain than usual.

My predecessor and his predecessor all said $1 or above is a good year.

Our goal is not necessarily to make money.

Our goal is to serve our local governments.

Having a net gain allows us to have a little bit more financial stability to make sure that we can support the operations of the agency should we lose a grant or should something change staffing wise.

and we also are currently building an operating expense.

We like to keep five months of operating expenses.

Any gains in advance of that go into a capital reserve account.

It has been the desire of the commission to begin to look at, this happened previously and again, I think it will happen in the future, to look at building spaces.

We currently rent and in our 50 years as a planning district commission have always rented.

So there has been a desire to consider a purchase in the future.

So we are still building that capital reserve count.

Financials are pass-throughs.

We have a significant number of pass-throughs.

That's funding that goes through us but does not necessarily financially benefit the PDC.

All of the pass-throughs, however, that we administer, there is an administrative fee associated with that.

So that is how we generate some revenue.

Their contractual obligations in FY21 are revenues for $4.2 million.

Just over half of that was a pass-through.

And so that's things like our home consortium program, that's direct funding that goes to sub-recipients, as well as the rent and mortgage relief program that was all passed through to sub-recipients to give to individual households.

Historically, our largest pass-throughs have been in our housing program.

However, that is likely to change very quickly with VATI.

That's going to be a large amount of pass-through coming through for the broadband grant.

As far as our financials, monthly I will provide on the consent agenda, the months profit and loss, a dashboard that I create, and then a balance sheet, as well as an approved revenues report.

And that approved revenues report is gonna compare our contracted revenues to our average monthly expenses to make sure month to month we are ensuring that we have enough revenue each month to cover those expenses.

Quarterly, I'll pull those financials off of the consent agenda and we'll go into a little bit of a more detailed discussion of the quarterly financials.

Annual budget, we complete an annual operating budget in May of each year.

In February, staff submits an amended budget.

So that's what you're gonna see tonight.

You're gonna see the amended FY22 budget with updates to revenues and expenses that we've received since it was approved last year.

And then in October of each year, we do a projected budget for the following fiscal year.

So it's a three-step process.

For our annual audit, we do get an outside audit every year.

Currently, our auditor is Robinson Farmer-Fox.

We do provide copies of our audit to all of our funding agencies, and the copies of the audit are posted on the website and given to you all in your packet in November.

And then in FY21, we again receive an unmodified, very good report, which we've had for the last as long as I know.

Each budget includes the past year's actual revenues and expenses, the current approved and amended revenues and expenses, and recommended budget for the upcoming year.

So I'll always present the budget with multi-years for you all to look at the trends and the changes over time.

FY22 amended budget estimates this is an error.

I noticed this error.

I changed it in my director's report.

I changed it in the budget memo.

I didn't touch it on the PowerPoint.

So that is not the accurate number.

It is in the $45,000 range, not $75,000.

So my apologies for that error.

And again, I told you we had a larger net gain in FY21 than usual.

And then our future year projected budgets are always balanced.

We always balance to a zero each year, net gains and losses.

So you'll see it is common for us going into a fiscal year to anticipate needing to pull from our reserves.

And then during that year, we secure grants that we didn't anticipate, and then we can end up ending the year with a net gain instead of drawing from reserves.

This is a large chart, excuse the small font, but it is in your packet.

This is our locality contributions.

So by jurisdiction, we collect a per capita, and then we seek contributions for individual programming by jurisdiction, as well as we take from that per capita the required local match for our rural transportation funds and our MPO funding.

So at the end, we get a balance.

It is a policy of the commission that you all set that any remaining balance, 75% of that is to go towards a regional initiatives, which means more than two jurisdictions.

25% of that is to go towards local projects.

So for example, if we're doing something that is a small area plan that uses two different jurisdictions, we'll be using those two jurisdictions, local contributions.

If it's something larger, regional housing,

Regional Broadband Regional Economic Development will be pulling from the regional plot.

This is a quick overview of our last year's actuals for FY21.

This is a proportion of our FY21 revenue.

You'll see that for every dollar of per capita, just the per capita, not all local.

For every dollar of per capita contribution, we are able to bring in $25.41 in other funding sources.

And then for every dollar of local contribution, if that includes all of our contracts, all of our local matches, plus the per capita we're leveraging for every dollar from the local governments, we're getting $5.95 from state and federal revenues.

As far as our ethics and conflict of interest policy, local elected officials and planning commissioners are required to file state disclosures in their corresponding jurisdictions.

Citizen Appointees file if designated to do so by their appointing locality.

So we rely on those conflicts of interest and ethics policies within the local jurisdictions where each commissioner serves.

And then included in here for your reference in case you need to contact any of us for any reason at any time, we welcome the commissioners to reach out directly to staff so you have all the good contact information.

And I'm happy to take questions if you have them.

Christine, I would just like to compliment you on your nice additions to the packet, the introduction packet this year.

Thank you.

All right.

Hearing and seeing none.

Thank you, Christine.

Moving on to, and also for the record, for the new folks, I'm sure Christine will outreach to you.

Rachel, I've talked to you.

Jim, I know you, Lyle, I've reached you, but Christine will take an opportunity to talk to you guys.

And there's some specifics that you might not understand.

And truth be told, some of it is trialed by like drinking water from a fire hose.

So, you know, it might take you a year to really kind of get a grasp of what's going on, but feel free.

Outreach, love to hear from you.

All of our staff and executive have no problem meeting up with you.

Thank you guys so much.

Moving on to Sara.

You have something for us today.

Thank you.

I do.

Yes, I should have unmuted myself before sharing my screen, but there we go.

Yes.

So thank you again, everyone, for having me.

Is my presentation available?

Are you guys seeing it?

Awesome.

Feel like you always got to ask.

So what's a year Rideshare goes through their annual operating grant funding cycle with the Department of Rail and Public Transportation?

And so when this happens, we bring all of that material, both the grant and the work program, to the commission here, since you are our governing body as being a TJPDC program, for your review, and then later you'll see we have a resolution about the local match contributions

To support that grant funding, but so that you understand what it is that you're supporting.

I know some of you have heard this before, but we have new folks and refreshers are always nice because I don't get to see you enough.

I thought I would continue this.

All right.

So what Rideshare is, we are a transportation demand management program.

What that means is we support and work towards reducing the number of single occupancy vehicles on our roads in the region.

Simple as that.

Not really that simple, but we all know that

Congestion and traffic have a lot of implications and man have we ever seen it like we have in the pandemic.

I come back to this illustration a lot because to me it is jarring and a picture says a thousand words and there it is for you.

This was literally comparisons just in those first couple of months of the pandemic with

the reduction of 90% traffic off of the roads into major cities with air quality issues.

Transportation demand management is important for so many reasons, not only to deal with those frustrations of traffic, because no one likes traffic, but also more importantly for our own wellbeing, both in safety and in health and dealing with climate change.

So Rideshare has a lot of different ways that we reach the general public and our communities.

In general, we provide a carpool matching system.

So you can go online.

I'll talk a little bit more about that with the fun.

parts that we have with our app.

But you can look for carpool matches.

We also have all of our enterprise van pools that run through this region listed on there so anyone can find those.

It also is a trip planning tool.

So you can plan your transit routes.

You can plan bike routes.

You can link all of those up for multimodal transportation.

And basically we promote anything that is taking single occupancy vehicles off.

We provide the carpool and vanpool support, but promote all forms of alternative transportation.

One of the really big programs that we have is our Guaranteed Ride Home and I am totally remiss for not listing it up here because it's probably one of our biggest selling points of the program.

And basically it is designed for anyone who is taking an alternative transportation a minimum of two days a week

to work, that they can then register with that.

And then if an emergency situation happens, so something completely unexpected, they are able to get back to either their home or where they left their vehicle, let's say at a park and ride lot.

for free.

We take care of that particular cost.

And we have found through the many years Rideshare has been operating since the 80s that that reassurance alone is probably one of the biggest things that help people decide to try alternative forms of transportation.

So just a quick refresher for some of you new.

These are some of the programs and initiatives we have been working on in FY22.

So this particular year, we're only halfway through, so we've still got exciting things coming up.

One of the big initiatives that we have been partnering with the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission is with the Afton Express.

They wrote a grant for commuter bus service from across the valley over Acton Mountain to with stops both in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

That is where we have always kind of seen the largest number of our commuters.

So we have partnered with them to do a lot of cross promotion.

It's hard to launch a new service.

It's even harder to launch a new service in a pandemic.

So we have really been working with them very closely.

We meet weekly to promote the act and express.

Also really important and why we're doing that is folks who ride the Athens Express get to take advantage of Guaranteed Ride Home.

So they are automatically qualified for the most part to be Rideshare customers.

One of the really fun initiatives that we got to do this fall is we partnered with CAT and Jaunt and UTS to do Discover Transit Month.

Now this was initially going to be a program through DRPT statewide, but due to the shortages that many transit agencies were experiencing with drivers, they decided right now was maybe not the time to encourage loads more people to discover transit.

But those of us in this particular region felt like we had the capacity and we really wanted to pursue it.

And with their permission, we went ahead.

We published three short videos, kind of addressing some of the barriers or the hurdles or misperceptions that folks have about taking transit.

Those were shared through our social media, through different Twitter and on the Ragshare Facebook pages, if you'd like to take a gander at those.

But we were really proud of them and had a lot of fun putting them together.

So stay tuned for lots more collaboration on that front.

And I do love the tagline that we had, which was bus or bust.

I have a feeling that will make a comeback.

It was kind of cute.

In addition, the state has a telework VA program to promote telework resources.

These days we probably don't really need to be telling folks necessarily to telework, but helping them understand and helping employers more importantly understand how to come up with formal telework programs that will be much more productive and simpler for them to run is one of the big goals of Telework VA.

And then coming up, we have Clean Commute and Bike Month, which will take place in May.

We've got our fingers crossed that we'll be able to run some really interesting and fun programs around that.

So stay tuned for more info there.

One of the other big initiatives that we took on this past year was looking at kind of reevaluating how we're marketing Videshare.

The same messages can get a little tiring.

And you want to make sure that you're saying the right things to the right people and giving them the why.

Why?

Why should I do this?

Why is this important?

So we have partnered with a local company, Hive Creative, and they have been taking a deep dive into some of our former marketing that we've done in the past.

They have completed, actually, everything that's listed there is what we asked them to do in the proposal.

We have taken the initial steps and completed the first two tasks of conducting market research and identifying some key audiences.

Granted, anyone who's a commuter technically qualifies for ride share, but thinking more thoughtfully about what message we're sending to what particular groups of people and what's going to appeal to them is kind of what we were focusing on there.

We are mostly through our brand development strategy and program awareness.

They have sent us some suggestions, so we are gonna be taking a look at how we can implement those to make our brand a little bit more recognizable.

One of the things that they suggested was coming up with a tagline.

So if you have any suggestions, we are open.

Maybe we'll have a contest.

We're also looking at different ways we can implement these marketing strategies, different mediums.

We're looking at different where people are.

You've got to meet people where they're showing up, where they're listening, where they're watching, all of that good stuff.

and then we'll also be looking at getting some materials for some of our campaigns like Clean Commute and then we're due for some new printed promotional items and they will help us with those as well.

So one of the things that is really interesting and I think is going to be a focus not only this year but going into FY23 is really looking at how we can truly utilize this great new system and app that we got right before the pandemic started.

It essentially, again, is that trip planning tool, and then as folks register in there, they can log their trips, and each trip, or non-trip, because telework still counts, that's a big message we have to get out, because nobody thinks of that.

But anyways, as they log their trips, they earn points that they can then use for rewards.

Now you can kind of see a little bit, I apologize if it's small, the rewards are often like gift certificates or percentages off or buy one, get one free or free sub at local and chain businesses.

However, there are also monthly drawings that you can use those points for.

And those are for gift cards that range anywhere from $25 to $100.

So nice, good prizes in there.

And the beautiful thing for us is it helps us get data and to understand what people are doing and how they're using the program and how we can continue to help them in the future.

This is one of my favorite parts of the info that we get from our Agile Now app.

This is a dashboard and if you go to that page where you sign up for the app,

You get to see this particular dashboard that tells you the activity.

So I think it's incredibly powerful to me to think that we have saved admissions, that there have been 6,423 lives shared that

All the calories burned, the money saved, everybody likes to see that, right?

So what's super interesting is this is for the region, but if you register and you sign up, you get your own personalized dashboard so you can see your personal impact to that as well.

Just briefly, this was in the pocket with the grant and the work program, but these are some of the areas we have really decided to focus on in the upcoming fiscal year.

Through our work with Hive Creative, one of the things that we've realized is that we need a media content library.

Video has a 95% retention rate.

People remember what they see in video.

We do not have videos, so we got to fix it.

So that is one of our big initiatives.

We also want to have local photos because people recognize places and themselves and things, and that is a more compelling image.

So this will be something that will help us for years and years to come with this and help us make sure that we're really telling the Vibeshare story that we want to be telling.

We will continue with promotion of DRPT initiatives.

They just released some coming out.

They will be doing Discover Transit Month again, so we have a little bit of a leg up on that since we got one under us, but are looking forward to continuing that partnership with Kat John ETS and Greene County Transit as well.

We will continue working with Afton Express.

That service is not even a year old.

Its anniversary will come in September.

So we've got a lot of work to do between now and then.

And then year two is just as hard.

And then, like I said, the big focus with a lot of the materials, things that you'll probably hear and see are going to be on using that app and how it can work for everyone.

And there's really no one that can't take part in at least a small portion of the program.

So that was just kind of a high-level overview of what that deep dive of the grant and the work program are.

Any questions for Sarah at this time?

Yes, a lot of the hooks I know who commute to Charlottesville commute from Buckingham.

Well, Jaunt actually has some routes that they run from Buckingham, and we have several of those folks who take the Jaunt routes in who are registered and are guaranteed ride home.

In fact, I know a couple of them personally, and they are lovely individuals that I always look forward to hearing from Libby.

She's my favorite.

Mr. Smith.

Sara, as always, great presentation.

Great to see that smiling face.

Can you do me a favor?

Can you either put in the chat the app address?

You went that a little too fast.

Great.

Any other questions for Sara at this time?

All right, hearing none, Sara, thank you so much.

Of course, lots of the Afton residents like about those commutes they take and it plays a huge role.

And for those of you who may not be coming from the rural context,

You know, whether it's health care, whether it's work, whether it's, you know, civil or anything, meeting your lawyer, meeting a health care provider.

These conversations are so big and moving forward, you know, it's always important for us to support the Rideshare program.

So moving on.

Thank you, Sara.

Consent Agenda.

It is the Chair's recommendation that we approve the Consent Agenda, which has the minutes of December 2nd.

As presented, do I have a motion?

So moved.

Motion for Mr.

Second for Mr. Andrews.

We could do this without objection.

Are there any objections to approving the Consent Agenda as presented?

We have no objections.

Let the record show that this was unanimous.

Thank you so much.

Moving on.

Rideshare application resolution.

In your packet, you will see a resolution that we put in there.

Rideshare is the only program that we have that has a unique timeline as far as the commission timeline.

And so the grant application opens after our December commission meeting.

And it is due February 1st, so it's before our February commission meeting.

And therefore we submit the application and then come to you all immediately after for the resolution that we need to have in order to support the application.

And so this resolution gives us the authority to be able to submit that application and that we are certifying that we do have the local match that is required in order to apply for the ride share funding.

So with that, staff would recommend a motion to approve the FY22 grant application in the amount of 139,358 with the local match provided by the member local governments in the amount of 34,840.

Mr. Chairman, I'll make that motion.

We have a motion from Mr. Smith.

Do we have support?

I'll second that.

We have support from Mr.

Herring and Greene County.

Let's go ahead and do a roll call vote for this.

Yep, Councilor Payne?

Commissioner Solla-Yates?

Aye.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow, Supervisor Jones.

Sorry, I forgot to unmute.

Yes.

No worries.

Miss Bishop, Supervisor Herring.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

All right.

Motion passes.

Moving forward into new business.

I'm unmuted, right?

Okay, great.

Second quarter financial report.

This is looking at the PDC's financials, October, November and December, which is our second quarter included in your packet.

The first thing is the dashboard report.

And so I wanted to do a high level overview and

and field any questions if you have any.

So our net quick assets is something that we're tracking.

That's our current assets minus our current liabilities.

The target is for us to always have a minimum of five months of operating expenses on hand.

We currently have 9.21 months of operating expenses.

Our rolling average of operating expenses has increased slightly, which we anticipated since they dramatically decreased as we had vacancies.

Our three month average of expenses is about $96,000, nearly $97,000.

And then our annual operating expenses for December were $108,000 compared to $99,000 in November, which was also anticipated because we did a one time staff bonus.

Our capital reserves, as you all will see in your packet, are about $403,000.

So that's taking our net quick assets minus the five months of operating expenses we keep on hold.

Anything above that is capital.

The next thing is our unrestricted cash on hand.

This divides the cash on hand by the agency's average monthly operating expenses to give us the number of months of operation without any additional cash received.

Our target is four months.

Our alarm is under two months.

We are at 2.68 months right now of unrestricted cash on hand, right about $257,000.

Excuse the scroll real fast.

Sorry about that.

And then the most important thing that we're always tracking is our net revenue on a month-to-month basis to make sure that we're ending the year in the black and not in the red.

You will see, for those of you that are new, you will see a large increase from September through December of last fiscal year.

That was the rent and mortgage relief program that we had.

In October, we had a net gain of 9,237.

It is very customary for us to have net losses in November and in December for several different reasons.

November, it is because that's when our audit expenses come through.

And December is due to holidays, personal leave, and this year a one-time staff bonus, which we will be able to recover in the remainder of the year, but it did come out in December.

So we had a net loss in December.

Overall, our net gain to date is 11,775, which tracks with exactly what we were budgeting around this time.

Any questions on the dashboard report?

Included in your packet also are profit and loss statements for October, November, and December.

If you would like to look at those in detail, as well as a balance sheet.

Another item that I'm gonna pull up just for you to view, but not to go into too much question over, just so that you guys are familiar, especially our newer commissioners.

Excuse the scroll again, you guys.

Sorry, did I really?

Yeah, I think you spoke downwards.

Oh, I apologize.

This table, again, I recognize this is very small font, but you have it in your packets that you can zoom if you need to.

This tracks all of our different program grants and contracts.

And it shows the spend down on those contracts by month.

And then you'll see that we do a calculation at the end that looks at how much grant money do we have remaining?

How much of that is going to pass through the organization?

How much is available to us to ensure that month to month we're looking at what our average monthly expenses are?

And do we have enough grant money in order to cover those expenses?

And so we track this every month and provide it to you guys in your packet so that you can look at individual programs

Any questions for Christine at this time?

And if I'm not mistaken, Christine, this is an action item, correct?

Yes, sir.

OK. Any questions for Christine in regards to the second quarter dashboard or anything else she showed?

Not seeing any hands raised.

It's the chair's recommendation that we approve this as presented.

So moved.

Ooh, I'm gonna go with the motion from Herring.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right, who did the second?

Ned.

Mr. Galloway.

All right, we support any discussion.

Great, thank you.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Something in the air tonight.

Supervisor Barlow?

We'll come back in a second.

Ms. Bishop?

It's okay.

She said she'll be right back.

No worries.

Moving on.

Christine, continuing on with the budget draft, amended budget draft.

Great.

So again, as I shared in the orientation in October, I bring to you all a projected budget of the next fiscal year.

It then comes to you in May, preceding the fiscal year for its approval as the operating budget.

And then comes back to you in February as a draft amendment and then in March to be voted upon.

So you'll see what I provided for you.

This is new.

This has not been included in the past, but I wanted you to be able to compare what would the original approved budget was and the changes in the amendment that I'm proposing to you tonight.

This is not an action item.

This is a draft for your review.

I will bring it back to you next month for you all to vote for approval.

If you look at just the revenues, you will see that our federal revenues increased slightly.

That is due to the home ARP funding and the money that we will be receiving through that.

It is also because our housing preservation grant increased this year from 117,000 to 156,000.

So there was a slight increase there.

You'll see that our state revenues increased.

Most of that actually is due to rollovers from FY21.

There was some state PRP funding for our transit grants.

Since we had a little bit of a slower start to that project because of the staff turnovers, some of the funding that was budgeted for 21, we rolled over into 22.

So that increased there.

Additional changes are the Virginia eviction and reduction pilot.

We received $50,000 for a planning grant and you'll hear later in my director's report we were awarded another $250,000 for an implementation grant and so that is included in that increased revenue and then likewise the local revenues increase for those matches on the transit grants and so on.

Also, you'll see an increase in local because of the cigarette tax board and the startup funds and reserves that we received for that.

So there's an increase there.

Small rent increase, we've been very successful in keeping all of our units in the back rented through the pandemic.

And so we projected a little bit of smaller rent in case we had some turnover during the pandemic with people working remotely, but we generated more revenue than we anticipated.

You'll also see that the original budget anticipated a need to transfer from reserves in order to balance the budget.

We no longer anticipate needing to use any reserves in order to complete the fiscal year in the black.

Okay, going down to our revenues, you'll see a slight increase in our personnel costs.

That is because we have been successful in filling some of our positions here at the end of the year.

And so it also, you'll see this slight increase because there is, there were one time bonuses at the end of the calendar year.

I budgeted for an additional one-time bonus at the end of the fiscal year, should we be in a positive net position to be able to do that, as well as doing some stair-step changes in salaries in order to be commensurate with some of our local jurisdictions, rather than doing that in one false group, we're doing that across several three to six month periods to get us where we need to go in a sustainable fashion.

So that's where our personnel increases are.

Our direct cost increases, you'll see an increase in advertising.

That's not significant, but slight.

That was due to the advertising of the executive director job, as well as the vacant positions that we have.

We did a lot more paid boosts and paid advertising in order to grow our net a little wider and make sure we're bringing in really good candidates.

You'll see the contractual is down significant.

If you recall, the budget included, in case it was needed, funding for a private search firm to fill the executive director role, since we did not need to use that, that was pulled out of the budget, as well as we budgeted a significant amount of contract time from Hansman Wiebel.

to help us through some financial transitions that haven't yet occurred.

So you'll see that be transferred into FY23.

I did maintain some of it for this year in anticipation if we get a finance director that we can use handsman and legal to help us with that transition.

We'll also see a slight decrease in our professional development and that's because things continued

to be virtual trainings.

And so a lot of the conferences and such that we looked to be able to send staff to the fees were a lot lower and the travel expenses were lower related to that professional development.

The other thing you'll see in travel vehicle right now, I am projecting a strong increase for the purchase of a vehicle for the cigarette tax compliance agent.

However, I am learning that it

I want to make sure to make abundantly clear that this budget right now does not include any program pass-throughs for VODI for the broadband grant.

and it does not include any tax revenue for the cigarette tax board.

We don't yet have clear enough projections and so I didn't want to just throw a dart at the board.

I'm hoping by next month I will be able to provide you a little bit better idea of what that might look like for the rest of this fiscal year.

I'll share with you later but the body contract is not anticipated to be

fully signed until mid-April.

And so while VATI is going to largely increase our budget, it might not have as substantial of an effect this fiscal year, next fiscal year it will.

Same with the cigarette tax projections.

We have not, this is the first month that we'll be receiving remittances.

And so we don't yet have a very clear idea on what that will look like.

And I'd like to receive at least one month before projecting the next five.

Christine, Lyle has a question.

That's an excellent question.

Within the document, I have included the administrative.

Thank you.

So this amended budget does have what we would receive for admin, for body, cigarette tax, and all of the other grants.

I just did not include the program pass-through because we didn't have a clear projection yet.

Excellent.

All right, does that answer your question, Lyle?

Yes.

Any other questions for Christine at this time?

All right, hearing and seeing none, this is not an action item, correct, Christine?

Correct.

Go ahead and start.

The grievance policy, as you guys will recall from the rent and mortgage relief program,

Bush.

More than a year ago now, DHCD, Department of Housing and Community Development requires that a grant recipient have a board approved grievance policy.

When we wrote that policy and brought it to you all and you approved it, we had the specific name of the program, Rent and Mortgage Relief in it.

And in order to make it a grievance policy that we can use across multiple programs, we revised it.

We took out the name of any program

But it did not substantively change any language other than taking out that program name.

Got it.

This one is an action item.

Okay.

All right.

Any questions for Christine in regards to what she needs?

Hearing none, let's go ahead and get a motion.

I have a motion.

Okay.

We have a motion from Lyle.

Yep.

And do we have support?

I'll second that Mr. Chairman.

Support from Mr. Smith of Fluvanna.

Any discussion?

Commissioner Sella-Yates?

Aye.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Burch, Supervisor Barlow, Supervisor Jones, are you back?

I am.

I'm sorry.

A state delegate called me.

Yes.

Was that a yes on the vote?

All day you could have called me.

Miss Fisher, I'm so sorry.

Supervisor Herring?

Aye.

Okay.

This passes unanimously.

Moving on to Executive Director Evaluation Process.

That's what I'm coming to you guys to ask.

In my contract, in the executive director contract, it does say that the employee will be evaluated by June of each year.

And at that time, either the commission or the committee will do the evaluation.

And that is what determines whether or not at the commission's discretion, whether there's an increase in salary or benefits.

And basically what I want to come to you all for is a little bit of guidance.

I know the process has changed a little bit in the past.

and how it's been done.

I know we've done surveys of the staff.

There's been surveys of the commissioners.

There's been interviews with our member of government leadership.

Certainly.

And as much as I hate to throw this in the laps of somebody who's been here longer than myself, Mr.

Herring and Mr. Smith,

I think historically we've set up a committee, correct?

And if you could elaborate what that committee has done, that'd be great.

Mr.

No, I think it's Mr. Smith.

That was called deferring to Mr.

Deflection, there you go.

Yeah, no, I mean, to, as I think Andrea is the second longest, first,

Longest serving member, I'm the second that we've been through a couple of these before.

But my suggestion is probably put together a committee and then let that committee formulate how it feels is the best valuation process.

I do support doing a committee and the committee kind of coming up with a process that they think is very appropriate.

You know, I don't think the committee needs to be any more than three or four.

I think after that, if not that many, you know, no more than three, probably.

Yeah, I'll take three.

With probably three or four, I agree with you.

It's probably three, just to keep it an odd number.

I think it's appropriate, since I'm chair, and probably not going to be chair the next round, that I'll take this round.

OK, Mr.

Herring, can we get another volunteer?

All right, Mr. Galloway.

Perfect.

So I have set up the committee.

If the commission is okay with that, is the commission okay with doing the evaluation through these three members?

Any objections?

Great.

That would be great.

Set up the zoom.

All right, does that answer your question for what's needed there?

All right, let me pull the whole agenda up on my phone because my computer's broke so I have to use my laptop and my cell phone at the same time.

Going on to monthly report.

Don't forgive me.

There are a lot of updates since we haven't had a meeting for a month.

I'm going to go through each housing and transportation economic development and give you some updates on each of our programs.

The first one obviously is the staffing update with the new transportation planner filled and the VATI position filled.

We are in the final stages of the process for the chief operating officer.

We're in the final interview process.

So I'm hoping to be able to come to you in March with a candidate for the chief operating officer.

We also still have vacant the finance director position and cigarette tax compliance officer position.

So we have been working hard behind the scenes to make sure that we fill all of these roles with highly qualified candidates so that we can make sure the good work of the PDC continues.

As far as VODI, the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, and if you guys will forgive me, I am going to use the executive director's report to just run through so I don't miss anything.

So the TJPDC staff, along with our private sector partners and the 13 jurisdictions, along with the HCD, we all met for a CNR.

It's called a contract negotiation meeting.

on January 12th.

The purpose of that meeting was to review the body project scope, the revised budget, the pre-contract list, what needs to occur and be submitted in order to go under contract with DHCD by approximately mid-April.

That was a very productive meeting and we definitely know what we need to get in order working with Gary at CBEC in order to get all of the documentation that we need in order.

We submitted to DHCD two different requests for prior authorization to draw on our body administrative expenses.

The first prior authorization that we submitted was to allow our private sector partners to begin to do some of the make ready work.

in advance and that was approved by DHCD that assumes that any work that is done or any funding that is expended if we do not for some reason go under contract, the liability falls on the private sector company to assume those costs.

So there is no risk to us at the PDC of that prior authorization.

We also submitted a prior authorization to be able to draw down administrative expenses in order to hire staff so that we can have Lori Allshouse begin to help us get through to the contract phase.

That part is still pending.

What is required by DHCD is that we submit what's called a performance based budget so that we are identifying milestones that we will reach in our administration.

And one of those milestones can be to include the hiring of staff.

So that one has not yet been approved.

However, we are in the process of getting that one approved.

Any questions on body?

Next update is on the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.

The taxes did take effect January 1st.

The first reports and remittances are coming in as we speak.

They're all due by February 10th, so that's today.

However, since it is the first month, we are going to be, we're going to give a little bit of grace for everybody since this is the first time they've submitted these forms.

As administrators, we do expect the first several months to be very fluid.

We aren't completely certain what that revenue was going to look like.

Everything was based on projections of the City of Charlottesville's number of packs sold and then projected to the different jurisdictions.

And so we know there's going to be a lot of change in what those numbers actuals are versus what the projections were.

The board met in January and is expected to meet quarterly moving forward.

and then we're currently still advertising for that halftime position.

The cigarette tax board did authorize a full-time FTE, one full FTE.

We are gonna assume the administrative portion of the cigarette tax board through existing staff and then we're hiring out for the compliance part of that position.

Any questions on cigarette tax board?

All right, housing, we'll try to do these high level.

As you guys heard me say earlier, we were successful in our implementation grant for Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot Program.

It's $250,000.

That is City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

That grant actually, we will have a sub-recipient and that will be Piedmont Housing Alliance.

And that will allow them to hire an eviction prevention case manager.

as well as a landlord outreach manager, which was what we requested in the grant application.

The Regional Housing Partnership held its third virtual series on missing middle housing on the 20th of January.

The fourth session is on faith-based organizations and housing initiatives.

That one is scheduled for February 17th.

There is an active link in your packet if you're interested in registering for that session.

Also, the Regional Housing Partnership is in the throes of its strategic planning process.

They did meet with the consultant, the executive committee, met with the consultant to begin the strategic planning process.

And then the full partnership in March will work with the consultant on a retreat in order to continue that strategic planning work.

The Virginia Housing, 2 million, yeah, somebody, I think, can you guys hear that feedback?

Yeah.

Virginia Housing, $2 million grant.

I just want to update you on where we are in the process.

We put out four requests for proposals.

We received those back.

We have worked with

Virginia Housing to go through each application to ensure that they are eligible applicants.

They have been narrowed down to three different proposals.

We will then have those three priority applicants submit their formal application with all of their documentation.

And then a review panel will look at the feasibility of the project.

I will come to you in April with our recommendation for who should be the recipients of that grant funding for you all to approve that.

We do have Chair Rutherford is going to be on that review panel, so he'll be bringing forward to you all the recommendation in April.

And then finally, we have begun to meet with each of our jurisdictions on the home ARP funding with staff in each of those jurisdictions so that they can identify what their priorities are going to be for the spending of that company.

As a reminder, the home ARP funding is designed for a different eligible population than the annual home funding.

It is intentionally designed for those currently or at risk of homelessness.

Williams, and then there's fleeing domestic or sexual assault.

And there's several other smaller subpopulations.

So it's not the same as just like, you know, AHIP necessarily renovating a home.

So there's different eligible populations and there's different eligible activities.

And so since home funding for

consortium agreement or cooperation agreement.

Each jurisdiction receives one sixth of the funding that we receive.

We're working with the staff in each of them to identify which priority populations and activities they want to address for their jurisdiction.

Lyle has a question.

I'm not familiar with the home ARP program.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other questions for Christine on that?

Hearing none.

You have three more categories.

Economic Development, we've reached out to staff in each jurisdiction.

We've previously applied for a SEDS, Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, which is a regional economic development strategy.

We previously applied to the EDA under their CARES Act funding.

That was not a successful application because they thought our application was more appropriate for their annual funding and not their CARES funding.

We have been encouraged to apply for it under their American Rescue Plan funding if we can include resilience in our economic development plan.

So we are intending to apply for a SEDS application.

Like I indicated earlier, I received an email today

That the funds for the Economic Adjustment Assistance Grant that we were particularly going for has had an extremely popular application.

And so they are concerned that there's not enough funding to meet all the requests.

So I will reach out to our regional rep at the EDA to see if they still recommend that we submit that application.

They are aware that we intend to apply, but I want to make sure we don't go through the process knowing that there's not available funding.

We can always do it the following year if there's not.

So I'll be able to update you guys on that in March.

As far as our environmental program, the largest one right now is the Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan.

We have completed the risk assessment, it's called the HIRA, the H-I-R-A component of the plan.

We are now completing a public survey that will help us update the mitigation action items and then staff is working with a staff group from the jurisdictions

It's called a working group in order to update the goals and objectives within that plan.

We will be holding a public meeting in order to review the HIRA findings and the solicit action input.

So we are moving through in that process.

Sandy, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the hazard mitigation plan needs to be submitted to DEQ September.

I think it has to be submitted to VITAM in September and then they'll review it and it will go to FEMA.

Great.

Our Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO staff continues to develop the SmartScale projects.

We convened a stakeholder group for the Rivanna.

Sandy convened a Rivanna River Bikehead stakeholder group on site so they could look at the alignments of the potential bridge configurations.

And then to date, the MPO is considering four projects.

The PDC has heard from Albemarle County and now I believe Nelson County that they would like us to support

No, Albemarle County will be submitting under the TJPDC slots.

Nelson has asked for support in their applications.

And so that is what we'll be doing with SmartScale.

Sorry, I messed that one up.

And then that we applied for, since the last time we met, you guys know that we were going to apply for what's called OIP, Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment grant.

That is to give us technical assistance to develop the next long range transportation plan.

We were awarded that OIP grant that is not money that passes through to us that just allows us to have access to a consultant who will do about $100,000 of work helping us identify, Sandy I should have made you do this part, performance-based metrics for how to identify the projects that should go into the long-range transportation plan.

Yes?

Good job.

And so we will get, we were successful on that grant application, which is very exciting for us because as a staff that has had a lot of turnover on our transportation side, this will be a very appreciated technical assistance to help us learn the process of updating a long range transportation plan.

And then with support from Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville and the Regional Transit Partnership and the MPO, we submitted a $180,000 technical assistance grant.

So that has been completed for the Regional Transit Government Study.

I encourage you guys about this.

I got your support for submitting the application that has now gone through.

We are very excited.

We will not find out about an award until it's approved by the CTB, so we shouldn't know until March-April that it's tentative and then by the end of the fiscal year if we are awarded.

Sandy, do you want to add anything to that?

Thank you.

Microtransit, thank you.

They are going to, I was so close.

They are going to pilot microtransit on the north end of 29 and the Pentox area.

And then the TJPDC is continuing to work with Kittleson and Louisa and Fluvanna on the Zion Crossroads plan.

The stakeholder meeting was held in January, the end of January to plan for the second round of public engagement.

And then a public meeting will be held in February and a survey will be released.

It is a MetroQuest survey.

I have not seen an update on that.

And then we'll share that information with you to make sure that it's widely shared in both Louisa and Corvanna to make sure we can get as much community input as possible.

And my very last update, the consultants on the North 29 corridor study, remember we're doing a transportation corridor study up to in Greene County.

They have provided a list of five different intersections for review by the locality, by VDOT and by TJPDC staff.

No.

Those are my many, many updates.

We had like two months worth of stuff right there.

Good job.

Did you catch your breath?

Thank you so much, Christine.

Yes.

Two, I may just reach out, but I'm curious about the eviction reduction pilot implementation grant and just if it's not already happening, any connections with an investment Charlottesville made last budget cycle for an eviction prevention position we funded through Legal Aid Justice Center.

Just curious what if any connections could be there to sort of maximize the impact.

And the second is for the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partner, not that, the Virginia Housing Development Grant.

Are those applications we'll be able to sort of see as a commission and learn more about?

I'm just curious what the applications will be.

Get a sense of where that money's going.

Let me answer your first question first.

So Legal Aid Justice Center is on our stakeholder committee for the VRP implementation grant.

And it was listed within our application that that is a local program.

And that was actually considered part of the local match.

And so, yes, we are trying to coordinate that work with the two hires that People Housing Alliance intends to.

Great.

The other one is the Virginia Housing Development Grant.

The actual applications, I did not intend for the full commission to see because there will be a review panel that includes the chair of the commission as a part of that review.

We have other professionals that we've drawn from other jurisdictions, from other regions that have been on similar panels for the Virginia Housing Grant that are helping us look to make sure

That it aligns a with our regional priorities that we've stated, but also so that the projects are feasible and able to be completed within the timeline.

One of the things that is unique about this is that there is a deadline for us spending that money.

And so the projects that are eligible have to already be in the process.

And this is more of a gap funding in order to get them to the finish line.

And so, for example, if projects did not already have LIHTC,

the low-income housing tax credits, then that would be less likely to be completed in time than those that already had LIHTC and just needed a little bit because of increasing costs or increase in materials.

Okay.

No, I trust the expertise of the panel.

So I can, I can share this with you as a staff when we met with Virginia Housing in order to say, okay, we have 5.8 million in requests for 1.8 in funding.

They left it very much a local decision on what we did in order to tear down those applications.

As a PDC staff, one of the priorities for us is that we ensured that there was at least one unit in all six of our jurisdictions.

It was very important to us that this was a regional project and not just urban centric.

We did not receive as many applications that had regional and so therefore we gave a lot of priority to those that did.

The other thing that was very important to us is that we spanned the affordability and so that we had some all the way down from

those that needed public housing all the way up through first time home ownership and everything in between.

Thank you.

Yes, I've got a question about the long range transportation planning metrics project, performance-based.

I'm coming in hot off of a comprehensive planning process, so I've got metrics on the brain.

In that process, there was sort of a vision, goal, strategy,

Thenmetrics, and everything kind of drove that way, transportation planning.

Yes, so basically what we're going to have to do when we start working with the consultants is we're going to have to define what our broader goals are.

So that's something we're probably going to pull from what our current plan is and maybe adapt those to include other goals that

Maybe we need to rework.

And from there, there's going to be a needs identification and prioritization.

So when you do transportation planning, you always start with where the existing deficiencies in the systems network.

They start with identifying and prioritizing the needs.

And from there, we'll start looking at where we need to prioritize additional studies to identify what appropriate improvements might be to meet those needs.

So what's going to end up happening is that you identify the need, you identify where you need more information to figure out the best solutions, and then you identify what the best solution is, and then you prioritize from what all of those specific projects might be.

We're not going to be able to go through the process of doing the studies and identifying all the projects right now so we're going to have to start with projects that we've already identified through the studies but the goal is going to be that this is going to be a process that can be adapted from one long-range transportation cycle to the next and will hopefully develop a much

O'Brien.

And Mr. Solla-Yates, if you're interested in diving deeper into that, we can certainly send you the scope of work that we sent to

Hoipe in order to apply for that grant that we were awarded.

Please.

All right.

Any other questions for Christine?

Hearing none.

Next item is round table.

So.

For y'all new bucks to this, this is a time where we get to kind of talk about anything we want about what's happening in our county, kind of updates and the time to ask questions of surrounding municipalities.

Sometimes there's something that you might not have been confronted.

And it's pretty great to ask a group of municipalities, you know, what they might think or reactions or whatever it might be.

So to open that, we're going to make Dale Herring go first.

There you go.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, I agree a couple of things.

We're still fighting the RSA water battle.

So far, I think as far as court cases goes, we're undefeated and we're still plodding along.

And for those who don't know, we'll stay with it until we actually own our own water authority.

We just recently approved our redistricting plan.

We had public comments.

I think we had one or two emails

And that was about it.

It was a very, for us, I know all the localities are having a little bit more difficult time of it.

For us, it was a very smooth process.

We had like four different plans presented.

I was actually advocating to do away with the at-large position that it went to.

So like I told them in the meeting, it just saves me calls from signs, no problem.

And so we voted and that went through last week.

We're looking forward to the VATI grant coming through.

We're excited about that.

And the biggest problem we're having right now is we're having some issues with our emergency services, specifically our fire departments.

We had one fire department that has asked originally for four staff members.

They came back and asked for seven, well, actually 724 staffing.

So, you know, they were on the press a while back.

So we're trying to work through that process.

I'm sure most localities are.

One of the things we would like to be able to do is to continue with our volunteers.

As most of you know, it's a huge cost to impact your locality when that volunteer service goes away, but it's something that all localities are being faced with.

And for the Albemarle County folks here, our grant writer actually found a report from the state of Pennsylvania

And Albemarle County was used at least once if not twice in that report as an example of successful ways to retain volunteers.

So congratulations there.

And the next big controversial thing we have in our area is going to be glamping.

That will come up probably in April.

So looking to Nelson County for an example of what to do or what not to do there.

And that's all I have right now.

Appreciate it guys and happy new year and welcome new members to the commission.

If you have any questions, reach out.

All I can say is that Nelson County has perfected short-term rentals and how you can bring in millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue and potentially get rid of your personal property tax all at the same time.

Dale, my opinion still stands.

I think lamping is probably one of the least impactful things you could do in an agriculture zoned area.

It's kind of like just putting up a tent and living there for a weekend.

I think, you know, but that's my opinion and I'm sure I'd get tarred and feathered if I came to your meeting.

So thank you.

I might, I know I already interacted with your constituency.

So Mr.

Herring, thank you so much.

The only thing I could add to that is that you heard a little bit about the North 29 Carter plan.

The Rutgersville Advisory Committee is also reviewing the pedestrian and bicycle plan and trying to come up with something not very easily.

Thank you, Andrea.

All right.

We're going to move on to Albemarle.

Well, let's see here.

I'll just follow up on the microtransit comment.

The Albemarle County Board is really excited about that.

We think that's going to be a huge effort to bring effective transit services, especially to our urban ring, places where fixed routes aren't necessarily giving just because of the nature of how the routes go are not as effective.

So we've got high hopes for that.

We, at the start of the year, our former TJPDC commissioner, Donna Price, was named our chair and Bea Lupisto-Kurtley is now our vice chair.

So we have a new leadership in place.

Donna, of course, was vice chair for the past two years.

I will note that this coming meeting on the 16th, we are going to be tackling some of the incentive, developer incentives portion of our housing Albemarle.

That's a big deal.

That was a big topic of conversation.

We voted the policy in this past summer.

So looking forward to the work that the board is going to do for their housing team on developing and understanding what incentives they're bringing forward to us.

We're getting ready to kick off budget season, which I would imagine most people are if they haven't already.

We had some representatives of CenturyLink in front of us a few meetings ago talking about

Well, lack of service, if anything else, and things that they could be doing to help and to approve what they're delivering to our constituents.

And there's been follow-up on that, both from our broadband authority and from the board.

And let's see.

I think that's all I have on notes.

So thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Ned.

Something like that.

I'm going to coordinate with Ned for next time so he doesn't take everything.

Uh, yeah, no, I think that he's pretty well summed it up.

Appreciate it, Jim.

Um,

The residents of Schuyler would also like to continue to complain that your constituents like to throw your trash on our side of Route 6 and we'd like for you all to stop.

That is our first ask.

Sounds good.

We look forward to Albemarle helping us officiate it.

Moving on to, let's see, Fluvanna.

I don't think Mr. O'Brien is here today.

You've never seen me walk the gauntlet before, have you?

Dale, if you ever invite Jesse to Greene County, please call me up.

This is an event I'd like to see.

So first and foremost, I want to take a moment and thank all our, thank our new folks, Lyle, Jim and Rachel.

Andrea and I are the oldest sitting members here.

So if you guys have any questions give me a call.

My office is in the X park, so if you guys are in Charlottesville, I'll buy you a cup of coffee and tell you a few lies.

I mean, I'll tell you a few things and then, you know, anytime you're ever in the area, reach out to me and we'd be more than happy to buy a cup of coffee.

As far as Fluvanna County goes, I was hoping Tony would fill in.

I will.

The only thing I can share is I did attend the planning commission meeting yesterday, so we're starting our comp plan process and

It looks like we're going to be leaning pretty heavily on the work that the Regional Housing Partnership has done on that, so that's exciting.

On the Regional Housing Partnership side of things, it just amazes me how our speaker series are growing.

I can't remember, Christine, I don't think Ian is on the call, but I think we had like 70 to 100 people, something like that.

That's a really good turnout.

I believe there's another one coming up on this Thursday, if I remember, is that correct, Christine?

Is it Thursday?

I think I'll look at my calendar and put it in the thing, but it's going to be another speaker speaker series.

So it's, it's a lot of fun.

And we've got budget talks.

And let me see, I wrote tar and feather three times.

So apparently I have to talk about that more than once.

But mainly welcome guys.

Welcome to new folks.

This is a really unique body guys.

This regional planning and one of the things that I've been passionate about being on it as long as I haven't blessed

It's exactly as Jesse kicked off.

You know, we all have little from different parts of our, our region.

I'm from a rural region on that end of it, but we all work together and we all interact very much.

So what Michael does in the city and Lyle does in the city impacts Nelson County.

What I do in Fluvanna impacts, or what I do with Fluvanna does impacts that.

And for all of us to sit around and have this conversation openly and freely is what it's all about.

So,

You know, welcome, welcome.

Reach out if I can help you in any way, guys.

Good job.

Fill in some of that area, right?

As my grandmother who was from County Cork, Irish, used to say, Keith and me, boy, when they vaccinated you, they used a phonograph needle instead of a hypothermic needle that she would tell me to shut up.

Thank you, Keith, as always.

Thank you, Fluvanna.

All right, Charlottesville.

Michael, go.

Well, I think the biggest thing is our budget process is getting underway.

You want your jaws to drop some.

We got our assessment increases.

Average assessments in the city were up 11%.

And we've gotten our first draft of, well, not the first formal draft, but beginning budget discussions and to afford everything currently in our budget.

On top of that 11% assessment increase would require a 10 cent real estate tax increase.

So we are gonna have some, that's driven mainly by-

Yeah, I invite anyone to just one city council meeting in Charlottesville.

Yeah, and that's driven primarily by a proposal for a school reconfiguration project, which would be $80 million for one building, Buford.

So we are going to have to have some difficult, honest, and realistic conversations over the coming weeks about how to get our budget working.

But those are really the biggest things, figuring out how we make our budget work.

I can add a little bit to that, Michael.

As those who are on the call might know, I also chair the Piedmont Community Land Trust.

Within two years, the property that we built on Nassau Street went up $100,000 in assessed value.

This is market rate.

This is not what we actually sold them for, but market rate went from 300,000 to 400,000, actually 405 to be exact, 105,000.

So good luck, Michael.

Yeah.

And it would be a lot more affordability if we had more land trust land, we'll just say that, but yeah, and that's just overall,

Some neighborhoods, it was over 20% on average, 10th and Page.

I don't know how familiar everyone is with the city, but 10th and Page was over 20% on average.

A lot of properties jumped by like double with no improvements having been made.

Sending lots of thoughts and prayers at this time for your assessments.

Hello, thank you.

My life is much easier and better.

We're just worrying about planning.

So we're wrapping up the comprehensive plan.

It was unanimously approved by city council.

Thank you.

We are now moving into rezoning.

Work has begun.

We are working with a consultant team as well as our own in-house team.

They're doing a sort of analysis of what we've got versus what our comp plan says we need.

I'm going to say they're different.

It's going to be a big project.

It will be difficult.

We should have, I think I'm recalling initial assessment mid-April.

And then once we have that, we're going into public process and people will share their thoughts and feelings about zoning, which is always a good thing.

Broadly, sort of conversations moving from there will be, okay, well, we've got land use, oh, no transportation, what do we do?

Thank you, Lyle.

Welcome again.

Let's see.

Our Louisa contingent, Rachel.

Yeah, I am.

I'm unmuting.

I'm going to turn the camera on.

Yes.

So I'm new on the board.

I'm in my second month.

But we've been busy working here.

And I'm going to just add a shout out to Lyle over here.

I've been having fun watching your hand gestures and your facial.

You've been keeping it interesting this evening.

But no, here in Louisa County, as you know, Zion's Crossroads is always a hot, fast building area for our county, and that is the district I represent.

So I've been having fun navigating and learning that.

We're getting ready for our small area study public meeting that we're having on the 23rd that's getting ready to come.

There's been a lot of public interest generated, so hopefully people will come to this.

because if they don't give us their input we won't know what they want.

They were in budget season so I'm learning about budgets and Mr. Barlow is not here with us tonight because of the rescheduling of it collided with our planning commission so he's our representative on our planning commission so he's not here.

We

I believe we're tonight on the planning commission.

One of the big hot topics was our capital improvement projects.

There were some pretty big asks there.

So I'm interested to see how that's gonna pan out tonight for the planning commission.

But overall, you know, we're just moving forward and I hope as the months go along, I'll have more to impart.

I'm really in the learning process here and enjoying my time so far.

So, and I'm sorry, I had to step away this delegate.

I did not expect him to call it eight o'clock at night.

So, um, but, uh, yep.

All right.

Welcome Rachel.

Rachel, we should grab coffee sometime.

Talk about Zayas Grocerose when you get an opportunity.

I would absolutely love to do that because both of our counties are involved.

In fact, if I look across my street, I can touch Fluvanna County.

Yeah, I've been involved for 35 years trying to get Fluvanna water there.

Yeah.

And in fact, I think I have some updates for you about the water.

I heard Mr.

Herring was going to bring water over to you, Rachel.

Green County just has so much, right, Dale?

Yep.

We got it.

Dale understands that.

All right.

I guess I'm the only one in Nelson County.

Again, Rachel, thank you for participating.

Jim, Lyle, looking forward to your success and your respect of governance.

Nelson County, you know, we're just out here honestly thriving because we're number one in internet and remote working and distilleries and breweries and so many other things.

I know, shake your head, Jim.

Be jealous, Mr.

Herring.

Oddly enough, this is obviously short-term rentals might be becoming a little bit more of a hot topic.

We've noticed that.

Definitely an uptick.

Something about Nelson County having like 800 Airbnbs and VRBOs definitely makes for some exciting conversations, which leads to us doing a comprehensive plan and trying to figure out how it is that we can thrive as a community and

which leads into the bigger thing, which is even more important than comprehensive plan is zoning.

How do you define things and rezoning?

I think affordable housing has to be radically looked at and radically approached as opposed to pandered by the respective demographics and power.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's about making sure everybody in every income bracket has a place to live in some way, respective way.

So that's going to be a very challenging point.

We are recently in the process of hiring a new school superintendent.

There will be some leadership changes in our local government itself, kind of very radical time.

And of course, I'm chair of Nelson County as well.

So which leads me to be stuck in the middle of it and having to find out where where leadership is changing and how we adjust with it.

I think the internet conversation in some of your counties might not be living this yet, but for us, I'm truly seeing 35 to 40% of working people working from home.

And to see the culture develop around that in the rural context is very intriguing.

Everybody has an orchard of some sort and everybody had a garden this past summer.

I'm going to look forward to see how many are going to do that this year.

About half that number decided to homeschool their kids and I think half that number won't be homeschooling their kids this round.

But you know, it's really intriguing to see the rural context with fiber internet and how the economy develops and how affordable housing around that too.

So lots of exciting things, lots of moving parts.

And honestly, I don't think we talk about this enough.

So in the last five years, Nelson County lost 25% of its school population.

In five years, we lost 25% of our school population.

We went from 2000 to about 1400.

And that's really scary.

That is actually a really terrifying fact.

And it turns out all of South Side and Southwest Virginia

They are experiencing very similar numbers.

And we're starting to see a change in the conversation of what does the future of a rural county look like?

Obviously, preserving rural is such an interesting thing.

You know, is it preserving trees?

Is it water?

Maybe it's that.

For some people, it's culture.

I think we're kind of at the beginning of a new era of what do we do with all these jobs that we can't fill?

It's kind of like I work

You know, obviously I'm on the conservative end of the spectrum and worked with Glenn Youngkin.

I told him to stop saying job creation because there's nobody to fill the job anymore.

In our respective counties, when you look in the construction industry, when you look in so many of those blue collar job areas, you know, you can create the job.

And at this point, you know, you could talk about increasing wages.

You're not creating more jobs.

You're just swapping one person from this entity to another person in this entity.

We're not creating more people.

What that means, and Keith can back me up on this, is longer timeframes for economic development, especially as it relates to housing and commercial development, or whatever that might mean.

So those scary words really aren't going to be that scary because there's going to be nobody to do them.

Things to think about.

Nelson County is kind of a weird place where we're thriving all at the same time asking ourselves, but who's going to be running the McDonald's in two years?

And it's not a dollar and cents conversation.

It's a, we're literally lacking bodies.

No, I, you know, it's just interesting.

I'm in this real estate space.

That's how I make my money.

And it's,

The conversation, the number one question I'm asked is not number of bedrooms and number anything is what is my internet speed?

What is my upload speed?

What is my download speed?

And that's Nelson County, Greene County.

It's, it's everything.

You know, they, Greene, they talk about water, but I say, ah, it's okay.

But really it's upload and download speed.

And it's really interesting.

And then the other conversation, which is going, you know, just for the sake of a discussion.

And it's something that I'm going to kind of dedicate some of my personal volunteer time to is we need to start growing our vocational systems.

You know, it's just that this iPhone isn't going to put pipe in a house.

So anyway, you're right.

I'm trying to back you up.

And by the way, the beard looks much better trimmed.

For those who didn't know, I had a pretty Lord of the Rings level beard prior to this meeting.

So other than that, guys, thank you all so much.

Christine, is there anything you want to run through while we conclude?

Hearing nothing.

Mr. Blount, thank you for all your hard work in Richmond.

I hope it's still there.

Well, I would say I remind some of my colleagues today, today was day number 30.

So we're halfway through to 60, assuming they adjourn on time.

Very good.

Well guys, looks like we're gonna adjourn 10 minutes early.

This is a great thing.

If we were in person, we'd go 30 minutes over.

So, you know, thank you all for brevity.

Look at the very bottom of the page.

There's some items coming up that'll be very important to hear about and think about.

Look for them on the next agenda.

Other than that, I need a motion to adjourn.

Christine, is there anything else?

Are we good?

We're good.

Let's get a motion to adjourn.

We have a motion for Mr. Smith.

We have a second for Ms. Wilkinson.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, without objection, this motion passes.

Are there any objections?

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

Christine?

Sandy, thank you all.

Mr. Blount, hold down Richmond, and please let us know how we can support you.

And I guess let me know on our committee that we just made and what timeframe, give us some objectives.

Guys, thank you all.

Have a great evening.