Planning District Commission Meeting   6/23/2022

Sounds good.

I call this meeting to order.

This special meeting on June 23rd at 9am.

I'm going to read the notice of electronic meeting.

This meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held personal at Dakota, Virginia 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, through the media, website posting and agenda.

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

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

A recording of the meeting will be posted at www.tjpdc.org within 10 days of the meeting.

Certainly.

Commissioner Solow-Yates?

Present.

Hello.

Good morning.

Commissioner Payne?

Commissioner Galloway?

Present.

Commissioner Andrews?

I'm here.

Thanks.

Commissioner Smith?

Present.

Commissioner O'Brien?

Here.

Commissioner Wilkinson?

I thought I saw her on.

We can just circle back.

Yep.

Yep.

Commissioner Barlow?

Here.

You have a quorum present.

Great.

All right, moving on to the next agenda.

I'm pulling it up on my phone, which is matters from the public.

All right, I'm open to public comments.

Is there anybody in the public who wishes to speak?

Hearing and seeing none, I close public comments.

I guess going to now presentations.

So we are here today to talk about the housing preservation grants.

The TJPDC applies for it every year.

And unfortunately, every year we have to call a special session.

Sorry guys, but thank you for being available.

So I'm just going to go into, for those who don't know what the grant is, just a very high level to give you an understanding how it is very useful in our region.

So hopefully you can see my screen.

I'm sharing the presentation.

Okay.

and I'm going to scroll to the next one.

So what does the program do?

The program basically, it provides our low income and very low income citizens in our rural areas with funds to help rehabilitate their homes.

The illegible areas, as I said before, are rural areas, basically rural areas and towns that have 20,000 people or fewer.

And our area, those localities are the rural parts of Albemarle, Savannah, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson Counties.

The funds, as I said before, may be used to repair and rehab electrical wiring, foundation, roofs, insulation, wastewater system disposals, handicap accessibility,

It can be also used for labor and materials related to those activities within the grant.

And there are administrative expenses, but that's on our end, the TJPDC, we use that to administer the grant.

So to give you an idea of how the previous grant that we just finished worked in our area,

For 2020, I just took some of the statistics.

We just finished the FY20 grant and we were able to use $91,500 in projects.

The total grant was $150,000.

I believe this grant was $116,000.

I could be wrong in the total.

I should have written it down and I apologize.

But for the projects, it was $91,500.

And I'm not sure if you can see my screen, but there are eight projects finished in Albemarle and they used about $36,000.

I'm rounding.

Fluvanna completed six projects and they used about

$18,000, Louisa completed 12 projects, and they used about $28,000.

Green didn't use any funds last year from the HPG grant.

Nelson used about $10,000 with three projects.

As far as getting into the AMI of those people, it has, the AMI, I don't think I said it before, I did say low and very low income, but that's by the federal,

federal government standards of how they apply affordability.

So basically low is you have to be 50% or below and very low or extremely low, it's interchangeable.

You have to be 30% or below.

So this little graph right here shows you that it's almost evenly split the households that were served within the very low and low categories.

And it was, you know,

I don't know what I was going to say, so I'm going to move over to the race.

So, and it's, you know, pretty evenly split among the demographics in our area of who's here with the, who was served by race with the funding.

So I don't have it here, but we're currently working on the FY21 funds, because we've completed the FY20 funds.

And we received $133,000 approximately to work in our area.

Almost all of those funds are committed to projects.

There's $122,000 that we've committed that we're working on using.

So it just shows that the need is there.

We just finished the FY20 grants, and now we're working on the FY21 grant

and the funds are almost, and when I say committed, they're held for projects that will be completed.

And so today we are asking that you approve a resolution so that we can apply for the current funding by July 11th.

I have a quick question concerning Greene.

Greene used zero funds in 2020.

Are they having any projects, or do they have any projects in the books for the current funding?

Not currently, no.

OK, that's what I thought.

Any more questions?

And since I'm sharing my screen, if there

Someone sees a hand, let me know, please.

And then two things I would love to add.

If you guys have questions, we can stop for those.

But two things I'd love to add is previously the housing preservation grant, you would receive a grant amount that it had to be spent within a two year period.

They have recently changed that to be within a one year period.

So rather than having two grants at one time that are overlapping by a year, we fully expend one grant before going into the next.

It does mean that the rate at which we have to spend the money, it's pretty important to spend it by its expiration date because it's use it or lose it.

And if you return funds, they're likely to change the amount that you receive in your grant if you're showing that you can't spend them in time.

The other thing I wanted to add is housing preservation grant.

Unlike the HOME program, the HOME program is equal amount split to jurisdiction.

The housing preservation grant is on a first come first serve basis.

So as projects are shovel ready, ready to go for rehab, they put in a request for the funding for reimbursement for funds that they've spent.

And so, um,

And just to also add to that as well, it's capped at $5,000 because we want everyone to have an equal opportunity to use the funding.

So one person can't come in with like $15,000, because we don't, compared to home funds, we don't get a lot of funding.

So it is capped at projects that are $5,000 or below.

And this is embarrassing.

I can't stop sharing my screen.

I'll share mine.

Can you hear me, Christine?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

I'm on the phone now, because somehow whatever.

Anyway, Dale asked one of my questions, but the other is about the list of things that can be done.

I truncated the list.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

OK.

All right.

Are you guys able to see my screen now?

So then you're back.

Yes, I think.

Yeah, all right.

In your packet, there was an intergovernmental review.

This meeting will serve as the intergovernmental review since all jurisdictions are present.

And then below that is a resolution that we need to pass.

This is a resolution of intergovernmental review and project support for the HPG Housing Preservation Grant.

There is one edit to the resolution that is in your packet.

It currently says we're applying for amount of $230,000.

That is an error.

It's $215,000.

We are capped at applying for half of the available funding for the state.

The state has $430,000, so we can only apply for $215,000.

Nobody has any questions.

Let's get a motion to approve the resolution as presented.

Chair, I so move.

Motion from Lyle, do you have support?

Second from Mr.

Herring.

If we could, any discussion?

Hearing no discussion, let's just do vote by act.

Well, this is virtual.

All right, on the motion to approve the resolution, Commissioner Solla-Yates?

Aye.

Commissioner Payne?

Commissioner Galloway?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Brien.

Yes.

Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

Commissioner Barlow, who I believe I saw is on.

Aye.

The motion passes.

There's something else on here.

It's just the next regularly scheduled meeting is August 4th.

There is no July meeting and I wanted to say a sincere thank you for coming together for a quick special meeting to cover this.

The timeline of the release and the due date unfortunately falls in our off month.

Great.

Alright, thank you guys.

Y'all have a good one.

Mr. Gallaway takes it from here.

So, thank you guys.

Have a good one.

Oh, motion to adjourn.

We need that.

All vote by acclamation.

All those in favor say aye.

Catch y'all later.