Planning District Commission Meeting   12/1/2022

And I'm going to go to the roll call.

Do we have folks here tonight?

All right.

If you are here to speak, you have two minutes to do so.

And we will be timing.

So we just ask that you keep your comments on time.

If you could please state your name and you're welcome to be in your comments.

First is Otis Collier.

Otis Collier is our cigarette tax compliance agent.

He's a former City of Charlottesville police officer and has a lot of experience in work-related compliance.

We're really excited.

You guys have known he's been here for a little while, but this is the first time you've met him in person.

The next one I'd like to introduce behind me is Lori Jean Tulum.

She's going to be working in the Housing and Community Development Grants Manager position.

She has managed public health programs and has experience with grant writing, grant implementation, and she'll be working on the home.

Hall Park and Housing Preservation Grant programs.

And then behind me, Corey, do you want to say anything?

Thank you so much.

It's wonderful to be here on the Hopkins campus.

I love this area.

I've been here for over a few years, and it was really exciting to see what you've done.

And then behind you all is Gorjan Gjorgjievski.

That's it.

It's getting closer if that's better.

He joined as the body program administrative assistant working with the body team.

He's going to be working primarily with Lori Allshouse on record keeping, invoicing, data management of the body program.

He has experience in customer service, project management.

He has very strong organizational skills.

I just want to thank the TJPDC from the bottom of my heart for giving this opportunity.

This is a very important project for Broadway, so I'm very glad that I'm working on it and making a positive difference in the impact of the development of our company that is my passion, so very happy to be working on it.

I'm from Albemarle, not even Florida, or in the TDAB state.

This is a presentation about the Regional Transit Governance Study that we just started.

During this presentation, I'll introduce the project, talk a little bit about the background and goals and our study questions, and talk about our stakeholder engagement and the expected outcomes for this grant, for this project.

Next slide.

So I know we've tried it before, but an authority isn't built in months, three years.

It's built over a decade.

So, some of the studies we're building on for this are the 2008 Transit Authority Study, and then in 2009, the General Assembly passed the enabling legislation to form the Shower Still Outland Regional Transit Authority.

However, it did not provide the funding mechanism for the authority, so it just is there.

The RTP was formed in 2017 to help coordinate

and the original transit vision plan finished yesterday and that plan recommended that we do a governance study.

So the TJPDC developed with the vision plan, I think most of you have seen this slide but I wanted to put it in here.

The vision plan developed two service scenarios,

I've been trained in the transit area which would substantially increase transit service in the region.

I don't know if anybody has any questions about the provision plan.

So this study aims to answer the following questions.

First, what are the appropriate governance structures to provide the confidence needed for adequate dedicated regional transit funding?

How would the structure support regional coordination and thinning around transit operations?

And how will the structure increase transit investments for the region?

Second question is, how would the rural localities participate in the government structure?

And the third question is, what are the most likely sources of funding for the region?

How would it be permitted to be used for transit?

And how would the funds be allocated?

So the study approach, we kicked off, we had a kickoff meeting on November 7th, and we're working on the technical memo, putting out the existing permission as the baseline of what we have now.

And then we're going to do a peer regional transit governance structures technical memo, and provide potential mechanisms for revenue generation, develop a governance structure, and then the consultants will recommend a course of action.

Thanks.

So this study is going to have extensive stakeholder engagement to form a consensus for the entire region.

We'll be working with representatives from all the jurisdictions in region 10, plus transit and other partners.

Next slide.

So the stakeholders, this is an outline of the project.

You can see the faces that I introduced a couple slides ago.

And underneath them are all of the meetings and engagement that we plan to do.

The project kicked off in October, and it is planned to end in December 2023.

Next slide.

So in summary, we're going to form a consensus around the most likely funding sources, permitted uses of those sources, and how the funds will be allocated and how many for that.

Any questions?

Thanks.

I have one.

And maybe we have to do, we haven't even studied them to answer this question, but if there's any thoughts on it.

Has it been discussed or come up about into science at the end?

Because your three big providers, CAT, John, and UTS, are not really governed by one of the jurisdictions that sit on the condition.

So if I have one, for example, CAT's basically a vendor.

We can't necessarily say, yeah, we need to lump them under if we want it to.

So we're doing small steps.

And the first step is just to get this study looked at, just to get revenue in and be accountable for it and have a mechanism for dispersing it.

So it won't be managing your transit.

Crockett is not going to tell us how to combine them or manage them or anything like that.

It's going to get additional revenue and then it's going to disperse it among the transit providers that will have some more control over it that way.

That's just the first step.

But as a part of looking at the government study, it'll look at a board structure for an authority and who will be on the board making the decisions about funding that came in.

And that would be based on who, which localities are interested in participating in that.

Currently the legislation is Charlottesville Albemarle Transit Authority, but it does have language in it that allows for the rural jurisdictions to be a part of the authority if they select them to be.

And so then that board would have to be built out based on who has interested in it.

And then you'd have to talk about

You know, voting, how many votes you get per jurisdiction.

Is it going to be per capita?

Is it going to be split equally between urban and rural?

I mean, all of that has to be talked about and decided as a part of this study.

So at the end of this study, we would be asking for the jurisdictions to ask for legislation in the past for additional revenues from the state

So that's kind of an ask that would happen in this.

And that's why we're working with mostly the jurisdictions because they're the customers of the transit.

And then we'll also be working in transit as well.

Two questions.

The first one is looking at the timeline.

I think we'll see.

The chief office in November actually now

So it's a plan like a year from now following December is when this would be finished.

And then the only other question I have is I don't really know how we would do this across multiple jurisdictions, but the state legislative action could obviously be important for funding.

Like, is there a way to kind of include more directly

State Legislators in some ways.

We have our Commonwealth Transportation Board member on our mailing list tonight.

He's coming to the policy board meeting where we're going to do some presentations.

We've been talking about that.

I don't think we're going to be able to part of it.

And then also some of our good officials are going to touch with our state representatives.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Very good.

Thank you.

You're going to be a master for the next bit.

So before I do that, not that you're not welcome to stay, but Christine, do your hopes that you contribute to stay?

You guys are all welcome to stay.

You're welcome to leave as well.

So I didn't want you to feel like you can't.

Thank you for saying that, man.

It's always awkward when I show this.

We would love to hear this.

We're going to need all the houses.

All right, start.

Yeah, Jesse already started.

Yeah.

Very good.

So C is the ER PT grant, 5210, Close Management.

So the section 5310 program is an FTA program that's authorized under the Fixing America's Service Transportation Act that was passed in 2015.

The section 5310 grant program supports transportation services for seniors aged 65 and older and people with disabilities.

It's a discretionary bail program.

DRPT administers the section 5310 program

as the designated recipient for the school.

So mobility management builds on the coordination of transportation providers and expands the availability of services for people, for seniors and people with disabilities.

So the 5310 program has three roles, increase transportation, improve access to transit,

Bill of Transportation Services for seniors and people with disabilities.

After talking with DRPT and grant officers and other stakeholders with transit providers and service providers, the TJPDC is proposing to develop and operate a one-stop, one-call center and website to coordinate transportation information

on all travel modes and manage arrangements for customers on one of the supporting programs.

I'll get into that in a minute.

So, it's modeled after the Rappahannock, Rappahannock and Reginald Williams Foothill Area Mobility System, which is a mobility management program.

And it started as a one-stop information center and referral center, which is similar to what we're looking at here.

DRBT recommended that we implement something similar to our RRC's program.

and RRRC generously offer to loan us their substantial sophisticated software system for tracking customer interaction and project analytics.

The system will also be able to track on their rides and identify transportation needs from the region.

Barrow, our city's mobility manager, who's been super helpful in having this news, will be presenting about their program that separates RTP meeting, if anybody's interested in learning more about it, she'll be there.

Next.

So we're going to start small and grow based on the needs identified by our partners and the requests from the community.

In the first year, we're going to introduce the concept of human services.

to the concept of mobility management and human services network.

We'll develop a call center and website to connect people with RISE and we'll identify the areas of need and the partnerships with community providers.

So we're not going to be providing RISE or adding new RISE at this point.

We're just going to be making referrals and working with the transit providers that are

So there's no direct services for TJPDC.

So there's more starting details there.

So the first year budget would be around $150,000.

There's a 4% increase that TJPDC would cover.

It would have a half-time manager for 12 months.

So the first six months we would work on starting up the program,

Gjorgjievski, Kevin McDermott, Kevin McDermott, and then there's a lot of opportunities with mobility management.

There's a lot of flexibility in the program, and there's a lot of ways to bring in additional money through grants.

So we could

Do things like develop and support new services to address unmet needs like volunteer driver programs.

We can also work with the transit providers to improve services for seniors and people with disabilities.

One of the things that mobility management programs do is travel training, where they help people who want to ride the bus learn how to do it and they'll ride the bus with you and, you know, go from your home to your destination and help you learn how to do it and

Some people have difficulties learning keys and ways to overcome these difficulties.

Another thing that the Learning Management Program can do would be to coordinate scheduling and marketing among the transportation providers so that it would be a uniform network from the outside.

You still have the separate service providers, but it would look like it was a uniform system and easy to choose for customers.

So basically it came to our attention that there is not going to be a 5310 recipients in our region.

So we're not already taking advantage of these funds here.

And so we just started to explore and started to reach out to peer agencies.

There's one other PDC in the state that does it.

There are actually the DRPT recommended we look at their program specifically as one of the better models in the state.

Other places that this is done is through the community service boards might receive funding and they can actually use it for capital for vans or rolling stock in order to be able to transport people with disabilities and seniors.

What we would like to explore if we get consensus from you all, and you guys are supportive of this, is what that could look like in our region.

It would be a really slow startup, like Lucinda said, because the majority of the work I think we would need to do would be looking at where are the gaps?

What are the needs?

Are there services that could be provided that aren't currently provided?

I've said to Lucinda, and we talked with our peer PDC, we don't want to be in the service industry.

We don't want to be frontline.

getting on buses necessarily with people.

So there's an opportunity for us to contract with existing community agencies where we would receive 5310 funding and pass through to peer agencies that can actually do some of the implementation where we would be more in a management and facilitation role.

So just, we wanted to throw this out.

We've been doing some research, grant applications are due February 1st.

So we would want to hear from you all if it's something you're not interested in us pursuing.

Yeah, one of the advantages of being a regional IDC and not providing services is that we can develop a system like the taxi doctor program that would work across the entire region and would work across many service providers and it would be uniform as opposed to having different taxi doctor programs that work different ways for different providers.

And then also we can be here as a support and resource for new programs.

Is it limited to seniors and those with disabilities?

It is, but it could also, you know, additionally, if somebody calls around, could turn them away.

Yeah, turn them on for work.

Yeah.

We would just count those seniors and people with disabilities, and what we would do to start off with is market to them.

The 4% local match, we would not go to the local governments to provide that.

We would also follow up with individuals and make sure they're authorized.

And if they don't get their eyes, it would be troubleshoot with service providers.

And then we'll also be documenting that.

And then we can add the two for them.

It would be very useful to have that who's not getting to learn.

It's a good way to be open.

Grants to February 1 awards would be July 1, and then we would take about six months of planning and relationship building for the service agencies.

The alcohol transit expansion?

I think for us as staff at the PDC, we felt like this is a resource that hasn't really been utilized.

And so we want to explore utilizing it, spend a year building it and see if it's something that is really needed in the community.

If it is, then we can continue to grow it.

RRRC, Rappahannock, Rapidan Regional Commission is now up to staffing something like six positions.

And only one of them is housed at the PDC.

The rest of them are contracted out to different service agencies, and there's vans, and there's volunteer driver programs.

And so they really build a large program.

This is from through the terms of partnership.

I just want to make sure before we spend a lot of time pursuing it that you guys were supportive of that.

I wanted to touch on a number of things.

Let's kind of talk about the timeline, session, talk a little bit about budget and potential legislative initiatives, and then finish up with

I guess my spin on some of the political landscape.

Today actually was the deadline for legislators to request drafts of legislation.

It will be pre-file for the first day of the session.

So several of you are in the room and we have work with your legislators to get those bills turning.

The next thing that happens is two weeks from today when the governor will introduce his proposed amendments to the current biannual budget,

The General Assembly then convenes on January the 11th.

Legislators will have a crack at introducing their own budget amendments.

They will receive the other proposal.

I think it's January the 13th.

You get to crossover day on February 7th.

That's when the remaining legislation that's been passed by the House

and then schedule adjournments.

February 25th this is the short session, 46 days.

You know we've had a number of extended sessions and special sessions in recent years.

I'm not anticipating that this year because we'll see you on the next slide.

Actually all 140 seats.

Looking at the current state budget, it's been in effect since June, but we had that protracted session before they reached the budget agreement this summer.

It's about just under $60 billion in general funds for the current biennium.

You'll recall that just under $4 billion in tax relief was agreed to by the General Assembly and the governor.

Across the biennium, big chunks of that were the increase in the standard production for income taxes.

There was the income tax rebates for individuals and married couples.

Had a lot of activities surrounding the grocery tax.

Ultimately, the state sales tax on groceries was eliminated.

Local sales tax on groceries was preserved.

State agencies have gone through a process this fall to funnel up their request for amendments to the existing budget.

through their secretariat to the governor.

So all that's been taken into consideration into what we'll see from the governor in two weeks.

All indications are, and this is some information from recent retreats that the House and Senate money committees had, there's going to be just under $3 billion in additional revenues above the current budget amounts over the course of the remaining, what, 19 months of biennia.

There's also been less demand seen for programs that are required to be funded by the state and those that have historically been high priority spending items for them.

This is not a free benchmark for the year after K-12.

So there will be money for another push that the governor is planning to make for additional tax relief.

I think there will be some consideration of further increasing the pay raises that were awarded to state and state supported local employees and school employees.

for both years of the current finding.

And you can see this one set pay range across those three major groups of employees is over $100 million.

The governor has indicated, I think this is probably the things to look out for in his budget amendments, you know, tax relief, public safety, mental health, and now behavioral health.

I think from the legislative standpoint, they're going to be wanting to be cautious in how they spend additional revenues and make sure that they're not necessarily committing those expenses in future biennials.

So maybe looking to make a long time expenditure as much as possible.

Possible legislation, you know, touchstone tax, tax issues, tax policy,

money being available for additional tax relief, maybe going after that local option sales tax again, I bet you will see some efforts to do that, some additional state income tax relief possibly, I've heard that there may be proposals to lower the corporate tax relief in Virginia.

Another big item that I think we'll see legislatively, it's been hearing about the past couple of weeks, relates to housing affordability,

The Governor has made statements that outline his Make Virginia Home Housing Plan in the housing conference a couple of weeks ago.

I included a write-up about it in the legislative update a couple of weeks ago as well.

Some things that appear, but we haven't seen the details, is some concerns with the governments and their role in affordable housing and possibly putting some restrictions on your local land use and zoning.

So definitely going to be a lot of talk about the housing section.

Spend a lot of time.

And then I think I've mentioned this to a number of you all earlier in the fall, we had some discussion about short term levels and though we haven't seen it yet, it's still anticipating that the area B type industries are going to be looking to also restrict the authority

I just wanted to touch on a couple of other little tidbits.

I think you've been to five or six localities in Charlottesville on Monday to seek approval of the regional legislative program.

As I alluded to earlier, we have several localities that have legislative initiatives or budget initiatives that they're working on.

Half, trying to shepherd those through the process.

And then just, you know, from kind of a blanket standpoint of information, you know, during the session, you'll see those legislative newsletters coming out every week, seven to eight, nine days or so, utilizing email communication, other

And then finally, this is kind of what I call the lay of the land, just from a political standpoint.

I mean, you have a slim majority in the House that doesn't add up to 100, because in fact, when the Democratic legislators resigned to take a job in the Biden administration, the Senate is 21-18 now.

I had the election of a Republican in Virginia Beach area Senator to Congress the last month.

So again,

You know, 140 House seats are for grabs in new districts next year.

I think that makes for potential for a lot of turnover in the General Assembly.

You've got a number of open seats.

You've got a number of districts where legislators, incumbent legislators are locked together.

And it's, you know, it's a brochure bill.

So I'm sure we'll see a lot of that again.

It also has some impact on what I call the lead factor.

You know, those that I work with, we always talk about, you know, what kind of session it is.

I mean, session kind of has its own personality and use it by the end.

We're saying it's a pretty crappy session.

Sometimes it's a good session,

But what's the mood of the legislature?

What's going on between the Democrats and Republicans?

What's going on between the House and the Senate?

And that's not atypical, but because really kind of the fact of the way things proceed.

And then I'll just put that last bullet in there for headlines, because I think you will, you're going to hear a lot of huffing and puffing in the media and sound bites from

from discussion in committees and on the floors of the House and Senate about actually certainly abortion restrictions and the Supreme Court decision this past summer.

Certainly you always hear about K-12 education, you know, with that already thinks to be used about the California admission standards and then certainly public safety and gun violence will also be a lot of what you hear.

There'll be a lot of other things that are going on that you won't necessarily hear about that are going to be more concerned and impactful to the local governments and the work that you do in your own capital.

So hopefully I can keep you up to date on that.

So I think that's all I have.

Yeah, just some, again, you know, these slides, you know, those presentations in your packet.

So, you know, some of the online resources and the legislative information systems

And then, you know, I'll send it out to you all and post it on the legislative page of the TJPDC website.

I didn't have one.

About the tax relief and the standard deduction.

Do you have any idea where that's going?

and many, probably even most Virginia taxpayers, took an increase in their taxes when the feds upped the standard deduction.

Most people are not ionizing anymore.

And so the state did raise the standard deduction of Virginia to 9,000 single, managed 16, 18 joint.

Did I say that wrong?

8 and 6 meter.

Yeah, but they made a fairly substantial increase.

It still did not make up for the whole additional tax that many Virginia taxpayers had to pay.

Do you know what their plans are?

And I do need to point out that the Fed current scheme is only through 2025 unless they extend it.

So they may roll it back to something else.

They have to take an action.

I haven't seen any of the specific proposals yet.

I would not think that they're going to focus on standard production if they did as big a jump in that as they did this past year.

And I know there were findings that eventually to the 16th, it may be that, you know, you think about, you know, the focus of one-time expenditures that, you know, a rebate for a sweeter rebate in this past year might be winning.

If I recall at the FAGO conference presentation there, the animated presentation, I think you did raise what you thought might be

What affected us most directly in the last year's session was the fact that the budget went to all the

The final moments to be approved and that put all of us behind the age ball trying to figure out what our revenues and costs are going to go by.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty vocal.

Since they have an existing budget in place, it's not like they're crafting one for the next buy-in and there's no way they're going to want to be in session in June.

So, you know, this is a year

Historically, years and years ago, the short session was primarily to come back and tinker with the budget, you know, where revenues and expenditures may need to invest, and that's all we did.

Now it's turned into a full-blown session with 3,000 pieces of legislation, in addition to wholesale budget changes, into fewer weeks' time than we do with the long session.

But that short answer now, I would think it would make every effort to get out on time or

That brings to the consent agenda to observe the news of November

and then the monthly financials.

Sure.

Thank you that quickly.

The dashboard and all of the statements are in your packet.

Just a couple of high-level things.

We are still watching our unrestricted cash on hands very closely.

We're still at the concern level.

We kind of anticipate that now with our larger receivables and our larger expenditures before we can seek reimbursement for our quarterly grants or our larger grants.

But paying attention to that very closely.

And then October was a very good month for us in the gate of $10,072, which puts us at just over $33,000 net gain for the year.

Typically at the PDC, not necessarily last year, but typically at the PDC, we've seen net losses in December related to taking our holiday and leave time and in June.

But we'll be watching that closely as well to make sure that we're

Any questions on that?

I do have one comment.

The dashboard has been highlighting the reduced amount of cash, which is a little nervous-making for management.

And I wonder if it would be informative

to make a list of these projects that are paying so slow to us.

The expenses we're paying for those projects to contractors as opposed to the staff in the office and whether something could be done to slow down a little bit paying the contractors so our incoming cash would match our outdoor a little closer.

So I just

Yes, and we can share that with you all if that's what you're requesting.

We are doing that.

So we are looking at, I mean there's a specific program, housing preservation grant, where they have several quarters behind in Vegas and we have made a decision we will not do another

Voucher until we get paid for them.

That puts it out that you're pushing on receivables, because you can't stand this.

And the other thing is, if we do have to set up loans and set up a line of credit, which we've been managing not to do, which is a wonderful place to be, we don't want to go there, but if we do, how do we

passed those costs on to these projects.

Not just the interest with the setup costs.

I remember that TJPDC paid a $5,000, which they didn't know they were paying, but they set up an equity line for the standards for the streetscape project.

They set up an equity line to afford this money.

And then we got stuck with the $5,000.

McPhee, and then set up charge for that equity line that Aaron was in there.

And the organization bit the bullet on that instead of passing it through to Standardsville to use up some of their funds for that.

So I'm just saying, if we do have to borrow money, you have to be pretty careful about it and make sure somebody besides us gets stuck paying the cost of farming to borrow that money.

So I hope we don't have to.

Other questions or comments?

All right, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Second.

Any further discussion?

That has stayed for a minute.

It wasn't here.

So we can move on.

We're going to have this on pullback.

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstention?

We will go to new business.

We have our 2023 calendar year meeting scheduled.

We'll just end with that.

Just noting that we will again not have a July or January meeting.

And I did schedule in there this time a extra session for housing preservation grants since it seems to fall in between when we meet.

So that's tentatively on the calendar.

And then

Also, I was curious for you all, it's not something we've done as a practice before, but would you all like in advance a calendar hold for the year?

Generally, that's set out the week before, but if you all would like a holding on your calendar, I can do that for this next this winter.

That's a grab.

Yeah, okay.

That's all our comments.

And again, it's a tentative schedule.

Are those things approved?

Do you just take action tonight, or is this approved?

I appreciate you all scoring our gingerbread houses.

I know it's a, you know, a life thing and we appreciate you guys engaging in that.

There are some competitive people in our office that cannot wait to hear

The results of your voting, so we will be sure to release those as soon as we can.

We're currently in the last round of interviews with the transportation planner.

We did have someone that we were interested in that took another job in the private sector and had decided not to go to the public sector.

I think that's it on that one, but we are really hopeful that in January we will be fully staffed and we have some good candidates right now that are going through the process.

Virginia Telecommunications Initiative.

In the EV report that I gave you, there's some milestones.

Some of you, we did the body quarterly stakeholder meeting today with the jurisdictions.

There's about 38 people on the call.

That was a really good update meeting.

We have done, we take credit where our team has gone out into the field several times to look at and make ready work and to look at the parts that we will have to do as staff

As far as ensuring that the work is getting done where it's being reported that it's done, so that's another element of the job.

And then the body 2023, so the new application that we put in, applicants should be hearing the 9th on challenge determinations and then by the end of the calendar year on award.

It was very interesting at the Virginia Governor's Housing Conference there was a panel on broadband and housing and they did mention the TJPDC specifically because our program goes outside of our own boundaries so they complemented the ordination that has occurred for it to be 13 jurisdictions.

They also shared that the amount of requests they got for this second round are something in the neighborhood of 12-fold for what the funding that they have so something like 600 million for 50 million available in funding so

It will be a competitive round, let's go around.

That's body.

Housing, Virginia Governor's Housing Conference, we had several staff and two of our very own chair and vice chair of the Regional Housing Partnership.

I encourage you guys to share something, if you will, during your update on that.

It was a great opportunity for us to learn together, but also just kind of spend some downtime together as a team.

The

Virginia Housing Implementation Tier 2 Grant.

So the Regional Housing Partnership just completed their strategic plan, five-year strategic plan.

There's a grant out of Virginia Housing that allows you to get funding in order to begin implementation of that plan.

So the Regional Housing Partnership has been looking at putting out an RFP for a consultant to do some of the work in looking at membership bylaws,

You know, whether there should be some sort of membership dues or fee structure to the partnership.

And so that's work that we're hoping, they just moved the deadline, we're hoping to get in by December 31st, but they moved it to March on us.

And there's other requirements in that application that may make it so that we cannot apply by December.

Happy to talk more about that if you guys have questions.

Transportation, Title VI, staff has developed a required Title VI plan for the MBO.

It is something that we're required to do.

We have done a lot of talking about expanding that agency-wide and making sure that we're following Title VI requirements.

There is a training that several staff will go to that's being put on by VAMPO on what is Title VI, what are the requirements, how to implement it as an agency.

We will bring a copy.

The Title VI plan goes to the MPO.

Okay it'll go to the MPO and then we'll bring it back before you guys in February so that you can see it has already been approved by VDOT so we already have a plan that meets the requirements.

Economic development for the SEDS comprehensive economic development strategy that we've been working towards

We did put out an RFP.

We received eight proposals.

They were scored, and we made a selection of a consultant that will be doing that work with both our planning district and Region 9.

I think that's it.

Great.

Questions or questions?

We will do our roundtable discussion.

So if any of you are on the list, let's see.

Sure.

I guess in the past month, the two biggest things are the city's search for the next chief of police.

This Monday, there was a public forum of finalist candidates hosted by our police leader, Robert St. Louis,

and possibly next week the finalist will be chosen by the city manager and appointed as the next chief of police for the city.

Another big thing is our budget process is just beginning.

Our planning commission had a work session with city staff.

It was the first meeting of overview of the budget.

I'm sure like a lot of localities this year it sounds like it's really going to be a lot about how do we manage large investments we've already made given inflation and interest rates.

One example, you know, a housing project invested year over year, the cost has gone up around 3%.

But those two are kind of the biggest things to pass on.

Commissioner Russell.

Who wants supervisor Andrews?

Well, you're going to need a couple of venerals because we don't have a lot to ask for, but we do have a meeting very quickly next week with the school board, and they're very interesting in terms of the plan and a lot of work out.

Yeah, we have

We didn't have one meeting in this last report here.

We did have the day after our last meeting, our meeting with the legislators, which went well.

As I would imagine all of you, if you have it, you're getting them on the docket to meet with the digital legislative practice together.

And we did get into our five-year financial partners to send these into the CIP conversation we'll be having with our school board.

I wanted to point out this Monday at 1 p.m., our Regional Housing Partnerships quarterly meeting is happening there.

And know that Hudson is our guest that day.

So it's going to be a chance for her to speak from the state level

So it'll be a typical whole partnership meeting.

We'll do the business in the meeting, and then she will have all that time will be devoted to that.

So it is available online, just to watch.

This is not that yet.

And then, like I said, it's on the line.

We're certainly welcome to attend.

And also, the housing conference, Supervisor Rutherford, I'm sure he'll make some comments when we do go out.

I think he's got to attend for a day as well.

This year, it was really just attending, Craig.

So it's each of us, we were kind of partnering up in one different places to try to spread the ears, if you would, to hear what was having to say, what was being said there.

But I thought it was a good session this year.

I didn't think, I should have thought to put a report together on the ones that I attended, but I didn't think we could do that.

So I'm still working on that.

But yeah, I know that since we took a lighter schedule in November that we're going to pay for it next Wednesday.

We're going to need it pretty late.

Sorry, I'm going to report in February.

Good grief, by the time we get back we'll all probably have heard about your respective leaders in our counties getting us our budget presentation.

We have a supervisor, Ryan.

and so on, but so far, especially in this country.

There may not be anybody in the community that knows what they're going to be doing.

So other than Jesse wandering around in Virginia Governor's housing conference saying, I got fired.

Have you been fired?

It was embarrassing.

I had to separate myself.

To focus on that much like what Ned said, it's really unique to be there and not as a presenter and actually have an opportunity to attend sessions and get a lot of learning.

I do want to actually take a couple of questions if that's allowable.

So we're putting housing affordability on the state level.

Do you think they're going to be as aggressive as the Western states?

What do you actually think?

I know it's a loaded question.

So the western states are basically Oregon, Washington, and California.

I'm saying, do you fit the affordable housing model, housing portability model, a local jurisdiction is well over?

I think going too far is, you're correct, I think there's going to be some

Pretty good resistance to the instrumental of governance there.

That's going to come from different parts of the state and those kinds of things.

I'm just trying to figure out what that is.

There's a possibility with those different ordinances.

You know, there's been very few attempts at doing that by having a locality to understand that.

And, you know, the whole builders have, in the past, resisted that type of thing.

But, you know, it may be a new game now, and that may be part of the package.

That plays out on that end of it.

And then let me see, what else did I have on my notes here?

So hopefully next June would be very good for me personally.

I've got a mustache.

I don't mind mustaches.

Hopefully early June.

Well, we had a short meeting.

We had a lot of discussions.

The main things that are working right now is the salary study within the compression.

For example, we've got a lot of staff that's starting at zero, and so we're trying to figure out how to work through that.

We're also going to be restructuring the reports, food staff report to.

Our county administrator has 16 individual departments report to that one position, so we're restructuring there.

And we're also going to be trying to give the staff a one-time bonus right now to help with the compression salary.

So hopefully we'll get that study started soon.

And the goal is to have something in place before the next fiscal year.

So that will be our biggest budget item.

They still do it, so don't ask for additional staff, because right now we're taking care of the current staff and dealing with that.

RSA is still on our dockets of discussion.

We have more shooting for December.

We've had some old ups trying to get staffing.

We've had certified personnel work the water and sewer placement state requirements.

So it looks like that we have all of one staff member hired at this point.

Or on the day to come aboard.

So we're looking at, you know, I've heard of January, I'll probably say February is more realistic.

So we're very close to terminal water authority.

That's going to be good and steer at the same time because there's a huge impact financially, but it gives us control over our growth.

And we've been fighting this for several years.

In my opinion, the reservoir, as most people will refer to it, should be completed back in 2017.

I mean, if I say complete, I mean Doug or everything else.

We're still fighting it, trying to get the note out so we can actually do the project.

We're going to county administration search.

We followed the same example that TJPDC did.

So we're doing very well for us here.

That search took place for our director.

So we're doing the same approach.

We're going to sell advertisement, watch an RFP process to save time.

We get the first batch of applicants tomorrow.

It would be next Wednesday to review those.

And that comp plan is projected to come to us for review, I think, in February.

So that's pretty much what's going on so far.

And we're in nothing too controversial, not yet anyway.

I would just mention, I'm really sorry that I missed the bow tie discussion.

The last meeting, because we have one on Route 33, it's a smart scale potential project.

We're continuing to try to manage, I mean, all the growth we're trying to attract to watch the light of dust.

They're being continually flooded with rust.

Schuchter and Rommel have been kicked down the road.

The James River water line is still waiting on final permits.

That seems to be a standstill.

SeaVac and Dominion, as far as the Internet rollout, they've done a great job to complete their RAC on the other hand.

I like using the fiber deployment as an excuse to upgrade the infrastructure.

And they came and they got to raise their poles and stuff like everywhere as a minion.

Didn't have to do all that or see that.

Well, that's pretty much all we are, but, you know, they're putting in poles that are 10, 15, 20 feet high.

Then, I mean, they're putting in huge, large poles that are upgrading their lines.

Good.

I mean, it's just dragging home and on and on.

And it seemed like, you know, C-WEC and Dementia just broke for theirs.

There are areas where they got RAC.

When we made the announcement, RAC stood up to them.

They were the catalyst for the tower plant, which they didn't get on board until Wednesday before we made the announcement.

But now, it better look like they're concerned about whether they get it done or not.

Well, I've been looking at

The lines that have been put in, and there's not that much difference.

We have our meeting with our class of authors.

Ask them their thoughts on what you're doing.

Good.

I rode the train in, stayed for some hours and then rode the train back and

You know, the internet on the train was okay.

That's just my quick review there.

It was really good.

I know the sessions that I went to, I joined Keith to the zoning one.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

The conversations are the same everywhere you go.

I think, you know, a lot of the stakeholders today, the conversations we're having on the housing conversation are starting to get even more productive to where it's equaling votes.

It's equaling elections.

which is now starting to equal policy.

I liked the correspondence that we heard from the governor referencing the monetary interests.

I think it was a potential interest of millions and millions of dollars.

Really we have a billion dollar issue, if anything.

And I think the zoning piece, you know, at some point I, what Keith was going with, and I think that was the question that I asked Virginia Haslam to the Senator, but the Virginia Housing Executive Director was,

Will there be any move for the state to just green light projects that meet a certain requirement, you know, relative to whatever regulators, not omitting those things, because that's what they're doing in the West Coast states.

And they're starting, you're starting to see that happening in urban traffic, like suburban areas around, you know, dropless places.

Yeah.

And it's, it's pretty huge.

I don't think

It's responsible of us to say if, I mean, it's probably realistically when, you know, and how they would implement that.

I agree with some of the dialogue we heard from the Builders Association.

You know, there's a huge emphasis on Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and then Charlottesville kind of hits the fourth priority in a lot of the conversations.

So I'm sure we will see something, some policy, maybe not this year, maybe not next year,

but probably within this governor or the next governor, that's when we're starting to start seeing policy.

Nelson County related, we've been very busy with the comprehensive plan.

Ernie continues to work very hard.

He doubled my pay from zero.

So thank you very much.

We have great staff.

I can't compliment, you know, the last year transitioning, how great our board has been and how great our staff have been.

I think Ernie can attest that we've seen almost not an entire transition, but the changing of rankings all over the place, which led to some new folks coming in and has led into a pay study as well.

Ours is still ongoing, right Ernie?

And I have not heard an update really for a couple of months, for a couple of months.

So hopefully we'll get an update on where we're at.

And we'd love to share whatever we get.

That's pay studies for those, you know, participating in this.

It's not my promise.

And that's what I'm going for.

We'll just take yours and keep it going.

Sure, you're right.

Thanks for reading.

Well, you know, that's one thing that's always interesting.

We always do case studies asking you guys, hey, where do you pay people?

That's ultimately why it's so big.

We could just send an email, you know, we could just send a big email, hey, how much does this person get paid?

You know, I don't know, whatever.

It's over simply five minutes too.

I know all of ours are up.

I don't think we'll see what that means during the budget session.

With that, I'm trying to think, what fun text do we have?

OK.

The bargain property, the property which the town has purchased, 150 acres, circles north and south of the high school and middle school,

Moving forward on a hydrologic study because there's a creek called Billy Creek that runs through there that has the potential to expand in the capacity of a source of petroleum to provide services which could help us and build out throughout the corridor and also what we decide to do with proper demand.

So that's going forward.

There's consensus

The scale is yet to be determined, but we're moving forward on that, which is great because we'd be sharing services with the community and the school at the same time.

That's a really good plus for us.

Jones, and the rest of the community.

One of the most, I mean, besides having dinner with the staff of TJPDC there, which was great.

The most interesting thing to me was something that was like really unexpected, which is I'm on the Environment and Agriculture Committee.

and Vapo structurally changing that committee and going to make it an agriculture and public lands committee.

I'm not sure exactly the terminology, but they're taking the environment and putting it in energy, which I think makes the ag community very happy, but disturbs me immensely because there seems to be more exciting discussion about environmental issues as they relate to agriculture as now to energy, because that's a

There's also issues there, but I'm a little concerned with how that got shuffled around.

There was very little discussion about meeting.

I'm interested in finding out more about that.

One interesting thing that did happen in that committee is that that committee got into the legislative program which was subsequently approved to include that there be a request that the county study the long-term positive and negative effects

Eglinton, and that concerns me because there's a big biosolid application permit pending in Nelson County.

DEQ says that you may request a public hearing, but in the committee we have a representative from DEQ there.

When I asked why those requests for public hearings seem to always get denied, as they have in at least two instances that I'm aware of, they said something very strange

I've had a lot of deals with DEQ, but they said that, well, public hearings are good if there's something that you can even

Change or stop.

And of course you can't do those things in this case.

I said, well, aren't public hearings about information and sharing information with the public, getting a chance to hear that information and get input.

And there wasn't really a DEQ response to that, but we didn't have a consensus on our board of supervisors to ask for a public hearing.

So I did it myself as the

St. Petersburg Supervisor.

So I requested a public hearing for the county on the household applications.

There's some significant problems with it, not to mention the fact that one of the properties is adjacent to an elementary school and Bible accumulation, all sorts of things that should concern farmers if they understood what it was.

6,000 acres in Albemarle or something like that.

So anyway, that's the concern that I have.

Another thing that would get back to me if I had to go on.

If anybody has any feelings about LAGWA Virginia, there's a special use permit that's coming in front of us in two weeks that has an opportunity of extending the reach of LAGWA in Waukesha Valley.

perhaps significantly, I'm not sure, but it would be worth finding out if there's any information people might have, yay or nay on that, because I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, we have suspicions, but I'm trying to weigh everything I can find.

Oh, and short term rentals.

We've had our second meeting with stakeholders and staff on

Church and Reynolds, we're having a public hearing on a new ordinance that would tighten things up for us in terms of business licensing and registered and planning zoning.

Yes.

One thing that we learned at our stakeholders meeting all the time is interesting.

What part of a short-term stay is taxed?

Is it just the lodging night?

Is it the cleaning fees?

Is it the host fee?

Which of those items are all taxed?

And nobody really knows, and each platform taxes it differently, but we got our checks more than likely.

And then as we sat there with our stakeholders, they showed how it was calculated because they auto-calculated for you.

It was also different than what, yeah,

So, short answer is that's also some stuff, and our legal counsel said it should, the tax on, DOT tax, should be on everything.

Cleaning, post-fee, and everything.

Not just the night and the stay.

Which might sound contradictory to my sense, but, you know, stuff like that.

Which people has one fee?

It's one fee, but your cleaning fees also get taxed transiently.

So like one of the topics is how many people should be in a short term rental?

And recently today I talked to some other stakeholders about the Albemarle Augusta, like they'll just say a cap, no more than eight, no more than nine, no more than six, even though it could be a seven bedroom place.

Okay.

Yes.

No more than six people.

It's kind of like proving how many people live in a long-term realm.

I heard Fluvanna, they're done their salary study, Nelson's is ongoing, Greene's is starting.

I'm so nervous with you guys.

I'm hoping.

Mwiza, is Mwiza conducting a salary study?

I'll go.

So something I forgot from my report in Regional Housing Partnership, and then I do it

A roadshow to all the jurisdictions.

We're going to start with Greene County on the 13th of December, so be kind to us.

We're going to be doing a roadshow around each one of the jurisdictions and giving them about 10 to 15 minutes, as much time as you guys will allow us.

An overview of the regional house of partnership, maybe a little bit about what this body does.

And apparently there's a 50

We did this over COVID, I remember that.

Part of it, one of the ideas that we're floating around is doing something in the summer where we're going to do some sort of gathering of all the elected officials and just kind of get them to, because I know

I can't say hello in ten minutes.

So we probably need a little bit more than that.

Our next meeting is February, so I hope everyone enjoys the holidays and Happy New Year.

We have some new members in January, so there will be some orientation.

You can see now the preview as to what will be happening in February.

So moved.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Have a good evening, everyone.

All right, Christine, tell us who did what else.