Planning District Commission Meeting   3/2/2023

Commissioner Russell?

Here.

Mr. Smith?

Supervisor Herring?

Ms. Wilkinson?

Supervisor Jones?

Here.

Supervisor Reed?

Supervisor Brotman?

Here.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Here.

And we'll move to, we do not have anyone that we have to allow to participate.

Before we move to, we do have to amend or add a couple of items to the agenda tonight.

And those items are number 5C, accounting and advisory services,

Item 5D, the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership appointment, and 6A, the fiscal year 23, a Measured Budget Resolution.

So those need to be added to the agenda.

Just noting the error on the list of commissioners, I recognize that I put the Louise and folks safe for now.

I'll correct that for next month.

So you're representing Fluvanna.

So any things you'd like them to do, you should get that in to them.

Not hearing any changes to the agenda, is there a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

We will go to number two, management of the public comments.

The public are limited to more than two minutes per person.

Anyone in the room wish to comment?

Anyone online wish to give public comment tonight?

See Sean raising his hand.

Great.

We will close public comment.

We're going to move to some presentations to see that.

So the first one is a resolution.

I am going to start.

Don in the back.

Don Reed recently retired this Tuesday as our finance director.

He's been with us nearly 17 years.

And so I want to say a couple words, and then I'm going to have Chair Galloway read the resolution aloud.

First, I want to thank Don not only personally, but professionally for your dedication to the PDC.

You have been determined to keep our books clean.

We've had clean audits every year that we've been here and you will go to all lengths to find that penny.

So we really appreciate everything that you've done to keep all of our books clean.

You see a lot of change in this agency between leadership changes, programmatic changes, staff coming and going.

You've kind of been the stronghold keeping us all together, making sure everybody understands the role that they play and the role that you play in helping people learn the agency from the inside out.

I really appreciate that.

You hold a great deal of institutional knowledge that we will miss while you're gone.

So you can anticipate that we'll probably call you more than once trying to get from you all of the wonderful things that you know.

We hope you really enjoy the extra time that you have with your family, especially your granddaughter, Choke Pie, I believe you call her.

And we're really going to miss you.

Appreciate it.

Do you want to do this one?

Can you stand for a picture, girl?

And I would love to read this Resolution of Appreciation as a motion for Donald L. Reid.

Whereas Donald Don Elby has faithfully served the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission since May of 2006 as Finance Director, and whereas Don has provided the Commission and its co-workers with thoroughness, accuracy, and thoughtful approaches to oversight of TJPDC's finances, and whereas during Don's tenure,

The agency's financial needs have grown tremendously.

And whereas Don successfully navigated the agency's migration from Great Plains software to QuickBooks to conduct TJPDC's bookkeeping and other financial functions.

And whereas Don oversaw the move from presenting quarterly financial statements to the commission to preparing statements monthly.

And whereas over the years, Don invested hours of his own time to learn and stay up to date on changes in governmental financial reporting.

and whereas Don prepared the agency's financial statements for the annual audit process, achieving a continuous stream of clean audits and whereas the TJPDC most recently has called upon Don to handle financial aspects of the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board and accounting for the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative 2022 grant, the largest grant award in the history of the TJPDC.

and whereas the overall quality of services provided by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District during Don's tenure has been enhanced by the knowledge, hard work and passion that he has brought to the mission of the TJPDC now therefore be it resolved that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission expresses its enduring gratitude and appreciation for the generous and faithful service provided to the TJPDC in this region by Donald L. Reed.

Is there a second for that motion?

Second.

And all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

There you go.

That motion carries.

Outside of just being a regular job, it's been a pleasure to serve.

This is a much different place today than it was 17 years ago.

I've seen a lot of things come and go, and people come and go.

I've seen the time when we were rupturing blood in the 13th century.

From Chip Wells to the work that Christine has done has turned the agency around and convinced them.

Thank you, Tony and I'll just go around the room if anyone would like to make any remarks, Jim.

Appreciate it.

Ben?

Well, I know Bella's going to miss you, so I really appreciate your current conversation with you.

Most certainly miss you and certainly I've been

Part of the TJPDC when I was in 13 as well, too.

And remember all of your teachers, as you said, rupturing blood everywhere.

And you were part of holding focus together and being steadfast.

Thank you.

You've done a great job, Don.

Thank you.

You and David are the only ones that have been here through my tenure.

And you've been steadfast.

You've done a great job.

They've been here about three years.

That's about what I showed her.

Yeah, thank you.

I've been around as long as other people, but it's remarkable where the Plating District Commission is at now and what it does for everybody compared to where it could have gone in those rubber years that I've read and heard about.

I haven't had the opportunity to interact with, but I do know that with the reports coming through, all this will sound insolvent.

And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Keith had a personal obligation.

I'll remember him.

So thank you again, Don, and enjoy what's coming straight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will go to the next item for the next presentation.

Alright, the FY 2024 draft rural work program, just to give you all a little bit of pressure, a little bit of

VDOT State Planning and Research Fund.

So it's a discretionary funding program that the state allocates to regional planning districts to support transportation planning coordination in the non-urbanized areas.

We have an annual budget of $72,500.

That is a flat budget.

Every PDC that operates this program gets the same amount of funding.

80% of that is state funding and 20% of that is a local match contribution.

I think you all know this, but the rural areas include the non-MPA portions of Albemarle County as well as Louisa, Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson County.

Just to give you a couple of highlights so that you know what we have done with this program in the past.

In FY 2023, through these rural transportation programming funds,

We completed the Zion Crossroads Gateway Plan.

We provided some additional staff report for the Regional Transit Vision Plan as well as for the governance study that is currently underway in addition to what we were received through the technical assistance grant from the State Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

We are currently in the process of developing some priorities for bicycle and pedestrian improvements in the rural areas.

We can consistently provide technical support with grant applications for the rural areas, such as SmartScale, or sometimes we've done this with Transportation Alternatives Program funds, or this past year I supported an application for a diverse area

Grossen accessibility planning grant application, and then we also this past year used this to develop the grant application for the safe streets of Woods for All grant.

So what we are proposing in FY24 that we will use the rural transportation program funding for, as you can see this first top category is the administrative budgets and that's

Pretty standard ongoing activities.

We have to do regular reporting and invoicing, developing the agendas and the meeting content for the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee, and then general information sharing, which includes training for our staff, making sure that we are attending meetings with the localities and FEDA, things of that nature.

And then with the actual planning and funding that we're receiving, we have proposed to program some additional support to do a safety data analysis process in support of the Safe Streets and Roads for All Regional Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, which we will also be requesting programming funding from the MPO's work program as well.

We will continue to support the development of smart scale pipeline projects and applications.

We will continue to support technical assistance and then we will provide rural coordination for transit, ride sharing services, and also multi-middle transportation solutions.

I will mention that one of the other items that we're going to be pursuing in fiscal year 2024 is a

what are they called, strategic plan for the ride share program.

And so some of the spending under task 171D will also be to provide some additional support to develop that plan outside of the grant amount that was requested for that program.

We're not asking for any action from you all tonight.

I'm presenting the staff for you all for you to provide any feedback or comments, ask questions.

And then this will be presented to the Rural Technical Advisory Committee at their meeting in March and it will come back to you at your meeting next month for you to officially endorse or tell us that you want some revisions made to it.

The draft copy of the plan was included in the packet.

Okay.

Okay, one minute.

We will resume the next item.

The last is the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Port update.

David and Ruth.

Yeah, I think I've got the presentation.

As usual, Ruth's going to handle the technology here.

She's got a class in the area.

All right, so we were last here in September, so it's been six months, a lot of stacking, the regional cigarette tax board and cigarette tax state counties.

Perfect, just to give you a little refresher on how we got to where we are.

2020 General Assembly session is when a number of additional taxing authorities for counties were implemented, including the authority to tax cigarettes for all the two counties that already have the authority to be in one of Virginia.

Came back the next year and it was some additional legislation to encourage regional cigarette stamp stamping and collection by regional boards.

and really kind of laid out in the legislation what some of the duties of those regional forms would be.

Regional boards would be guided by a rebus that established their membership and their powers and duties and how they collected the street.

We were very fortunate, I think, here at TJPDC to have had several of the counties come forward to us, not only to

asked the TJPDC to lead this effort on a regional basis, but also to be very involved in setting up a work group that included representatives of several of the jurisdictions that ultimately became part of the board that met regularly.

Probably the biggest lift that we had was just the financial scenarios, where our expenses were going to be, with the projection of sales and revenues.

and then you'll be good to be able to actually recall the best from each of the jurisdictions that have expressed interest in joining the board for start-up funds to reflect those perjunctions.

So following the approval of necessary number of understanding, the cigarette tax quarter was established at its first meeting in October of 21.

You can see there, there are eight members, six counties, we have the town of Madison, individual Madison County,

And we're glad to have a city of Charlottesville that's been already doing it.

Next slide.

So new local taxes for the counties and it kind of lasted to get back to January of last year.

So we're just over a year into it.

On a monthly basis, TJPDC is working with about 25 distributors.

They're submitting monthly reports about their stance, their sales.

They're submitting revenue, remittances, as far as their collection of taxes from retailers.

They get to knock up 2% for their costs, and then they send us the rest.

You've heard me probably talk before about Gretchen Thomas, our administrative assistant, who really just kind of took this over when it started January, a year ago.

She's the point person for anatomy, the remittances and reports, making sure all the numbers match up, the number of cigarettes being reported,

Matches on different forms, a number of stamps that were reported, and she's kind of like down to the cutting, like we were talking about, God, I said, well, this could have stayed here in class.

And then just a little case there, turning that around and getting the checks sent out to the jurisdiction.

So we do that on a monthly basis.

our administrative expenses from the revenue that's collected, distributed groups, and then send them out to the jurisdictions based on the state.

So just to give you an idea of some of the numbers, we just completed reports near the end of February for January collections.

You can see the total revenue collected just over $220,000.

It's actually down.

We have been running

For a while, closer to about a quarter of a million dollars on a monthly basis.

We're really starting to see some of the cigarette sales and magazines and we're kind of looking at them all.

There you can see the six-month figure for the first half of this year, 23, about 1.45 million.

And that's on total practice sold during the same period, just under

and then the administrative costs for TJPDC which includes a little bit of residence time, a little bit of his time, a little bit of my time, a lot of residence time, and our compliance agent that's out in the field which we'll talk about as well.

Just kind of a summary there, as I said, the number of facts sold, revenues starting to level off from what we've seen probably in the first six to eight months of the collections.

Those revenues are due to

for the July and December time frame, 1.45 million to put that out over the course of the year.

It's about one tramp that will be projected on a yearly basis.

It may be projected at 2.8 billion a year, so we're pretty close to that.

And fortunately, what we'd like to see, our expenses are a lot, pretty far below the figure on national projections.

So that's a good thing, and it's more money going back to willing jurisdictions.

Next slide, please.

So I mentioned the board.

It's up and running.

They need to be recorded on a basis.

They got in this recent meeting in January.

We need to get it in April.

Some of the things that the board has done recently, there was an initial application fee for the distributors to be registered with the TJPDC as the board's administrator to do business with us.

And that was $200.

Board came back and said, you know, there's no sense in $200 being paid every year.

So we lowered that to $50.

They've adopted some policies dealing with what the financial obligations would be for additional counties or any other jurisdictions to become members of the board, which would be in line with paying their fair share of some operating expenses and for the revenue fund, revenue reserve fund that the original jurisdictions were asked to pay.

And then they also have adjusted the high-to-soul ratio

It's been admitted on that because the way that we kind of calculate the administrative costs are based on the number of packs sold and the portion that are sold by each jurisdiction.

So if you're a quarter of the number of packs sold in a given month, then the administrative expenses, you know, are a latitude of jurisdiction.

We had been doing that.

We did that to close out fiscal year 22.

The board had said, yeah, let's just do that.

You're moving forward.

You have to close for the fiscal year.

But then we came back and had some further discussion.

The board decided that we would do it on a monthly basis.

The board decided that we would do it on a monthly basis.

That made it kind of truing up your numbers every year or every month.

That acceleration would look a little bit different every month.

But then you avoid a big true up at the end of the fiscal year.

So we actually just started that in January.

So that might be more work for TJPDC.

And they also most recently agreed to what we call the investment strategy.

We have $140,000 in reserve funds.

on that right now.

The registration fees that are coming in, we're more than covering our costs, but we've got this purely siloed-out money that's just sitting in a bag.

So we're going to move that into something that's going to be a little more reflective of the market these days and be able to generate some revenue.

And then finally, I would mention working with the state tax department right now to develop a memorandum of understanding with them, which I think is really going to help with our compliance efforts and really being able to have the best possible handle on where the detailed establishments are.

They're selling cigarettes.

If they're selling cigarettes, they have to go through a approval and licensure process with the state tax department.

So we're trying to execute an MOU

Littlestead, and we're not necessarily going to go down there.

Next slide.

So it's headway to compliance.

As I said, we have our compliance meeting out in the field.

It's been out since September.

We're guesstimating.

We have about 240, 250 retail establishments across the region.

selling cigarettes.

That's probably growing because the back of the main shops are starting to pop up right now.

But he is probably close to half, visiting half of those again.

Initially, the goal was to be informative and be educational.

about the tax, about what the local workplaces are, and to work with the retail establishments in order to move them in a direction to be in compliance.

They have the proper Blue Bridge cigarette tax port and stamp on all of their cigarettes so that the distributors are doing their job, the retailers are selling cigarettes for stamp and correcting out tax made to the distributor.

So having a report that most of the retailers that we're working with, 95, 98% of them are in compliance or are working toward compliance.

We have had one incident here most recently, we worked with a retailer to push them a little bit harder than some of the others to make sure that they were in compliance.

And then the final thing I would mention in compliance, the board initially established for

Cigarettes that were on the shelf as of January 1, 2022, when the new stance started to take effect, we had more than about a 90-day settlement period.

So we had a product that was sitting on the shelf, whether it had a state stamp or some other jurisdiction stamp, whatever that would be sold.

Well, 90 days is now 390 days plus.

So we're going to start

Working with those retailers to do some rubber stamping so that the stamps of the cigarettes that are still put out of compliance can continue to be sold in the first edition.

So that, again, part of our, as a compliance agent, has got to be able to try to work with them to continue to do that.

I believe that might be it yet.

There's a page on the TJPDC website for the board.

It has some good information about the jurisdictions that are running the board, the tax rates.

There's forms that the distributors would need on there.

I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Hutchins, Nelson Cagas, and Tax Cigarettes.

I think Ernie does.

Are you out there Ernie?

I actually have some questions.

I'm not shocked by the amount of packs that are coming to this.

Even higher, we all have that kind of factor.

I mean, the revenue is there to cover the cost, so the best public concern will just

I don't think that grows to be beyond what we thought.

Yeah, some shots don't move them.

I think there's some cases where you have some off brands that may be a favorite for a particular customer or two.

There's not a lot of them.

And there may be some issues with others in terms of rotating their stock and then not doing an adequate job of getting that.

It's not a mother's ball, but it is.

I know at least at one corporate level, we had to think more about how we're going to deal with these in our retail stores because they were getting in their stores and they still had stamp cigarettes.

I don't recall we set this up at a reserve on this trailer.

What's the intention behind, what was the intent behind setting up to a reserve?

OK, let's you handle that.

It recommended that we have cash on hand so that we didn't have to go back to the board in order to request additional funds.

We did need to move someone from 0.5 to 0.6 FTE.

Because we didn't purchase a car there.

We did purchase a vehicle.

We did build in.

Lee, $25,000 for the purchase of vehicle that was including the cost that we asked the jurisdictions to pay to fund.

Is that your ongoing maintenance fuel?

That's a direct cost for the TVAVDC, but it's recovered through the mileage

And then we do intend to bring back before the board a policy for them to determine the use of those reserve funds.

And it very well may be the case that they request reducing that amount, knowing that we don't have a large need for that reserve fund.

I guess that's the point I'm leading to.

I don't know about the other jurisdictions that use the funds from this.

But Albemarle, the funds that are coming in

We'll get through it.

If it's not needed, then they could potentially do some similar type of things if they thought it was worth one.

The Albemarle Board was particularly interested in some of the numbers.

Just being that it's budget time and this is a new item, I would imagine it would be in our presentations that we receive at some point.

Yeah, your staff would have this on the staff for the board.

We can certainly send that to you.

I might have missed it, but like what's like the ballpark number of the number of establishments that aren't in compliance and are you seeing any kind of

Yeah, I think you've heard of Ruth, but I think the one that we've had the trouble with is the one that I'm aware of.

I don't know if there's been some others that have been, you know, slogging the program.

Yeah, there have been a number of talkative elevations that were in compliance the first time.

are applying to be visited, but they have actively taken steps to get in compliance.

There are a good number of retail establishments who have heard that the cigarette stamps were needing to be applied with, and so they had already taken steps before POTUS showed up.

They've had one store in the urban range that was really not in compliance, but had

But I spent a lot of time working directly with retailers to help them understand the focus of the tax and understand what they need to do and help them with the key distributors.

OK. And then I would agree with Chair Galloway's comments about the reserve funds and then

The only other question I have, which is probably kind of a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyway, is my understanding is this wouldn't apply to vape products, which are taking over a significant part of the cigarette market.

We all know how to hire nicotine content, same companies own them.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard to say in what happens at the state level,

Right.

Yeah, because I mean, anyway, too.

Thank you.

We will move to item, thank you, guys.

We'll move to item number four of the consent agenda.

February 2nd, 23 meetings.

Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes?

So the motion and a second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Okay, the FY 23 amended operating budget was brought to you in draft form in the last commission meeting in February.

We are recommending a budget with expected revenues of $41,339,674 with expected expenditures of $41,327,650.

Upon adoption, this would be the budget that will be used for our final budget and auditing and reporting purposes once it's approved.

There are a couple of changes from last month to this month, small changes in most cases.

There was a slight reduction in rental income revenue to more accurately project.

I did a deeper dive into the rental of our space here in the Water Treat Center and our tenants.

So I reduced that slightly by $4,000.

For expenses, there's a slight decrease in salary and fringe associated with retirement of our finance director, and then a $53,000 increase in projected contractual expenses for the need to contract out the financial function in the short term.

So pulled a little bit more money into that contractual line item just to make sure we had ourselves covered.

Any questions?

And so we're, someone else is next.

So the process that was followed last year for the executive director evaluation, we did a staff survey.

There was also a survey done of the commissioners.

Now, you do recall that was kind of the first evaluation we had done since Christine came on board.

Then an ad hoc committee was formed.

That was myself, Commissioner Herring, and Commissioner Rutherford.

and they met in closed session to review and to go over the evaluation.

And then the whole commission went into closed session and able to discuss that evaluation.

And then the action at the conclusion of that was a salary increase that took effect a lot of while.

So the conversation for tonight is if the commission desires to follow the same process,

Or David may have some comments about whether or not the survey ordinance need to happen on an annual basis.

Yes.

So that's something that we would get well done.

So, well, yes, you have comments.

The comment does not believe the survey needs to happen on an annual basis, but perhaps every other year or something like that.

that still would put together the whole commission.

I think it was in a good way, that way we also ran into, I think part of that was because of the virtual nature we were in, there was not really a lot of interactions and stuff.

So we kind of, this is really our first year of being in reality.

So I think, you know,

A commission now provides a little bit more ability to, I'm not necessarily against the surveys.

I think we've historically done them.

I can definitely also appreciate doing them every other year.

There was no normal evaluation until pre-COVID.

So this would be the, last year was kind of the closest thing to normal.

If there's not a survey, it would help just with organization.

For the commissioners maybe to do the evaluation as some sort of rank, not necessarily a survey that they complete, but an instrument that they complete that evaluates you that they follow up.

So perhaps we could come up with something like that.

Yeah, I could have done it a few times.

There's plenty of, I mean, I think with, for executive director positions in each of our counties, we'd have some of those forms.

I don't, if we do something like that, I don't think we necessarily would need the ad hoc committee to get together.

We can put the instrument out to the commissioners and then have them in by deadline, compile them, and then pull committee, you know, on closed session and just have the whole conversation of what they are.

If it's alright with that, the commissioners, maybe Jesse and I can kind of put our efforts together to come up with what a good instrument would look like and then put that out.

And then we'll go to that.

Timeline.

The full commission met in close session in April.

Because of the FY 2020 budget is presented as a draft in April.

And so if there were any salary increases, I could incorporate them into the May approval budget.

So we want to try to get this done by the inclusion of April, right?

And then we're going to be...

So that April closed session will be interesting.

Anything I missed there, David?

I didn't.

And I don't really need to have anything

If you use, maybe you can look.

Let me distribute a survey for commissioners to complete in advance of the closed session.

Typically, that is what's been done.

Yeah.

And they distributed a certain amount of time.

Yeah.

And then we allowed that sound and made sure people were feeling better.

I don't recall.

I think the responses to the surveys were very good.

Yeah.

Last time.

Good.

Yeah.

We understand.

We'll move to 5C.

One of the items added, the accounting and advisory services.

OK, so accounting and advisory services.

With Don's retirement effective Tuesday, we are going to use, or we are using, emergency procurement in order to get, or we already have, a firm in place immediately to make sure that we don't have any gaps in our financial function.

Additionally, we have released on February 10th a request for proposals for accounting firms to submit proposals should we contract this function out.

We also are actively advertising the finance director position and have begun to receive applications for that job.

So we are, proposals are to be received by tomorrow is the deadline.

So we will begin reviewing the contracted out position.

We've already started doing screening calls for the applications that we've received.

and we'll continue to use Handsman and Weebl until we can permanently fill that position.

What I put into the, what was added late was the letter of agreement with Handsman and Weebl.

Any questions?

Written into that agreement.

And so they're planning to help us with the next person's training.

And we need to take a vote on that one.

That is the motion.

So moved.

Any further discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

And the next item, we have the appointment to the Central and Interregional Housing Partnership.

So we have a recommendation for you all for Mr. William Park to serve as the developer.

He has been contacted and is willing to serve.

This is a TJPDC-appointed position on that partnership.

We'll make a motion.

Thank you.

Appreciate you, right?

Second.

Alright, motion made and seconded.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

We did the comments on the interstate, the

All right.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

In the executive director's memo that I included in the packet, they gave us an update on the body project milestones to date.

Today was the quarterly meeting that we held with all 13 jurisdictions and all of the private sector partners to give a quarterly update on that project.

So each month we're committed to putting this data into the ED report so that you guys have that on a month-over-month basis.

and then quarterly the TJPDC staff would present.

No, every six months the TJPDC staff will present on body.

We are anxiously awaiting body 2023 results.

I think everybody is anxiously awaiting that.

We still haven't heard when that's going to be coming down.

For the housing, the Coming Back Home Regional Housing Summit is occurring on May 24th at the Omni in Charlottesville.

Encourage all of you all to attend.

I know several of you have already reached out to Ian Baxter.

If you have not already, please reach out to him.

The TJPDC can cover the cost of that for you all to attend.

And then the application that we got, 2.4 million from HUD, one-time funding.

We've worked with all six jurisdictions to identify the activities.

We submitted the allocation plan to HUD, and it was approved on its first round, which we were very pleased to see that has not been the case for a lot of the consortiums

that have submitted their plans.

So we're very pleased that that is approved, which means we can now in full force begin setting up those programs in each of the jurisdictions and beginning to spend down that grant.

We have until 2029 to fully expend the funds.

Transportation updates.

We're very pleased and thankful for Sandy's work on submitting a $3.01 million application to raise

That stands for Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity and that's for the Rivanna River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge to complete the preliminary engineering so that we can begin to reduce some of the unknowns and hopefully reduce the contingencies on that project so we can apply again for either state or federal funding to move into the next steps.

Safe Streets and Roads for All.

You guys already know that we did receive that award.

We have been meeting with VDOT to start the in-depth crash analysis, crash data analysis.

And then there is an up, we've just had the kickoff meeting for that just occurred as well.

And then we have an upcoming meeting with USDOT to start looking at the contracting.

They're going to start rolling out contracts.

When did they say?

Get through a couple of these regional transit vision plan.

We just received our final reimbursement.

So that project has been closed out with DRPT and we are moving forward with the governance study.

The consultants on the regional governance study will be coming to our commission meeting to present to you all an update on where they are in that and along with Lucinda on our team in your next meeting.

Additionally, the next Steering Committee meeting is March 23rd for that project.

And then Rideshare, we have developed a request for proposals as part of the approved work plan and budget.

We're going to be seeking a consultant to develop a media content library of local images, videos to encourage ride sharing.

For economic development, SEDS plan, we developed a strategy committee.

We had a kickoff meeting February 13th, and we have monthly internal project management meetings on that.

The SEDS is expected to be completed no later than June of 2024, but we anticipate it being sooner than that.

Hazard mitigation plan has been officially adopted before Fluvanna as the first jurisdiction.

They approved it at their February 1 meeting, so February becomes our five-year update date of requirement, so we have to do another update in the next five years by February.

Watershed Improvement Program, the WIP staff has been working with USDA Forest Service for what I explained to you guys last time, the STU-MAP, Stewardship Assessment and Mapping Project.

I've asked Bella if she's willing in the next few months.

We're going to let it progress a little bit further, but in the next few months to come to you all to present that so you can understand the STUMAC work that's happening with USDA.

Thank you.

Any questions for Christine?

Ferguson.

Oh, there they go.

Chatty bunch tonight.

I'm curious to see how this goes.

I'll start here with Michael and just go round the table, Michael.

It's 4 AM today.

Sure.

Well, I guess a few updates.

We had an interim meeting.

City Council position to fill, one of our councilors resigned in the beginning of the year and we've since filled that position.

We have for a long time school board member and leader of the Upward Bound program at UVA.

Likewise, we were just beginning the process of, we selected a firm to do a national search for our next permanent city manager, and that is underway.

The goal is to have that decision made by June or July, roughly that timeframe.

The first module of our zoning rewrite has been released and we've had our open session and first joint work session about it.

That first module is just the zoning districts and where those zoning districts are located in the city.

There'll be two more modules that will get more into the affordable housing requirements, environmental protections and other things.

And

We recently had a public forum about gun violence in the city led by the chief of police, which I think

Good and honest discussion about all the different tensions there.

And then, of course, on Tuesday of this week, we had an officer-involved shooting involving Charlottesville police.

And the parking lot of the Red Room Fin involves both Charlottesville and Albemarle County police.

That's Tommy.

Oh, me?

Our assessments went through the roof.

I think many of yours probably did too.

Last year, we did make some adjustments to our personal property tax, and I think possibly figuring out if there's anything we can help with our assessments.

I'm sorry.

It was a friend of my daughter's.

We had five baseball players involved in a very serious car accident.

You've probably seen it on the news.

That has been very hard, but I have to say we're a strong community and we've been rallying around families and we're a small-knit community and Nelson County.

Brought pizza to our teachers of the high school this week from Nelson, so we appreciate that.

Their school district to ours and the support that we've received as we get ready to get very, very, very nice young man tomorrow, Saturday.

So that has affected me a lot this week.

The governor came into the lease today and

He came to our schools and to our high school, and he did a read across America.

So that was good.

That was a little bright spot for us, I guess.

And he had some very kind words to say to our baseball team.

Well, as Gretchen mentioned, we're starting into the beginning of the season, like everybody, and that's the worst part of everything on the board.

Yeah.

We got a lot going on in the region, but it seems like everything we have going on here, we're under a gag always not to discuss.

Yes, that's true.

Good things are coming.

We can't talk.

I know these days we'll be able to tell something, but like I said, there's a lot going on with

Everybody that you get interested in coming into the county, first thing you do is put you on the restriction of not being able to talk about it.

the young man that was killed in the shooting on Hay Street.

Is that right?

Here's Hay Street.

Our assistant county administrator?

No, it was the girl.

Yeah, I do.

She's a very, both Jane and me, too.

So, tragedy strikes.

So other than that, budget season, same thing.

Assessments were up, I think, about 17%, which is pretty significant.

So our equalized rate would be $0.77 or something like that.

And so we're struggling with the budget.

The big things on the budget are the, of course, the pay increases that are being promoted by the states.

We're paying half of it.

Paying is that, right?

And then we're bringing in EMS services in-house.

We put an advertised maximum rate of 86 and a half cents, I think, which is down, but that's, of course, due to the assessment.

And we approved a concrete recycling plant on 250.

Big operation out of Richmond that just does a lot of business up here.

and you're improving the 400,000 square feet of warehouse space on 15.

It was another 200,000 square feet like the Econ.

And then for a smaller warehouse space, 10,000 unit warehouse spaces, we've improved 100,000, 200,000 square feet of warehouse space.

It'd be smaller little package units that are designed for smaller organizations on 250.

So,

and then we've got of course some things like Tom and Sara, we can't talk about it, it's divine.

They're still very exciting and dear to us.

Yeah.

Alawa is coming too.

It's good to finally see the fruits of so many years of efforts.

That corner needs to get developed.

Well, Perj, I have to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for coming to our meeting the other day.

It was great.

It was excellent.

We enjoyed the conversation.

Though I beat my board up on housing issues quite often, having someone, not you, like me, keep saying that to them, it was like my balls clicked off and they finally believed me.

But no, that was it.

Y'all's presentation led to more productive conversation, and we've really taken it seriously on the housing situation in Nelson.

Then at the end of the meeting, which all we got to miss, one of the board members had some thoughts on real estate tax litigation for people who choose to have long-term rentals, especially in homes that were dilapidated and were remodeled.

So what does that look like?

I don't want to say all of it's gone, but there's definitely some pretty serious interest in trying to offset the year-to-year burden of the cost of long-term rentals to encourage some of that.

So that was a really cool discussion that came right after y'all came and left.

We're in the middle of our comprehensive plan.

I would say in the middle, we're finally past the middle and we're getting to the nitty gritty data pieces.

I don't think I was here to talk about the commuter population in Nelson.

And it's really intriguing to get to see the history of what Nelson County's workforces look like.

Typically, we fielded 6,000 to 7,000 working people.

And about 4,800 of those people, they'll leave Nelson County to work in jobs outside of the county.

Number didn't make us surprised at all.

And then we saw another number, and that was about 1,600 Nelsonians.

and work in Nelson County.

That number really didn't shock us at all either.

But the scary number that we got was the number of Nelsonians, or not Nelsonians, but people would have to come into Nelson County to work Nelson County jobs.

And that number is above 2,000.

So, you know, we had a really long discussion recently under Congress planned about what that data means to us.

You know, does that mean we want that 4,800 to live and work in Nelson County?

Does that mean we want those 2,000 to be able to infiltrate our economy in Nelson and Liv that 2,000?

And so there's a lot of really hard questions that we have to ask ourselves in how we do that.

Median house sale in Nelson County is $400,000, which is pretty serious.

And to be able to infiltrate that number, you gotta make real money.

Further the burden, you're finding out that close to 17 to 20% of our population

Work From Home.

What does that mean?

Now all of a sudden internationally, nationally, you're a place that people want to live, eat, work, play, and raise a family.

So we've got a lot of different kind of burdens that we're trying to figure out.

The conversation about a land trust of sorts is of interest.

And there's been numbers talking about in the hundreds of homes.

There are hundreds of lot ready potential.

So that's serious.

and our board does want to meet with Land Trust at some point to discuss what that means and what potentials could exist.

We have a very big meeting on Tuesday to discuss the future of that land acquisition and how that relates to housing, job creation.

Kind of the funny thing about the word job creation is you got to have people to do the jobs.

So we kind of quit saying it.

And I know it was me as a diehard conservative kind of guy, job creation, that was the breaking way.

Now we come to the reality of I could create 200 jobs and I have absolutely no clue who's going to work any of them.

And we've come to the realization that Amherst County is having to field a lot of our talent-specific roles and a lot of our kind of low-end, like, infiltration of certain career paths.

which is a very perplexing thing to be in the rural county context.

So that's where we are.

Is anybody just out of curiosity or any of the gangs going to sponsor the overall regional housing center?

Okay, well we did.

Last year or so, we were just chugging at it.

Well, nobody else is doing it now.

Do you want me to?

I think Greene County did as well.

What's that?

I think Greene County did as well.

Okay, good to know.

I can't speak for my other four board members, but I'm over this.

It'll be okay.

Great.

I think we're starting into our budget.

We had our first public hearing on it last night.

The meeting went until, well, 15 in the morning, but it wasn't because of the bug, although it was interesting to see so many people there to hear our presentation and to have people speak because they are concerned about the assessments and so to make it a little more difficult.

But the proposal by our account executives for a,

Platt, rates on real estate and personal property.

I recall, like many of them last year, personal property taxes were dropped significantly based on the expectation that valuations were excessively high for vehicles.

They've come down.

So that effectively means that there's a significant drop in personal property taxes for this year, but there's a significant increase in assessments of real property.

And so that's one of the trends in that line.

It's a $551 million budget, but that is almost $35 million less than last year, which shows what happens when federal money goes away.

And we have to figure out how to cover those needs and our capital needs.

It's significant.

We've got, of course, schools, about 57% of the overall capital in there of that budget.

It's just called schools.

But yeah, we were there late because of the development that's been brute on old ivy next to the University of North grounds and very controversial because of traffic.

We also have several traffic town halls over the previous month.

I think Eric's successful in getting people out to express their concerns.

They were initially started by the police department, just telling people about safety concerns with distracted driving and some statistics along those lines.

But of course, once it went to the open forum, it became a lot of concerns about different traffic issues throughout.

And you know this isn't really a traffic issue but I'll turn it back to the chair by saying we did one little nice thing yesterday and that is we took a little street that really doesn't do much except to connect to Dartentown Park, Freeridge Lane, and we're turning it into a pro-level knob, I think you would call it.

So we'll close it to traffic and try to longer it down a river and it's very pretty and a nice little place to put it.

Just take a look.

The last few years, the budget of the first public hearing, any of the public hearings haven't really brought anybody out.

So this year, we had about eight or nine people talk last night to the budget, and half of those were on affordable housing advocates.

The other half who were speaking to the assessments, it wasn't so much that they were there just saying, our assessments have gone up.

You need to equalize or reduce something.

But it was more of a line of questioning trying to understand is the evaluation process more relative to what they're seeing in the immediate housing market relative to sales prices and such.

And it's a lot of the stuff that's in the presentation that Keith gives as part of the housing partnerships presentation that we do.

For those folks in my district, I love it when people come in and engage at that level.

I mean, it's one thing to just come in and go, things are too high, you need to do this, or it's too low, and you just got to raise it, get both ends for asking and advocating for the thing.

But when they engage at that level and start asking those type of questions, I think that's interesting.

And I think they'll follow along during the budget process this year.

So I'll be curious to see, since this is the first one, if the other public hearings will bring out more folks as they continue to follow the process.

It was great, the Nelson County presentation that Keith and I did, not the presentation, the engagement.

When we go to these, you never know what to expect, Keith and I.

And we always wonder if the person that, you know, like Jesse's on the Regional Housing Partnership, so is he going to take the lead and do all the talking?

And we kind of go into these thinking, well, hopefully they'll help, you know, trigger it.

Jesse didn't say a word.

And his supervisor, especially the one in particular, was really engaged with it.

And it was right on the heels of their compensation study and conversation that they were pulling over, which I was thrilled to be there to sit and listen to that.

I learned quite a bit being in the audience.

But that back and forth, this was the first presentation after it was a great engagement with the board where we had folks in the audience jumping up to come over to talk to us and the staff from TJPDC, developers from Nelson County asking questions.

There was an organization there that we've been able to make a contact with.

So that was great as well.

I mean, you guys had a cool house that day for your agenda.

So it was nice to get that level of engagement afterwards.

Jesse had to kind of chew us out of the room because we were going to talk it after the break.

So, so that was great.

So we were thrilled to be there.

Looking forward to going, coming where I know we're working out to have a little bit different agenda time with Fluvanna.

And I know we're working to get Louisa.

We just got invited to do a presentation.

I'm not even sure who it, who it is to yet.

But they were asked to be on the calendar for Keith and I today to do a presentation with UVA, the Regional Housing Partnership presentation.

And it looks like we'll put in a portion of it during the coming back home.

So it's just a topic that's hitting all of us.

And there are a lot of people planning to understand it further.

There was still a lot of eyes.

You know, folks think, oh, no, you can still rent for this.

It's like, no, you can't.

Maybe you're in a place like that, but nobody's leaving that place.

And so I really want to convince supervisors that there is a problem.

There is a crisis occurring.

And we had our first, we had our two cents.

People can submit their comments that way.

We had one of our first people saying, we can't afford to live in my house anymore.

I'm going to start living in my car.

And that's pretty pathetic.

I think philosophic.

And one of the most important things to happen is for the politics to catch up with the issue and for elections to finally be influenced.

I can proudly say, and it's really strange to convince that by the efforts regionally, probably by the board to an extent, every candidate who's running for board of supervisor in Nelson County, one of their top threes is affordable housing.

and for that to be in the rural context is really, really neat to see happen.

Because I haven't really seen that happen south of us.

Amherst doesn't really care about me and really doesn't care.

But now for the first time, we're seeing that each person realizes that if they don't talk about it, they're not going to be able to get elected.

Well, those who are still thinking about attending the coming back home, I think it's going to be a great day in terms of resources and folks.

And there are people that I'm encouraging to attend.

Jesse's going to be one of the panelists about, for those of you thinking the bias that you spoke to and understanding who actually has problems with portability.

And that's where Jesse's going to talk about this topic.

So I think it's going to be a great day.

The first one went off really well.

We had great attendance.

People were speaking at a

And then I promised Ian that I would add, and I'm so glad you guys started talking about the summit again, I promised him that I would add that evening before

The summit is a networking event.

That networking event is intended for the keynote speaker, the regional housing partnership, any members of the panel and speakers, and then you all as commissioners will be invited as well.

We didn't get that.

It's not developed for our area.

And then the only other thing I'll say about an Albemarle is it really seems like it's taking up a lot of time.

Our Airbnb applications, home stay applications.

So as other VFAT appointments in place and as others deal with it, there's been some interesting conversations that go on in our board that are taking more than a lot of time.

It's probably one of the topics.

There's a couple of topics when you, you know, you always think of if you have a like-minded or like a body that's of one politic, when you think of politics, quote unquote.

But Eric Homestays and probably Turfbeals have all been things that really you could deploy the Albemarle County Board and really split and get into some interesting conversations about.

Any other items or things caught?

Awesome.

Great.

Next meeting will be April 6th, 2023.

There is, there on the agenda, you can see a bunch of items coming forward.

Christine, did you have anything to call out or just heads up on the program?

It looks like a lot of items to be there, so we'll have a full meeting and hopefully we'll have a full crew back.

We'll all be in towards, we'll get frankly about three quarters of the way through the budget, getting closer to the end.

So with that, it was good to see everyone tonight and I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Conference is in two weeks, right?

March 24, 2019.

Mr. Barlow made a motion.

I'll second it.

All in favor?

Have a good evening.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Yeah, nice to see you, sir.