Planning District Commission Meeting   4/6/2023

Mr. Smith?

Aye.

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson?

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow?

Aye.

Supervisor Jones?

Aye.

Supervisor Reed?

Yes.

Supervisor Rutherford?

Yes.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Yes.

Aye.

It's not needed?

Okay.

Any comments from the public?

They're done.

They're done?

They're done.

There are none.

Okay.

That was cute.

Yeah, thank you.

As you all are reflected where the TJPDC began a regional transit government study in the fall of 2022,

and we anticipate that that would be wrapped up by December of this year.

The purpose of this study is to help us understand how we can improve the governance of decision-making around transit operations, as well as consider opportunities to increase revenue that could support transit services throughout the region.

Joining us tonight is Scott Baker with the AE comprehensive team.

They are working

Or providing the support for this study and really completing the analysis.

We have completed a couple of phases of the study including the assessment of the existing conditions and doing a benchmarking process to look at how some other transit, regional transit systems operate throughout the area.

Mr. Baker, are you muted if you're online?

Mr. Baker, can you hear us now?

Are you able to hear us, Scott?

Can you hear us now?

The next presentation will be technical difficulties.

There's a gentleman who may need to see this.

The Unified Community Work Program is the work program that MCAE develops each year to communicate to our Federal Highway and Federal Transit Administration Agency what we are doing with the funds that we are given or allocated to operate in the image that the Metropolitan City Organization

The funding for the year comes from those two sources at the federal level, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, and then that constitutes 80% of our budget.

And then 10% of our budget is funded by the state agencies, VDOT and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

And then the other 10% comes from a little match contribution.

The development of the annual unified planning work program is a required activity for MPS and we have a process that we go through to submit what it is that we plan to do with this and have that with this funding and then have that approved by the state and federal agencies.

Our draft budget for fiscal year 2024 is a little over $500,000.

That includes funding outside of what our annual allocations are.

So we get an annual allocation and then this funding also includes rollover funding from previous years that were unused and they now have a slowly under $30,000.

And then in addition to what actually comes through the PDC and our program, WeDOT staff have an additional budget for their staff to support the MPO and other activities throughout the state through their state funding and research budget.

So you'll see if you look at the independent work program, but there is a budget line item for VDOT that does not actually go through that, you know, where the TJPDC budget.

There are two types of rollovers that are

coming into play here, going into fiscal year 24, the first one is a passive rollover.

So what happens is that for FHWA funding that is not spent enough fiscal year, if we don't spend down the entirety of the budget, we don't lose that FHWA funding, but it's not available the next year.

It's available in two years.

So we have a little bit of passive rollover.

That's the passive rollover that

That was remaining after we finished fiscal year 2022.

That is being allocated for the upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget.

And then we just approved at the MPO meeting in March some active rollover from fiscal year 2023.

So what happened there is that we made a formal request and said, we don't want to have this money available in fiscal year 2023.

We want this money to be available in 2024.

And we simply de-initiated it.

This is the fiscal year 2023 budget, so you'll see that there were two categories or two line items from the tasks where we reduced the budget overall.

So the first one is in the development of the upcoming long-range transportation plan.

The original budgeted amount for fiscal year 2023 was $161,000 and we reduced that to $189,000 available.

So it's a difference of $72,000 that we're dealing with from this fiscal year into next fiscal year.

This was all intended to be passed through to pay for consultant services to support the development of the long range transportation plan.

So this does not impact the actual ability for us to compensate staff for their time or anything like this.

This was something that we knew.

When we went into fiscal year 2023 that we would be de-applicating a portion of that into fiscal year 24.

And then the other portion that we are de-applicating is under on-call services.

What happened in fiscal year 23 is that we were given an original budget estimate from DDOT, and then they came back later and said the budget or the allocation that we're giving you is actually higher than what we had estimated when you're prepared to need a five-day work program.

So we had not actually identified activities that we were going to be using without additional funding.

So we put it in this on-call services that is kind of an opportunity for us to use that funding for opportunities that may not be identified at the beginning of the year.

So again, that was never actually programmed to complete specific activities.

I can give an example for that.

So the policy board approved the de-allegation in the amount of $105,000 at their last meeting.

And so the job work program that was developed for fiscal year 24 has incorporated that additional revenue.

So this shows the revenue from all of the different sources, including all the revenue rollover.

So the amount of FHWA funding we are expected to receive is 257,000.

That's just our baseline.

And then from that passive rollover from FY 2020, an additional $25,000

and then the active roller very much.

In addition, we're getting funding from the Federal Transit Administration amount of $129,000.

So the total amount of funding for the MBO that is coming through the TJPDC is $516,000 and then the additional $170,000 is $40,000.

So these are the tasks that we have programmed for the

for our fiscal year 24.

This will be considered and approved at the MPO policy board meeting in May.

Task one is pretty consistent from year to year.

This is mostly just for us to show you influences and prepare documents that may affect any work program to any of our required reporting staff or committees.

We did increase the information sharing line item a little bit so that we could put some resources into modernizing the MPA website because of some of the format of the MPA website.

We will continue to work on the long range transportation of damages that require documents that MPA's have to produce.

We also put for this line item right here where the comprehensive safety action plan, we are including that line item in both the unit vector new work program and the rural work program.

So this will be additional support for TJPDC that for the safety of the roads for all great activities.

And then you'll see that we have a couple of other items that are related to administrative things that we will have to take care of.

doing any sort of processing related to the adjustments and the MPA boundaries based on the symptoms outcome, continuing to support the development of the transit governance study, providing for staff support for the commuter assistance program strategic plan, which is also a required document.

And then we will also need to work with VDOT to update the regional travel demand model, which is basically a model that they use to assess and understand what future traffic conditions will look like in every region.

So they are required to maintain that and we need to factor in the stats before that will be needed to provide information for them before they put them on.

And then the short range transportation planning tasks are fairly standard.

We have to maintain the transportation recruitment program, which is the NPO's opportunity to approve the funding allocations of federal funds and transportation projects in our area and support ongoing grant development for things like smart scale transportation alternatives.

potentially raise grants, whatever great opportunities present themselves, and then defund those other required federal reporting related to performance targets.

So this is what is in the draft, you know, subcommittee and work program.

The O'Neill Policy Board approves the board plan and recommends the budget.

We bring it to you all because it's part of the piece, so just making sure that we're experienced now with that entire process.

Oh, I see a guy in the building.

Well, we'll label that right now and see if we can get that.

We're doing a longer talk.

There we go.

Next week, we'll do the consent again.

Are you hearing me?

Very good.

You have the floor.

We've done your introduction, but you couldn't hear us.

All right.

The slideshow turned on.

I'm having trouble sharing screen now.

Ruth, yeah.

I think we might have to take this.

It might be technical issues together.

All right, so back to the consent agenda.

A, action item is on the action agenda.

A, minutes of March 2nd, committee meeting.

B, January of managing reports.

Item I, item 1, January data for the report.

Item 2, January, it's all about the lawsuit.

Item 3, January, the balance sheet.

Do we have a motion to approve the consent?

All right, next on to new business, appointment of the nominating committee for officers.

I'll get you out of here.

We're going to have some technical difficulties with one of the presentations.

I did put on there the officers have been and then discuss who would be willing and interested in serving on the committee.

I also have listed here in case you guys want to know

which jurisdictions have served in chair and vice-chair role if we want to consider switching positions or that the chair's budgeting may just nominate the committee as the ability to do so.

I think we should start there.

I don't know.

I don't know if it's typically three, right?

Yes.

The others?

Or do we disappoint?

Thank you.

You were appointed and volatile.

And then we'll take care of staff when you're ready to vote.

On the biggest thing to item B, fiscal year 2040 wrap operating item, Christine.

Dang it.

Okay, so we have the FY24 budget before you all.

It is in draft version, so there is no action required tonight.

It comes back before you in May for consideration for approval.

Just a reminder on the timeline, the budget was originally created as a projected budget in September, October of 2022.

That's what sets the per-counter rate and the populated basis, and then it also sets the amount for classified specific programs

based on budget submissions to the local governments.

We're down before you with that draft.

Next slide.

The FY24 operating budget is bounced.

We expect projected revenues of $46.4 million, projected expenditures of $46.4 million.

We do at this moment have an anticipated budget shortfall of $51,766.

That is a potential reserve transfer.

Based on information between when I published this and put it out to you all and this week, I'm going to note some changes that you're going to see when the May budget comes along and that anticipated reserve transfer amount should decrease.

In my tenure and the previous director's tenure, we've never actually had to pull those reserves.

We've been able to close that gap that points throughout the year by receiving additional funds throughout the year.

The next slide is the federal revenues.

You see the top one is all of our federal sources.

Because the body broadband program is so large, I pulled that out in the second graph.

So the bar chart below it is without the body pass-through, so it's a little bit more realistic of what our funding split is between federal, state, global, and per capita.

So you can see that right now our majority funds are local funds.

Second is our federal funds, and that's excluding the broadband.

Next slide.

Each of these next slides will then give more detail on each of our funding sources.

So this is the federal revenues, 42 million.

I did, again, pull out the broadband so that it is skewed in circle graph.

You wouldn't have been able to read any other category of broadband that's still in there.

So you can see the majority of our federal funds are coming from HUD through the home and home ARP program.

And then secondly, they're coming through our transportation programs through the MPO and through Safe Streets for All.

Our state revenue sources, that is all state revenue.

I did not have to pull anything out.

You can see the majority comes from Virginia Housing for our development grant, building affordable housing units.

And then second is the Rideshare Cap Strategic Plan.

That is a pending source.

We will be watching the Commonwealth Transportation Board's budget to see if that's actually recommended for funding, but it's pending right now.

Local revenues, for this one I pulled out the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax pass-through revenue, since that's such a large amount when it is a pass-through, it doesn't necessarily affect our operating budget.

And it also skews this circle chart pretty dramatically.

Majority of our local revenues are Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board administration at 140,000, legislature liaison, 119,000, and then the rest of them are listed there.

and Per Capita based on the $0.64 Per Capita that you all approved back in October of 2022 to receive $171,000 VAT split based on the population.

That's fine.

96% of our budget is pass-through funding.

That's funding that we receive.

And then we pass it on to the subrecipient or to the contractor.

The majority of our pass-through is because of the body and the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Program.

But there are other pass-throughs associated with the non-profits that do the affordable housing development through home and HBG.

There's pass-through funding through the Virginia Addiction Production Pilot.

So each of those programs listed has a portion of the funding that passes through our organization for someone else, either as a service at Kansas Bend or someone we contract with, such as a consultant for the work that we do.

Our operating expenses are just over $1.8 million.

Right now in the budget, it is salary, fringe, and benefits of $1,364,952.

But I'm going to recommend two changes to that.

And it assumes 13 full-time and four part-time people for FY24.

That part of the budget, now I have additional notes that I wanted to share with you based on what you missed.

In your packet on page 58, you get a copy of the full budget, all revenues and expenditures and passes.

I'm happy to go through in any level of detail that you guys are interested.

If you have questions on that, I know Ruth is going to pull that up in a minute.

Also on page 59 of your packet is all of our revenue sources.

So here's the total operating budget.

So you can see on the right-hand side of the FY24 budget, and that's the $46,443,000.

You can see an increase in salaries, fringe, and release.

That is because in the previous fiscal year, we were not fully staffed for multiple positions.

And so having those fully staffed into the next fiscal year, additionally, our health insurance premiums increased 8.9%.

Slide down a little bit.

See if you guys want to see if you have any questions.

Total of 43.

Right.

We've got the revenues change.

On the revenues page, I highlighted in yellow the funding sources that were still pending.

These are ones that we have high confidence that we're going to receive.

That's why we went ahead and included them in the budget, but they have not yet been approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

And those are for the mobility management program that you all

supported us moving forward with, and the strategic plan provided shared.

And then some things that I would want to note that have changed, particularly relating to salary and franchise.

And I will revise this for the copy that you received in May.

We are very excited to announce that we have hired a finance director

So that will change in our budget.

We budgeted very conservatively to make sure we had enough funding because we didn't know what the pool would be like.

We were able to get somebody who's going to come in at 25 hours a week, which is exactly what we were hoping for.

And somebody with 30 years of finance experience, we're really grateful.

And we'll introduce her to you when she begins.

She starts April 17.

So the first thing that will change in salary and fringe is related to this new hire.

Another thing related to salary and fringe, as you guys know, and we've talked a lot about it in these meetings, we've been doing a lot of research for comps for salary compensation.

All six jurisdictions are either just completed or working on completing or ready to begin a compensation study.

All of the CIOs have shared those completed studies with me.

I've also looked at several of the different PDCs in the state, both that are geographically close to us or that are similar in budget size or population size to us.

Our salaries are below what our competitors are.

So the budget that's in front of you recommends a 5% increase.

I would like to recommend a 7% increase in the budget that I bring for even many.

So what I was able to do was create new salary bands that were more comparable to all of our local governments and to move everybody into the right place in that salary band.

A 7% increase would get us here.

We started looking at our local governments.

The raises that are proposed in your budgets are anywhere from, I think, four, five, six, and seven.

So it is at the top end of that, but we also know that we've been at the lower end of that entire age.

Since we've been here, we've hired nine people in less than two years that I've been here.

And so I feel pretty strongly that we need to invest in those people, and we need to attract and retain really good staff here in order to support all of the work that your staff are doing here in your state.

So I'm recommending that 7% in the May budget for you all.

It ends up being a net zero change in the budget you're going to see next week, because we budgeted more for the finance director than we're going to need to pay.

So I'm actually going to spread out that difference across the staff to make that 2% increase.

across the board.

Again, no action is required tonight.

I'll come back to you in May.

Another thing I want to note about the FY 23 budget, which gets passed in March, which involves already passed, is not customary for us to bring that budget back before the board for any changes.

However, based on the work that Firefly is doing with broadband,

We do expect that the number is going to be very different than what was passed in the March budget.

This is brand new.

We're learning it within the last couple of weeks.

And since it is such a large difference, we projected 35 million pass-through per body.

It's likely to be closer to 18 to the point.

And so since that's such a large number, I would like to bring that back to you all to amend it so that our audit and our financials are based on that better projection.

What that means for the body program is that additional money that was not spent in FY23 will then need to be spread out between FY24 and FY25.

So also in the May prep budget that I bring to you, you'll see a larger amount for the body passed through to accommodate for what was not spent in FY23.

Firefly, and we are confident it will be spent, is just not on the timeline that we originally projected.

So those are the major changes that I have.

So bringing to you in May, I'd like to bring you amended FY 23 budget to consider, and then also the 20.

Questions?

Back on the salaries, can we take a look at comparing it to the private sector?

We do not.

You know, I think one thing

With 7%, that's probably consistent across all the other government jurisdictions and with the governor's budget, right, something like so.

Is that the alligator range?

But Albemarle has already had

Two compensation changes.

Yeah, we're on compensation study now, so hopefully in the next year or so, that's going to help you get back to it.

That's right.

We need our compensation data because of the school and college.

Yeah, that's hard.

All right.

So when we look at public safety, that's really what we've shored up.

So the current piece that we're doing is minus public safety, because we've done a lot of investments for that.

Over the last couple of years, so right now the compensation adjustments are focused on the non, the focus on the place, the focus.

I missed a question on that.

So one of the things, and we have not got the full detail yet of our compensation study, but there could be some broad strokes that would be.

And actually I started thinking of this one, and listen to Nelson County is going to happen to be out there for that.

But did you do comparable to like your binaries versus other binaries versus just 0.7% to ask her about?

We already have internal spread.

We're just below all of our competitors.

So we did a flat increase.

I ran numbers in three different ways where I did different percentages by person to get them in different places in those bands.

And then I did it with this flat increase.

And we felt, a couple of us looked at it, we felt that a flat increase for everybody would move everybody about where we want to be in those bands for this year.

Although I anticipate once we see the rest of these studies, we may come back to you all again next year for another increase in order to make sure that we are somewhere in the middle of the group.

We don't want to be at the high end.

We're a small agency.

That was a really good question.

We're trying to be a union compared to our union.

Okay, we'll look at the market, you know, a comparable market, and if you're like, oh, we're targeting to be at 90% of that, I guess I've never heard you here, we should look what kind of market it is that you're shooting for.

Just so I can see what is the lowest and the highest across the entire area.

I think we are we are just below the 7% raise where I want us to be

I don't think it's financially feasible for us to do well in one step.

And so I think 7% this year, and then potentially, again, adjusting.

I just don't want to project what that adjustment is until I see all of the studies, because there are still some that are pending.

And it's very helpful.

So the Regional Hospital Partnership is a 21-member board.

The PBCU has a commission of 0.9 of those positions.

The appointed health industry representative position is currently vacant, and we've been given a recommendation that we're bringing to you all to appoint Shannon Meager.

She's from the Blue Ridge Health Department to fill the position.

Great.

Thanks.

Any questions?

I will make a motion to appoint Shannon Meager.

H.I.V.

and Armidore, and Manager of the Seward Health District, and Tom Shelby, Planning District Commission, appointed Health Industry Representative for the Central Virginia Regional Housing Party, which is... Who knew... Who knew that?

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I would like to thank those for the notification that I actually could read it for these people.

It's a proclamation.

A proclamation.

You may have been harassed, that's what it means.

I've been practicing it for the last 15 minutes.

Alright, we'll move to item six, resolution.

In our last meeting, we brought to you guys the draft program and the draft budget.

There have been no changes to that between the last meeting and this meeting, so we'll run ahead and put a resolution in the packet for you all.

Chair, we've got to notice that our presenter, I believe, is technical issues have been solved.

We're going to try to keep it brief, if that's okay.

Do you prefer that that happens now, or anywhere else in the event?

Very good.

Well done.

We did your introduction for all of the technical difficulties.

I appreciate that very much.

I appreciate your patience with the technology.

All right.

So what we're talking about in the governance study that you probably heard about this evening is just an overview of the study and our approach to it, progress to date, the preliminary findings we have, and the next steps as we go forward.

And I'd like to save some time for questions and answers if that's possible.

It's divided into five phases.

We finished the first two existing conditions.

and the peer regional transit governance structures.

And looking at the existing conditions, we became aware pretty quickly that one of the concerns of our steering committee was a lack of funding to accomplish the vision plan that's been done.

The vision plan had a constrained vision that required a modest increase in funding to achieve a constrained level of service

improved from today's service or a quantum substantial increase in funding to provide an unconstrained vision which offered a much higher level of service.

and the Steering Committee suggested we should aim somewhere between the two.

So we identified funding as a concern and phase three will be focusing on revenue generation and then developing some scenarios for the changes and improvements in governance that might accompany increased funding and putting those together in a

In a recommendation, we do expect because of increased funding that legislation would be necessary, so we'll be doing the recommendations with alternatives so that as the legislative path unfolds, you can adjust your strategies.

In terms of the existing conditions, as you know, we have three operators in the region.

Transit operators, CAT, with the City of Charlottesville, is funded about 34 to 35 percent by local funds.

John provides much more heavily on federal funding and provides about 21 percent of the total cost of service with local funds and the university system, UTS,

is of course operating with university funding, but it's notable that a significant part of that is what might be called user fees funded through student and parking fees and there is some contract revenue generated.

We also looked in the existing conditions at the existing frameworks that are available under the Virginia Code for addressing governance and funding issues.

The first

A framework we looked at was the Charlottesville, Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, which we called CARTA.

It's existing in legislation.

on paper or I guess today in digital files, but it's not as you know functioning, but it's a comprehensive set of authorities powers to develop and deliver transit service.

The major omission is it does not include any funding capacity.

The second row on this slide shows three frameworks that do include funding capacity.

They're similar.

The Central Virginia Transportation Authority in the Richmond region is the most recent.

It's a transportation funding authority that does provide and pass through funding to the Greater Richmond Transit Corporation, as well as road funding.

Northern Virginia Transportation Authority was earlier but similar, operating in the more complex Northern Virginia environment, providing funds to WMATA and to the local

and then the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission provides funds to Hampton Roads Transit in the Hampton Roads region.

We looked at two other frameworks that are available and might likely be a possible

Hughes, and the Charlottesville, Albemarle region.

One is the Public Service Corporation, which is the basis for the Greater Richmond Transit Corporation, as well as John in your region.

And then the Transportation District Commission framework, which is the statute that was used to create Hampton Roads Transit, and it's used in a number of other places around the state and may be useful in our work.

So in addressing these frameworks and the need for funding, we'd be looking at a number of

Roesen, Constance issues, the level of funding produced is key, the economic impact, the boundaries of the service area and funding area are important considerations, composition of the governing board, and of course, the way the institutions work, how efficiently and effectively they can deliver the transit service that's needed.

So these seem to present three major strategies to us in terms of trying to accomplish the governance improvements and particularly the funding increments.

The first would be to establish a new authority comparable to the Central Virginia authority or the Hampton Roads

Transportation Accountability Commission.

That would provide funding capacity.

It could be passed through to CARTA and RTA that were operationalized or to another operating entity.

The second major strategy would be to modify the CARTA legislation, possibly to provide funding authority through CARTA.

CARTA could operate the service directly or pass that through to another operating agency.

And the third will be to modify another framework to provide additional authority like the framework could be like the Public Service Corporation or the Commission or any number of other frameworks that are in operation on the state.

But the underlying assumption here is that if we start with a framework, the legislative model that's as close as what the District 10 region needs as possible, the chances of legislative success and the speed and ease of legislative success are gonna become much more, it's much more facility.

Then if we try to make major changes or even start with a blank sheet of paper to create some new authority from scratch.

And of course, we might have combinations of things.

You could combine modifications to the RTA part with a new authority modeled closely after Central Virginia or some similar legislative strategy.

That was our existing conditions work, and there's a memo on that.

The peer comparison through the second step of the study that we finished, we selected six peer agencies.

Blacksburg, where Virginia Tech has its campus, the Bloomington, Indiana system, or the University of Indiana.

has its campus in Iowa City, Iowa, the University of Iowa is located, Ann Arbor, Michigan is the home of the University of Michigan, and RIDE is the transit authority in Ann Arbor, State College, Pennsylvania, where Penn State's located, and CATA is the transit authority there, and then Ithaca, New York,

where Cornell and Tompkins County and the city of Ithaca operate a consolidated system.

Lots of lessons learned.

Of course, much of the funding information from the other states is not gonna work well in Virginia, which has an unusual legislative funding process arising from the Dillon Rule.

But we did see a lot of different governance structures, city departments, authorities, and one 501 C nonprofit corporation that was formed.

If they could because they couldn't get the state to authorize an authority when the three agencies decided they wanted to consolidate.

We saw a lot of range of cooperation and particularly different relationships with the university and of course a number of funding mechanisms in those peers.

Having finished those first two phases, we're starting to analyze the potential revenue.

We'll be dealing with a list of revenues available and comparing them and the governance implications.

And we'll be sitting down to talk with each of the jurisdictions.

I think most of those in the room tonight are going to be included to get their reactions to these governance changes and funding changes and try to assemble a recommendation that would fit the region.

and develop those scenarios in the final phase and then select what seems to work best for the region but also offer those alternatives that might help work your way through the legislative process that's likely to be necessary.

So with that, I would open this to questions or suggestions.

Perry, didn't we have something to add after we're at 151?

Yeah, I was going to talk about, can we do the roundtable?

Was there a particular bottle that was very interesting that you've come up with yet?

Well, I think the model that's pretty clearly the most useful, and my understanding is somewhat of a breakthrough for Virginia, is the middle role that I showed you of the CVTA, NVTA, and the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission.

There's been a lot of difficulty throughout the state in getting dedicated funding for transit, some method other than trying to annually sort of work it through the general public sector funding process.

The municipal or county funding sources

had not been a reliable continuing source of funding for the transit agency.

But the first attempts at that failed because of the constitutional structure in Virginia.

It was a Case Marshall versus Northern Virginia Transportation Party.

I happen to be a resident of Northern Virginia at that time, and now again a resident of Northern Virginia, but they actually had the mail sales tax back to all the residents in Northern Virginia when the authority was struck down.

So it's been a difficult process, and those agencies that Christine or someone just put up on the screen there, Central Virginia, Northern Virginia, and Hampton Roads,

have a process that successfully is delivering dedicated transit funding.

I should note all of those also deliver roads funding.

It's not essential, but those three do deliver both transit funding and roads funding, and they all do deliver it to operating agencies.

There are no remarks or questions.

Thank you.

And as I said, suggestions are welcome.

In the memo that I put in your packet, each month I am including the progress that's been submitted on the body projects.

It's the progress that we submitted to PHCD and our monthly report.

So each month you'll see if you want to get into the details of how many miles of field data collection and how much of the mid-grade work is all in there for you.

It is one of the requirements that we have as a part of our planning space budget with PHCD that we are

not only reporting to them, but also reporting to you all as a commission-embedded person.

We still do not have any word on body 2023.

That is just, we're just waiting for that decision to be made.

As far as housing, the summit was a great success.

There was 215 people registered.

We had just under 200 show up in person.

We have been getting very good feedback.

We've had a lot of people really pleased with both the organization of the event, but also the sessions and the breakouts.

But we've been getting really good feedback on that.

So I thank you all for your support.

And I think there will be the aim to the networking event the night before and for the event itself.

For transportation, I'm not going to go into all those because we've already done some of these several updates.

and then Environments.

This is an exciting one for the watershed improvement plan.

We were notified by DEQ that DEPA had some funding that would be available for with implementation projects.

And so we reached out to all six local governments.

It was the tightest timeline yet that I've seen on funding notice to funding due dates.

I think we had a total of 14 days, was it?

Something like that.

We had to contact all six local governments and say, do you have a shell-ready project that can be completed within 12 months?

Which is pretty challenging to find.

We were able to find two projects that were eligible.

I give a huge kudos to staff, Isabella O'Brien and Sandy Shackelford for, in less than seven days time, creating the applications, getting the budgets, making sure we have the energy and communicating with the local governments.

So we applied for

Just over $100,000 in the city of Charlottesville for urban tree canopy along Moore Street.

They're going to have a new invasive species that implants an additional native species there.

The funding was announced at a page and a half to notice the funding opportunities.

There wasn't a ton of detail, so we're hopeful.

It was a first come, first served type of branch.

We don't yet know how competitive it is.

Only planning district commissions were eligible for the funding, those that are in the watershed that have a program.

So I'm really, I can't say enough about staff saying, let's figure it out, let's just do it, let's apply,

Turning on a dime to get those in.

So we'll let you guys know if we hear anything on those.

That will take us to number eight in business on the round table.

I just want to follow up on the regional housing summit and I was hoping to be here to thank him again.

Ian did a wonderful job.

Biles, and the feedback from folks that attended some constructive criticism about, hey, you need better lighting.

The guy who did the missing middle was horrible, you know, stuff like that.

And then there was something about mismatching ties and potentially the firing of the executive director involved in that.

I don't know.

He got very nervous.

He got very nervous because we were reading a different name.

Oh, I'm sorry, the chairman.

Yes, Christine Thomas.

And you should have seen Christine's face as well.

But, you know, look, it was absolutely awesome.

Who attended?

Raise hands.

Yeah, it was unbelievable.

And I can't wait for next year.

I will tell you the feedback I received was great to point out the issues.

The next one should have solutions.

So to a person it was great.

Let's get some solutions on the day.

That is it, Mr. Chairman.

So, like everybody else, we're wrapping up by the season here.

I think we're pretty close to where we want to be.

The schools haven't been going as fast right there in terms of where they were in relationship to surrounding counties.

In part due to the cuts that we made 10 years ago.

So we're getting a little bit of a curve there.

So we'll see what the new work comes up with at the end.

Right now, we're close to meeting most of their asks.

Of course, the challenge with the data, that budget and the value budget there was for the little child who returned to one of the schools and for us to figure out what was right and where it is there.

We did have a lot of, we did do some comparisons, which was kind of interesting to see how other surrounding counties manage equalization.

And interestingly enough, most of the counties just stay at where they're at, and at that point, try to use that as their general funding for some other expenses compared to the last campaign.

And I've asked my county staff to take a look and see what would have been the impact

So it's one of those challenges in terms of trying to get something back to the taxpayer, you know, making sure that they're getting the most value from their money, but at the same time, you see what your needs are in the future, you know, how much you'll fund balance, and you all know that that means you're going to borrow a lot of money, which the taxpayer is upset because you're borrowing less money.

So that's what I mean up.

We'll take it for sure.

And we're excited about that.

So, on the other comment, I guess we'll do it in the house, and I was shooting in the pool, and we talked to her, and we didn't think that we were probably on the same page.

She asked me how I felt about going abroad, and I said, well, I think smart growth is good.

And she said, oh, we're definitely on the same page.

And then she said, the Mexicans are at a con next.

Anyway, I didn't tell her that I was a Mexican, so I was already there, but I was OK.

We're doing really well on it.

We've had three work sessions and we covered just about everything in school with this one.

There won't be any increase in real estate tax, so that was decided at the end of this meeting.

Under Christine's report, rural transportation staff is working on identifying and supporting the development of bifidestrian projects in rural areas.

The 151 corridor study, the comment that I got from Mr. Youngblood, who's been looking at all the information for our April 18th public meeting, or VDOT's public meeting, is that it's overwhelming

People in the survey say they want multi-modal transportation in these four areas.

So just wanted to put that on the radar screen that we're trying to get VDOT to when they're doing infrastructure improvements to make sure that they leave space and part of the area so that we can do those things when it comes.

So we'll see how that plays out.

It's nice that we're doing that at the same time as our

O'Brien.

So that will be next week.

I'm sure we'll be talking about that more in the work sessions.

Jesse, go ahead.

O'Brien.

I'm pretty happy with our staff.

Obviously, we had a lot of change over in the last year.

So, having our staff be able to get up and running late and then we still got the budget largely completed in two to three days.

It's pretty exciting.

So, very proud of our staff.

You know, the

Davis, and it was a wonderful, it was awesome just to hear the experience and I totally agree with you about the solution part.

We also need planning commissioners next time.

I think there's definitely some supervisors that I was counting on being

but you know there's the adversaries like we need to get

Broadband, we had a wonderful thing the other day, 20,000 Connections, and I don't even remember how many were in Nelson County, but it was close to 25,000.

And I got an honorable mention by

and getting ready for the recession.

Fun fact, most manufactured home factories today are running, two years ago, they were running an eight month backlog and they just went down to a one week backlog.

So there's a whole big mentality switch.

And keep in mind, this is like your lowest income demographics all of a sudden, really.

The market's still, it just dried up over time.

This hasn't happened since 2009 in our world.

And we're cautious.

So, you know, after that industry did that, I might be the new Inaudible, the Rutherford signal, the Rutherford crystal wall.

So I'm holding my hands on working on

Porterham and Porter numbers from sales.

Same family details, no new construction.

First quarter of this year versus last quarter of the year during selection went up by

It's such a strange, isolated housing situation.

The people who are suffering are greatly suffering.

Like, they're suffering so much that they don't even live in Nelson anymore.

The two losers were Scholl and Lavelle.

Down 5% and 8%, you guys won the game.

And I think it's a lot of that's a hangover thing.

I think you're going to see next quarter, those numbers will be up probably.

I'm out.

I guess you ought to stop and congratulate Tony and Fluvanna.

Hiddleston, Wilkerson, Brian Lee, Professor Wilkerson, that's not the case.

We keep talking about it, and we keep learning early and early.

We like everybody else going through the budget, which is where we talk about being open to the city last year.

And our finance committee and administration are always on the balance budget.

We've got 13 million more dollars to play with, so we didn't say they'd do that.

But then the concern was on the board, get rid of that drain, and now they're back to square one, trying to figure out how they're going to give out a tax pass, some benefit back, and still cover all that stuff that wasn't done.

We have, you know, the firing of masks, we've got all the people moving into the cabinet that want the same services that you're adding, the backpacks and the out-of-sounds, by the way.

We wanted to start with an eight-minute response time, which I heard, that's what you have in regular old backpacks, you know.

So now we have, you know, some of the people with the firing of masks,

I don't know, like, somebody had a red ring, Louisa.

I mean, it's, you know, nuts.

So, hey, we also have, we've been, for the last four years, trying to get the industry to come in and get it.

We've been working on it, and now that we finally got it, and everybody in Canada knows about it, but anyway,

We've established these technology overlay districts in certain places to sort of ease the problem.

Everybody in one of those junkyard towns, they're in their backyards.

They don't want to get rid of the rural character, but by the same token, before the meeting's over, they want to give you five stages to put around, and even when they're trying to profit others, you know, it's just, you know, they don't want to be more taxes, you don't want more people, that's what you want all the services,

Bellman, you know what's out there, you know, it's huge, good money, it's all worth it.

Well, the most terrifying thing that you said is that you can serve at a time.

I can serve through the list there, so.

Well, it's not for being a couple.

The grass fell down the drain.

It's a bitter way.

Yeah, I guess.

If it gets wider for us, Jerry.

We're going through a long transition right now.

Our gentleman who's in charge of our water authority went back to where he came from.

So we have one individual right now, I don't know if it's his name, John Prado, which I'm pretty sure most of you may know.

He is doing the planning directive, he is an urban finance directive, he's also an urban water authority, and we have an urban county administrator.

So if you haven't seen yet a meeting or two about the housing authority, we had four or four to go.

We had a company going through the interview process for a county administrator.

We thought it would be a Greene County water authority if he or I were first.

Everything is done.

All the legal issues have been, as far as I know, resolved.

We're waiting for a state after a state bill that's all administrative, and I'm not so sure, you know, to go to another common view.

So we're waiting to hear back from them, and we're not sure when they give us a call back, if another comment here has already started, or if it's already started, 30 minutes have gone on.

So we're ready to go with our own water authority.

Regardless, it should be done in the next couple of months.

We really thought it would be April 1st.

We're applying things in the emergency services as well.

We had a prior achievement budget that was removed from our budget.

Our budget had to grade $0.82 equalization was $0.66 this year.

So we had a rate of $0.76, and we got it down to a rate of $0.73, which that rate itself is what we were at 12, 14 years ago.

We have a lot of citizens that come to our meeting and say, you know, our account is already interconnected.

Allshouse finalizing the last power location for emergency service to the radio.

That's from Johnson and Madison County.

Our first responders on scene have had issues with radio communications.

We've actually had our firefighters in the building not even communicating.

Ten years ago we had a situation which could have been a bit of a lesson.

So the radio tower is finalizing that project.

We had some opposition to that.

I think we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

That's where we are.

It seems like in our community, there's an opposition to tourism.

But there is tourism.

There's a force that I want to speak to the rural part of the community rural.

There's a part that wants to bring in all of the retail, but they don't want to bring in additional residential housing.

So it's very difficult to explain to people that the retail doesn't come with residential.

You can't keep things rural.

You don't have any funding mechanism for the people who own the farm to make any farming.

And so we're going back and forth with that.

Seems like, I mean, I hit it on the nail.

They want the services without the financial obligation

and they don't want to make changes to get that financial obligation.

It's not a large number, but that number's out there.

They're very accountable.

And so it's very difficult sometimes to try to balance with the expectations aren't it?

And with the realism, there's the visible power things are going to happen every quarter.

Hopefully sheets will be opened up soon.

Yeah.

Well, I say that because that was a serious tax.

and that was being sold for us with Cigarette Act.

The Greene County Sheets Act, it was one of the bigger, yeah.

And so they actually demolished the building, rebuilt it back.

So hopefully, I don't want to wish Gilman he'd buy it, but hopefully he would wash Cigarette from that.

So, you know, and we did return to the first little project.

I know South Bay is something that did happen,

And we did refunds for the program back to our citizens.

We had to advertise the rate as it was.

It was not intentional.

It was way above the budget amount.

The difference we had at that point in time was the amount that we had to go with.

And so we worked our treasury and official revenue and long-term work to give a refund back to the citizens, some of them.

And I think we would address that as well.

I do want to give a public shout out to Jim Creel.

The man is a rock star and whatever you're banging is not enough.

So I had a meeting with him that I got confused with how he was wearing things.

Yeah, he's got quite a bit going on right now.

Hopefully the next time we meet, we will be out of RSA.

It depends on the state, and we'll go to the county administrator, and hopefully it will be mostly through budget.

Hopefully it will be welcome and bright, and we'll be good.

And it's a sad state of affairs when you're sharing with people to smoke cigarettes and get to Kansas and get ready.

Yeah, I didn't mean to, it sounded bad, but it's not a good issue, it's about

We can't get any new houses in the industry, but we've got a lot of cigarettes.

Albemarle, we are advertised at our, this is the tax rate that we've been at, we've not made the tax rate.

However, obviously we're hearing a lot this year, because on average, property values are about 13%.

A lot of residents, they're on the average quantity, even 30% or so.

So there's, it's not so much that they're coming

and the folks that we've been hearing from, and it's not a huge, you know, it's not a huge outcry, but the citizens that are coming out and speaking to it seem to be really at, are the values, the assessment values proper?

We're not seeing it, which is a little bit of a, maybe it's because we're, I get to hear Keith's updates on the sales so much, but feeling like, well, the value should be much better.

So they don't, it's like they don't believe the value is just that much.

And then there's a segment of the population that knows the revenue is, if we don't equalize, if we're bringing in more revenue, what is that going to pay for?

So being very specific about, all right, you're increasing, we're spending more out of our pocket, but we want to know what service we're getting back for it, so what are you adding to?

So this budget cycle, that's been a lot of the communication that's going, in my fashion, for those who have come back and said, you know,

We'll be down to 0.753 and we're at 0.854 now.

So we've started to say, well, the competency just want us to cut the tax rate.

What do you want us to cut?

Just come and say cut the taxes.

What do you want us to take out?

And some of them, you know, we're having that dialogue.

If someone's coming back and said, you know, 5% across the border, we want to get you here.

So there have been interesting conversations

As we reported with that.

Our personal property tax, the car tax, we had dropped that down from 428 to 376 the prior year.

So this year we were looking at, all right, what would happen, I'm sorry, we went from 428 to 342.

So 342 is the current one, per 100.

What would happen if we equalized?

Because now we're getting less because car delays are starting to come back.

equipment, not mud.

They're not dropping as fast as they can.

So that would mean we would actually have to raise that to 376.

But the board was like, why would we do that?

So we're keeping it right at the 3.42.

And actually, that particular tax is complicated because of the way the values and what we collect are, you know, scientists across the board will come up here.

There's a different percentage based on the values of what we actually collect.

So it would have created an administrative nightmare as well, I think, in a lot of ways.

So we're just keeping that there until we see what happens with those carbon values and personal property values moving forward.

The big ticket items, one of the approaches our accounting executive is taking is that we do not think that the decline in real estate values is going to be sustainable with these high level increases year over year.

So we're not going to, we're thinking of how to not obligate all increased revenues that you're taking in so that you're balancing, you're looking to the next year and the following year budget already to go, okay, let's not count on that revenue being there so that we can start the prep and plan for it so as it drops back down, we don't catch ourselves.

So now we definitely have to raise taxes if we wanted to.

So I think that's a smart approach.

Workforce stabilization has been a big one, making sure the people that work for us, both for benefits and for salaries, are compatible with the market and keeping them.

And this is what we call business process optimization.

We're doing a lot of modernization with, you know, you think of it, we've been developing and how applications are processed.

We've switched over to ADP and our payroll.

A lot of things have been touched.

I would have thought we would get further along,

still relying on individual knowledge, work on home space, I mean, to put it in systems.

A lot of that's been worked down in the last couple of years.

And you're seeing the federal and federal securities that are put about on that.

That allows us to get more efficient or more effective use out of our staff if now we're not spending all the stands on work just to process patients.

And then that frees or that frees up time

and a lot of times money savings that could be moved over there somewhere else.

I forgot the one little story where it was that one of them saved $60,000 just to save into the movement of the systems over and now that it's in play, the $60,000 is in salvage for a position.

I made the comment that we don't do a good enough job when folks say, well, how are you using the money of telling the stories?

And I know that everybody does it.

What we find

efficiency somewhere, or savings, whether they're small or large, are we telling that story to our constituents to show how it is being moved away?

Because otherwise, then you'd have to adapt and you'd have to raise.

I'll echo all the comments about the Calhoun partnership.

Keith told them what color times and what the situation was.

And then that's probably what threw me off to get Christine to say a couple of things, but I'm sorry to begin with.

The folks I know at the end who were getting some feedback, really seemed to have joined the networking sessions, the ability for people to go.

So I even wondered if that can spill over things like he should.

with the lunch sessions, maybe some lunch sessions and networking sessions sometimes, like the little mini things that can be used throughout the year to build back up the summit.

I think it was the presentation.

It'll sound like I'm picking on them,

at the Regional Housing Partnership where they did their presentation on their affordable housing initiative that made this comment at the quarterly Green House Department meeting.

We're talking about how, what median, area median income do we serve or what are we targeting?

And the point was, well, we're hoping within the AEA, we're trying to get to 60,

If we can go deeper and start to end story 50, but to get to like 30, 40, and 50 is so difficult, there's different reasons.

If that is all true, the comment was made that you can't please everyone.

Well, in that particular context, who are we saying we can't please?

The people Jesse said are really something like that.

And I feel like that was kind of a wake up call for me as an elected official to say, because I've said that phrase at different times.

When I've had development projects,

Well, we can't lose everyone.

That's a way out to be naked.

Everybody gets a little bit of pain.

Well, the challenge out of that partnership meeting back there was like, well, hold on.

That's probably not what I've been thinking about when it comes to housing.

Because the folks, when we say we can't lose everyone, are folks that are basically falling into that bucket in every conversation you potentially have.

So perhaps the folks at the other end

Just to add to my public comment.

Yes, last night we approved a huge new solar project that's happening in the Scottsville District of Albemarle County.

And I forget the name of it, but it's a very large project.

It was two years in the making.

It's right.

I mean, it's a huge development.

The local company Exedon Energy is doing.

They've spent a long time working with staff, working with the community.

There was one speaker that was like at that federal work place where I was against it at the start.

But after working with them, I've come to support it.

Points being made like this is a type of development project that can bring in revenue and help give you impacts on kids and schools and transportation.

Albemarle County, we have

increased water and erosion standards that are higher than what the EQ is.

So we don't have an ordinance yet, but the special conditions basically are the makings of an ordinance to kind of make this work a little bit better.

But, you know, there are 25,000 homes, I believe, that were going to be powered for this project.

And they're just going to log in, they're right on the substation.

It's not being used from coal plant being down so that the capacity is there added to the network.

So a big, good project.

To me, the interesting part is that it's solar projects that are climate or environmental projects that are pro-environment.

Well, all the folks speaking at, well, not at all, but a lot of the folks who had concerns or even spoke against them were other environmentalists talking about the land and how you use it.

So it was the first topic that I've had where it wasn't just pro-environment, you know,

Viner and I are, it was more, well, wait a minute, this is an environmental project, but what are the environmental impacts of this environmental project?

And then transportation remained a big deal.

We had some of the smart-scale recommendations are going there.

We found that our workbar extended the project with just the smart-scale

And it's the trickiest, most expensive little section to do, but now Louisa Clark Drive goes all the way up next to 29th and it jumped about $800.

We're trying to figure out what we have to do to keep that out.

It was nice that each board member was very critical and relevant.

Williams, and the transportation projects.

We can't come up.

Something I want to mention and this has been a lot of answer in one of the upper edge lines of the DC government is as it relates to House.

I mean, I've I've said this multiple times.

Everyone keeps voting no, no, no.

Eventually, the local governments are going to lose the

Bass.

We can vote no, but one day we will very well likely not have the authority to say no.

That's cutting on the 19th, so we'll see what they have.

So that's what we're doing here in the Senate.

So how the Albemarle has been on hold to get the developer incentive for evidence there.

Basically what it means is we increase the percent that you would need for this device to decrease the A&I for residential.

So to help make that happen, whether incentives can pay for it, we've yet to define or outline what the incentives are on these two years of awakening.

So we're hoping to find the best outcome.

Thank you.

Motion to close session.

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. Smith.

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson, Ms. Barline, Mr. Reed, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Chair, Mr.

Aye.

Mr.

Herring?

Mr. Barlow?

Aye.

Mr. Reed?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Aye.

Yes.

I'll second.

Aye.

Ms. Schlicht.

Aye.

Mr.

Herring.

Aye.

Ms. Robinson.

Aye.

Ms. Bartleback.

Aye.

Ms. Reed.

Yes.

Ms. Brathburn.

Yes.

Mr. Chairman.

Yes.

Very good.

No exception.

And it's certified.

Yeah, well, it's two out of number 10.