Planning District Commission Meeting   2/8/2024

Good morning, everyone.

I call the town's campus and planning district commission to order for a Thursday, February 8th, 4-7 PM meeting.

President.

Supervisor Crewe.

Supervisor O'Brien.

Aye.

Mr. Smith.

Aye.

Supervisor Goolsby.

Aye.

Supervisor Barlow, Supervisor Woodward, here, Supervisor Reed, here, Supervisor Rutherford, yes, Commissioner D'Oronzio, here, Councillor Payne, here, thank you, and you don't have to vote for anybody to participate electronically.

So that will take us right to matters from the public.

And we alluded to two minutes per person.

Is there anyone in the room who wishes to give a public comment?

Is there anyone online who wishes to give a public comment?

All right.

We will move on from there and go right to number three.

And we have some welcomes and introductions to do.

So we have four main commissioners with us this evening.

And I'm going to turn that over to Christine to handle.

So only thing I'll note is just a reminder, this got moved from last week.

We typically meet the first Thursday of the month.

But since it was local government day last Thursday, we adjusted it for this week.

Well, this year, Superlative Barlow did not attend yet the planning commission meeting.

Christine?

Great.

So I'll just do introductions of the four new members.

But then we can go around the room and everybody introduce yourselves, where you're serving from.

So our new folks tonight are Supervisor Mike Pruitt, he's Albemarle County and he's taking Jim Anders' spot.

We have Supervisor Manny Woodward from La Vida taking Rachel's spot.

Rachel Jones, we have Supervisor Tim Goolsby from Greene County taking Dale Herring's position, and then James Higgins also from Greene County Center Point D taking Andrew Wilkinson's.

and Scott.

I'm Michael Payne, Charlottesville City Councillor.

I'm just a large global city, checking out where I am in the district.

And I'm Ernie Reed.

I'm the Central District Supervisor in Nelson County.

I'm Bill Oronzio.

I'm the

My name's Keith Smith, I'm from Rhode Island County, and I am an appointed representative.

Tim Goolsby, Greene County, the Monroe District, the Greene County, on 2th Island, Manning Woodward, Louisa District, Louisa County,

Well, we appreciate having you folks.

I know we're going to do a pretty good orientation this evening to get up.

I'm not a little over with you, but I know that I can speak to the commissioners that have been here for any of the new folks that if you have questions, that you're welcome to reach out to any of us in addition to the orientation tonight.

We're happy to help answer questions, provide information, and of course,

Christine's available as well.

We have a staff member, Logan Ende, here during the spring of January.

Sure.

Yeah, I'm Logan.

Nice to meet you all.

I'm a new regional planner here.

I recently did my graduate work at UVA in urban planning and public policy.

and before that I worked a lot in environmental nonprofits and after the deal.

I spent some time, Logan's going to be working with the Regional Housing Partnership quite a bit.

So that's what we were at.

So Keith and I are on this brotherhood, just obtaining two offices around the table on the partnership.

So welcome, Logan.

We're looking forward to working with you.

And then the next item, C, and we have our former commissioners from Greene County, Mr.

Herring and Ms. Logan Center, joining us online.

And what we would like to do is to recognize their service with an official resolution of appreciation.

And then obviously, I'll give folks, Mr.

Herring and some other folks, the opportunity to give a few words to please do so.

The first one, Mr.

Herring.

Yes, sir.

Well, it's an honor to read this resolution of appreciation for Dale Herring, whereas Dale Herring faithfully has served the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission since 2016 in the capacity of chair, vice chair, and commissioner.

and whereas Mr.

Herring has been a tireless advocate for the work and services that were TJPDC during his time on the Commission and as a Board of Supervisors member and Chairman in Greene County and whereas Mr.

Herring has represented the County of Greene in the very interests of its citizens, businesses, and public officials alike during his time on the Commission and whereas Mr.

Herring

Whereas Mr.

Herring provided steady guidance, support, and leadership during TJPDC's transition and executive directors in 2021.

And whereas Mr.

Herring also ably served Greene County as chair of the Emergency Services Advisory Board and as liaison with the Board of Zoning Appeals and Planning Commission during his tenure.

And whereas Mr.

Herring has played an ongoing instrumental role in advocating for broadband expansion in Greene County and the region.

including through the work of Freedom County's broadband committee and the TJPDC's regional broadband partnership and Virginia telecommunication initiative grant.

And whereas the work of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission during Mr. Harriman's tenure has resulted in a multitude of programs, plans, and services that benefit the people of this region, including but not limited to improved mobility through transportation plans and projects, expanded access to broadband internet,

improved accessibility to the safe, decent housing for residents, economic fatality and entrepreneurship, and a commitment to environmental stewardship, now therefore be it resolved that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission expresses its enduring gratitude and appreciation for the generous service provided to this region by Dale Heron, adopted this ninth day of February of 2024.

So moved.

Do as a motion.

So moved.

Is there a second?

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Period.

Thank you very much.

That motion is approved.

Mr.

First off, I really appreciate the resolution.

I didn't realize that was that active throughout my tenure.

Let's tell all the nice comments you guys have made.

Like I said last time, back in December, for me, one of the biggest honors I had being on the Board of Supervisors was serving on the Thomas Justin Plant District Commission.

The commission is made up of individuals who believe in something greater than themselves, who work for a better tomorrow for all the local communities.

You taught me what it means to be an elected official, what it means to struggle at times, and what it means to not always make the easy decision

But look at the solutions, the long-term solutions, and at times make the hard choices.

I've really enjoyed serving with each of you.

I appreciate it.

And thank you so much for your friendship and your advice over the years.

Like I said, it's been an honor to serve with each of you.

Thank you, Mr.

Herring.

Are there any questions or like to say a few words here?

Well, you looked a little refreshed there, Mr. Harris.

There must be some stress that has been raised.

It is.

So,

The second resolution of appreciation is for Ms. Andrea Wilkinson, who is also joining us online this evening.

And I will also read this resolution on the form of the voting.

Whereas, Andrea Wilkinson faithfully asserted the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission since 2009 in the capacity of chair and commissioner, and whereas Ms. Wilkinson has been a tireless advocate for the work and services of the TJPDC during her time on the commission and as a citizen member from Greene County,

and whereas Ms. Wilkinson has represented the county of Greene in the very interests of its citizens, businesses, and public officials alike during their time on the commission and whereas Ms. Wilkinson also served Greene County as a member of the Ruckersville Citizens Committee and whereas Ms. Wilkinson used her background in accounting to provide high-level review and helpful suggestions to improve the TJPDC's financial management plan and practices

and whereas Ms. Wilkinson also served as a member and vice chair of the TJPDC Corporation, which was established to broaden the funding base for TJPDC initiatives and act as an implementation arm for selected projects and whereas the work of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission during Ms. Wilkinson's tenure has resulted in a multitude of programs, plans and services that benefit the people of this region, including but not limited to improved mobility to transportation plans and projects

and improved accessibility to safe, decent housing for residents.

Economic vitality and entrepreneurship and a commitment to environmental stewardship now therefore be it resolved that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission expresses its very gratitude and appreciation for the generous service provided to this region by Andrew Wilkinson up to the same day of February, 2024.

All right.

All in favor, please say aye.

All right.

Any opposed?

That voting carries.

Well, I thank you very much for your nice words.

I have really enjoyed serving on the commission always quite a number of years.

And one of the things that's really great about the commission is that the group seems to pull together to accomplish things in a positive manner.

which has really been a great thing to be a part of.

It has helped Greene County, the region and the state really move forward in several areas.

Thank you.

Andrea, I'm going to miss you in particular because I don't know what I'm going to do as treasurer without you sitting next to me.

Well, you've got 14 years.

I've got two more to beat you.

Oh, yeah.

We couldn't have done this, got through all the struggles over the last 14 years without you side by side.

So thank you.

I actually have to do my job.

Well, thank you, Ms. Wilkinson, very much, and Mr.

Herring, again, for joining us online.

And I'm happy to say that you get the rest of your Thursday night.

I know that you'll want to probably stay on and just join us for the rest of the evening.

But we won't be insulted if you decide to spend your time on the books.

Good night, you all.

All right, that'll take us to 3D, which is the TJPD emission orientation.

I've got a quick PowerPoint.

What I'd like to extend is an offer to our new commissioners.

We could plot to take in the first meeting.

So this is pretty high level on purpose, but I will be reaching out to each of you guys individually.

And if you're interested, I would love to do a one-on-one sit down.

Dig into any level of detail that you would like.

Everything I have is an open book.

I'm glad to have further conversation with you about the things that you care a lot about so that I can make sure that we're paying attention to those.

The PDC was created through the Regional Cooperation Act, all planning district commissions were.

Geographic regions were established by the state.

membership in the PDCs.

Start over.

This is in the book with us.

Alright, Land District Commissions were established in the General Assembly in 1969.

TJPDC specifically was created in 1972.

There are 21 Planning District Commissions across the Commonwealth.

All jurisdictions are members of Planning District Commissions.

There may not be elected officials and citizens that are appointed by local governments that can be board supervisors, city council members, planning commissions, and citizens.

And we particularly are directed by a 12-member board, two from each jurisdiction with equal voting across all 12 seats.

Regional Cooperation Act of 1995 said that geographic regions, all PDCs must have at least 51% membership of elected officials.

The membership does vary pretty greatly across the 21 different planning district commissions.

Some of them are also called regional councils, councils of governments, they're named different things.

So for example, in some places, towns, maybe members, universities can be members with legislative approval.

Ours is a much simpler board structure with the 12 members, two from each.

Some of them are up to 25 members with peer voting depending on population, so they're all vastly different.

Every planning district commission is required to adopt a strategic plan, ours was just recently adopted, and we must submit annual reports to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, annual and long-lasting.

Our mission, as it's stated in the new strategic plan, the PPC serves our local governments by providing regional vision, collaborative leadership, and professional service to develop effective solutions.

So those are the three really core tenets.

One of the things that the PPC is not, which I think is really important to note, is that the PPC is not a policy-making board.

It is one that serves as a resource and brings people together.

So we really do facilitating and convening and problem solving at a regional level, but all decision-making is still at a local level.

So the PDC doesn't impose anything upon its local governments that those decisions would also be put forward.

We have a regional vision.

It's to create a shared vision by bringing all six governments together to understand the contribution of each to the region and the role that each plays in meeting the needs within the region.

And then the organizational vision within is to work at the intersection of ideas, partnerships, and support and create a cohesive regional community.

That's our membership.

We get on the first Thursday of every month, 7 o'clock, except for July and January.

And then our annual meeting with the election of officers is in June.

Our latest version of our bylaws were amended in 2017, and the bylaws do all the things the bylaws do.

They establish our name, our membership, our meeting times, that a quorum has to be at least seven commissioners, so there's equal voting across the jurisdictions, that we have four officers, secretary is served by staff, and the chair and the vice chair cannot be from the same local government.

We do have the ability to have both standing and special committees.

Thank you, Mr. Foreman.

So, Mr. O'Brien is the current vice chair, of course, to be attention to the meeting.

Mr. Smith is the current chair.

In April, the nominating committee comes together.

That's also stated in our bylaws for elections in June.

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

We have the same fiscal year as all of our local governments, and the annual budget is approved at work before the May meeting.

I'll talk more about that when we get into budgeting.

It's actually a three-part process.

It does require two-thirds to amend the bylaws.

History of programs.

What is unique, I think, about planning district commissions is they often have programs that begin, that start off into independent organizations.

And so Jaunt was originally a program of the PDC, as well as the Thomas Jefferson Health Improvement Court, which is now on the Housing Alliance, formerly TJAC, now it's BRAC, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, Center for Virginia Partnership for Economic Development, sorry, I'm so used to calling it CBTED,

and Java, all of those were programs that started within our organization and then branched out to become independent.

We also currently staff the urban areas metropolitan planning organization.

We staff the TJPDC corporation, which is our nonprofit arm, the home consortium made up of all of our jurisdictions.

And then we also staff the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board, which is eight different jurisdictions, some members of our planning district commission, two outside of our planning district commission.

and then the Red Manor River Basin Commission is staffed by the Commission.

Commission duties are to support the work of the PDC to provide mission-based leadership and strategic governance to attend meetings.

There's 10 for a year.

Every now and then we'll have a special called meeting if there's something timely related to a brand application or something where we need approval of the board, but we try to do that.

only on an emergency basis.

It is expected that to tend all the meetings and that three consecutive absences for the bylaws were required to notify your local government.

It's wonderful if you have the time to read the materials in advance, it certainly makes the meetings go more smoothly.

I will give you a little bit of a hint that if you are running behind on your time and you can't get through that packet, the executive director reports that I knew was only the last document

It is a narrative of the meeting, and so it does give the details on everything that we'll be discussing and what all the decision points will be.

So that's kind of a footnotes version of the meeting.

It's also important for you guys to review, participate in, and improve the budget and the financial reports, and then to relay information back to your governments and other stakeholders, really to serve as a liaison in the role that you serve here for your local government and making sure to get two-way communication back and forth.

I'm not going to read these to you.

I listed them just to show you the comprehensive, the breadth and the depth of the work that we do.

We are small, but we're mighty.

So you can see in services, we have transportation and transit, land use, community development and housing planning, economic development planning, environmental planning, grant writing and administration.

We do a lot of administering federal and state programs on behalf of the region.

Legislative services and technical assistance.

I did read those.

I'm not going to read these.

And then I gave details of all the different programs and projects in each of our heat planning areas.

Many of the things that we do are mandated.

So things like the hazard mitigation plan will require a top one, and there are economies of scale that bring it at a regional level versus an individual level.

There are other things that we work on because we've either contracted directly with our local government above and beyond global per capita, or we have been asked with the existing resources that we receive to be technical support

So some of these are mandates and others are through decision making of this board, what the priorities will be.

There are some examples of our environmental and then our other.

Other is always interesting to me because there are some of our biggest programs in the other categories, the Regional Broadband Program, which we'll talk a little bit more about later, and the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.

That's where the majority of our revenue comes from and it's where the majority of our pass-through funding goes.

And then Legislative Services.

Most of you guys have had the opportunity to meet David Blount on our team.

He's joining us virtually.

David serves as our Director of Legislative Services that is funded directly through to six local governments through a per capita contribution.

He creates the annual list of regional and local legislative priorities that are followed and promoted throughout the General Assembly in collaboration with the staff and legal at each of your jurisdictions.

schedules legislative meetings.

He does support for government and legislature meetings.

As anybody who's worked with him knows what a wealth of knowledge he has and what a resource he is to our region.

Members will receive periodic email updates during the General Assembly.

And then he also has that legislative newsletter throughout the year with regular updates during the General Assembly.

And then he also organizes and staffs along with me, the mayors and chairs and the CAOs meeting.

as reported.

Revenue sources.

We receive money from our local governments both through a third capita contribution and local contributions for recurring programs.

We get annual state appropriations through DHCD, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.

They give us just under $90,000 a year.

We get program funding from federal and state sources.

Many of those have a local map

Parvick, so those little matches come from your jurisdictions.

And then we have contracts for services.

So for example, if, I'll give you a current example, Town of Mineral reached out to us for support on their comprehensive plan, and we went under an MOU and they contracted with us to do staff support on that type of work.

Another example might be Nelson County, which has social health support, factoring applications and small scale grading applications.

And then we also get a very, very small amount of private grants and donations.

And that's usually around things like events that we hold, regional housing summits.

We'll have outside sponsors that give us some funding or through the community foundation.

If there's a particular initiative of ours that is a priority of the community, sometimes we'll get grants from the community foundation for things like mobility and energy.

So here's some financial high level.

We experienced pretty fluctuating net revenues and losses depending on what our programming is.

Again, one of the things that I think was really unique about PEC is we really did it along with what the original priorities are.

And so, for example, broadband is something we're very much involved in.

Five years ago, we were not involved in broadband.

And so wherever there are opportunities for the planning district to support our local governments, we flex into that space in order to capture greater

Leverage funding at the state and federal level to support those local partners.

Recent year gains, we've had a handful of very strong financial years back to back.

So those are the gains that we've experienced.

And then the commission set the goal to have net quick assets at over five months at every given time.

That number in June of 2023 was just over 660,000.

We have met and exceeded that goal.

So we're in a very solid financial position currently.

Pass-throughs.

So you'll hear the phrase pass-through a lot.

At TJPDC, it's a lot of pass-through funding.

So that's funding that we will receive.

We are the administrators, but we pass that funding right through.

That can be anything from federal grants to tax revenue through the Blue Red Cigarette Tax Board.

There are contractual obligations for us.

We do not finally financially benefit from those taxes.

unless within our administrative fees by the paper staff time and indirect costs.

An example at FY23, the revenues were just over 19 million, 16 and a half million, that was faster.

So 86% of our funding comes through our books and then right back out either to sub-recipients or local governments in the case of the taxes.

Historically, in years past, probably three plus years ago, for a very long time, our housing program was our greatest revenue because we administer federal home funds through HUD, USDA, the Health and Preservation Grant,

the rent and mortgage relief program through the pandemic.

We administered Virginia an addiction reduction pilot program that used to be our largest revenue source.

However, now body broadband is exceedingly larger than that, but the majority of that is about high speed.

And just a really quick note, and we'll talk about it later, but the broadband project body, what was really unique about this, and we're not the only one, but

Our planning district is actually administering this on behalf of 13 jurisdictions.

And as you guys know, there's only six in our planning district.

So we touched five other planning district commissions in administering this project, which is the largest of the consortiums in the state broadband grant that was the bottom funds.

For financials, every month we'll provide you guys with the four following documents.

You'll get a financial dashboard, which includes narrative and graphs on the previous month's finances.

We'll give you the monthly profit and loss statement.

We'll give you the monthly balance sheet.

And then we also have a report, thank you to Andrea Wilkinson, who came up with the idea, which is called an approved revenue report.

And it's really going to show you the compared contracted revenues to our average monthly expenses.

And you can track it by individual programs, so you can see what our spend down rate is.

That report is really designed to make sure that we are, from the very beginning of the year, tracking all the way through where we connect, collect enough revenue, and we're going to be able to meet all of our tests.

And so it has been a very, very powerful management tool against transparency we'll be able to share with you all by program.

And then importantly, those financials are pulled off of the consent agenda.

We'll put them into new business just to provide an opportunity for any discussion or questions should you have them.

Annual budget, we completed annual operating budget in May.

I'll bring it to you as a draft in April for approval in May.

In February, following that, we will then present an amended budget.

That's what you'll see tonight, is the amended FY24 budget.

That allows us to re-project, because as you can imagine with a grant-based organization, much changes in a year's time.

So you can re-project based on awards that we received or grants that we were not awarded so that we can get closer to what the actuals might be at the end of the year.

And then in October, you'll get a projected budget for the next fiscal year.

So in October of this year, there'll be a projected F-26 budget presented.

So that's the three different phases of budgeting.

We do get an outside annual audit every year.

Our auditors are Robinson Farm and Fox.

We provide copies to all of our funding agencies and pretty much anyone who requests a copy.

They are posted on our website, and in FY23, again, we received an unmodified report.

Each budget, when you look at it tonight, you'll notice I always present to you guys, and we always have the past year's actual revenues and expenses, the current approved budget, and the amended revenues and expenses so that you can compare across time.

The FY 24 amended operating budget does estimate of one of our largest net gains in our history, 306,000 due to some changes you might hear later in the agenda.

I'm not certain that that's an accurate projection anymore, but we will talk about that in a little bit.

And then FY 23 actual budget produced a net gain of 115.

115 is solid for us.

I think our goal is to make a dollar or more.

You know, we're not necessarily here to make profit, but we also want to make sure that we have a strong business model.

One thing that you guys will see within the budget is we do rent our space and we have always rented our space since the Commission was around.

There has been a lot of talk in the previous five years about what that will mean long term.

Will we continue to rent?

Will we do purchase and building?

So oftentimes net reserves that we have, we have a capital fund that is set aside particularly should we need to purchase a building if for some reason our lease was not renewed.

All right, FY23 actuals, this is last year.

This is the percentage of our revenues and where they come from.

So as you can see, 66% of our revenues were federal.

27% were local.

I will give a parent medical reference though that that local revenue does include Bloomberg cigarette taxes.

So that's higher than it had been in years past.

You can see the local per capita is less than 1% of our revenue and in the state revenue is 5%.

We do have a couple of rental spaces, offices that we do rent out.

We have more space than we need.

And so we capture a little bit of our revenue revenue through that.

Here's our actuals and where they were spent.

Personnel at 6%, as you can see, the passport is by far the largest expense of ours.

I think this is the last slide.

For ethics, conflict of interest, and FOIA, our local elected officials and planning commissioners are required to file state disclosures on ethics and potential conflicts of interest with your jurisdiction, so you don't fill them out for us.

You fill them out through your local jurisdiction.

Citizen appointees should file if they're designated to do so by their appointing locality, but I do think it's always important to note for new people that we are subject to Freedom of Information Act.

We are subject to the code of ethics and the conflicts of interest via FOIA.

What's the A?

Yeah, but what's the A?

Act?

Happy to take any questions, but for the new folks, again, I'll reach out to you one-on-one.

To our November 7th, this is an opportunity if you would like to ask questions now, by all means, fire away.

Can you see them?

Very good.

Thank you, Christine, for your time.

Number four on our agenda is our consent agenda.

There is one item, the minutes of the December 7th meeting.

Are there any edits, changes,

to that seven minutes.

All right, is there a motion to approve?

Is there a second?

Okay.

We got a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

That will take us to number five, new business.

We've got a handful of items under this category.

The first of November and December financial reports.

So first we'll hear from them, and this is an action item that we'll receive the report.

Yep.

Good evening.

I think this might be the first time since I joined the TJPDC that I've actually stood in front of you guys.

So tonight we presented the November and the December financial statements.

So the dashboard takes us through December 31st.

And just a high level summary of the dashboard.

We start with the net quick assets.

and in December we ended with 1.2 and our target is about 684,000 so we are well above what our target for net quick assets are.

Unrestricted cash on hand is 2.53 months on hand based on our financial statements this month.

My notes are terrible.

I'll just look at the screen.

That might be better.

So for revenue in November we added $24,000 and for December we added another $14,000.

So for this fiscal year we have increased, because of those, we have increased our capital reserves by $38,309 since October.

and then, that's body, yeah.

Sorry, that was very terrible.

The report that Christine mentioned that came from Andrea Wilkinson is the larger fold out if you're looking at your packet.

At the bottom of that, it shows where we are for basically halfway through the year with another six months to go.

So the average funds available per month are $198,478 projected for the grants that we have and the work that is slated for the rest of the year.

And that should cover us again.

Yes, 198,000 for the remaining six months of this fiscal year.

Sorry about that.

Does anyone have any questions?

We have like $1 million, so that's pretty awesome.

And with the public, we say this, that was all in business.

There's a time that it was about 30 days in public.

We will need a motion to set up the financial report.

All right, do we have a second?

Second?

Leave a motion and a second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

The financials are set.

And that will take us to, we have fiscal year 25, Rideshare Work Program, the Land Application, and the Accompany Resolutions, which is an action item.

Hello.

Many have seen, you've seen me present around this time every year before, but welcome to all of the new faces.

We will cover a little bit of the backstory or a summary of Rideshare so that you have that when looking at the grant application.

The grant application cycle we do is through DRPT and the deadline every year is February 1st.

So the application materials have been put in and we're just waiting on the resolution for the match with the commission.

So what is Rideshare?

Rideshare is a transportation or travel, those words can be used interchangeably, demand management program that is through the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

So what is travel demand management or TDM?

It is a use of strategies to inform and encourage travelers to maximize the efficiency of our transportation systems leading to improved mobility, reduced congestion, and lower vehicle emissions.

So a lot of big overarching goals there.

So Rideshare itself and the program that we have here at the PDC has been around since the 80s.

In 2009, we expanded and brought in Rideshare in the overarching program with the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission.

Because what we were seeing was that many of the folks who were commuting in the region were commuting over the mountain for jobs over here

on our side.

What Rideshare offers is ride matching through the Connecting VA program, and that consists of a mobile application as well as a website that matches commuters based on their origin, their destination, and their travel schedules, which is usually their work schedules.

We also provide tips and assistance with folks once they find matches to set up carpools.

We also assist with vanpool coordination

We also work with employers in the area to help them with programs.

Many have parking struggles or want to

You know, be more green.

And so some of the things that we can provide through that are we can help them develop a traffic reduction program.

We can provide materials and marketing directly to the leadership there as well as the employees.

We can set up information tables.

We sometimes do lunch and learns, kind of whatever they're looking for to help them figure out the solution to their problem.

It's really tailored to each individual employer and their needs.

We also, and this became a much bigger thing, an interesting topic after the pandemic, can help with setting up formal telework programs or work on developing hybrid schedules for employers.

In addition, we also, like I said, help with the van pool coordination.

We will market, help get riders set up, and most of those van pools are run through the state and through the Enterprise Program.

So one of the other cool things that we started back in mid-2019 is with our matching system.

It now allows folks to trip plan through that so you can kind of put in where you're going.

It will tell you if there's transit available.

If there's van pulls, if there's scooters, if you're down here, all the different options.

It will also let you look for carpool matches there as well.

And one of the really cool things about the app and the program is that as you find an alternative form of transportation that works for you, you can use this system to log those trips and earn rewards.

So it kind of gives you like a little bit of a carrot or a reward for doing that.

Telework trips count too.

I earn a lot of points with my two days teleworking.

And you can cash those points in for gift cards, for coupons, different things for local businesses around here.

In addition, we also manage our park and ride lots in the area.

So many of those are owned by VDOT, but some of them are privately owned and have been given permission for the ride share program for folks to park there during the day, like churches, for example, who, you know, from

9-5 are not using those lots throughout the week.

There are 27 lots in the area that we work and do quarterly inventory through.

So we check the conditions, we count how many cars, make sure everything looks well, and report that information to DRPT and to VDOT.

Next slide.

This is one of my favorite aspects of the ride share program because I think it provides an even greater benefit.

So one of the things or what we're doing with ride share is we're asking people to change their behavior.

And that is a hard thing to do.

And the behavior we're asking is for them to give up the use of their single occupancy car for a time frame to get to and from work.

The number one question we get, what if something happens?

Well, this is what I like to call the insurance policy for that.

And that is guaranteed ride home.

And what that means is anyone who uses an alternative form of transportation at least two days a week to get to and from work, if an emergency situation comes up, they become ill while they're at work or their child becomes ill and they need to leave.

They don't have their car.

What do they do?

They call us and we make sure that we get them back to where their car is located.

And that can be anyone for carpooling, for vanpooling, for public transit, and for biking.

Now, they get five free rides a year, so you get lots of opportunities just in case the unexpected happens that many times.

Those rides can be taken either through a taxi, through a rental car, or the commuter can be reimbursed if they choose to take Uber or Lyft.

We are in the process of working with the state of getting that more integrated as well, so stay tuned for more information on that to come.

All right, next slide.

So this is a snapshot of some data that I thought you guys might be interested in.

This comes from our Connecting VA program, which, like I said, started in about mid 2019.

So that's a cumulative from when this started.

So we have just a little under 2000 members, which is really exciting.

The numbers I really like are that $910.92 saved.

The calories burned, that's a real fun one.

Obviously, that's our bikers and our walkers.

But I think it's really interesting to be able to kind of put it and to see it in a quick snapshot.

One of the other things I really love about this app is when you register as an individual, you get your own dashboard of all of these statistics so you can see your own individual impact that you are having.

And I think it just goes to show that small things can really add up over time.

So in our FY24 program, one of the big things that we were working on is our strategic plan.

So this is mandated by DRPT for us to continue the program.

We're really looking forward to this opportunity.

We've just kind of gotten kicked off and got that started in November, but seeing how behavior and travel patterns have changed since the pandemic, I think will set us up to really be able to hone in

on making sure that we're meeting the needs and getting our information out to the people who really need to hear it in a way that it resonates with them.

That plan will cover the entire program, like I said, for over a five-year span.

So stay tuned.

You will see me back on some information and some input and feedback on that one.

Some other initiatives that we do is we work again with DRPT through the state to promote all kinds of different marketing and promotion and fun things for people.

One of the big ones we did last year, not only with DRPT, but with local organizations and Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville was Bike to Work Week.

And so there were events all over

with swag stations and places that gave out coffee and snacks.

We had an e-bike demo, so just all kinds of different things to bring people together and to get them excited and interested and get any questions they had about biking answered.

Another big initiative that we are a part of is the Afton Express.

Now this is actually managed by the Central Shenandoah PDC, but as it's carting a lot of their commuters over to us,

We are a natural partner for that, so we help make sure that there is good marketing and that folks understand how to take advantage of the Act and Express.

And again, we continue to focus on the app and the reward system and making sure that that message is out there for folks as well.

We've also partnered with some other organizations around.

We've partnered with C3 and their Better Business Challenge and many of the Chambers of Commerce as well.

So that is kind of an overview.

So excited to see what comes out of this strategic plan, which will help us keep the program going and keep it new and fresh for the next five years.

Questions?

Yes, sir.

One very important answer

Yeah, I would be happy to share that.

You don't have to carpool or vanpool or take transit every day to have an impact both

Bigger on, you know, the climate and everything else, or to see that impact in your personal finances as well.

We do have a grant application.

I don't know what's that one.

All right.

All right.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Opposed?

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Item C, 5C is the fiscal year 2015 mobility management grant application.

And this also has a variable rating action after this presentation.

So this is a new program.

I don't know, some of you were here last year when I came and presented a little bit about what we thought we could do with the grant from the FTA for a section 5310 grant.

FTA section 5310 grant supports transportation services for seniors and people with disabilities.

The Department of Rail and Public Transportation administers the grant and is the designated recipient for these funds.

As people age and they can no longer drive, they depend on others for transportation, especially in rural areas.

The state, the Blue Ridge Health District and health service providers like Sentara and UVA have all identified a need for additional transportation for services for older adults and people with disabilities.

The mobility management program is a

It helps fund those additional transportation services so that people can get to their doctor's appointments, reach amenities like shopping, and stay healthy and engaged in the community.

The program builds coordination among transportation providers and expands the availability of services for seniors and people with disabilities.

When considering adding the program to the TJPDC, we spoke with neighboring mobility management programs and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation and decided to start with an information and referral service

and then grow the program in subsequent years.

So we started a center that people can call in, there's a website and a phone number and you can call in and get a transportation counselor.

So it's not just a referral, it's working with the person to help schedule a ride and find solutions to meet their transportation needs.

We've built an extensive database

that will collect all of the information so we will also collect information on rides that were not available for people and then the next step would be to work to implement services that would meet those needs that are identified through the data collection.

So we started in October 2023 and we'll run through September 2024

It's on a federal fiscal year.

So the first year's budget was $119,000 with a 4% local match of $476,000.

This affords us a half-time manager for 12 months and a full-time information and referral specialist for nine months.

So far since October, we've developed the Collins Center and a website to connect people with rides

We've built a partnership with Java, UVA, the Blue Ridge Health District, and the Community Foundation.

We've started collecting data to identify areas of need, and our community partners are also sharing those areas of need as well.

We've raised an additional $47,500 from community partners, and we've cured a marketing firm to develop a brand and marketing plan.

Some of the benefits of starting a mobility management program are providing clear and competent information to the public, connecting human service programs, nonprofits, and transit operators to increase services, increasing livability and community health.

Most of the needs that we've seen so far are for medical services.

For example, it's hard to ask your neighbor or your family member to take time off of work

to drive you to physical therapy once a week.

We get a lot of calls of people who are missing medical appointments and especially physical therapy because the distance is too far and it's too great of a demand on their resources.

Another benefit is having more data to make informed decisions and building an infrastructure and funding foundation to expand services for multiple stakeholders.

So we submitted our application for funding for fiscal year 2025 on February 1st.

If awarded funding, we'll add a second staff person and work more with partners to grow transportation services.

We'll work more with Jaunt and CAT to advertise and improve their services.

We'll foster and support volunteer driver programs.

We'll work with partners like UVA and the Blue Ridge Health District to improve transportation for students with disabilities and non-emergency medical transportation, especially for people living in rural areas.

We'll also explore providing travel training services and events to increase

Rydership on John and Kat.

So the second year has a budget of $223,000 and $8,800, a 4% local match of just under $9,000, and this would have a half-time manager for 12 months, a full-time information specialist for 12 months, and then the last six months we would add a second staff member, an information specialist to continue to take calls and coordinate with

Partners.

This funding program is incredibly flexible, and some of the options that we can consider in the future are to develop and support new services to address the unmet needs that we identify, work with Cat and John to improve services for seniors and people with disabilities, provide travel training to help people learn to ride the bus and use the systems that we have, coordinate scheduling and marketing among the transportation providers,

and start new programs such as taxi and gas voucher programs based on additional funds from grants.

So we're asking the commission to vote to sign the resolution in your packet to support this program.

Questions?

Oh, I don't have my 800 number with me.

So you call the 800 number.

You get like a mobility specialist and you tell them where you need to go and where like from and to and the times.

And then they'll look at the services that are available and let you know what's available and help you troubleshoot if something

You know, if like you, if John's available, but you can't get them on the phone, we'll get them on the phone for you.

I'll text it to you.

We were working two weeks ago, so if you hit the amount of money, that's what it's about, so advertising and marketing items.

I'm deaf and this is because it involves hiring attributes, so it's very upsetting.

Yeah.

That is right.

We're modeling ours off of an existing program.

Staff out of the RapidANEC, RapidANEC Regional Commission, Foothills Mobility, Foothills Mobility Alliance, Foothills Mobility Allowance Alliance, they are a model in the state.

The ERPP says that their program has been highly successful.

One of the greatest things that they shared with us is build it small, start small and make it successful over time.

Don't try to take on too much.

We're unique in this region in that we have three different transit providers.

A lot of regions, like Breton and Grattan, they do not have John and Kat and UTS, and so they're actually developing services.

So they are doing volunteer private, they have rolling stock owned by the Planning District Commission.

Our goal is not to do that.

We have too many other providers in this region.

Our goal is to do better coordination and better information and data sharing.

Where are the gaps that exist and how can we try to close those gaps with our providers?

And that could be bringing in 5310 funds for operations to expand services that they can't fund through their other revenue sources.

So I've been meeting with the interagency councils for the different jurisdictions and telling them about the program sharing the 800 number.

We've been meeting with them for over a year now so they're pretty familiar with me and the service that we're providing.

We also have a flyer out or like at Java and through the center

We're going to expand that to more service agencies.

I'm mostly targeting service agencies that work with older adults and people with disabilities so that they can reach to their clients.

And we won't be kind of gathering people who are not eligible for the program.

We're going to answer every phone call and help every person who calls us, whether they're eligible or not.

But by targeting the marketing to those populations,

And then in addition to that the January through June of this year we are working with a consultant to do branding and marketing.

We intended for this to do a soft rollout in January 1 because we didn't want to overwhelm the system without the

resources, the biggest failure to us would be is if we receive a ton of phone calls and we can't really help them with anything.

So we really did a software rollout and we're doing very targeted advertising right now.

It won't go broader than that.

It's terrible.

I should have brought my flyer.

So explain how that is.

That's nine grand spread amongst, that's not nine grand each.

So, you know, and that's usually broken out first, first week.

So, the formula that had to pay into the PDC, but the point that I'm iterating to is the last time we had our fire and EMS folks in front of our board talking about the non-emergency call that they receive, a lot of times our folks, they're just talking about a VA ride, silly doctor, and they don't have a family member or somebody like that.

Then you expect and send EMS or fire, by the end of a non-emergent transportation call, well, I take that nine grand myself.

To be able to afford the cost savings and not having to send out our fire and EMS to help in those situations.

So this is one of the reasons why we have a regional aspect and help us find not the savings, but then justify some of the expenditures that are not high.

We're seeing them.

Any other questions?

So this is an action item, so we need a motion to approve the resolution for the fiscal year 2015 ability management grant application.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Do I go to debate?

Seconded.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

No.

What's the grant?

Thank you very much.

That will take us to 5D.

We have the U.S. Department of Transportation grades, grant presentation, and there's also the road revision that we will take action on.

For those of you that are new, Sandy Shackelford, Director of Planning and Transportation, third grade application of the night.

This one also does not include any advertising in it.

It's a different kind of project though.

So, on your screen is a picture of the Rivanna River, and for those of you, hopefully a lot of you recognize this, but the picture, the part of the picture on the west side of the river is the Woolen Mills area, that's Riverview Park, that green park right next to the river.

And then on the right, the gray side, that's the Pan Tops area.

And so this little red line down at the bottom is a proposed bicycle and pedestrian bridge that the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO, which is staffed by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission,

has been working through different phases of development.

We started by completing a feasibility study in partnership with the Department of Transportation, the Virginia Department of Transportation, as well as Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville to do a feasibility study to identify potential locations for this bridge.

Through that feasibility study, we identified two potential locations and then in, I think it was

2021 to 2022, the years are kind of melding together in my mind right now.

The MPO conducted some extensive outreach to pick a preferred location.

We preferred the location.

We chose the location here on your screen.

This would connect basically the wool factory development site on the woolen mill side over to what we refer to as a state farm property.

And then this white dashed line that goes up to the road network would be a shared use path.

So that just tells you what we're trying to accomplish.

We submitted this project as a SmartScale application in the previous round.

It scored really well benefits-wise, but what happens with SmartScale is that projects are submitted for all phases, all in, and you're starting with a conceptual plan, not necessarily an engineering plan.

So what happens is that we don't have a lot of information about some of the specific

requirements for the project because we haven't done any engineering.

So when we submitted this project, we started with a base cost estimate of $18 million and then that inflated once we added contingencies to consider or to account for any unknown risks that have not been identified yet.

and then escalating for future inflation on top of those contingencies, the cost of the bridge ballooned up to $42 million.

So while the project was identified through SmartScale of having a very high amount of benefits, the cost just made it not competitive.

So we have been working to identify some other opportunities to get a better cost estimate for what it would cost to actually construct this bridge.

And so one of those opportunities is by applying for a USDOT raised grant.

Next slide, Ruth.

The RAISE grant program is a federal discretionary grant program.

It's highly competitive.

It covers all modes of transportation, so not just bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, but it includes roadway infrastructure,

I believe it covers transit and rail as well.

And it also funds projects for both planning and implementation.

$75 million have been designated specifically for planning grants.

And while we are applying to complete the preliminary engineering, this project does not include any right-of-way acquisition, so it would still be considered a planning grant.

There's a total of $1.5 billion allocated for raise in fiscal year 2024.

Awards are based on the strength of the application but then they also consider the diversity of the types of projects and where projects are located.

So they want to get a good variety of different projects from modes of transportation and then they want to make sure that different states have good representation and funding that they receive and they also want to make sure that there's a good consideration for projects in urban versus rural areas.

So you can have a really strong application but because they're trying to diversify the types of projects they're funding

Good projects don't always receive awards.

Next slide.

RAISE has these eight different criteria that they use to evaluate the quality of the project.

So this is how they calculate the benefits.

This is how they determine what good quality projects are.

Safety, environmental considerations, quality of life,

mobility, community, connectivity, economic competitiveness, state of good repair, partnership and collaboration, and innovation.

So basically projects are scored in each of those individual criteria given a rating individually and then they are given an overall merit rating.

So highly recommended projects are projects that receive high scores in six of those categories individually and receive no non-responsive scores.

And you want your project to be highly recommended because while it doesn't mean your project is going to be funded, it does mean that it automatically advances to the next tier of review.

And so once you get to that tier of review, you have a higher level of panel considering it, and it goes to the Secretary of Transportation's office to determine what the final allocations are gonna be.

So Ruth, if you could go back to the previous slide.

We submitted, this is actually resubmission of a grant application that we submitted last year.

So we have the benefit of knowing that this is a highly recommended project.

It's received high scores in six of the eight criteria

And the other two criteria that it did not receive high scores were, which were the state of good repair and innovation, it received medium scores on.

So this is a very competitive application and the work to develop the application itself is basically completed with some minor updates needed.

Next slide.

Go to the next slide.

So this is the project scope.

We are asking for your support to complete a application to complete the preliminary engineering project phase.

So this includes conducting some of those environmental analyses, getting better information on the geotechnical conditions, completing some of the engineering work, and then this will allow us to develop design plans that can then be reviewed to determine what kinds of cost savings could be considered beyond what the original concept is.

We are working with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

They have agreed to administer the technical aspects of the project, which means that if we are able to be successful in receiving funding, this project will be designed according to VDOT specs, and it will be ready to be ushered through the next phases of any sort of VDOT processes for implementation.

The PDC staff will administer the project and be the project sponsor.

The estimated grant request is right around $3 million.

We'll need to update the cost estimates based on just new inflation numbers, et cetera.

But the previous application was around $3 million.

We're working with VDOT on those.

And 7% of that would be for TJPDC admin, at least based on the previous application.

We'll revisit those numbers to see if that remains the amount that we include for the TJPDC's administration.

Back of the napkin calculation, I did show that if we were able to reduce the contingency in half and take the preliminary engineering out of the funding amount that is needed to complete the grant application, I think it brought the cost down to something like $27 million.

So it really depends on whether or not this preliminary engineering review identifies that there are some actual costs that would have been covered by that contingency.

If there aren't any unexpected costs that could be reduced.

Part of the bridge, the location there, is in fact, well, land.

Well, the bigger piece, just for some quick local kind of fun area, but obviously all of those in the Panzops area,

Well, walkability, you don't have any way to get downtown.

This would end right where Willow Tree is in the Willow Mills area.

The county is working on a little sliver, well, chunk of the county that's kind of painted into a corner up against the river.

We're near the city right there.

We're working on our Broadway corridor that was in front of us yesterday.

We'll get that as an appointment, so maybe there's a call towards research to come after that, but then figure out the transit we can get downtown so we can then actually walk and hand off the rail system, which is already existing on that side of the road, and then we can go from the top of the mountain down, and then be able to walk across the bridge and go into downtown and get these transit services.

Unless you want to sit at the free bridge, try out right there.

Everyone wants to know how to get back up.

I would like to dig into what you're talking about, the way that the treatment of lack of education can help.

Yeah, it gets very complicated.

So when we submitted this previously, the MPI was the applicant for the SmartScale application, which made sense because it does have a regional connection between, even though it's completely in Albemarle County, it is within, yeah, it connects like Albemarle basically to the Charlottesville urbanized area.

What happened is that when the Commonwealth Transportation Board went through their overhaul of the SmartScale program most recently, bridges that are only for bicycle and pedestrian movement are no longer eligible for MPA's to submit as applications and are no longer eligible for the high priority program.

So one option through SmartScale, and again, it's probably dependent on what the actual construction cost estimates come back to be, is that this could be submitted by a locality, probably by Albemarle County for SmartScale, since it's in Albemarle County, through the district grant program, but that is a smaller pool of funding.

It is an option.

There is a limit on the amount of funding through RAISE of $25 million.

So it's possible that you could apply for $25 million through RAISE.

It's also possible.

I mean, there's a whole host of options, but if all those stars align correctly, it's also possible we apply for some of the money through RAISE and use that as a match to get the rest of the project funded through something like SmartScale.

Skjort, or if it's bike-ped problems, or if you now have a bike-ped attached to other transportation projects that aren't going to come.

This, I think, even though it would have to be submitted by the locality, could be a highly competitive smart-scale application because it's not attached or trying to justify some other project and scores no longer.

Any other comments?

We need to approve the resolution supporting the GRACE grant application to fund preliminary engineering phase for the Rivanna River bicycle and pedestrian bridge.

Second was made.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

No seconds?

All right.

Number six, we do not have any old business.

Oh, did I skip the budget?

I already had it checked there.

All right.

Okay, so in the September, October part of the budget, when I'm actually projected by that, that's when there's all the visuals and the graphs and all those details.

What we do for the amended budget is I give you a detailed memo of the changes between the overall projected amended approved budget and the amended budget.

So if you can look up here, this is the total operating budget.

And like I said, in the orientation, we give you

22 and 23's actual FY24's operational budget as it was approved originally, and then the amended budget is the last column.

So you'll see the change between the original operating budget and the amended budget is a vast difference.

You see that 54 million versus 28 million, and that is directly related to the body program.

And so again, at the beginning of this three to four year, 112 million coming through the PDC, we were projecting it across four years, splitting it equally,

We then adjust that as we go.

One thing that's really important to note about the body program is the majority of the expenditures that occur in this first year or two are on the private sector.

So it's a lot of the work that's being done by Firefly, by the Dominion, so that the expenditures are greater on the private side.

They'll be coming on the public side for the local match that comes through.

So you'll see we list the federal, state, local, and local per capita.

I'm going to go and I'm going to skip ahead, Ruth, if you'll slide down to the revenues sheet.

This is very small, but it's in your packet.

Basically, we detail all of the revenue that will be coming in by source, by program, so that you can see all of the money that we are anticipating receiving through the fiscal year.

I'm happy to take any questions on that, but that's really the detail of the revenue projection.

We then go to the, I'm going to go even deeper down the line.

to the local.

And I'm going to have Ruth zoom into this because this is kind of what Supervisor Galloway was talking about a little bit earlier.

This is the local funding that we receive from our member jurisdictions for recurring programming.

So if we have like a grant application that requires a one-time match, something like, well, raise that again because there is no match required, but it's a one-time project, that's not going to be in this state because that's a unique project.

It is a recurring program that is going to begin here.

So we calculate that per capita on the per capita rate that is set by this board, 64 cents.

Then in the yellow columns, you'll see that is direct funding that you receive for our recurring programs that we have.

The Rideshare Grant, the Solid Waste Planning, Red Antirater Basin Commission by participating jurisdictions.

Again, all done proportionate to per capita.

Then the legislative liaison revenue that we receive is at a 40 cent per capita and then regional transit partnership funded by Charlottesville and Albemarle and regional housing partnership funded by all six.

So those are the direct local source revenues that we receive.

We then take those and we back out

whatever the balance is.

And we backed out things that require a match that we don't receive direct funding for.

So there's a required match for the NPO.

There is a required match when we are in the five-year COVID mitigation cycle.

There's a required match for the with the watershed improvement program.

You guys approved mobility management.

So that will add a column to this and we'll pull out that 9,000 per capita from that.

Go over to the right again.

And then per commission policy, if you see the green column at the balance, that's the remaining $109,000 is really the discretionary funding that remains.

And a policy of this board is that remaining discretionary funding has to be spent 75% on regional initiatives, since we're a regional library.

And that means that there's an initiative that is more than two jurisdictions.

Okay, so that's things like when we are pipeline planning and we are seeking new grant opportunities that will benefit the region, we would bill it to this because we don't have a revenue source that covers that staff fund.

So that comes out of the 75%.

The 25% is then just like piper-piper locals.

You know, if we're asked to serve on, you know, a body, like an advisory body or the CEO plans, or then we'll bill it to that 25% for that local jurisdiction.

Also hyper-local support, things like you all needed free applications for mapping, you know, you have some mapping done, that would come from that follow-up as well.

So you can see when we get to the end of it, it's not large amounts by jurisdiction that we have that's discretionary.

Okay, we'll go back to

So a couple of very high level, I'm not going to go through this.

No, no, this is, there's no action required tonight.

This is just a draft form.

You have plenty of time to read through it, ask questions in the next 30 days as you have them, and then it'll come back before you guys in the mark meeting for your consideration for approval.

Just a couple of very high level things.

Obviously the body pass-throughs towards the bottom.

What I started doing in the budget at the bottom, it used to say home, HPV, and other.

I'm now breaking out the cigarette passport and the body revenue since they are such large sources of pass-through.

I'm calling those out specifically.

And then the other grants and contracts pass-through.

That's anything from consultants to, or what else is in that category right now?

It's so many.

I don't want to put you on the spot.

Basically what this is showing is the net income anticipated of $306,000.

That was about two weeks ago after that projection was made.

A couple of high-level changes.

We do have another staff agency that's coming down the pike, and anytime we have a staff agency, obviously we're not building programs during that time, so it reduces your revenue depending on how long that agency is for.

Any questions, any changes in either revenues or expenditures that you see that you would like to see any further?

If not, then please tell them to let me know.

And again, call me, text me, email me if you see something that you're like, what is this?

Or why is this such a big difference?

I'm happy to give you any further detail.

You'll see right here, this is the total agency budget.

We are a billable hours agency, like a lot of private sector firms, but we're a public sector billable hours firm, so every hour that our staff works on a program, we allocate to that program, all the signatures, and so we maintain an individual program budget for every single project that we do.

I don't know whether I'm not going to be able to answer that.

Oh, it is.

And that's what, if anybody is using the paper version, that's what I'm going to be hearing.

Thank you.

No action required there, as mentioned.

OK.

So the first one is that we attended Local Government Day.

We saw a couple of you guys there.

We were able to use funding from the Southeast Present Regional Commission to go to that, which was nice to have a revenue source to cover it.

So it would come from that local source for us to go.

And then the second update that I want to give is that Sandy has taken a job, our director of planning and transportation, has taken a job with our state agency, VDOT.

Really excited for her.

But the good thing is she will actually be our call number and is very representative of VITA.

We never heard every smart scale part of it.

How many millions are we going to die?

How many circles are we going to get?

So what that means for us is another vacancy in our transportation department.

So we have one that came about in December that you guys know about and then both of those positions are advertised.

They are live.

We are putting them out day-to-day if we speak.

Certainly looking to find really good folks to fill that position.

But that could have an impact on

The end of year is anticipated for several reasons.

One of them being it depends on how long it takes us to build that vacation if we have to start contracting out some work that we would be able to do on our own.

So there's a possibility we'll need some of that for contingency.

Bonnie, every executive director's report gives that update.

So I'm not going to read through that with you.

I'm also not going to go through the transportation ones because we've got a lot of presentations tonight on all of the transportation updates that we've been doing.

For our economic development planning, we are working on that regional and super regional comprehensive economic development strategy plan, that's called a SEDS plan that's coming through the EDA.

And I talked a bit about before it leverages further opportunities for us to get funding in the region from EDA, many of their grant programs in order to be eligible.

You have to go to that strategy within a status plan.

Our region has never had a status plan.

So there is potential economic development funding that we could gain access to by having that plan in place.

We're working collaboratively with Planning District 9, north of us, because there are some opportunities to get some super regional travel that would benefit both of the different planning district areas.

Recently, the consulting team went to the Build Virginia board to start to talk about those super regional strategies.

They will next be coming to our jurisdictions for a strategy workshop, work session.

We have representatives from each of your economic development offices, you know, the visitor, you know, the bureau, the board.

So we have a big workshop coming together to review the recommended strategies.

What's really important to us is that your local economic development strategies are mapped into this comprehensive economic development strategy so that things that are local probably work for you.

You can point to in that plan to be able to try to seek leverage state and federal funding for it.

So that's something that takes a lot of coordinating and cooperating amongst the six to make that plan reflective of each local, but also

Berrigan, and Missy Berrigan.

There's a lot of layers to that one.

And then housing, I just wanted to let you guys know that we're awarded another Reunion Addiction Reduction Pilot Branch.

And because of the government budget is two here, we did get the second year's funding.

So that's another $275,000.

It is a pilot, and that is an urban pilot.

They don't get the funding that they're dedicating

It isn't in the rural areas yet, but we are certainly encouraging them and advocating and saying that this program could be incredibly successful if it were expanding.

Thank you.

All right, that will take us to number eight and the round table discussion by jurisdiction.

So for our new members, what we do is we basically just go around to each commissioner, ask what's going on in your locality, items of interest, things that you would like to share, be specific to your district or the whole of your section.

A little bit more of a share of those items in the future.

sharing ideas that we've created.

So I feel like I've lived in Richmond for like the last three weeks.

We have the local government there.

That was awesome.

We've got a good chance to see a lot of friends.

For new guys, you know, it's an important process to be in, since being with our state.

If you don't, you'll find yourself behind the eight ball.

Ben, you're looking kind of what's going on for Nelson, the line of duty death benefits.

You know, we talk about this all the time.

We feel like it.

When Mr. Wagner died, we feel to many of you, I actually think pretty much everyone in this room, except for believe the past revolution, supporting line of duty death benefits for- line of duty death benefits for private police officers.

I'm really excited to say,

But we're running into politics and party-like politics, and it's a shame.

This is something that we were created from conception, and we're starting to live that now in not the General House.

We know it will pass if it hits the General House and subcommittees.

So getting to experience the parliamentary weaponization of subcommittees, it's always way too much fun, and being run by seven individuals out of hundreds, calling all the shots, it's kind of a shame.

Make sure the families are taken care of, that the block one is protecting our community.

And then trying to figure out where that mortgage payment's going from, you know, the right thing is that we help figure that out.

So in terms of Nelson comp plans underway, we had a, this is going to be fun, we had our planning commission public hearing, and how many people were there?

We got out of there at one hour and a half.

Ernie did all of that.

But I think we're in one of the 20 of our comp plans.

It feels like finally our constituents are ready for it to be completed.

And so that's really good.

And then, you know, after it goes to the board of supervisors, we'll have our hearings here.

The hearing will probably be longer than most of the projects.

But then our consultant member will be giving us their input after that on

You guys do a lot of damage, by the way.

Yeah, a lot.

I don't feel like we're going to become Charlottesville.

We had two people stand up in front of me to say, no of them.

The compliment should say, no of them.

Boom.

Boom, bam.

That was the tagline.

Just wait until we get some sodium.

Yeah.

Beyond that, we do have a new board member, so just fill in the blanks and do appointments.

I knew it was going to happen.

It was good.

There were three different funding options.

The biggest option was the demolition of the whole building and redoing it.

It turns out to be almost the same cost from the remodel.

So, you know, in terms of when you get the money from the state.

So, it was good.

Any other items we'd like to read?

Nelson County now has 87% friendly occupancy.

Split vote, we do have some increase in that.

I couldn't hear what the question was.

Yeah, they're still moving through.

We've got Senate Bill on the floor tomorrow that would allow if you are a resident of a property, you could not have a local ordinance that would require a special use permit or borrow the use of that residence for a short-term rental if it's an owner-occupied property.

A lot of unanswered questions in terms of what does owner-occupied mean?

And do you have to be there when it's being used as a short-term rental?

And then there's a very similar house bill that just came out of committee, subcommittee today.

It'll be in full committee tomorrow.

Those are the main vehicles related to short-term

Reynolds, I don't know of any others that are really onerous.

There is a positive piece, the delegate Lee Ware used to represent Fluvanna County has that would, that's passed out of committee on the House side that has, would have the state set up a registry, you know, there's been problems with being able for the localities to be able to keep track of

Thank you.

Any other comments on that?

Let me go quick.

Anybody want to say anything?

Sure.

Also following Richmond by the legislation Charlottesville, the most

Closely tracking in the sales tax legislation to authorize a sales tax to go to school construction, which could have a huge impact for us for five plus years in terms of the infrastructure needs we know we have with the schools.

In December, we finally passed our zoning update.

Projects of tenable units, affordable housing is required to be included as part of those development projects.

So our city manager's office is fully staffed for the first time in over three years.

So it's a very good thing.

And what else?

One of the things that will be examined is the potential to use that site as a permanent view around homeless shelter and or permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals.

I think it's going to be particularly difficult for Charlottesville because we had a wage and compensation study which showed that our pay is just really not competitive at all, especially with our cost of living.

So there's some significant pay increases for employees that are going to be needed, as well as this is the first year where collective bargaining contracts for the newly unionized

Police Department Union, Firefighters Union, and bus drivers union are coming into play.

So depending on how much goes to schools, we're looking right now at our budget season beginning of a four to $10 million gap.

So we'll have a lot to figure out when we come to the lease.

Well, you know, the zoning fees for a part of my role,

We're going to drag ourselves to the finish line there, and now we're moving on to actually how to implement it, and that's becoming an adventure in and of itself.

And see how it sort of gets the view of that a few weeks after we do.

How are we going to administrate the development piece?

That is at every step.

And we're already looking at a couple of whoops we didn't even provide in that paragraph.

Pretty impressive.

Two very large that were sort of large developments that are

Bell, and Steven Knaussel that were sort of presented as sort of under the ersatz new zoning, because it was not yet applied, but it was an interesting sort of attempt by the developers of these to meet the anticipated requirements.

And those seem to be a little bit of a shooting with all of the rest of that.

Leibovna, C.E.Jorgjievski, Dr. Reed Seidl, and we're getting another piece of that in the planning mission and that is rolling over the equivalence about that.

Well that just made me think an interesting data point about the impact of so many developments

We had a joint work session with our school board last night.

Obviously a few years ago in West Main, there was a large new student apartment complex that was built by 10th and Page.

And the student population for that district, the schools that served 10th and Page went up, I forget by what exact number, but like 100 students went back.

What was observable when those two departments were built, all of a sudden students moved out of those houses in 10th and Page.

and families were able to reoccupy those homes.

So it's just an interesting data point on how quickly, you know, the impact has felt in terms of some of these changes, but.

Is that an increase of that next year?

I don't know exactly if they were moving through different areas, but it's just picked up as a net increase for that school district.

Mr. Bryan, Fluvanna.

Too much excitement.

We have two new board members.

So that's a little bit of a change.

It's still part of determining how that would influence the direction of the board.

So far, it's been excellent to ask great questions.

I think that's exciting.

The county administrator who's had his proposal, I think, was flat.

It was nice.

There's a deck among the books which helps with that as well, too.

Still don't have to know all the budgets in, but so far that looks like a promising start to budget season.

dramatic county has a park called buzzing brook and there was some discussion about dog leash enforcement and we ended up basically splitting the park into three parts the two engines are allowed to be on the off leash and the middle is on the so it's kind of a compromise

We had some resolutions passed yesterday, in particular, the one resolution in regard to the utility companies having to pay for the expansion of fiber at the local utility company.

And as we voted and said, that language is modified.

So I don't think the impact is quite as much.

There's another Senate bill that came up.

We think that it was with regard to the SCC being able to override

Focalzoni, and we voted against therapy to be able to do that.

I think that was for a year, if David can correct me.

And then we also have another one on Senate Bill 697, which I believe just passed out of committee today, from what I've heard, David, and that has to do with not allowing counties, it's an amendment to existing ordinance, but not allowing the counties to make

special exemptions in terms of limitations of a land that can be applied to it or the type of land that you do with regard to industrial solar scale applications.

And again, we voted that they don't do that.

I think it came out of committee 69 right now.

And personally, for myself, as part of like the conversation that we had with AGO,

with Dominion and the presentation that was made there and the impact of different centers.

And AI as it grows.

The need for energy is really significant.

And the utility can't keep up with it.

So they're looking to spit out as much alternative sources of energy as they can on top of meeting clean energy goals both federally and state-bound.

How do we accomplish those things if the fatalities are making it harder to improve those green energy solar scale industrial plans, which you see a lot of local residents coming out against because they want to preserve the rural character.

So that was kind of an interesting debate and conversation there.

And I voted for that resolution saying that we were against them during the analysis data that I thought I was

would be speaking out on both sides of our topic.

We, in fact, started to put in regulations that made it harder for us to then do that.

Of course, you have the structure you can do it to begin with.

And in fact, I think in two weeks, we'll be discussing whether or not there will be solar utility scale projects, subject to only I-1 zoning.

So we're doing exactly what the bill is saying don't do.

I think he expressed everything very accurately.

There's one more bill.

There was a House and Senate bill on the solar siting.

One has been carried over.

The other will be carried over for the year tomorrow morning on the Senate side.

But the one that you mentioned, Senator Van Valkenburg's bill that passed out of the Senate committee today, you explained that.

Very accurately, that'll be on the Senate floor for approval, you know, early next week.

And that was portrayed in committee today as being, you know, they don't want you to have say, you know, just at the very beginning, kind of preemptively to say, no, you know, you can't, you know, you can't have solar here.

But I think if you read the bill, it, you know, it doesn't really say that.

You know, it says that there's all these restrictions on what you can do, what you can approve.

So, you know, that one's going to be an interesting battle.

Yeah, it's a tough call there.

That's for sure, in terms of what's the best way to approach it, because we do have these goals that we're trying to reach.

You know, there's only certain areas where you can put in solar utility scale.

and many other projects.

And ultimately, a large part of the way I feel about it is that you should be, as an individual landowner, have the ability to go in and petition for the use of your land as you see fit.

So private property rights are pretty significant there.

And a lot of arguments being made about, well, you're maybe taking away the trees,

and I think ultimately kind of steps on kind of the longer term goals.

So it's easy to say we're protecting over here, but we're not protecting over here.

And that's where we're top down.

So it will be an interesting debate that happens, I think, Senate there.

Thank you.

So, looking at the clock, I'll let others speak.

I'll put it without, I don't want my mouth shut.

Other than.

I'm super bad as a rural county.

I can't tell you how many mobile events I've received in the last couple of months in reference to this mobility management.

To Mike's point, you guys need to help your marketing because it's definitely a need out there, particularly a need for the rural county.

I'll have some time to contribute if we sell issues.

We have seeded three new board members in Greene County.

We are now in the seventh month of Greene County independently providing water and sewer services.

Back in June, we left the RSA

Very good.

Well, that's the right hand, green hand.

That is the hot topic.

You know, running your SunGear project, it was in for the

Planning for this big reservoir, I think that's still in the works for getting that for too long for water because right now they just had a drought that put everybody on restrictions on drinking because of the drought.

So that's going to be the main topic right now, the water situation.

You know, there's a couple, you know, there's special huge perlets and stuff that came above.

I think there's a big lamping project that's still in the works.

There's a whole lot of big high profile stuff getting rid of the rolling down hills.

So yeah, like you said, three new members to, you know, be on the board.

This is my first stand of big politics.

Francis McGuigan, I think it's his first extent, Steve Galano, he was chairman for the board for eight years running in Greene and he's back now so that's I think that's a plus on that right there but he's he's pretty you know up to date and he's well equipped for that position in itself you know so

But it's going to be a big game.

They've got a lot coming their way right now.

We've got to all work together to figure it out for them.

Then I think their budget, they're rolling around the June areas.

That's when that all comes in on the June part of their budget, so it's coming into them.

So they got some, like I said, their biggest thing now is the water issue and stuff like that.

Trying to get that, trying to resolution a new noise ordinance type thing.

We've had that pop up here, you know, see what they're gonna figure out.

I don't think they've in the past, they've never really had an issue with it, but it's come up here lately and they're trying to figure out the best solution on how to figure all that stuff out too.

Thank you, sir.

Supervisor Pruitt, do you want to share some stuff about the one?

Sure, thanks.

I will try to keep it to leave some of my time and experience about how to also provide a case that's brief and powerful.

O'Brien.

There is a lot of new buildings going on every day which is exciting and if that comes their funding stream kind of chugging along which has required us recently to reauthorize funding displacement and potentially

A major thing that is on the immediate horizon is our much-discussed, much-prepared Halligan Center package, which is also a completely different package.

The proposal that's coming before us is going to be a 20% F-80 A-line for all of the people who attend Indian developments with a Belver offset

That is kind of like a test.

That is going to come before us.

It's going down the journey slightly.

And we decide whether or not something is going to actually achieve the agenda we're looking for, both for allowing that development, while also incentivizing greater development.

Also, last night, we approved a very large project, which I will let Susan talk about,

Just to kick off the incentive piece that we talked about, I actually went through our regional housing partnership.

So this past July, the regional housing partnership hosted a workshop with developers and there were plenty of some folks.

Mr. Smith moderated that.

And then it turned into a joint meeting of our board, our planning commission, and then another 10 or so.

developers that we have in December.

So the meeting that's coming up this month is the kind of the output of some work that actually came through our regional housing partnership that they assisted us with.

So I'm pleased about that.

Just to say that the regional housing partnership that's working on there are coming to the end of our strategic plan.

We had a desire to solve the four.

Executive committee and full partnership will be dealing with the sit-ins on that this month and through the end of March.

The big development that we heard last night with UVA's project at Northport, which is out basically in stretches of airport road up to Lewis and Clark.

This site was identified by UVA as one of the sites to help achieve their affordable housing.

This development at the max level can be around 1400, 1500 units.

Part of the, part of the, what would the right word be?

Part of the reality of the situation is that it's approved at the 15% affordable housing unit number.

So the requirement at a minimum, if there's 1,400, it would be 15% of those have to be affordable.

UVA, the conversation, the discussions had last night that that is not the vision that is backed up by the announcements nor the hopes of what Albemarle was hoping that that project could deliver.

So we had that conversation last night and they promised a different delivery and explained why they were going through the minimum.

I'll leave it for you to go back and listen to that conversation without having to re-enchant here.

Any of the day, with North Fork and all the research elements there, this does provide a residential work where there's an employment center and with our acquisition of our plans for Rivanna Futures, which is across the street,

Two big economic development projects and that was added to components that could help folks work and live and also do some permanent services right there.

So it is a good project and a good development.

But we're getting started with that.

Our county executive will be making the presentation at the end of the 21st.

Our micro transit pilot that Kat's been doing, the update in the middle of December was over a thousand users.

The feedback right now is all positives.

This is basically an Uber-like transit service where there are Toyota Siennas, if you see them branded, if you know what they are, call them up.

If you live in Woodbrook and want to go to Kroger across the street, the microtransit will take you over there and take you to a fixed route.

The only complaint we've heard so far, that I've heard so far, are the people running up against the geographic boundary of the highway.

So the microtransit's working for them, but then they hit this wall and they're like, well, how do we get there now?

So if it keeps going, this could be a, if it pans out, the Superbud Board is interested in this being a big answer to solving our transit delivery.

And then,

Yeah, I know that last night was our first look.

They started our own Smirniskill process and what might be better and lower is all of that's coming out of the securitization intersection as well.

It's a budget time, transportation time.

Well, being a new guy, I was on the planning commission for the last two years.

I don't know what has been shared with y'all prior to that, but if I start repeating what you've heard, we're pretty solid, but Louisa County back in the fall, I guess, increased their transient tax from 2% to 7% with the 3% to 5%.

There's 3% in there that has to go to the transportation,

So we have had tourism department that's been through parks and recreation and that's going to continue but thank goodness with Lake Anna and short-term rentals that three percent will amount to about six hundred thousand dollars.

So we're doing a transportation tourism board and that will take the director of parks and recreation will still be over

We should have that in place, I would say.

Amazon's come along, Amazon Web Services, I'm sure they've carried with y'all, you know, it's $11 million dollars, $11,000.

It was kind of a good bit.

There are quite a few people that moved in there that weren't very happy about it, but I think it evolved a little bit.

All that and lots of construction, so I'm going to try to avoid something so bad.

No worse than once Memorial Day comes.

Or then there's another 11, 12 hundred acres that's near completed.

We're out there at 3 o'clock,

at the school, it's 11 now, so it's a bit limited to, so the school and all that, the preliminary plans came through the planning commission, this is for, did not show the buildings, but it showed the, you know, the electrical substations.

The substations are 10 acres apiece.

The one from the southern, that center,

The one for the other three warders, they have schedule for two.

So I think it kind of gives you an idea, but we're open to that anyway.

So because, you know, there's, to put 11, put seven, we'll hold 146 others, and only put four on.

There will be about 180 dozen of them in the one sitting.

and there are also the 26 agencies where they have their administration doing everything that you can do as a county.

So anyway, that's good that we're doing a lot of pipeline from the reservoir down to Lake Ann.

I don't think it's about land miles, it's both miles.

And we'll actually pay for all that.

They agreed to pay for the process more

Dean, I mean Alford Allen, but the war is not real, Russell.

It would be long, really.

So they're going to pay us for that.

We're just obviously willing.

And they have 16 years to build it out.

They feel like they're going to do a lot for bringing that.

So anyway, that's, I mean, it's a lot of stuff.

We'd certainly like to get some

I reached out to David a couple of times while I was in there in Richmond

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, everyone.

So I apologize for going a little fast in time tonight, but we have a lot of information here and sharing going on.

We have March 7th will be our next meeting.

And the budget coming forward, transportation work program, and some other items to see on the agenda that will be coming up then.

Christine, anything else?