Planning District Commission Meeting   4/4/2024

So, I call the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to order for Thursday, April 4th, 1.47 CM meeting.

Welcome everyone.

Commissioners, we do need to, there will be a change in the agenda this evening.

We will be required, or we need to go, we're not required, we need to go into closed session for consultation.

I'm going to place that following the executive director's report.

And if time permits, then we can come back out and do the roundtable.

But time does not permit that the roundtable is going to kind of punt in on the agenda, making an induction to that, but in the closed session.

Great.

Thank you.

So we will start with a call.

Ruth.

Supervisor Dorut.

Supervisor O'Brien.

Mr. Smith.

Great, and Mr. Smith, Mr. Barlow, and Mr. Payne all told us in

There's some reasons, perfect reasons to not be here tonight.

Mr. Payne's are leading the city council.

Barlow's got some continuing ed related to his board going on.

Mr. Smith is out of town.

Mr. Pruitt from Albemarle will be joining us late.

He had a function related to DBA and what the programming's in, so he can arrive a little bit later.

And then Mr. O'Brien, I expect, will probably see.

Nobody's online, we need to have participated.

And we'll go to matters from the public.

Anyone in the room wish to give public comment?

Anyone online wish to give public comment?

All right, I'll check that one out.

So we're closing public comment.

We'll go right into our presentations this evening.

And Ms. Pennington has our first one, the Rideshare CAT strategic plan update.

It was an ad reading?

It's nice to see you again.

As I promised from our presentation about the Rideshare Annual Operating Grant in February, I have come back to you with updates of our CAP strategic plan.

CAP stands for Commuter Assistance Program.

So ride share began in the 80s and then in 2009 and expanded to include the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission as we saw a large number of the commuters traveling from that region into the TJPDC for employment.

So as we're going through this strategic plan, one of the things that we're doing is working in tandem and developing all of this with our partners at CSPDC.

Since most of the program is operated together and marketed, TJPDC does a lot of the administrative tasks of it, but we really partner together to make sure that we're getting the message about rideshare and the commuter assistance programs far and wide.

The purpose of this plan is really much like how the transit providers have to do a strategic plan to meet requirements for DRPT, same for the CAPS programs.

This really gives us an opportunity to look at the program, to see how it's working, to see what's changed.

It does replace a previous five-year plan that we did before called the TDMP or the Transportation Demand Management Plan, but that's a mouthful, so TDMP was shorter.

And it really sets the tone and helps guide us for the next several years of the program.

So there are a few components of the program.

One of it, like I said, is assessment and changing the travel demand.

You know, we saw a lot of changes come out of the pandemic.

A lot of people, their lifestyles, their work styles have changed.

Little bit more remote work in some areas, some areas not.

So this in some ways is a really good time to be looking at and evaluating how this program functions in this area and what needs our communities have.

Again, there'll be some evaluation.

The planning will move forward to look at the structure of the program and then make sure that we are aligning up with future funding requests

We do for DRPT each year.

As I said, this plan directly informs and affects the applications that we submit every February.

What we put in this plan will be looked at every time our grant application is evaluated and considered.

The plan does not completely guarantee that the program will always be funded just because the strategic plan has been approved, but it certainly sets us up for success in that particular arena.

All right, so some of the benefits, again, making sure that we understand what is happening in our own region and our own communities, building that foundation for moving the program forward, looking at effectiveness and efficiency of the programs and services, and then looking at the changing landscape that we see here in this region and in the state as a whole.

So here are the various chapters that are in the CAP strategic plan that DRPT, the guidance that they have put forth for us.

We'll kind of go through each of them.

The reasons that four and five are highlighted in red is because that is where we currently are.

So that's the steps that we are finishing up.

So we're about halfway through, which is really exciting.

We are working with a local consultant, Launch Consulting, to assist us through this plan.

So chapter one is just a brief overview.

Not all commuter assistance plans throughout the state are set up or designed exactly the same while we serve a very similar purpose.

Some of them are housed in transit agencies.

Some of them are housed in PDCs like ours in Central Shenandoah.

Some operate in other entities or independents.

So chapter two, this is where it starts to get really interesting, is looking at the demographics and the characteristics of the citizens and residents in this region.

So we're looking at not only who lives here and who is commuting here, but what travel patterns, what services they have available to them currently, and what existing facilities like park and ride lots, things like that.

We're gathering a lot of this data from a variety of sources.

That has been one of the challenging parts of doing this coming out of the pandemic is making sure that we are finding both consistent, comprehensive, and reliable data.

So we are pulling from a few different places.

These are some of examples of some of the data that we've already collected.

So we're looking at population, how much of that population is workforce age,

so forth.

Also looking at employer data.

Who are the employers in this region that folks are commuting to?

What type of industry is that?

Where are they located?

This, still working through this map, got to remove some of these labels so you can see it, but I think this is a good illustration to show that, you know,

where the residents are living, where they're commuting to.

I will say none of this was a huge surprise, which is good.

Sometimes it's nice to know that you are on the right track and having that data to be able to confirm that is really great.

We are still in the process of gathering some data.

We are currently conducting a survey that is open through April 12th so we can get some qualitative as well as some quantitative data to help complete the story.

So our mission and vision, which is one of the things that we established in chapter three, so about a month ago, is connecting people to inclusive and sustainable transportation alternatives in order to increase mobility and enhance quality of life.

I think we all know sometimes what it feels like to have or to set into traffic for long periods of time and how that can kind of

impact your life, your mood, all of that.

So we want to take it as a very holistic approach.

Transportation is more than just getting from point A to point B.

It covers a lot of different areas and aspects of people's lives.

I think I said back in February just kind of an overview of TDM or transportation demand management is a use of strategies to help inform and encourage travelers to maximize the efficiency of the transportation systems leading to improved mobility, reduced congestion, lower vehicle admissions.

So again, we wanted to take that into consideration as we were going through and developing what our mission and our vision would be.

In addition to that, we came up with four main goals and then additionally objectives to go with those as to what we would like to see and accomplish in the next four years.

Obviously, the main component of all state operated CAPS programs is to reduce single occupancy vehicle trips.

So that had to pretty much be goal one.

That is the overarching goal of everything that we try to do with this program.

Next is we want to

Make goal one happen by encouraging more utilization of trip planning tools.

So we have not only the app through connecting VA as well as there is a tool that can kind of help you plan how to get to whatever trip you want to go through.

And now the really exciting thing about that tool is it is actually statewide comprehensive.

So if you go on to

to our site and go to use that tool.

It doesn't just tell you how to get around our region, but it does help people figure out even bigger and longer distance trips to anywhere in the state, which I think is a huge improvement for helping everyone understand what options they have.

Next, we want to build and maintain relationship with community stakeholders to promote regional collaboration around transportation solutions.

That's a little bit of a mouthful, but essentially what we mean is we know that there's not a one solution to transportation.

problems or issues.

If there was, wow, life would be incredible.

But we recognize that oftentimes we need to work in tandem and together to make sure that there are options in place

Regardless of what the situation is, transit doesn't necessarily work for every person or every community.

So what can we do in between there?

How can we fill in gaps?

And oftentimes TDM ends up being some of those places where we can fill in those gaps.

And then lastly, educate community members on TDM as a solution to increased mobility and access through the service area.

You know, one of the things that TDM has the ability to do is to really increase access to jobs, to healthcare.

It also improves the climate, potentially.

Citizens Health as well if they bike and walk and can do that even if it's just a first mile last mile.

There's just so many different ways that it can work in a region and in a community to help see improvements.

So where we are right now is in our target market and customers phase.

So we have been working with the consultants.

We did a fun little exercise to look at developing customer personas or profiles.

So what are the type of people that could potentially take advantage of this program?

We came up with three target markets, and that is commuters from the CSPDC region.

We know that there is a considerable amount of folks that are traveling across the mountain.

We have a whole bus service for it now, so the people are definitely there.

Historically, at least in my time at Rideshare, which has been over 10 years, that is definitely where we have seen a majority of people

commute from.

Now granted, while they don't live here, they certainly take up the space on our streets and in our parking lots and all of that.

So there is a lot to be said for helping and assisting those folks.

It also brings a greater level of access for employees for the jobs that we have.

The next market is of course commuters within the TJPDC region.

So folks who are commuting either from the rural counties or even folks commuting very locally.

I think sometimes the misnomer of a commute is that it has to be a long distance.

But anytime that you are leaving your place of residence and traveling, whether that's by foot, by bike, by transit, by car,

anything is a level of commute.

And so it is important to remember that we serve all of those levels of commutes because there are different options for those different levels.

And then the last market that we determined was commuters from outside of the region of the TJPDC, obviously beyond CSPDC, we see quite a few van pools go to UVA from Richmond,

There are folks that commute sometimes from Lynchburg and we're kind of starting to see, to some degree, some of those markets increase.

So we want to make sure that we pay attention and that we figure out how we can help them meet their needs and get the information that they need about commuting.

So some of the things that we're doing, like I said, we're developing those personas or profiles.

We're looking at what are the motivators or benefits

to potentially taking alternative transportation.

What are the barriers?

That is always an important thing to look at.

And sometimes those are a little more glaringly obvious than sometimes the benefits.

So we really have to do a good job of making sure we're communicating those benefits and looking at what those barriers are.

And then what can be done to shift behavior?

That is the ultimate question and quest kind of of these commuter assistance programs is we are asking people to do something different than what they normally do or sometimes first inclined to do.

And asking for behavior change can sometimes be a decent ask.

So understanding what

can move that needle for someone or what we can do to help them make that choice, I think is a really important factor that I'm intrigued to see which will come out of this.

So the upcoming chapters, we have our operational plan, which we have begun.

That's basically how we implement it, how we run it from day to day, how we operate it through the entire fiscal year.

Next, once we kind of have an idea as to what we want to do or what we'd like to do, we're going to look at the financial plan and how does that fit in with the parameters that we have?

How can we try to achieve these goals and objectives?

I'm also really excited about the monitoring and the evaluation plan.

I think it'll be really interesting to see what tools we can put in place to make sure that we are meeting the needs and communicating effectively.

A lot of what we do at Rideshare

is getting the word out of letting people know what their options are, because if they don't know what the options are, they can't make those choices.

So I think that'll be really interesting to see how we can continually check in with ourselves, see how we're doing there.

And then chapter eight is just kind of a compilation of all of the research and the data that was conducted to complete the plan.

So next steps, like I said, we are finalizing those target markets and the customers and the operation plan.

We'll work through the finances and the monitoring and the evaluation.

And we do hope to have a finished product by launch by July 12th.

They actually put in that date themselves.

So just into the new fiscal year, it will be coming back to this board as a draft and then for adoption.

because this is our governing board as being a PDC program.

So you will see me again and hear maybe some of this again and then maybe in some different details.

So just wanted to kind of set the stage for that to let you know what we've been doing and what you can be looking forward to.

Anyway, this is an issue that we brought up in the regional transit governance study of the Johnson Rural Transit Leads Assessment, which is Nelson County.

Yes.

We are the southernmost part of the planning district and many of the people who live in the south are in the

West part of the county primarily are going elsewhere, not within the district or their community.

So we're not just the commuters from outside the region coming in, we're having commuters from the region going out.

So I brought this up at the John meeting that we had last week, I guess, and there really wasn't

An answer to how we can get the data about how many of the people in Nelson County actually have transit needs, commuter transit needs outside of the district.

So for us, trying to utilize the data that comes out of these

Sure, maybe not painting the whole picture.

So I'm just, you know, I'm trying to flag that so that it gets paid attention to because when we decide where our, you know, how we're going to deal with our transit needs, you know, it may or may not be advantageous for us to be

Yeah, no, that's a great point.

And there are other CAHPS programs throughout the entire state.

There's one in Lynchburg, which covers more than just Lynchburg, so that may start to kind of

butt up with us, and so we may be able to talk to some of the folks there to see if they have some of this data or if they have a picture of it.

That would be really important.

Yeah.

If you're going to depend on the CHOC study to determine trans leads, they're only contacting people that you've joined, of course.

Yeah.

I totally understand what you're saying.

And it is an interesting position because we are, you know, somewhat bound to our regional boundaries, but we know at the same time that those boundaries don't necessarily mean anything to the everyday citizen.

They drive or go where they need to go, which is why bodies like this are so important to think regionally.

So yeah.

Yes exactly and so we we may be able to capture a little bit with that part since we're working so closely with CSPDC and I will definitely keep that in mind and maybe reach out to some of our other folks

Not everyone is doing the strategic plan all at the same time.

They kind of have a staggered, probably for some funding reasons, and so that the consultants in the area don't get overwhelmed doing, you know, 20 of these.

But I will definitely reach out to some other folks.

And we just want whatever, whatever needs assessments are being done.

I think that's a really good point.

Louisa County has the same thing with eastern part of the county.

The majority of those people are the ones in Richmond or down around Lake Anna.

A lot of those folks go to Fredericksburg.

So you're exactly like me.

Yeah, and that was one of the reasons why we thought it was very important to look just beyond the two regions where we know things are happening, but we know things are happening out there.

It might be on a slightly smaller scale, but that doesn't mean that it won't grow over time or it might shrink.

We don't know.

That's why we've got to look at it.

Christine, was it in the NPO meeting?

Or is that a meeting, some meeting, that I've been in before?

and the Fairfax and places like that.

That was in the SEDS, the Regional Housing Partnership update on the SEDS plan on economic quality and strategy.

So that data is out there.

It just may not be in this place.

Yes.

But we were looking at that folks that were commuting as far away as Northern Virginia on a regular basis from Richmond out of the area.

And so if they're using that, I'd be curious what the sourcing is in that data.

Because my guess is if it exists for wherever they parse it out for it, it does exist for you.

It's the census on the map tool.

They have an interactive tool where you can manipulate all of the different variables and you can look at commuting patterns coming into an area and going out of and you can

Do all the way down the census track, but again, as far as region, you can do county-wide, so you can really begin to break down some of that data.

What it's not necessarily doing, though, is looking at propensity for travel using a different mode.

You know, like that's literally how many people are working in one place and living in another.

One of the things that the MPO is looking at doing is really looking at travel demand management strategies.

and getting even more regular with the data by using street light data to see exactly where people are coming from and exactly where they're going so that we can start to really think about where are these employment centers, activity centers, where are the places that people are coming to within urbanized areas

And that's a good point as well, Christine, in saying that we have these different sources of data and sometimes they do a little bit of different things, but sometimes they don't quite get us

White to what we're looking for, not knowing why someone is making a trip on surface level seems maybe inconsequential, but it's not necessarily because what if they were only making that trip once or twice?

and not on a regular basis.

You know what I mean?

So sometimes getting to those real granular levels can be really hard.

And like I said, we have had a little bit of struggle, the consultants, with making sure that we're getting those comprehensive, reliable data sources.

And we all know that the last census was

Not everything we wanted it to be.

And so we have they have been working to really kind of piece together to paint the clearest picture that we can come up with with the numbers.

But I think that's also why the qualitative data is so important, because the numbers can only tell a part of the story.

Yes, it's linked in the executive director's report because the draft came to us very late so we want to make sure to get in front of you guys as soon as we've had the draft.

I mean, I'm not saying, yeah, it's going to show you the transit needs, but I don't think it was all, I think it would first out people going to one-on-one trips.

I think this was moving for employment.

As Henrico stood out as a destination for employment, then there were more going to Fairfax than I would have ever expected out of the area, too.

That's just in memory of what that's worth.

Our staff has not used it.

We now have access to that data through the Virginia Department of Transportation that we have never utilized before.

And so part of the work of the MPO is to have staff going through the training to learn

What is this streetlight data tool?

What types of data does it have?

How is it useful in our work?

But we don't know as much about it as we would like to.

You're talking about streetlights, aka the poles with lamps on top of them?

Yep, cameras.

Cameras associated with that infrastructure.

I'm just saying surveillance.

It's what the toll is called.

No, I understand.

Other questions?

Great.

Thank you so much.

And like I said, you will hear from me again.

The next item.

The end of the presentation.

We've got a fiscal year 25.

So it will be a fairly quick item.

The planning district commission doesn't need to take action on this item.

This is action that's actually taken by the policy board.

But I did want to keep updating you guys on the work.

So the MBO, it's called a UPWP, Unified Planning and Work Program.

It identifies all the transportation planning related activities that will be occurring within the metropolitan area.

Federal law requires that the MPO address eight basic planning factors, which are listed here.

The funding that we receive for the MPO comes from two different federal agencies, both FHWA, which is Federal Highways Planning Funds, which is administered through VDOT, and by which we receive a local match, but also through Federal Transit Association, and that's administered through DRPT, who provides state match for that.

So we received 80% of the funds through federal sources, 10% from state for VDOT and VRPT, and 10% from local.

Please stop me if I'm using too many acronyms.

That happens a lot in the transportation planning world, so if you want me to say that out loud, please stop me.

Additionally, VDOT receives their own state planning and research funds.

Those do not come through the TJPDC's books, but they are related to planning activities within this region.

I believe last year that amount was approximately 170,000.

That's what you'll see in the draft budget, but I just learned today that that's been increased by a little bit.

So there'll be some changes that I make before bringing it back to the policy board.

So the funding for the work program, I know that's really tiny, but it was included in your packet, is broken out by both funding source, both the federal and the state sources and local.

But then it also shows the state planning research funds in the yellow line so that the total amount of funding is down at the very bottom in the dark salmon, pink line.

And that's the amount of planning funds that are dedicated to the metropolitan areas of our region for transportation funding.

If anybody wants to dig into any details, please ask, but this is intended to be a high-level pass since the policy board digs into all the details.

Okay, next one.

And then the next table is just parsing out that financial information slightly different rather than by funding source, it is by activities.

So the planning work for the MPO split up into three different tasks.

One of them is the administration of the MPO.

The other two, one of them is long range planning, another one is short range planning.

So this lifts it up by the tasks that will be proposed for FY 25's work program and then also by the two other funding sources.

The next steps for the UPWP, it has already gone before the policy board in their February meeting to give us direction on the types of activities that they would like to see in the next work plan.

It then was presented to both, to all MPOTEC, the Citizens Advisory Committee, and the policy board in their March meetings in its full draft format with details on all the work plan.

And then it comes back to the policy board in their April meeting for consideration for approval.

The final draft of the UPWP then gets sent both to FHWA and FTA for them to review to make sure they don't have any outstanding issues or revisions and then is delivered in its final format for us to be able to receive our funding.

Any questions on the policy or its unified planning work?

Yes, this Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Program, the Cigarette Tax Board program, I think is a prime example of a service that Planning District Commission is implementing the request of localities.

And in the case of the VRCTB, we included localities

Not only in this region but outside of the region you could go to the first time.

Thank you.

But really following the approval by the General Assembly in 2020, it gave the counties the authority to have some additional tax revenue generating authority, one of which was cigarette taxation.

Several of the jurisdictions in the region and outside came TJPDC and said, hey, looks like this is a, you know,

Goodway to do something on a regional basis.

So we had a good working group of folks who had a actually good model from Northern Virginia, which had a regional cigarette tax board for almost 50 years, I think, at the time.

But we came together and culminated, I guess, in October of 2021 with the establishment of the Blue Cigarette Tax Board.

which consists of eight jurisdictions, four of which are in the TJPDC and four outside.

We see there it's six counties, the city of Charlottesville and the town of Madison.

They all agreed to join this regional board, have representation on the regional board, and then each adopted a local ordinance to tax cigarettes beginning January of 2022.

So the TJPDC serves as the administrator to the board,

We work with them on a monthly basis.

We're working every day with them, especially Laura who's here with us and Gretchen, our administrative assistant, who does the heavy lift on those.

But we work directly with the distributors who are submitting reports of the cigarettes that they have delivered to retailers who are selling cigarettes across these jurisdictions.

They're collecting

the tax for that jurisdiction from those retailers for each pack of cigarettes.

And then they're remitting that back on a monthly basis to TJPDC.

We're going through the process of tracking all the packs that are sold, the revenue that's generated, processing all of that.

And then we're remitting the money back out to the localities minus our administrative expenses and minus the 2% discount that the distributors get

for the work that they do in administering the cigarette tax.

Next slide, please.

A snapshot of, just to give you a sense of revenues and packs of cigarettes that are sold across the footprint of the Cleveland Cigarette Tax Board.

Just January, I think we finished our February numbers now, but when this was put together, we had January, you can see about $213,000 was allocated out to those eight jurisdictions.

That's revenue.

And then July through December, you can see that the total was about $1.4 billion.

And that was all on the total number of packs sold for the first seven months of the current fiscal year of over $5 billion in this footprint.

A lot of people were smoking.

and then our administrative cost for that same period, just over $90,000.

In the past two plus years, we have seen overall the number of packs sold is slightly decreasing, which I think for the folks that are on the board would tell you that's the number one goal, is we want to see a reduction in smoking.

And so, of course, finding the amount of revenue that is coming in and being allocated back out to the jurisdictions is declining as well.

And our expenses have been pretty steady.

They look much weighted, a little bit, but they're somewhere in the neighborhood of $113,000.

And then our expenses then are spread and allocated out to the member jurisdictions on a monthly basis, based on how many packs of cigarettes are actually reported to us as being sold in the jurisdiction.

Here's just a little bit, a deeper dive to show you the trend lines,

Over the past six months, the PACS sold again, July to January.

You can see, I guess the first bar is the previous year's January or July to January numbers.

And then the second bar in each month is the current fiscal year calculation.

I will note, I'll actually just go to the next slide.

Something I'd like to note.

This is a breakdown of the number of packs sold across the different jurisdictions in the reason, just in a pie chart form.

You will see, if you can see, it's kind of small, but the jurisdictions are listed over on the right.

And then if you start at 12 o'clock, they're in the order around the circle.

So you can see Albemarle and Augusta well over half of the total packs among the eight jurisdictions across the region.

Next slide, please.

Here again is that kind of that seven month representation of how the revenues are being allocated.

You'll see the bump up there in July and August of 23.

Orange County increased its cigarette tax effective July 1 of 23 from I believe it was 15 cents, 12 cents, I'm sorry, up to 40 cents, which is the maximum per county.

So that's

What we think is probably responsible for that bump.

But then again, as I mentioned earlier, you're really seeing that slight decline on a month-to-month basis.

Next slide, please.

And then again, here's a pie chart representation of the allocation by jurisdiction of the cigarette tax revenues.

You're going to have Albemarle again, 40 cent tax rate, the cap, most cigarettes that are sold.

So they've got the highest chunk of the funds.

You'll notice that Augusta is not quite as big as they were in terms of the number of tax sold.

That's because their tax rate is at 15 cents per pack.

And so they are at the same tax rate as both the city of Stanton and the city of Waynesburg and Augusta County.

They have a cigarette tax that's 15 cents per pack as well.

And then all around Orange County, you see it comes in pretty large as well.

You probably partly can pull that tax increase if they had last July 1st.

And we're glad to hear anybody who provides a specific jurisdiction information to you.

Just a couple of things about the work of the board.

And then most recently, Eric Dolls, County Administrator of the Fluvanna County is the current chair and was elected last fall.

The next meeting of the board is in a couple of weeks.

The board meets quarterly, the meeting on April 22nd.

The board is required to adopt a budget and make a recommendation to the TJPDC for the inclusion of that budget number in the TJPDC's budget.

So at the April meeting, it will consider a fiscal year 25 budget of $2.9 million, which is the number you will see in the budget, which Christine will present to you shortly.

A couple of things that we've tried to do just in working with the board as the administrator, making sure that there's

You have information that they want to see on a monthly basis.

We are doing that under the realm of that third bullet there in financial management.

We've started returning interest and any distributor fees and any erroneous payments back to the jurisdictions on a monthly basis.

We have not been doing that monthly, but just periodically before.

Distributor fees are

Every year at the beginning of the calendar year, we ask for distributors to re-register with us.

There's a re-registration fee of $50.

That is really just for them to get back on the record with us.

We turn the biggest portion of that back around to the localities.

Board members also receiving on a monthly basis the bank statements for both the operational and the reserve fund.

There's some of the reconciliations for those.

And again, trying to work with our distributors on some of the financial mechanics of the cigarette tax program is we have just this month made available to them a bank account by which they can pay us by direct deposit, ACH.

They had been mailing checks to us and we had some issues in the past six months with getting checks on time.

It's okay.

Gjorgjievski, Tim D'Oronzio, Tim D'Oronzio, Tim D'Oronzio, Tim D'Oronzio,

Riele for the second year and beyond.

It's a $50 fee.

We have formalized that process a little bit more by actually now issuing them, I think with the 2024 calendar year, issuing them a permit number.

Helps them on their end, helps us a little bit better in keeping track of who's where in the process.

And then requiring them to sign a wholesaler dealer's document, which really

outlines some of the key provisions that are in state law that are applicable to collections of cigarette taxes as well as to provisions that are in the local ordinances of the jurisdictions.

Next slide please.

And then also a part of the program, a big part of the program actually is

working in compliance.

And TJPDC through its compliance agent actually is out there performing efforts on behalf of jurisdictions in enforcing the tax-related ordinance that have been, ordinances that have been adopted.

So first though, the distributors, we do have a process.

We do expect them to report to us on time, which in our case is the 10th of each month, and to remit the tax that they have collected.

There is a practice in place for if those reports are not received on time, I wish they would get a warning.

Second time the next month, if they were late, it would be a 10% penalty.

And then a placing on probation, they go backwards again.

With the retailers, just to give you a sense of how many retailers are out there across those eight jurisdictions, right now it's about 250 plus.

that our compliance agent over the first probably what 14 months or so that he was on board visited every single one of those.

And the goal initially was to inform them, to educate them, to make them aware that, hey, you've got this cigarette tax that your jurisdiction has adopted.

This is what it means.

This is what you need to do in order to comply with the ordinance.

Some of them got to be some of our friends because they got some additional business in order to help them to be in compliance.

And we're still working with a few who are very good friends now because we are still trying to work to bring them in full compliance, which we told them we expected by the end of the year 23.

So we're at a point right now with compliance where

There's actually in a very few out of the 250 there are old, what I'm going to call old, because they are more than two years old packs of cigarettes that were on shelves before the taxes took effect in January of 2022.

So the Board had allowed those products to be sold through without having to be accounted for with the taxation.

But some of them are still sitting on shelves.

So I think we're actively working and hopefully maybe to the point of all this being gone.

so that now we'll know if there's stamp, if there's cigarettes on shelves that are not stamped, we know that those have come into the retailer since then with the cigarette tax.

And as a result of that, we have now taken steps to put it in place.

What happens in those cases where the stamps aren't present, there's the wrong stamps, and they're not coming into compliance, at what point then we would seize the cigarettes?

And then there's an opportunity that's laid out in the ordinances

for the retailers to actually go through the appeals process, but then we've seized them, we have to store them, we have to keep them in a secure location, we have to provide them with certain notices in terms of what their rights are for appeal.

So it's a very intricate process and, you know, hats off to our compliance agent because he's the one that's out there, you know, having to deal with folks, you know, in the retail stores who sometimes

You know, don't really know what it all means.

The cigarettes are stamped.

They need to be stamped to do something that are just trying to spread around the world.

But I think we're continuing to learn as we go.

Again, Northern Virginia has been doing this for a long period of time.

And there's two other regions in the Commonwealth of Virginia that established regional boards at the same time that TJPDC

and Billy Rich Cigarette Science Board was established.

I know that's a lot of information, but we try to come back to you all every six months to give you an update.

For some of you all, you're new to this, so they might not have this updated before.

I know that Louisa County doesn't participate in that.

I had no idea why.

Is it a situation where we can go through whatever process and join them?

There is a process that the board can make requests, but we see providers request to the Regional Cigarette Tax Board to join.

And, you know, they agree they'd like to join.

I think I'm glad to share that with you.

Yeah, I think it was interesting.

We were having these discussions, you know, really starting in the spring, I guess of 21, but I think all the jurisdictions were of a lifetime.

We're not going to rush through this and try to get it done in conjunction with the budget process at that time and bring it up and running when

in July.

So that's why we saw a change in 2020.

Thank you, David.

All right, that takes us to number four, our consent agenda.

There are three items.

The first are the minutes of March 7, 2024.

Are there any changes, addends, corrections, et cetera?

Those minutes?

Is there a motion to approve those notes?

It's on the move.

I'll second.

All right, motion's been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Sessions.

Then we have the February financial reports.

Any questions there?

Is there a motion to accept the February financial reports?

So moved.

I'll say.

All right, questions have been made and seconded.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

Right.

And then the fiscal year 25 rural transportation work program and budget resolution.

The resolution was in the packet.

No, there have been no recommended or requested changes or amendments since it was presented to you last month.

And if there are no questions or comments there, is there a motion to approve the resolution for the fiscal year 25 rural transportation planning work program?

OK.

I'll move.

OK. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

All right.

The motion has been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Something doesn't flash.

So how this works, give a brief overview, especially for the new folks.

So the fiscal year is when the changeover of the chair, vice chair, and the treasurer happens.

Also the secretary, I'm the current chair.

Mr. O'Brien is the current vice chair.

Mr. Smith is the current treasurer.

Christine serves as our secretary.

So we'll have to have new leadership and figure that out by July.

So typically we appoint the nominating committee in April.

The nominated committee will come back and make a recommendation to the board in the May meeting.

And then the board will decide and vote from there.

So what we, I think it's typically three people?

Yeah.

Yes.

So we will need some volunteers to serve on the nominating committee.

Mr.

Chair, I've had a problem serving the last several years.

All right, so we will go over.

Thank you, sir.

Brown, we need a city person.

I was willing to speak to Mr. Payne, but not knowing he didn't.

I think he's going to be anxious to do it.

But maybe I'll take the chair's priority and we'll appoint Paul and Jane.

Paul and told.

Paul and told.

Paul and told.

All right.

So we'll work back.

Thank you.

Was that an official motion?

I don't see it as an active item.

No.

So I can just appoint.

Yes.

All right, very good.

Thank you.

And again, those three will get together and then they typically, so if you are interested in serving in one of the sessions, they will likely be speaking to you or you can reach out to them directly.

Jesse, like he said, he will take almost a handful of years on it.

Yeah, it will be reached out.

Absolutely.

I'll lean on you to send the email first.

That's right.

You'll actually bring the slate back to present in the next meeting, even if it doesn't get voted on until the meeting after that.

Send the email.

Tim, do you like meeting in person or over Zoom?

In person.

All right, we'll meet here, since Michael has at least this channel.

That'll be fun.

That would be great to do.

Great, thank you.

Okay, the Region 9 Council is comprised of Planning District 10, Planning District 9, that's the TJPDC and the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Planning Commission.

The GO Virginia Council is responsible for implementing the Commonwealth's GO Virginia plan within that region.

They work to review and award grants that incentivize collaboration between business, education, and local government.

The TJPDC gets to have two different members serve as voting members on the Vote Virginia 9 Council, one CAO, Chief Administrative Officer, and one elected official.

Before reaching out to anybody, I did

Ask Go Virginia staff to give me a breakdown of everyone who served by every jurisdiction so that we can make sure that we are rotating that through across the many years.

And it was identified that Greene County, Albemarle County, and the city of Charlottesville have not had representation yet.

So in reaching out to folks, Cabbie Shackelford, the county administrative, what's that?

It's Nelson.

Nelson has- Steve was on.

Steve and the Shas, right?

That's right.

I brought it just in case you asked that, but yes, Steve has initial, he just, yeah.

Katherine Shafrick, the Greene County Administrator, is willing and excited to serve, if you all are willing to appoint, and then Ned Gallaway from Albemarle County is the Board of Supervisor appointee, so staff is just recommending a motion to appoint the two of those, respectively, to the Virginia Region 9 Council as the PDC's CAO, and elected official representatives, respectively.

Mr.

Chair, are we ready for a motion?

Yeah.

I was going to make the motion.

What was the first?

She's the great Kathy.

All right, I'm going to go with Kathy and Ned on the go.

I'll second.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

All right.

Thank you.

This one can be fairly quick because our staff has already been around to all member jurisdictions governing boards but as you guys know we were awarded a U.S. partner transportation grant to a comprehensive safety action plan in all six jurisdictions.

One required component of the grant is that there is a leadership commitment to reduce serious crashes and fatalities on our roadways

Each member government has already adopted their resolution specific to their goals in their jurisdiction.

This is just one that says the TJPDC will also commit to supporting activities that can reduce serious crashes and fatalities.

All right, motion has been made and seconded.

Any further discussion on this timeline?

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

So moved.

And that will take us to the fiscal year 25 draft operating budget.

With this one after the presentation, I'm going to begin with the budget timeline and just make sure to review that.

In September or October of 2023, I brought for you guys the projected FY 25 budget that sets the full capita rates.

And that sets the amount that we then apply to our local jurisdictions for their local contributions through their budget process.

Then in April, May of 2024, which is now is the FY 25 operating budget that we will use for management purposes.

And then it actually comes back before you all in third version in February and March as an amended operating budget

That closer aligns to the actuals that are going to be used for auditing purposes.

The draft FY 25 budget that's presented before you is a balanced budget with projected revenues and expenditures of just over $42.5 million.

We broke this down in a couple different ways.

So this is a slide that indicates the revenues that we receive.

I did it in two different ways.

One of them is excluding the Virginia telecommunications broadband because that dramatically skews our graph because the majority of those funds are passed through.

And so in the top, you'll see all funding sources.

And then the bottom one that'll show a more realistic representation of about 35% of our revenues are federal.

14.96 are from state sources.

46.35 are from local sources and that does include the cigarette taxes as a local source and then local per capita that's just over 2.4 percent of our budget and other sources such as rental income from extra states is that we have.

Next slide shows a breakdown of our federal revenues.

Our federal revenues are 37.8 million dollars

If you pull out the broadband, but then we pull that out because otherwise this pie chart would be impossible to read.

We pull out the body.

We then have other federal revenues that are non-body sources of just over $2.6 million.

And you can see starting at 12 o'clock and working your way around what those federal sources are for the projects that we are running and the programming that we have.

Christine, I don't know what the adage is.

Some folks might not know what BODI is.

Yes, great.

Yep.

BODI is the Virginia Public Communication Initiative.

That is the broadband grant that we received from the Department of Housing and Community Development to help facilitate universal broadband access across 13 different jurisdictions, working with

The next one is a breakdown of our state revenue sources.

Our state revenues are just over $1.1 million.

The largest one is the Virginia Housing Grant, where we're actually developing affordable housing units.

The second largest being also related to housing in VRP.

You'll see that the DHCD contribution, that's the top, that's our state allocation from DHCD.

It is in the draft budget that we would receive an increase of $25,000, but there wasn't enough confidence to put that in there yet.

Once that's approved, I will add that into the budget.

Right.

What I did for this pie chart in order for it not to be skewed is I did pull out the local revenues received the Blue Ridge cigarette taxes.

So that 2.9 over 2.9 million is pulled out of this.

Our non-cigarette tax local revenues

are indicated here again with our largest ones coming from legislative liaison for the legislative services and also for the local matches for the Safe Streets and Roads for All Ranch.

And then finally is our per capita revenues.

This is the member dues assessed at $0.66 for two cents per capita.

So next year's per capita revenue will be just over $178,000 and again broken out by six jurisdictions.

Okay, budget expenditures.

I think it's really important to note in our budget, while it's a $42.5 million budget, $40.5 million of that is passed through.

It comes through our organization and it goes out to another source.

That's things such as the telecommunication initiative, the broadband.

We have large pass-throughs for the cigarette tax, as discussed, and then the federal home, which is the HUD funding.

and Housing Preservation Grants where we receive funding and then we work with sub-recipients who do the activities as well as what's called the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot.

That's another housing program trying to help reduce evictions.

All of these programs, we either work with sub-recipients or we work with consultants where we are not using those funds for ourselves.

We're passing them through onto another organization or contracted agent.

Our operating expenses then make up just over $2 million of the entire budget, and over 70% of that is related to personnel.

We anticipate having 14 full-time staff next year and 35 full-time staff next year.

Then I'll run through a couple of other details that were in the budget memo that I put in your packets that goes into greater detail in each of these categories and talks about the funding splits to reach in the different grant programs.

I do anticipate between this first draft that you're seeing and the draft that you see next month that there might be a couple of different pages that's in hopes that we have a higher between now and then so some of the salary fringe numbers may change.

I also have another staff member who is eligible for a promotion, so there's an increase in there.

And then we have, that will be changes.

I think those were the two main ones.

The budget that is before you assumes a salary increase of an average percent of seven.

The one that I'm already working on for you for next month is actually up to 7.8.

And that's because in a lot of analysis that we did last year,

And bringing before you all an additional analysis we're doing this year is that PDC is lagging behind in all of our competitors and salary incumbents.

And so we need to catch up.

And we know that's not realistic to do in one year.

And so we have a three-year plan to be able to get there.

Last year was to get everybody into the correct salary band.

This year is to get people into the right place within that salary band.

And then the third year will be as new employees come on, making sure that everybody is within a competitive place within our organization.

And so as you guys know, as we experience vacancies here, we do exit interviews, we do talk to folks about their compensation that they receive with their next employment.

So we feel very strongly that we need to commit some resources to making sure that we catch the PDC up so we can continue to attract and retain very high quality staff to be working with your member jurisdictions.

I'm happy to take any specific questions related to line items in the budgets.

There's a lot of information in there, but again, this is in draft form and we'll come back to you with some revisions.

Hopefully I'll also, that's the other revision.

Hopefully I'll be adding the 25,000 for the HCD annual contribution.

Questions, comments?

I will just back up the comments about the staffing.

The TJPDC, the nature of the work means that they can get poached quite a bit, especially if they're lagging in the salary.

All of the jurisdictions have done compensation studies and made adjustments.

So the TJPDC started that effort last year, as Christine said, to get them caught up.

We don't want this to just be a place where somebody works and gets poached.

As we were dealing with right now, we were fully staffed and then we went back to

The couple of the questions I would have just on the line items.

If you go to just this, I forget what page this was.

But if you look at the line items, there's a new line item for contingency, and the order is for 89, 971.

Yes.

That 89,000 is the annual contribution that we received from the Department of Housing and Community Development.

In all years past that I've been buying and analyzing budgets in the past 10 years, we have always budgeted that money towards administrative costs.

There is a lot of argument for we shouldn't assume how that money is going to be spent because it is some of our most flexible funding that we have.

There are very few requirements on that money.

And so rather than budgeting it immediately to admin, if we can get our admin expenses covered through our incorrect rate through our grantors, then I pulled that into a contingency line item.

And we'd be able to use that to do things like match grants of local sources without having to go to our local governments.

We could use that funding to pursue pipeline opportunities that staff can build back to contingency line item.

We can use that if there are areas where we want to slightly increase

The amount of work that goes into a program, we can use that as a cost overrun category.

Thank you.

Then you have two that, if you look back at just what you were wanting to do, and you invested a previous year, just when you were 24, you had some jumps.

One was audit and legal and one was advertising.

Yes.

The audit and legal I can speak to very easily.

We have started using legal counsel.

The more we engage in federal grant programs and the compliance and the reporting related to contracting, we are relying on our legal counsel to support us through that.

Additionally, we are relying on legal counsel for things like procurement, making sure that we're following all the procurement

procedures, we are a small organization, we don't have a procurement office, so we use legal counsel for that, and then also comprehensive contract review before we sign any contracts with outside agencies, and also any matters that come up that are personnel related.

And then, just to be fair, we did see the equipment data use.

I didn't get it.

That's actually a decline.

I would have to phone a friend, but I believe this one is changing how we classify some of our expenses, that traditionally we were putting them in data equipment use.

Rather than putting them in a contractual expense.

And so moving them from one category to the other, it looks like a decrease.

It's actually just a reallocation.

Do you want to do anything?

Move them to those lines.

That is probably the reason we're doing that there.

Every year.

Obviously it was pandemic.

But you're right, having a new accountant on the board makes sure that it's changed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christine.

It's very minor, just the discussion of the legal and compliance costs.

Maybe I'm curious if that is

Many of the planning district commissions that I have been talking to do have outside council and actually have utilized that council much more than our planning district has in the past.

So we're seeing an increase in it because we're actually utilizing them in a way that many other planning district commissions have been

Consistently using them.

That would strike me as odd, right?

Yeah.

That would be, you know, that would be curious to

Not right this week, in those circumstances.

Great.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

That will bring us to, and just so you're aware, Mr. Brindman, Mr. Pruitt, we did have to add a closed session this evening.

So that's going to happen after the executive director's report.

And it puts us under a time constraint, but the ground table is open.

Well, that goes us to item six, Executive Director Evaluation Process Next Steps.

So Christine and I, as I reviewed last month, we were going to identify an evaluation instrument that has not been used in the past.

We did that and pulled that down from, oh, I forgot the letters.

It's the city, county,

It's a tool that has been developed for them as a national organization to use for city manager, county executive type of design relations.

Christine and I work to edit that to be a little bit more specific for the TJPDC purposes.

That has all been completed.

Christine has used the same instrument you all will use to evaluate to complete a self-evaluation.

So she's already submitted that.

And so tomorrow I will be sending out to each commissioner the PDF file for the instrument.

It is one that you simply open and you type in your name and your location, and then you put in your rank score.

And I think, if I remember, it defaults to NA.

So for some new members, we had a conversation about if you feel like you're not

You don't feel like you have enough information to be able to score it.

You can just leave it blank.

It'll come back as an act.

It's a one, two, three scale.

Needs expectations, exceeds expectations, or is below expectations.

I think there's going to be like 10, 10 or 12 type of items.

I will send that out with Christine's self-evaluation.

So you will be able to see what she is or how she ranked herself.

And so that you can use that to do your own

Completion of the instrument.

Then I'll have you email those back to me directly.

I'm hoping that you will all have them back by 4.25.

That'll give me one week to compile the scores anonymously, put it all together in one so that you will have by the next TJPDC meeting where we do our actual in-person evaluation.

And it'll give Christine time to be able to review what everybody has said about us.

And again, anonymously,

If you want to identify or self-identify, that's your call, and it'll be in the report.

So for example, item one, there's, you know, all the commissioners will put all the scores you've received from each person without names attached to it, give her an average score, and then we'll have that to use to discuss.

If you can get it back and done by it, the sooner the better because the compilation took a little bit of time but the 25th gives me a week to chase down any stragglers who don't complete the tool and then to be able to skip that into the hands of the commissioners before the next commission.

Any questions on that process?

I appreciate Christine going through the instrument and working on it to help edit it to be a good opportunity.

Good thing to use and kind of formalize this evaluation over to the scoreboard for the positions.

I would just like to add that I also ask all staff to evaluate these in a little bit of a different instrument that gets more down into line item management type things.

Good.

All right.

The first thing I want to give is an administrative update.

As you guys know, we have three transportation planner vacancies.

That has caused quite a bit of strain on a very small organization to fill those gaps because we still have federal requirements that we have to meet.

So we've had an exceptional amount of staff taking on duties that are not their normal assigned duties.

Within the approved budget for FY24, I intend to compensate any staff members who have taken on additional duties with a temporary bump in increase in pay to compensate them for that additional work that they're doing.

It doesn't require any more funding that is already improved, but I want to make sure folks are getting paid for the additional work that they're doing on top of their additional duties.

Competence of Economic Development Strategy, we did receive the draft of that.

We have a 30-day statutory review period.

So that is out on our website.

It has been pushed out through multiple sources.

We do encourage you guys to go look at that report.

There's a lot of really great data in that report.

It will then come back before you all in May for a presentation and then for consideration for approval and adoption.

That grant does expire in mid-June, so it does require an adoption in the May meeting in order to meet our timeline for the grant.

And then the final updates, I'm not going to read to you because each month we give you the broadband numbers to date.

So that's with the executive director report.

If you have any questions on that, please reach out to us.

Any questions or comments for the

Executive Report.

All right.

Thank you, Christine.

All right.

The board will go into a closed meeting at this time.

I'm going to just read the motion, if that's all right.

I think I will move that the commission be convened to a closed session pursuant to the exemption found in Section 2.2, 3711A7, the Code of Virginia,

for consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to actual or probable litigation where such consultation or briefing an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body and pursuant to the exemption found in section 2.23711A8 of the Code of Virginia for consultation of the legal counsel employed or retained by a public body

regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

And then I'm going to do the roll call here, because there's an error on the sheet that was named.

As soon as I remember how to spell Phillips last name.

Oh, I did.

That's the name again.

There's a fashion over there.

and then we'll see.

Mr Payne is absent.

Mr. Goranjian?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Aye.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Higgins?

Aye.

Mr. Woodward?

Aye.

Mr. Reed?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

All right, thank you.

So we are in closed meeting.

Thank you, Ruth.

I, Ned Galloway, move for the petition to exit closed session.

That motion is seconded by Jesse Rutherford.

And I'll do roll call.

Stupain is absent, Mr. Dronzio?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Aye.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith is absent, Mr. Woodward?

Aye.

Mr. Goolsby?

Aye.

Mr. Higgins?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow is absent, Mr. Reed?

Aye.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Thank you.

And I, Ned Galloway, move that the Commission certify that, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matter lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and identified any notion authorizing the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session.

Is there a second?

I got Jesse for a second.

I know that we usually quote that to go in.

Well, of course it's, you know, it is a motion that while in closed session, you only discuss matters that you went in for, and the matters that you went in for are legal and authorized under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

So again, the motion was made by myself.

Seconded by Mr. Rutherford.

Mr. Payne is absent.

Mr. Goranzio?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Aye.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Mr. O'Brien?

Aye.

Mr. Smith is absent.

Mr. Woodward?

Aye.

Mr. Goolsby?

Aye.

Mr. Higgins?

Aye.

Mr. Barlow is absent.

Mr. Reed?

Aye.

and Mr. Rutherford.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

On the agenda, that puts us to number eight, other business.

We do have time.

Thank you for moving through that quickly.

But that brings us to the roundtable discussion by jurisdiction.

And I'll just start at the end down here, Mr. Goolsby.

We're going through the fiscal budget and I think we're set to make the full vote by April 23rd.

The process was short.

Some people happy, some people are not.

Greene County did receive like a three million dollar

Grant Thang, Bryce Reeves, and that committee for helping some toward this water project and source the ingredients for the, I was told, for the reservoir and then all the water line updates and the pump station and all that.

So all that slowly started to take shape and get finalized.

They advertise for what drops on their property and they cut in real estate tax for their living.

They advertise.

It's not fully voted on, but you can advertise.

A lot of people in Green County are very happy with their tax.

So yeah, that's, it's, it's over there.

It wants to get through their budget and all that, which I think pretty much every county, they renew the same thing.

Other than that, it's going on pretty good there.

That's some redevelopments coming in, but if you leave out those developments coming in, it was already been approved back from years ago and stuff, so.

Very good.

Mr. Higgins, anything to add?

I really have nothing to add to that.

Sure.

We are also in the latter days of our budget process.

We had, as our next rate, we started with a balanced budget.

We identified a few primarily about health and safety related issues, fire and police were a solid job in terms of additional expansion of the sheriff's office to support busing people, preparing them for their detention orders.

those all added a review bill to the budget and so with that there is an increase in the personal property tax that's been advertised as well as a one percent match to Charlottesville's transient occupancy tax.

We had staff, we worked with staff to kind of measure the specific amount that we were advertising for the increase in the personal property to be

basically the effective rate of before the decrease, which is something on the order of like a 60% return to where we had been.

In addition to that, just over the past few days, really past yesterday, we had quite a few land use related discussions.

We continue to work through our comprehensive plan.

There was a kind of an agreement to one day further discuss at some point

And actually retain language to consider, but to consider creative pathways for formal consideration of what expansion might look like while not triggering how it might proceed in there.

Additionally, just something that I'm, that I know is happening on the background, but is not really on the floor right now, but might be interested in this committee, both Sir Robert Galloway and myself,

We talked about how we recently significantly changed the Affordable Throwing Unit program to have pretty high standards, both for the number of units that are set aside and the level of affordability that's required, so 20 and 60.

There's a really ambitious and also there is a growing demand in an environment, especially in sectors of urban

and the number of subsidies that are available for development through significant increase and restructuring our funds.

My understanding is the next big step in giving there is going to be examine how we actually structure these into lieu, which goes hand in hand with that first policy, which is why I mention this is the ability of the developer to buy out of their requirements.

I don't know their current policies on that are very formalized or commonly used.

Well, I know they're not commonly used and I don't believe they're very formalized.

So getting that formalized where it actually is kind of sitting right there on a balanced fulcrum where there's an equal chance that someone might utilize a payment loop versus actually delivering affordable needs themselves is going to be a huge effort that I know our housing office is undertaking.

It's going to be very interesting as that comes online.

See how that really divvies out.

Some localities have a pay and lose scheme that brings up being the only option people lose.

And it's therefore ultimately how they get all their money.

Basically developers never want to do lose.

So it all goes to pay and lose.

So it all gets built by non-profit developers and others have a lower set of standards or a crappy pay and lose system.

So everything is built by private developers.

And we'll see how well we can get it.

The only thing I would add is our county executive, as you know, we had several fires, dozens of fires, and other counties were dealing with that.

We happened to be in session when that issue was happening, so we were able to deploy our local emergency right then and there as the county executive needed it.

But last night he gave us the report that our fire personnel and our emergency services were maxed out that day.

The having the declared local emergency allowed us to pull in resources from outside so other localities were able to come in that day and assist.

But we're going to be getting a full report on just what that meant maxed out to understand it further, which speaks to one of the items that we're adding in to our budget and looking for additional revenue for which is supporting volunteer in our North Southern Fire Department, but then also adding

and another full staff ambulance at our Seminole Trail, which is right off 29 at Berkmar, which is our busiest station.

But other counties I know were dealing with the same issue that day.

I know Madison especially was one specifically.

But it's interesting.

I was making a comment in the sidebar last night with another supervisor that we talk about emergency events as if they're these big significant deals like, oh, a hurricane.

or a big tornado or a earthquake.

But here we had a downed wire, electric wires that started a massive fire.

I'm sure some of the others were created for other reasons just because of the rotations of where they were at.

And that maxed out our capacity.

It wasn't a hurricane, it wasn't a tornado, it wasn't an airplane crash.

So the point that I was trying to make or sharing last night in my mind is that it's not these big emergency events that could necessarily max out your emergency personnel.

It could be as simple as somebody hooking a cigarette out of one of them at the right time.

And the next thing you know, your personnel and your surrounding county's personnel, if you now had a tractor trailer wreck on I-64 and they're all at battle and fires, do you have the capacity to make a deal with that situation?

I'll be curious to see the County Executive's report on that and what that meant and then what that means for our budget and trying to go for personnel, personnel land.

Thank you.

Well, we're trying to get our budget wrapped up as well.

Included in that budget is what Ned just talked about with Byron EMS,

And the biggest problem we have is probably the same as most everybody has is giving the people that come and do the job.

I mean, it's just, I don't care what kind of service you're involved with, man, it's just hard to get people that much less qualified.

I mean, obviously everybody's seeking the best, but same way, we've got, I think it's six full-time positions that we're funding

Dolan right on top here, maybe eight part-time positions, something like that.

But well, we'll be able to find those people.

I don't know.

And we're finding out that firing the U.S. this fast, but coming probably, if you take the school systems out, system out, it's going to become pretty quickly, probably our largest budget leader, as far as the candidate department's concerned.

But I think it came

Once you decide to get a paid in the pool area, you can't turn and go, no, you made that commitment and you better be willing to go into the pool.

So those are the types of things.

We also had an emergency situation in Louisa.

Same day, about 200 acres burned, burned a building in Twin Oaks.

The common unit's been there since back in the 60s.

I think it's the most successful common unit in the country, at least at one time.

they lost a pretty good-sized building over there and thank goodness we didn't lose any dwellings.

But there was down in actually where Mr. Barlow lives down in the eastern, southeastern part of the county, a lady that is a retired clerk of the juvenile domestic relations court lost her house not because of a, not sure what, but you know, it's been one related building to the Orange County, something like that.

Nobody was injured but she lost everything she had.

So anyway but that really taxed you know they were already at that fire fighting it and so just fortunately I mean we've got really great neighbors in the counties and they were thinking at least I think three or four other counties, Blue Anna, Goochland, I think Hanover, somebody said some stuff like that too.

Anyway, but we did declare a state of emergency because of that and some shelter.

I think we had about eight families, six or eight families that paid to the shelter.

Later on that night, they didn't have to spend the night at the shelter.

Thank you.

City, Mr. Daronto.

So, just for a change of pace, I thought I'd discuss the conclusion of our budget season.

So, the

Final work session, either for the city, as I've just ended, where everyone in that room is really hoping it's going to end in a second.

And most of the, and I will admit, I have not been as focused on that as I have been in the past years, just because of professionally, I've been going wide open, shows wide open for the last three years, I mean, many times.

But most of the dangling issues, of course, the deficit with school needs and decisions about changes to the taxes, et cetera, most of that's going to be established.

I painted my consensus tonight, so I can't report on that.

As far as other matters in the city, which I'm paying attention to, that's on the housing side,

Happy to talk to you about our brand, it being a new system.

Do I know if it works?

No.

Go ahead.

You probably won't for five years.

But we have on our larger projects, sometimes those fees in lieu have been discussed at the dais and are sort of

Customized at the moment, which I'm sure is probably an absolutely horrible way to manage that, but it ends up being done that way anyway.

We are moving forward with our land bank, processing these events out in the subcommittee of the housing advisory committee to handle that.

I have a question.

actually for commission staff.

How much actual home money the city is getting?

Period, because we've been waiting on the famous email to actually buy one.

Yeah, OK.

So the CBBG task force has postponed to get it underway with final numbers and we didn't make allocations.

and I'm sure there's a rash of other things, but again, I think we can go to the chair's letter.

Thank you.

We're, you know, finishing up our budget season.

It's actually been a relatively smooth budget season, which is unbelievable, and nice for the two of you supervisors.

We'll actually be flat in terms of our unassessed

School's request was fully funded.

So we're seeing it so far as needed.

But we seem to be down to the last $180,000 of how we're going to spend it.

And we'll probably go towards the Sheriff's Department to try to increase pay there.

Despite having done a salary study and having done the pay increases, it's kind of a revolving door.

We did that just two or three years ago, two and a half years ago.

And we were, I think, in the middle of the pack, and now we're in the bottom of the pack.

and everybody knows that agreeing for first responders is very challenging and seems to be a door that you can't you can't you can't keep close you know it's always open in the sense that you're always trying to find somebody to come in.

So that's kind of what we are as far as the budget goes.

In a sense there's a little bit of tax relief for the citizens because property personal property values

We passed an ordinance formalizing short term rentals.

In my opinion, a little bit too restrictive.

We've only been able to do this prior to 10 acres.

So that's kind of small, I think, in terms of what they could do.

And they were going to be into three bedrooms.

And only two people per bedroom, two else per bedroom.

That was really interesting.

You know, that's a really good question.

Can I ask that question?

Can I ask that of my fellow people?

It seemed to me that we were looking for the problem of doing this issue right now.

The concern was, you know, you have these free crawls that Louisa County gets out late there.

We have $20,000 to show off, and we lay it past.

It was just all in there.

I once got into the argument with the health department.

They were arguing about people in the house.

And they said, you know, the health department quantifies two people per bedroom.

That's based off of water and sewer usage.

I said, okay, do you manage that on all residents in the whole community?

Our residents are just people who rent homes.

So because this family has a family of eight with two parents.

Oh, we have grandparents over there too.

Oh, yeah.

So that's the thing we're moving forward with our committee to evaluate our ordinances for solar, industrial-scale solar and smaller-scale solar, things like setbacks, spaces between those.

We have a fire in one of the solar farms recently.

respond adequately in understanding where the wiring was.

We can't really turn anything off the slide all the time.

Interesting approach though, we'll see how that comes out as being a demand for the planning commission.

Again, with this committee of two planning commission members, two board members, so you're coming up with some solutions and ideas for both of those programs.

So we'll see how that plays out.

Other than that, pretty quiet, yeah.

Mr. Rieden with Nelson County.

Briefly, Jesse will follow me.

Next week, we have a comprehensive plan approval considered at our board supervisor meeting.

I see you don't have consensus.

It's like six hours later.

Well, anyways, don't worry, I'm amassing the population of Nelson County and we've got the finest

Hellos, feathers, and we're gonna use in the event, and I'll be tarred and feathered from all of the sea.

You wanna see the spectacle on April the 11th.

Anyways, we'll see what happens.

Con plan, yes, it's already said we gotta get

I don't know why, but even there's not.

We're on monthly 25 at that point.

And I don't want to, I mean, I know, I'm just saying, we're not Charlottesville, but I think I'm confident now.

I'm ready to do zoning and get that done.

But Ernie, I'm sure it's the same.

That's going to be a big deal.

We're going to have to see that.

I don't really have much to do with that.

It's kind of just bad.

I mean, I did the San Bernardino during a bunch of seasons.

Boyse Ass, the county administrator, would present the inflation adjusted tax rate, which is always very interesting now.

Some counties, of course, don't equalize.

They just kind of keep the rate flat near the majority of the utilization.

But where will you adjust our tax rate for inflation going back to 2018?

If only we knew the difference between the size and the price of the house.

Who here this year is the state officially pulling money away from?

I know they're pulling money away from Gotthold schools.

I know Nelson.

I bet.

I don't think they're giving any more, but I don't think they're taking any more money either.

Are you like that?

We got a Captain Roan population pretty good there.

We have one of the five schools closed.

There's so many guttings that I'm going to show you somewhere, some district.

All right.

How are we going to end this?

Well, you know, it's an arrangement passed on, I think the meeting is April 3rd, and so there's been some legal back and forth between, you know, what they're requesting of us and what we're requesting of them.

And, you know, the SEC will recognize that what's being asked by us was maybe outside, you know, pretty much everywhere else.

And it is outrageous.

So I hope that it ends up not going up at all.

And we can add an update to answer your question.

I've been extremely selfish to reason that I've shared this task force.

No, not at this time.

I can optimistically say I penciled it in for your May meeting to look at the plan, but that doesn't mean we'll know anything by then.

I am coming out tomorrow and head out back by 4.45 immediately because I'll put all those instructions or reminders in there.

And then for Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Pruitt, we did appoint Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Goolsby, and Mr. Payne to the nominating committee for the leadership positions.

And then we'll have the sets planned and we will be doing closed session to do the executive director evaluation at the next meeting as well.

All those in favor say aye.