Planning District Commission Meeting   5/2/2024

Tristan Plankton, Jonathan Plankton, Timothy Herbert, Thursday, May 17, 2020, 4-7 p.m. in-person meeting.

And let's see, Tony is going to be joining a little late.

And once he does, we will have to take the electronic vote participation when he joins, but he is not on the list yet.

And we can move to comments from the public.

Is there anyone online who wishes to give public comments?

Sean had to give a public comment in a minute.

And that will take us to item three presentation.

We have the TJPDC comprehensive economic development strategy plan for SEDS.

You can say that we got our money's worth.

So over the last year, we've had Des Moines associates working with us develop a comprehensive economic development strategy.

All right, everyone, I hope can hear me okay.

If not, just stop me.

But like Ruth said, Dan and I are here today to

really give you a high level overview of sort of where we've been in this process just to appreciate all the work that did go into this and why this is such a valuable document.

We really wanna highlight that as we hope that the commission will move to adopt it and just demonstrate the value that it's gonna have moving forward for the group.

So,

Basically what I just outlined, let's set some of the contacts, understand what's in the plan.

I know that it is part of your packet.

It was available for the 30-day comment period, which the EDA sanctions that just ended last Saturday, I believe.

So we got some good comments, but we're not going to go through item by item today since you all have access to that.

We're happy to answer any questions on specifics.

We'll go through at the high level, talk about implementation, talk about how this

We have a report and action items move forward.

That's gonna be a group effort.

It is not just the TJPDC that's responsible for that.

So that's the good news.

And then we'll talk about next steps and where we go from here.

So I had the pleasure of having a conversation with all of you a while ago at this point.

I know Ruth has been giving updates.

But again, just to sort of center what a SEDS is, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, it is truly a document that is based in thinking regionally for economic development.

Now, obviously across this region, we've got very different priorities and characteristics and factors that affect the entire region.

So we're not looking to do economic development the same in all of these areas, but we are looking to pick up on opportunities that touch multiple parts of the region, really think about sharing resources and amplifying the strengths, assets that the region does have.

Some opportunities I think it's important to point out with the SEDS.

We, through this process, with many, many stakeholders involved along the way, have set a regional vision for shared economic development goals.

So again, those are going to apply differently throughout the region, but

We're working toward the shared goal and that is going to help in terms of being able to leverage funding opportunities, determining what's the right fit for different parts of the region.

This is a regional document.

It does not supersede or come before any of the local work that's been done.

All of the local economic developers were great in contributing to this.

This, again, is meant to amplify the work that they're doing but does not in any way sort of take over what they're doing.

Through a lot of these efforts of the actions that we'll talk about, we are looking to grow existing industries, the backbone of the existing community, emerging industries that might be bubbling up today.

This is a five-year

We want to look beyond today, tomorrow, and really think about those industries and jobs that might look a little bit different today.

This is also an opportunity to look at large scale infrastructure investments.

The SEDS is really setting, has a potential to set up the region to be able to access significant infrastructure funds when those arise at the EDA or other federal agencies.

And so that's one of those action items that sort of touches multiple parts of the region and can have a big impact.

Just a highlight of, again, all of the work that has gone into this since February of 2023.

So we've got our about 30 person or so said committee that helped us along the way.

We worked on a pretty significant economic data analysis.

All of that is a resource for this group and any of the other stakeholders to use from demographics, industry, occupation, resilience, a lot of good data to use in there.

interviews, one-on-ones, focus groups, site visits to the region, got to go through each of the localities, a business survey, this public comment period where we got some pretty thoughtful comments to think about for the whole document and then the commission itself.

One of the components of the document and required by the EDA and really helps us think about

The different components of an overall economy was a SWOT analysis.

And so this just sort of summarizes a lot of those key components that the EDA looks for in the SEDS.

We did that at the regional level, so the TJPDC region as a whole, and then also broke it down by locality since there is such differentiation across the region.

The different colors here indicate the perceived

Need or opportunity to work in that particular area.

So green was a lower perceived need, meaning that item might be doing pretty well in any of the particular localities or across the region.

And then to the other side of the scale is the orange, which indicates that this is an area that really could be strengthened or grown or expanded through our strategies.

So that takes us to the summary of the goals and strategies.

Overall, just to put it in perspective for you, so we've got these four goal areas, which I'll just summarize briefly here, 10 strategies, so those are the letters underneath the goals, and then 44 actions.

So I think just the way to think about it, like those 10 strategies, 1A, 1B, 1C, those are the direction that we want to head for each of these strategies.

And so when you're thinking across the five years or trying to boil down what the strategy really comes down to, I think this is a good page to keep coming back to.

Goal area one is really focused on our existing industries, our emerging industries, leveraging those market opportunities both within and capturing market, perhaps outside of the region, and overall expanding economic potential.

Goal two is focused on workforce.

You know, there's not one conversation that we have today that isn't workforce related in some way with the business.

And so really throughout this process, the workforce actions have actually already started to develop with some of the regional partners.

And so that's exciting to see in terms of getting the private sector involved a little bit more.

And so there's already quite a bit of work going on in this space and really harnessing that attention, focusing on specific industries and occupations.

That's what that goal is all about.

Goal three,

focuses on the community and placemaking side of the economy.

So from our transportation hubs to our housing, to our downtowns and main streets, they play such an important role in this region's economy.

At the in-person meeting, I guess in February, we talked a little bit about with one participant how

Some of these strategies apply to some of the more rural locations across the region.

And so, right, it's exciting to see when a community sees themselves in some of these strategies.

Last one here is investing in components of infrastructure that are going to enable business development opportunities.

So, site readiness, right, the ability to have

A site that is ready to build on and welcome a business.

Clearly so important to be able to both grow from within and attract from outside the region.

And so that is a big focus.

And again, an area that has a lot of work going on in it, but this seeks to coordinate that and again, focus on your target markets and emerging industries as well.

With those goal areas and strategies, we needed a way to think about, you know, there's our limited time and resources.

How do we think about where we start with any of these?

And so what we did was work on a scale of

Again, like left to right here.

So an emergent strategy, something was designated as emergent if it was really in its infancy and needed a little bit more work in terms of actual conceptualization and the stakeholders involved in leading that.

So those are the strategies that need a little bit more work to come along.

The evolving strategies, they need a clear leader and resource allocation, but there is some

maybe existing work going on in that particular area and then to the right in the green those launch-ready strategies those are the ones that you know really have partners behind them that maybe have the right time place and funding and those are the ones that are ready to be executed so that they can move forward.

So there's a lot of

Movement I'd say in between each of these categories, but important to all of those strategies that we just looked at on the last page.

Each of those are categorized in one of these three areas.

And again, just to get your heads around where we start and what do we need to move forward, where do resources need to be devoted to make sure we advance these important strategies.

implementation.

So we've got this great plan, this great strategy.

And the question is, where do we go from here?

How do we ensure over these next five years that we are successful?

And so there's a couple different ways just to highlight here.

The SEDS committee is still

essentially going to function as a body that keeps this document up to date.

So meeting at least once a year to gather around the summaries, those strategies and goal areas that I mentioned to update and really keep track of the progress that has been made.

In order to help that conversation, we envision a implementation committee that has already been

discussed with the partners that would be involved.

Those are really some of the core economic development leaders within the region.

And this is work that they're all working on day in and day out.

So they are really important in terms of moving these items forward.

On the right-hand side of your screen, you can see partners in action.

This list of 25 to 30 or so partners really just shows that this is not on the TJPDC to strictly implement.

They are the convener, owner of the document would perhaps be the conduit for federal funds or certain funding, but ultimately there is, and this is just a beginning list essentially right of the partners that would be involved.

I anticipate as the strategies evolve over the course of five years that this list would continue to grow and grow.

Another part of the implementation and keeping track of progress, of course,

is metrics.

How are we going to know that we're successful year to year that might look a little bit different in terms of when data is collected and reported and things like that.

Qualitative and quantitative is going to be important, but we boiled down three metrics for each goal area

to keep track of.

And again, partners would be involved in helping to track this.

They may be adjusted or grow along the way, but we do think that this will be important.

One of the aspects of the SEDS that the EDA mandates is that there's a annual update every year.

And so these metrics I imagine will be reported on that annual update along with any

O'Brien.

So again, notable progress on the strategies in addition to any adaptations or refinements to the overall plan as well.

Well, I think you've done a good job.

With metrics, you'll note here there are

Some metrics that are output related, meaning it's tracking activity, our partners doing what they should be doing and our clients being served, and then outcome.

Larger indicators as to whether you're really moving the needle in terms of, you know,

The changing conditions.

So for instance, building permits by locality, that's not put.

But the labor force participation rate would be more of an outcome.

So we were very cognizant about that and trying to make sure that these are easily tracked, that it doesn't require a data analytics specialist to be able to do this.

The commission and their partners can be able to do that.

The only other thing that I would add, just to stress the importance of having this SEDS on hand, we keep talking about how this is required by the Economic Development Administration of the US Department of Commerce.

But it's been around for about 50 years.

And it really helps the federal government prioritize

where funds should be distributed when they're requested by different states and localities.

If you have a sense in place, it sends a signal that you've thought through what the priorities of the region ought to be.

So when a request comes along, they can tie it to this kind of a process.

And it is used not only by the Department of Commerce, but by Department of Labor and transportation and other entities.

It is an indicator that the region is doing all that it can to get its act together.

And just as one example, during the pandemic, the federal government had to move money out to communities to help deal with businesses that were in need.

And if you had a sense and you were an economic development district,

Immediately $450,000 appeared in your regional planning commission's budget to establish a revolving loan for businesses.

And that's money that's going to continue for decades, really.

Well, the region didn't have the sets in place.

And, you know, so this is a first step.

Thanks, Jan.

I'll talk about one more component of the plan and then I will pause for any comments, questions.

Some of you may remember that the other part of this process, which is quite novel actually, is working across the boundary lines of the TJPDC into the Rappahannock-Rapidon region and to work with the Go Virginia region nine

Council to develop super regional strategies.

And so those are further looking at the overlap of potential

potential economic growth that could touch both of the regions.

And so between both of the SEDS committees, all of our stakeholder meetings, working with local economic developers across both of the regions.

Again, this is just the summary here of those goal areas that are associated with the super regional.

There is a plan in place to figure out exactly how to work these into the

growth plan for Go Virginia to figure out how to essentially advance these strategies at that level.

You'll notice that some of these are a really good fit for Go Virginia, industry-based, workforce-based, things like that.

There are a couple that we felt were opportunities

at that super regional level, but that are not necessarily Go Virginia related.

So housing toward them, right?

Not necessarily the focus of Go Virginia.

However, again, having this in place, identifying those shared opportunities, it's a good, again, guiding document to have, should there be an opportunity to leverage these strategies.

So that is a quick overview.

Just to be respectful of time, you can see here there's a couple of important dates coming up.

Rabbahannock's SEDS is currently out on their 30 day review period until mid-May.

We will do some final wrap up with the SEDS committee, a little bit similar to what we're doing here and talk about next steps and moving forward and what implementation looks like.

We'll go to

Go Virginia, talk about their super regional strategies, talk with the Central Virginia Partnership and their role in this as well.

Continue that conversation, I should say, because they've been highly involved in this whole process.

And then the annual reporting to EDA would be one of those next steps.

And I should say I was remiss in saying that the role of the set.

One other thing is that nonprofit organizations that are in this area, in the region,

can also look to the SEDS to see if it aligns with their priorities as they seek federal funding as well.

So it doesn't all have to go through the region, but the fact that the region has coordinated this is what's very important.

I have one comment.

And I did read through it with a lot of interesting information, especially around the different sectors that are growing.

And at least my interpretation, it seems like a lot of the more traditional blue collar professions are declining.

And a lot of the growth areas either require advanced degrees or be in the service sector.

So I know we're voting on this.

I don't have an amendment or anything.

I guess this is just amusing.

But I wondered if one of the strategies that would be worthwhile explicitly pointing towards like the community wealth thing aimed at making sure as many people as possible actually can benefit from this economic growth.

Because I just wondered, would a lot of these strategies, given the growth industries, not reach people who have just a high school diploma or an associate's degree?

Actually, to sort of follow along, this may be a process and data question, but in digging in some of the metrics here for changes in employment by type, and this is not the first time I've noticed this, but there seems to be this ever growing category of general managers.

and not general managers, maybe dealerships, generally management type jobs, but it's really difficult to parse with that exactly.

If you look at your numbers there and the percentages, that seems to be a whole lot of cheats and ultimately the Indians, if all of those people are managers.

So I'm sort of curious, that might just be an evolving, maybe manager is a great word,

maybe his general white collar job over the event.

So that was really curious to me.

And then you have something in politics founded on, you didn't think this was a priority, but this military and defense corridor that were popping in here seems to be worth pursuing.

And of course, you know, the wind carrying is where that ends.

Hepstones, and so on.

Is it?

Just to make sure we heard you correctly, is the question a little bit of the generation of the super regional strategy around the defense and intelligence industry corridor, where that came about?

Yeah.

And again, we're talking about the issue of job growth and the growth of employment here, but it seems, I mean,

It seems that it's largely going to be driven by federal employees, either Indian or not, to be located.

Not to say there aren't job shops, you know, every corner, there's a shop up there, but if you can just understand how we end up, it seems to be

From the discussion, it seems like it was a johnny come late to the evaluation.

But now we are taking a closer look at it.

How did that come about?

And what are we really talking about in terms of that?

So I yeah, I can give a I can give a

I'm going to start with that and then Dan, you might want to jump in.

That came about really through talking about some of the strengths of the region and some of the assets that it has in terms of its geography and the existing

The existing federal agencies in the region and their prospects at growing, right?

So particularly land in Greene, Albemarle, obviously Rivanna Station, and Charlottesville, along with

other components, I would say, right, obviously into Culpeper, Orange, Backhear, to really this corridor that has pieces of the defense and intelligence industry.

And I think they're sort of a right time, right place in terms of

How do we strategically think about coordinating this?

And it's certainly going to involve those larger federal players.

However, the

sort of smaller business infrastructure around that certainly has opportunities as well.

So there's definitely a scale I would say of the type of job worker that would be associated with those different kinds of training, education that could be available in the region.

Let me try and I apologize because I seem to be picking up every other word, but I'm getting the gist.

This first originated as a super original because in

Williams, the Rappahannock-Rapidin area, Fauquier County in particular, was seeing a lot of movement in terms of defense contractors coming out of Northern Virginia looking for a lower cost environment in which to locate and realize that they

could be in region nine and not more closer to the outside of the Vienna and Tysons area.

And so we began looking at this and then realized that in the Charlottesville area, there were a lot of companies that fell into this category.

It's kind of like the crossover between defense and intelligence, which is cybersecurity largely these days.

and a lot of IT firms, some manufacturing and a lot of R&D.

In fact, the UVA Business Park has quite a few of these kinds of companies.

And so you had both at the southern end of Region 9 and then at the very furthest northern end, you had this concentration.

And so we were trying to figure out how can we really leverage both sides of this to build out a corridor so that the counties in between can see some more of these higher technology companies that are going to drive the future.

We call it defense, but really it's not federal employees, and it's not always just federal contractors, but it is intelligence

that is, that feeds into that whole industry sector.

It does a bit.

I just started turning it over in my head.

So in February of 2023, there is a defense industry economic impact on the Charlottesville region report that was done by the Walden Cooper Center that would be worth looking into.

It specifically mentions the growth over the last 50 years of that industry within the region.

There are currently over 100 employers in that sub industry.

And it's everything from software development for government contracting to intelligence to

Research and Development Education.

And in fact, we include some information in the Super Regional Strategy about growth over the past year and just in job numbers.

And when it's growing at a rapid pace,

It's categorized as emerging and it's showing that the Charlottesville region in particular is emerging in this space and it shows in the Rappahannock area that it is present.

meaning that it's been occurring for quite some time.

So you have growth in terms of numbers of new jobs and they're higher paying jobs that are happening.

We're saying designate this, make it a real thing and grow it out because that's going to have spinoff value into many different kinds of industries, not just defense, but

All right, thanks.

The only other comment I have besides the fact that we're putting forth the narrative that statistically there is 0% Asian people in this region, which struggles a little weird.

I think something to kind of add on to this as we look as a region you know of course we're talking about career technical education on time that's huge need and I'm part of numerous trade organizations and construction and we solicit scholarships and we advertise pretty directly the demographics as well as the schools for

And we got zero applications.

You know, when you talk about blue collar, I mean, and I, I have had to adjust my view of what that means now, because my father used to be a software developer in Charlottesville or software fabricator in Charlottesville in the nineties.

And which he said, he's like, I was the equivalent of blue collar.

And just to happen, I worked with circuit boards.

And so what does that translate to here?

That is that defense context.

That is cyber security.

That is, you're starting to see that turned into, you know, what is your now telephone line person?

And those guys, well, now they're running fire, you know?

And I think when we kind of envisioned that as us as region one, you know, the demographics, how do you get the demographics to be that, you know, welding,

Harris Wingen, you know, hard paper.

Yeah.

I mean, it is actually so near impossible.

It's sad.

You know, we're dependent on demographics that we are moving here from more countries as well as, you know, in the south side of Virginia, if there wasn't a mass migration of Amish from Lancaster, Delaware, and Illinois,

There would be very little new construction housing happening in Southside Central and Southwest Virginia, which is a weird mess, which no one's talking about on an economic basis.

So, you know, I err on the side of we have to be thinking about blue collar from that, you know, there's still a desk.

Because you're not finding the demographics that will work that, you know, brick and mortar kind of

Hanging Sticks, Pudding Roofing On, exactly.

Well, I mean, but you have to look at American historically, you know, the Crozet Tunnel, you know, that Nelson County has, which at the time of its completion was the largest tunnel at its time.

You know, it was built by Irish immigrants.

You know, America has that history that goes back hundreds of years.

And the only time we were self-sufficient with our

and that was a very brief window as you watched demographics, technology change and all that.

So when I think about economic factors, I look at Nelson County in different ways.

I'm like, yeah, they work from home, they're nurses, they're teachers, they're police, but in terms of attracting a factory, in terms of attracting those entities, that's something

Battlewood in my mind is if I built, if we attracted Nelson a 400 job producing, which is insane, so let's bring it down to a hundred, well, just a hundred, which doesn't take a big building to accomplish that, that is fabricating or building some type of thing, we would struggle to find people to fill those chairs.

It's just a fact.

I mean, currently in Nelson, there's not a contractor that's short.

Jackers Building Houses.

So translate that into something of that nature.

Well, then you got to figure out the education piece.

Then you got to assume those, when that entity comes, that you're going to have the students who want to be educated to do that.

I took the Nelson County class, which is like 110-ish, between 100 and 125.

50% are going to some form of higher education, and they're never going back to Nelson.

And then there's five to ten that are going to go into the military, all right?

Plus then they're going to go do that and they're going to find new lives.

And then you get further into that, you get that 30 to 40 kids.

Well, I'll be honest, those 20 of those 30 to 40 are going to go work for dad's harm, you know.

Moms Parlor, or whatever it is, they got some kind of big root job and lifestyle that keeps them here.

And then you're really advertising to 15 to 30 kids on some of these jobs.

And those 15 to 30 kids, they don't know what they really want to do.

And it's hard to do a welding class because of those 30.

And that's not saying that women

Can't be welders, but typically in Nelson, it's the larger son who becomes a welder, but 15, three or four are willing to do that, maybe, just to get the class and get the experience.

So I often struggle when I think about that, like, how is it that we can attract when we don't have the demographics to fill the seats?

And we can't attract the demographics to fill the seats unless you figure out a housing problem, because that's astronaut.

Well, now we have 957, which I guess is...

I don't know.

I think that's all the answers, though.

I have a question on slide 20 of the addendum.

We've got all the good help with names.

I want to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly, but it looks like we are, while we're experiencing growth in professional, scientific, technological services and healthcare, we are not, like that quotation quotient is someone, which I understand means that we are being outpaced on that growth nationally, which goes against what I would say is the popular anecdotal understanding of the job market locally.

Oh, we're really kings of tech girls and health services.

We've got the, you know, cutting edge hospital right next door.

I believe, let me go to 62.

I can just switch this up here for everyone too.

So location quotient actually, it doesn't speak to the pace of growth, it speaks to the concentration of the industry in a particular area compared to the US levels.

So hold on, let me get this up here.

So,

If we're looking at the gray bottom right quadrant, these are the emerging industries, the categories that Dan was alluding to.

So those emerging industries, they have positive job growth.

So they're on this side of the axis, but they don't have a location quotient greater than one meeting.

They aren't particularly specialized in the region.

If something is high up on this vertical axis, this is the location quotient, so zero at the bottom here, three at the top.

Anything above typically like a 1.25 is sort of considered

I mean, I've seen them into like 600 and things if something's like very, very niche.

Anyways, all of that to say that this is a way to keep, you know, there's no necessarily sweet spot for growth and for location quotient, but it helps to understand

The assets around a particular industry, if something is highly specialized, then do those surrounding industries have another application or if it's so specialized, is the economy overly reliant on that one industry?

So lots of different ways to look at this, but for professional and scientific in general,

You can see the growth around 10% and a location quotient, you know, a little less than one.

I still don't think that actually gets at the meat of what I was curious about, which is that it just seems to defy, I would say, the anecdotal thinking on the region that I encountered, that I frankly came here with before I had fed the stock, you know,

And I guess I don't understand, is what I'm saying.

I don't understand what it is about the TJPDC region that makes us so heavily concentrated in utilities and government service, but not apparently concentrated in health and science when we have a scientific defense industry that we've been talking about all this time.

in terms of how the industries are classified.

So that is why the size of the bubble is so big.

That indicates overall job count.

So that's the healthcare education positions in there along with your sort of local public sector as well.

And that utilities being so concentrated as well, but relatively small in terms of the bubble size.

So relatively small in terms of jobs, but very, very specialized.

That's where

That explains it, but to look at that graph and to see the government bubble doesn't at all break that information out and take a look at it.

They also draw their tech from UDA or DOD.

Right.

And then, again, not knowing where that line is, I don't know how far attenuated you have to be as a governor to still be the gov box versus the science and tech box.

So if you've been sitting at the Scoot Show, I think when you're at the Booz Allen or the Governor's box.

Yeah, if I'm going to get in contact, I have my IC badge, my governor, my whatever.

OK.

There certainly is a lot of context.

I know it's quite dense.

The data report in particular does address the exact conversation topics that we are getting at.

We always wish it was more clear-cut than necessarily maybe how it's measured, but we do go into some detail in terms of some of those nuances particular to

The area, particularly with the EVA and the educational institutions, right?

Any other comments?

We have past time on this item.

The questions I have were relative to more just understanding the data and the info, so I'll do some follow up on that just electronically.

Just trying to understand it specifically, some stuff for Albemarle.

This is an action item.

We have a resolution that was included in the packet to adopt the 2024 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy.

There are motions to do that.

Is there a second to do that?

All right.

Motion has been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

All right.

Thank you.

I see that.

Thank you, Alex.

Thank you, guys.

Appreciate you.

Alright Commission, we have Mr. O'Brien looks to join.

Where'd he go?

Oh there he is.

Mr. O'Brien, we have not taken the action to allow you to participate electronically yet.

Could you just state your location and your reason for participating electronically?

Tony, were you able to hear me?

You're muted if you did.

All right, we're going to let you just listen in and we will deal with that when you get in a safe spot.

All right.

Assume that he can hear.

So number 3B is the 2024 legislative report presentation.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, and I'll try to help make up some time by being very brief.

There was a, or is a memo in your packet, just summarizing that very briefly.

As you know, the General Assembly adjourned in early March, adopted a budget.

Governor proposed a ton of amendments at the 11th hour.

Governor and the General Assembly decided to take a step back.

They are supposedly talking, now trying to come to some agreement on a budget for the next two years, next two fiscal years, that can be presented when the General Assembly convenes in about 10 days, May the 13th, I believe.

It's been kind of crickets, which is kind of typical when you get folks spread out all over the state behind closed doors.

But as I said in the memo, I think the first thing that they have to do is decide where they are on the revenues before, you know, in terms of primarily the digital services tax before they can go to the appropriations side.

I've noted in the memo there are a couple of local budget items that were included in the General Assembly approved budgets, money for harmful algal blooms in Lake Anna, some money for water impoundment in Greene County.

So reached out to both counties and asked for some self-advocacy with the budget folks, just to reassure them, you know, on that.

asked that that be included in the final budget.

City of Charlottesville had a successful legislative initiative, increased the caps for council members, something that hadn't been done for 20 some years, 20, between 25 and 30 years.

And then probably the biggest downer that we saw here in the region and across the state, many local governments were supporting the bills to allow for a one set sales tax for school construction if approved in a local referendum.

Bills were passed by both the House and the Senate to do that if the bills were written.

I don't know that that will become part of the budget negotiation that's going on now.

And if not, I think we are safe to say that those bills will come back again next year.

And then finally, I just noted some things that are kind of in the future here in the coming months as we work through the summer and fall.

The JLAC report on K-12 funding came out last summer.

There's a joint subcommittee with legislators.

It's going to be taking a look at those recommendations more closely in the interim.

So it may be that we see a package of recommendations coming to the next General Assembly session.

I put in here that the JLARC was going to have its meeting next week to set their work plan.

They've canceled that meeting.

One of the things they kind of have on the radar with all the money that has come into the state in the past couple of years for broadband is to step back and take a look at that.

And then I'll just skip down to solar.

We had a number of bills this past session.

I think there's going to continue to be a lot of discussion here in the off-season about solar, particularly how that fits into the Clean Economy Act that was adopted back in 2020.

Where lines are drawn for how we're going to reach

And those goals, what's local authority going to be on solar, a lot of moving parts on that.

We'll keep you updated.

I'll stop there.

One out of pure laziness, maybe notice off the top of your head, legislation to allow localities to set speed limits under lower than 25 miles an hour.

I believe there was an amendment

proposed to that bill by the governor.

I'd love to go back and look and see if the amendment was accepted or if it was rejected by the general assembly.

I've got that on my computer.

I'll let you know.

David, this is Johnny.

I had a question about your thoughts on

Yeah, I think it's really kind of too early to say, you know, none of those bills that were going to, you know, eat into local authority were put by for the year, you know, the housing commission is going to be looking at some, the Senate Agriculture Committee is going to be looking at some other things and

You know, I think you're going to have your advocates on both sides of that issue, and if there's going to be some compromise, it doesn't come until probably late this year, heading into the next session.

If there's no compromise, then you go into battle again.

Okay, thank you.

And let's do this just because we'll have them in there.

But since he's driving, I know that Tony is in Virginia and he is driving back to Fluvanna tonight.

So that is his location and the reason for participating electronically.

Can I have a motion to allow Supervisor O'Brien to participate electronically?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

All right.

Mr. O'Brien is officially in the meeting.

Houston Baderin.

Number four, the consent agenda.

We have the minutes of April 4th, 24 and the minutes of April 4th, closed session.

Any changes, edits, corrections to those minutes?

Hearing none, is there a motion to approve both of those sets of minutes?

Second.

Is there a second?

All right, we have a motion and a second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

All right.

And then, we will move to the Barnes Financial Report.

So, you had something like that?

Okay.

She's behind you.

Current net quick assets, as of the end of March, we're just under $124 million.

We have surpassed our goal of having five months of operating on hand.

We have just over $720,000 in capital reserve on hand.

March's net gain was $40,588.

You'll note the body pass-through for March was just shy of 5 million, largest to date.

And you'll see in the executive director's report later that those passings are starting to increase more rapidly now that some of the engineering and design work is done.

And we're starting to see the construction come through.

We're starting to see a real uptick on the federal funds and the local matches coming through.

And then there was a strong financial month again.

Questions about the financial reports for March?

For a motion to accept the March financial report.

Or the consent agenda.

We did them individually, so calling that one out now.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

Aye.

Thank you, Tonya.

Yes.

First and foremost, thank you all.

I feel like I've learned everything that I know from Tom.

I don't like him.

Anyways, we had a brief meeting.

We realized that one of our members probably would be a officer potential.

So we fired him from the committee.

So Mr. Payne said he was not able to attend that way.

So one of the, how we were kind of looking at the slate was having Tony as chair, Mr. Michael Payne as vice chair,

Keith Smith as treasurer, and I believe it's Ruth as secretary.

Right, or is it you, Christine?

All right, we will take Christine as secretary.

That keeps us with the tradition of the rural-urban swapping.

It also spreads some of the representation to different

We also do have a large amount of membership that is new.

We still need action on the sleep in June if everybody's wondering a little bit.

I guess if you're in disagreement with it.

It's a great time to talk.

You can call Jesse if you have any objections or anything to those right now.

That was all my idea, actually.

Oh, we appreciate you doing that, Jesse.

It's good to get the slate together so that we'll be all set up for June.

And I don't hear any objecting, so very good.

We'll go to new business item B, 2024 Community Development Block Grant Regional Priorities.

And this was revised, so there were the hard copies distributed.

Yep, okay, so each year the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development reaches out to the 21 Planning District Commissions so that they can begin to anticipate any applications that may come in in the upcoming year.

So we then reach out to all six staff in our local governments to see what they might be thinking along the lines of CDBG.

By putting the project on this list, it does not commit anyone to apply.

It just says there is the potential that there is a project related to this.

Charlottesville would not be included because they are already a, it's what I'm looking for, where you automatically get the funds entitlement.

So this is for the non entitlement communities.

So that's why they wouldn't be listed if they do have a project.

Yesterday, I did hear from Greene.

So the revision is adding Greene at the bottom.

Basically what this does is if we set up that there are these potential activities that may occur, we are prioritizing those activities.

And then if they do choose, if you all do choose to submit applications, there's a very small scoring advantage for having already been identified in that regional priorities list.

So it comes before all 21 planning district commissions for you guys to approve that and then send it back to DHCD so that they

I asked a follow-up question on this that I did not get a clear answer to.

In previous years, they didn't even use a qualifying word saying it's like a nominal difference.

They just said they get a scoring advantage.

This year, they added that word, which triggered me to ask, what does that mean?

Any other questions?

All right, this is an action item, so we need to approve the revised.

The revised 2024 community development block on regional priorities.

Second?

Second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

Very good.

OK, so in your packets, there was a FY 25 operating budget.

I also included a memo of any changes that happened between the draft that was presented last month and the final copy that you're looking at before you.

I'll highlight a couple of those.

Generally, with programs that we receive funding for that are not automatically recurring grants, I will be pretty conservative in my projections on whether we'll receive that again.

So for mobility management,

I conservatively budgeted that as flat funding.

We actually heard that in the draft six-year improvement plan that's going to go before the Commonwealth Transportation Board that they are recommending, rather than getting $119,000, that we would be getting $215,000.

So I amended our budget to account for that difference in funding.

Also, there's some funding that we received from Mobility Management through the Community Foundation.

that we can roll into next year.

So I went ahead and rolled that over.

So those are the two changes in revenue.

The changes in expenses.

The first one is the expenses that would come along with that additional grant, both are passed through to our contracted mobility management, which is Java.

And then as indicated in the April meeting, there's some changes to the salary and fringe.

So for salary, I'll

Go into more detail later, but we have filled two of the three vacancies, so I was able to amend the budget with actuals versus projected amounts for those two positions.

I also was able to put in what I decided to do for the one remaining vacancy is budget that at the max of the cap just to make sure that we have enough funding in the budget should we find somebody further along in their career that's going to be at the higher end.

Another adjustment that I made was I did include tentative annual bonuses, which we have done in the past two or three years, should there be favorable financial conditions at either calendar year end or fiscal year end.

I went ahead and budgeted for those because I was still able to present a balanced budget.

There was a decrease in fringe expense due to reported changes in both our long-term disability rate and our workman's comp rate.

Those were confirmed so that I was able to go and put those in as actuals.

And then, as I discussed last month, the money that we receive in annual allocation from DHCD still hasn't confirmed whether we're going to get the additional 25, so I did not amend that.

What I did do, though, is I pulled out of the contingency line item directly budgeting for professional development.

So you'll see when we go talk about some of the feedback that's been received by staff through the executive director's evaluation that there's some real desire for more clear processes and how to access professional development funding.

So I wanted to make sure to set some aside so that we didn't use that contingency on other programs and projects without being very intentional.

about developing the capacity of our own team to build.

That doesn't mean we can't spend more than 20 if we decide to pull down some more contingency.

I just wanted to make sure to protect at least 20 for professional development.

Questions?

No questions?

Then it is time to approve the fiscal year 25 operating budget.

So Luke?

Second.

All right.

Motion is made executive.

Any further discussion?

All right.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

Great.

Excellent.

Thanks.

OK, so the staffing update, which I already shared with you, is we have made two hires.

I will, although she does not like this, give a very public kudos to Ruth for all of the work that she's done on the back end, screening candidates, setting up all of the interviews, making sure that we had a very well-documented, thorough process for bringing folks on board.

We have been successful in hiring two different folks.

One started this week.

Her name is Sarah Simba.

She'll come to a future meeting to be introduced to you.

The second one does not begin until June, so I'll wait to introduce them until they're here.

Both of them will be coming in as regional planner twos, working in the transportation MPO, rural transportation transit area.

I'm very excited about that.

So thank you.

I know you don't like that, but thank you.

The body update is in there, as it normally is.

Like I noted earlier, it's exciting to see those passings really start to climb.

And then no additional updates.

I left that just in case.

All right.

We go into our closed session.

I, Supervisor Leopold, move that the commission be convened for closed session of search and exemption filed in section 2.3, Act 2711 of the Code of Virginia to discuss matters of employee performance and the executive director.

I will start.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Mr. Smith is absent.

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

Supervisor Woodward?

Yes.

Supervisor Reed?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you and we will stop recording.

I'd like to motion aye to move that the commission exit closed session.

Is there a second?

Second.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Yes.

Oh, Mr. Shackelford is absent.

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

Supervisor Woodward?

Yes.

Commissioner D'Oronzio?

Yes.

Great.

Any motion coming out of closed minutes?

I move that the commission certify that, to the best of each member's knowledge, only business matters will offer the exemption from the oath of convenience of violence in any period under which an act to be enacted in the motion authorizing a closed session will occur successfully considering the closed session.

Second?

Supervisor Pruitt?

Yes.

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

Supervisor Woodward?

Yes.

Supervisor Reed?

Yes.

Supervisor Rutherford?

Yes.

Commissioner D'Oronzio?

Yes.

Yes.

Very good.

Thank you.

And board success is, we have time for many for round table since we're just about at 8 past 9.

We will be moving past that item tonight.

As you can see on the agenda, what's coming to the next evening, it will be June 6th.

And that's going to be our elected officer with the slate that has been brought forward today.

So if there is no objection, is there a motion to adjourn?

Second.

Thank you, everyone.

Are you having a good evening?

Your money's back?

Do you have all that emotional time?