Planning District Commission Meeting   9/5/2024

Forgot to hit record.

Give it a second.

There it goes.

June, the other thing that we do is we provide progress reports to the state, and we also send these out to the counties.

You can see on the numbers here, this is our July report that we provided in August.

We measure what we call milestones.

There's eight milestones here.

All the different elements of this infrastructure project.

All right.

So I'm going to move along with the fun part of the project for those of us that work in it.

It's going out in the next, all through the race to see the work that's being done.

So we took a few pictures.

So the next few slides are just some of the pictures we took of our project.

So in March, we were in Madison County on the left.

That's a site planning that they were doing for a communication hut.

And on the right is some completed mainline fiber that we observed.

Keep on going.

And then April 23rd, we went back to that area.

In the left, you can see the trees had leaves on it in just one month, and the communication hype is set.

Crowded driveways in.

And then you can see this is a steel fiber connection on the steel poles.

It was a little bit different than the other poles.

So take time to look at that as well.

And then in May, we were down in Campbell County in the Concord area.

to see some completed fiber and some connections that were made to homes in that area.

And then in June, we were in Appomattox County, seeing a pedestal installation on some connections to the Dominion Middle Mile.

One thing that we observed was, you can't see this on the slide, but you can tell we're a step away back from the folks working there.

They did a underground hornet's nest as they're-

and it just kind of reminds us of what happens out in the field and things change their scope and they have to come back and after they had taken care of the harness and finished their project.

So that was something we observed that day.

And then in Greene County, Stanisville area, we saw some completed fiber installations on the RAC poles.

You can see multiple pictures of the work that we saw being constructed in Greene County.

And then the final one that we went out on August to see was a communication hut being installed by a spark crane.

And again, another safety issue.

A lot of those cranes have to be extremely careful.

They're working around those, as you can see, those electrical lines, very dangerous work.

Another piece of the multiple types of work that are done in this major infrastructure project.

And then finally, before I end, I just wanted to mention to everyone, and I'm sure you've seen the press release, we received another grant.

It's called the Body24 grant.

It's another round of funding that came in.

There was a number of 25 applications for about $170 million in funds.

We were very happy to receive $12.2 million in state funds.

And this is going to expand our project a little bit more.

It's going to be able to reach more houses that are eligible, more businesses that are eligible, in 10 of our 13 counties.

So it's going to be a $48.6 million expansion, 5,825 additional locations, and it again will continue all the partnerships that we have with Bracken, Electric, Cooperative, Dominion, and other county counties.

And then finally, just as I end,

Firefly has a really nice website.

You can see all the progress that's underway.

You can go into their partnership area and see where the progress is going on in the counties, in the TJPDC area, as well as the other counties.

And they keep it updated like every week or so, so you can see exactly what areas are receiving fiber.

Thank you.

Any questions?

All right.

Good evening, everybody.

I hope you're doing well.

I'm Isabelle O'Brien, a planner too with the PBC.

And today I'll be discussing the Chesapeake Bay PBC locality implementation program or WIP.

I'm the program manager, and this is an annual environmental program designed to help

Our local governments and the state meet the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL.

And the TMDL sets limits on the amount of pollution that can enter local streams and eventually the Chesapeake Bay, ensuring it meets water quality standards for activities like fishing, drinking water, and recreation.

For a little bit of background, the Chesapeake Bay, you can see here, is North America's largest and most biologically diverse estuary.

For hundreds of years, the Bay and its tributaries have sustained the region's economy and defined its culture.

However, by the 1970s, the Bay's health was declining due to excessive pollution from sources like agriculture and development.

In 1973, a study revealed that nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment runoff were harming the aquatic life and fish roots, and as the Bay developed, pollution increased due to factors such as

Runoff from farms, sewage discharge from septic systems, and urban and suburban runoff.

The loss of trees and wetlands, which act as natural filters for pollution, exacerbated the problem.

In response, the U.S. EPA established the Chesapeake Bay Program to restore the bay and signed the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement in 1983.

and after decades of effort, the Bay continues to struggle with water quality issues and so far all of the agreements have failed.

So to address this in 2010, the TMDL that I mentioned before was developed as a federal strategy to accelerate restoration and hold all jurisdictions accountable to the pollution reduction goals.

Watershed implementation plans were created for each state to outline the specific actions for achieving the TMDL by the 2025 deadline, so December, 2025.

And these WIPs represent a culmination of legal requirements, federal commitment, and the need for a coordinated approach for pollution reduction.

The efforts of PDCs across Virginia is just a small portion of what's included in the Virginia WIP and it's why I'm here today to update you.

to 2024 scope of work.

So in 2024, we continued our efforts under the WIT program, maintaining the 80-20 funding split between DEQ and our local governments.

Since 2018, TJPDC staff has served as a bridge between DEQ and localities, providing public education on water quality and best management practices and expanding local capacity for water conservation.

However, a shift in approach was prompted by DEQ and the Chesapeake Bay Program in 2023, recognizing that Virginia and the Bay are falling short of the 2025 TMDL goals.

So PDCs across the state are transitioning towards supporting on the ground best management practice implementation instead of education and support.

So these efforts can include tree plantings, permeable pavement installation, green roofs, and stream bank stabilization, just to name a few.

Examples of this shift in this year's scope include collaborating with our housing team to report the septic system pumpouts and maintenance projects to DEQ aiding and pollution reduction modeling and then conducting rain barrel workshops in new localities like Nelson County to showcase at-home water conservation practices and provide homeowners with everything they need to install it at home.

Moving on to a little bit more about why this landscape is changing.

The Chesapeake Bay program's warning highlighted the need for more on-the-ground action to address stormwater runoff.

And despite progress in reducing nitrogen and phosphorus loads, these pollution sources still remain significant challenges.

So this missed deadline and the availability of new funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has prompted PDCs to adopt a more focused approach.

We're now prioritizing DNP implementation to maximize progress before the 2025 deadline and continue our efforts through 2027 thanks to the IIJA and funding dedicated to PDCs.

So a few updates from DEQ.

So in response to this funding availability, EPA has increased the amount of funding available to planning district commissions within WIP.

And the first round became available to PDCs two years ago in 2023.

And we've been working with local partners, your staff, and DEQ to develop grant proposals to help our region increase BMD implementation.

Next slide.

And this is just an example of how other PDCs have utilized the funds just in the last year.

And you can see eight PDCs received the funding out of 21 Virginia PDCs.

and they range from tree planting projects, permeable pavement installation on public land to septic pump out programs and installation projects.

So for 2025, we will continue our baseline activities with the $72,500 from DEQ with local match to continue sharing grant information, information about the stewardship mapping and assessment project, supporting grant applications for water conservation and growing our local partnerships.

We will also be applying for an additional $150,000 with no match required to implement three new projects.

The first of which will be the TJPDC's pilot septic pump out program, mirroring what many other PDCs have done across the state, providing 50 low income homeowners in the rural section of the watershed with three septic pump outs, working with local partners to process homeowner applications, work with homeowners and the septic contractors.

We will also be supporting Friends of the Rappahannock with the Greene County South River Stream Bank Restoration Project, which will fund phase one of design, engineering, and permitting for the partnership.

And this project is just five miles downstream from the county stream water intake.

So it will provide significant sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus reductions in that area.

And then continuing on the momentum from this year,

with our rain barrel workshop program, providing residents with everything they need to install a do-it-yourself rainwater harvesting barrel to support water quality and conservation.

We're supporting efforts and have the past two years in Charlottesville and Albemarle, but we are also this year and next year posting workshops in partnership with the Soil and Water Conservation District in Nelson, Fluvanna, Louisa, and Greene Counts.

So, well, actually, okay.

So my family used to have a pig farm back in the late 80s it was.

And when the Chesapeake Bay thing came to that, they were a little bit more ruthless back in those days and they gave no transitionary appears.

We ran a 5,000 pig farm on like three blue line creeks.

And as you imagine we're flowing with discharge, it also goes to the creek.

So you learn about

E. coli, and all that, and what that does with nitrogen and all this stuff.

Back in those days, they just shut your business down and say tough luck.

Yeah, so it's amazing how that has evolved.

The Chesapeake Bay agreement, like with the EPA, they have the capacity to provide further enforcement if the Bay doesn't meet those requirements.

So in Charlottesville and Albemarle, there's an MS-4.

They're required to meet certain pollution reduction goals.

Anyone else?

The western beds are recovering.

Yes.

Interesting story on that side.

I used to live on the Chucatec Creek.

There was a story how originally the Chucatec Creek, prior to the 1970s and the whole key town pollution, was home to

Now, the VATI has cleaned up the paramount, and that's not as much of a concern.

Some of the VADs are restoring, and the VARMs are returning to the VADs.

Thank you very much.

All right, now we'll move on to the consent agenda.

We're going to move on to the consent agenda.

I don't think I was at the GMB, was I?

I'm pretty sure I wasn't.

I'll make one for you.

I'll make one for you.

And we have a second.

Second?

All right.

Second, goodbye.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those against?

All opposed?

The chair votes aye.

The motion passes.

Now we will move on to the business.

Hello.

I'm going to remain seated if that's OK.

I'll do it from here.

So good evening.

The last presentation of the financial reports occurred at the June 6th commission meeting, which covered the period through April 30th.

Tonight's packet includes the last two months of fiscal year 24 and the first month of fiscal year 25.

Because of that, this presentation will not only, will not be a quarterly summary, even though it covers three months.

So let's begin with the fiscal year 24 financial dashboard through June of 2024.

The net quick assets are a highly liquid asset held by the agency.

The target is five months operating expenses based on a rolling 12 month average.

As of June 30th, the TPDC had 11.38 months of operating expense.

and the rolling 12 month average decreased to 133,924.

Actual operating expenses in May were 145,000 and in June were 143,445.

Net quick assets above the target are earmarked as capital reserves.

As of June 30, capital reserves were at 854,321.

Unrestricted cash on hand are funds available immediately to TJPDC for expenses and does not include pass-through deposits in transit.

Total cash minus deferred revenue equals unrestricted cash on hand.

The months of unrestricted cash divide the unrestricted cash on hand by the average monthly operating expenses to get the number of months of operation without additional cash received

June's financials indicated there were 1.69 months of unrestricted cash on hand available.

The June alarm is anything less than $267,847, which is the average operating expenses for two months.

The actual unrestricted cash on hand was $226,738.

The net revenue is a surplus or shortfall resulting from monthly revenues minus expenses.

To prevent skewing of the data, the VATI telecommunications program has been removed from the first draft and it's reported separated.

The agency's net gain in May was 49,807 and in June was 21,748.

The fiscal year ended with a total net gain of $160,222, which can be seen on the consolidated profit and loss for June of 2024.

As a reminder, this net gain is a one-time gain and is not budgeted for fiscal year 25 operating expenses.

The funds do, however, increase the amount in the capital reserve account.

Moving on to the

Financial dashboard through July.

Please note that this report indicates July of 2025.

However, it is through July of 2024.

On July 31st, the agency had $1,538,193 in net quick assets, which covers 11.45 months of operating expenses.

The rolling 12-month average increased to $134,329.

The actual operating expenses in July were $145,047 and the capital reserve balance was $854,321.

For unrestricted cash on hand, July's data indicated there were 1.4 months of unrestricted cash on hand available based on a calculated unrestricted cash on hand balance

of 187,830 and a July target of 268,659.

It is important to note that these targets are impacted by the existing capital reserve policy, the net quick asset policy, and the unrestricted cash on hand policy.

In fiscal year 2024, the unrestricted cash on hand dipped below the two month average target more than 50% of the time.

Therefore, staff would like to recommend that these policies be reviewed by the Finance and Executive Committee against current agency goals as they were set at a time when the agency expenses were much lower.

This review may lead to a recommendation to modify these policies at a future commission meeting.

Additionally, while the capital reserve account is labeled by policy as a restricted account, the funds are liquid and are technically available to cover operating expenses should the need rise.

The agency's net gain in July was $11,876.

The July accrued revenue report projects the total average available funds of $184,229 for the remaining 11 months of fiscal year 25, which is ample to cover projected expenses.

Looks good.

They're in VIP, the Virginia Investment Pool, yes.

So we try to keep,

about $100,000 and $200,000 in the operating accounts.

It is.

Okay, then we'll move on to the draft network.

Thank you very much, by the way.

We're going to move on to the draft.

Action.

That is actually an action item.

We'll share that we approved the May, June, July financial reports.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those against?

Aye.

Okay, it's coming to you in draft form and there is no action required tonight.

We'll also go before the Finance Executive Committee in their September 7th meeting and then back to you all in October for consideration for approval.

Each fall, PDC prepares the projected budget that's setting the FY26 local per capita rate and the local contributions.

That is the purpose so we can then go out and apply to the local governments for those funds in their budget cycles.

The budget that's presented before you is balanced.

It only includes known or highly likely revenue sources, which means it is very likely that it will change before it comes to you again in the spring for final adoption for the fiscal year as we secure additional funding and we have more contracts in place that confirm suspected sources that are not yet known.

And then there is a one-time reserve transfer to balance the budget in the amount of $34,922.

That is not uncommon.

We have almost always had a reserve transfer in the initial projected budget.

And then by the time the actual budget comes before you in the spring, we've already closed that gap and we don't need to utilize that.

If the past is any indication, we have not dipped into reserves in the past five years since I've been here.

The per capita rate is set at 68 cents.

That was approved by the commission in September of 2022 at a two cents per year escalation rate.

The budget assumes a 5% increase in staff salary as a placeholder for budgeting purposes.

Before we get into the spring, we're going to be doing quite a bit of analysis on comps in class, like many of your jurisdictions have done, so that number may change when the final budget comes before you.

It is a $44,650,426 in both revenues and expenses.

And then in the September 17th Finance and Executive Committee meeting, we are going to have a discussion about the local contributions, which I'll move to on the next page and talk a little bit more about.

Between now and October, I'd ask for your review of this, asking of questions, giving comments so that the one we put before you in October has any revisions incorporated so that it's a smooth transition.

So this first page is the totals.

You'll see on the right hand column all of the projected revenues by source.

You'll see the operating expenses split by our personnel costs and our direct costs.

You can see that 1.5 million of our 2 million in operating expenses is personnel.

And then you can see the amount of pass-through that comes in and goes out to other agencies, home, HPG, SIG tax, taxes that we give to the local jurisdictions, and then the body broadband pass-through.

Then move down to the next page.

In your packets, you will see all of the revenues broken out by source and by program.

The highlighted ones are ones that are anticipated and likely to be funded, but we have not yet secured contracts for those.

We do include those because they are generally annual programs that we continue to receive funding for, so they're included in that budget.

We'll see that the interest budgeted last year was $34,000.

This year, it's up to $50,000.

To your point, Mr. O'Brien.

We continue to receive rent revenue from a couple of office spaces back here that we sublease out to other tenants.

And then the last one I'm going to zoom in really big if you'll forgive me for a second while I try to right size it to the screen.

This is the per capita and this is the one that I wanted to go through in a little bit more detail.

And then of course take any questions on any of it.

So the way that our per capita and local contributions are determined is we do our population estimates using Walden Cooper Center's estimates that are publicized.

The per capita rate was set by the commission in 2022.

That's that 68 cents.

That's the green column.

You'll then see the series of yellow columns.

Those are local contributions that we receive for specific programs.

And those funds are dedicated to those programs and not used for other sources.

One of the conversations that I would like to have with the Finance Executive Committee is many of these programs, we have not changed the funding request in many, many, many years.

So for example, if you were to look at solid waste, the 10,500 we received is the same amount we've been requesting since 2008.

And so as you guys can imagine, with escalating costs that we've had over time,

We're using the same amount of money to try to do the same amount of work with way less time for staff to do it.

So we want to talk about how can we set this up similar to the per capita to grow slowly over time so we don't have to have large adjustments as we go through the budgeting process.

So we'll talk about that first with finance executive and if any recommendations or revisions are made to the budget I'll highlight those in a memo coming back to you in October.

And then finally, you look at the end, the blue column is the total of the per capita plus all of the local program source funds.

If you then take that green per capita, we have to pull funding out of that for required local matches on our programs.

So for example, the Rural Transportation Program, we pull from the five rural portions out of the per capita, same with Mobility Management, the MPO, and the Watershed Improvement Program.

Those are matches that we are required to do, but we have not gone to the local governments to ask for additional funding.

We just use the per capita that we already received to meet those match requirements.

And then once you get to the end, we have a balance of what's left.

If we take all of the funding we received from our local governments, it boils down to $100,000 by commission policy.

75% of that has to be used for regional activities, which means two or more jurisdictions.

The remaining balance, 25%, can be for hyperlocal technical support.

So you'll see those balances in the pinkish gray columns on the right.

OK.

Then, once you guys consider it, ask questions.

Finance Executive Committee has a stab at any revisions or questions that they may have.

It comes back to you all.

Again, this is just the projected.

It only sets those local applications.

It'll then come back to you in April and May with any final revisions, any known sources updated, and that will be the budget that is approved that we use throughout the fiscal year to manage by.

Do you have any questions?

I know it's a lot of work.

All right, so the Regional Cooperation Act outlines the duties and the responsibilities of PDCs.

It tells us what we are charged with doing.

DHCD, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development,

is required by code 36-139.7 to complete a review of the planning district boundaries following all of the decennial census.

So we are at the point where they do a standard review of all of the boundaries.

It goes out for public comments.

I just wanted to share with you all that we are in that public notice phase for public comments.

Included in your packet was where that public comments portal is as well as the existing PDC boundary map.

Just highlight a couple of items.

I already told you the Finance Executive Committee is meeting September 17th.

We are going to look not only at the budget, but we're going to do the pre-audit portion within that meeting.

We are also going to

Look at some recommended employee handbook policy revisions based on changes in code, just updating to make sure that we're meeting code and pulling things out of our handbook to streamline and make it a little bit clearer and easier to follow.

We'll then be coming back to you all in the spring with additional suggested revisions to the handbook, but those would have fiscal impacts.

So we'll be working with the finance executive committee during the year to start to think about some decisions that may need to happen

that would be in the handbook but then would have an impact on the budget.

And that's looking at our compensation that we offer, that's looking at, oh my goodness, there's a whole slew of items that we're going to get into with the handbook.

Our leave policies right now, we do both sick leave and personal leave and looking at an analysis of whether we should move to PTO.

So all of those types of decisions could have a financial component.

So we're gonna do that analysis before the spring presentation of the budget.

And then we will also in that finance executive committee meeting put forward a revised procurement policy.

And we're trying basically the financial policy and procurement policy that we have in place right now at the PDC is much more restrictive than the states.

We have morphed a little bit as an agency.

We are working in much bigger numbers.

We are operating with these large grants.

And so we would like to right size our procurement policy to match what the state is doing so that we have a lot less procurement requirements.

than we currently do.

Right now we have to procure any purchases over $10,000 and at the state it's $100,000.

So we want to work with you all to say what is the number that you're comfortable with where we can just get quotes or estimates versus going through a full-blown procurement which as you guys know is very time and resource intensive.

My next update is a staffing update.

You guys have met Gorjan Gjorgjievski.

He has worked with our VADI program.

He will be moving into full-time regional transportation planning.

We're going to do a great deal of work.

He's going to be staffing the MPO, which means we will be replacing the VADI admin assistant that is working with Lori on the VADI program who are in the final stages of recruitment for that.

We have some really great candidates by the next meeting.

We should have an announcement of a new staff member.

Additionally, the Director of Transportation, which is a large role here, that position still remains vacant.

I am beginning to research recruitment firms to see if we need to get some outside help to be able to cast our net wider to get a highly qualified candidate to support all the transportation work that we're doing.

I'll come back with you all.

Caden Pritchett comes to us as a full-time VISTA member.

So we will have him for the full year, full-time 40 hour week.

He'll be working to support regional housing partnership and the regional housing summit that we're planning for spring.

So we're very excited to welcome him.

VATI, you already got a really great update from Lori.

I'm going to move over to transportation updates.

Real quick, Safe Streets and Roads for All.

We've talked about that several times in here.

Just want to let you guys know we're done with the first round of engagement.

This week and next week, we are on site doing site visits of specific locations in the High Injury Network.

with consultants, engineers, VDOT, your staff and our staff looking at the sites to try to identify, prioritize them and come up with strategies or solutions that will be incorporated into the plan.

We also provided a letter of support for Charlottesville.

They're applying for a supplemental planning grant through Safe Streets and Roads for All.

So the PDC did support that application because it dovetails into the work that we are doing and it'll help us set our strategies for what Charlottesville wants to do.

For mobility management, right now we contract with Java to have a one-click one-call center.

It's called a mobility specialist position.

It was intended to be contracted out in the beginning, eventually hoping to bring it under Ruth.

We are definitely finding that we would be able to be much more effective and much more efficient.

with resources if they were employed and housed here so that our mobility manager and our mobility specialist can work side by side on all of the work that they're doing rather than going through a chain of people at a different organization, one being managed by Java, one being managed by us.

both of them having different schedules and different, you know, other priorities.

And so we are likely going to look at advertising that position and terminating our contract with the partner as it's taking that position in-house.

Java will still partner with us for all of the actions that we're going to be doing.

They're still going to be referring their people through the same hotline.

Nothing will change outwardly facing, but inwardly, it'd be a lot easier management-wise if we could staff that here.

That's something that I wanted to put before you.

That is not currently in this draft of the budget.

If there is no real pushback against that, it will go into the next version of the budget, right?

It's not in there now.

Yeah, it'll go into the October one.

That's right.

So instead of a consultant pass-through, it'll become a personnel salary for the same amount.

And then, let's see.

Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.

I know many of you are already aware, but Rockingham County is now a member of Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board effective July 1st.

For the month of July, 834,000 just above that packs of cigarettes were sold in the month of July.

That's the highest number in several months.

We had been seeing a trend in decline, but that was a very high month.

Atypical.

And then environmental programs, Bella already gave a great update on the watershed improvement, but I wanted to bring to your attention the Rivanna River Basin Commission.

They're holding their annual conference scheduled for September 27th.

It's at 930 at the Carver Recreation Center and it's going to be focused on progress and goals for connectivity and conservation in the urban Rivanna corridor.

That is what they identified as the priority.

And then finally we do some direct local planning support.

A new contract that we have is with the Town of Mineral.

We're just help supporting on an administrative end their required lead service line inventory.

We're helping them with their procurement.

We're helping them with their invoicing, but they're contracting out the work.

So we're not in the field doing the work.

And then last thing I'll note, which is not in the executive director's report because it just happened today, is that we did have a discussion with the owner of this building.

We are going into our fifth year of a five-year lease.

So wanted to begin to talk to them now about what their plans were related to our tenancy.

I know we have a very large capital reserve account that has been building over time.

So I'd like to work with the finance executive committee and or a building committee, if it gets to that point to learn the wishes of the commission and whether or not you guys would like to continue to be tenants and renters, or if you want to consider purchase of a building that is something that has come up many, many years here over time.

I think we're well positioned now to do that if that is your wishes, but we are in the very early stages of that.

We were informed today that they don't have plans to ask us to leave.

So there is a potential to stay here.

There's a potential to renovate, continue to be tenants or to continue to look at other places.

So just throwing that out there is something that we are working on.

We did ask that.

I mean, this has been an ongoing debate philosophically.

I know we were hitting it really hard in like 18, 19, and then COVID hit, and then that just wasn't even crazy to me.

I'm happy to get feedback, or we can have this discussion at Finance Executive Committee and come back to you.

Burden our negotiation.

There you go.

You were going to mess up my time.

I was going to ask what you thought.

And then the final thing I just attached to my executive report this time so that you guys just had copies of it, but it is a copy of our award letter for the VATI 24 grant that we received as well as the authorization letter allowing us to begin work in advance of being under contract.

We go through a long contract negotiation phase and we want to keep the work moving.

So we were authorized to continue to do work and they would reimburse us for that work outside of the contract date.

Thank you very much.

Well, moving on.

On to the roundtable discussion.

Since you are so docketed, I'm so sorry.

Well, now, I think County, you're currently in a situation where we're just working with your zoning plans done.

It's now up with your zoning definitions.

It's going to take us a couple of years.

In terms of

D'Oronzio, Michael D'Oronzio, Michael D'Oronzio, Michael D'Oronzio, Michael D'Oronzio, Michael

Breweries and cideries and wineries are actually saying this is actually a sizable dip.

We're talking 20 to 30% drop just in consumption.

Now, again, there have been a lot of switches amongst the breweries to providing non-alcoholic beverages, which they have no problem doing.

The problem we run into is you can't really sell non-alcoholic beverages easily because of its ability.

It rocks quicker because it doesn't have alcohol

So we're actually seeing a big dip in that, seeing a major dip in short-term rentals, which is, in some respects, a good thing.

In others, it's indicative of other issues.

People's not interested in utilizing whatever excess cash that they may or may not have.

So we're starting to see some of those impacts differently.

The housing conversation is pretty much the same.

It's a struggle.

We got people moving from everywhere and absorbing a lot of our housing stock.

You know, locals are, we're truly getting to a point where, you know, local household names are becoming the thing of the past.

Now it's a new family name that you'd never recognize the house that was in a family for 200 years.

So that's, we're starting to see that culture shift quite substantial with the dawn of the internet era.

Great, Mr. Hayes.

Very briefly, Greene County is now in the 15th month

of operating as a home in Japan, a garment of water and sewer.

At this time last year, we were having significant problems with accuracy and timeliness of filling.

The gratifyingly, it now has been almost entirely resolved, mainly through the expedient of identifying poorly functioning or non-functional water leaders as replacing them.

Last month, we hired a permanent director for the Department of Water and Sewer, Mr. Huthcutt.

He has expertise in public tourist planning and communication.

Certainly, those will be valuable skills in accounting for residents, et cetera, to help create and improve our infrastructure.

What are you doing better than orange?

Well, they all know where to put them.

So we'll check.

Mr. Goldke, you want to dive in there?

Well, yeah.

The new director for that is definitely, when the intern directly had, he made some beeping steps alone.

And then we now got a full-time director for it.

And then the intern, he's going to be there like a couple of days.

Still helping to implement a lot of that.

We definitely got a lot of growth right now, quite a few housing things coming up and the biggest thing in that now is trying to get the water empowerment to start supplying that too.

We've got a long ways to go on that.

It's making leaps and bounds on a lot of ways on it to

So hopefully within the next year we'll definitely maybe look to all these reservoir projects and something to get started with that because they get down to the deadline when a lot of it has to be done so they gotta step up the game and get a lot of stuff going and get that ready.

We did, you know, we've had a couple different

We did turn down a big major business thing that may or may not have worked for Greene on a farm winery and it was a lot of big discussion on calling the event center and I think that's what put everybody in the county in a big panic, but we didn't approve the SUP for their big building at this point so I mean I think it may be something if they're buying right to start

See what it does to the community and the impact.

And then maybe within a year after it gets started, then if they come back, we can approve expanding or something like that.

But that's the in and outs and pros and cons of that kind of stuff anyway.

Orson, we'll do this for you next.

Sure.

Probably we spent quite a long time on this.

Last night at our board meeting, and frankly, it's also coming back to us after we spent quite a lot of time on two months ago, and that's we have finally approved a new cell power ordinance in Albemarle County.

We've historically had, I would characterize as an extremely restrictive cell power ordinance.

We have a lot of, we have three different tiers of approval.

One, which is basically automatic.

Tier two, which requires administrative approval.

Tier three, which requires board legislative approval.

So we're covered before the final commission before the board of supervisors concerns that tier three makes them non-economical so that they just don't fit within a period because why would that, right?

If I have to throw that through our process to cite them.

Things get kicked out to a tier three when they're in, among other things, an avoidance area, which we had designated as agricultural board, forestal districts,

Scenic Highways and Byways, the mountain ridge lines, which sounds all well and good until you actually draw those out and happen to realize it's 63rd county.

And almost my entire district was, in fact, a historic district, because we got a lot of traffic down there and everything else.

They were like, well, let's make the whole thing a historic district.

Never built a cell town.

So we had previously,

We did quite a lot of things off that WITs, WITs came to us about a few months ago, so we said that we did not want historic districts, agricultural districts to get highways and highways on their annual because that was massive, but we did want to try to capture some of those concerns, like we don't want to make it open season so that you can build a highway for the next month or so.

So staff kind of put together two different options based on that, either using National Historic Places that have been registered and four National Historic Landmarks that have been registered.

There's four National Historic Landmarks in Albemarle County.

They're the ones we might expect for the most part.

Minachello, a few others.

No, I don't think so.

I kind of remember one of them is Shack Mountain, which is that house that Jack knew of.

And then there was like something like 64 historic places, which is basically any house that is suitably old owned by someone suitably rich and suitably big.

We actually have split vote on which of those to adopt as kind of the

Perimeter of Avoidance.

In the interest of not having to get on a boat, we adopted the more restrictive one, but we froze it in time.

So we won't allow a 60-day historic place so that it can't be used offensively to keep someone from putting a tower there.

We also created an avoidance area

to try and protect ecologically sensitive areas in the county.

That specifically is identified in very large interconnected forest blocks, which are almost entirely located in the mountain ridge area.

So it's not one duplicative, but it is both under and less inclusive in different ways in a way that's specifically protecting ecological conditions.

I'm really excited.

Everyone's got a story, and that's how you know it's a problem.

Two other things that I will mention, just because they're near and dear to my heart, something that's been interesting to me about how we grapple with other government.

I forget if I mentioned this a while ago, but something, an issue that really got me in my mind a while ago, you've seen kind of a general uptick

Fong-Threats, these kinds of things that disrupt public spaces, shooting threats at schools, bomb threats at flights in Fairmont, Martha Jeff, we had a guy claiming a bomb there recently, and then the thing that got me particularly exercised was two consecutive bomb threats at the Planet Fitness

Yeah, I'm not.

I had my reaction when I heard it.

It was also a very political thing, because it was seen as a disemmified by the way that they're popping out, who's going to say yes to that question.

And there's that weird national prediction of it.

I wanted to go by and write, and I told the county, pretty much, can we sue this TikTok account in court?

Why not?

The answer is, it would probably be a losing case.

And two, we think that our legal authority is displaced by this particular enabling authority that was passed in the wake of 9-11 that tried to expand, expand county's ability to respond to terror abuses.

It prescribes an incredibly, basically you can charge $200

or up to $2,500 if you itemize every amount of time that went into the emergency response and can only be attached to a commonwealth attorney's successful image.

So an absolute nothing for deterrence and the process of itemizing costs more than you're given.

Still, it's a matter of getting up and trying, and it's like, oh, well, this seems like at the very least, enable this to activate this, enable a bunch of suction.

Even that blew up in our face, because we got a back and forth from an attorney about whether or not this was mandatory to use once he received a conviction, which he doesn't like mandatory sentences.

Point being,

It's going to move here in our legislative priority because it's a frickin' hot mess.

It both ties our hand, gives us a remedy that's worse than what we would have had if they hadn't said anything.

An absolutely messable one.

In a kind of physical space, how many messes there are in a neighborhood.

And I thought that might be a general interest to folks as they kind of suss out what they're going to do with it.

Sometimes they're going to be built out, they're going to be given the power they need.

And kind of the last thing I would like to exercise about

There's a story that was covered in the New Bed Deck by Charles Goldemarle, in an interest area that focused on hand in ministry.

There's a, historically, a student, but now there's a variable, a complex in the urban rank by the script, a cavalier crossing,

that has been sold earlier this year to a very specialized boutique that basically bundles a lot of different investors, creates experienced communities, focuses on specifically in growing areas and specific developments that are out there.

So they are buying up low-income communities.

They are

facing evictions over the course of about a year, and then they're going to slap code and quintuple the race.

Probably out of foolishness, like some classy evidence.

And there's very little we can do about it.

And I'm particularly exercised about it and find that they elevated this issue.

That's one, it's my decision, but also because it seems to portend a general trend.

that I'm concerned about.

We also have just seen another major development get sold.

So this is going to have to hit on 29.

And I think the broader problem is that Michael's actually very helpful.

Almost all of the county's life I give them to is set to expire.

The low-income housing tax credit subsidized inventory is normally subsidized for a 30-year period of time.

Nowadays, more often than any time, because it's how a credit tax credit works.

But ones that were built in the 90s and 80s are mostly about their interests.

They're all set to expire soon.

When they expire, the people or they pass.

who are like, well, I would now like to capitalize on my investment I made 30 years ago.

I'm going to sell for more than I'm making for currently if someone else is going to do that.

Or there is an limit, right?

Well, and if you buy it out from under the limit, that's just setting your

The two possible solutions that I was able to, one of them I came to the table with and one of them I brought to the table.

So the possibility of a win would be a way to kind of intervene on that expensively.

And the other thing I would be very

excited about because I'm not as obnoxious as I feel, would be a rent stabilization enabling authority that would allow us to either exercise that between redevelopments, say you can't increase rent point 100% through redevelopment, or just normal rent renewables, which we see much more frequently, which would be a small single digit percent plus consumer price index between these renewables.

But we don't have that.

And we probably won't have that in Virginia.

And that's the end of my rant.

Thank you.

All right.

You guys can fight over it.

Let me check.

Well, OK.

So segue to the land bank.

It's making progress.

But we are writing it so you guys can pop the board.

So we don't have to do it twice.

Yeah.

But we've got what we've got.

And I think we are now trying to get a legal review done on all of the works and tweaks we've stuck into the ordinance.

I'm sorry?

The twerks.

The twerks.

Yeah, actually this is not going to be your bothered land bank.

So that is making its progress and shifting the thought of city council in the next couple of months for a regional work session in

We might be on the way, which segues me into the Carleton Little Home Park panel area play, whereas you know there's a statute.

If you have a mobile home park of X size and you sell it, you can allow the residents to be able to purchase it, but it is a bear trap.

Essentially, the rule, and I'm flying over this at 70,000 feet, hey, here's a letter, we're selling it, here's the top line price, we're not going to tell you who the buyer is, we're not going to tell you any of the terms, but you have 59, 58, 57,

So you don't even know what the album really is except the top line.

Primarily, I think, because the sellers were not terribly interested in becoming Old Man Potter and being honest with the entire city.

And I don't think they wanted to necessarily shaft anybody.

They were receptive to a consortium, including the city, PHA, Habitat, and Chilling on the Bailing Wire.

And we cobbled together an offer that was accepted.

But that has led to a recommendation by the Planning Commission and then a break, which feels kind of like a vote Councilor subcommittee on.

We need to update this statute to one, if you redact the players that you want to, but you need to know the terms of the deal so that you know what you can respond to.

Number two, 60 days is ridiculous for a multi-million dollar grant.

It's ridiculous for a bunch of bankers to work out a multi-million dollar transaction in 60 days, let alone a bunch of local ballpark residents trying to have a multi-million dollar deal.

Because that is a Venn diagram that does not have like overlap.

Yes.

And that the provisions for the value of trailers and the cost of moving them be, one, bumped up to something that is within the realm of realism and chained to some sort of index and such.

So that's in our legislative packet.

Can I take something you said and turn a question to David real quick?

Has there ever been a legislative

Proposal balloon failed effort that sought to import the tenant's right to buy, I'm forgetting the acronym used for this, the tenant's right to first refusal on mobile home parks.

Has there been anything that would be resembling that, for example, for localities, for properties that have received federal or local subsidies?

But probably the most impactful thing would be returning a right of first refusal for an equal or greater counteroffer, which was individually.

And yeah, I mean, I don't recall any,

legislation about right-first refusals more broadly.

I know a lot of the new biotech projects still work in a right-first refusal along with city funding.

Just remembering, I know that Carlington County had tried to figure out a way to

Yeah, and it particularly gets ginned up because frankly 20 years ago, 25 years ago, 60 days is not an unreasonable length of time to find a new place to live.

Now,

Six months is a push.

And in Charlottesville, likewise, we have some loan and housing tax credit projects that are re-expiring soon that were done before we set up 70s or 80s, where they would include my first refusal and

99 and Brown leases.

At least we've seen the most practical thing to plan for actually helping those residents will probably be Virginia Housing has financing options to purchase buildings with expiring LIHTC periods.

And if you can build up a reserve amount of money for a land strike fund, and then partner with nonprofits, there are a lot of state financing options to do it.

especially if you've got like a couple years to plan for it.

I know on rent stabilization, I think Darius Clark had a bill that was piloted in one locality that he's introduced, never made it out of committee, and that's probably the closest effort there is for any kind of rent stabilization so far.

All that, I will just add quickly, I think

We received our vacancy report, which is interesting.

It's like a lot of the narratives that are out in the community or maybe in the press that the vacancy rate on the downtown wall is the lowest vacancy rate of any of our business districts.

It's about 3%.

And then if you factor in businesses that are about to open, it's one to 2%.

And our district with the highest vacancy rate is Barrett's Road.

So it's not apparently actually destroying the downtown wall.

Then there's ranked choice voting, which we passed and will be implemented in a local five election, which will obviously be a electoral change.

And we'll have to kick off a big voter education campaign just to make sure everyone's aware of how ranked choice voting works, you know, not confused with the end of the ballot.

But I'm optimistic it will be positive.

So we'll see how that goes.

We're doing an audit of all our ARPA spending money, including evaluating things we allocated in the past, but to fully spend that deadline for localities to decide how they're going to fund, use all those funds, is coming up in the end of December.

And if localities haven't made decisions how to use it all, we'll go right back to federal government.

So obviously, we don't want that.

And then the last thing that was mentioned, probably the biggest news, was the call to mobile home purchase.

who lived there, 250 people who were probably about to come homeless or out there and live their lives ended, but through a huge partnership with nonprofits, Citi, the residents themselves, everybody, it was able to actually happen.

So for at least the next three years, it will remain just as is a local home park, but long-term habitat plans to work with the residents, similar to Southwood,

Re-develop it while ensuring that there's no displacement and anyone who wants to stay is able to, they'll probably be five years before, you know, ground, bring up a project like that.

But yeah, it was really, there's a lot of, there's the new state law, there's pretty new state legislation of revolving loading funds, as well as the grants for local park preservation.

So it seems like a lot of those agencies are excited.

I would say to any of y'all that have mobile home parks in your communities, and I think all of you do, I mean, really be on the lookout.

National private equity groups are being really aggressive in buying these mobile home parks and evicting the residents.

And there are ways with your zoning that you could try to preemptively make that less feasible, as well as looking at these state programs, but particularly people who live in mobile home parks once those private equity firms come in.

It's going to be destroyed by a period of less than a year and those people will probably move out of state because I think there's only two vacancies in central Virginia that will allow the walls to be moved to that lot.

As I invoke my floor tie.

I'm the chairman of the Virginia Manufactured Modular Housing Association.

So we often have this discussion about what that displacement is.

And of course, if you are interested in preserving mobile homes, we call it manufactured housing.

Mobile homes are homes built pre-1976.

So toss that out.

But you know, if you guys do have interest in talking about collectively how this works with your zoning and how it should look, please don't reach to me in my other capacity.

and I'd be more than happy to help you with my team that we have to work on.

For example, Hopewell, we're interacting with them on trying to get manufactured housing in their zone.

Because this plays both ways, like through the preservation mobile community.

However, you'd be amazed at how many localities ban manufactured housing in the rest of their zone.

So being empathetic to one, but then rejecting it in every other context, you know, isn't saving anyone because at the end of the day,

We as supervisors focus on rural preservation and ensuring that we deny housing and don't concentrate on focus, vertical growth, and that we pass that burden on to the next county

If you don't pass that burden on them, the costs go up.

You have to have any great situations like this where of course it's attractive to buy them all because you can't get anything else which so you just buy something.

It's illegal.

It already has more free zone in it.

So that makes it attractive.

Well, you know, in the past $2,500, $3,000 for a few days.

Yeah.

Well thank you Charlottesville for your excellent presentation.

With no further ado, the gentleman from Louisa.

I think we should let him take it.

I apologize for that too but it's the only way I can deal with the screen tonight so I appreciate I just have one thing real quickly and then I will defer to Supervisor Barlow.

I really appreciate Christine and David

Thank you.

Imogen Neeby.

We've been meeting with love since last February.

Finally put it to rest last night.

We're hoping that it ain't going to go.

Now see what happens.

We've got to count the positive things.

We've been in business part of it.

We're moving forward.

The water tank is going up.

Great shining water tank.

It's provided more and more than so many different activities.

In fact, two of the Amazon assets that are in the parking room, two things that are, two different sides of the cabin.

James wrote the New Orleans Times, the latest in the program, August 14th.

So we can never put that back to rest.

That would be a blast.

And how much tax revenue do you need, Vincent?

Yeah, but you have a lot of reason to just keep their tax rate this long.

Oh, you're very smart.

Fluvanna County, we continue to work on building our wall.

Just kidding.

We were speaking quite a bit about signs.

I think we met in the same age that you were there.

It's kind of sad that we stopped speaking about it.

We had enough time to speak.

Thank you for coming out.

I was online.

But the further compensation.

Then we talked a little bit more about the upcoming solar ordinance.

It is moving to the planning commission of the public hearing next week.

The solar commission worked diligently to provide a framework for the planning commission to provide something for its supervisors as it stands right now.

if we modify the setback so that we keep attracting them now and are not denied by what is given the certainty of the possibility.

Groundbreaking, I missed it.

Mr. Barlow and I have been serving together for 11 years at least.

I used it more than I have, but JRWA is something that's been a long, long road.

So I'm sorry to have to be there, but happy to be here to put it to ground.

Bonhoeffer, Tonya Swartzendruber, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount, David Blount,

O'Brien speaking of housing, I should say that right there at the intersection of 53 and

and Stephanie Wolk, which are 7 and 5 are apartments that are affordable housing, that's 60% A and I.

And those are finally getting ready to open up in September.

So that would be a nice move for the community, I think.

Probably got about 70 applicants so far, not even one.

And two, one that would be about six months

It's not even nice enough.

Right, right, right.

People are just farther and farther afield.

Exactly.

Right, exactly.

So, yeah, constantly that will be the last thing.

and all good men, they're being bought by us.

We all just do a great job of creating scarcity.

Absolutely.

All right, next we have, our next meeting is going to be October 3rd, the finance community time and date.

It's to be determined still.

September 17th for them to be there.