Planning District Commission Meeting   12/5/2024

Very nice.

Anybody wishing to speak or any comments online?

No?

Okay, very good.

Okay.

The staff member wasn't able to be here, so we'll be introducing her again at a future meeting last minute.

But you have previously met her.

She's working on the mobility management program.

We had her contracted through an agreement with Java.

As we discussed, we were going to bring all mobility management staff under roof, so she applied for the job.

She was one of two people that we offered and were accepted.

Both of those are grant-funded positions.

It's 80% federal, 16% state, 4% local.

So we're really happy to be bringing them in.

All right, I believe there are some slides in your packet, and that will momentarily be on the screen, but it is that time of the year where we look forward to the General Assembly session in January.

I say that with common chief.

This is the short session, which begins on January the 8th.

Short is 46 days, which means we're out of there by, hopefully,

February the 22nd.

And the thing about the short session is it's the same amount of work, too few weeks time to get it done yet.

So I think I've really started on the next slide.

There we go.

Democrats will likely maintain a majority in both houses.

There are a couple of vacancies in the Senate, expected vacancies in the Senate, due to some folks who are elected to serve in Congress or will be elected in special elections.

I think Blount has already been elected.

One more will.

And then there's going to be a vacancy, I think, in the House of Delegates, likely

All in all, I expect those numbers, 2119 in the Senate, 5149 in the House, to remain the same.

Short session, they try to limit, put some limitations on the number of bills that legislators can introduce.

This year's 15 for the House members and 20 for the Senators.

And drafts for legislation that are first day introduction and pre-filed, is the word, they had to be in last Monday before Thanksgiving.

So really after the first year of passing bills,

You know, hitting the system, so to speak, with more frequency.

Next slide.

So, of course, in any given session, state budget is usually a very high priority.

The governor two weeks from yesterday will introduce amendments to the current biennial budget.

As you know, we closed fiscal year 24 with revenues exceeding expenditures at the state level by over a billion dollars and so far through the first one, two, three, four months, I think, of reporting the estimates for the current fiscal year are exceeding expectations.

I'm right now projecting that there will be over $3 billion in revenues available for appropriation during the coming General Assembly session.

Both the House Appropriations and the Senate Finance Committees had budget retreats, which they do every fall, had those rights before Thanksgiving to take it up.

You can first look at what to expect during the session as far as the budget's concerned.

And they, both, both, chairs of both committees really stressed that they will have their eyes towards one-time expenditures for any of those excess revenues as opposed to having ongoing commitments that would extend past the current two-year budget.

Hold on a sec.

I was just going to mention the

Revenue estimates, the staffs of money committees usually provide their guess at what they think the revenue estimates or revenue growth will be for the remainder of the biennium.

You see a little bit heavier in fiscal year 25 or the remainder of 25, and then rationing it down a couple of notches for fiscal year 26.

Now I'm ready, thanks.

So looking at that three plus billion in expected revenues, the staff at their retreats outlined what are mandatory expenditures that they're anticipating for the remainder of the biennium.

of about 800 and some million dollars.

So you do the math and you're gonna be looking at probably close to 2.5 billion available for the legislators to appropriate.

The majority of those mandatory expenditures are in the health and human services area, 600 and some million of that, and I didn't put the number in.

For Medicaid, additional expenditures required.

And then Children's Services Act, of course, which you all are familiar with,

Asstimating that another $70 million dollars in state funding will be needed for that over the course of fiscal year 25 and 26.

So again, next bullet there, kind of going back to what the SAP was saying about, you know, focusing any expenditures on one time cost, because if they

I think what they're what they're seeing in the future and looking at some five-year financial planning that if they start putting too many of these ongoing expenditures into the budget that then would be in the base budget that rolls over for the next biennium it could cause some problems in as early as fiscal year 27.

So I think that you might not see you know you're probably going to see the governor introducing some tax relief proposals

I don't know that you're going to see anything that's of an ongoing nature beyond what's in place now.

The General Assembly in the past, when you've had divided legislature and executive, or even between the House and Senate, has tended to provide tax relief with either some credits on some programs, which are one-time but lesser dollar amounts, but then they'll do some one-time tax relief, like maybe a $200 per tax file or rebate or $400.

So I would anticipate when the dust settles,

That would probably be where we land if there's going to be some tax relief.

So I always say governor proposes, which he's going to do on December 18th.

It's then the General Assembly's turn to work with the budget.

Legislators have an opportunity to then propose amendments to the Governor's introduced budget.

They do that by the end of the third day of the General Assembly session.

Then we get to about the middle part of the session.

Just wanted to list some of those high priority spending items that were identified by the Money Committee staffs.

I won't go through all of them, but as you read through them there in that first bullet, you'll see a number of those, the salaries, business ready sites, capital projects, all those could be things that are one time expenditures as opposed to ongoing commitments.

And then the staffs also identified as they do every year.

things that could just totally blow their estimates and their thinking out of the water depending on what's going on primarily at the national level, changes in the economy, of course we have change in administration at the federal level this year, and other factors that might make the projections for revenue not as rosy as they might think.

And then finally, I think this is the last slide just to talk about legislation for just a minute.

You know, again, a lot of legislation in a short period of time.

We'll probably see somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 to 2000 bills.

Local governments are going to play defense as opposed to plan defense.

So we probably should plan on playing some defense, I think, as we had to do this past General Assembly session, particularly in the land use area.

There's been a lot of discussion.

I believe I shared this when I visited with you all in November to talk about the regional legislative program.

A lot of discussion throughout the year about energy generation, transmission, siting of facilities.

That is ongoing and will continue through the session.

There's a

A group that's really taking more of a high profile here in the past several months.

It's been a reincarnation of a group that was created.

probably 20 some years ago, the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation.

And there's been a number of stakeholder groups that have been working under its umbrella to come up with some different alternatives and proposals as to how the state might more aggressively, I guess, meet the goals that were contained in the 2020 Clean Economy Act.

A lot of those I'm sure you're certainly aware and kind of reflection of what we saw last year with some of the bills with regard to siting of facilities that would erode or restrict or take away local authority with regard to siting facilities.

That kind of discussion is continuing.

One of the things that some of the stakeholder groups have been talking about and

really kind of latched on to, I think, as maybe an interim step, is to do planning, energy planning.

And they've talked about that in the realm of planning on a regional basis and perhaps involving the planning district commissions in doing that plan.

So I had a meeting today with

BAPDC, Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions Board and a number of the executive directors that were on call to just kind of review, you know, what's being talked about, you know, what a possible role for planning districts might be.

Somehow they came up with a number of about $4 million for investment into planning districts to do this energy planning.

But I think there were a number of questions that we still have about this framework that's been put out there, a number of concerns about it as well, while also being appreciative of the fact that people are looking to do things on a regional basis.

Long, long, long, long, long, long way to go on this.

I was just telling Christine, there's gonna be a lot of moving parts that are gonna be changing between now and the beginning of the General Assembly.

And then of course, once we get to the General Assembly, they'll probably be changing by the hour.

So I'll certainly be keeping everyone posted on what's going on with this through the legislative updates during the session.

Vaco, I know as well has been very active in some of these off-session discussions and certainly anything having to do with authority for siting facilities, they will be keeping their membership up to date as well.

Just conclude with local initiatives and working with several of you all.

You have legislative priorities that you've approved.

I am anticipating that

Well, I put a question mark beside it.

I would have told you maybe three or four months ago that I'm anticipating legislation on the sales tax, increasing the sales tax for school facilities, which passed the general assembly last year, was vetoed by the governor.

Your veto was not overridden.

I've heard some discussion that there might not be legislation to do that this year.

knowing that the outcome would likely be the same.

The bill would pass, it would go to the governor, the governor would veto it and the veto would be sustained.

So that information is probably a couple of weeks old now, but I think that's one that we'll certainly be keeping our eye on for whether those bills are introduced.

And certainly if they are, that is a position that's in the regional legislative program in terms of the authority for

McClelland,

Yeah, we'll have Bill back.

I know that Albemarle County has been interested in, was tried last year to make some changes to speed camera legislation.

Mr. Rutherford has been very active in working to try to get load of benefits for private police departments and police officers on the heels of tragedy that occurred at Wintergreen about 16, 17 months ago.

And then there will be various local budget initiatives that will be put forward by legislators representing some of the jurisdictions in the region as well.

So there will be, yeah, I think a number of local things of interest as well as probably some pretty high items that will occur that will be of interest and concern to all local governments.

So I think that is all I have.

Where did that end up?

Pass unanimously out of the Senate.

The subcommittee didn't really have the spine to vote on it because they didn't want to have a voting no on the record, so they let the time go.

Basically, they waited until the buzzer was gone, so they didn't have to vote on it at all.

We're reintroducing it again this year.

We have an 18 for legislators on this.

The pre-deeds disagree to co-sponsor it again.

Bell, most of the delegates.

I remember last year our board, I'm sure the other folks did too, right?

Really honored to support it.

I think we're just going to run with the prior one.

We'll just keep it parallel.

But if you want to leave it all, we'll keep

January, so we're just keeping everybody's power on.

And we modified it slightly to be more palatable for some of our communities, so we'll find out.

If anybody wants to go to Richmond, call me.

It's early morning.

It's a long way to Plum Dragon, 5 a.m. to get to Richmond at 7 for some community.

That's been the name.

I've never heard of that one, so it's like, yeah, that's the standard.

I have a question about, of course, lots of work you've got coming up, and lots of work that you're going to have as well, too.

Lots of things coming from different directions, but in your commentary about the value of these data centers, and so on, what are you worried about?

I should have mentioned, you know, a lot of the legislation, I guess all of the legislation last year on data centers was deferred for the year in deference to a JLUC study that's been going on on data centers.

And that report, presentation of that report is Monday.

of next week.

So I'm sure there'll be a lot of good information in there.

I think some of you all were probably in the session over at the VACO conference.

Senator March, the Dominion Energy Representative was there and to me it was just striking, you know, the presentation about the demand for energy that Dominion has seen, you know, whatever it is now and how long it's taken to get to that point.

This boggles your mind.

15 years to get to where we are.

I know I'm on our side of the board.

I have many other, because you mentioned the JLAR,

And it's interesting that in a year where you have a three and a half billion dollar revenue, they're taking away a dollar a year from school.

So certainly it would be great to hear their thinking on why they are, while they have clear evidence in the JLR study that there are a lot of problems.

Well, and that's, you know, I think partly reflective of the changes in the composite index.

You know, one of the JLARC recommendations is to, you know, to alter that formula and it's not, you know, it's not going to happen this year.

I think it will be interesting to see in light of what they've said about the one-time expenditures.

You know, there have been some pretty strong, strong statements made about the need to try to move forward with

For example, the support staffing that was so cut back, their support during the great recession, so 15 years ago, and trying to restore some of that funding.

So hopefully we don't see a repeat, and that there will actually be some infusion of some additional educational funding as well.

But during the session, certainly, if there's anything that you all need, shoot me an email,

Yeah, I'll be trying to communicate, you know, through the legislative update and certainly keep in touch with your staffs as well on things that are particularly interesting.

Great.

Any other questions?

All right.

I've come up here so that way I can see everybody.

It's nice to see everyone again.

I lastly addressed you about the Commuter Assistance Program or CAP for short, a strategic plan back in April, which feels like yesterday and both three years ago.

But we have completed the first draft of the plan and due to the commission's schedule with you guys not meeting in January, even though we were in the early stages of our

Edits and Revisions.

We wanted to get this in front of you so that you would have an opportunity to look at it and that we could potentially get it adopted and passed in February.

And that way you would have plenty of time to be able to review that.

So just a quick refresher.

The strategic plan aims to evaluate and update the commuter assistance programs throughout the entire state.

So all of the CAT programs throughout Virginia are doing these with DRPT.

It is a requirement of our funding, and DRPT funds 80% of the CAT program, and then the locality to the additional 20%.

So the idea is to really evaluate the program, see where we can enhance effectiveness and the efficiency of programs and observance.

It does replace a previous plan that was called a TDMP, which took for transportation demand management plan.

which was a little less robust, a little bit less forward thinking as in five-year strategic plan is.

And the idea with this is it sets a blueprint, not only for us here at TJPDC and the staff working on the plan, but also a blueprint for DRPT to kind of know what to expect and to, you know, kind of prior approve some of the directions

and the services and things that we're doing in the program.

So it keeps everybody kind of on the same page as we move forward.

So you can go to the next slide.

The components really look at changing the travel demand, what mobility and transportation needs we have, evaluation, like I said, looking at that strategic planning for a five-year timeline,

and then aligning that with the funding requests and the application we submit to TRPT annually.

In addition, once this plan is completed and adopted, it will go to TRPT and then we will do annual updates to that plan to track our progress.

You can go to the next slide.

So here are the various chapters.

I think when we last met in April, we kind of talked a little bit about chapters two, three and four.

and looked at some of the demographics I think we presented you with and the target markets that we looked at which include commuters within, traveling within the TJPDC region.

We see a strong number of commuters that travel from the central Shenandoah PDC region which we partner with them and they are also part of the Rideshare brand.

And then looking at commuters coming from additional outside areas.

That isn't to say that those are the only people we're looking to help or the only people that we're going to be marketing to, but we felt like those three segments were probably the largest proportion of folks that we would need to reach and that might have different needs and different things we need to communicate.

So it's not just necessarily a one stop or one message fits everyone.

That each of these groups have different needs and different messaging.

that our services may be able to provide.

Can go to the next slide.

So what is newer since we last spoke that we worked through and I wanted to present for you guys to review as well as having the draft of the plan is our operation plan timeline.

So what we really try to do and we work on this in conjunction with Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission is to think mindfully of how we want to use

both staff resources as well as dollar resources in moving the program forward.

Like everything else, COVID kind of threw a little bit of a ringer in there when we were all home forever, when we were all teleworking, so we did a lot of that.

We've obviously have moved out of that direction and so we are, it was really a great time in that sense to really stop and go, okay, what do people need

How can we help them?

So with the operations plan, we've kind of broken it down for each of the years with some key areas that we want to focus on in addition to just the regular operation of the program.

And just as a refresher, our goals with this strategic plan were to or are to reduce single occupancy vehicle trips, encourage utilization of the trip planning tools,

And that's important because Rideshare doesn't operate in a vacuum.

We work with all of the other transportation providers and entities in the region.

The trip planning tool encompasses all of that.

So that is a way that folks can look up and make those connections if maybe they need to use a couple of different modes of transportation.

The third was to build or is to build and maintain relationships with community stakeholders.

to promote regional collaboration around transportation solutions.

So again, working together because we get a lot more done when we all work together.

And then the last one is to continue to educate community members on TDM solutions that can increase mobility and also enhance quality of life.

All right, you can go to the next slide.

Promise this would be nice and short.

So just the next steps again, you have

A very early draft.

We are very open to your feedback.

You can send any of that to me or to Christine.

We will be incorporating that.

In addition to this board reviewing the draft, we will also have it out to some of our other committees like the MPO, Enroll Transportation, as well as other staff and the consultant we've been working on are all still going through that process.

So now is the time.

Again, hopefully adoption.

at the February 6th meeting.

And then once we complete that, we'll be submitted to DRPT.

And like I said, we will use this each year as we complete that grant application, which is due February 1.

Another reason for the timeline and why we wanted to go ahead and get it to you early, because I will be back here in February, not only to talk about this, but to present to you the FY26 work plan.

as well as the grant application as well.

And, you know, these things are going to work in tandem.

As you can see, FY26 is the first year in that strategic plan.

So, you know, we wanna make sure we're on the right track before we submit that grant application February 1.

And that is it for me for the moment.

Yeah.

You know, I was,

It's a really interesting process doing some of that and especially having someone else kind of pull some of that together to review.

You know, there were pieces where you were like, I feel very validated because that's exactly what I thought.

And then there were some eye-opening things in there as well.

And I think that's exactly what you want when you're really delving into a big research plan like this and to do that forward thinking and strategic plan.

Like I said, we did a plan before,

that sort of worked on a five-year timeline, but it was definitely not this robust.

So this has been my first go around of this.

And I think it has been a really amazing experience.

And like I said, I think the timing could not have been better because we're poised and in just the right place to really start thinking about how everything has changed and how everyone gets around in some ways has changed or their needs with that.

So it's been,

Very fun.

Very interesting, and I noted, I think it was on page 66 of your report, you were discussing the gathering of data, and what are the implications of that, and how not to conflate correlation and causation.

And that's a very important thing in research, because as you know,

So I didn't mean to laugh.

My apologies.

Yeah.

And you know, that was another one.

Well, I think it was a great time.

to really rethink the program.

Unfortunately, the data was the hurdle on that one in that data coming out of the pandemic is maybe a little inconsistent or not our best.

But the good news is, like I said, we will be doing yearly updates to that.

So there's no complaint.

Noted.

I'll also add that we pushed this out to you guys very quickly.

We know that there are errors in here, but we wanted, with you not having a January meeting, we wanted to give you ample time to look through it.

So we do intend to do a very

Thoreau review, all the typos that we've already found.

Yes, yes, correct.

And there will be more data coming out with some more of the census data.

It would be interesting to look at the cross tabs behind the

sort of motivation interest questions about getting engaged with ride share as a commuter versus who those commuters are.

Yes, you have hit the nail on the head.

That is the number one sticking point is convenience and how

Do we, and we had a focus group to try and understand a little bit more because convenience means different things to different people.

You know, there is an umbrella, but what, you know, each of those is put together is, you know, what could we get down?

How could we drill down further to understand what folks are meaning by that?

And the issue is, is it's going to be a little bit different for everybody.

And so how do we tackle that?

And, you know,

The idea is that there are multiple transportation options.

Not everything's gonna work for everybody, but if we have transit, if we have carpooling or vanpooling, those can be options to fill in sometimes gaps where transit is not the best solution.

And so the more we can kind of delve into that and figure out where we can kind of fit in and how we can help people find

what might work for them, I think the better and yeah, convenience is the big thing on that.

So understanding what that is for everyone is a big thing.

You know, we're asking people to get out of their cars and to choose something different.

And that is a innate behavior that all of us do multiple times every day.

So it's a lot, but it can be done.

Mr. Smith?

Supervisor Barlow?

Yes.

Supervisor Reed?

All right, very well.

So on to new business.

Okay, included in your packet is the calendar year 2025 schedule confirming all of the first Thursday dates of each month with a reminder that PDC does not usually meet in January or June.

And the anticipated topics that we know will come up at different times of year are already drafted on there.

However, this is alternative.

It was y'all's preference that we do hold some of our meetings virtual.

I did not list those on there so that we have flexibility, but the next meeting in February is scheduled to be a virtual meeting and we'll send all that out in our normal manner.

It is, did I say June?

Good for you, July.

It is January and July.

With that said, we have in many years had to pull special sessions in those off months for particular deadlines that come up.

I will say in finance director today, Laura, or yesterday met with the consultants for the class and compensation study.

And they are going to want to do a session with the board on your philosophy on compensation of where you want to fall within competition for the market.

And if we are trying to get that study completed by March so that any recommendations can go into the budget in April, we may need to call a special session in January.

But just a heads up, while it's not on this calendar, we may be asking for an additional meeting if needed.

Did you say February is going to be virtual?

That's correct.

It was supposed to be.

It's a second.

No.

Yes.

I also.

Anywhere is going to be.

And virtual.

Yep, January the 9th virtual, converting the February one to in-person.

The February meeting also has a finance executive committee prior.

It shows on March here, but we might need both.

Do we have to have a forum for that?

Or is this a special you can all be virtual?

Virtual is virtual.

They've made that distinction very clear.

They're trying to make that distinction clear in the guidelines.

But that quorum is virtual.

That's correct.

A virtual quorum.

Yes, a virtual quorum.

I like that catch as you were lying.

They've made that very clear.

They have tried to make that very clear.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right.

Seconded by Mr. Gallaway.

All those in favor?

The next three action items are all resolutions for upcoming grant applications that are due.

If you guys can recall, in both 2023 and 2024, we applied for a U.S. Department of Transportation RAISE grant to do the preliminary engineering on the Rivanna Bike Ped Bridge.

It was a smart scale application that came back with an extremely high cost.

And so doing the preliminary engineering might help us reduce some of the contingencies, get a better cost estimate, know what we're going into so that it can be a little bit more competitive for either state or federal funding.

In 2023, the grants got a project of merit score, which means it was automatically advanced to the second tier.

However, because that is such a competitive program and a national program, it was not awarded.

They highly recommended in our debrief with USDOT to continue submitting the application.

We did that again in 2024.

It was scored as recommended.

They continue to tell us that it is a very competitive application, but again, it was not awarded funding.

So we are going in for a third round for 2025.

We are going to massage the application a little bit, maybe do a little bit more data analysis on economic impacts to see if we can increase our score in that particular area.

but are hoping to get your support.

And then we will bring it before the MPO committees, both technical and policy board to get their support.

And then we'll be reaching out to the many different stakeholders to see the letters that we can secure to apply.

It's due January 30th.

So moved.

Second will second.

In the new application, I know we're, I think it's smart scale, the project that's got the ride, the park and ride on pan tops.

I mean, I don't know where that, I mean, we won't know, but I don't know if that was in the application.

Yeah, thank you.

This one is an 80% DRPT, 20% local match.

Again, Sarah already noted this, but she'll come in February to share more detail with you on it.

But since you don't necessarily meet in January, but we may now meet in January, we're going to go ahead and put the resolution before you now with further detail coming.

In years past, this resolution has come to you all after the application has already been submitted.

We're moving it to in advance just so that we can submit it with the application rather than ask to send it along after it's been submitted.

So moved.

All in favor?

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

This is the work that Lucinda has been working on with our two new hires.

This is again annual funding that we are seeking from Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Under FTA 5310 grant program, this one is 80% federally funded, 16% state funded, and only 4% local match.

So that local match does come out of the per capita funding from all of the member jurisdictions.

The application, again, is due February 1st, and Lucinda will come before you guys in your February meeting to share more detail on the actual application that was submitted.

I'll move.

I'll second.

Second by Mr. Gallaway.

Second by Mr. O'Donohue.

Second by Mr. O'Donohue.

Yes, we have currently three vacancies on the Regional Housing Partnership's full partnership board.

And those vacancies are for the appointed builder representative, the appointed citizen representative from a rural area, and the appointed health industry representative.

Those were occupied by Christopher Berment,

Moselle Booker, and Shannon Mead.

We have received recommendation from the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association for one of their board members, Luke Roark, who is also the owner of Commonwealth Contractors to be appointed for the builder representative role.

Louisa County resident and board member Fitzgerald Barnes has been recommended for the citizen resident representative for a rural area and then for the health industry representative we have Cameron Moore who is the Virginia Department of Health language access analyst and also serves on the board of BRAC, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless.

And that is a mouthful.

Every time we get near the end of a lease, we get to the decision-making point of do we want to renew or do we want to consider a purchase.

And so the discussion

said that it would be preferential for staff to have a buildings committee so that we can get support with negotiating a lease if that were to be the choice and or any cosmetic upgrades since the building hasn't been painted floors, things like that haven't been changed in many decades.

and or to consider a long-term purchase of a building and making sure that we have commission action on that.

So moved.

So the five that we just said.

Just let you guys know we are now under contract with Gallagher to do the classification compensation study and we have done the kickoff meeting.

They generally recommend six to eight months for the process.

We've asked them to do it in three to four and they were amenable to that.

So since we are a small organization, a lot of the data already exists and we would like some considerations with the FY26 budget round.

They were willing to accommodate that.

And that is why we may need a special session in January in order to keep that timeline.

I'm really excited to be working with them.

This is a good process for our staff to go through not having ever done a formal study before.

Body information is in there monthly, as it always is.

There's a lot of information about the upcoming Safe Streets and Roads for All.

It is in its second round of public engagement.

We've conducted 12 pop-up events.

There's ongoing efforts to engage the community, analyzing survey responses, and then there's a list of upcoming events.

There's some virtual meetings coming up and a working group meeting coming up.

For environmental related to the Solid Waste Plan, Fluvanna County Transfer Station is seeking to increase their capacity, which is allowable under code.

It does trigger an amendment to the Regional Solid Waste Plan that the TJPDC puts together on behalf of the Solid Waste Planning Unit.

It doesn't require DEQ prior approval and it doesn't require a public hearing of any type.

So staff did make the amendment as requested and did notify DEQ, just include it in your packet as appendices on the ED report.

And that is all I have.

Yeah, you know, David and I talked a little bit about this, obviously, loaded, and that's coming back to the table in January.

Again, thank you all for all the counties that did put this last year and wrote a resolution.

We'll be carrying those with us again until the inception.

Although we're successful, we're in the middle of

rezoning, it's getting pretty exciting, a lot of interesting topics surrounding that, affordable housing being one of them, very strong contingent very much against, another contingent talking about where do they go, and then there's another contingent that's curious where infrastructure happens to Nelson, all valid questions, the median house sales like 400 grand again for this year, we're going into our assessments,

So we now essentially have a couple years of data points where comps are sitting and it's going to look like a pretty untastable assessment year.

A lot of areas, especially east side of Nelson, they're seeing 40 to 50 percent increases in their assessments.

This is especially impactful to those communities because they're usually lesser income compared to the western side of the county.

We got that.

We have a solar panel vote coming up.

Big old igniting megawatt thing.

So any advice you can give, if you've ever voted on one, you've voted on a few.

I can take some.

We're not voting on it necessarily, but we'll be having our public hearing this coming month.

And it's pretty much happening in the portion of Nelson that I think, you know, they would be able to, which is lower cost of land.

predominantly, was just utilized for a lot of lollies.

So at that point, beyond that, discussion of community colleges, trying to get more groups in connection to develop a relationship with the Central Virginia Community College, so much as Lynchburg based, they have a lot more blue collar, essentially, brick and mortar type programs compared to PDCC.

And I think that's something that I kind of want to talk about.

related career technical education.

Piedmont does a great job and they address blue collar in this way.

And I have changed my mindset from thinking you gotta be a guy like mine on the roof putting architecture shingles on at 18 degree weather to, as a matter of fact, an IT guy is now a blue collar job.

You know, if you can, you know, I just didn't really have to teach myself and I screwed it up a bunch, but you know, splicing will

That is a blue collar job.

And then creating the network itself.

And I think we have to change the mindset on that.

Cybersecurity, you know, that's not a white collar job.

That is now a blue collar job.

Splice and fire, you know, we're not doing the greatest job in our area.

And the Southern Virginia Electric Co-op is doing a good job, but we need to start looking into the new infrastructure that we have.

How is it that we're training our folks to be looking at those 40 or 50,000 public cars?

But in addition to that, you know, that doesn't negate the importance of, you know, the guy putting shingles on a roof or the mason putting block on.

I do want to touch on one last thing before I go.

At the Mayco conference, we were talking kind of about job creation, what that looks like.

And I think a flawed idea is that

with the assumption that if we simply provide the education, we will get more workers.

I think we've proven in the last 10 years from the philosophical change of higher education not being the answer for education and saying, all right, let's provide classes for these jobs, that we're going to get more workers.

That has clearly not been the case.

We've seen this happen on a regional basis.

You provide the classes.

You also need to convince the kids that they need to take the classes.

This is not easy.

It also impacts job creation.

We talked about housing.

Can you build anything in a rural area with that workforce?

And your alternative is importing workforce from Richmond or from any of the larger metropolis areas to then go and build things.

You know, hey, I get that.

That's great.

Nelson County has got a long history of having a lot of home builders because of the Whitaker community.

I think something that's frustrating me and I said at that conference to delegates and senators is the weaponization of regulators on making those exact licenses, like becoming a master plumber, electrician, R-framer, or any of those, is actually more difficult to attain than getting a four-year degree.

And one of the things, simply, the guys who are running your lecture, you know, yeah, I do think they're all smart enough to get a four-year degree,

But putting that expectation on a working class kid who wants to do working class jobs to be stuck in some kind of company monopoly for six years where he has to do four years of journeymen, two years or four years of working under someone, two years of journeymen, just to take the test, you've forced them into some form of indentured servitude to some corporation or one entity.

God forbid he wants to change jobs.

What's that?

That's a feature, not a lie.

Yes.

It's quite the look.

Yes.

And you're sitting there, and I'm looking at people on my job sites that I want to become master electricians who are completely capable of doing it, who, because of all of those barriers, can't do it.

So I don't know what that means.

I don't really know how to really articulate that on a regional scale.

But I do think it's a discussion for career and technical education, how we can address that.

Because housing ain't going to go down either if your workforce is this big.

What was it, Miles?

Real quiet, man.

That sounds moving along, pushing there.

Got a little line that's set in place for another one, not for James.

We have our annual holiday parade in downtown Stanardsville.

The Commission on Aging had their Christmas one, which is all of them.

CIP, CIP CFP had planning committee, had its work session, actually we've done essentially two work sessions on the CIP, one of which was a sort of process oriented at the beginning community work, how things come into the CIP.

One of the complaints, concerns on both the commission level, I think at the council level has been that

By the time it gets there for decisioning, there's been these sort of assumptions that are made earlier in the process.

So you end up with a half-cooked product, and you weren't really going to have a grasp of what the original ingredients and possibilities were.

So we're trying to work on that a little bit procedurally.

Public hearing on that is on Tuesday, and I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stuff in that.

That packet has, I didn't have to crack that packet, but it's Saturday, so that's for me.

I'm on the horse of the land banks moving forward, although the city is taking it in a sort of hybrid authority fashion, which I happen to be dubious about.

And I won't whine about that here.

I'll fight that battle somewhere else.

And I think there are things that are happening in terms of the city's

sort of medium term plans in the unhoused that I won't get into except every time we turn around.

Yeah, I think everyone's gotten used to the idea that yes, this is going to take real, real, real life to sort of attack this properly.

The premier circle really is sort of scratching that we've got more div, including talking with salvation army about opening up a low entry shelter

Green County is our biggest topic now.

It's definitely the water developments.

We're still hashing out, trying to figure out what's, you know, to start them all at once.

trying to phase them in in sections but that's Green County's biggest thing is what we're going to do with this new reservoir and stuff and but that's that's the biggest topics right there going on in the green hopefully when the new Harley-Davidson story may have opened it's supposed to open the week of Thanksgiving but they had a major setback with the floor or something so that's soon to be opening and

Quite a few development things that have come along as far as the tear screen on 29, that's moving up.

And then there's the senior thing right there, right across the middle of the side.

I think they set to start taking people in that by the end of December or January.

They said people start moving into that.

So we've got a little bit of development going on.

Sure.

We're in kind of a slow season right now on the board.

We are gearing up for budget season.

And as part of that, we had our long-term budget forecast, which was not

That's great news.

It's projected a kind of growing revenue gap just based on our committed obligations that we already know about.

The main driver of this is our, I might have even talked about this in our last meeting, so I apologize if I did, but the main thing of this is our kind of our growing transition from volunteer fire and rescue into professional fire and rescue with declining volunteerism and being a pretty large, low county at the end of the day.

We've kind of financed that transition up till now through a series of I think four total safer grants of different sizes, ultimately hiring 60 new fire rescue professional staff to go throughout the county, specifically a few very targeted volunteer units that have been manned up significantly with professional staff.

Those are a federal grant that phases in slowly into more and more local funding.

So the feds buy the first year salary and then slowly be hickered up until by the year four we're paying the bull salary.

There's other things that are affecting our budget outlook.

Capital projects that are coming online.

We have the operating costs like the Corp project.

debt service on the jail renovations, these things.

But the hugest driver is going to be this significant uptick in professional buyer staff.

I raise this as just something I imagine it is also a concern that some of our other jurisdictions face, because this is specifically because we have relied so much on volunteer buyer for our rural areas, right?

The urban core has often is

Has not relied so heavily on that, but this is very much how we've had it provided.

And there's now an expectation of this kind of continuing service.

I'm sure there's something else I'm missing, but that's what I got.

We also just had a meeting with our schools to go over the CIPD for the next five years.

It's a really good fix here.

Significant asks.

$560 million CIP live.

Yes.

Yeah, they're...

It's really achievable.

I would throw out, it wouldn't hit your issue, were you in the Smith County when we were in Vacab?

Did you see their presentation on what they do with their community college systems?

They provide for other high school grads and they have to work it out because the way their county falls, the jurisdiction has two different community college systems servicing it.

That any grad from Smith County can go to the community colleges for free.

And the idea is, like you said, that providing the classes doesn't necessarily fill up.

But when you take the cost out of the way, the purpose they're doing it as a locality is to help keep people, because they're such a small county, they don't want to lose their talent.

So there's, without any sort of commitment, they're not tying somebody in that you must work for them.

But the idea is that if they provide that to them, that that may help solidify keeping the population there to work within their county.

They've just got it going.

And they've got some other interesting stuff to keep employees retained.

That might be one to look into.

You could do it for specific.

programs, or whatever the needs are, I would imagine they was doing it, it sounds like for everything.

Would you count?

With the candidate.

He went, with the candidate, made him go to the Union College, which then went right straight on into Tech.

Amy Waller, when she was one of the City Council here a few years back, and one of her clients was called the Piedmont Promise, which essentially was graduated city, city schools, you go to Piedmont, Detroit, and she carried out her budget for it.

I'm going to point this out.

Well, I think there's a state program to be built around this.

There's definitely different sectors that it could impact.

Oh, specifically for local, just local government positions.

If you have a better talent pipeline from your local community college system directly into your local governments, you could have a fee and if you were paying for it.

I just came from, before this meeting, left my community advisory committee meeting for my RIO 29 area.

And we had a presentation on MicroCat.

MicroCat now has been in place for a year, 48,000 rides in this pilot.

It's the fastest growing transit project, they said, in Virginia.

And VIA is this company that they, you know, you contract with them to run on.

So they're nationwide running in big places and said it's their fastest growing project that they've managed in the last three years.

So MicroCats really

Taking off, if you're seeing the MicroCat van running around, our board will be hearing more about it in January.

And I'm just getting more and more geared up for phase two, because it seems to be now doing even more than what we thought it'd be successful.

And it seems to be that, but plus more.

So excited about that.

The other thing into the budget ramp up that Supervisor Pruitt mentioned is we're in our comp plan conversations.

I think it's interesting in Albemarle, we have 5% set aside as development area, 95% set aside as rural area.

And more so than any other time that I can remember, conversation about the development area, not so much expanding it, but getting creative in ways to maybe swap areas in and out.

But there are just things being talked about that have never been talked about on our day before because of the political sensitivities to it that doesn't go with party politics.

But it definitely goes with politics.

So it's interesting how those conversations will continue as we work through our comp plan.

Give yourself credit there, Ned.

I'm very much the one who pushed that ball right up to the edge of the hill.

Then it started creeping down.

Especially since an election years ago.

I want to put on my regional housing partnership chair hat for a minute.

The 18th is our quarterly meeting.

The quarterly meeting is on the 18th.

It's a virtual meeting.

So I would ask that all of you consider listening in.

We're going to have some really nice presentations, including Mr. Rutherford.

We also have Virginia Housing's Director of Policy and something, I forgot her title, but she's going to be going over, giving us insight into what the General Assembly will be doing in terms of housing, what Virginia Housing will be advocating for, et cetera.

So there may be some interest there.

You know, since it's virtual, you could kind of hone in on the presentations and not necessarily need to be there for all the other stuff.

The meeting schedule started two,

And of course, it's on the website, so if you have interest in hearing some of that, I'd like you to attend.

The other piece of it is some of the counties right now, and I know January tends to be the time, at least for our board, where we appoint people to committees and things like that.

Some of the counties have one representative, and by our bylaws, the idea was that each jurisdiction would appoint an elected or a planning commissioner, but also an alternate.

So there are some absences or vacancies on the alternative positions.

So hopefully sending out to those counties and saying, hey, can you guys maybe get the alternate place?

We had some quorum issues this year.

So part of that is if a person that can't attend doesn't have an alternate to attend in their place, then attend.

It becomes kind of an impact we'll have in the meeting.

So just appreciate your help with that.

And like I said, we'll call, we'll send that out to the individual chairman of each board.

But that's all I have.

Great.

And as far as the solo can go, say we can negotiate.

And make sure they do it right.

and Fluvanna County.

We did vote down rural cluster subdivisions.

You know, I know that's not a practice in a lot of localities, but it was a rather capacity to say a lot of things there.

It's just one more thing that a landowner doesn't have available to them.

So that was our one that happened recently.

We did start our discussions with the schools.

The general sense is that, you know, with the

The funding going away from the feds with regard to COVID and positions that were, I think it was much earlier, you know, taking away 2012 kind of brought back a certain degree of funding.

And now that that funding is going away, you know, if you absorb those people, if you absorb those people, what are we going to do in the next century?

The sense that we shouldn't maintain them and keep them is still very important.

But again, with a lot of the funding that you're seeing

The overall budget season is still too early to tell.

We do have reassessment here, so we'll see how that plays out.

And other than that, it's been pretty quiet, I would say, in the last several weeks.

Yeah, can I take a temperature on that?

Do you guys want to hold this time?

It's virtual.

7th, great.

Thank you.

All right.

And is anybody not going to be here?

Excuse me.

No.

Is that changed?

That's great.

So I think that's it.

And as for nicely our new commission orientation, I share work for the right of ratification.

I guess a lot of these things are actually in February.

So I'll skip saying those.