Planning District Commission Meeting   2/6/2025

Lee, and Mike, I believe, is going to join us virtually.

And they asked yours truly as the treasurer to chair today.

So I'll do my very best to keep up to their level of professionalism.

So I'll call the meeting to order.

Shall I call the roll first?

Sure.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Present.

Supervisor O'Brien?

Mr. Higgins?

Present.

All righty.

So we will move past that and go to matters from the public.

Do we have anybody from the public who would like to make a comment?

You've got two minutes to chat.

Look at that, rolling by, 702.

Presentation.

So it looks like we've got a bunch of new staff to talk about.

Yes.

So we have two joining us online and we have two in person that I want to introduce you to each of them.

The first is Taylor Jenkins.

Taylor Jenkins is our new director of transportation.

It's the role that we've had vacant since last February.

So we are very excited for her to be here.

She has experience in both public and private sector planning.

She's AICP certified.

She has experience working with DRPT, supporting MPOs from the state side.

So we were really excited for her expertise in both local and regional multimodal planning to bring that onto our team.

So welcome, Taylor.

You don't have to say anything, but if you want to, you can.

I look forward to working with all of you.

Great.

Thanks.

That's awesome.

All right.

And then the next one we have joining us online as well is Joe Klodzinski.

And Joe is taking on the VATI project administrative assistant, filling in where Gorjan has now moved into other planning.

And so he's coming in to take on to support Lori with the VATI project, both the 2022 and the 2024 grant.

He was a senior claims administrator working for the Office of Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.

He has extensive

Keen attention to detail, which is very helpful in that very big project, a background in community development, and we're really happy to have him here with us in supporting such a huge impactful project.

So welcome, Joe.

All right, and then we have two joining us in person.

Behind you, one is Igor Kalina.

He is our PATH Transportation Counselor.

That's our mobility management program.

As you guys recall, the grant allowed us to hire a full-time and a part-time employee to support the program in its development.

He comes to us with a background in transportation, language interpretation, project management, really good fit for the role.

He was a former medical transporter, so he has field experience helping community members with mobility issues.

And then we're really happy to have him help build the program since it is so new.

So thank you, Ike.

You're welcome.

And then Sarah, whom you've met before, but is back now under our umbrella.

She's the PATH Transportation Assistant.

She was formerly with Java when we were contracting that position out.

And when we advertised for the position, she was such a good fit that we decided to bring her with us.

She has a background in community experience with senior care, intake with United Way, residential manager, group home.

So she's got a lot of background and knowledge of the unique needs.

A lot of our community members and how to get them support with transportation.

So really excited that you're here with us.

Any of you guys want to say anything?

I'm just very happy to be here.

I'm very thankful for the trust.

I'm really looking forward to working with you.

For the first time in a long time.

So very, very excited for the next

So before we move on to, I guess Lucinda has the next two, I'd be remiss not to say thank you to you two, because you held in that position for a very long time.

So thank you for Ruth and Christine, that you did a yeoman's job.

Cool.

Yeah, I don't know.

You want to sit here?

Is that OK?

Yeah, of course.

Thanks.

So the PATH program.

I think you all remember me from this fall when I was talking about our achievements in our first year.

So we submitted our application to DRPT for fiscal year 2026.

We're two years ahead on our funding applications.

because we have to apply to the state and then the state applies to the federal government for the funds, so it takes a while to get it.

So I'm gonna provide you some background on the PATH program.

I'll review fiscal year 24 and 25 budgets and programming, and then I'll introduce the fiscal year 2026 application and programming for that upcoming year.

So the next slide, please.

The goals of the PATH program are to increase and improve transportation for older adults and people with disabilities.

We work to coordinate transportation among providers and build partnerships.

So we're not providing transportation.

We're helping people find transportation and we're helping providers increase and improve their transportation for older adults.

Next.

So in our first year, we secured funding, we formed partnerships, we established an informed information and referral center, which is where we hired Sarah to answer phones and answer questions.

We also conducted a marketing study and developed a brand and marketing materials.

And we started marketing our services.

And then this year, 2025, we have two transportation counselors and we're implementing a lot of new services.

We have a transportation solutions workshop that was developed through an AARP livable communities grant that we partnered with the Charlottesville CAA, the Charlottesville Area Alliance, which is a

which was a collaboration among many aging service providers.

They asked us to do some grant programs with them.

So we developed a transportation solutions workshop.

We also found two partners with two volunteer driver programs that were assisting.

We're providing staff support for them.

We're helping answer phones and schedule rides.

And we are working on

Providing them more support by providing mileage reimbursement for their volunteer drivers, background checks and training.

We also provided a bus field trip and are going to be continuing bus field trips with community groups and also conducting travel training one-on-one and in groups and we're going to continue to grow partnerships and increase transportation services.

We hope to start some new volunteer driver agencies in rural areas that don't have as many transportation options for older adults.

So in fiscal year 2024, our budget was $110,000.

We had the low 4% local match and that had a halftime manager and a full-time specialist for nine months.

The next year, which is the year that we just entered into for 2025, our budget was $224,000.

Again, it was still a 4% local match.

It gives my time half

as the program manager, and we have two full-time specialists.

On the slide, it says we have one for six months, but we added some additional funds and were able to keep Sarah for the other six months.

So we were able to keep a full staff through that.

And so this year, our application for the DRPT grant

We applied for one category for $324,000, still with the 4% local match, and that'll give half of my time and the two specialists.

And then the

operating funds, which is just 4750 was a separate category grant.

And that's for the mileage reimbursement for the volunteer driver programs.

We're going to, that's a 10% match, but it's only $475.

So we're going to help try and increase the amount of miles that their drivers drive and also recruit new drivers.

Hopefully with the incentive that they will be reimbursed.

The reimbursement is only 50 cents a mile, so it's not the full federal reimbursement.

We'll also be doing the driver trainings and background checks.

So our plan,

So we're still going to continue our information and referral services that we offer to the public.

We will also be adding the new services that I mentioned, the transportation solutions workshops, the travel training and field trips, partnerships and building transportation services and support for those volunteer driver programs.

and then we added a transportation assistance fund which is not funded by DRPT but is part of the PATH program and actually Sarah wrote the grant.

She got some funding

because we got a lot of calls from people who had really dire needs and just couldn't find any services and so there was an example of a man who had a stroke and he needed stretcher transportation to get to his doctor's appointments but his wife couldn't take him and so the cost for those rides was about a thousand dollars each way and he needs to go to the doctors and there's no way that they could afford it

So Sarah came up with the idea of having a transportation assistance fund where in those instances we could help support that transportation

for a limited amount of time and like enable those people to get the services that they need and just get through that hardship.

So we're still, it's a very small amount of money.

So we're not advertising it very much.

And we have about a thousand dollars per jurisdiction right now, but we are looking for additional funds and fundraising to continue that program and, you know, add more to it.

So we're able to help people with more rides.

So you've seen this slide before, the community benefits.

We're still doing the same benefits.

Plus we're working with partners to start new transportation services and increase existing ones as well.

I've been working, talking with John about hiring them to provide some services in the rural areas.

And then also talking with the Nelson County,

Health Clinic, and also their community paramedic services on ways that we could help them address the needs of their clients to get to their clients.

So you know how everybody says that we do too many studies?

Well, not these studies.

They're not too many.

It might take us a while, but we're really building on the studies that we've already done to improve transportation for the region for the long time.

TJPDC applied for a technical assistance grant on behalf of the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority to do another study.

But let me give you some background on this first.

So we started in 2018 with the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority report that recommended that we form a regional transit authority to improve public transportation in the region.

and in 2009, the General Assembly passed legislation that enabled us to form a regional transit authority that's called the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, CARTA.

In 2016, TJPDC was asked to re-examine, yeah, I'm still on that slide, was asked to re-examine opportunities for improved communication among the transit providers

and this effort resulted in the development of the regional transit partnership in 2017.

So in 2022, we did the regional transit vision plan.

I think I presented to you on that.

And in 2024, we completed the regional transit governance study, looking at how transit is currently governed and then how we could

structure a transit authority in the area and make decisions around transit on a regional level.

So that governance study recommended that the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County initiated a preliminary discussions to enter into an agreement for the, for CARTA to be enacted.

And so in

Okay, next slide.

So the Regional Transit Authority will be working towards providing regional transit planning, so it's kind of unifying transit planning, increasing public transportation funds, and expanding services.

In August, a working group of Albemarle County and Charlottesville staff was formed to start enacting the CARTA legislation.

And then in the last two months, the leadership from Albemarle and the City of Charlottesville enacted CARTA and selected board members, which is like so exciting because we've been working on this since 2008.

So it's really great.

And so the first board meeting is on February 20th, and they're going to look at the draft bylaws, review the goals and intent for CARTA and discuss a timeline for going before the General Assembly.

So that was all the background.

And one of the CARTA's first projects is going to be looking at developing a service prioritization and implementation plan for the services in the Regional Transit Vision Plan.

So that's going to answer the question of

Like what order should the services from the vision plan be implemented?

And in order to answer that question, we'll be looking at how much each service costs and what would the benefits be for each of the services?

So we applied for a merit technical assistance grant.

The budget was $200,000.

TJPDC applied for this on behalf of CARTA and

because CARTA wasn't quite formed when the application was due.

Well, you guys know what I mean.

All right, we got that.

So the study will have a steering committee to provide local input and guide the study and it'll be made up of representatives from CARTA, the CARTA board, representatives from each jurisdiction embraced by CARTA, representatives from the Department of Rail and Public Transportation, also from VDOT because

In the second phase of the study, we'll be looking at street design and some modifications might be needed to be made in order to help the bus routes run in the new areas.

So we would need cost estimates from that.

And then our representatives from Cat John and UTS and representatives from the Regional Transit Partnership.

We also have stakeholders, and we would present two updates to the stakeholders, and that would be the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee, the ACARDA, the board, Albemarle Board of Supervisors, Charlottesville City Council, the TJPDC Commission, and then additional Rural Board of Supervisors as requested.

And so the technical assistance grant would have two phases.

And the first phase would be to evaluate the services in the vision plan and kind of make a list of what those services would look like and then use criteria to select the services to be further evaluated.

So we'd get like a short list of maybe 10 services that we want to further look into.

So task two would be refining the operating and capital costs for those selected services, review the benefit data for those services, meet with the steering committee and get local input and then prioritize those services for near-term investment.

And that's all I have.

Yeah.

Lucinda, these are informative presentations.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

And I will take the heat for this one.

Last week was five different major grant applications were due in the same week for our organization.

So I gave staff grace to not have their presentations ready for the packet, but ready for the meetings.

Understood.

Can I actually, as a matter of privilege,

I remember when we last heard an update on PATH, the number of actual touches in the community.

I don't remember what it was, but it struck me as being smaller than I would hope.

It's about the same.

There's a small increase, but not really enough.

So what we discovered, we based our first estimate of

2,000 calls a year for our first year based on Rappahannock's mobility management program.

But they schedule all their rides and they provide all their rides.

Right.

So we're not trying to supplement catch on or UTS or any of the other providers in the area.

So we are just providing information and referral.

So the people who are calling us are the ones who are the most in need and can't make the other services work for them.

So we have a much lower call number.

One of the things that we're going to do to increase the call number is start working with partners to schedule rides through them.

So we've got a partnership with the volunteer driver programs and we're hoping to help them schedule their rides.

We're answering their phones a couple days a week now, so we'll be scheduling their rides and that'll increase our call volume.

And then we're looking to the rural communities to try to find organizations that will also start volunteer driver programs.

We can support them with staff support, mileage reimbursement, driver training, database, all of that, and answering the calls.

So we would start to see more calls coming in.

One of the ways that we're marketing the program is doing the workshops and the bus field trips.

So we can kind of get that out there and organizations will be partnering with them to do the workshops at their

I think what's also, because we have so many transit services in this area, and I can't speak to this any level of detail, but I can get the detail if you want it.

When we compare our calls and our data to John's calls and data, they're receiving a lot of the phone calls for work-related needs, and we're receiving a lot for medical care-related needs.

And so it was really important to us that we weren't creating something duplicative.

We weren't doing something that somebody else was doing, but that we're serving a unique role that's not yet met in the community.

And we recognize those aren't going to be large numbers.

And DRPT has been very supportive and understanding

We are building this program from the bottom up and it's going to take a great deal of time until it's really well known and ubiquitous.

And we were very hesitant to do hard advertising before we were prepared to be able to help them with the rides.

We don't want a thousand phone calls where we're telling 950 of them, we can't help you.

Are you at that point you can do that?

That we can, you guys would have to speak to that.

It's very, very small, incremental.

Yeah.

So it's not, it's not quite, we have done some travel training and, you know, gotten people on the buses.

But it's, it's really small.

One of the things is this program is designed for like people with the most need, older adults and people with disabilities who can't drive.

And so we are getting those people.

You know, it's a small amount of them, but they need a lot of help.

So we have somebody who calls us probably once a week and he gets a little confused and he needs help getting a ride.

And we schedule him on MicroCat.

And, you know, we help him like connect with them and get the ride.

He wouldn't be able to do it on his own with the app.

So there's like, you know, kind of special cases like that.

I want to tell me if this is maybe too pointed, but do you construe the principal goal of the program as being actually delivering the service?

Or is the principal goal of the program qualitative data collection?

Which it's doing a great job of the latter right now, I think it's fair to say.

And I might, I guess, be slightly more generous in my outlook of the performance if we were characterizing the latter as being the main goal of the program at this structure.

Yeah, and in taking on this program, we were asked to apply for this because there was a gap need that wasn't being met.

And in taking on this program, I was very clear that the TJPDC is not in the business of transportation provision.

We don't want to own rolling stock.

We don't want to be doing bus trips.

So we don't want to necessarily be getting capital grants.

for buses, but we can help other people get them.

We can help Jaunts.

We can get senior centers.

We can help provide vehicles through this grant.

We can help provide drivers and training.

So the 5310 program has been around for a really long time.

And originally it ended up just giving vehicles to

and each adult day center.

agency would have their one vehicle and their one driver.

And it was very siloed and not really efficient because everybody, you know, their van sat in their parking lots except the morning and the evening.

And so the federal government decided that they wanted to try to make it more coordinated.

And so they made up this like mobility management, which is to look at the region as a whole, and then try to take those vans and coordinate them so that their

We get a free van and we give our clients rides for human service agencies.

So walk me through the gentleman that calls once a week.

What does that look like?

Sure, sure.

Would you be willing to?

Sure, yeah.

Both Igor and I have talked to this person.

This week we have not heard much from him, but some weeks we'll get three or four calls depending on how active he feels like being.

One thing that we do to help him is, like Lucinda said, we schedule micro CAT whenever he's going somewhere that's in that service area and whenever he is scheduling a same-day ride because you can't call John on the same day.

I don't remember if he has a connection with one of our volunteer driving programs yet.

I don't think he's in their service area, so probably not.

He will also call sometimes because the hold time to call joint and make a reservation is extremely long.

So rather than him sit on the phone for 45 minutes, one of us will do it.

Yes, he is capable of doing it himself.

I think he just prefers not to.

I think it gives him a little bit of peace of mind that we do it for him.

And it just makes it a little bit easier for him.

When he uses MicroCat and we get him the right to where he's going, he calls them for his return right home.

So to follow Mike's comment, so you're a facilitator, right?

We put people together.

That's what we do, people with services.

Is there any value to get in front of organizations, just like, for instance, CAR, right?

We've got 1,500 real estate agents and we have monthly meetings.

We can at least talk about this.

I'm confident they don't know that this exists.

I mean, is that a beneficial thing to do or all of a sudden you're going to get more work?

Yeah, so right now what we're trying to market are the workshops and the bus field trips.

What you would do is you would come to the monthly general membership meeting and just do a presentation.

Thanks.

But I think to your point from the very beginning in talking with DRPT, it was we can use this program to help us better understand where the gaps really are.

Where are there truly people that need help that aren't getting it through all of the other existing services, community groups?

And so we are required to report all of that back to them.

And the vision would be we then pull in mobility management resources to fill those gaps to help get

Also, like one of the things that we do, like we meet kind of monthly, we report monthly to John of any calls that we get to have problems like the long wait time.

We'll talk to John about that.

So we can help advocate for those people who need the services or having bumps and hiccups with services and try to make them better and improve them.

So like their call system was worse and we were able to have them improve it.

So there's, you know, I think that like there's nobody whose job it is to kind of monitor the transportation services and make it better or represent the people who are having trouble using the systems.

We can certainly offer to give this presentation.

Well, but I mean, if you're going to their staff and they've had long wait times, the governing board should be aware of that.

But I'm beyond that issue.

I'm not just saying go and I'm saying the whole program.

And I'm on their board and I give monthly updates of our programs.

And I mean, I'm using John, but you've got plenty of other, not everybody has a governing board that's overseeing where staff is the last entity.

But John himself is not mainly from medical pickup.

Like you said, one gentleman with the stroke

Thank you guys for being here.

Thank you.

Consent agenda is next.

How do you want to take this piece by piece or do it all at once?

All at one time.

Mr. Chairman, I move we accept the consent agenda as presented.

Okay, do we do a roll call on this?

No.

Jesse says no.

Roll by activation.

Okay, everybody say aye.

Just picked up 15 minutes.

Thank you, Jesse.

New business, Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership appointments.

We have been informed that Greg Powell would like to step back from his current appointed role on the Regional Housing Partnership as the appointed design professional and he has recommended that

Kurt Kiesecker take his place.

And Kurt is willing and able to do so.

And there have been a few people who have shared their support for that appointment.

All in favor, say aye.

I'm going to take a little chairman's prerogative on this topic.

I emailed you late for the summit.

I want to first give a shout out to Lori Jean and staff.

We're coming up on our summit.

This will be our third summit.

And I'm going to do a little bit of a sales pitch here, put on my salesperson's hat on it.

There's a registration link.

Thank you very much.

I have staff can send it to you.

There's two events.

There's the actual summit is on March 13th and then the night before there's a cocktail hour in it.

If you scroll through that, we've got some awesome agenda set up.

The previous, just to put a short window to it, the previous summits, we're all kind of talking about what is the crisis.

These are gonna offer solutions.

So this is gonna be an awesome summit.

I'm also happy to report from this morning, we've actually are fully funded on this, which is the first time.

So hats off to staff, you know, Lori James is doing

Yeoman, another one, Yeoman's job on it.

But if you have an interest in housing, if your jurisdictions have a concern about housing, or if your board of supervisors or your fellow elected officials have a concern about or interest in housing, this is the place you want to be.

plus the night before some pretty good cocktails are coming up.

So please, please, please sign up.

I was taking a look at the register.

I'm seeing not a lot of us signing up yet.

We know it's all about you, Jesse, but there's others in the room.

So please do, you know, you're not going to regret it.

But more importantly, Laura Jean needs a kudos there.

It's unbelievable.

If anybody's ever put together a couple of hundred person summit, and if you have never done that before, the workload to do that is off the charts.

And she has to put up with me, which is really, yeah, there you go.

So I said the same thing.

But anyway, please do.

I've just, that was a little bit of chairman's prerogative.

Please, if you guys can send it out.

And I tell you what, if you show up, I'll buy everybody a drink before.

Just got to talk about real estate so I can write it off.

Follow up email.

I send you all with presentations.

I'll include information about the summit.

All right.

We've got I think Laura Jean is not here.

Alltakers, yep, Laura couldn't be here last minute, so I'm gonna go run through this with you guys.

So this is just the quarterly financial report.

We're still sitting in really good shape for the fiscal year, November and December, one of them was less of a net gain than normal, but still in the positive.

December was 1,900 in the negative, which is not atypical for us.

Anytime there's lots of holiday time, we can't bill to our programs, so we're not bringing in as much revenue on those months, but we are still at just under a 90,000 net gain for the year.

So that doesn't cause us very much concern.

As far as the quarter goes, we are through December is what the reports are reporting on.

So 50% through the year total income was 55.72% of the budgeted amount.

Total expenses were at 41.51% of the budgeted amount.

And then total pass through we're at 56.21%.

So we're in really good shape for both revenues and expenses.

Our expenses are a little behind, but that is expected because as the body program picks up and we're making larger and larger payments, a lot of that comes in at the second half of the year.

So expect to be on target for both the expenses and the revenues.

I think that's all I have unless you guys have questions.

There was a memo from Laura with some graphs and the financials.

Slowly, yeah.

Any questions?

Alrighty, can I get a first and a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

And look at that.

Alright, this is the amended FY 25 operating budget.

So just as a reminder, we have a three part process.

The year prior, we bring to you guys a projected operating budget that sets the per capita rate that we then go apply to our local governments through your annual budgeting process.

It then comes back to you all in April and May to approve the operating budget for the year that we work from, and then comes back partway through the fiscal year, which is where we are now in February, an amended version to be approved in March.

So this is not an action item tonight.

It's just informational.

that reprojects because as you guys know when you know working with federal state and local grants things come in at all different times of year and so we want to you know halfway through the year reproject where we think we're going to be and make any changes that we we think we need to make so we are at that point now I have a large memo in your packet I know it's a lot of detail but I wanted to tell you some of the high level items and then happy to take any specific questions and or meet with you all if you want to go into any any level of detail

This is a summary budget before you.

I do have a spreadsheet on every single program.

So any level of detail that you want, it all collapses into the one that's in front of you.

So the proposed budget is including projected revenue of $48.25 million and expenditures of $48.00.

That's an anticipated net gain of $253,852.

Federal revenues you can see are slightly amended.

That's to account for both a new VODI 2024 award that we had not received at the last time the budget came before you.

Some new projections, we're spending the VODI 22 grant at a great clip.

So we actually think we're going to get through more of that than was originally expected.

We have received some additional grants that weren't from DEQ in order to do ring barrel workshops and septic pump out pilot program.

So those are now all included in the federal revenues.

We have some due to staff vacancies.

We're not spending down the MPO federal funds as quickly as we anticipated.

However, those do allow for rollover.

So any funds not expended by June 30th, we can still roll into future fiscal years.

And then home ARP revenues are a little bit lower than expected.

We projected quite a bit larger, but it's because our sub-recipients are really pulling their funding for larger projects.

So we're not getting little bits at a time.

We're getting large requests.

And so we don't have a great deal of concern for Hillmark.

That doesn't have to be spent until 2029.

Thank you.

And then safe streets and roads for all.

Just re-projecting where we are in the year compared to where we thought that one expires September 30th.

For state revenues, we amended that to be 3.77 instead of 1.11.

That is primarily due to the body grant, the body 2024 new funding.

Also at the very beginning of a fiscal year, we have to project which revenue sources are gonna come in for VATI and each of the 13 local jurisdictions are using different sources.

Some people are using federal funds, some people are using local funds.

So we make our best guess on the progress based on the construction schedule.

statement feels like it's anticipating a potential question here.

OK, so I've been very concerned in general about the uncertainty with federal funding and the most acute one is VATI because the VATI 2022 is targeted to finish in my region as one of the main, my magisterial district is one of the main standing service areas this summer.

And I am not sure when

The timing of that federal money hitting the right bank account where it can't be called back is.

It has to be committed by December 2025 and expended by December 2026.

Allow me to follow up on that.

Okay, thank you for that correction.

David, do you want to add anything on VATI?

Yeah, we haven't really seen anything.

I know coming from the broadband office and Department of Housing and Community Development with regard to either the VATI program or the BEED funding program.

Thanks.

Also changes in state revenues.

We were not awarded another round of Virginia eviction reduction pilot, that VRP grant that we had been receiving.

For several reasons, we did a debrief with DHCD, but I did not include it in the original budget because it wasn't a confirmed source.

We didn't know for certain we would, so it's no change financially, but just wanted to let you know that we did not get that for the current calendar year.

And then state revenues for Virginia Housing Development Grant are higher than expected.

However, we recently received a request from one of the sub-recipients to

Do a timeline amendment and we have to seek permission from Virginia Housing for an exception.

And so we've already submitted that.

And if they allow that exception, that funding will just roll forward to a different deadline.

And then some changes in some local revenues, again, related to Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.

We did take on two additional localities into the Cigarette Tax Board.

So that's Mount Crawford and Rockingham.

So the revenues are a bit higher there than we originally projected.

and then funding that's come in for the Housing Summit and the Housing Studies.

We're not included in the original budget.

And then our rental space has become quite popular.

Not only are all of our tenant spaces fully rented out, we are finding more desire for the use of our Water Street Center.

And we also this year,

increased the rates for our tenants because our rates increased with our landlord.

So we just passed those through so the revenue coming in covers the rent in those spaces.

And then some changes to the expenses.

There's a slight decrease in salary and benefits.

Obviously we brought more people on, but that means there were vacancies for some time.

So there's a bit of a gap in what we expected to spend on salary and benefits.

increase in cost of goods sold because of cigarette tax.

We have to buy them by the roll.

We anticipated needing to buy two.

We had to buy four because of the increased number of facts with the two new jurisdictions and then decrease in audit legal due to fewer personnel related legal expenses that we had in the previous year.

We have not had those in this year and then increase in equipment and data use.

We've

Needed to buy some new computers for new staff.

We did get an AED unit to have here.

We're gonna get a second one for the Water Street Center, and then replacement of broken office furniture that we didn't anticipate needing in the beginning.

Overall, we do expect our revenues to exceed our expenditures.

I think we're in really good shape.

I will say one of the changes to expenses in here, the first budget did have approved in the budget two one-time bonuses for staff, one at the end of the calendar year, one at the end of the fiscal year,

They were at 1,400 each.

I have in this budget, I am requesting that that goes, the second one goes to 2,000.

During those vacancies, staff were taking on more than their responsibility of the roles by covering the gaps of the staff that weren't here.

And so I'd like to compensate people that additional 600 for the work that they were doing.

And it's well within the net gain that I think we'll anticipate getting.

I think it's something that we can afford.

With that, I'm happy to take any questions.

I've got a great deal of detail on every single program if you want to learn more.

And then you've got the month before it comes back to you next month for consideration for approval.

I will say related to this budget, similar to where you were coming from but not specific to body is I just want to ask you all as commissioners, 78% of our funding is federal.

And so certainly with the uncertainty that there is now, I've been approaching this with a keep your eyes and ears open, listen and learn.

A lot is happening fast, but I've also been really clear with staff.

We don't want to be reactionary.

There's nothing we can do until something needs to be done.

We haven't received any funders saying they will not refill reimbursement requests.

We haven't had anybody freeze our funding.

And so for now, my advice to staff is keep doing the really good work.

And we cross bridges when we get there.

But I want to hear from you all if you want me to be doing something different, assessing our risk as an organization.

So question on that.

Absolutely spitballing, having given this very disorganized thought over the past two and a half weeks, not regarding planning district in particular.

But one, our cash position is about a million bucks.

Because it seems to me that what is likely, what's likely,

You know, there is a significant chance that we're going to get some sort of bump in the road that is going to take a week or two for some federal judge to say is illegal or we're going to have some other condition where, oh, we didn't mean that.

Oh, you know, with the usual sort of efficacy we've come to expect here that in terms of short term bridging for problems, we got that covered.

So the question is, do we have a plan for likely targets for how to deploy that money?

And maybe that plan is just farting around on an Excel spreadsheet for a while to figure out, what if this disappears?

What if this goes to 50%?

What if this doesn't show up for 60 days?

I don't know.

I mean, the permutations are innumerable.

You know, as a person and business owner who's survived two recessions now, I do understand downturns.

They do exist and there's no entity at all that is ever immune, including our very local jurisdictions.

You know, as Keith probably has learned some of the same strategies as I learned from my father about liquidity and the importance of it in both the preservation and why rainy day funds exist.

I'm sitting on a huge pile of cash deliberately at the moment.

I spent all mine.

I'm going to send this out.

I'm going to overleverage and see what happens.

All that to say is, so it does appear that, you know, our liquidity is about two commas, right?

Okay.

So as that reflects into operating on here, sometimes it's a little complicated.

It looks like our personnel in a year basis was essentially... We've got 11.25 months.

Yeah.

I think it's also important to note it's a million in cash, but it is also 932,000 in capital reserve.

And that is by policy.

So that is also cash in the bank.

Most philosophies, at least the ones I've been around in construction and usually bad times, first industry that gets hurt is usually us, you know, was to have six months of cash on hand to survive and re-posture over six months.

And we have two years.

Obviously, I've had the great displeasure during COVID repostering and modifying operations on the whim of a hat because I said I don't know what this means.

And as you just said, we don't want to be reactionary either.

We have enough cash to where we could float feasibly, understand the environment, and modify our position as necessary.

So I would say

My understanding of federal policy is that funds can't be frozen for more than

No, that is necessary to have a greater than three month reserve.

Like, well, it is definitely for others.

But if we were hitting that three month, and I think we're probably safe from having to weigh off people because of a freeze, right?

That being kind of the dramatic thing, to kind of the first way you presented this, it probably would be valuable

I don't need to see it because I'm not going to do anything with it, but to know that we have an understanding of how different federal grants and funding streams correlate to programmatic and personnel.

something goes out on Truth Social and a funding stream dies like that that we know within the next five minutes oh this is this is the funding this is the program that's going to have to close or be radically reposturing this is the personal perspective again Mike

I have all that.

And in the packet part of the budget is you can see our revenues by source by program.

So I'll put a little historical context to this organization I've been on it this is my 13th year and in the first year we had days of liquidity right so you know a you know financial crisis management plan I mean

somewhere in the back of your head you've got one right so if something should happen we have enough liquidity we can we can do fine and we don't need to move instant you know it's not like you have to move instantly because we have 1.9 million dollars it takes 60 days to figure out what the hell we're doing i'm pretty confident in christine's capabilities that within minutes she

I'm as one who's seen it from literally a heartbeat away from bankruptcy to this point, we're in good shape folks.

Nope, it'll come back to you next month for consideration for approval.

Happy to go through it with you.

All righty, anything else on that topic?

All righty, old business looks like none.

In the executive director's report, I gave you all of the VATI 2022 and 2024 data, as well as some updates on the Safe Streets and Roads for All transportation planning grant that we're working on.

And then the only other item that I had to bring up is I will, for the April,

O'Brien.

So I wanted to ask your preference on either rescheduling it.

That is when the FY26 budget is presented.

So ideally I would like to be there, but if you guys want to keep the date, I can always make sure that other staff are prepared to present the budget to you.

So it's either keep the date and other staff, or we reschedule for the following Thursday, like we did the special session in January.

I have to wake up my computer.

If it's the second, then it would be the ninth.

It would be Thursday the ninth.

What do you prefer?

I prefer to present the budget.

But my team is fully capable of doing that.

It's just the spring budget is the one where I pull out all of the graphs and the PowerPoints and we really dig a little bit deeper.

The amended budgets are where it's a memo.

I'm fine with postponing it for your arrival.

How's that sound?

You said the 10th.

I said the 9th.

First Thursday is the third.

Tommy, I'm sorry.

Mink, Thursday the 10th is the date.

I apologize.

You can throw things at me.

Yes, it is Thursday the 10th.

We said April, right?

Yeah, we're saying April.

So March meeting is going to be the same as normal.

I'm just looking ahead because I'm already starting that budget.

And so I want to make sure.

Everybody good with that?

That was it, huh?

Just that there's body information in the report.

All right.

Well, then we're up to the time we got.

Look at that.

Eight o'clock.

We're up to the round table.

We're 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

Oh, boy.

It was long winded here.

We're going to get that person done.

Ernie, I did not think.

We're going to move from my right all the way around.

So Tim, we'll stop.

In Green County, we just elected the new chairman and vice chairman to start the new year for this year.

Hopefully we get ready to start

driving the wheel on this water impoundment program and get it going.

We've got quite much development going on in the green that's going to need that water anyway because we were in a crisis this past summer with the drought, which I think a lot of people were anyway.

So that's the whole biggest thing to get them dry and get this water impoundment with the reservoir and intake line and pump station and all

So on that business part of it, that's about it.

The new hardware started to open up.

Something's gone in.

I don't think Greene realizes how much business that's actually going to probably bring to the county in general.

Lewis, Hey, Tommy, you're up.

The only thing I can think of, everything's going smoothly with Amazon and the water line.

The General Assembly tried to throw another skier into us.

They had a little come up that was

All right, Ernie.

Well, the biggest news in Nelson is the 90 megawatt solar farm, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors.

What called the Wild Rose Project from Savion subsidiary of Shell.

It's a big deal.

We had a couple of supervisors that negotiated with them, and I think we got

A deal that would be the envy of just about any other community in the Commonwealth in terms of what they're offering us to go along with it.

Over $200 million over the 40-year project and $400,000 worth of scholarships for high schools over the same, for a high schooler from the area, Gladstone, the affected area.

And also,

An interesting thing is that the siding agreement gives the county a right of first refusal on possible purchase of the facility at the termination of its 40-year project.

So in the event that there's different energy landscape in the Commonwealth and it allows for microgrids or anything like that or redundancy or anything like that,

90 megawatts is about one and a quarter times the amount of energy that it takes at this point to run all of Nelson County.

So no one knows what the future has, but that's something that it's a no loss scenario, but not often do you have a chance to play that kind of a long game in something like this.

It's pretty split, pretty vociferous on both sides.

It was a really tough decision because in terms of the public, we got pretty equal on both sides.

So it really came down to

You know, the fact that what we saw in front of the Board of Supervisors was the siding agreement, which, of course, didn't show up in the Planning Commission.

So it gave us a much larger look at what it actually meant for the county.

And the other thing is that I'm the board chair for this year in Nelson County and

I took the VACO training for chairs and vice chairs in Richmond, and I was fairly blown away.

My experience with VACO has always been fairly positive, but I felt that that was probably one of the best trainings I've ever attended, and I just wanted to call it out to anybody else that might wonder if it's worth attending or not.

I would say it absolutely is.

I don't think they'll be doing it again until next year

in January.

But yeah, it was top notch and I've served as chair before and I feel like I've got tools I never knew I had.

Did they give you a big book too?

They gave us the little supervisor manual.

We didn't get a supervisor manual.

A gentleman who's done lots and lots and lots of work in the federal government wrote a book and did a presentation.

No, I was going to say Ernie's chair.

No, did that.

I'm trying to think.

Yes, really exciting news, line of duty benefit bill.

Thanks to David.

Yeah.

About five trips to Richmond later.

I'm done.

I ain't going back.

No, the line duty benefit bill.

We had some minor edits to it, which were very simple and easy to digest on the house side.

But we did overcome some division on party lines on the house side with some bipartisan.

We had some really great advocates on the Democrat side of this conversation this time that told some of these individuals and said you kind of this is not how this should go.

This is a bad thing for you to be voting no on.

With that, we had some really delicate conversations with the, I'm not going to say adversaries, but those who are questioning why we're doing this.

And we were able to get them around to our side of the discussion, which thanks to VACO, thanks to localities who had passed resolutions supporting line of duty death benefits for our folks.

All of that came into play and

Thank goodness we overcame a lot of partisan stuff and we weren't used as a bargaining chip.

We finally made it all the way through because it's a good thing.

So we did make it out of the House and the Senate.

We're in crossover.

We got some edits that's gonna happen.

Shouldn't be too bad on that front.

And then hopefully waiting on the governor's signature.

If the bills are presented to the Governor within the last week of the session for signature, he has to act, actually outside of the seven days left in the session, he has to act within seven days, but otherwise he has 30 days, so we would know.

And all the indications our admin is going to sign it.

Is there not a fiscal impact?

There is no fiscal impact.

No, no.

Bury that in the ground.

There is none.

You see what I'm wearing?

How is this why?

Actually, no, this is for entirely different reasons.

Me making money, but that's different.

But I did wear a blazer a couple times, but I would say 70% of the time I did wear a Carhartt jacket and my beard was pretty gnarly.

My hair had hit six months of not cutting it.

So that was part of my strategy this time, was going to subcommittee looking like a madman.

I think it worked.

Well, I'm pretty sure hell's free isn't over because I've never seen you in a jacket.

So other than that, that's honestly, it's a huge deal.

Yeah, we had the solar vote.

That was exciting.

I'm tired of getting FOIA'd.

I'm tired of getting called.

It's just part of the thing.

You're just a supervisor.

I know.

I know now.

So you get that.

But I understand constituents and what they're interested in knowing.

I will say this.

Our board did take this conversation extremely seriously.

And this is not something that transpired in a week.

This has been transpiring for probably over two years of discussions internally, one on one, stakeholders involved.

This probably was one of the longest thought through special use permits that I have seen us go through.

Though I did vote not in the affirmative.

I do appreciate the effort our board went in trying to take this conversation seriously.

And as it relates to comment Ernie had indicated, the deal that was struck is pretty huge.

We set a different standard.

So hopefully that changes some for the industry.

And positive news, the bill that was going to take local authority away on solar panels did fail.

So that's good.

So we still have some level of home rule, at least on that front, which is a good thing.

And it needs to stay that way.

So that's new.

James, briefly.

Next week's Board of Supervisors meeting should be a lively one.

On the agenda is a proposal from the head of our Department of Planning and Zoning to craft a new technology flex

Zoning District.

I do believe you may have taken inspiration from our colleagues in Louisa County, who several years ago used the creation of a technology district to expedite the approval and placement of a data center in Louisa.

And indeed, one of the proposed uses for our technology flex district is a data center.

Now in Greene County, data centers are a controversial topic.

Is that related to the impoundment?

I know y'all need the water either way.

There are a couple of the planning commission meetings that I've sat in on it.

They say that the text flex things is completely different from the data center in general.

Okay so maybe the impoundment's a little related.

Anything else, James?

That's it.

Let me think.

So yesterday we approved our own solar development.

It is a three megawatt solar development and it had no members of the public who came in opposition.

One person wrote a letter.

I also happen to know that she was already selling her house.

And I think she's mostly concerned about what the value is when I find myself.

So good for her.

She did not feel inspired to speak against it.

It is interesting to just see how we're kind of reaching a point where, you know, everyone hires the same counsel.

So we're slowly, I think, standardizing what kind of expected conditions we have communicated that we expect to see these things come forward with.

It is going to be interesting to see how that kind of interfaces with our solar ordinance if and when we finally approve it.

It has gone through the Planning Commission.

It still has not sat on our desk.

It is off on Buck Island Road.

It's in my district.

They're all in my district.

Not many, it's like 25.

It is not hitting any distribution lines, which I mean, there's, I think when we get around to the Solar Ordnance, there's an interesting discussion to engage in about whether or not we treat community versus utility differently, right?

Because

The barriers to them are ostensibly the same, but a utility scale solar farm can sit there and they can spend as much money as they need to and as much time as they need to on community outreach and making these kind of individual deals to make sure that people don't come out.

Haller in their face when it's time to get approval because they have to already sit through all the regulatory hoops that will be required before they can hook it to transmission.

And they're also operating at scale, which means they have the resources to spend on that.

Community scale doesn't always have that luxury, but if we're treating them the same, we're still kind of expecting that same level.

So it'll be interesting to see kind of how we break out on that.

There's a lot of public opposition to streamlining smaller community scale projects because it's seen as a, in an untenable way.

But that's the thing that is most in my mind.

I'm trying to think what else we don't.

So I have been extraordinarily siloed until this point in the year.

The Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee meets in January and handles sticks and bricks projects funded by that fund and what we call HOPS, which is Housing Operations and Support.

There were two thousand seven hundred and nine pages worth of application to read.

I will admit to skimming some of the 990 tax returns.

And 20, between the two of them, 21 applications ranging from $10,000 to all the money the city has ever seen.

So that, you know, there were six, seven, eight meetings.

So to get that sorted, that's sort of been the focus of my attention, I understand.

The rumor is that our $22 million budget surplus has been, at least for the moment, parked in future CIP, but I know that will not last.

What I think is worth mentioning, and this sort of popped into my head with you're not getting the renewal for the eviction prevention.

So of the 16 HOPPS applications, five of them in some way,

touched on eviction reduction, eviction prevention, all from different directions.

That struck the committee at the time as being, well, there's this enormous need here.

There are various folks trying to help their constituencies.

None of these plans seem to be at all comprehensive.

This is silent in and of itself, which brought

which coincidentally enough we have been thinking about, the city thought about having a landlord risk reduction fund.

We actually brought that forward to city council.

I'm not gonna take any ownership of that thing, but back in 2017, 18, a proposal was put forward that nearly caused a riot in the council chambers because

The idea was that the city would backstop any landlord who was providing housing to anybody who was subsidized in any way, essentially saying, don't charge them the security deposit, we'll guarantee up to X thousand dollars.

if they trashed the place on the way out.

And that's to make it easier to move in.

And then some bright boy in the city decided we really shouldn't do that without getting a judgment against the tenant.

And which just, you know, which is absolutely bananas.

So it died an ugly death.

But I did have a hand in the original crafting of it.

And it is now back because we've decided that if we've got six different organizations trying to do eviction prevention,

and risk reduction for landlords.

You know, we might as well have some sort of coherent policy of doing it.

And it's also dirt cheap that the city does it because nobody ever taps the fund.

We heard we have the example of Pittsburgh where one was established with, you know, two hundred thousand dollars in reserve for anything that was needed.

And in seven years, they spent thirty four hundred bucks.

So, you know, do they have a nervous process to actually tap it?

because it's a myth that subsidized housing people trashed their places.

So there wasn't anything that the normal wear and tear, there was no trashed.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a lot more going on in this city.

We've had a lot of conversations about where to put our low barrier shelter.

We've had, obviously, conversations on surplus and what to do with that.

But again, I've had my head down slogging through these applications.

Oh, we do have the first examples of special exception requests

Under our new zoning code coming before the Planning Commission on Tuesday, there are three items, one by subsidized housing and friendship court here across the street, meeting some changes to how we deal with some setback issues, and then two others.

That is a $443 a page packet that I have not yet cracked.

That is my Sunday job.

You can be a busy person.

Ned, you're up next, sir.

Hold on a tad.

I mean, the AC44, I will say the last night, solar.

It was kind of a first.

We did have one speaker come out on it, and it was kind of a plot twist.

He stood up and started, I was like, oh boy, he was being a little ornery about the solar stuff, but not the company that had the application in front of us, a different one.

Then he turned around and said, no, this place is great.

I love these people.

And he said, I have nothing to fuss about, which we don't hear too much.

I wrote it down.

I forget if I told you this, but he was also at the community meeting.

He rose blood and thunder the whole time.

He was furious.

He yelled at me.

He was he pointed me and he's like, would you would you want to live next to these solar panels?

So I don't think he was happy with this company.

I'm not so happy with the other one.

I'll just say subsidiary of some three common entity.

Did you want to talk about the housing fund?

I thought that was interesting that we got.

The board seems to be our board current board.

All right.

I've been trying to not be snarky about this.

But we voted on a housing policy that called for the creation of a housing trust fund.

We paused working on that directive and some others to get developer incentives in play, which we did a year ago.

But somewhere along the line, it must have become muddy that somehow the board hasn't given direction on the creation of a housing trust fund.

So it was just we get the end of the meeting.

There was consensus that we agreed that, yes, we need to apply agenda time so that we can clear up.

The whole board understands what trust funds are, what they do, not worry about funding because we can deal with that in budget.

and then decide once and for all where we're going to go for it and get a clear direction of the board.

One of those little other business items that kind of snuck in at the end of the night.

That's it.

So in the packets over there, I'm not going to talk about Fluvanna County.

I'm going to talk about year end real estate values and the number of transactions.

So I'll just keep it short.

It's in the package.

I do my own numbers literally day by day.

Car comes in out about six weeks late.

So this is current data.

Greene County, you win.

You're up 14.1% in sales year over year.

Second up in sales is Nelson County at six.

Six, and let me see, where's the other up one?

Charlottesville is fully up at two.

Charlottesville wins 15% increase in price, well done on that.

The lowest increase on price was my county, Fluvanna County, at 2% was also, we had 12% less home sold.

and 24 versus 23.

When you go through it, I've got stuff broken down.

It's a little bit easier to read and digest.

Then you'll see a car on it.

I broke down the number of households sold by 23, 24, and then I threw out 2016 just to see what it looked

Greene is 21% down in sales in 2016 versus 2014.

The good news is we've got 2,500 houses about ready to come out of the ground.

Green?

Green is going to be the new construction of Rockstar.

That's the car footprint, yes.

Okay, so in order to not be housing burdened, you have 10% down in today's market to buy a $450,000 house.

So Charlottesville is up 15%, 23, you're at $460,000.

You're now at the end of $24,000, you're at $530,000.

I'm going to change my hat and put my chairman hat of the land trust on.

We just changed our AMI from 80% to 115% because we can't make 80% work.

Their DTI is out of whack.

So there's a slide in it that I thought was very interesting.

I did, what's the impact of cash on the market by price point?

I don't know.

If you have it, it's the first slide, that one, which I thought very interesting.

I broke down different price categories where the impacts of cash and was surprising.

I did it this morning.

Well it's this point, it's the price point, so if you take a look at where we're at in Fluvanna

So our median sales price is at $361 in $24, $23, or $352 if you're only about a 2.5% increase.

Well, the buyer profile at that is your first time home buyer, right?

And now you're at 6%, 7%, 8%, and it becomes unaffordable to the buyer.

When we were at 4%, that number works.

I mean, that's your world, right?

Yeah, that's my world.

So that's why, and if you take a look at the cash thing, you know, you start seeing some of the stuff that are in a million, now that the largest block of sales is the 300 to 500, which falls into your median price range, but you're roughly at 24% cash.

The national average is 32 in cash.

So you have more folks bringing loans to the table on that, because they have to down payment.

The median looks the most like what we would think of as a traditional home sale.

But in any event, let's get this out of here early.

That's all I've got to report.

Thank you for allowing me to chair this.

I'm sorry I didn't see you there out of the corner of my ear.

And I'm deaf as hell, so there you go.

Are you looking for a motion?

Pardon?

Yeah, I'm looking for a motion.

Seconded.

Well, you were just keeping talking, right?

Yeah, I am from Brooklyn.