Planning District Commission Meeting   8/7/2025

All righty.

So, how long was I going to hit the okay button?

All right, well, I'm going to kick this off.

So we're going to call the order and the roll call.

Supervisor Goolsby.

Supervisor Barlow.

Here.

Supervisor Reed.

Excellent.

We do have a quorum.

Thank you.

That's what I just said.

This meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is being held pursuant to Code of Virginia subsection C of section 2.2-3708.3, which allows a public body to hold all virtual public meetings.

The meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public.

The method for holding this meeting shall not change unless a new meeting notice is provided.

Should the electronic transmission fail, you may reach out to the TJPDC at REMERIK at tjpdc.org.

Notice has been provided to the public through notices at the TJPDC offices, to the media, and website postings and agenda.

The meeting is held pursuant to the remote electronic participation in all virtual meeting policy as adopted by the commission on July 25th, 2024.

The meeting minutes will reflect that the meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communications by which the meeting was held.

Looks like Mike joined us.

Good to see you, Mike.

Thank you, Ruth, for doing that.

Do we have any public attending today?

I didn't see any.

No.

OK.

So not seeing any public joining us.

We're going to skip over matters from the public and go right into presentations.

I am.

Awesome.

Thanks, Ruth.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm happy to share information with you this evening about the PDC's consideration of a change in our smart-scale area type specific to the rural areas within our planning district.

The TJPDC Rural Transportation Advisory Committee did receive a presentation and a discussion on this topic, and at their June 17th meeting, they provided a recommendation to the commission in support of taking this action.

Following that, a staff memo was circulated with the VDOT analysis attached that accompanies

This consideration was sent to the CAOs and our tech staff directly on July 15, just to make sure we're broadly communicating the potential for this change since it would impact all of our rural jurisdictions.

It wouldn't just be for the PDC, it would be for all of our rural jurisdictions.

Next slide.

So we'll start off with a brief overview of the SmartScale program, its scoring factors, and weighting.

So SmartScale is a statewide prioritization process that's used to fund two construction programs in the Commonwealth.

The High Priority Projects Program, or HPP, where all eligible bodies can apply, including regional bodies and transit agencies,

and the district grant program where only localities are eligible to apply.

District grant program projects are competitive just within the individual VDOT districts while the HPP program is competitive statewide.

Virginia State Code identifies six individual scoring factors that are used in the evaluation of projects.

These are in the table at the bottom of this slide and they include safety, congestion, mitigation, accessibility, land use, economic development and environmental quality.

The weights of each of these factors when calculating the project score is determined by the area type, which is assigned at the PDC and the MPO boundary level.

And of course, after calculating the raw score for projects, that is then divided by the total cost to get the final smart scale score.

Currently, the PDC is classified as area type C, and we would be requesting a change from C to D. And as you see in the table, category D has the highest weight given to the safety factor.

Next slide.

Oh, I see it, sorry.

TJPDC and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission are the only two PDCs not currently categorized as Area Type D. For the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, this makes sense that they're categorized as Area Type A, considering the more urban nature of their geography and their density.

But for the PDC, this map really illustrates that we're somewhat of an anomaly with our categorization as Area Type C right now.

And so the question was, would projects have scored better, would they have had better scoring outcomes if they were scored under area type D instead of C?

So to help answer that question, VDOT conducted an analysis where they ran scenarios of how projects would have scored if they were in D instead of C for the past three rounds of SmartSeal.

So in this slide, we have projects that were submitted in round four.

Because there were changes in methodology for each round, this table does have both

Round 4 criteria and Round 6 criteria all the way on the right.

These two columns represent impacts to the Smart Seals score.

And so as you can see, projects almost uniformly would have had a better scoring outcome under Area Type D. On this slide, we have projects that were submitted in Round 5.

Similar to the previous slide, it has

both round five and round six criteria that was run separately for this analysis.

The two columns on the right still represent impacts to the overall smart scale score.

And while there were a few instances here of lower smart scale score, staff did do some digging to understand where the funding line would have been and if this would have impacted the actual outcomes and the response was it would not have because of how many points those projects still would have been away from the lowest scoring project that was still included in the funding scenario.

And then finally for round six, there's only one column on the right and this one, since this was the most recent round of SmartScale with the most recent methodology, if round six projects have been submitted under this round and scored using area type D instead of C, all of the projects would have seen a positive impact on their score.

Overall, our takeaways are that changing the area type from C to D would improve project scores overall in our planning district.

There is no indication in this analysis that an area type change would have impacted the actual selection outcomes, but they almost uniformly would have led to higher project scores, which means more competitive projects and a better chance at getting funded in future rounds.

I do want to note that, of course, every round of SmartScale, it always depends on what other projects are submitted for funding since SmartScale is a relative calculation based on the highest scoring project and they're not absolute.

and one other notice that the MPO's area type would remain the same, which is category B right now.

We're not seeking to change the MPO's area type, just the PDC.

And as far as next steps, TJPDC staff, we do recommend that the commission request a change to the smart scale area type from C to D. Today's meeting is only informational for you all, but it will be on your agenda for the next meeting as a voting item.

If approved, we would then forward that request to VDOT, who would notify the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, who they're the state agency responsible for administering SmartScale.

We would then bring this to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, who would make the ultimate decision and consider this at their December meeting, where they would adopt any policy changes, changes to the SmartScale technical guide methodology that would take effect for SmartScale round seven, tentatively starting in March or April of next year.

All right, and that's it.

Happy to answer any questions.

Taylor, a minor question.

The Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment.

So they are the staff, the state agency that administers the SmartScale program.

No, it would be to take this request for a change in our area type to put it on the Commonwealth's agenda for consideration.

I'll just add that the memo within your packets and the VDOT analysis is included so you can see more than just the positive or the negative.

As one of the rural jurisdictions, thank you.

This is some good stuff.

And just as a reminder to the rest of us on here on this call, if you do not know who your CTB representative is for your jurisdiction,

Be a really good idea to get to know that person.

They're the ones that ultimately make the decision on where this money goes and kind of getting to know them is always a good thing.

So I'd encourage you to go ahead and do that.

Cool, alrighty.

Logan is preparing that.

Can I insert another comment on this, the last item?

We did we did email this memo out to all of the county administrators, deputies where there were ones and also all of the rural transportation staff and all of the VDOT Culpeper and local representatives just to make sure we're broadly communicating.

But I would really encourage you all in the next month before this comes up for vote to make sure that broadly there's consensus within your jurisdiction.

Any opposition we would love to hear in advance because we really only want to bring this forward.

If all of our rural jurisdictions have consensus that this is a benefit to your locality.

So just please share it, whether it's informally or formally.

Thanks, Christine.

All right, good afternoon, Chair Smith and the rest of the commissioners, or I guess it's evening now.

I'm going to do a little presentation today about our USDA Housing Preservation Grant program.

Yeah, you can go to the next slide, Ruth.

We fortunately received word this week

that they are indeed, USDA are indeed running another round of their housing preservation grant, which we have been working with for, I believe the past nine years.

So that is good news.

It is a little bit later than in previous iterations, but better late than never.

To give a little program overview, this is,

from the rural development portion of USDA is specifically for rural communities and it is money used for home rehabilitation for low or very low income residents.

We work with a number of sub-recipients on this front.

The next slide will have a list of them in each of our rural localities.

And they are the ones who are actually sort of finding the projects and coordinate them with the homeowners and the contractors.

We are working on the USDA side, so we help get folks reimbursed.

So as you can see we usually limit, oh and I forgot to mention this is so you know we have a pot of money from USDA and folks send projects to us on the first come first serve basis they're funded.

We have traditionally limited

Program funds being funds for the actual building of whatever it is that's being rehabilitated.

We've limited those to $5,000 for projects so we can, we try to get around 30 to 50 projects that way every brand cycle.

We also add a little $200 subrecipient admin now for our subrecipients.

Over the past two grant years, we have completed around 70 projects and around $270,000 in program funds have been redistributed to our sub-recipients.

You can go to the next slide, Ruth.

This is just a percentage breakdown of where the grant money has been distributed.

These are by a number of projects, so you can see Fluvanna, Louisa, and Albemarle together kind of take up the lion's share of that.

To be clear, that's only,

eligible and the rural parts of Albemarle.

On the left, you can see our grant sub-recipients.

We intend to work with the same folks.

These are nonprofit housing groups that we work with on a regular basis and other contexts as well.

For example, the home program.

And we intend to work with them again this year.

You can go to the next slide.

This is a little bit about the budget.

So I'll start with the left column there from the previous grant cycle that is federal fiscal year 24.

They operate on a slightly different fiscal year from us.

Last year we requested and received around $135,000 and you can see how it's broken down there between the program funds which are required to be matched by other funding sources and then how the sub-precipient and our TJPDC admin factor in.

Together the admin costs are 18% of the total grant amount.

On to this year.

So the way this works is that it's a federal program.

There is a nationwide pool of money.

That pool internally to USDA is decided upon to have certain allocations per state.

So Virginia will get a certain allocation of that money and we apply for

A portion of that money.

In the past, we've only applied for half of that money.

This year, because, well, last year we applied for half and received it, the other half

There was no other successful applicant for and so it was basically reworked into a different USDA program.

To sort of hedge against that happening and the eventuality that you know other applicants are not successful, i.e.

they don't complete the application correctly.

We would hopefully be able to get the full amount so that the rest of the money does not go to waste.

But the way it would work, if there are one or two other successful applicants, the money would get divided between the two or three.

The only complicating factor for this presentation is we don't actually know what the Virginia state allocation is yet.

Based on how much money was available nationwide last year, which was around $12.2 million, this year it's $13.3 million, so a bit more.

We are estimating that there's going to be around $300,000 in the Virginia state allocation, hence the proposed budget there on the right.

But again, this was just released two days ago, so USDA folks don't seem to know exactly what the Virginia state allocation is yet.

Yeah, you can go to the next slide, Ruth.

Thank you.

This is just a rough timeline of how this will work.

So this meeting caught us right at the beginning of the process.

The next TJPDC Commission meeting will catch us quite literally right at the end.

That pre-application is due on September 4th, and that's when our public comment period will end.

It'll run from August 15th to September 4th.

So we will be advertising that widely to get input on, and in the meantime, putting together our statement of activities and the rest of the application for that September 4th deadline.

So I think that's all I have.

Any questions for Logan?

Logan, thanks for putting this together pretty quickly.

I know this hit you literally at the last minute.

So appreciate it.

So tell me how that is dispersed on per project is a project cannot exceed 5000 or

is does the sub-recipients have to match it or if I have a $25,000 project, I can just add, I can just contribute $5,000 towards it.

Yeah, good question.

So that $5,000 refers, so that's just the limit on how much USDA HPG funding a project gets.

So the project

could be much more than that and in the case of some things like I don't know like a septic tank or something you know it often or a roof repair it often is

that our sub-recipients are really excellent at finding matching funding and this is often sort of the last little bit they need to complete a project and so you know I think the 5,000 is there just to make sure we are able to distribute that across as many projects as we can but yeah the

That doesn't limit the amount of match funding even to being $5,000.

And often it is more.

But I would say our average request is less than $5,000 as well.

The average request is around $3,500.

So some are less than $5,000.

Thank you.

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

Looks like we have four action items there.

We'll start off with the minutes from the June 5th meeting.

Has everybody had an opportunity to read them?

And if so, any edits or changes?

Seconded.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Phil.

Do we need to do a roll call on this or just a simple yay or nay?

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

Next item, May and June financial reports.

Looks like we've got four parts to it.

I'm sure everybody had an opportunity to read it.

Any questions, comments, concerns, edits?

Mr.

Chair, I so move.

Thank you, sir.

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

All righty, FY25 quarter

McEwen, profit and loss, your comparison, comma staff memo.

Same drill.

Any thoughts, comments, concerns?

Looks good.

Okay.

First, second.

Mr.

Look at you, buddy.

We're probably sitting right next to each other at the moment.

Thank you, James.

And we're not going to do the executive contract.

We're just going to skip that one.

All right.

Executive director, annual contract, resolution, same thing.

It's in the package.

didn't ask the question, but it's okay, Phil.

We got it.

Thank you again, James.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Look at that.

We might set a record here.

Old business, none.

New business.

All right.

I knew this one fairly rapidly.

It's the annual review of the remote electronic meeting and all virtual policy.

It serves two purposes.

One is to permit members of the commission to participate remotely in an in-person meeting where there's a physical quorum and present.

And the second purpose is to allow the commission to hold all virtual meetings like the one that you all are having this evening.

And it sets the stipulations for those meetings about being seen and heard, how we notice the public, how frequent and often you can hold them and how the public can access.

You can have up to five meetings per year, since we typically hold 10 all virtually, but they cannot be held consecutively.

And that's also an action item.

Any thoughts, comments?

If not, first, second, and we can vote on it.

All right.

Come on, Phil.

Mr.

How about a second?

Come on, Tommy.

There you go, Tommy.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

There we go.

All righty.

I'll give a couple high-level bullets, but again, my written executive director's report is in the packet, so there's a lot more detail in there if you're looking for any individual program detail.

I'll start with the MPO.

They are beginning to prepare a kickoff for a transportation demand management study.

That is a new study that's written within the Unified Planning and Work Program, which is just the MPO's annual work plan.

I wanted to share with you all that the TJPDC was not awarded the RAISE grant.

If you recall, this is the third year we've applied.

We've always scored very well, but due to the competitive nature, it's a national grant.

We were not awarded the funds and that's for the Rivanna River Bike Ped Bridge Preliminary Engineering.

It's interesting to note that there were no projects in the state of Virginia that were awarded raise funds in this round and staff will certainly take advantage.

FHWA offers a debrief on your application and your scoring and so we'll take advantage of that once they offer it.

Usually takes a couple months after award notices before they reach back out to those that weren't successful.

We did submit a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant that you all approved earlier in the year.

The partnership with UVA to study vulnerable road users, but awards won't be announced for another couple of months.

So stay tuned to learn if we get that one or not.

In June, the Commonwealth Transportation Board approved their six-year program, which is the DRPT and VDOT budgets.

The PDC was actually awarded all of the funds that we applied for.

So our ride share program, our PATH mobility management program, the Regional Transit Authority's prioritization study, and both our rural and MPO funding were all awarded at the amounts that we requested.

So we were very pleased with this round.

Staff also completed a triennial DRPT financial compliance review, just a comprehensive review of all of our practices and making sure we're following all the rules.

It's an extensive review.

There were no substantive defaults noted.

There was one minor finding, and that is an instance of submitting multiple invoices within the same month.

So they don't like you to do that.

A lot of our program managers say, go ahead and do it, but if you don't get that written documentation that they said, go ahead and do it, it's a finding.

basically this stems from having gaps in staff that earlier in the year when we did not have transportation planners and so the invoicing got behind and as soon as we had staff we got caught back up and submitted them all at once that was a minor finding we submitted a corrective action plan it was approved we're not terribly concerned but we do take that compliance very seriously and that will be overseen by the transportation director to make sure that staff are submitting invoices as we're allowed one per month and not stacking them

Happy to take questions on any of these.

For environmental, some quick updates.

We have kicked off the water supply planning.

That kickoff happened at the end of June.

We did receive the just over $8,000 planning funds from DEQ to support that.

Once available, we'll apply for the second round of just over $8,500 to help support that.

The Watershed Improvement Program, there are four rain barrel workshops planned for fall across the PDC and the pilot septic program officially kicks off in August.

So we'll be excited to start moving that money.

And then finally, our two more environmental, the hazard mitigation program, the full application was submitted in order to get funding to complete the required five year update to the plan.

That'll be a several year process.

And then the Rivanna River Basin Commission is holding their September meeting, September 24th, and that's going to focus on water supply planning.

So that's going to have speakers from Virginia Association of Counties, Rivanna Water Sewer Authority, Piedmont Environmental Council, DEQ, and RCA, Rivanna Conservation Alliance.

And then a new standing item that I'm going to put in my ED report every month.

There'll be a link within my report.

An executive order, it's actually a very old executive order, 12372.

It tasks federal agencies with notifying and seeking comments from both states and local or regional officials.

when they're applying for federal financial assistance with a project that affects your region or your locality.

But the state of Virginia never formalized a statewide process or a point of contact for who they're supposed to reach out to when they have an application that affects a jurisdiction or a region.

And so a lot of federal agencies have then developed their own steps.

Okay, well, if Virginia doesn't have a process, we'll just send it to all the localities or we'll send it to all the planning district commissions.

Or we'll send it to all of the reps.

So everybody has a different process.

We at the PDC receive a significant amount of these reviews to do.

They're called intergovernmental reviews.

Some of them are just notices.

We've always, as staff, reviewed them, made sure local either staff or electeds are copied.

If they are not, we forward them on when it has to do with your locality.

All this is is a new process for us to officially log

Every review that we receive, every intergovernmental request that we receive, we're logging it into a spreadsheet and we're saving it so that anybody can access those on the website.

So within my monthly ED report, there'll be a live link that you can always go to if you want to see all of the different reviews that we have completed within the last month since the last time we met with you.

Happy to take any questions on that.

This is really more about information sharing and transparency, but also just formalizing what our process is when we receive them, since we do receive so many of them.

And that is all I have.

Any questions for Christine?

So moving on to eight, which is other business.

If everybody takes a look at B, we've got kind of a busy September.

And I'm going to take lead from my dear friend Ernie, who chaired a meeting earlier today for the operation.

We won't do a formal roundtable.

Maybe we can all get on with our evening.

But if anybody would like to share anything, this is a great opportunity.

They want to chime in and talk a little bit about what may be going on in their world.

So if anybody would like to share, this is an opportunity.

Okay, guys, I tell you, I would like to do one thing, though.

Caitlin, would you mind turning your camera on, please, if you're able to?

There you are.

So I personally wanted to say thank you.

Your last day is on the 11th.

Yes, sir.

We could not have done what we did at the Regional Housing Partnership without your awesome work and support and always being there.

And thank you for putting up with yours truly being somewhat of a PIA from time to time, so maybe regularly.

But I personally wanted to say thank you and wish you the best of luck.

I guess I'm still going to be in the area, everybody.

So you might see me in a couple of meetings, this little fly on the wall.

If you have any questions or you want to hear my input about things, I'm always available to chime in on that.

But yeah, so my contract does end on the 11th and I am going to graduate school with EVA, Frank Baden School of Leadership and Public Policy.

I'm excited for this next chapter and I'm excited to where it may lead me, but I'm always going to be in the area.

So

Well, it'll be an absolute pleasure.

And I just want to thank you so much for everything you did for us and wish you only the best of the very best moving forward.

Anybody else want to chime in?

If not, look at this.

We might be able to adjourn and get on with the rest of our evening.

We're all on the table.

Mr.

Chair, I move we adjourn.

Thank you.

Everybody have a great evening, and we'll see you guys in September.

Thank you.

Thanks again, my friend.

Good night, all.