Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   3/15/2022

And do we need to read the- I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order.

We'll need to read the notice of electronic meeting.

I've got it.

Thank you.

Yep.

This meeting of the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to code of Virginia

Section 2.2-3708.2, which allows a public body to hold electronic meetings when the locality in which it is located has declared a local state of emergency.

And the catastrophic nature of the emergency makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location.

And the purpose of the meeting is to provide for the discharge of its lawful purpose, duties, and responsibilities.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings and is accessible to the public with closed captioning and there will be an opportunity for public comment during that portion of the agenda.

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

The meeting minutes will reflect the nature of the emergency.

The meeting was held by electronic communication means and the type of electronic communication means by which the meeting was held.

Thank you Lucinda.

Members of the public are welcome to provide comment on any public interest, transportation related project, including items on the agenda.

Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak during this time?

Saying that there are none, let's go ahead and move to the minutes.

Does anybody have any comments or changes for the minutes?

I motion to approve the minutes with the correct spelling of my last name.

I need a second.

Second.

Thanks, Douglas.

All right.

Moving the meeting from the 19th to the 26th for the APA conference.

I think that's very important.

I don't have any problems with that.

Does anybody else?

I motion to move the meeting from July 19th to the 26th due to the APA Virginia Conference.

All right.

So I'll share my screen with you.

I have a presentation, but I'm not going to go through the entire thing because I think you guys all probably know this even better than I do.

So here is the fiscal year 2020 budget and the fiscal year 2023 budget.

Last year, we did a lot of work with the Route 29 North Corridor Study.

We started working on some SMART SCALE applications and other types of support for local assistance, like the Zion Crossroads Project.

This year, the two large things that we would like to work on is a rural transit needs assessment and recommendations.

So this would kind of go hand in hand with the transit vision statement.

And then also when Albemarle County expanded their micro transit service

Rural counties, like rural areas were asking us if we could do something similar.

So I think by having a needs assessment, we'll be able to kind of ascertain where services are needed in the rural areas and kind of help, maybe help Jaunt plan services that would help fill those needs.

And Jaunt has graciously volunteered to work with us on this.

So it would be a joint project between TJPDC and Jaunt.

And then the other tasks would be preparing the SMART SCALE applications and any other assistance that you guys request.

And then the last part is VDOT had made a comment and asked that we prioritize the Thomas Jefferson bike ped plan.

There's some rural projects in their areas of need that are suggested, but they're not prioritized.

And unless they're prioritized, they're not applicable to SMART SCALE and VDOT funding.

So with that task, we would develop a methodology for prioritizing those need areas and then prioritize them.

and that's kind of the pretty much the bulk of the fiscal year 2023 budget.

I just wanted to elaborate a little bit on the rural needs assessment that you mentioned.

I think as most people here know, Jaunt has been through a lot of change over the past few months and we're really enthusiastic about that rural needs assessment as well as the transit development plan that we'll be working on this year.

Specifically, we want to establish some really strong norms for what can go on on a regular basis.

The TDP, if you don't know, is done only once every six years.

So we'd love to learn from that.

Well, what can we do every year?

What are the pieces that we can take?

So we really want to build strong relationships with all of our partners in the rural localities.

Jaunt is

Somewhat unique for a transit agency in that we do have two planners on staff so we have a lot of capacity to pursue those relationships and I think do some really good work.

So this project was, well this plan was brought before the Thomas Jefferson Planning Commission and it will be brought before them in the April meeting to ask them to

approve it.

So I don't know if you guys have any other questions.

If you do, I can't see everybody.

So let me stop sharing.

Okay.

Does anybody have any comment, questions, or concerns about the proposed budget?

I have a quick question.

So

Does the TJPDC reach out to like the administrative staff of the localities when they're putting this together to determine, you know, every year, obviously we're focusing on a different thing or continuing.

Yeah, that, that's a really good question.

Sandy emailed everybody, the county staff and asked if they had anything they'd like to add.

I think that Sandy, we got,

One request for some assistance with a comprehensive plan that is part of the work plan.

And that's all we heard back.

Yeah, we don't email the administrative staff.

We email the planning staff and ask you all if you have objectives.

So you should have gotten an email from me a month or two back asking if you had any

Adams you wanted us to incorporate and then we rely on you to go through and determine if you need to have any additional conversations with higher level staff at that point.

But Lucinda is correct.

Would anybody like to motion and then I can get a second?

All right, I'll motion to approve.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lucinda.

No, I actually don't have a whole lot to say.

I mostly just wanted to provide an opportunity for Chuck and David and you all to raise any questions and clarify any processes or anything like that that you might need.

I will say that one thing that we will need from each of the localities, especially if you're outside of the MPO area, is a list of your projects.

because the commission will provide a resolution of support for the SMART SCALE applications that you can include in your applications.

Those do not need to be done prior to the pre-application period.

I think I just checked and it looks like it was on the commission agenda for either May or June, but we would like to be able to provide that as additional support for your projects.

Just a reminder that pre-applications need to be submitted by March 31st.

You can have up to five pre-applications and then you'll each have four applications you can submit.

The deadline for submitting this, Tom, I made the same mistake that you did initially, is August 1st, not August 31st.

So I was corrected and make sure everybody knows they need to be done on August 1st.

But Chuck or David, do you have anything else you want to add or any of the rest of you have any SMART SCALE types of questions?

I just wanted to, I know I've been working with Tom.

I haven't really talked to Douglas or I don't know if there's anybody from Greene.

I have talked to Jim Frydl, so I'm working on his stuff, but I haven't really talked to Douglas.

Do you need any more assistance, Douglas?

I'm working on your studies right now.

Some of them,

Two of your applications should be pretty, well, yeah, two of them should be clones.

Troy Road is, that was from a couple of rounds ago.

So let me know if you get, if that one even shows up on the list, because it may not show up on the list because it was a couple of rounds ago when you get it, but Turkey Sag shouldn't be a problem.

You can just clone that one easily.

And then I just finished the report for the,

618 intersections.

So I don't have a sketch yet, so I'm waiting on that.

As soon as I get that, I can send you that information.

But you can go ahead and start putting in some of that information in the portal.

No, that's great, Chuck.

Yeah, the main one was Martin King in 53.

I think we're going to, like you said,

Re-load or clone the ones from Turkey Sag and Troy Road.

Troy Road, since it was a previous one, it's not going to have as much information in it, but we're not really doing anything different there than what we had previously done.

So most of the information should come over, but you may have to put in some more.

I know that you have to go and even if you clone it, you have to go in and put in the

V-Trans needs and that's kind of tedious so it takes a while because you've got to go through that location map and then it highlights the segments and then you got to go and pick a need for each of those segments of roads so it's that's pretty tedious but other than that everything else should be pretty straightforward you don't have to fill out the whole thing it's just you don't have to put in reasons for the

or what the actual improvement is, you just have to put in the type of improvement like highway improvement or a turn lane improvement or something along those lines.

You don't have to put in exactly all the details about that in the field to the right.

At least by the end of next week.

Like I said, I've got some of it now.

I know waiting on the consultant to do the sketches.

All right.

Thanks, Joe.

And Sandy, I think we should be pretty straightforward with Nelson.

So you guys, Isabella O'Brien working with her with the TJPDC.

She's putting together the applications for Nelson on behalf of Nelson County.

So two of those are cloned applications, so they're pretty straightforward and others are pipeline.

applications.

So the consultant's been working with VDOT to get all the application information over for that one.

The other final one is a potential UDA project on Front Street in Livingston.

So the only contingent with that is they would have to designate the UDA by May 13th

All right, well, thank you.

The city of Charlottesville, so that's the emergency order that we are acting under right now.

They have extended their state of emergency for six months, but it's really to provide for a transition back to in-person meetings.

So what that means is that the PDC, the commission is going to really be looking at what our remote policy is going to be developing our own transition plan back to in-person meetings.

And so probably within the next month or two, we will have additional information for either we're going to start meeting in person, or we'll have a plan for when we will start meeting in person.

We probably will still maintain some sort of hybrid meeting opportunity, but if you recall, when we go back to meeting in person, in order for you to participate on a regular basis, there are some exceptions that were adopted as part of the policy, but you all will need to

Thank you, Sandy.

All right, we'll move on to Douglas and I. I promise we won't bore you too much.

All right.

So in the last meeting, we all decided we want to have a conversation about transportation in relation to solar projects.

And Louisa County has, as you see by the map, 590 megawatts and just about over 5000 acres that's been approved, not necessarily built.

As you can see in the slide here, a lot of them are approved and not constructed.

And during the course of the conditional use permit processes, which is what Louisa County uses, there's been the creation of an ordinance as well as 31 standard conditions that we've been using.

Lucinda, could you give us the next slide?

Thank you.

So I pulled a actual photo from the Central Virginia newspaper of one of our public hearings.

So you can see that somebody has a rather large folder in their hand.

Some of the issues we were seeing back in 2020 were tracking of dirt on roads, trucks backing up on the highways or the roads.

Who exactly do I complain to if a boulder lands in my yard?

damage to roads, conflicts with school bus timing, speeding from contractors, and of course, rocks falling off trucks.

Lucinda, if you can give me the next slide, please.

So I'm a big proponent of PowerPoint slides with not a lot of words, but in this case, I'm going to give you the actual conditions that Louisa County is using.

Just a few of them out of the 31 that are slightly codified within our ordinance.

One of them being a project liaison, because we were having all these issues, but there was no one to actually complain to.

You would call Louisa County.

We send code enforcement out there.

And it could be three different complaints at three different areas.

And so what we require applicants to do is create a project liaison.

There's going to be a website, a toll free number, and then the applicant or the project owner is responsible for giving the county an update on what are the problems you've been receiving complaints on, how have you

Remedied those issues so that way we can stay in the loop going forward.

Lucinda, if you can give us the next slide, please.

Secondly, when it comes to site plan review, we have the applicant being responsible right after the site plan has been approved, but before the preconstruction meeting, they're going to have to work with VDOT to video the road.

to determine what the current condition is, because after the end of the project, they'll be responsible for bringing the road back to the same, if not better condition.

Now, the question is, well, how far down the road?

And that's something you need to work out with your VDOT local office of working with the applicant, where are the trucks coming from?

Are they coming from 64, 95?

How much of the road needs to be videoed?

And every project's a little bit unique and different that has to be worked out.

Secondly, the applicant, if there is a problem, let's say a puddle is created, they're responsible for repairing it during the course of construction within a certain amount of time.

That way we're not having conflicts and waiting until the project's over with.

Lucinda, if you can advance to the next slide for me.

Thank you.

Within the site plan itself, we're expecting applicants to show designated delivery and parking areas so we can figure out, you know, is it at the front of the project working back up on the road or is it going to be in the middle?

Designated routes and deliveries of equipment.

You have to tell us where they're coming from.

Where they're going, traffic control methods, that's something that VDOT's going to look at at your site plan process anyway, flagging procedures, for example, wash racks, how many wash racks you're going to need to make sure that you're not having dirt fall off into the road, and then continuing to make sure that you're policing the road so that if dirt does happen, end up on the road that gets cleaned during the day, not just at the end and the beginning.

I've actually had some very angry people come out that like to wash their car a lot and they made it well known that that was a big concern for them.

Plans to direct employee traffic.

So also working with the local traffic pattern, we're starting to ask applicants to work with the schools or what if you're crossing a railroad?

How do you know that you're not gonna have delivery of panels?

You need to work with whoever owns that railroad to make sure you're not having a conflict.

Lucinda, if you could give me the next slide, please.

Again, we touched on this a little bit more, dust control, water trucks, daily monitoring.

So I went ahead of myself there.

So there's a little bit more of what I said.

Lucinda, if you can give me the next slide for me.

Something new that we've started adding just in 2022 to the conditions is that project owners will be required to ask the Board of Supervisors for a permanent or temporary reduction in speed around the project sites within a mile.

There is some cost involved with that so if you are going to request that and make sure that the applicant is paying the cost of applying to VDOT for that reduction of speed because traffic study has to be done, signs have to be purchased and installed and then taken back down.

Our Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors has come up with 35.

There's a good speed limit.

Regardless of the reduction of speed, VDOT may say that they don't want to reduce the speed.

So there is language in our applications for conditional use permits that if a reduction of speed is not successfully granted by VDOT, the project can still go forward.

However, they will be responsible for enforcing their own contractors to drive within 35 miles an hour around the project.

Also, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, the applicant conditions that they are aware that if they're in close proximity to a town, a school, a railroad, or a very popular church, anything that could, you know, or a festival, anything that could have a large amount of people that they need to work with them to make sure they're not, you know, if the school buses are letting out a certain time, you're not getting deliveries at that same time.

Or if we know there's a festival that's gonna shut everything down for a weekend, that you're working with those different entities.

Lucinda, if you can advance the next slide for me.

And then I think this is one of my last slides here, construction and deconstruction hours.

So this goes a little bit out of transportation, but it's still worth talking about is that you could have issues with equipment warming up.

Let's say you're allowed to start construction at seven, but everybody gets together, drinks coffee and warms up all their bulldozers and starts backing up equipment.

and it ends up on the road or it's just very noisy for the neighbors because they're trying to sleep in.

Having that within your conditions of, okay, your lay down yard is gonna be required to be in the middle of the project, not at the very beginning of the entrance.

You're not allowed to warm up equipment until, you know, after a certain amount of time.

And the deliveries, we have, the county has a set time that we like to use, which is between 7.30 AM

and 830AM for deliveries as well as 330 and 430.

But that could change based off what you have going on around you.

And again, I have a video on our website of like, it goes in a little bit more of other conditions that aren't transportation related.

I have a whole ordinance and several other conditions, but I just wanted to touch on the things that Louisa County has come up with for these large scale projects that we hope and feels will prevent future problems from occurring.

And I believe that was my last slide.

All right.

So yeah, Tom and I were putting this together.

I've actually learned a lot from just working with Tom in the last week or two on putting this information together.

So, you know, Louisa County has a lot of really large solar projects.

And fortunately right now we have one, well, we have larger ones you'll see in the queue coming up in one of the slides, but ours has mainly been working with our solar projects the last couple of years.

We've been working and partnering with Sun Tribe Solar out of Charlottesville and all of our school sites, we all have, all the schools have power purchase agreements and

So basically, it's been kind of an easy way for us to see how construction goes, but also protecting the parents, teachers, and, of course, students and the bus traffic and everything.

So the next kind of last year or so, we've been doing the small

facilities, two to three megawatts, small scale facilities.

And then this fall, this past fall in September, we adopted our land use, small scale facilities, utility scale and so on.

And that because we there's a lot of large scale projects

that are currently in the Dominion queue for folks.

And each kind of every quarter or six months, the Dominion Energy is not releasing those people out.

So we're trying to be well prepared, especially from a transportation perspective in this form.

So if we can go to the next slide.

Thank you.

So you'll see these two maps are real early on ones that we've been doing, but you'll see kind of in the top center of the slide is the little green looks almost like the little state of

South Carolina.

That's our first Cunningham solar one in the center of the county just south of Lake Monticello.

That's a SEVEC two to three megawatt facility.

And then the larger orange one on the far right, that's the Carriagebrook solar behind Carriagebrook Elementary School.

And in that kind of south central portion of the county.

The other map in the center on the right here shows some

Of our larger utility scale ones, 50 to up to 120 megawatt facilities we're expecting.

So we're in the planning process, we're working with those areas for what projects we are working on and expect.

So next slide, please.

And so not to be, you know,

Going over kind of the same conditions that Tom went over, because in fact, a lot of them that he went over are very valid for us.

We looked at it more at the Carisbrook Solar one next to Carisbrook Elementary for working with the site consultant Timonsphere to really perform the full traffic analysis and traffic study.

As he mentioned, videotaping everything, but also we really wanted, we had a lot of bus traffic on Route 15.

School bus traffic, our school bus maintenance facility is also in there, so not only buses going in and out with students, but also going in and out to be serviced and

and everything.

So it was really important for us to make sure that our transportation folks in the school division worked with us and worked with Tim and Spirit.

So next slide, please.

So again, it's a lot of text.

So I did try to, this is kind of extracting some information from one of our recent staff reports, but the bold and the

We also felt it was very important for coordinating the deliveries and employee arrivals and starts and dismissal times for the Caresbrook Elementary School would not be affected.

So you can see those times are 7.25 and 2.45, real similar to what Tom was just mentioning about the timeframes, the bulk of the site construction work will kind of work in between those timeframes.

so that there's minimal school traffic disruption.

And just up the road from here from Carriage Brook Solar facility on 15, we have numerous other schools, elementary schools and middle schools.

So in this like three to five mile radius, it's like most of our schools.

So next slide, please.

And we did have the same kind of construction traffic management plan that we work with with the VDOT, Louisa residency, both of us.

And then working to make sure that if there is any pre and post construction road evaluation done, that the necessary repairs are required.

And we want to get that done like right away.

Even on smaller, small scale facility work, it can still possibly have some damage.

So we're trying to really work with the solar providers to work with the county and VDOT.

Next slide, please.

And then these are kind of some of our ones that, again, site parking is the same, but we also, since solar is kind of new for our public safety and public facilities folks, even with working on smaller ones at schools,

We thought it was important that the fire chief would be notified along with the construction manager's direct contact information during construction.

And we also, in our thought process, we looked at part of the conditions to be for future expansion or for future swap out of panels and materials and inverters in 10 or 20 years.

So we really looked at the

Us in the county attorney's office, we looked at making sure the conditions were very, very long-term as well, not just immediate three to five years for construction and operation, and we don't hear from them again.

So we looked at making sure that that remote manager's direct contact information is also important.

So once they're operating it, they can get to us right away with the fire chief or the sheriff's department.

And I think I'm getting close to the N-90.

So let's see.

Yep.

So we also have the construction mitigation plan.

And we will

A lot of ours are in farming areas and such that we want to make sure that use of a water truck or keeping soil and sediment on the premises.

One of the things that we just recently worked with DEQ on at Harrisonburg

is to look at the future large utilities scale solar projects that we would work with them on the onsite retention of soil and proper drainage during construction or future site expansion.

And so kind of wrapping up, Tom and I thought that these kind of three bullets were helpful for things that we've experienced so far and what others may be experiencing or getting ready to experience in their locality, in their county.

We just really need to work with the solar applicants up front during the community meetings.

I think it's really important

to use your transportation related concerns because that's really going to be the most large impact.

You know, the actual site construction is going to affect a small area, but people coming in on your major roadways and corridors

with equipment and making sure all those things are timed correctly and notifying VDOT and other partners that might have that.

And then they also spend some time with us working out those conditions after the community meeting and things that we can get ready for them and just have minimal concerns or thoughts that may come up during the public hearings.

So the more we can work up front, the better in the end for the project.

And in conclusion for Fluvanna County, we've really had a strong focus on protecting our schools and, you know, indirect traffic around them.

I think the future projects that we have in the southern and south

South Central part of the county towards Scottsville and Kid Store area, we're gonna probably see that our shift is gonna be changed to the rural community and the farming areas and logging and all the different folks that work in that portion of the county.

So again, I think it's really helpful to work with VDOT on a lot of our projects and we appreciate that.

So I guess Tom,

Thank you, sir.

It was a very interesting presentation there.

Did you guys have a lot of pushback from the private sector on that sort of fairly long list of conditions?

Louisa's experience has been that every single applicant has pushed back on something or multiple things.

That's why, as Douglas said, it's very important to start engaging them very early on, even prior to the pre-application meeting and some examples to go, you know, here's an example staff report.

Here's what we've approved in the past.

Here's what we expect.

And so, you know, we have a level of expectation of these are the things you're going to have to do.

I have a few questions but I want to defer to the other localities since these are just curiosities for me more than anything.

The public interest in the solar farms, is that because of previous projects that have occurred that were not maybe managed well or did not foresee some of these impacts?

Or is this something that automatically triggered the public's interest because of the scale of the projects?

And then my second question is as far as the conditions that you go through,

Well, Louisa, our conditions are a lot of them come from the ordinance.

However, we are constantly adding on and tweaking them as we learn new things.

As for how it came to be is that around 2019, 2020, we were starting to see these big projects come forward.

And the first thought was we need to pass some kind of ordinance so that everybody's playing with the same playbook.

Otherwise, you get an applicant, one provides your environmental phase one, one doesn't.

One provides you a detailed map, the other doesn't.

So the ordinance really provides that level of playing ground.

The conditions, it's easier for staff to review things, obviously, but also there's that level of expectation.

And we did have a project that was about 1200 acres in size that we experienced some issues with.

So we gained a lot of knowledge out of that project.

and we hope those projects continue moving forward, that we won't see the same problems that we've had on a large scale.

Yeah, on the smaller stuff, I think it's actually gone quite smooth, but one thing I would like to bring up in here, and I know it's not transportation related, but

I think that our normal applicants that come from the state of Virginia or mid-Atlantic, you'll find we're actually dealing with people all over the world, okay?

We have people from, of course, all around United States, California, but we have people from Canada.

We've worked with some projects and groups from South Korea.

I can mention some of these because they're in the queue.

You have Samsung from Korea.

You have the folks from our largest one that's proposed right now as Power 174 Global out of California.

And you also have to remember their scope of when they're looking for sites in Virginia.

They're looking at where the sun hits the curvature of the earth the best.

All those tilted panels.

And so you sometimes have to bring these folks down to the Virginia scale and then even your county scale when you're working with them for site selection or things like that.

And I think once you bring them to that level, they understand and they've worked

The best thing I've found so far in working with some of the larger utility scale folks is they'll actually offer up things that they've done in other parts of Virginia or other parts of the United States that's worked well.

So they'll sometimes even match up.

Hey, these conditions work well for us in Pennsylvania County or

Bottsylvania or wherever.

So it is a complete partnership, but with our largest one, there's also now ratios where people are looking at large amount of acreage for the amount of megawatts that they can produce.

And so, and the reason I mentioned that is it all relates back to transportation.

I have a question and it's not transportation related, but I'm just really curious.

Do they use cover crops like when they finish with their construction and everything?

So a couple years ago, the American Planning Association put out an article, I believe it was called Are You Solar Ready?

And they talked about, you know,

vegetative plantings, pollinators as well as Douglas actually along with Jim gave me an article a few months ago about planting kale or species that don't need as much sunlight underneath the panel.

So there are options for cover crop that isn't just grass.

And from a standpoint, we, Louisa County,

We had a 1200 acre project that a lot of it was open at one time.

So now we require that the projects are phased in development where on average you're not allowed to open up a certain amount.

Each project is different.

A hundred acre project is going to be different from a 1200 acre project.

One of the larger ones, we don't allow more than 100 acres to be open at one time.

It has to be stabilized, at least temporarily, before you can move on to the next phase.

We, Louisa County, does require that all projects, 10% of the entire project, must be planted in pollinators that conform with the DCR Pollinator Smart Program.

So we do have that going on.

We're not doing animals and kale underneath the solar panel yet, but Douglas, what do you got going on?

No, no.

Yeah, but no, the pollinator buffer program that Tom talked about, it's really come into its own.

You know, basically you have a meadow underneath there.

They're not, they don't have, you know, in the older days, some of my previous locality, people were, you know, using goats and other things to, you know, clear property or whatever.

the pollinator meadow and native plants and everything.

Yeah, the article I passed on to Tom and Jim was something that out in Colorado, I think it was, they were planting actual cover crops or other crops underneath the solar panels.

And so the farmer or farm family could still get some of that and take it to market, farmers markets, what have you.

You know, and they still felt they were doing something with it.

But I think overall, universally, the pollinator buffer program really works well.

It keeps it right underneath the panels.

And, you know, it's great on maintenance for them.

You know, Michael earlier asked, were we getting pushback?

It's just that's actually one of the things we got pushback on back in 2019.

We were told that it would be

Prohibitively Expensive, which I then asked the question, well, how many times are you going to cut the grass in that facility?

When you're doing pollinators, depending on what you're planning, you may only need to cut it once in the fall.

And if you have to cut the grass multiple times over 35 years, that's a pretty expensive landscaping bill that you're going to have.

And so it's more of an upfront cost for the applicant.

In the beginning, when we were thinking about doing it, we were getting 5% here, 12% here.

So we said at least 10%.

Yeah, and so one last thing kind of in here in central Virginia, there's so many different wineries and, you know, we have a meadery here.

So the gentleman who, husband and wife team that run that meadery,

They've given up on their own bee production of the honey product because of so many soybean fields and other highly corrosive chemicals and pesticides.

So I think long term, near term, long term, you're going to see some of that, you know, get better because the natural native buffer stuff is there.

We've also had applicants tell me that they're working with a local beehive group, that they can actually install beehives and it ended up being a condition.

I don't know if it'll actually happen, but one of the projects may end up doing that.

Again, you can pass an ordinance and you can have standard conditions, but you've got to constantly work on making them better so that you're getting the best project you can for the citizens.

Anybody else have any other questions about solar?

Well, Douglas and I thank you for letting us tell you all about solar transportation today.

So what will we like to talk about for the next meeting?

We did roundabouts last time and solar this time.

Who has an idea?

Don't be shy.

I guess we'll have to marinate on that.

But you know what?

That's a good idea.

Well, it'll be March 31st is a pre-application.

Yeah, we can do that.

I mean, that's, I mean, we've got the video and we've got some of the material and most of the other than I know you've seen it and Douglas, I think has seen it, but I don't think most of the other people on the committee have seen it.

In the Lynchburg district, David and Rick, one of the recommendations for Livingston was a, was it a three in a row level archive?

I don't know how you describe it.

We basically had two main recommendations.

One is going to be a signalized archive.

The other is just going to be a regular archive, unsignalized.

The other project was an interchange with roundabouts, but the cost of that project is very high.

The right-of-way impacts

We're very high.

So the public responses from the survey were not very favorable for that project just because of the impacts of that.

So we're pretty much we're looking at the signalized art cut.

It's kind of our preferred alternative.

That's what we're applying for at that location.

We've got a roundabout.

It was funded last round on 66 at exit 28.

There's a roundabout on the north end and an R-cut on the south end.

So those were funded as two separate projects, but they were funded in the same round.

We originally applied as a double roundabout.

and then the other one is in South Warrenton.

All righty, well, I'll go into round table and I'll start, I guess, as usual.

I have a new director of community development here in Louisa County.

He's actually on the Zoom, I believe, unless he's in a meeting, Josh Gillespie.

I watched the blinding light, sorry about that.

Hey, Tom, thank you for the introduction and everyone to the welcome.

I'm Josh Gillespie.

I'm the new director here of community development in Louisa County.

I have recently been working in the next planning district over in

the Triple RC as it's called over in Rappahannock, Rapidan.

And I am thrilled to be here.

I know a couple of you and have met in person Sandy recently after having talked a few times over the years.

I'm looking forward to working in this region and with all of you.

I have a lot to learn, worked with Chuck over time too.

So I know a couple of folks, but not many.

Thanks, Josh.

And the only other update is in the next meeting, you'll learn about bow ties.

I can go next.

We are, right now, I'm going to the Board of Supervisors tomorrow with a work session on our

Rural Rustic Roads, our secondary six-year plan,

We're in a position now where we are kind of running out of potential roads to pave.

In Amarillo County, we're almost, I mean, we do have a number of roads left that are unpaved, but most of those, there's no desire to ever pave.

So we are starting to stockpile this paving money and wondering what we're eventually gonna do with it.

But we'll have that discussion with the board tomorrow.

Other than that, it's really just, you know, preparing for those pre applications.

I was glad to hear no one else was jumping those TJPDC slots for applications because I think we have a few that we'd love to work with them on submitting.

And those are really the ones that are the results of the project pipeline.

that we've been working on with the TJPDC and VDOT including improvements out there on 250 in the Shedwell area by

Route 22 in 250 and route or I'm sorry Milton Road in 250 and those are right now it looks like we're proposing some innovative intersections out there where they'll be a they're very close intersections they're really just separated by a railroad line with a bridge over it and so

A roundabout at one of them and a displaced left turn at the other.

So we're just talking about combining the innovative intersections.

That's really what we're looking at there.

And then the others are just inside the urban area in the Pantops area on 250.

Some minor improvements along that more urban corridor there.

So those are the projects that we're hoping that we can work with the TJPDC on for submittal.

Let's see, anything else?

Thank you.

This is Stephen, I can go next.

Quick update, we have our TDP coming up this year and we're going to be kicking that off this Friday.

and this is David with VDOT.

I have a three o'clock meeting or two o'clock meeting, so I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here.

Just one thing to keep in mind, our spring public meeting is gonna be May 3rd at 4 p.m. in downtown Lynchburg at the Virginian.

Hey Tom, this is Douglas.

I'll go ahead.

And you guys kind of got an update already indirectly on our three SMART SCALE projects.

But Chuck, we also just heard from Bethel this morning, Eric and I, that

The 600-618 intersection, I think we're getting ready to go through some more analysis and work on that maybe next Thursday or Friday.

That's the one on the other end of Lake Monticello in South Boston.

That's a real challenging kind of intersect in there.

We've got the lake dam, the lakes,

Wastewater Treatment Facility in the Ravenna River all in a sloped road that comes down to a T-intersection.

So it's been our most challenging intersection.

So we're hoping to be good to get working on that one as well now that the roundabouts completed at the other end.

So now we just have one small three truck restriction that we're doing down in the Fork Union area.

That's about it for transportation right now.

Thank you.

I can jump in.

Like David, I've got SMART SCALE for everybody.

I know Tom and I, we've gotten together on their applications.

Let me know if you have any problems, Kevin, and I can assist you too.

And same way with the PDC folks.

If there's any problems there, I can help you guys.

Got the Zions Crossroads.

Study that's going on, I think we're trying to set up a meeting with the board and possibly another public meeting in April or something like that, I think.

So at least that's when we met with them last week, that's what we were looking at.

And then we've also got the 29 North Quarter Study that Lucinda and Sandy brought up earlier.

I need to get back with the consultants they're supposed to be working on,

developing alternatives for those intersections along that corridor.

So hopefully we'll be coming up with those in the near future.

And then the other one we've got is the pipeline studies, which I know Kevin brought up both of those.

Those are wrapping up, but those are mainly in the MPO area, but they are on the 250 corridor going into Charlottesville.

So that's pretty much what I'm doing right now.

I'll follow up with that.

My name is Michael Barnes.

I know most of you.

Some of you I don't know.

I haven't had a pleasure of meeting yet.

I've been working with VDOT for the past three, four years with the local assistance program, working primarily with Charlottesville, but I've recently taken a job working with Chuck as an assistant district planner.

So I'm sure I'll be working with many of you all a lot more.

I really look forward to that.

I've been living in the area since the mid nineties.

So I know it well and know

Lots of the outlying candidates very well, too.

So look forward to working with you.

Thank you.

Well, while we're introducing new people, I don't know that Ryan was here at our previous meeting to introduce himself.

And then we also, a lot of you might already know Ruth, but we also have Ruth join us as our COO and Ryan is a transportation planner.

Yeah, thank you, Sandy.

My name is Ryan Mickles.

I'm a new planner here at TJPDC.

I'm Ruth Emerick.

I'm formerly from Albemarle County.

And prior to that, the city of Charlottesville.

And just looking forward to working with everyone.

Awesome.

Well, Sandy, I flew through today as I usually do.

Do we have

Anybody, I don't believe anybody from the public has joined, but just in case, would anybody like to participate from the public today?

Tom, this is Douglas.

I really know this is not transfer related.

We stretched the solar a little bit, but with transportation type stuff,

But we're kind of ending up in the latter part of the stage of short-term rentals here in the county and so I've already done a little bit of research and I see Josh is on here and he was on previously at Orange County I saw that

Orange has had some information.

I know Jim's not on here, but I also know I talked to him at VASO back in October about some of the things they do in Greene and Nelson for short-term rentals and inspection programs.

If anyone would like to email me this week, anything or links that you could suggest that you work on or staff in your office works on, has worked on, excuse me, relative to short-term rentals, we are, Jon-Michael and I are researching that, putting some of that stuff together.

So we have no hotels here and very, of course, everyone knows very limited

Affordable housing and rental housing, so rental homes.

So I think a lot of our short-term rental scenarios are coming up in accessory structures and the former mother-in-law suites and things like that.

And we're actually now even getting people to construct them as really nice opportunities inside of there.

We know what we want to do with it, but if there's things that you all as other planners have seen how it's worked well, please let us know and just email me directly if you'd like and we'll kind of put that regional localities chart together and so on.

Hey, absolutely.

And Doug, I don't want to and everybody, I don't want to sidetrack on this, but I will say Louisa County is looking at this specifically for the reasons you talked about related to money making opportunities or just opportunities on portions of property that weren't used for accessory dwellings or accessory rental places before.

But I do want to just put one one kind of thing out there for awareness.

In Orange County, there is a requirement that's unlike most of the other counties, especially those with getaway properties, weekend properties, for example, and that's that the owner must be present on the property and available as a manager.

And that's unlike most of the short-term rentals that are out there.

A lot of the cities may have that, but in the counties, that's uncommon.

So just some awareness, Orange is an outlier in that regard for those places that have short-term rental.

No, I appreciate that, Josh, because I found that Monday morning,

on your site, on your former site, excuse me, at Orange County.

So, but yeah, just like the older style bed and breakfast, getting a special use permit to turn the old farmhouse into a bed and breakfast.

We think it's real important in rural localities, especially to have people on site and that kind of thing.

You're welcome.

Just for what it's worth, that's not the model that Louisa's looking at specifically around

All right, yeah, I appreciate it.

Josh and Tom, I'll look to you guys, our immediate partners here.

But if anyone else just comes across stuff in their research, just send us an email and whatever we find out in our spreadsheet chart analysis, we'll get it back out to everyone who wants to look at it too.

Thank you.

This could end up being a transportation topic because one of the issues that many localities are having is that you're having cul-de-sacs that are backed up with cars.

As well as you're going to see additional traffic on rural roads, it might be one car and now you have a different car all the time.

So we might be able to make a small presentation out of this.

Always looking for something to talk about.

I will say that we here in Albemarle County we do have a short-term rental regulations as well similar to what Josh was just saying we require the owner to be on site at all times so you're only you're only seeing those in the accessory dwellings or in in the home but that that's because Albemarle likes to think we're urbanized

I think a little bit more so even in the rural areas the people don't want that type of you know new people coming in all the time and agree with the parking issues have been something that have come up quite a bit with these because you know a lot of on smaller streets they weren't built to see a lot of cars and when they start having all these extra cars come in

On a site that was already occupied by a homeowner, then you get spillover with the parking and we do have to deal with that sometimes.

That's something we have them identify in their application.

is where parking will go and ensuring that that's appropriate parking.

Doug, if you're interested, I'm sure, I don't deal with it directly, but the folks over in our zoning division, Bart, if you've worked with Bart before, he's helped to lead that program.

And then Leah Brumfield is working under him and she really actually runs the program.

We have different levels of short-term rental applications.

Depending on the level, you may need to get actual board approval.

Sometimes it's just at the administrative level.

So we have different types, but I'm sure that those folks will be happy to talk you through some of what we've dealt with if you're interested.

That's great.

Thanks, Kevin.

Yeah, I'm glad that we're kind of letting this go into the residential parking issue because we have some of our R3 kind of residential townhouse mixed and it's having some problems.

You know, people basically, you know, they're supposed to have two parking spaces, one in the driveway and the garage.

Well, guess what?

The garage is full from all your boxes when you moved in, your kids, your young toddlers.

You know, toys and supplies.

So we're kind of experiencing that already.

And then if we start having, you know, short term rental stuff going on, that kind of those kind of neighborhoods seem only going to exacerbate.

I live I live across the street from a short term rental, like in rural Nelson County, and parking is still an issue there.

It's not just for like the developed areas because

The, the, um, like the number of cars that you come, especially if it's has, you know, multiple bedrooms where, you know, there are two, there are two houses are right next to each other, multiple bedrooms that can sleep, you know, 10 people you're, you're getting a lot more cars and vehicles there than would normally be there for residential development.

So it's, it's not just where there's already high levels of development, but the parking is a, it's a consideration.

I mean,

It's even in rural areas where you think there's plenty of land that people can just pull off the road.

Thanks everyone for your help.

And maybe in July or September, some of us come back with a short term parking option or something like that as a topic after the APA conference.

We'll throw wedding venues on top of that one to make it a full 30 minutes.

All right.

Well, I'll go ahead and motion to adjourn.

I thank everybody for showing up.

Thank you.