Rural Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting   2/3/2026

I think it already started.

I think we have just about everybody now.

Hey, Jim.

You know how hard it is to find virtual parking this time of day in Charlottesville?

I thought I saw you outside parking.

Good.

Jim, how are you?

You were on your high horse.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, Tom has a very friendly, lovely horse.

Thank you.

And then your wife has a former racing thoroughbred, right?

Churchill down stakes race winner.

Now, I do have to warn you, the last time I was close with somebody that always rode in that hunt club, they like spirited horses and it didn't end up being the end of them.

Usually that meet is not very long because everybody wants to get back and do Thanksgiving.

Plus, it's kind of hard to have that success in a hunt when the pastor prays for fleetness of foot for the fox.

Looks like everybody is back at their seat and we have some electric meeting notice things we need to go over before we do roll call introductions.

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

Thank you, well said.

It wasn't very clear.

I'm with Louisa County.

He's been doing a great job and really glad to have him here with me.

You landed in Nelson, obviously.

I think that's later in the agenda.

Let him get his feet wet a little bit first.

Yeah.

Good to see you there.

How about Todd?

Nice to meet you, Cody.

Alberic?

Alberic Karina-Plun, Albemarle County Planning.

Do you want to introduce yourself or say anything about yourself, Cody?

I'm a planner in Nelson County.

Sandy?

So Cody, happy to meet you and probably won't work with you as much as the Lynchburg District will.

Jason Espie with Jaunt.

Christine.

Christine Jacobs, Executive Director of TJPDC.

Carson.

Gorjan?

Thank you.

And back to Tom and Sarah, I guess.

Thank you, Gretchen, for helping with the roll call.

But for this to be official and on the record, all voting members do have to have their camera on and audio on for anything that requires a vote.

Aye.

Aye.

It's that time again.

Can everyone see my screen?

Yes.

This is a time, again, like I said, where we really want some feedback from you guys if there's things that you think are missing or, you know, things that you would like to add, questions, comments, concerns.

Anybody have any at this time?

Having a new long-range plan.

No, I'm all for the updating a long-range plan.

It's a great roadmap for us as well.

And we email you all if we have any comments between now and April or other people have comments.

Absolutely.

But the more we can get in there in that draft for them to look at ahead of time, the better.

And so we would not be able to bring you back another draft to be able to respond to.

Is this just like a regular vote or?

Yes.

Does everybody want to vote on that now or come back to it later in the meeting?

I'm fine on voting on it now.

I'll make a motion that we recommend approval of the FY 27 Rural Transportation Work Plan to the PDC.

Second.

Carson, Sandy, you are up.

Carson, your name's first.

That's it for us.

Thank you.

Is that, do you have that date off the top of your head, Carson, by chance?

I don't think they sent an invite out, but I do remember them saying the end of March, the end of February, sorry.

There wasn't an invitation, but I think it was scheduled.

I can drop the link to the SMART SCALE website in the chat.

Thank you.

What else do we need to know?

I had mentioned in the draft work plan that that has officially, the grant that we received wrapped up and been finished, but I know there are ongoing conversations.

So it's going to be a one bundled application.

And so that's kind of the timeline that we're working on in the background to make sure we can gauge interest in that time and really have enough time to participate with you all to be able to take information to your boards, should you want to apply for any of this funding.

So just kind of keep that in the back of your mind and we will continue reporting out on that while that process finishes during this fiscal year.

Is there anything vexing or any issues they were having that are not SMART SCALE or SafeStreet related?

I know we had a fantastic guest speaker at our November meeting, so always more to come and always open to any suggestions there.

So that can be kind of interesting.

So I can definitely keep him on tap for that.

Yeah, I forgot his name.

David Blount, perfect.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Robert.

So that's a great, great one.

I can definitely tell you it's not the only request he's getting by topic area.

That was probably very popular.

So I wasn't sure if anybody else was having any similar issues and or had any ideas, unique ideas or thoughts on how to utilize those funds when you get to a point where you don't have any roads that you can pave any longer.

And we have like almost six million sitting in our bucket.

I think we'd be interested to hear what you come up with after you talk internally and then internal discussion becomes public if and when it becomes public.

We'll hopefully have at least a draft idea of what we're planning by then and we can get some board feedback but there won't be anything that's like adopted or that is county policy I'm guessing easily until the summer and then we can start doing that but that's something that we're going to start working on here because yeah we have they keep reminding us Greg Banks is like you have six million dollars that's sitting there that you can't use in anything except for the unpaid roads so yeah

So I will look at some opportunities and, Alberic, keep in touch with you about this.

and if that's something that we can put on for a future, it doesn't have to be April, but a future meeting just to kind of like zoom out a little bit into transportation funding at the state level.

I think it would be interesting, Christine, I think it would be useful to wait till after this budget because I know they're planning on making some significant changes to the way things are funded and that might be a positive benefit for all of us.

We're all on Nextdoor and these Facebook pages and people complaining and trashing VDOT in the counties and how we can maybe help with that better.

Your success and failures in trying to come up with better ways to do access management in the rural community.

So we'll see.

So that's kind of why that I'm just bringing that up.

So if you want like a case study, that's one I know of off the top of my head, there might be other ones.

Thank you.

Okay definitely seems a lot of traction around that one so we'll see what we can possibly put together and look at either the May meeting or the one following that so I may be in touch with a few of you to to talk about that.

And at that, I leave it to somebody else.

So pray for me.

So once I have a better idea, yeah, I'm happy to share with the group kind of what our strategy moving forward is and honestly workshop with you to see what could be better.

And we also have a local administered transportation project because with our massive staff here in Greene County, we thought we would just add some more projects to see if we could just have a fuller day and a richer life.

I was going to ask if you have a consultant you're working with on that or if your staff

We're using Kimley-Horn after that we selected off a cooperative contract on the state.

And Gorjan, I owe you an answer on safe streets for all I haven't forgotten you but I will get back to you on that.

Who'd like to go next?

I don't believe TJPDC has any further updates than what we've already shared.

So yeah, we'll see if we get it and we'll see if people agree to local match.

Does the TJPDC have anything else they'd like to add before we all sign off and leave 36 minutes early?

in May, which feels like a long time, but we'll blink and it'll be time.

Thank you.

Just administrative updates.

Looking forward to trying out the new space and the meeting in May.

Next meeting needs to include a tour of the new amenities.

And there are some lovely 70s features that we will be saying goodbye to.

I'm still waiting for Dylan to give us the 151 tour.

You booked the van.

Look forward to seeing everybody in May, and does anybody have anything else for the group before we sign off?

I move we adjourn.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.