Regional Transit Partnership (2017-2025) Meeting   8/25/2022

and we're going to need to vote to approve these zooming, I guess is the best way to say it.

She has to tell us why she needs these zooming.

I mean, I guess we need to, it doesn't matter the order.

I would have thought the reason would get given and then we would vote on whether.

That makes sense.

Will you please tell us the reason why we're zooming and where you're looking.

And the other thing is I am in Keswick, Virginia.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mayor Snook, for agreeing to let me Zoom.

Let's just start with you.

I'm the staff person for the Regional Transit Partnership.

Sandy Shackelford, the planning and transportation worker at the PDP.

I'm representing the Charlottesville Area Alliance.

We run University Transit Service.

Lloyd Snow, Mayor of City of Charlottesville.

Sorry.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm John English, I'm here at transit, and I'm the assistant director of stepping in for Garland Williams.

Christine Jacobs, executive director of Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

Sarah Pennington at Thomas Jefferson County District Commission in the right-of-year program.

Mike Warren, so I'm the lead-off for the district.

Brian Davidson, Iowa County Office of Management and Budget.

And Lainey Lacey of John, as well.

Welcome, everyone.

Well, let me just ask the folks on Zoom, Biko, I have to introduce yourself.

Yes, Biko Bistro currently, Supervisor Albemarle County.

And I believe our presenter is there.

Yes, Chad Parsons, Richmond Regional Transportation Planning and Innovation.

Okay, good.

Just a reminder, anybody speaking in the room, if you can just articulate and kind of speak a little bit louder so it picks up on the microphones, that'd be helpful.

Especially with the mask on, it's really important.

And Supervisor McKeon, Wood Hudson has his hand up as well.

Wood, go right there.

Wood Hudson, I'm representing DRPT on behalf of Neil Sherman today.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Great.

Any abstention?

Wow, there are a lot of you back there.

We did.

Yes, we did vote.

With that, I want to make a motion for the minutes of June 23rd.

I move to approve the minutes of June 23rd.

All those in favor?

Aye.

And we're so glad you joined us.

And you have people here who know about it.

And we'll send the folks on the webinar.

If there's anybody on the webinar who would like to speak, please raise your hand or raise your hand.

And does someone want to introduce Chet or shall we let him introduce himself?

So Chet agreed to give up a good deal of his time very generously to come present to us and then reserve some time for question and answer from

Thank you very much, Chad, for joining us.

I hear some feelings.

We can hear you very clearly, which is great.

So we'll see if that guess holds true.

Because we're not, I don't think we're really hearing it here, but anyway.

I just wasn't sure what was causing it.

Thank you.

I appreciate the time again, so thanks for having me.

There it is.

I assume the local tax, sales and gas tax that funded you was based on a local referendum of some kind.

So there was no local referendum or ballot measure.

So I was wondering if the multimodal nature of your authority was deliberate in order to attract a bigger funding pool.

So that'd be a lesson learned for us.

It does.

Those kinds of things wouldn't be impacted if you're only looking at one mode.

From a political point of view, what does that kind of look like, do you think?

They provided lessons learned from their time and their positions and that's what it's really open to.

Any other questions?

If we were to do something exactly similar, I guess the MPO would sort of like be the,

So there's a lot of variety in the way that it can be set up.

So is that part of the governance study?

The existing legislation is also a transit authority for this area.

I mean, the transit is nice, but if that has not a lot of chance, we need to know whether that has a good chance of being funded or not, as opposed to another particular approach.

So I would hope that we would not shut off the dual model, but let's focus on getting the money first, making the model work, and then let's go back and ask for the authority because the region will see that the model is working.

Now the transit alone can carry it in a certain area, that's great, but

I think it should identify that through the next process that we're going through.

I'm not quite sure where our transit tax monies are currently going.

Where are the gas tax dollars currently going?

To the state.

Is that through our GA, that you got it from the state to be used at the local level, those monies?

We carry about our lives and try and go from place to place.

I guess I was more concerned if we're actually going to be raising taxes by getting through the GA at this point in time.

the legislation being changed.

I'm curious about the timeline.

Walk me through that a little bit.

I'm kind of hoping we don't do it too fast, but I think at this point we're kind of making sure we have all of our eyes dotted and our teeth crossed in terms of what the legislation laid out and what the requirements are so that we continue to follow the letter of the law and keep everybody moving forward together.

That might be helpful when we're talking about it to just sort of know

If we find we don't need additional funding and we're ready to do the next stage that doesn't require technical assistance, we could always expand the timeline if we need to.

Pretty quickly?

I would think so, yes.

Yes.

And there's probably enough.

And then the sort of only further lowercase D democratic input that's required would be from elected officials to fund the darn thing, is that right?

revenue associated with the establishment of the abortion.

I guess I just, to which we thought the revenue was going to come from the places that we normally get revenue from.

The state is taking, is the keeper of the funds.

That's gas tax, Carl.

That's their model.

Gas tax and sales tax.

That's correct.

So we could diversify.

Maybe that's not a fair question.

I don't think there's concerns at this point.

Be you can hear us.

So I think we're, in my humble opinion, a couple of steps ahead of the three that did this process because they had to create the model and get the funding at the same time.

And seeing if there's a change around that, what should look like based on how it's set up.

The biggest weakness is the funding release.

Yeah.

Well, nobody had it in to vaccinate.

The study will show, I just want to be clear, the study will show us what those changes need to be.

Yeah, through a consensus process of working with stakeholders to review what exists and what we believe should exist and make recommendations.

Because I was thinking, you know, we have these legislative packets coming up right now, and I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing a window of doing anything that would advance us as we need to go through this process.

Your timing is set up to be in front of the General Assembly in January of 2024, which is perfect.

Any other questions?

Yes.

The gas tax is fairly small, isn't it, if I recall correctly?

Sandy, I knew you would give me a question that would stop me.

I'm sorry.

I can certainly find out and communicate that with staff.

Sorry, I didn't have time for that one.

It seems like this group would need to make that decision today, or soon, I heard now, because from an age-friendly perspective, as the city of Charlottesville County has committed to what the research shows, what the effects of healthy aging is, transportation is a multiple problem, it's not just

What helped me with or helped all of us with the downsides or

And so if we are dramatically changing that scope to move away from transit and towards a multimodal, we would have to go back and say, what is the change in cost and can we get the funding and

and the local match to support it.

I'm still centered around transit, but it could support other infrastructure.

And it's really helpful, at least for me, to remember that the ERPT support works for the transit study.

So it's a one-two combination.

Comments?

That's the point of this next phase of our work.

And we don't even know the jurisdictions that are going to have day work, which makes a huge difference.

And so I think what we're trying to do at least from the PDC and the RTP is take this one phase at a time to get us where we need to go and make sure everybody's on board as we move through those phases and not jump to a conclusion.

I am really impressed at the group of people that you all have working together on all these projects.

And I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person, but as you move forward with this, if there's anything we can do from Richmond to assist or provide a sounding board, I'm more than willing to step in as much as possible.

Any other last questions or comments about this?

And then as people are processing and thinking about this, if you have questions that come up after the fact, as some of us often do, please email them to us and we can communicate with Chad if there are answers he can get us.

You may have already done that, but I'll bet that it would be great for us to have that presentation if you don't mind.

Absolutely.

I'd like to take another look at it now that we've had questions.

And thank you, Jeff, for sending those as you were speaking.

We're engaged.

All right, so with that, anybody have any comments?

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I can't resist these entreaties.

What?

I, or what were you saying, you could go on and be John Hyshter.

I would like to make a motion to nominate Diane McKeel as chair.

All right, Ben, do you want to take another vote here?

Second.

Second.

So who wants to take this?

So continuing to go to other meetings and talk about the activities that are taking place.

And then there are a lot of different opportunities, getting guest speakers and bringing peer agencies and making sure that they're getting information and that they're sharing it.

So I guess I'm asking if anyone has any questions about it.

Any concerns?

I assume that we're within the budget of what

And Becca, you have to leave early.

I appreciate it.

All right.

So they'll be coming out for sure.

So can you expand a little bit on that for us?

And I did want to mention, she's not here today, but Jody

Kat and Charlottesville Schools.

39, maybe 61.

and how our, we can just move forward and not, that's not a part of that discussion.

I have something to do with that.

One of the advantages of authority is that we would stop playing whack-a-mole, as you were just talking about, with wages and salaries.

but they don't want to be, because they think it's an ability for them to negotiate a better salary.

I do not have a county.

That is Charmaine White.

We are understaffed, but not at the point that it's gotten better.

I want to say that we're the worst in the room.

Garland, can you provide us a timeline like now that the council has cleared the way, what best case scenario when you might have, be set up to have collective bargaining of the previous?

Yeah, I mean, to be very clear, we have voted.

Yeah, first of all.

Because it just enables it.

and best expectation is that the earliest would be July of 2023.

Thank you.

Excellent.

I was interested in some of this.

So, I know you're there and you are giving us an update from DRPT.

That concludes my updates.

Is that normal for you guys?

No, it's just because of available funding that there is a mid-cycle grant for this particular program.

Any questions for one of them?

CAT has a church grant that is funding us through June 30, 2020.

All right.

Thank you, New York.

If you'd like to share that email in the chat so that Stan needed it, you know, or it was sent to somebody, you've got it, you're all.

Well, if you could send it to me, I'll send it to the group.

Absolutely.

Does anybody have anything they want to add?

Yes.

Any new business?

I have something I'd like

Oh sure, come up and introduce yourself so that everybody knows.

We are finalizing all of that next week with the folks at CBS BBC, so I will be sure to pass that information on to this group.

And I know you all hate to get out, but I'm going to adjourn the meeting until September 27th.

Thank you, guys.

I'm glad you had a great time.

It's great to see you.