Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with the Economic Development Authority, Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Date: Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 2h 11m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1080
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1080

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-15. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] to be to invite Supervisor Jim Andrews to join us remotely in accordance with the board rules of procedure rule number 8B1D enacted pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and Supervisor Andrews will you please take your reason for remote participation and your location. This is, I'm in the name of personal business and service domain very much and with that the supervisors will give me a

[00:00:32] motion to admit Jim and a second so and I saw and first for the motion and B for the second please call the roll mr. Galloway yes mr. Kirtley hi his ballot yes mr. keel yes mr. Pruitt all right turn to you all right well I will call the EDA to order. We don't have, we're missing two of our members today, but nobody is participating remotely, so the EDA is now in session. We're glad to be here. And it's still going to have

[00:01:09] everybody together. This is really cool. We haven't done this before. I'm very excited about the meeting. For the Board of Supervisors only, our first action item really is a resolution of confirming the declaration of a local emergency. And it was in your packet. And I would really appreciate a motion, unless there are questions, a motion to approve that resolution.

[00:01:37] So we have a motion from Ann and a second from B. You all are teaming up tonight. Would you call for the vote? Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Cartley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes.

[00:01:54] Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Aye. Yes. Yes. Great. Very good. As we normally do, especially in the area where we have so many people, we're going to go around the table and ask folks to introduce themselves.

[00:02:12] And just, if you can introduce yourself, let us know, maybe your magisterial district you represent, or if there's some other tidbit that you would rather us know about. So with that, I'll start with B. I'm Bila Pistole-Kirtley, Rivenna Magisterial District, Board of Supervisors.

[00:02:32] Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive, Portfolio Includes Supporting Public Safety and Economic Development. Don Long, EDA Chair, and I'm the at-large member of the EDA. Diantha McKeel, I represent the Jack Jewett District. Oh, no, Board of Supervisors, sorry.

[00:02:49] David Storm, I'm the Scottsville Appointee to the Economic Development Authority. Jeff Richardson, County Executive. John Mottola, EDA Director, Whitehall. Ned Galloway, Supervisor for the Rio District. Steve Rosenberg, County Attorney.

[00:03:06] Ann Malick, Supervisor for the Whitehall District. And I'm Richard DeLoria. I'm a Senior County Attorney for Albemarle County, and I'm assigned to the Economic Development Authority. Andrea Johnson, Jack Jewett, District Economic Development Authority.

[00:03:23] I'm Mike Pruitt. I serve as the Scottsville District Representative on the Board of Supervisors. J.T. Newberry, Deputy Director of Economic Development. And I would like to introduce Claudette Morgensen, who is the Supervisors Clerk.

[00:03:40] And would you like to introduce your... Ashley Horrenditorio. Yes. Ashley. My name's Jim Andrews. Remember like that, to make sure that we see your hand going up or to catch you.

[00:04:09] Yes. All right. I also want to thank and introduce Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Master Police Officer Chip Riley, who are here this evening. We thank you for your service today and for your work in making our community safe and your colleagues work as well.

[00:04:29] So thank you very much. Is there anyone else from the EDA that you want to introduce? I don't. I think that's all of our community. All right. Sounds good. Ms. McKeel, I'll take you up on that offer.

[00:04:46] We do have Andrew Sides, who is the DAC program manager who is with us this evening. And he took over for recently retired Lady B.M. Welcome. This is a great opportunity for you to introduce yourself to this group.

[00:05:04] Anyone else? Emily, JT, anybody else that we need? When we get to the Ravanna Futures update item, Daniel Heyer with Lining Grade is here with us to help support any questions that you all have. And then we have lots of phone-to-friends in the audience that will identify who should be.

[00:05:23] That's great. I see a lot of smiling faces back there, so that's great. Thank you. All right. As you all are aware, tonight's meeting is an opportunity for us to come together, share information, provide direction, updating our MOU to better reflect the county's economic development strategic plan project.

[00:05:44] Today, key elements of our successes have been public-private partnerships and prioritizing workforce development. It is through collaborations that would leverage resources, expertise, and innovation while driving sustainable economic growth, diversifying our tax base, and creating career opportunities for our residents.

[00:06:12] Our discussion tonight offers us an opportunity to align our shared MOU with Project Enable, which reflects Palomar County's vision of the community. And I really appreciate it. Thank you all for being here. John, would you like to say?

[00:06:28] Sure. I don't have much to add to that. I think that's a great description of what we're going to be doing. I think from the EDA's perspective, what I really hope we get out of it is direction so the EDA can be the right tool for economic development for the county and make sure we're doing it in partnership with the Board of Supervisors.

[00:06:48] In my sense is that the Board of Supervisors have always been able to. So with that, I will turn it over to, I believe, Emily? Turning it over to you, is that correct?

[00:07:06] Did we do the local emergency? We did. That's already done. Oh my goodness, here we are. We just did it so quickly. All right. So we thank you all so much for a meeting like this is really difficult to get a date on the calendar, to get everyone prepared for and to have a good discussion.

[00:07:26] And I know we've had the opportunity to connect with members of both bodies in different ways to prepare for this evening. So I just really want to thank everyone for being here, for making time to prepare for a good conversation and what I know will be a great conversation ahead. So we'll walk through three main items this evening.

[00:07:46] One, and the first is an update on Rivanna Futures. We've been working on some conceptual engineering work with line and grade support. And so this will be an opportunity to catch everyone up on the freshest information that we have on Rivanna Futures Project.

[00:08:03] So we're really excited about that. We'll do some questions after that for clarification. But the bulk of our time is really going to be spent on the other two items, which are the discussion items this evening. The first one, the Economic Development Strategic Plan update. We are seeking input from you all to help sort of at the very front end, foundational input to help guide our early work on that project.

[00:08:25] And then the last conversation will be on the memorandum of understanding. And we've teed up some topics for discussion there as well. I think I'm going to stand for this one and invite, I'm going to invite Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive, and J.K.

[00:08:44] They're going to help support different parts of this first section. And so I'm going to turn it over to Trevor to kick us off. Thanks, Emily. I just have a few slides really to tee up this work. As Emily said, the intent is really to share the latest work with one as we continue the site evaluation and preparation process.

[00:09:08] This image is an image that has been seen by both boards. This has been kind of represented as a concept, what we've called our intelligence, a National Security Innovation Acceleration Campus. Just as a reminder, the work of this came out of work led out by the State Veteran and Defense Affairs Office back in 2014, 14 period, as they were going listening tours throughout the state and an analysis of opportunities.

[00:09:40] And what came out of that was this campus expansion concept. It's a concept of expanding work within the agencies that would include public-private partnership. In this case, the county has now acquired the land, but in working with academic partners and other partners really to move the work of our defense and national security agencies forward.

[00:10:08] That concept led to the county's acquisition. We've done a lot of work, really, with the consideration of the project that has been successful out in St. Louis. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA, has a campus and a headquarters that is referred to as NGA West.

[00:10:28] It has all the elements that I just talked about in place and working right now. And so we've been advised throughout this process by folks that the director of NGA, a former retired voice admiral, actually led a lot of the work out in St. Louis and has been supporting the work here as we've gone through visioning and the work to get us to today.

[00:10:54] And we feel strongly about all the elements of our ecosystem can support that kind of work on the East Coast in our area. And so to further kind of learn about St. Louis, Jeff, Emily, and I are flying out tomorrow morning, and we're spending a couple days out there.

[00:11:13] And we're meeting with the St. Louis geospatial ecosystem. We'll include DOD. We'll include locality folks for economic development, you know, a branch of folks from out there. And really listening, learning, sharing what we're doing and what our concepts are.

[00:11:33] and I think we'll be in a great place as we continue to work multiple lines of effort on this project. Just as a reminder, this acquisition was both to support the existing Ravana station, which is part of a significant economic generator for our region.

[00:11:53] It's to support the 4,000 and 3,000 employees that work there on a day-to-day basis and to make sure whatever expansion would look like would be done so in a collaborative way, that does not affect existing missions or create any kind of encouragement concerns.

[00:12:11] Next slide. This is a slide that really is a kind of, we call it the layer cake. It really is showing the different elements of the work required to move this to fruition, which is a 15, 20 year plus process.

[00:12:27] Getting site control was key and really the linchpin for us to be able to have the conversations that we've had at the state level with the federal partners, and so we've kind of moved on to site readiness and that's what we're going to talk a little more about today. Jim has his hand up and I'm not sure. Supervisor Andrews? You're muted Jim.

[00:12:52] Inadvertible, sorry. We'll move on. The topic for today really is and the work that is happening now both internally and externally is around site readiness. JT will walk us through some of the concepts that have taken this art of a possible and then trying to place that onto the land based on what the land looks like and what the land can accommodate. And so I think it's really interesting. It's work that is new that the board and the EDA will be saying for the first time, but it is reflective on feedback that we had from the state as we put

[00:13:32] in a funding request was, great, we understand what it takes to do the full project. What is a reasonable planning effort that would unlock elements of this site in a more phased way. And I think this work, again, is still conceptual and it gives us more ideas of where we can focus our energy on, but also we have the opportunities to design what we need to design to support the entities everybody. And so I think I will just end with that. MJT.

[00:14:04] Okay, thanks Trevor. I think Emily and I are going to stand up for the remaining parts of these slides. I'm going to turn the laptop around so I can navigate the electronic laser pointer. I have just a few slides to present before I turn it back over to Emily to talk more in depth about the conceptual engineering study, which is the 11 by 17 printed packet that you have sitting in front of you today. The purpose of my slides is to really tee up that conversation give a brief recap of the work we've been doing since closing on the property and

[00:14:43] provide some context for you as you read through the specific elements of the study so this this tool that you see on the screen i believe is information that both bodies have seen before this is the the state's rubric for site readiness and it's a tiering system that goes from tier one to tier five where tier one is raw land where there's really little to no information about the viability of a property to support commercial or industrial development and it goes all the way up to tier five which would be a shovel ready project where an end user can expect to be able

[00:15:23] to use the property just based on the construction timeline of the particular structures that they need. We wanted to show this, not only to give you that context, page six of the report will estimate the tier, the level of readiness for the different development blocks that were studied as a part of the conceptual engineering, but also just to note that we still have study that's going on right now. Last week, we started a stream delineation study that will go on for

[00:15:58] another month and that information is critical to having the state recognize the county's property as fully tier three and it will also be critical for any grant applications that we submit to accelerate and escalate the level of readiness that we're at now. We've been really focused on getting the county's property to a tier four level of readiness and that's for to give confidence that an end user could be up and going in about a 12 to 18 month time frame.

[00:16:35] So I'm just going to quickly touch on the rezoning and special use permit before diving into the conceptual engineering information. Back on June 12th, the Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning and a special use permit for 172 acres of the county's property within the development area.

[00:16:55] That was rezoned to light industry with a special use permit for office. We think that that is the appropriate zoning district and entitlement for the kinds of future users that we see here. And it was subject to one proffer, which was related to vehicle trips.

[00:17:15] Right now, the property is served by just one way in, one way out, and that's Boulder's Road. And so approval of a site plan for any development that's greater than 5,000 vehicle trips would require the submission of a traffic study.

[00:17:32] But we were very excited to get this rezoning approved. It's a step that allows us to be minimally eligible to apply for that grant funding so that we can continue to work on our site readiness activities.

[00:17:47] So this is an image, I think it's on page four of your packet tonight, that gives you a good sense of the layout. And I'll highlight a few things before I turn it back over to Emily. Dashed in the red dashed line shows the bounds of the 172 acres that were rezoned to light industry.

[00:18:13] The dashed yellow line shows the approximately 60 acres that are within the development area, but not a part of the rezoning action on June 12th. The numbers 1, 2, and 3, and outlined in the black dashed line, is the existing 75 acres of Rybana Station.

[00:18:37] Trevor mentioned St. Louis has the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The other two intelligence agencies that are here are the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Ground Intelligence Center. The patched area and labeled number four is approximately 15 acres, and that's a privately held office building that the report calls Boulders 1.

[00:19:04] That's currently occupied by contractors that are directly supporting the missions at Rybana Station. And then finally, just the solid black line around the outer edge comprises the entire 462 acres acquired by the county.

[00:19:23] And so with that, I will turn it over to Emily to talk more about the conceptual engineering. So we'll be looking at sort of the same view for the next couple of slides that JT just went through.

[00:19:38] And so what the conceptual engineering study really did was to look at, based on the land, the topography of the land where the streams are, where some of the natural areas are, looking at where development sort of naturally wants to occur on the site.

[00:19:57] So it's not, you'll note for this land massing diagram, it does not fill the dotted red line, which is the land that's been rezoned, but it really focuses on the large land masses that would be most appropriate for development over the time horizon that we're looking at.

[00:20:16] And so you can see we sort of have three rough landmasses identified for a total of just over 100 acres that we could look at sort of what does the land tell us it wants to be as we move forward.

[00:20:40] So then the study went down and looked at phasing and broke those large masses into blocks. So these are block level diagrams, and then their color shading indicates sort of a time horizon. So we would be thinking about what would be a reasonable phase one over the next five years.

[00:20:59] Maybe six to eight years out, we would look at bringing these blocks online, and then finally ending with the green areas for a potential phase three. And why we look at it that way, zooming into phase one, is really looking at how can you maximize the parcels that would become available with the least amount of infrastructure that you would be adding to the property.

[00:21:23] So phase one looks at adding about 650 feet of road and a couple thousand feet of water and sewer pipes. And these are sort of the large land areas that you could sort of chunk out as you look at what a phase one could be.

[00:21:41] This takes those chunks and applies an office building to them. So these are not buildings that have been designed. This is not necessarily what would happen out there. But it's looking at, based on where those blocks naturally sort of form, what size building could you put out there? How much parking would it need under the county's code? The blue areas are appropriately sized stormwater management facilities. So to give sort of a good working concept of what could happen out there. So this is not necessarily what will happen out there, but it's to develop our understanding and further our ability to sort of envision what's possible,

[00:22:18] taking the art of the possible and looking at what can you really engineer to be out there. This is my favorite page of the report. It's labeled as page nine, and it really helps us think about how to move forward with a phase one, and so it shows information about the building sizes of the buildings that are located on each of these blocks, again, what's required under the county's code for parking for an office use, and looking at sort of estimating what the infrastructure needs are, a rough order of magnitude of what those costs to develop those might look like, and

[00:22:57] And we can really use this as sort of a roadmap as you look at phase one for what we would be looking to do up there. Important feedback that we've gotten from the state is to not think about one giant site all at once, but to think about how could we break things into really achievable chunks and then focus on really delivering those as we move forward.

[00:23:21] One area that we've heard a lot about when we engage with stakeholders of Rivanna Station is the resiliency of their, and the security of their site. So right now, there's only one road in and out of the existing uses up there, and that's the connection of Boulder Road at Route 29.

[00:23:39] So one key piece, once you have the massing in place, looked at how would you flow through the site and envisioned, you know, we've been talking for a long time. Our comprehensive plan shows Boulder Road looping back to Route 29, and that certainly creates some important resiliency.

[00:24:00] This loop road adds an additional layer of resiliency. And then you can look at what could potentially be emergency access up to Watts Passage as you look out over time of what that development might look like. So the layer cakes slide talked about state supported and federally shared.

[00:24:20] So some of our next steps, the last large work area line of effort for the current phase of work is drawing down grant funding. This is a locally driven project, but we think that the significance of it rises to a state and a national level and seeking partners to help bring that to reality. So we're working right now to prepare for the Virginia Business Ready Sites program. That's a grant program that Virginia Economic Development Partnership does to help localities do this exact work to really bring sites to a state of readiness for business.

[00:24:52] And then also working to identify other state and federal funding that might be applicable. When we think about the phase one in particular, this can really present a roadmap for what the next couple of years of work of the county could and should be.

[00:25:13] And we think that with this plan in place, we'll have the ability to be really strategic about going after the right grant funding Rather than sort of trying scattershot to seek to bring in funding that might otherwise not exactly drive us forward in a meaningful way.

[00:25:30] That is what we have on this topic. So we wanted to pause here and see if anyone has questions. We know you're just seeing the large handout for the first time this evening that we received that just a couple of days ago.

[00:25:48] And so certainly there's lots of opportunities for each of you to ask questions at a later time once you've had time to digest. But we do have Daniel Heyer here with us and wanted to see if there are any questions about the conceptual engineering analysis. So we'll open it up to questions.

[00:26:04] And just for the supervisors, we're not going through our order, call order, like we normally do in our meetings. We're just opening it up for questions from anyone or comments. So just let us know. Raise your hand, Jim. Could you go to the slide that had the tier phasing?

[00:26:26] I think it was 13, maybe? So the tier four, or the tier column, is that what you're proposing? Explain to me how the, because these are not at tier four yet, or tier three.

[00:26:43] So just explain that column. So you're theorizing that we're going to start with those, and then does by start mean that we're going to achieve that tier unless they're filled out and rocking and rolling? I'm going to invite Mr. Hire to start, and then if we need to add.

[00:27:03] Join us. Introduce yourself again, if you don't want to. and come on up so we can catch you from that. This is Daniel. I've been working on this for about almost, I don't know, 18 months now. There's a lot to take in, so no questions are silly.

[00:27:22] In terms of the tiers, like JT was mentioning earlier, we're doing the preliminary jurisdictional determination work right now and the natural resources on the property, which checks the last box in terms of meeting your Tier 3 requirements at the site. That work is imminent to be finished soon, although there'll be some back and forth at the Army Corps as we wrap up our findings.

[00:27:44] So in terms of working your way up that ladder, Tier 3 boxes are kind of checked, which kind of leaves us at the threshold of Tier 4, which kind of says within 12 to 18 months you have a shovel-ready site. The reason these are identified as Tier 4 and some of them have asterisks is because if we took Block A, for example, that site can be accessed right now on the existing Boulders Road.

[00:28:12] And so the only thing really standing in the way of having that shovel ready is an approved site plan, which could be done within about 12 to 18 months. So those sites like Block A to some extent, Block B can also be accessed on the existing Boulders Road.

[00:28:31] Some of them could potentially be accessed with the existing infrastructure if you had an access management agreement with the adjacent property owner, hence the double asterisks. So you really are at the threshold of Tier 4 right now. as soon as your preliminary jurisdictional determination work is finished.

[00:28:49] Which is why, you know, phase one is very attractive right now. You're very close to having some implementable work. Does that kind of answer your question? It does. I mean, the tier four seems so far away, even three or four months ago, having sites that were tier four. Tier four is a critical, my understanding of all the tiers.

[00:29:09] That's a critical one to get to tier three. If you have somebody comes in and they see tier three or tier two, that's very different than, oh, your tier four is like, let's go. it's go time and you know i mean tier five i guess is a whole different animal but that doesn't really work out here i'm i was surprised to see so many fours on there and expecting oh well what's the timeline to get there but it sounds like we're already shooting through tier three and putting tier fours up on the the rezoning was really critical and especially these permits that the board took action on in june were really critical for that um being able to obtain obtain that four

[00:29:47] status once the small outstanding tier 3 elements are in place. Other comments? So, a Daniel question. Can you give a little more background on what the stream delineation study takes on? Because it will be no surprise to anybody here. I'm very concerned about encroachment on stream buffers and that kind of thing. And so will that kind of detail be very granular as far as what you produce in that study, so there'll be no mess-ups going forward.

[00:30:22] Yeah, so what's happening right now, the preliminary jurisdictional determination process is we have several environmental scientists who are out there walking around through the heavy vegetation and the humidity, looking for the signs of where the actual delineated natural features start and stop, and with their professional certifications and training, They know what to look for.

[00:30:45] So they'll basically flag it. We will come back and survey it so we know where it lives in the digital ecosystem that we design within. And then all of those findings are validated by the Army Corps staff. And so when we're done with this, we kind of know where they are already, but we'll have very granular accuracy and understanding of what those resources are and how we can honor them with our work.

[00:31:11] And does your planning take into consideration the nine weeks of draft? which is going to put, I mean, every perennial stream on my place has been dry since the 1st of June. I mean, completely bye-bye. My environmental science knowledge is limited, but I know that it's not just necessarily the presence of water, but the presence of certain types of grasses and vegetation.

[00:31:35] Also the soil, like the soil components. So water actually is almost like a, it's almost like if it's there, it's almost distracting. Like it's better for them to look under it in this environment And we're looking for the other cues of soil and vegetation and other things.

[00:31:52] So I don't think it's going to have any negative effect on the work. I look forward to seeing that when it comes forward. And just as a general philosophy, if we're doing comments also, I really, my dream for this, it would be a super sustainable effort.

[00:32:08] And I hope when you go to St. Louis, you will be able to find out from them what they have done in that element. Because this is a chance to really do it right and show what can be done if you try. Instead of just saying, oh, it's too much and we're not going to try.

[00:32:24] So that's what I will be continuing to watch for. I really look forward to this. Other comments or questions? Mike. You'll have to forgive me because I think one of my biggest issues is that I never can remember if I've gotten an answer to something or not before.

[00:32:42] So I might have asked this before I received an answer. But during our conceptual development process, where in that kind of loop that we're going through, are we frequently touching back with Fed stakeholders?

[00:32:59] I mention this mainly because when we're looking at the conceptual access drawings, I'm immediately thinking, I can see federal stakeholders at this facility having some concerns about the boulders are extended or the emergency vehicle access connection point.

[00:33:16] and i've seen other locations where the the site occupants have condemned a road because they're like we are closing this we are blockading it because we don't want to staff that ecp um and i just want to make sure that we are incorporating those stakeholders in this process to make sure because i'm sure there's a lot of other security concerns that i'm not thinking i guess i'm just curious what that kind of process on y'all's end both in the county and from the folks line in gray is in working through those kinds of concerns?

[00:33:54] Yeah, it's a great question. So staff is in regular communication with the federal agencies, the leadership of the federal agencies that are located there. One important way is that we are now the property manager for the primary parking lot for their employees.

[00:34:12] And so there's a relationship on a facility level on the needs of sort of the day-to-day operations. And then at the leadership level, you know, looking at what the future could hold, building on some of the work that was done, the concept for this whole vision, the basis of that was a study that was done, led through the state Veterans and Defense Affairs group back in the mid-20-teens to look at potential opportunities for expansion.

[00:34:48] And that sort of formed the backbone of the vision that we worked with line and grade to sort of flesh out further. That included the extension of Boulder's Road. It's a daily concern of the staff there with just traffic flow in and off the site.

[00:35:08] But as we continue to move forward, as we continue to flesh things out further, continued stakeholder engagement with the folks that are there today is critically important from our perspective. And so we'll continue to make sure we've got some open dialogue. I don't know if Trevor would. I would just add to that. It's working with the right representatives from our back station, but also Fort Delaware, which is a property.

[00:35:34] Mr. Richardson and I had dinner a few years ago with the former installation commander that just was relieved. And he leaned in at one point and said, the biggest thing you can do for us is get that room extended and connected.

[00:35:50] So for them, the resiliency is critically important. Part of our trip to St. Louis is to also better understand how to move forward with our conceptual, with our master planning effort of the campus to make sure that we have the right input at the right levels with this.

[00:36:10] So that's also future work that we have as well. And just a couple weeks ago, Emily and I and JT in its core of our property, I want to say we have 15 or so of staff, including the commanding officer at NGIC, in the three vehicles with us.

[00:36:30] And so there is engagement and partnership at the level that I've never seen before. And really, I think it was the acquisition of the property that was prompted that. Supervisor Prude, does that get at your question? Yeah, no, it does. Okay. Ian has something else she wants to do.

[00:36:48] One historical footnote to that. Back in the 2014 environmental study, there was continual mention of moving the guardhouse to 29, so that the whole fence line perimeter did not have to be continually interrupted just when people were going amongst, between parking lot and the output parcel, et cetera.

[00:37:08] So that's incredibly important, and still the conversations mentioned that to me this year. And I think it really shows the long-term interest. Back in 2014, also, with all the different Spaghetti Hat people there who they all debated about how big or small to make the application.

[00:37:32] And finally, one of the leaders, I don't know what his rank was or anything else, he said, you know, we just have to stop cutting our nose off here. Just go for the whole thing and see what happens. Because if you cut yourself off and only go for half, then you're going to get halfed again.

[00:37:49] And so it's been really a wild 10 years getting to where we are today. But at least we do have that access to have the ability to do the full thing and manage that. Absolutely.

[00:38:05] Third time I've had my hand up, but that's okay. No problem. Could you go to the slide where it shows the area that we approved for rezoning, the area next to it? This one?

[00:38:25] Okay, so the outline in red. This is the one you want? Okay, the outline in red, that's what we rezoned, the board rezoned. correct and the outline in yellow is going to be up for future rezoning um at this time the focus has been on the red line area and again that's sort of driven off of um based on the contours of the land based on the development that is current is currently there and how boulders road is located on the property that that was the sort of the focal point for um where we believe that

[00:39:02] future development most naturally could occur and so that's that was um when we put forward the application for the rezoning that was the rationale for for focusing there first um so there's there's no plan at this time to look at the yellow um but it is noted on that diagram um just to know that there is additional development area land as part of the county's holding but it does not hold the the li or the office use zoning but the intent would be to add that yellow in the future perhaps i my real question is why didn't you ask for the whole thing uh yeah

[00:39:41] really it was it was to limit the the we've been working at speed on the on that rezoning application and it was to to focus on the area initially that was sort of most likely to develop more quickly um in order to uh in order to allow that process to move with speed okay yeah i mean and I can see us working on, or you working on the area in red, but if the yellow area is going to be, to me, you said the rezoning portion was so important to get done so we can move forward, I thought, that's why I was thinking,

[00:40:17] I thought, well, why not just ask for the red and yellow, but we didn't, so that's okay. I would add, too, that it looks like you have a lot more depth of buildable space in that picture. If you recall, when you toured the site, there's a dirt road that runs down along the fence line.

[00:40:38] There's not a lot of buildable area along that spine, if you will. And so, again, I think we focused on what we believe the most buildability would be. I would say there was a question that was asked, would the county be willing to extend the fence line with our partner at the federal level?

[00:40:58] And we said certainly all options are on the table. That would be an easier side to expand for perimeter and access from the existing site, just as a hypothetical. So I think we have that.

[00:41:15] We know what its designation is, and we'll continue to evaluate what that should be. That was my only question. Thank you. And as B points out, persistence pays this many people. So I'm trying to swivel my head around here to make sure that nobody else has any comments or questions.

[00:41:35] I have a comment then. Somewhere on there I saw legislative priority on one of these slides. I think what it was gearing towards was something, well, state funding. I mean, they just stripped a lot of economic development out of the budget.

[00:41:52] We've had two governors, politics aside, that stayed pretty consistent in their support of economics. Tweaked, and there's been different programs, and they've moved money around, but it's been there. a problem that would have been a problem had revana futures popped up or not for us in the county so i've made a few comments about this big project fully supportive but it can't suck the oxygen out of the room of every other all the other economic development activity we have to remember

[00:42:28] that the funding is now not just critical to this but other pieces that we do so when the legislative packet comes forward just as we have in the past around education funding and making strong statements about the state needs to do their part I think we need to be strong on that front regarding what they did in economic development especially since this will be I mean it'll be what two years before they do another budget yeah um if we don't have any further questions we'll move on to the next topic just one second I want to just turn to Jeff and see if he has

[00:43:05] I really, thank you, Vice Chair McKeel. I want to really underline the staff's work with Ravana Station. Supervisor Pruitt asked an outstanding question, and as a former military, he's got a past and he's familiar with this kind of work, and he understands the secrecy and the work that goes on behind the fence line and the need inside the fence line.

[00:43:35] So much of what they do is guarded information, and none of our staff have security clearance. But the work that Trevor Henry and Emily JT and our – and it goes much beyond that group, the contract work with Liningrade, the work we've done up there, the attention that we have given to those folks, the staff has understated the level of collaboration.

[00:44:02] If we had folks here today from Ravana Station that are in leadership roles, their attitude, their morale in the work that we've done with them, we are working very close with them.

[00:44:19] And I think it should be noted that it makes no sense as a local government for us to step in the way we have with the purchase that we've done and not work hand-in-glove with the DOD intelligence agencies because unless we work with them, we can't grow and fully develop that site to its potential.

[00:44:42] We just can't do it. And we are making inroads every day with state and federal officials. It's baby steps, but we are moving forward. And I just really wanted to underline that because that comes from a spot with Supervisor Pruitt with his background.

[00:44:59] understands a little bit about how they work and we have to meet them where they are I think we've done that and so I just wanted to underline that thank you very much thank you and if there aren't any more questions or comments and Jim does not have his hand up okay so then I'll turn it back to you thank you so much all right so project it's a good it's a good transition mr. Galloway's comments on sort of thinking about the future and you know Verdana Futures is the largest economic development project the county has ever undertaken, but it's not the

[00:45:35] only economic development efforts that we have going on or that we expect that we'll have in the future. So part of your packet for this project-enabled economic development strategic plan item included two things. One was just a copy of the plan that was adopted in 2018, and then the other was a short summary just highlighting goal by goal of that plan some of the accomplishments that the office has the county has appreciated over the past several years so we won't spend a ton of time on this slide just wanted to point out that you do have that in your packet and that the seven goals here

[00:46:14] are have been sort of a focal point of the work of the county over the past several years we've been before both bodies over the past couple of months to talk about the process and the schedule for the plan update so this is a this is a refresh um of a slide you've seen before um we are currently um the rfq for vendor selection closed so we've received proposals um yesterday um and so we'll work we'll continue to work that process um to have a vendor in in place to support the

[00:46:49] work ahead um and we do hope to be back um next summer um with a with a final draft for consideration by both bodies. So really the focus of this item today, and we've shared these questions with you all when we sort of briefed you on this topic for today, are really to get some early feedback and some dialogue between the two bodies and, you know, sort of direction to staff on really some of the top priority areas that you all see as we start to think, as we sort of launch that plan

[00:47:26] process. So for this section, we'll spend the rest of our time really focusing on these three questions. And with Ms. McKeel and Mr. Long's support, we're going to sort of try to facilitate a conversation, as Ms. McKeel indicated. We're not using speaking order this evening, so if you have something to share, we'll work through that. And really, this is an opportunity for you all to hear amongst each other your thoughts on these three questions. And so we'll take them one by one. And that's how we'll proceed through this item. And so the first one, what are some of the strengths? And that's, if you've been on the, if you haven't been

[00:48:06] on the EDA or the board for that long, think about your perspective as a representative for your district and as a valued member of our community. What are some of the strengths that you've observed over the past five years when it comes to economic development? Open it up.

[00:48:30] Just share that I think the success that I have felt and heard from constituents has been because the plan was developed in concert with the broader community and respectful of the fact that, I mean, I have my marked up MOU here about where the focus was going to be, that it was not welcome all warehouses, but actually helping our own businesses to grow and spinoffs to launch and employees to get strengthened and trained and also to have support for things in the rural area as

[00:49:09] well as those are keynotes that i think are strengths that i hope we will continue to have as our focus yes andy so one of the things i've been really impressed with um so many of you have worked so hard on this it's just really um the thought process through it really justifying the decisions and um even like the defense study for an example and using that as saying hey this is the economic benefit not just saying hey we think this is a great idea let's go for this really um

[00:49:46] just really great thought process in that and really saying hey is this the best place to put um our taxpayers money and and um why should we do it and the justification for it i was just really impressed with and so I think that's really a strength is the the work that um the team has done um I mean I'm just very impressed with it. I think the handset business retention and

[00:50:23] expansion efforts especially the economic developmental office staff to work programs where they've gone out met with various businesses asked them what they needed work with them to try I encourage all of these additional funding for various businesses, both industrial, like Bonumos, but also for some of the ones that are in the agriculture area, Kelly's Turkeys, those sorts of things.

[00:50:56] I think it's been great. It's been a real strength. And I think the other part of that is the readiness for business, which I think we've seen through more futures.

[00:51:12] And I think those are two real strengths that we've had in finding those and developing those. So I think that's one of the areas that I do think we've done. And I guess the other piece that's not in here and kind of accounts for why we're coming back to this now and maybe not as early as we'd hoped is the way we pivoted during COVID.

[00:51:31] That office worked with other people to get money out, to get things, to develop plans, to deal with, you know, restaurants being able to serve people outside. Those ideas, working with the community investment collaborative to get money out, those are all things that I think the office did a great job.

[00:51:51] I think to me, innovation and thinking outside the box, that's what I'm hearing from a lot of people. I will say that taxpayers have said, well, why are you spending so much money on my van station and everything?

[00:52:10] And I said, well, this is what they bring in. Then they go, oh, okay, that's good, yeah, go forward. A lot of it is education, letting the people, the constituents know what the EDA, I think a lot of the businesses are aware of how important the EDA is and what they've done for businesses.

[00:52:31] But to me, it's the innovation and thinking outside the box. I mean, who would have ever thought of my manifestation futures? I wouldn't have thought about that. But my congratulations to not only the county, but the EDA for thinking of these things, It's not just the regular, you know, step-by-step we're doing this.

[00:52:50] And, no, you're really thinking what will accommodate Albemarle County in the future. And that's very impressive. We did have 10 high-profile expansions, which is really very impressive.

[00:53:07] Jim, you were unmuted, which tells me maybe you were going to add something. I was looking for something, but I didn't unmute intentionally for that. May I ask real quickly, when I was looking through the materials, there were discussions about Project Enable worked with particularly Southwood and Brookdeck, and I was trying to understand sort of the relationship there because I'm not trying to jump ahead to the next question, but it was relevant to some comments I've received about whether or not

[00:53:42] Project Enable touches on affordable housing and how it works. Supervisor Andrews, great question. A lot of the EDA support for those projects comes from thinking outside of the box and how can the EDA support other major initiatives of the county related to affordable housing and other initiatives.

[00:54:14] Brookdale was an infrastructure TIF. It was the first time, to my knowledge, that we've been involved in helping to support the infrastructure needed for an affordable housing project, and likewise, the EDA processes the payments for Southwood. So we work closely with the housing office in processing those payments and utilizing our special powers to pay those entities that are doing this great work, and the EDA is enabled to make those kinds of payments.

[00:54:54] Jim, do you have any? Thank you. I mean, it does tell me that one of the strengths, of course, is that we have the EDA and it's able to exercise the special powers. And I'd love to learn how we can take more advantage of that.

[00:55:11] One of the things that I've noticed, and this goes back to, Jim, you're mentioning Southwood, was the thoroughness, and again, sort of, as somebody else mentioned, thinking outside the box, with Albemarle Business Campus on the south side, getting access to some of the land to develop a roundabout at that intersection with Lowell Lynchburg Road, that through the economic development agreement there, that that piece is going to not only enable any business, that are gonna locate there to flourish, but to improve the quality of life of people who are gonna be at Southwood now,

[00:55:50] who are on that stretch of old Lynchburg Road, in particular, to come out that way, and to get onto Fifth Street and access everything that's happening on that stretch of road. And just getting that access to that land will allow us to then pursue through the smart scale, the traffic roundabout.

[00:56:12] It's a really nice way to tie everything together in improving a business environment and just the life environment in that part of the county. Andy. One more comment, really quick. I think that, once again, some of the strategic thinking has been really sound in this.

[00:56:33] One of the projects was a lab to support all the wineries. There was no lab in our region. This is basic things that they had to test, they had to do to be able to get their product to market.

[00:56:51] And so supporting Winn & Crozet was huge, not just for that small business, for that lab to grow and bring on new employees, but to support an entire wine region agriculturally because there was no source locally.

[00:57:10] And so to be able to think that and to support in that way, I thought was really smart, just smart thinking, because if it's easier to do business, you know, you're going to want to do more business. And I think that's something that, that's just one example. There's been a couple more, but I just think it's, it makes for a nice business environment in addition to everything else.

[00:57:34] So I think that's really promising. Any other comments, questions? So I'm trying to think, because I'm truly not sure what the actual causal relationship here, like what the secret sauce is, but when I did my master's thesis, I was focusing heavily on communities that were shaped generally like ours, ones that are in the Appalachian South mid-sized cities.

[00:58:02] And one of the most pernicious problems you see in these communities is non-local capital is the main thing driving their interactive workforce, which creates boom-bust cycles and a sense of systematic kind of underinvestment in their community itself.

[00:58:20] And something when I, for example, look at our companies that have announced expansions, I know the CEOs of several of these, and I'm not even someone who knows how many people, we have a, it seems like an unusual amount of actual capital that has a real stake in the community, right, like you have.

[00:58:41] It is not an environment. It's not a business environment. It's not an economic development environment that is prone to absenteeism. It's prone to, if anything, the opposite of that, which I don't think we have a good word for, but picking up your bags and moving into the community and actually investing and giving it to the community.

[00:58:59] There's something in our secret sauce that incentivizes that. I don't know what it is, but figuring out how to harness that and accelerate that, I think, is really critical, because that's how you make sure that you have that kind of throughput investment, that kind of continued investment in our human resources, that kind of continued investment in our environmental resources and community resources.

[00:59:21] That seems like a great transition point for the next question, which is sort of opportunities. And I'm going to jump in at that, because I was thinking about that with one of the questions I was going to ask was to sort of transition perhaps, Emily, could you just, or could someone review for us fairly quickly the target industries that we currently have? Because I hear a lot of concern in the community that we haven't revisited those. And I think the folks at this table

[00:59:57] probably understand the process, but can you quickly go over that? Just so folks that understand in there it might be listed yeah so i'll invite we have the target industries up on the slides but i'll invite jt to sort of talk through how how these are developed yeah so um the community had its first target industry study back in 2012 through the tjpdc um they obtained a consultant to look at the existing industries and the data that they rely on to establish what is a target

[01:00:33] industry is something called a location quotient. So relative to other communities, how much more of a given industry do you have in your community? And based on that analysis, where we have an over-representation of these sectors that you see here, indicating that there's a strength and something that we can build on. And that original data from 2012 has been validated in 2017 through the GoVirginia process. They do a growth and diversification plan every two years

[01:01:10] to analyze the entire region and say, are these industries still our strengths? Are there things that we're not capturing that we should be investing in? And so in 2017, 2019, 21, and 23, the Region 9 growth and diversification plan has largely mirrored what you see on the right-hand side of the slide from Project Enable. You will see individual communities identify an opportunity within their own strategic planning process. The city of Charlottesville recently updated

[01:01:47] their strategic plan and found clean tech as a result of all the environmental companies that are within their specific jurisdiction that that's an opportunity for them. But largely over the past 10 to 12 years, it's been consistent.

[01:02:03] One of the benefits of having an understanding of what the target industries are and how you can use them to sort of further your economic development work is this helps us understand what is our workforce good at. And it also helps companies understand what is your workforce good at.

[01:02:21] So the analysis that goes to develop these sectors or target industries really helps private sector and public sector understand what some of those, again, strengths and opportunities could be, and it is a way to have a conversation about, you know, is Albemarle a great fit for, is going to be a great fit for this opportunity?

[01:02:41] This is the kind of data that we can pull from to help have an informed discussion. Also, a great opportunity to be able to key in to partnership with the state and federal workforce system, Because if we're anticipating where the gaps are with our skill set of our employees, then those kinds of training opportunities can be funded state and federally.

[01:03:07] And then that helps us along the way when we're working with local businesses who want to expand or someone who went to school here and came back after 25 years and said, aha, I'm going to plunk down my new business rate. Here's what I need. I hope we will really keep our eyes open for those partnerships as well.

[01:03:28] So looking at those target industries and recognizing how it's easy for organizations and governments to really spread themselves thin, do we want to be looking at all of those?

[01:03:43] Would it behoove us to target several? I don't know, make up a number. I'm just questioning sometimes if you focus on some, you can do the work better, more in-depth. You can't do everything.

[01:04:01] I guess is what I'm getting at and I'm just wondering if I recognize that those are still we revalidate and that those work still for our community and that's great but just thinking about if we want to continue with all of those do we want to together focus on certain ones I'm just throwing that out for discussion when you look at the list of the 10 successes right they cover all of those right so to me that means I don't want to close the door on anything okay that's I can't predict who's going to come.

[01:04:34] That's fair. I mean, I just wanted to mention it. JT? It makes me want to give credit to we're so fortunate in our community to have organizations focused on our ecosystem like Seagull Biohub, like CBIC, like the Defense Affairs Committee and our special guest here today to help us support those particular target industries.

[01:05:00] And we don't have to do it all on our own, but we can maximize those partnership opportunities. It's really great. Any other? Well, not so much on targeted industries, but I think one of the things that in terms of what I think we should be spending our time focusing on in the next five years is greater support for the ecosystem, especially just because I know more about this day job, but in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and investment, some of the things that Mike was talking about,

[01:05:35] We've developed individually pieces, angel network groups that are investing in companies and funding, but we don't have lots of individual groups that are trying to work on these things. But I think we should be considering that we need to make a bigger investment accelerators and the startup space and those sorts of things to really encourage those companies to stick around, to grow, and to invest.

[01:06:09] was a concern for a long time that companies would grow and they pulled away venture capital out of the area. And, you know, I think that that is still somewhat of a risk, but I don't know that it's as much of a risk as it used to be. But I think being able to have an investment in these organizations so that people can grow their businesses internally and then be able to move into the spaces we have, I think is really, this will come up, this is one of the things that I

[01:06:43] I feel like, you know, are we going to put consistent investment in these as opposed to we're going to do $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year? Are we going to really commit? Because one of the issues that you run into is these organizations, if they get a $10,000 grant for one year, it's really hard to build something sustainable there.

[01:07:05] Do we want to try to make more longer-term investments? Yes. My answer would be yes. And then I think, you know, where do we want to do it? But I think that's... I don't know what the role was for county investment in the 20 life spaces in Town Center 4 in the summer with the biohub.

[01:07:28] That money came from somewhere. Maybe it all was generated by the Angels and good for them. JT, you want to answer that? The EDA provided a commitment to $100,000 a year for three years in order to pull down a four million dollar investment from the state for that particular project okay we joined a variety of partners to to get that project across the nation and that was money that came from was

[01:08:08] appropriated by the eda then turned around jim to make sure well i think that speaks to both the strength but what you need to continue to build on for the next five years i mean the strength is we've been doing economic development we weren't always doing and what that means is you know at Letty's congratulations, whatever, I forgot the arm, the thing that we re-honored her for service.

[01:08:47] But when I watch JT and Emily, Trevor, work the room, and you see economic development directors from other counties there and from industries, this is something that if you put on a survey, well, how do you feel your government interacts with your community?

[01:09:06] It's one of those nebulous questions to try to answer. But what's been going on in economic development with our team is a great answer for how that's playing out day to day. So like the biohub, when JT says, well, we work with different partners to get that done.

[01:09:22] Well, if the network doesn't exist, then the partner, if you don't have the relationships and know that what that doesn't, well, it may happen, but it would happen without us if it happens. So I think, you know, oftentimes on a supervisor's run for office, we're asked, how do we partner with the city?

[01:09:44] So economic development is a good example of a great partnership that we have with the city and when i saw it was a green county's economic development person was there and just the casual it wasn't like oh good to see you jt from albemarle you know reminding i mean it's it's real there's there's a real connection that's happening and if we think that economic development stops at our county border either moving into the city or out regionally then then we're we're in trouble um so uh that's the opportunity for the next five years how does

[01:10:19] that networking and partnerships that you've built built continue to expand and grow and even beyond the tjpdc six counties but into that whole region nine because we all have people while the business may be located in albemarle not all the workers are living in albemarle so if that dynamic and what's the report that they're doing this is it the sets that shows you your movement of where the workers are going opens up your mind to go oh yeah you can't you know if the eda can't pivot and move and try to try to match the speed at which business is working with the with the

[01:10:59] complex dynamics of the businesses and where the workers are and how they're moving day in and day out and wow we don't we have nowhere to go so i love that you guys have a handle on that and it's not something you can put in a report or you can say or do, but I think some of the things that you've brought forward that you could call successes have proven that you've got the right relationships established in the community and the region.

[01:11:24] So kudos to the team for that. It's like okay, how do you take that, I mean Project Enable 2.0, but how do you take that dynamic and make that 2.0 and take that to the next level? I can say one thing, and I don't know whether the supervisors are aware of this, but we did actually this summer had a joint meeting with the charlesville economic development authority we were going to give reports from some of these organizations and we said well let's why have them do it twice let's get together i mean there was a it wasn't a meeting like this where we're

[01:11:58] talking about things but it was a chance and really it actually just sort of happened we got lucky i think we're able they had a date that worked for us but i think that's something that we'd really like to do, and I think is part of that relationship.

[01:12:14] I would just get back to our very first presentation that was on Rhyman and Futures. How does that presentation and the work that we just saw with conceptual engineering and the design and all, how does Rhyman and Futures and that work inform our strategic plan and our strategic priorities going forward?

[01:12:39] Because I think we have to look at how that endeavor informs our work in the next five years. And that's our strategic point. How do we get looking at it?

[01:13:01] So long as we're talking about opportunity areas, I'm going to revisit a bullet point that I know I recited so many times during the campaign. But I worry, it is not clear to me if our economic development hand and our education hand are always talking to each other as well as they could be.

[01:13:27] Namely, we are really leading into career technical education. We are having a whole high school model that leans into a career technical education model down specific designated career training paths.

[01:13:42] It is not clear to me if we're specifically using that as a hook when we're working with partners in the private sector. And ideally, what I would want to be seeing would be conscious forming of ecosystems with our educational institutions as anchors, forming very deliberate partnerships, very deliberate pathways, and even using that as not even just negotiating in some kind of partnership, but maybe even using that as an incentive for communities, but very much baking that into some of the siting agreements that we're doing.

[01:14:21] And it's interesting you say that, because I just remembered my very last meeting as the EDA liaison. The EDA had a discussion, and Mindy's nodding her head, about how to make sure that we're looking at high school, PVCC, and the university, and the education and that workforce development, because that certainly is critical to the work that we're doing. And there was a long discussion about that among the EDA members. And Jeff, you've

[01:14:50] leaned in, so I'm going to. Oh, I appreciate you, Chair. A couple of points. Just this board of supervisors just approved our chief operating officer who's here this evening, Christy Shifflett.

[01:15:08] She now will be serving on the PVCC board, and we were very intentional in going to our board and asking them to consider her for this position. One of the things that Christy does is she supervisors human resources she also supervises uh it uh strategic planning and and embedded in our strategic planning is one of our goals is workforce uh stabilization which has to do with workforce development so we were very intentional in coming to the board recognizing pvcc we've got

[01:15:43] to be a closer partner to pvcc and they've been just like this uh we would love to partner with you more uh and then the university piece it's interesting uh because next month our board of supervisors city council will be together for our first opportunity for the two those two boards to have met in quite some time and the university will be a part of that meeting uh if if for nothing else to talk about the infrastructure work that we're continuing to do with the city the county and the university but i've also thought that workforce and better collaboration

[01:16:23] there could also be a topic of could be a focus of discussion maybe moving forward and anybody that knows me i'm going to bring it back to high school i'm our county public schools because they are looking at career pathways our work with them could also be critical great and their new center model is all about career pathways and and we should really be i think working closely with armar county public schools as well as those students graduate from high school and i'm sorry trevor's got his hand up but i had one more point and i was just going to say tomorrow when we go to

[01:17:01] st louis that model has partnerships with 11 universities wow and so uh we're very excited about going there and really learning about that intelligence campus. Specifically, let's talk about the partnership with the universities.

[01:17:20] Trevor, I may... I took my phone. I didn't mean to do that, Trevor. I saw his face at the moment. He's like... We really do want to make sure that as children that graduate from Almar County Public Schools can go to PDCC, that there's a career pathway for them, that they can work in this community.

[01:17:39] They don't have to leave. And we want to make sure that we have career pathways for children who have high school degrees, PDCC degrees, college degrees. I mean, I'm just saying that work is an end. Thank you. And this also will not be a surprise, but I keep mentioning it because we're not getting where we need to go.

[01:17:58] Other communities in our region are using the state training staff of the Workforce Center with already prepared work and coming into the schools to do the classroom work rather than standing up a whole other FTE at the local level or middle school level or high school level to do the same thing.

[01:18:20] So Abel County Public Schools has not been receptive to this, but I hope that they will warm to it because five other jurisdictions are all in and really benefiting from these federally paid-for staff who are doing this work every single day, all day, and not having to make it up from scratch.

[01:18:37] And I think that's a good part of what their center model is doing, For a very small group of people. Especially the new Center 2 model. What I hope will be also happening, rather than wonderfully talented but very small group of students, there's a broad base of students who really need this work.

[01:18:59] I don't disagree. Everybody all the way down the line. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm looking up to make sure Jim doesn't have his hand up. Any other comments, questions, Emily? Oh, Mike.

[01:19:15] I also caught you. That's okay, go ahead. I just want to, just one more button. When I've talked with our peers and partners in the schools about the center model, something that they occasionally, quietly, raises an alarm is that enrollment in the centers is not where they would want it.

[01:19:36] And it is hard for me not to think that it is asking a lot of a student to take a risk on an opportunity in a very narrow field of education when you are not showing them that guaranteed employment.

[01:19:53] So when I'm thinking what the role of these bodies, the Economic Development Authority, and us and the Board of Superbots, needs to really be making sure that there is some sense of surety that if they pursue these educational paths, that there is a local partner, there's an employment partner, there's a private sector offer that is waiting for them.

[01:20:13] And I don't know that we're offering them that kind of surety. So I just want to emphasize that was kind of my big thought when we're talking about education here. What are we doing to actually fill in that back end? No, no, that's okay.

[01:20:32] One of the things that I think we've shown over the last few years is also the ability when developments are approved, and the board has been very good about this, is trying to get a development that is not solely residential. So you've got Southwood, where you've got commercial activities.

[01:20:50] You've got the alcohol business campus, which had a residential component, which has a business component, where the jobs are going to be, where the people are living. So they've got that access and that we can somehow continue to encourage that type of thoughtful development throughout the growth area.

[01:21:10] So it's not just in Prozay where there's such a demand for people to live or down on the south side of Fifth Street and Avon Street Extended where people are demanding to live. That we are thoughtful about those developments, and we have not only the residential opportunities, but the employment opportunities, or the opportunities for entrepreneurs, whether it's a startup space or something like that, or a commercial kitchen opportunity where people can take the business out of the home and grow it in those fashions.

[01:21:45] I think that's a really thoughtful thing that both boards have done, but I think it's a real good opportunity for the next time. And as your official timekeeper, I'm looking at Emily because I want to make sure Emily, I don't want to cut anybody off, but I want to make sure that we have enough time in our discussions to do so.

[01:22:05] Yeah. So I think the last question is actually a great segue to the next topic area. So I think I'll just move us into the final topic, which is the memorandum of understanding unless there's any final. Unless Mike looked like he had something, but are we good? I don't want to. I don't want to take us.

[01:22:23] I've been thinking the same thing. I almost brought up the same point. We do strategically set aside economic engines inside residential areas. And I also know, like, my understanding is it's kind of the story of that effort that we've been engaged in its own property.

[01:22:44] This came up with Montclair, right? There's a little sliver of it that's supposed to be in the neighboring development that's supposed to be used for commercial purposes that just hasn't matured over its 10 years. This was something that torpedoed the Scottsville Tire Factory. So when we're thinking what are some opportunity areas, it seems like zoning those areas is not enough, right?

[01:23:06] So when I'm thinking what is the opportunity for these kind of mixed use goals, I'm curious what else do we have to do? What else do we have to do to actually make those models succeed? Because it seems like creating the zoning and the scenarios and the preconditions has not been sufficient in our current work.

[01:23:25] I would just throw out one thing to think about if I just, one second, because of the oversaturation of that zoning, I mean, four huge rezonings between 2004 and 2008, 200,000 square feet of commercial opportunity. The market isn't there, so we unfortunately got carried away by their own exuberance, or earlier boards did, and we just have not had the demand to, you know, that's one person's opinion. Okay, Emily, if everybody's okay, we'll take it away.

[01:23:55] Thank you all. That's really helpful feedback. So the final topic on the agenda is the Memorandum of Understanding between the Economic Development Authority and the Board of Supervisors. This document was last updated in 2017 and actually called out in it that when the county adopted its Economic Development Strategic Plan that the MOU should be revisited.

[01:24:20] We are doing that now. And we think that actually in tandem, in partnership with the new strategic plan, the MOU, a revised MOU, if there's interest by both bodies to proceed with that effort, could actually be a nice sort of partner in making sure that that MOU aligns to sort of the future look of what the county's economic development strategy will look like. So you may have noticed in your packet there was not a red-lined MOU for you to review.

[01:24:53] The idea for this discussion topic is to not do one in real time, because we've all edited by committee before. I could. But to get a sense of direction, sense of interest by the board and the Economic Development Authority on whether and how to tackle the items that we prepared for you all in advance of the meeting and I've got on this slide here, one of the items in your packet was a memo that gave a little bit of background on each of these bullets.

[01:25:31] And so... Can you pull it down just a little bit? I am out of my element now. We do have it in our packet, so we can use that. Nicole, I'm not sure how to... Please just do it. Thank you.

[01:25:47] From the back. And then if we move to Mr. Ann, this is... Jim, could you please move? And so today is really just about, there's seven items for consideration in that, in your packet, and really hearing from the EDA and from the board on if these are the right things to be focused on, or if there's any, you know, within a particular topic, you know, in general there's support for this, but, you know, with certain parameters around it would be helpful feedback.

[01:26:26] And the idea at the end of this discussion would be to just take a sense from the room, should staff take the conversation from today and use that to guide what would be a first redline draft of a revised MOU, which then we would work in tandem with each body separately to sort of work through making edits to that redline copy from staff.

[01:26:53] Hopefully, you know, driving towards a new MLU that would be adopted in the next several months. And just for my own appreciation, my understanding is that these bullet points were developed by the EDA. They're coming to us from the EDA as a suggestion.

[01:27:09] Yes, with the exception of the final one, that is one from staff. So, but the first six are items that came forward from the EDA. Yeah, the final bullet mirrors a process that we already have in place.

[01:27:27] Yes. Yes. So with that, we thought we could kind of just sort of step through, again, like the last discussion, step through these topics and see where folks have thoughts that they'd like to share, concerns that they'd like to share, questions to get better clarity from the EDA or from staff on what those might look like.

[01:27:48] And there's good information in the packet, so you're going to go through those with us. Yes, and in front of everyone is a copy of that memo, so that you can sort of reference that if you'd like. Why don't I go ahead and start, because I think the first bullet point is really what I think we've talked about, and I feel is that some of this is more of an administrative process, because so often now there's money that we'll get a grant request,

[01:28:23] And so the EDA will have to go back to the board and say, okay, we've got this request and we spend, the board has allocated, and I'm not using the correct legal term, but it's kind of allocated money for economic development, but not specific, go to the board, the board will say, yes, that's fine, or come back to the EDA, the EDA will say, okay, we can now fund this grant.

[01:28:46] And so what we're looking for here is, is there, can you use the EDA as a tool for supporting these things in a little broader sense and say, okay, we're going to now give the EDA some bucket of money to do a certain thing or certain things and let the EDA make the decisions about, okay, we're going to give this $10,000 grant without the back end.

[01:29:13] And is that something that we'll consider? And that's really the idea there. And obviously, we're not talking about futures-type money, but really the smaller dollar. So that's kind of the idea.

[01:29:32] So what I'm hearing is flexibility and speed to some degree. I mean, because having Washington as a liaison, that process can be very cumbersome and it can take a long time. So let me open it up. Nods, me? Yeah, I'm just, part of clarification, when you said the board would give you a lot of money, you're referring to the grant that would come in because the grants go through you, not through the board, right?

[01:30:00] Right, but right now, oftentimes, and JT's better able to process, they would come to us, ask for the money, we'd say, we think this is a good idea, then have to go to the board, have the board appropriate the money, and so rather than saying...

[01:30:22] That part I would say, the money that's being allocated, that is the grant not coming from, or is that coming from the board? The board would, as opposed to, let's say, the board would say, here's $100,000 that we want to support, or even a more narrow focused area, say, we want this to support entrepreneurial ecosystem building.

[01:30:51] And so then as people come to the EDA, the EDA can say, yeah, we think that's a good idea to spend $25,000 particular request without having to go back to the board to request authority. That part I agree with. I'm all for streamlining, so that part I agree with.

[01:31:10] Where I'm confused, and maybe I'm a little dense, is that you talk about a grant which comes from somewhere else. Yes, yes. As opposed to the board giving you a request for money from someone else. So like when, you know, let's see.

[01:31:29] We're oftentimes being asked to pledge a match so that somebody can submit an application for us to receive money. A lot of the state programs ask for local support. And so I think the mechanism would be establishing a fund.

[01:31:47] I think the source of the funds for those local funds, I think staff would look at that economic opportunity fund as a source for establishing such a fund for the EDA. So they could use that to get the grant.

[01:32:07] Other comments, questions, concerns? Yes. do it you're saying yes do it it boggles my mind we we have a strategic plan that gives direction we appoint we have a liaison on the board who gets to see and go through all of that stuff it comes back to us in financial reports why it has to come to us boggles the mind and it's about in my mind it's flexibility and speed this this mou was put together i was like why am i not remembering this mou it was put together in my campaign year so i must not have read this

[01:32:45] it baffles me a little bit that some of the things that the eda is bringing forward is not already occurring so some of the things you're asking for yeah i'll just say yes because this is we do not a board the board does not have the capacity to have our hands in every weed related to the county and we cannot it we hear it all the time in other areas about getting on the board's calendar, getting on the board's schedule. It's no way to respond in this environment. We just talked about partnerships and

[01:33:25] entrepreneurial, and you have to be able to, well, that was a Trump pronunciation. Entrepreneurial. Sorry for any Trump fans in the room. But we can't, the EDA has conflicts of interest. They have to file with the state.

[01:33:46] so for transparency reasons and all the ethics and the legal legalities all that's covered and we've put you together you report to the board and if the liaison had a concern about something that was going on in there then they would red flag it that's the whole point of the provided the liaisons on on top of it right so they have to be you know that's an important role for that particular body um so i'm i'm all in so any of these things you're asking i mean if you need clarification or updated direction things like that i think those are good discussion points but like the one that says the state code consideration by the board for the eva to

[01:34:24] exercise its special powers under state code what i mean yes why aren't we doing that um well say why and because i gotta tell you that the board the board well it's a discussion so we and we're not going in an order so we might as well start going back and forth on some of this stuff because it's important um i don't i do not need to rubber stamp every single decision that the is there this supervisor and I'm opening it up but I will say I agree with Ned completely I think as the person whose signature is on this MOU from years ago

[01:35:03] we were starting we began the EDA office we were taking baby steps right and it's time to yes and we wanted ourselves the EDA and the community to get a sense of what the work was that the EVA could do and would do and have comfort with it.

[01:35:28] And we've got a history. And so, yeah, I think that addresses it. That's spot on. I thank you for that. But I think the history of what they've been doing so far, the board can't get in the way of the work and the progress of this development authority or the economic development authority. Okay, opening it up.

[01:35:45] Anybody else want to be? You agree. No, I agree. Well, Ann, I mean, Ann had a counterpoint, so I'd love to have a counterpoint. So I think that the VGIP and the APID, I'm happy with that. The Governor's Opportunity Fund, because of the magnitude of the awards, I mean, we're talking about several hundred thousand dollars.

[01:36:06] In my mind, I put that in a separate category as far as having more process. Ever since the late 90s, business people have been coming and saying, speed, speed, everything's got to be fast because everybody's doing everything fast.

[01:36:22] Well, you know what? When you do things so fast, you make mistakes. And that's what my effort has been to avoid making mistakes. And we've only had a couple, but there have been some where we've invested a lot of money and then the business picks up and moves to the city. So I don't want to be doing that again.

[01:36:41] So while I really respect and admire the effort of the EVA people, I think it's important that we continue some of those middle-sized steps. And the special powers about owning land and stuff, where other communities have gotten themselves in trouble so I have heard way too many stories that I know are not going to happen here because we're watching and we're doing a better job but I am more cautious than others like it I just don't understand how we're giving up oversight right and I am very interested in pursuing the special powers by state code because I think that

[01:37:19] is something that could really need us so I mean I hear you loud and clear Ann but those mistakes have all happened and the board was involved So maybe the experts on the EDA will help us not make some of those mistakes again.

[01:37:36] But the idea is that we don't lose any control, authority, or oversight by granting some of these things that the EDA is asking for. We still own it. The buck is still with us. We appropriate money to them manually, and we say that's yours, just like we do with departments and everywhere else.

[01:37:57] And we have control over that. So, I mean, nothing's perfect. If a company moves out of the county, we can't – I mean, good grief. We could not always foreshadow that or think about that. I mean, that could happen. But one leaves, and another one hopefully would come in.

[01:38:14] And some of those places leave, go to site. We don't have spaces for them. So that's a different issue in some ways. Like, well, if you had all the spaces and they're leaving, then it's like, all right, what's going on here? But if you don't have a place for them, then that's problematic. And when we – and I agree completely, and I want to just say to the EDA members, I don't believe you're rushing into, I've watched your work, and you're not rushing into or doing anything quickly and fast without proper consideration.

[01:38:42] But I will say that Willow Tree is a good example. And when we, when this was first, when we first started and we signed off on this MOU, we had an agreement with the city and economic development in the city that we wanted to partner with them so that when businesses outgrew their space in the city, they would notify us so that we could take a look at that in that county and vice versa.

[01:39:08] We've got to be partners on all of this because we are community. I'm just saying, Ann, to your concern. And to some degree, keeping a business in this community is a good thing. If they outgrow their space in the city, hopefully they'll come to the county and maybe vice versa.

[01:39:27] I don't know if that addresses what Ann's concern was, but I'm opening this up. Mike. I should begin by saying I do agree with the point that you and the Supervisor Galway have made. And yet I should be very clear. I came into the meeting with a little bit more reticence than either of you did, mainly because I'm just thinking about it from a kind of philosophy of government perspective. I think about an elected body and I think about an appointed body that is composed of experts from industry. And even when both of them have high-minded goals, there's kind

[01:40:02] of an inherent inclination between those just because of the nature of those bodies of one toward equity and one toward growth. There's kind of an implied and almost implicit tension just with what those organizations would have as a goal that I don't think we can ignore fully get away from. And so I take your point, we do still own all of this as the board, but it comes down to kind of a very qualitative thin thing that we're doing that by, and that's that based on

[01:40:35] direction by the board element, which at some point is how the members of the EDA are qualitatively interpreting a set of standing documents that we've proved in the past, which is a very kind of mushy, more art than science. So I guess I would be interested to hear from some of the directors on the EDA of kind of what that process looks like, frankly, from your position. Because if we are talking about like seeding our our rubber stamp and handing it over to y'all i guess i'd like to understand when you're thinking ah what is direction from the board what is what is my

[01:41:15] direction on this um what that checklist is in the moment if that seems like a reasonable ask there are some examples of the city using special powers would you all like to talk about that a and also please feel free to challenge me if you think I've unfairly characterized the difference in our roles and relationship no I think I think it makes sense to kind of respond

[01:41:49] to that first and I'll I'll say what my thoughts are I mean my view is and and what I what I think the MOU needs to be is sort of broader but then the board can can narrow it down like the example I was talking about, that direction of, okay, here's money, here's what we want to do.

[01:42:09] And that can be as loose or as tight as you want it to be. I think one of the things that I keep hearing at the EDA meetings is you've got people who want to be doing something, and they want to be involved, and they want to figure out, okay, how do we aim this expertise at the right area with workforce, things like that, to let the group make those decisions.

[01:42:32] And I think you've got to decide, the supervisors need to decide, okay, how much direction are we going to give? And that kind of goes to the city of Charlottesville. I represented the city of Charlottesville's economic building that was originally the NINJ, but also Charlottesville Pavilion when developed.

[01:43:01] And so in both cases, the city gave or leased land to the EDA. The EDA turned around and negotiated private parties. And because the EDA is not as limited in terms of what it can do in terms of negotiation, it doesn't have to take the spitter, and there's flexibility there, and the EDA could say, we're going to make a deal to allow this property to be developed in a better way, something that the court of supervisors couldn't necessarily do.

[01:43:39] But in those cases, the city council was giving direction to the EDA and said, You know, this is what we want. The city wanted to keep an employer downtown, and so they were able to get this an out at that point, lease that space, and to stay, and to put their own money, developing it.

[01:44:03] And the example ties in with sort of what futures is, there were things the EDA could do, getting a way of building, and doing those things the county itself couldn't do, and make decisions that are not necessarily economically, you know, they can make decisions to lease at a lower price in order to get the people in that the county wants to have and make decisions that they can do things that encourage and do the sort of butt-forward type development we're talking about.

[01:44:43] We don't create this tier four space. Nobody's going to come, so we need to very long-wind. And those are special powers, though, that are given to EDAs by state code. Correct. So they're very commonly used.

[01:44:59] Just to your question, honestly, I don't think about when something's presented, I don't think about what the board of supervisors will think. And I think one of the things that people don't understand is the amazing staff that is behind the economic development, the whole organization.

[01:45:19] The work they do prior to any meetings is just really impressive. So when they come and they present something to us, they say, this is going to fit into the board's plan, this is how. I mean, once again, Diantha and Bea have been in the meetings, and they don't present anything that's not already going to flow, right?

[01:45:41] So when we're presented with something, you know, we're looking at what is the economic impact, what are the jobs, the cost, the investment, how many people does it reach? once again like with the lab space or like the pasteurization um mobile pasteurization truck for all of the bee um people who are producing honey right reducing the cost to do business all these little things they've done all that research in that back end of it so um that's what we're able to focus on the fact that i mean to the most part i don't think you've ever presented anything once again you guys have been in the meetings that is not already in line with the board or they wouldn't

[01:46:20] bring it to us in the first place. So I think that, you know, just so you know, kind of how the process is, you know, our focus is on the overall economic part of it, not, is that? That's a great point.

[01:46:36] Your comment was, you said a thin document. It's a thick document because it all goes down through strategic plan and budget programming, then project enable. And if you think of every department that comes forward, you have a lot of credit to Mr. Richardson for this over the last seven years, because that's that becoming a high-performing organization that you can draw all the threads. And if you can do all that, then the board can have faith and confidence in the people that they're working under that constraint. And then you just have to make sure nobody goes outside of balance. And that doesn't have to come to the

[01:47:11] board for a vote, because you have staff doing that type of work, and you guys being cognizant of it. So, I mean, when you said that thin document piece, and then hearing the other I was like, oh, no. I said tether, but okay.

[01:47:32] I will say, I mean, to Anne's point, it is a legitimate concern because it has happened in other places where the EDA has gone off and done a bunch of things. But I think in those cases, the EDA was off by itself just doing its own thing.

[01:47:49] And to that point, I think the fact that everybody's tied in together and everybody knows what's going on. Do these places have board liaisons? No, I guess not. Probably not. If they did, they weren't doing their liaisoning. Would you spell that?

[01:48:06] I'm going to find some other word to describe it. What was your original phrase, then what? Tether. Tether. That's what I meant to say. I don't know if I said it, but it's certainly what I planned to say. Mike, excuse me, but that's attorney language. That's all right.

[01:48:22] That's all right. One of the concerns I had was that, well, our constraints as a board that we would have to give leases or anything like that to the highest, to the lowest bidder. And yet, from what I understand, speaking with Emily, just like what Don was saying, we could actually have a project we want to give this piece of land to the EDA.

[01:48:49] It may not be the lowest bidder, but they have a better plan for that. And I'm thinking specifically of Rivanna Futures and being able to work with other entities because we as a board are constrained. I have complete faith being a liaison in the ETA.

[01:49:09] And I do see it as getting rid of some of the excess that we make them go through the extra steps. And we also have the power as a board to, if it's not working out, you know, changing things or reeling things back in.

[01:49:27] I mean, we can do that. Look at the MOU that was written, what, in 2017? I read that thing. It's like, oh, my gosh. You know, I mean, no, it was just beginning. You know, I'm not, you know, pointing figures at anything. It's old. It's dated. Yeah, it's dated.

[01:49:42] It's old. And I thought, you know, and the way things are moving so quickly, maybe MOUs need to be redone every few years or something. But we just need to be on top of it. But I am fully supportive of what we're looking at here.

[01:49:58] Well, I don't want to confuse anything I've said as the objective being speed of turning something around. We have to be able to have speed to react and turn things around, yes. But that's not the bigger point. It's not, we have expertise.

[01:50:15] We have people that know their stuff. And if the board has this on their agenda, what's that taking time away from? That could help us improve other things, say CDD, which comes before the board a lot more often.

[01:50:33] So it frees up capacity in other areas. If an appointed authority that has a lot of government, this isn't a citizen advisory committee. This is a very specific type of thing. Trust it. We have to have some trust in that. I think in the discussion, I don't mean to, we haven't heard from Mr. Andrews on this.

[01:50:52] I don't mean to call you out, Mr. Andrews, but this is an important discussion that I think I'd love to hear your thoughts on. I was watching for his hand to go up. Thank you. I'm listening and appreciating the complaints that are being made. So I'm in agreement that the idea of at least limited appropriated funds, recognizing that big projects still have to come before the board.

[01:51:18] The bigger questions for me are later bullet points, like what is meant by the clarification of the EDA's involvement in public-private partnerships and supporting local entrepreneurial ecosystems. But particularly in the public-private partnerships section, I think it talked about advising staff as to opportunities and assisting in long-term administration.

[01:51:41] And I saw those as really different and different from what's going on right now. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about some of the later bullet points as we go to clarify. Maybe we should, do you think, are you all ready to move through some of these more?

[01:52:01] Because as your timekeeper, we're running out of time. We knew it would be a long meeting, so. Well, I think to Jim's point, I'd like to mention two things, because we talked about them earlier, that's workforce and housing. And I don't think we're going to make those decisions today, but I think they are things that all within the EDA is produced because the county attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but because we don't have a housing authority, the EDA would potentially serve as the housing authority for funding.

[01:52:35] and things could flow through the EDA, but we need to decide, or the board needs to decide, is that something that they want the EDA to be spending its time and resources? Do we want that EDO office to be spending time in that workforce?

[01:52:54] It's sort of the same way. I think it's a little more economic adjacent, although housing is really important. So I think that's something the board needs to think about in terms of its direction to the EDA, which is not so much an MOU issue.

[01:53:12] I guess it could be, but, you know, is that something you want the EDA to spend in its time, and do you want the Economic Development Office to be spending time on housing-related projects? You know, I want to clarify, when I said speed, what I'm talking about is sitting around and waiting for our agenda two months later when we have time on the agenda, right?

[01:53:37] Efficiency might be better. Efficiency is a better word. Thank you. Yes. Well, the workforce development one here seems to be, of all the things that were there, that was the one I went, oh, that needs work. I mean, that could be its own work session between these two and a lot more just that particular item.

[01:53:58] So walking in today, I went, well, I don't think we're going to resolve the workforce development one. The business attraction one I think you guys are doing. So what I think that may just be more validating practice that we've seen occurring over the last seven years and getting that cleaned up.

[01:54:17] But workforce development is, as somebody pointed out, or it was pointed out in maybe the summary that said workforce development, was that the one that was outsourced to basically other, what am I thinking of? Yeah, that's workforce development. So it was called out that it was basically in Project Enable.

[01:54:35] It says that's the, you know, we're going to rely on outside partners to handle workforce development. So we don't even have, I mean, that was our way of going, well, we won't worry about that. So I guess we need to worry about that or have to decide if we're going to worry about it And if we are, what are we going to do about it?

[01:54:54] So that's a bigger conversation. Yeah, I think one element of the workforce development piece is some economic development offices provide direct services. And our practice has been in the county to work to support partners who do that work to deliver those services directly.

[01:55:13] I think the earlier conversation that you all had around workforce and education was focused around more of that aligning. I hate to think of people in pipelines, but more aligning the education opportunities that are available for students that, you know, what folks will call K through 16.

[01:55:34] So whether that's high school, community college, or a four-year degree. And so that's a form of workforce development, working to be that convener to help connect where the job opportunities are and where the educational upskilling can happen.

[01:55:50] service delivery is one area, and then working with partners to do service delivery is another area. And I think a little bit of thought from the board on, you know, is it all of those things? Is it one of those things more than others? Can help us understand what opportunities we should be focusing on. Are none of those roles also duplicative with the workforce development bucket that human services also holds. I know they run their career center. I guess I get,

[01:56:26] with a few of these things, I have flags go up of saying, are we duplicating processes that are elsewhere in the county? I guess I'm not clear what the value add is necessarily. If these are things that aren't being done, I can think of people who are doing these rules. And maybe I'm speaking more out of ignorance than anything else. I'm ready to be corrected, but I was under the impression that a lot of the roles that you're describing are currently housed under human services. And I can think of an example in the Commonwealth right now of an EDA going off the

[01:57:02] farm into something that is tangentially related to economic development, trying to get involved in homelessness services in a certain city that I won't name, knowing nothing about it and not having any conversations with the continuum of care. And when we're talking about their EDA's role in workforce development, the EDA's role as a pass-through in lieu of a housing authority, I get concerned about those kind of possibilities happening.

[01:57:28] And I'm welcome still to those being valid rules for the EDA, but I think I would need more convincing about what the value add is and what the deconfliction is being. I'd like to make a quick comment on that because, you know, when you look at affordable housing and we look at workforce development, oftentimes we think of, you know, these, you know, doctors are high, high degrees.

[01:57:51] a lot of workforce including mine we need laborers and we still need people to do labor type work and the business doesn't run without it you're not going to get somebody with a four-year degree you know to run an excavator or a forklift right and you still need those job functions to have your business grow and there's a lot of people so I think that having affordable housing that also makes gives a workforce that is close to businesses who need

[01:58:29] their skill sets in addition to that so I think there is some tie-in I'm you're not going to get a better advocate for a workforce development and PVCC and and investing in education but I think there's an element to that people need a place to live and they need a place that they can you how their families grow up and they want their kids to go to good schools and they you know they they want these things so to me i i think there is a link there is a tie-in but i just wanted to throw that out there emily i'm worried i'm concerned because it's 7 30 yeah and i'm the

[01:59:06] official timekeeper sort of so um i'm looking around at the board do you want to continue the conversation right now can we continue in a little bit i don't know if anybody has any hard deadlines but it is 7 30 so are people comfortable with it going on for another 15 minutes or so does that work all right so we'll keep going that's good since i guess we have a there is a next stage deliverable that is a consequence of this meeting which i'm guessing is a first draft of an mou for us to then get feedback on i'm guessing this is the side of the

[01:59:45] table, it's drafting an MOU, and that side of the table is drafting an MOU. I'm pointing at those. Raise your hands. And so, is it prudent? We know what you're thinking.

[02:00:04] To perhaps ask Mr. DeLorean if there's things that we specifically need further clarity on to proceed with the next phase of it. So I'm probably the wrong person to ask. Ms. Kilroy is probably the better person. I'll take it.

[02:00:19] Yeah, take it. Okay. He's grinning now, so that's good. I'm the scribe. So I think the good news is that the next step would be to draft a document. I think I do hear that there's interest in, you know, having read all now the 2017 MOU and having seen the discussion that the EDA put forward as topics for it to explore in a future potential MOU draft.

[02:00:45] I believe that we have what we need to know that we'll be working on that. So unless I see anything different, I believe our next step will be to work with the attorney's office to prepare a revised MOU. The good news is that that would be a first draft.

[02:01:01] And so I think we've covered a lot of – you've given us a lot of, I would say, sort of big picture direction that, you know, it's always hard when you have to take that and actually draft a legal document.

[02:01:19] That translation can be a challenge. And so I think I see that you would like us to take that step and know that what we put down in that first draft might not quite feel right, but that you all have ample opportunity to help us work through getting to what does feel like the correct framing.

[02:01:41] What I might suggest is that there might be an interim step to consider, which would be rather than trying to draft the actual agreement at this point, maybe the way to do it is to come up with a document of bullet points or your business terms without worrying about the rest of it.

[02:02:03] Term sheet that says, here's the things that we think ought to go in the overview. Here are the things that may need some further discussion. And that way we're not worried about the wordsmithing of it. And then that might allow us to figure out, okay, Here's some things that the board can just talk about.

[02:02:22] The board of supervisors can talk about themselves to try to reach some consensus on. Here's some things that the EDA could follow up on. And do that first, and that might allow some discussion. I don't want to dictate it. But in my experience, it makes it a lot easier to then write that legal agreement if everybody's a little more honest terms.

[02:02:44] I don't know what other. Yeah, that's a good idea. Does everybody, am I seeing you nodding the camera? I like it because when it comes back, then the counter, the supervisors can get their own thoughts on each term out there. I mean, obviously, at some point, a consensus will be found or that each supervisor would then be able to make sure their points are made.

[02:03:03] That's important for the public to hear. Yeah, and I think this discussion has allowed us to do that because we've really had a good discussion. We have great information. And I would encourage, as we get that information, before maybe we start, that we can always reach out to staff, ask questions ahead of time, try and get it figured out in our head, right?

[02:03:24] And I do want to, the comment about business attraction. I think the issue there, and amplify it on, is that when Project Enable was developed, first version, the focus was on developing local businesses.

[02:03:41] And there was definitely, I don't know if it was prohibition is the right word, but the idea of going out and finding businesses and bringing them back to the community was something that was not encouraged. It was discouraged. Discouraged. Now, I don't know whether we want to say we want to just focus on targeted industries.

[02:04:00] That would make sense. But I think that's what that question means, is can the EDA and EDA in the office go out as opposed to just respond to people who come in and say, hey, I might be interested. Is that a fair statement?

[02:04:17] Yeah, so in the 2017 MOU business attraction, there's a list of five items that the EDA could work on, and business attraction was one of them. The economic development strategic plan was silent on that activity area.

[02:04:36] So it was, as Mr. Long indicated, business retention and growing local businesses is the first goal of Project Enable. But business attraction is absent from that document. And so there's been a sense of, you know, that that then should not be an activity that the EDA and the office staff work on.

[02:04:58] And, you know, as we started the conversation today on Ravanna Futures and some of the opportunities that that presents for the county, and so just thinking about those two things together, some direction from the board on the interest in business attraction efforts.

[02:05:16] As Mr. Long indicated, you know, maybe bound around the target industries or one or two of the target industries, maybe not all of them. That direction would be really helpful. Especially as we look at Ravanna Futures. And it might be that the trip tomorrow, as you all come back and report out on the trip tomorrow, might be very helpful, just thinking.

[02:05:38] But yes, I think if we are ever going to one of them, romantic futures, reach its potential, which is what we want, we're going to need to think about it, seriously. So Jim, are you, we heard, I saw the nodding of the heads here around Don's idea.

[02:05:58] Are you comfortable with that? Yes, I am. Okay, just wanted to make sure. yeah absolutely so we want to do a wrap-up then emily or jeff so because i think we're oh and i'm sorry things i've been trying to get in um the comment about service delivery for workforce taking that into the economic development department of labor in the state is passing through three million dollars a year to the local workforce center and if those programs are not

[02:06:34] aligned with the business needs in the community that money is going to stop so as duplicating other efforts i just really hope that people will think about doing more collaboration i mean the county's putting in some funds into the local locality funding it's called to support things that are outside of what the state can bring down but that is amount three hundred thousand dollars so it's from all the counties put together so that's not a huge amount but i just want us to

[02:07:06] be aware that the federal pass through the WIOA money will not be coming if the locality is not perceived in its training and its schools education I mean especially this governor and for the next year they are really serious about the fact that school departments have got to get involved with this the technical training that is being considered and so I just really want to emphasize that before people leave that we're not getting into something that is going to be something that

[02:07:44] we that the county or the economic development office really needs to do and this is attraction I'm focusing on the target industries is really important with lots of guardrails I can live with that for Benna station the support that the county had was based upon defense sector there was not based upon other businesses that have nothing to do with as far as otherwise the security element goes away.

[02:08:13] So this is where my brain is going right now. But I'd like the idea of the bullet points to think about because it's a lot to think about. Yeah, because that will move us to the next step. So, Emily, Chad, are we comfortable? I just want to make sure comfortable. Yeah, so thank you all.

[02:08:35] I think, again, these conversations can be hard. It's hard to have a conversation with so many people. But I think I think we got a lot of themes out of what you all talked about today that will put us on the right.

[02:08:51] I think it's a really great foundation to sort of launch off both the economic development strategic plan work ahead as well as the MOU work ahead. So we will work over the next couple of days to sort of pull those themes together and start drafting a term sheet to help us.

[02:09:14] I use the legal term. To help us on that MOU, and then on the economic development strategic plan, this is just a first check-in with you all. We expect to be before you both at several points over the next year timeline to ensure that that plan gives you all, that you all are giving the guidance and direction to that work that we will use to really guide the work that we do here over a good time horizon.

[02:09:45] Jennifer, are you? I'm good. You're good. I just appreciate everyone's energy and time and the service that the Economic Development Authority puts in to help our organization and our staff. Thank you very much. The one thing we didn't mention was the last bullet, but I think that's been part of our process, and I can't imagine that there's a lot of pushback on the administrative fee.

[02:10:09] I mean, I'm just saying we might need more information on how that would play out, but that happens all the time and out in our processes. This is separate from the fee that's already collected on the muni-bots and things like that. That took 10 years to get adopted.

[02:10:25] This isn't internal. This is, I think, the EDA paying the county for the administrative services. Okay, very good. Yes, and that's consistent with the Albemarle Broadband Authority. What we do with our other. And I just want to make sure, Because that was the only thing we really didn't need to know.

[02:10:45] Okay, so I think we're good. You want to adjourn your... Yeah, thanks to everybody. I thought this was a really good discussion. And the EDA meeting is adjourned. And are we still on the calendar for next week? So the EDA still has a virtual meeting?

[02:11:02] Yes. Next week. And again, I thank everybody for their patience, their great discussion tonight. This was really wonderful. And I'm going to adjourn us to August the 21st, 2024, 1 o'clock, Lane Auditorium. Opportunities for the public to access and participate in this meeting are posted on the Elmar County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Elmar County calendar.

[02:11:26] Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received. Thank you so much, and have a great evening. Thank you. Good night. Good night, Jim. Good night, Jim.

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