Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting, Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 54m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1182
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1182

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:03] Good afternoon. I'm pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Alba Merrill County Board of Supervisors on the 16th of October at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. I'd like to note at the desk we have Supervisor Ann Malick of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor B. LaPiesto-Curtley of the Ravana District, and Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District.

[00:00:28] Notice how I made room for them. We appreciate it, thank you. And I am myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Millen District. A quorum is present. We're also joined by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our interim county attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our clerk, Ms. Claudette Orkerson.

[00:00:45] Also, let me please welcome and thank our Albemarle County police officers present, police officer Parker Davis and master police officer Dana Reeves. Thank you for your service this day and every day and work you and your colleagues do on our behalf in safety and security throughout the county. If all present could now stand as you are able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:01:06] Thank you.

[00:01:24] And if we could now join us in a moment of silence.

[00:01:53] Thank you. Lord, our first item will be adoption of the final agenda. I do want to just make one quick comment that, as I understand that Granicus is currently down, but we are trying to make sure we have a link through Zoom so people can see the meeting online and participate. It doesn't help if you're sitting there on Granicus. The link has been switched, so hopefully it's working for people. So I haven't heard of any requested changes to the final agenda. Do we have a motion to accept the final agenda? So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Lapisto-Curtley, a second from Supervisor McDeal without objection.

[00:02:30] Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lopisto-Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. Our next item board is a brief announcement by board members, and we'll go through our order for this meeting. It is starting with Supervisor Pruitt. Thank you. A few quick things. First, as I mentioned every meeting, I would like to just highlight that early voting is ongoing. Voters and residents might have heard that registration has ended. That is true,

[00:03:05] but I would also remind you that thanks to our General Assembly, you can still vote if you have not yet registered via a provisional ballot, and those ballots are still counted. Just make sure that that is communicated when you go to the election office. In Albemarle County, voters can vote at the county office on Fifth Street. This is the same place where the police are located.

[00:03:26] that is normal working hours during the weekday. Additionally, we open the early voting lines on Saturday on the last day of early voting, which is November the 2nd. And if you come on down, you will actually see me hanging out there volunteering outside during early voting. And I would love to talk to anyone during that. I'd also like to just provide a little bit more information about the Scottsville town elections, because last I mentioned, we did not know who all going to be running for those so as a reminder there is a race for mayor between mayor smith and counselor pain and there is one qualified person on the ballot for the three positions for town

[00:04:04] council that is alex beset there have been three people who have since declared that they are going to run as a write-in those are walter townsend david becker and roger whitley you can tune into the james exchange hosted by nancy mcgill for more information as uh as those candidates come in for interviews and additionally just subscribe because that is a great news source for what is going on in and around Scottsville. I would like to highlight that there is going to be a film screening titled Another World is Possible. This is going to be on the 25th of October at 6 30 in the evening at the Lighthouse Studio in Charlottesville. This is going to focus on youth

[00:04:40] reactions to climate and is going to involve some screening of some films directed and developed by young people in our community which is great additionally uh it's spooky season unfortunately you know we we have our last meeting of october a little bit too early the only reason i would ever consider you know supporting a change in our schedule of supervisor meetings is so that we can get the second supervisor meeting of october just a little closer to halloween because i would like for us to all wear costumes for at least one meeting unfortunately that is not the case and we're not going to make any kind of calendar changes like that in the near future but but but

[00:05:18] spooky season um twilight tours are going to be happening in scottsville this week on the 18th and 19th um the scottsville museum is going to have departing some twilight tours on local history uh kind of holiday themed for for uh halloween um those are going to depart from the scottsville museum at six and last for about two hours fifteen dollar charge there's also going to be a seated performance at victory hall on the 20th of october at 3 p.m and that is all i have thank you thank

[00:05:50] you i thought i was in costume when he said spooky season i thought he meant because it was a presidential election no that's a silly silly season i got my s words wrong i'd like to take the opportunity to voice my appreciation uh to mary mcintyre she was my the rio district representative on the Elmer County Department of Social Services Advisory Board. She resigned in September after seven, almost seven full years of service. Mary is a teacher at Journey Middle

[00:06:27] School, and she recently has become the head of the Albemarle Education Association. But I remember when I first asked her to serve on that board, she felt, oh, well, that's an interesting, you know, like social services and where am I at? I said, well, I think you both your commitment to things and I know the work and the seriousness in which you take the work that you join into that alone to me is why you should be on the board. But a perspective from an educator and somebody that works with children on a day in a day out, but basis is also a voice that I think would be

[00:07:03] welcome on the advisory board. And she did, she took it very seriously. I got updates on a regular basis. And I know that she was appreciated on that board by her fellow board members and the folks in our social services team. So I just want to, again, officially thank her for her time. And I know that Zarina, who's following up, will be an apt replacement. And once she's up to speed, we'll be doing just a fine job as well. And they're both from the Woodbrook neighborhood, so I'm glad to still have that affiliation there. So thank you, Mary, for your service

[00:07:35] on that board. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Lupita. Yes, I had the opportunity to, as did Chair Andrews, to go visit fishes and loaves yesterday. That was very enlightening.

[00:07:51] It's the first time I had been there. What a great operation. They feed about, they feed hundreds of people from Albemarle County, but they don't say no to anyone. So even in the surrounding areas and they give out a very large shopping basket, a regular shopping cart of food once every two weeks for families. And what was really impressive about fishes and loaves is they also try to meet the dietary and or religious requirements of the people that are

[00:08:28] receiving the food. So I think that's extraordinary. They get a lot of their donations. They work with the local grocery stores in the area for their food. So I thought that was good. Also, I wanted to say that on October 30th at 6 o'clock here, there will be a joint CAC meeting along with the Board of Supervisors.

[00:08:50] And it's all about AC44. So if you want to come and listen, anyone wants to listen to what's happening, that's a good place to do it. And I thought I'd look forward to seeing what kind of costume that Supervisor Pruitt will be wearing since it's the day before Halloween.

[00:09:09] Surprise. Surprise. Oh, that'll be a surprise. And any others. Also, the FIRE Foundation quick update. They have approved, the board has approved their articles of incorporation, working on the MOU and the bylaws, which should be done shortly.

[00:09:26] And that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Mel. Thank you very much. This has been the comet and aurora week in Northwest Albemarle. We've all been spending a lot of time out looking at the scars and hurrying the clouds to get out of the way. Finally, on the third attempt, I did actually get to see the comet for the second time in my entire life. And as I was looking through the binoculars, the shooting star went flying through. So that was the third shooting star in my entire life.

[00:09:54] So I feel truly blessed that this has happened. And I will add on to your Loaves and Fishes support, the fact that they have self-choice. It's like a grocery store. You don't just go and get a bag that somebody else has chosen for you, but the clients get to go and pick out what they really want.

[00:10:12] I've also been impressed with their cooking and tasting events that they have there for people, especially during produce season, to show and help them learn about what some things are that they might not know how to cook for their families. so and the fact that they're getting protein from local farms with grants too is a really important thing so i really appreciate all the work that they are doing uh my only event that i have oh two things saturday october 26th is apple butter at the whitehall ruritons and it will begin the cooking will go on all night uh friday night the sugar-free will begin to be

[00:10:46] cooked about uh be canning will begin for the sugar-free about 11 and be ready about two and the sugar content apple butter will be available in the afternoon so please come out between one and four and stock up on Christmas presents and other things uh the other is the Ruck the Ridge which is the uh honoring the service and sacrifice of active duty military veterans and first responders November 9th out of Blue Ridge School in St. George and there are multiple different trails and adventures that families can choose uh whatever their physical ability is carrying a

[00:11:22] heavy pack or not, to really have some more awareness about the lives that our soldiers undergo. So that available, if you search Ruck the Ridge on Google, you will get all the information you need. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:11:37] Supervisor McKeel. Bea, I think you started something. I will add for Lowe's and Fish's, one of the challenges that they had for many years was no transit for the folks that are going there. And the microcat transit now has provided a real wonderful service.

[00:11:58] And so I've been hearing nothing but praise about the ability of loaves and fishes to use microcat transit for their users. That's right. I will just make a couple of comments.

[00:12:15] Most people know, I think, and we also talk about this a lot, the new speed zone cameras and school zones, and the first one that we have in operation is on a hydraulic road through the Lambs Lane campus school site.

[00:12:31] We have some data that was shared with us, I thought is pretty interesting, that it's amazing to say that we found that 782 cars per day were speeding 10 miles and or more over the speed limit between school start time and end time of those two times during the day. That's pretty astounding. The good news is that according to the data for the first three months, this new speed

[00:13:03] cameras has led to a reduction of about 70% in speeding incidences. So it is proving to work. And the document that I'm using, thanks to Trevor, who shared this with us, similar programs across Virginia have observed a 55% decrease in speeding violations. So you can interpret that as we had more people speeding or we have more people that, I'm just teasing, But it is great to see that we have a 70% reduction, which is really wonderful.

[00:13:36] I also want to point out, though, that up until now, the violations have not been generating fines. As of Monday, October the 21st, if you receive a violation, you're going to have to pay for it. Oh, and the only other thing I wanted to add, Mike, I have a clown suit that I used to wear to work at the hospital.

[00:14:03] on Halloween. So just let me know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, it was an afternoon for loaves and fishes, as I mentioned. My wife and I went there, and the only sort of side comment is that they have a lot of volunteers, and it was incredible to us in part because our niece happens to be home from school, college in Asheville, North Carolina, where they can't go back because of the conditions down there, but their school told them, well, while you're home, why don't you volunteer for some opportunities. And we walked in to see a tour and there's our niece packing

[00:14:39] groceries for the loaves and fishes. And my understanding is they serve thousands of people. It's a couple of quick ones that I think may be on the radar for later. Someone looked to the executive, but there's a student senate fall conference here on Friday, which is pretty exciting. A big part of it's right here in Lane Auditorium in the morning. Is that going to be mentioned later i uh so that's uh albemarle county public schools having this student senate fall conference leadership in action and the sessions are just this this friday several places but

[00:15:14] including lane auditorium and um some uh speakers uh brennan gould susan cruz harold foley frank valdez and katherine flores from the community um the other one that i think might be mentioned later is I understand there's an award to the architectural review board from the AIA community service award that was announced this week and hopefully we'll hear more about that at some point too I was impressed to hear that and that's all I have does anyone else have anything else yes one quick leaving a question regarding the speed cameras family member reported turning east on

[00:15:52] Rayo from Berkmar extended at the light yesterday, and the car in front of him peeled out to go very fast and sped past two buses, stopped loading children. Buses were one behind the other with their arms out, and the guy just flew, or woman, whoever it was, he couldn't. So my question is, were the cameras that were already approved already installed on the arms of the buses?

[00:16:21] So I hope they were, in which case that would be good because that was a big fight with the General Assembly to get that approval. And I just don't know if it ever got done. So I'm leaving that question out there and someone may be able to answer it someday. Thank you. Yeah, maybe the Abermoral, the schools division can answer that question.

[00:16:41] They should know whether or not those are on their buses. Thank you. Thank you, Board. Our next item is item six, proclamations and recognitions. But seeing that I see none on the agenda, we can move to item seven from the public matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

[00:17:03] And we do have a couple of people to speak. We have two individuals signed up and I will read the instructions. I think most of these people probably know the instructions, but during the time set aside for matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the board of supervisors.

[00:17:26] concerning matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing. Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting during matters from the public. Sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

[00:17:50] The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Alamara County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and debate is not permitted, and please do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are

[00:18:27] live streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. And our first speaker this afternoon is Tom Loach. Welcome, Mr. Loach. Please adjust the microphone. Thank you. My name is Tom Loach.

[00:18:45] I'm resident of Crozet. While AC44 does state that there is no expansion of the growth area this year, a more thorough review of the document barely leads once to the conclusion that it is not if, but when there will be growth area expansion. The problem with this conclusion is that it is in direct opposition to the stated goal of over 50 years to preserve rural Albemarle County.

[00:19:08] I have already reported to the board the words of Robert Tucker outlining the use of land use subsidy to preserve rural Albemarle and the fact that it is clear, Mr. Tucker's document, that rural preservation was the primary driving force for utilizing the land use subsidy program. In 1991, the cost for land use was $4 million, which has risen to $14 million in 2023.

[00:19:31] Mr. Tucker clearly states, who pays for a rural preservation state in the course of land use is not a hidden fact, since it is implicit in the concept of land use, that the tax burden is shifted to other taxpayers. Using the data from the county, I have calculated that those who pay for land use have invested over a quarter of a billion dollars to preserve Albemarle County since 1975.

[00:19:55] Those of us who pay for land use don't want to find ourselves in a situation where five years down the line and another $70 million in land use money spent only to have the board decide that rural preservation is no longer important. After almost 50 years of payment, the logic also cannot be. We'll just do with a little less preservation. While I don't often agree with the development community on growth and development issues, I have to agree that the county can no longer kick the can down the road when it comes to growth area expansion. If in fact a trajectory towards expansion of our growth areas or conversely the end of rural preservation,

[00:20:34] then note there is no further need for land use tax subsidy program. It is my belief the majority of growth area residents who pay for land use will also object to the continuation of a preservation policy that is doomed to fail and is promised to protect Albemarle County.

[00:20:49] I realize this is a difficult question, preserve and not preserve, and if it was my choice, I would prefer a referendum to decide the answer. The entire county now finds itself now looking for an answer. The answer now rests with the board, and at this point, you have a choice, preservation or development.

[00:21:06] Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Neil Williamson. Good evening. Neil Williamson from the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on Central Virginia's local governments.

[00:21:27] Is Albemarle a welcoming community? Albemarle County has this aspirational goal of being a welcoming community. Is Albemarle a welcoming community when regulatory restrictions limit development and redevelopment to 7% of the development areas, which make up less than 5% of Albemarle's landmass? Is Albemarle a welcoming community when punishing housing providers by restricting their ability to reinvest in their property via heavy-handed rent control policies?

[00:22:03] Is Albemarle a welcoming community with practices and protocols that increase development project timelines for months into years, thus decreasing housing affordability? Is Albemarle a welcoming community instituting a land use map that prohibits townhomes and multifamily projects in most of your development areas.

[00:22:29] Is Albemarle a welcoming community when you need a magnifying glass to see the areas of high density in the future land use map? I believe the answer is no. Albemarle is not a welcoming community. While residents and electeds say they wish to be welcoming, their actions say otherwise.

[00:22:49] Our community should be encouraging new residents. It should be encouraging diversity and inclusion. How could Albemarle be more welcoming? By expanding the 1970s era development area boundaries, you can provide more housing opportunities by allowing, not mandating, higher density across the entire development area, by rejecting the concept of rent control currently pommelgraded in your current legislative priorities, and by streamlining your policies and procedures so applicants seeking to bring your comprehensive plan to life are not working with

[00:23:28] one hand tied behind their back. Yes, Albemarle can be welcoming, and it's up to you to do so. thanks for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Thank you. Then board our next item is the consent agenda. I'm not aware of any request to pull any items. So the floor is open for a motion to adopt the consent agenda. So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malik, a second from Supervisor Lupisto Kirtley. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Malik. Yes. Ms.

[00:24:02] McKeel. Yes. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. Lupisto Kirtley. Aye. Thank you. Board, our first action item today is the 2025 legislative priorities and 2025 legislative positions and policy statements.

[00:24:20] This will be led by Mr. Andy Herrick, our interim county attorney, assisted by, I believe, Emily Kilroy, our director of economic development, and assistance perhaps from Mr. David Blunt of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. Welcome all.

[00:24:42] Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Andy Herrick, I'm the interim county attorney. It's a pleasure to be with you again this afternoon. As the chair indicated, I'll be addressing with the assistance of Emily Kilroy, our economic development director, as well as David Blunt, our legislative liaison with the TJPDC.

[00:25:02] Together, the three of us will be addressing the legislative priorities and policy statements of the board. As the board may recall, we were before the board recently, the last meeting of September, going through with you some of the priorities and positions as we understood them to be at the time.

[00:25:18] the board offered for us then several additional priorities and positions that staff has attempted to incorporate into the revised documents that are part of your agenda package. They consist of a couple of different items. First is the 2025 legislative priorities. The next is the legislative positions and the policy statements, which again are slightly different and we'll go through the difference between the two. My presentation today will close with next steps and what we can expect going forward. So again, the distinction between the priorities and budget amendment requests on the one hand and the positions and policy statements on the other is that the priorities

[00:25:54] are the most important items that have been identified by the board. We have six of them now at this point that we're going to be presenting to you today, whereas the positions and policy statements are more of a reference tool in the event that county leaders or county staff is asked to provide what the county's position is on certain policies. They are not as high priority as the legislative priorities that have been identified for the board. We tried to be more selective, again, in the priorities, again, limiting those to six, whereas the positions and policy statement is a good deal more lengthy. So we'll begin by looking at the proposed

[00:26:29] legislative priorities. As the board may recall, there were several of them that may be familiar to you from the previous draft that was presented on September 18th, and then some of them are new. So we'll be going through each one of these in turn, expanding the PhotoSpeed Device Authority, the one-cent sales tax option for schools capital.

[00:26:50] We've revised at the board's direction, expanding offenses subject to property forfeiture to include community threats. Again, this item has been revised, and we'll go over that in a moment. We also have a couple of budget requests, one for Rivanna Futures and the second for Biscuit Run Park Project.

[00:27:08] And then finally, a new item, again, generated from the September 18th board meeting, a request that there be a legislative or agency study of tools to mitigate rent increase caused by multifamily residential development. So again, going through each one of those priorities in turn, the first one is to expand the photo speed device authority. And the priority for the county as currently drafted is to enable the use of photo speed monitoring devices on locally designated segments of road where speeding has been identified as a problem. Currently, state law allows those

[00:27:45] speeding device monitoring to take place in school zones, in highway work zones, as well as at dangerous intersections with a documented fatality that are within a thousand feet of a school zone. What the county is seeking to do is to allow enabling authority to allow those speed devices anywhere where a local government, where a local governing body has requested it. Also, as an additional priority is a request to amend the code, the Virginia code, to designate Albemarle County, in addition to the other previously designated cities and counties, as a qualifying

[00:28:21] locality for the purposes of allowing a one-cent sales tax referendum to support school construction. Again, currently the Virginia code only identifies certain named localities. Albemarle is not currently on that list. We would like to either be added to that list, or perhaps better yet for the General Assembly, simply to allow that authority for any locality that seeks it. This item is new. As the board may recall, there's been a fair amount of discussion before the board about cost recovery for community threats or hoaxes. And after further discussion

[00:28:58] among our staff, specifically, I brought in Amanda Farley, who works extensively with our public safety agencies. And it was her suggestion, and I think a good one, that instead of continuing to pursue cost recovery, that we approach this from a different angle, and that is adding these offenses to the list of offenses that are subject to property forfeiture. That would allow for a greater recovery, perhaps be a greater deterrent. It's a simpler process that's well understood, and again, it's far more than the flat 250 that's enabled under the existing cost recovery statute.

[00:29:31] So we've pivoted a little bit on this with the idea still of providing a deterrent for those types of offenses, but hopefully a better deterrent and one that's more familiar to all involved. I'll go through quickly a couple of the budget requests. These have not changed since the board saw them previously. Again, we're going to be asking for $11.2 million for targeted phase one readiness funding for the Rivanna Futures Project, as well as $1.37 million for a trail segment at the Biscuit Run Park. Those are unchanged. And finally, this is a new item that was generated at

[00:30:11] the September 18th board meeting. It's to request a study of tools to mitigate rent increase caused by multifamily residential development. We're requesting that the state conduct a study of that, be it a JLARC study or be it by another state agency. And the reason for that is because new construction doesn't have a baseline by which to look at percentage increases in rent.

[00:30:36] And so what this would do is to try to perform a study that would allow for best practices in this area to allow localities or perhaps others interested in preserving affordable housing to provide a baseline where none currently exists or to come up with tools for addressing that.

[00:30:57] So those are the the six legislative priorities that are part of the current draft. I will say that what is before the board currently is just staff's understanding of the requests that have been made by the board. They're certainly open to further amendment or additions if the board seats fit. But but I'm happy to answer your questions. And I'm sure that Miss Kilroy and Mr. Blunt can assist as well.

[00:31:20] Thank you. Board, we'll go through our order to address these issues first. Supervisor Prove. I appreciate the thoughtful attention that's been given to an alternate solution to the recovery of fees recommendation.

[00:31:36] I think this makes sense. I'm also, I mean, I'm naturally thinking through what are the ways that this can be abused? And I wonder if you would mind just talking me through what it looks.

[00:31:52] I place a hoax call to the board of supervisors saying, I'm going to explode the board of supervisors. It gets intercepted by ACPD. What does this allow to happen next? So if, if this, if that offense is ultimately prosecuted, goes to trial and the defendant is convicted, it would allow for any property that was used in the, in the commission of that offense to be, to be subject to seizure. Currently the law allows that for, um, let me just refer to my own notes here, that it currently allows for that for certain types of activity, but not others. And this would just simply expand the classes of offenses that would be subject to the criminal

[00:32:32] forfeiture provisions. And so this does not resemble what we might think of in civil forfeiture when we're thinking of traffic incidents, where it can be held without criminal conviction initially. That's correct. Again, this is simply adding, there's an existing criminal forfeiture provision.

[00:32:51] What this would do would be to add certain additional offenses to that provision. Would this be contingent on proceeding through the circuit or general district court, or would this be able to attach to crimes that have to go through JDR because the perpetrator is under 16?

[00:33:09] So I'm sorry that Ms. Farley isn't here to address the specific logistics of criminal forfeiture. My understanding is that since these offenses are all felonies, that typically to be the circuit court handling that i'm not prepared to address on the fly juvenile defendants yeah what would happen in a juvenile court for a defendant being tried that's how but it would have to be something that even could be prosecuted as a felony which i think can't be done for defendants under a certain age i believe that all of these offenses are felonies which would be tried in the circuit court at least for adults so just to share with the board where i'm thinking

[00:33:46] with this the child who calls to their school with a bomb threat this would only apply to them if they are old enough and the situation is dire that it can be prosecuted as a felony which would not apply to elementary school students middle school students some high school students is how I'm thinking through this and that's just based on age and when you can get out of JDR and be prosecute as a felon um thank you that's helpful um i do just because it was mentioned both in um

[00:34:23] in an article that mr williamson wrote um and also he touched on it briefly during his remarks i want to just address the rent stabilization piece that i know was added late in this so if i might stop oh this is i'm sorry we're doing the three stages aren't we correct of course and this is just our five priorities and i'm certainly willing to accept your comments on that but let me encourage you that we'll be covering that. No, that's wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that. Otherwise, I think everything else is largely unchanged. We have the addition of the study. I like the language that's used in there. I've already mentioned this to some of our representatives in our delegation, but I'll be sure to have this conversation privately to make

[00:35:02] sure that the intention of that is clear. Thank you so much for the work on this. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Callaway. I'll be curious to see where the property forfeiture goes in the federal assembly i think even like 10 15 years ago this was uh and and more so for what it for i don't want to say misuse but concerns about how that was done but i mean we're talking about in this instance a cell phone since that was used could be for is what the property would correct

[00:35:38] what else would it be besides a cell phone that's that's a good question i'm curious a computer maybe if they email it or auto dialer system just conceivably i'll be curious to see where I'm not going to stand in the way of it or it's just one of these where I'm like, knowing the General Assembly, we'll ask and see what happens.

[00:35:59] But for us to actually reap and cover the cost of it, we'd have to sell wholesale the thing that we recover. I was skeptical of just collecting the fine of $250 or to amount to the thousands of dollars that this is going to recover.

[00:36:20] If we're collecting cell phones and computers and then needing to resale them on the wholesale market, this adds even more administrative cost to the burden of the recovery. And again, I'm not opposed to trying to get these costs covered, but it needs to be more realistic and it needs to be in a way that says, all right, yeah, if you cost us $8,000 in emergency response, I want that eight grand.

[00:36:48] I don't want a cell phone. I don't want your $250. So if this is a way to try to angle in to get to that bigger picture, then it moves the needle. So I'm not going to object to it because I understand the rationale behind it. But I'll be real curious to see where it goes in that scenario.

[00:37:11] Where's the list of the new items? So again, this is just the priorities. The list of new items is longer on the positions, which we've yet to get to. And I just, you know, I think the relative, we've, some stuff has flared up around rent control over the last few days.

[00:37:33] I don't recall taking an action on rent control, which we've been told that we have. So I either snoozed during that part of the meeting or we didn't take the action. But if we, if a study was done on rent stabilization and rent control may or may not be a good idea, that study will tell us that.

[00:37:51] If there are other things that could get to the point that the supervisor brought up to help with this scenario, then the study would lead to that. So, you know, I think asking for a JLARC study, I'd be curious to see where the rest of the state is on this, because it is a Commonwealth-wide study, the JLARC studies. But I hope folks in the community understand that this board didn't take action on rent control. So saying that Albemarle County is making a decision or wants it is not what we did, and that was not the discussion. So I would hopefully encourage folks to go back and re-listen to the discussion that day and know that there it is. Study tools to

[00:38:28] mitigate rent increases caused by multifamily residential redevelopment. If you want to call it rent control, that's fine. But my guess would be that there would be other scenarios and things that a study could say are good ideas or bad ideas. And just like most decisions we make, we ask for that kind of information before we take action. So I'm fine with this being included in there. Whether the state takes it up or not is another matter, but we'll leave it to them to to determine um the only other item i wanted was the there was the it was in the packet that i read something about the demerit the the points on the licenses right that also is part of the

[00:39:04] the positions that we'll be getting to in a few minutes and this can be nuanced i know just just a side kind of spontaneous conversation with with mr andrew so i get all the differences of it but this photo i would think that if we're really wanting points to go to licenses for traffic offenses we should go for the whole gambit and not piecemeal this it shouldn't just be for through truck restrictions it should be the people speeding through the speed cameras in the speed zones that's my personal sense on them and it should also hurt their insurance if they get that ticket which currently it doesn't because an officer's not pulling them over i'm not saying i don't need to stand in the way we're getting to the you know the eighth hour and getting this

[00:39:41] stuff passed but knowing this general assembly it's probably i mean this is not one i think gets nuanced we just go to the big bang and then see what what other kind of uh other folks are there because you saw the numbers that supervisor mckeel talked about speeding through uh 50 miles per hour through a speed zone you should have points you should have double points taken off your driver's license for that um and just to add this comment in we the last time i think it came up about the lights and weren't functioning or something i went out to i drive through there every day uh so the lights were functioning the day that we talked about the lights might not have

[00:40:17] been functioning so when carrie was here i think that came up but the flashing lights are working properly they were working properly the very next day um so folks might not be seeing them maybe we should look at visibility issues but it wasn't because the lights were not functioning that's just an add-on here um but otherwise i think um you know i hope the school division joins us in doing some very very uh effective advocacy for this one set sales tax option that is becoming more and more critical to not just the school division, but to the county side as well because

[00:40:54] of the capacity it opens up. So that doesn't just, you know, pointing off to David and going, all right, David, go do the advocacy. It's going to take all six of us and all seven of our school board members to be down in Richmond, probably advocating on this one to help try to encourage them to get it over the goal line. Was there another question that I didn't answer? No, sir.

[00:41:14] I'm sure I provided a lot of extra that you didn't. Well, and some of the points that you raise supervisor galloway we'll be getting to in the positions part of the president okay so i'm out of order fine i just sort of just talk later now just ahead of your time all right thank you supervisor yes i there are a lot of things that uh supervisor galloway brought up that i do agree with with the legislative the rent control i agree i do not think we took any kind a position on rent control um i don't remember that either so if we did i was also asleep but

[00:41:50] i don't remember us doing that i don't mind a study coming out to see where we go from here what can we do the expanding the photo speed device of course that is something i've been we've all been ask asking for i spoke with a delegate law for today and about that she actually spoke to the people in richmond who are also on this they are moving forward on this bill so hopefully uh when we call our legislators regarding the one cent sales tax option we can

[00:42:29] also talk to them about the expanding the photo speed device i mean that is something that is really needed just in my area we've had oversized trucks on 22 231 two weeks ago we had a very large amazon truck that was not supposed to be there that went over on the side we we've had residents have called me and have said i've seen within a space of an hour 14 trucks oversized trucks going

[00:43:06] along that road. That's why I know when we did it for plank road, truck restriction, I'm curious to see how that's going to work because unless we had the police all over the place, which we cannot afford, which we cannot do, that's going to continue to be a problem. So that's why this is so important. The one set sales tax option, absolutely for schools, all out effort, frankly, by schools and ourselves to get that passed that would be that would really make a difference in our county because we also we would be asking the people of abamoral county to vote for this

[00:43:45] for a referendum that's all we're asking for give state give us the permission to have a referendum to ask to ask the populace whether or not they want to increase the sales tax by one percent for school construction and renovation. Everything else, I mean, I agree with our agenda. I think it's a good agenda. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Yes, I'm in support of each of these elements. The, excuse me, having lived in a rent control apartment in 1973 in

[00:44:22] Brookline next to Boston, 50 years ago, all these established urban cities with very large senior populations at that time. We were the only people under 70 in our building, and it was a big building. So I think this can be done very well, and I don't know how it's going to turn out.

[00:44:43] The housing study report, I think, is supposed to come out sometime in the month, this month, from the DHCD, and maybe there will be something in there that will be useful for us. I do not know, But looking for more information is fine with me. The swatting question, are parents involved in this responsibility at all?

[00:45:05] Or is this strictly to the child and the child's thing? And if this is an off-the-wall question, then put me off and figure it out later. But that seems to be the only way to get any kind of behavior change is if parents are held accountable in the same way that they have been in some ways with some weapons things recently.

[00:45:24] I was totally shocked that the demerits of the points, the insurance doesn't count for these egregious things. And the 700 cars passing, we had 1,000 a month a number of years ago before we got the authority for the cameras on the ends of the arms.

[00:45:41] So it is an incredibly serious element, and I'm ready to go. Thank you. Supervisor McHale. Going through the legislation, expand photo speed device authority. Absolutely.

[00:45:57] I'm supportive of that. I will say that I think all of us are frustrated that it seems like to me that the penalty is really not significant enough to change behavior. At least it hasn't been up until now.

[00:46:14] Having said that, we've spent 1A in the last two decades getting this far. So, you know, Ned, when we talk about your frustration, I get it. But we've had to piecemeal it and massage it to the point where it was acceptable to the majority of the delegates in the general assembly to get something passed.

[00:46:33] Having said that, I'm hopeful that we can continue to work on this and get it to where it really has an impact on behavior. Maybe we'll see what I was reading today. It looks like it's impacting behavior to some degree. So that's great. One cent sales tax option.

[00:46:51] Absolutely. I won't even belabor that. We definitely need that ability to have a referendum to ask our community. Different communities would vote on the referendum different ways, but we definitely need that ability. Expand offenses subject to property forfeiture.

[00:47:08] I really appreciate you all thinking or coming up with a different option, but I'm not convinced that the juice is worth the squeeze here. If in fact, so you're going to have to give me some more examples, because if we're talking about taking a cell phone or a computer and selling it and trying to recoup, I mean, that's just wackadoodle world to me.

[00:47:29] why would we waste our energy on on i mean i mean the only thing i could think of is that yeah these days a young person the threat of losing that is probably more than the cost so it may be a deterrent but it's for cost recovery it's it's crazy it's right and what i have to say is if they lost it they their parents are they just buying i mean i just so help me with what else we could, what other examples besides laptops and phones? Yeah, unfortunately, I'm at a loss of specific examples, except to say, again, that this statute already exists for terrorist acts. So we've

[00:48:07] got the ability to seize property that's committed in the, that's used in the Commission of Terrorist Acts. This expands that. Again, I'm sort of at a loss to provide specific examples. I do know one of the advantages that Ms. Farley was sharing with me as we were discussing this is that this is a more established process. And as you may recall, when this item was before, when cost recovery was before the board, there were some pretty significant objections from the Commonwealth's attorney that would not be present with this procedure. So in addition to having a larger pool perhaps of recoverable funds, it's a procedure that Commonwealth's attorneys are more familiar with

[00:48:47] and it's more familiar to the system. So that may be an additional advantage, despite perhaps the difficulty in liquidating personal property. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I'm not going to fight this in our legislative packet. I'm just not as sure that, again, if that's what we're talking about, is the juice really worth the squeeze? And just the effort of trying to get it passed. Now, the other scenario where you have drugs and guns and all sorts of, I get that.

[00:49:17] that makes perfect sense just not sure you're gonna see that in this case the alternative would be to expand the 250 flat uh cost the the cap the current 250 cap and you may encounter the same problems with that that the 250 may be a drop in the bucket exactly right and i think that's even more so i'm happy to say yes to this we'll see how it goes but i'm not convinced that this really um go back to where you were there we go great um so that's those three bullets and then

[00:49:53] we did sort of include a discussion about the study tools correct um for for um rent increases i think had the report said a jlark study which is what we all talked about at the last meeting when this came up at the last meeting mike mentioned it i turned to mike and i said in you're talking about a JLARC study? And he said, yes. JLARC is a process that we're all very familiar with. Many people in the community are familiar with it as well. If it had said we were pursuing

[00:50:27] a JLARC study rather than studying tools, I'm just saying that I think if the community had understood what we were talking about better, we wouldn't have had as much angst in the community. But I will say, Andy, it does say on page four, support legislation that would enable localities to implement rent stabilization and rent gouging protection.

[00:50:52] And I think when people compare the two, it added some angst. So let me address a couple of points there. First of all, we did hear the board's request for a JLARC study specifically. When we ran that request by Mr. Blunt, he indicated that that, in fact, was not the proper tool that would be done in Richmond, that it was a different type of tool.

[00:51:11] I don't know whether he has anything that he wants to add, but again, it would not be JLARC necessarily that would be studying that. It would be a different agency. And see, that's great. And so do you want to have that discussion a little bit later? No, but the discussion I do want to have later to get to the second point was you had cited the rent stabilization, rent gouging, that's part of the position statement.

[00:51:30] And that's what we'll get to in the second part of my presentation. That's perfect. That's great. And that's interesting because I think we're all used to JLARC studies and we just assume that that would be what and we shouldn't assume right but i think that when the community saw some of these points together in a report that's what they thought i am not interested in implementing rent control at this point i don't know enough about it to even say i would be in favor or against it but i would always be interested in more information on how something like that would play out in the community so i'll look forward to the next discussion where you're going to tell us

[00:52:09] what might be appropriate. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. And I think that was all you wanted right now. Just the priorities at this point. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to try to make sure that the comments that I've heard, I understand well enough to know if there's anything that needs to be clarified. So expanding the photo speed device authority, I'm definitely in favor of that, but I did hear comments that suggested extending it to other traffic violations, such as the through truck restrictions or other things. And that had not been so that is part of the understood original i'm sorry that's part of the positions so there's the uh putting demerit points for through traffic uh that's part of the positions that we'll get to

[00:52:48] in the second part of the president but also whether but that's not that's not related to to the photo uh authority those two separate items well i heard it in this discussion so i wanted to make sure okay uh and i have no problem with the one cent sales tax as discussed uh i do Thank you for reminding us of the Commonwealth Attorney's position comments about this because otherwise I felt like this is really a very different thing and doesn't necessarily accomplish a lot, but it does look like a much easier lift and it is something.

[00:53:22] And so I would definitely be in favor of recognizing the problem and seeing if this helps. The budget requests are great. the legislative study, you know, this is where I thought we were. I understand the word redevelopment is specifically in here because there's some sense in which this is already fully understood in regular development or in existing transfers of properties, but I'm not fully convinced of that. So I guess I hope the study is broad and looks at what the possibilities

[00:53:59] are for understanding how to deal with rent rental housing and rental increases under those circumstances. Uh, but otherwise I'm very supportive of a supervisor. Yes. I just wanted to say the truck, uh, restrictions that would have to be boots on the ground in order to be able to do that, which is the photo to me came up in this. And I want to make sure we're exactly stick to the proposed legislative priorities, but I think now if there are no other comments, ready to move on to the positions yes yes i did want to um i did not uh take the opportunity uh

[00:54:35] for expanding the property forfeiture i think that would work very well with adults you know that have something i'm not so so sure about uh as supervisor pruett said those under 18 and those under 16 and younger i don't think that would work i'm wondering if we could say if we would include you probably already thought about this or so if they're adults it would be the fine property forfeiture if if their children are under 18 maybe that would be you know the cell phone

[00:55:12] the computer or could we make their pardon me their parents responsible right so typically my understanding is that there would not be criminal responsibility for the parents of students that commit these offenses there might be some related offense some sort of child neglect charge or something. Generally, it's the offender, him or herself, that is facing the charges.

[00:55:35] And that would be difficult with a child? Correct. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So on to the second part of the presentation, which deals with the legislative positions and policy statements. Again, what we've presented so far has been the six priorities that the county would be advocating for. What follows are the positions and policy statements that if inquiries arose in Richmond. This would be the county's position on these. You may recognize, here's a list of the seven earlier additions. The list actually is much longer positions. I believe

[00:56:12] there's 40-some positions that the county states in the position documents. Seven of them were new as of the last meeting, and they're listed here. All of two of these really deal with increased funding. So the county would be in support, if the issue arose, of increased funding for economic development and site readiness, increased funding for community services boards, for mental health services, for housing Albemarle, and for public schools funding. In addition, going into the last meeting, the position statement also had a position against the legalization of skill games,

[00:56:46] and it also had a position statement in favor of preserving local authority over land use matters. Since the last meeting, or at the last meeting, there were a number of new ideas that were generated that staff attempted to take down and to encapsulate and to bring back to the board for further review and for further discussion of what the board consensus is. As you'll recall, a new position was added regarding digital equity to support statewide efforts for advancing digital equity. The environmental position statement was revised to include support for sustainable

[00:57:20] material management legislation. Staff in drafting this had relied on an August 30th memo of the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee that referred to sustainable material management legislation. It also made a reference to the EPR program as well, which is the program- Extended Producer Responsibility.

[00:57:43] There we go. Excuse me. The Extended Producer Responsibility as a subset of this. We can certainly clarify that in the final position statement if the board is interested in that. We also revised the affordable housing funding statement to refer not just to housing Albemarle, but affordable housing more generally. There was a request to add a position statement regarding the locality enforcement of the Landlord-Tenant Act, which would enable localities to enforce violations of the Landlord-Tenant Act. Currently, the violations of the Landlord-Tenant Act are only enforceable by the tenants themselves. And this was, there was a request made that we

[00:58:22] add this to position statement that we would be in favor of allowing localities to enforce that as well. There was a request to add locality right of first refusal to the position statements to support a localities right of first refusal when an affordable housing property was either sold or converted. There was a request and it was added as a position statement, not as a priority, but as a position statement regarding rent stabilization to support legislation that would enable localities to implement rent stabilization and rent gouging protections. I believe Ms. McKeel referred to that on page four. I believe it's attachment B. So there was that position statement that was

[00:59:01] requested and that's being brought back for the board's consideration in the final position statement. And then finally, requesting demerit points under the uniform demerit point system for violations involving overweight trucks or unpermitted through trucks. Again, that would be added to the position statement list rather than as a priority list. So with that, I'll stop and take any additional questions. And this is the final feedback. So if there's any questions regarding the positions or anything else that the board saw here, I'm certainly happy to take those questions. Actually, let me just go forward to say what our next steps are so the board has

[00:59:37] an idea of where we're going with this. Ultimately, we were looking to adopt the priority statement and the position statements. The current drafts of those are included in the package as attachments A and B, respectively, but they're certainly subject to board discussion and board amendment to the extent that the board feels that anything needs to be added, removed, amended, and so forth.

[00:59:58] It's certainly subject to that. And actually, while I'm thinking about it, I will also add that there was discussion and staff acknowledges discussion at the prior meeting regarding the enforcement of parking violations and expanding the scope of who may enforce parking violations. Staff went back and found that for counties or localities with populations over 40,000, of which Albemarle is one, that those localities already have the enabling authority to have contract enforcement of parking violations. So that's enabling authority that currently exists.

[01:00:32] It's my understanding that VACO may be advocating that as a VACO legislative permission to open that door for smaller localities than Albemarle. But again, there is existing state law that allows for contract enforcement by localities that are larger than 40,000.

[01:00:48] And that's why that item, though discussed at the prior meeting, was not added to the draft list that the board has before today. So with that, I really will stop and seek any comments or questions that you have. Thank you very much. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Bruet. Sure. So I'm going to dive right into what I think is the controversial thing here.

[01:01:07] I want to first just clarify that the request for the study and the position statement in here are two separate things. One applies to existing housing, renewing year-to-year leases or month-to-month leases and what they can do in between that. And the other is studying what tools might make sense when housing is redeveloped, right, either torn down or refinished, resulting in temporary displacement, then significant increases in rent, two kind of separate things. And I did discuss

[01:01:43] this at the previous two meetings in which we talked about legislation. So I don't want it to be characterized as something that came out of left field. So I want to begin by just saying rent stabilization is something that the majority of our peers, Democrats in the House and Senate, do support, and there's been recurring submissions of rent stabilization legislation each year.

[01:02:08] It is a Dillon thing, right? And so insofar as we are people who complain about Dillon's rule, hobbling our ability to make change at the local level, I would point out this is not implementing any kind of rent stabilization scheme whatsoever. It is empowering us to consider doing so in the future, much like we were just talking about with the school capital tax.

[01:02:31] This is something that localities in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area frequently have included on their legislative priorities issues. When I've talked to housing advocates, they've highlighted that currently we know nothing's going to happen in the next year.

[01:02:48] We know there's probably not going to be anything that happens in the year after that. But a helpful thing is to show that this is something that is on the radar and that is, frankly, confronting people outside of NOVA. And a helpful thing that can be done to highlight this issue and the possibility of this is to have more localities expand this on their legislative priorities.

[01:03:13] I would also say, again, I want to highlight, this doesn't mean we have to do anything on rent stabilization whatsoever, rent gouging. And I would expect that would be a much, much, much more in-depth vote that would be contentious. And I don't know how it would go.

[01:03:29] But I personally do support the idea of rent stabilization. I think we hear a lot of doom saying about it. The chilling effects that you see in studies, in meta-analyses, including the urban meta-analysis that Mr. Williamson pointed to, the chilling effects on overall housing is incredibly modest.

[01:03:49] It is more modest than what our own inclusionary zoning policy that we implemented earlier this year does, as in it results in less of a chill on new development than what we've already done does. And it does result in significantly more low-income housing being available in the community.

[01:04:06] I think that is a reasonable trade-off, an incredibly modest across-the-board reduction, a more significant reduction for people making more than 120% median income, and a significant increase in low-income housing. That's what it actually realizes in practice.

[01:04:23] And at the end of the day, if you're opposing rent stabilization, what you are saying is, I think landlords need to be able to raise rents more than 10%, even when they've done nothing, even when there's no improvements to the home. I think we need to think that is what we're actually asking for the ability to do.

[01:04:40] So that is my position on that. Everything else, I think, is pretty straight down the middle by the books. I don't think it's particularly contentious, but I'd be happy to... I love our policy positions as written here. I think they're extraordinary. And thank you so much for the staff work that went into this.

[01:04:59] Thank you. Supervisor Golly. I think I've said everything I need to say. The only add-on will be just for, again, from a strategy standpoint, I know last year during the packet for the sunset clauses for the development items, that that was last year advised that this would be the year that we shouldn't really get after that. So we just have to make sure that that's a priority in our, not just our meeting with our legislators, but the advocacy when the GA convenes.

[01:05:25] And I'll add that that was a position statement that was in last year's, a position statement that's in this year's as well. We did not go over all the things that got carried over from last year's to this, but that is in there. And, you know, I didn't, I wasn't trying, you know, the legal strategy for the forfeiture piece, very close.

[01:05:41] I mean, I think that's a smart, I didn't mean, I didn't want to come across was thinking, oh, that was wasted effort. That's a good idea. I just, the outcome will be curious to make sure. Supervisor Lepisto Kirk. Regarding the locality right of first refusal, I think that's something that would be, frankly, I would like that opportunity because it enables the county to be able to retain affordable housing when it is sold or converted.

[01:06:13] Or maybe someone like Habitat for Humanity, other organizations, if that's what applies. Brent stabilization, I want to see the study. Still not sure on that.

[01:06:29] The devil's in the details, I guess. DeBarre points for truck violations. It's interesting you say overweight trucks or unpermitted through trucks. Could you explain? Because I know the signs we have if they're over length trucks. I haven't seen overweight trucks, but I guess that's also included, correct? That is a potential violation. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And the over length trucks would be would come under unpermitted through trucks well it could that the unpermitted

[01:07:04] through trucks is if through trucks were not permitted at all so certain trucks are open to uh to certain truck there i'm sorry there are certain routes that are open to certain trucks but not all trucks whereas others are close to through trucks generally and that and the um position statement that we had drafted was intended to to address both both ones that were overweight, as well as those where they were on roads, where they were through trucks were not permitted. Okay, so if you have something in between, like an over length truck, that it's clearly marked trucks that are over 65 feet in length are not permitted on this road. I don't

[01:07:44] think this addresses it, does it? So we could certainly add that to the position statement, if the board wish. And that's why I brought it because I saw overweight and I thought, well, We need for over-length trucks that are not permitted. That should be included, in my opinion. Okay. Thank you.

[01:08:01] Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. I'm especially supportive of the, well, I think all of these, but the landlord-tenant local enforcement. I have been contacted several times in the last several years by people desperate to get improvements to the place they have rented and they don't have a lease.

[01:08:25] There are lots of people who live in places month to month and have no protection from a lease. And the landlord now knows that no one's going to make him or her do anything. And all they have to do is threaten that the person can just go if they don't like what's going on.

[01:08:42] So that's why when I asked DSS and others, you know, how can we help these people? They've said we have no authority, which is it's all up to the tenant. So I really hope that there's some success that happens for that. As far as investment in rental property and the stabilization issue, I know that 50 years ago in Boston, if there was reinvestment in the property, that was part of the whole discussion about the rent.

[01:09:10] It was not a ban on things. It was much more reasonable than that. And I'm sure that reasonable people nowadays would do the same. And I think in as far as the length of trucks right now, it's a federal restriction that length and weight. There are requirements and the box cannot be over 60 feet, much plus the truck.

[01:09:31] So it's even a smaller thing for federally. And there there's always, as I've mentioned to everybody in the past, there are bills every year to allow triple triples. And, you know, we just have to keep going along here because the the moles are coming out of the holes.

[01:09:49] So anyway, thank you for all your work on this, and hopefully we'll get there on something. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Thank you, Andy. Bullet one, I support. Bullet two, I really want to take the time to thank Mike for talking about clarifying for the public what we're talking about.

[01:10:13] Because I think, and my point only was, in total, when people looked at this package, they interpreted what we were saying in different sections differently. And they put them all together. Right. And so I appreciate your talking about that.

[01:10:29] I have to say, I don't know enough about this and I am uncomfortable supporting this because we haven't even heard from Stacey. I mean, Stacey is to me our housing person. And I don't know that I want to put her on the spot right now.

[01:10:47] that might not be fair, but I feel uncomfortable supporting it unless I've heard from our expert on our affordable housing and our housing. The demerit points for truck violations, I have no problem supporting that. B, tell me one more time though, let's just make it clear how you would change this. I would just add overweight or over length trucks, because we have signs that say trucks that are over 65 feet not allowed on certain roads and you can tell if

[01:11:22] a truck is over 65 feet if it has a sleeper cab then we're then they're going to be over 65 feet and i don't have any problem at all with with those changes um oh and i wanted to just say talk about the um um parking violation it would appear to me that there is a miscommunication or a gap in understanding around what we can do and what we can't do.

[01:11:56] And I guess my question to that is there are so many bills every year that are passed. So many different, so many bills that affect different departments in our work. Andy, do we have a process that would say to, you know, July 1 or right before July 1, these changes have passed the General Assembly, and this is going to affect your work, or you now have the ability to do that, and maybe that would require too much work. I don't know, but if we have the ability to do this, and someone in the department doesn't understand that we have

[01:12:35] that ability, that's a disconnect, or if the employees working in that department don't understand. Right, so the code section I share with you, I'm not sure when that was amended or that's been a longstanding practice. But to answer your question more directly, one other person I'd like to acknowledge that wasn't on the speaking order, but does a great amount of work with our office, James Douglas, who's our FOIA officer. And as I said last time, he does a lot of things well, but one of them is managing the legislative process internally. And so he does a fantastic job of alerting us to the bills when the assembly is in session. And then we, our attorneys go to a number of continuing legal education programs that go over legislative changes. So we try to stay on

[01:13:15] top of all the attorneys in our office trying to stay on top of changes and then informing their respective departmental clients about changes in the law from year to year. And I'm sure as departments head change or as employees change, you know, I get all that. I mean, it gets complicated. It would have been nice, and I guess it was my fault because I didn't reach out first to ask. I just assumed when I was told, right? And then it is what it is. But if that's accurate, then we don't have to worry about it not albemarle but again my suspicion i'm saying for us we don't have to that's that's my understanding and and i can certainly have that conversation with with

[01:13:52] the police chief that would be great um because if we have that ability yes ma'am because we even had the the citizens police um advisory committee even had a discussion and during the meeting and supported that legislation so i and that's fine it doesn't make any difference other than we just need to make sure we're all aware of what we're unable to do yes ma'am just trying to figure out process it yes thank you very much and appreciate your work on all this thank you thank you uh i am also you know very supportive of everything i see here except that i have issues with the rent stabilization i really do appreciate supervisor bruit's additional qualification but at this

[01:14:29] point i'm uh appreciative of the jlark or the study that we've recommended and i hope it would help inform what actions we have uh to pursue this and i think there are several other things that are important here that i would put higher priorities such as being able to enforce landlord tenant uh acts um with that i i guess i i have to ask whether we are basically at a i know we're divided do we have uh four people that want the rent stabilization in are we are we the next thing on my agenda is whether or not you need a motion so yes sir so i so i've moved ahead if the chair

[01:15:08] himself doesn't have further comments or questions about. Additional items, you know, as I said before, and you mentioned, I would like to consider the possibility of extended producer responsibility and sustainable materials management as a subset of sustainable materials management, but otherwise I had no other additional items. So in the way of next steps, again, what the action that we're looking for out of today's session would be the adoption of the priority statement, which is attachment a as well as the position statement was attachment b as i indicated previously both of those are subject to amendment additions suggestions that the board may have if any of

[01:15:48] the statements don't reflect a consensus i heard some support in attachment b for including over length trucks in addition to overweight trucks that's certainly something that staff can do easily um but but what the what the motion would be is if there's if there's no uh concern or no objection to the priorities, simply a motion to attach the, or excuse me, a motion to adopt the priorities statement as in attachment A. And then if there are amendments to attachment B, there could be a motion to adopt attachment B with whatever amendments the board consensus is.

[01:16:19] Okay. Yes. Question. So I've may have muddled my response so badly that it wasn't clear. I'm happy to do the study first and learn what we can from the housing report rather than race to this only because I don't want to put our lobbyists in a position of having something that somebody else comes up with that may be completely over the top. And then they're thinking that they should advocate for it based upon a decision that I've made without having enough information. So if that changes your four to two, then please consider that. But where in the process do we also figure

[01:16:57] out which ones we will ask our delegates to carry? And to me, the landlord-tenant one is the highest priority in this whoops it went away in that list but um so anyway we'll figure that out i just that's the question that i don't know the answer to in the process question and jim i'm still confused about the jlark study because i'm told that the jlark study is not appropriate so if we're talking about a study but a study if the jlark is not appropriate but if we're talking about a study then what kind of oh there you go it's coming so let's let's hear it i think that's part of the discussion yeah mr chair well before mr i just do want to quickly suggest briefly we're talking

[01:17:35] about how we want to know more about rent stabilization before we take action on it and i hear where the board said it sounds like it's either three three or four two on that so i understand um i would remind the board that the study as proposed in our priorities does not actually address rent stabilization in the standard form it specifically asks about redevelopment concerns. I would also highlight, I mentioned that I proposed this as supporting implementation because that is where the momentum is in the House right now. In previous years, the momentum had been around a study, and that is just not the strategy that I think advocates are taking right

[01:18:14] now. But if this board wants to instead support a study, I think that would also be appropriate, but we would need to say that separately from the other study that we're asking for. So I'm curious if the board would be interested in, on the rent stabilization line, just support legislation that would, instead of enable localities to implement rent stabilization, that would study local implementation.

[01:18:41] And that gets to my concern about not hearing from our, from Stacey, from our housing expert. And I would also like to know the cost involved in that study. Well, I think this would be a statewide DHCD type study.

[01:18:57] not our study. If it's a JLARC study, we're not doing that. Not JLARC. That's a different department. Yeah. Mr. Blunt, if I may. Sorry for stepping on you there. No worries. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. David Blunt with TJPDC. I think in the follow-up discussion I had with your staff was that, you know, if you went in and asked for a JLARC study, you're limiting yourself to asking for a JLARC study. So to make the option available to have Either a JLARC study or a legislative study or an agency study.

[01:19:28] I mean, we see all kinds of forms of study that come about through the General Assembly process. JLARC is tougher because, you know, there was one study resolution that was passed this past General Assembly session to direct a study.

[01:19:43] And it was a very large study related to, you know, social, economic and so on and so on impacts of gun violence. Huge study. Many of the other studies that JLARC is looking at for this coming year, they are taking that up in a number of ways.

[01:20:01] They are the members of the JLARC study subcommittee that bring forth what they see as priorities. There's legislation from a previous session that will come into play to see if it's appropriate to kind of seize upon those items as well. So I think by having some language that is more general in nature, then you open yourself up to other possibilities to get this issue reviewed by whether it's a DHCD, a legislative study committee, or some other entity, rather than putting all your, you know, all your marbles into the JLARC bag, which, you know, and they're limited.

[01:20:34] the JLARC itself, they are limited to, you know, four or five studies a year as they kind of look out. And they're always looking a year ahead to kind of see what they have in queue for the next go-round. Thank you. So, board, let's start with the first item, which is legislative priorities.

[01:20:55] And I think that what we're seeing here is, if I'm understanding this, is on that original list that we have the priority items back a little bit further. There we go.

[01:21:11] That are listed here. Whether any of those need to be revised at this point, I'm not hearing a lot of suggestions for revisions. So I believe we are in a position to look for a motion to support our proposed legislative priorities as presented.

[01:21:28] To adopt attachment A as the county's legislative priorities. Adopt attachment A. Do we have a motion to adopt attachment A as our legislative priorities? I'd like to adopt. Okay. Yep. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malik and a second from Supervisor Pruitt without objection that the clerk will call the roll.

[01:21:50] Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista? Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. Now, we are looking at the question of whether we want to amend attachment B, legislative positions and policy statements, before considering a motion to adopt an amended attachment B.

[01:22:15] That's correct. And I had heard, again, in the earlier discussion about the over-length trucks, that seemed to be something that the board had discussed as a possible amendment to attachment B. and uh so one proposed amendment would be to overlay uh trucks um i don't know whether you need amendment related to extended producer responsibility so that's included we certainly could if if the chair of the board wanted that to be added we certainly could okay um so would that statement be sustainable materials uh management including extended producer response we can certainly add that if that's the consensus of the board um and then the last if i think the

[01:22:53] last issue is whether we include the rent stabilization language that's in here, whether we modify it or whether we remove it. I sort of need to know from the board where, which direction you'd like to go in that regard. Well, that would suggest for moving it at this point, we have a study coming on JLARC. Well, the study that we've requested, the priorities is different. The study that we have requested in the priority section is different and we'll not touch on this. If we want a study in order to learn more on it, we would need to amend the language rather than remove it

[01:23:28] to request a study of support language that would study localities implementing rent stabilization and rent couching protections. And do we know who would do that? I think the point is that we would leave it open. We'd leave it up to leave it open. But it would not be us. It would be an agency supporting a study statewide study i i can accept that yeah i can do that yeah yes okay so what i'm hearing if i may for the board uh suggest that uh we're looking for a motion to adopt

[01:24:03] attachment b with the amendments that we include other like trucks that we include uh extended producer responsibility and sustainable materials management and that refer a reference to rate stabilization be support legislation that would study uh localities implementing of rent stabilization or if i might suggest to support a study or to support the study of or a state study of local implementation rather than legislation yeah yes to support a state legislation right yes ma'am thank you and i hate to muddy the waters if we're agreeing on that but i had noted and

[01:24:43] didn't mention it because under transportation funding, we have allowed Charlottesville-Almore Regional Transit Authority to establish a new dedicated funding source to support multimodal transportation in the region. While that is great to do, that's probably premature for our authority because we have not even established an authority yet. We have to establish the authority first.

[01:25:09] Well, and as we've discussed, there is an authority that exists. It doesn't, it hurt, sorry, that there's enabling authority that allows that authority to be adopted. But I'm just clarifying that we're anticipating that we would not be going to the General Assembly this session, but next session, because the city council and the Board of Supervisors have to approve the authority for us.

[01:25:38] we have the enabling authority but we have to approve it and then we have to that authority has to meet and determine what we're actually asking for i'm just saying so what i'd like to do is look to mr blunder and where is and because ann wall's been involved in this oh she's not back there okay that's fine and and and these folks may be better able to address the timing yes and why that particular i'm just a little concerned because we're now voting on this amendment that has this statement in it right so i'll i'll defer to them as to why that position statement okay and i think i'll just be very brief in saying i believe that that position statement has been

[01:26:16] in your right there for a number of years so it has you know i certainly what you say and i believe that that reflects the position that the group has taken and it's probably been in there and now it's becoming a reality because we're we're actually dealing with an authority right yes good afternoon emily kilroy um thank you for having us here this afternoon to continue this conversation. So we had talked at the September work session on this topic that we would start talking, socializing that this could be something that would be emerging maybe as soon as next year so that that conversation is not new when we hit next year. But as Mr. Blunt referenced,

[01:26:56] that same language has been unchanged for several years. And so we thought we may as well keep it in there for consistency but again sort of changed our posture and how we address that in the meetings that we have with the legislators and we did have that conversation and I recognize that I just want to make sure though now that we're actually the city council and board of supervisors are going to be supporting the creation of the authority right under our existing law that this isn't confusing that's all I just wanted to make sure everybody understood thank you thank you

[01:27:29] Yeah. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. I think 2006 or seven, I think what convinced me that this is good to keep, it says allow a transit authority, not the, we're not saying that we've already done it, but having the parallel effort to go along, because sometime in the next year, I would assume that this will come to both jurisdictions and get its up or down vote. Right. And this could continue to be plotting along through the committee halls down there. So I support leaving it alone.

[01:28:02] and that's fine too i just want to make sure everybody understood right and jeff i've seen you lean in a couple of times did you have something you actually wanted to to say you'd look for miss wall and you were looking for timing and i was just going to say that you're absolutely correct that that we're one year away yes uh and i and i wasn't sure that this was um uh language that had been in previously but that that it appears that we're based on the discussions that are happening at the RTP, that it's one year away. Yeah. So we're in good shape, folks. So everybody's on the same page. So it's only attachment B with the amendments previously

[01:28:38] discussed. With those three amendments, the over-length trunks, the extended producer responsibility, and then making rent stabilization a study rather than supportive legislation. Those would, what I'm hearing to be the three amendments to attachment B. We're looking for a motion to that effect. I'm sorry. Did you say the rent, the right of our first refusal? My understanding is that there was that in the last that there was no interest in removing that that that would be no interest in removing good that there would be that my understanding is that the board is ready to approve that is submitted sorry thank you we are looking for a motion uh to approve it i was not

[01:29:13] typing that in real time um so i don't know the precision with which we need the language of the amendment but i imagine since we're amending specific language we need it somewhat precise is that correct um i believe it can be done more generally i mean if if if the board would like to see um the amendments we certainly can provide that to the board but but we're also looking i would like to move that the board adopt the um the legislative priorities as discussed to include the three amendments uh adding over length trucks uh producer responsibilities and a study on the

[01:29:50] the effects of rent stabilization, uh, implemented locally. So, and just to clarify, am I understanding that you want to adopt the legislative positions that were articulated? Yes. Attachment B with those. Did I remake the motion? Well, you, you had, you had said priority. I did want to make sure that we're talking about legislative positions and attachment. I am the three amendments that you had articulated. That is correct. Correct. Do I need to rearticulate the motion? Not as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to jump in with a second. I think we have a motion from supervisor Pruitt And I second from Supervisor McKeel.

[01:30:23] I really don't think there's additional clarification needed, but are there any other concerns? Yeah, I'd like to see the exact wording after we approve it, but if he could email us the exact wording, that'd be a great thing. Yes, ma'am, we can certainly do that. Trusting the system to some extent, if there are no further objections, we'll let the clerk call the roll.

[01:30:47] Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Thank you, the board. Before I surrender the mic here, I did want to give one last update, and that is the legislative forum. The board has received a number of emails asking for availability. We're still scheduling or looking for a mutually available date. Unfortunately, it appears as though there's not a single date that works for the entire legislative delegation.

[01:31:15] We've narrowed it down to two different dates for which there's one member of the legislative delegation that's unavailable. And staff's proposal would be that we select on one of those dates, have the absent legislator represented by a chief of staff or legislative aid, and then also get with that absent legislator one-on-one in advance of the session. That may be the best that we can do, given that no date is available to the entire delegation. And if that suits the board, that's what staff will proceed with doing in terms of scheduling the legislative form.

[01:31:46] Sounds good to me. Very good. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. I wonder if in the future we might consider different words than priority and positions, because I think the fact those both start with a puh sound is really swirling us all up.

[01:32:03] Thank you. Well, board, this brings us to our presentation of the Economic Outlook Report, which is being led by Mr. Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer, with assistance Dr. Cheryl Bailey, visiting Professor of Practice, Virginia Tech.

[01:32:20] Welcome again. Thank you for the introduction, and good afternoon to Chair Andrews and the Board. Today, there is no action request to the Board. This is an annual presentation we give to the Board on the economic outlook. Before we get into the content and our featured guest speaker today, this is really kicking off the long-range financial planning process that the Board holds every fall.

[01:32:45] We'll have three meetings before we get into the annual budget process in February. After today, we'll be back in November to discuss the county's five-year financial plan. That'll be our outlook where we look at all of our assumptions and expenditures and revenues. We'll take a look at how this report translates into that revenue forecast.

[01:33:02] We'll take a look at to what extent the expenditures can be the upcoming obligations we have and how we can address those, such as new facilities open, we'll need to operate them. Existing grants may expire. We would need to evaluate continuing that service. So those questions, in addition to how well is that five-year plan moving forward, the board strategic plan, Those will be things that we evaluate with the board of supervisors in November.

[01:33:27] In December, there will be a joint meeting with the school board where we'll be really focused on goal five of the strategic plan around the school capital request, as we have done for the past two years. So, but getting back today, this is really continuing a partnership we've had now for three years with Dr. Bailey.

[01:33:45] We're very fortunate that in the Department of Finance and Budget, we have a host of very talented analysts and other financial professionals who have a really in-depth expertise of the county's revenues, how things work locally. What this report does is it augments our understanding by connecting the work and knowledge we have to what is happening regionally, at the state, national levels, and even globally, and how those impacts translate.

[01:34:09] We were very fortunate that a team, we got to spend about an hour and a half with Dr. Bailey this morning, and even though this report goes to the board once a year, we remained engaged with her throughout the year with regular updates and ongoing dialogue. Dr. Bailey is actually part of a team with our CFO, Jacob Sumner, and our Chief Operating Officer, Christian Shifflett, presenting at the Regional ICMA Conference in Pittsburgh about some of this work and how that's tied into our strategic plan.

[01:34:33] If you've heard me reference strategic plan several times, that is intentional, because when we do the strategic plan and the budget right, it should feel like one process. So with that, it's my privilege to introduce Dr. Cheryl Bailey. She has about 30 years of experience in the private sector as a senior leader at both the state and local level.

[01:34:52] She has served as part of gubernatorial cabinets. She has led the Municipal Bond Bank in Virginia, directing that. She is always on the leading edge, is presenting on Capitol Hill in the past when it comes to changes in financial tax law changes around bonds.

[01:35:10] She has been serving on the Board of Directors for the Municipal Security Rulemaking Board and a visiting economist on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. And of course, this says that may have not done her full list of accomplishments. experience full, but this is to say nothing of her extensive experience in higher education and academia. After obtaining her bachelor's at Norfolk State and receiving her master's and doctorate from Harvard, she's been a part of the faculty at Harvard, Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion, Hampton, William & Mary, and Virginia Tech, where she is currently a visiting professor of practice. So again, it is my honor and privilege to introduce Dr. Cheryl Bailey

[01:35:47] for the remainder of the presentation, and I'll be available for questions with Dr. Bailey after we're done. Thank you. Welcome, Dr. Bailey. The school is in session. We are. Always look forward to this. It is good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Mr. Richardson, all members, senior leaders on the dais. It is a distinct pleasure to be back with you again with our,

[01:36:18] I would say one of the top counties in America with a triple AAA. Many say AAA, but it's important to know you have a triple AAA. It's the rare 9A club. About 1% of all counties in the U.S. have that. And that permanates all aspects of your organization. And the team has been extremely wonderful to work with. And their questions, boy, do I have a list of questions just from this

[01:36:51] morning and then the sidebar we have after that. So I find it thrilling to work with you as an organization and with your team. With that, the thirst, the thirst that comes from Album All is just energizing. And so you want to do well and you want to do better. And I get that with every conversation with every member here. So today, we're going to start with the bottom line.

[01:37:20] So start with the bottom line up front. In terms of the U.S. and Albemarle County's economic outlook, then I'll do an overview, a quick overview of the U.S. trends and outlook. Then we'll take a deeper dive into Albemarle County, your economic trends and outlook, and then I'll have some closing and some recommendations. So bottom line, I worked very hard to choose this slide. It's mostly sunny.

[01:37:46] So, you know, my granddaughter, we have this calendar and, you know, you have these different things, partly sunny, mostly sunny, all sunny, cloudy. So it's mostly sunny. And so we could say partly sunny, partly cloudy, but it's mostly sunny. And we have come through, we have walked through the fire and we're coming on the other side.

[01:38:07] We still have to emerge. We have a sturdy economy, a solid U.S. economy. Jay Powell, chairman, says we're in a good place. We have a solid economy. with some moderate growth ahead. We are coming in for that all-knowing soft landing. It's not going to be linear. We're going to have some little, we're having some bumps along the way, but we are coming in for that. And we'll talk about that further. So, some moderate growth ahead. I will say that U.S. is doing the best amongst all mature economies. And I'll talk to

[01:38:42] you a little bit more about that. Albemarle County has a solid economic base, and we've looked at it in many different ways, and it is still solid. We do have some things we are always looking at, we're always watching for, and we'll talk about that. But also, this provides you a scope to plan and to act proactively. In my role at Virginia Tech, we get calls and conversations from many localities. We had many were catching me at the Virginia meeting at ICMA talking about issues

[01:39:17] locally. And so to have your solid base, your proactive management, your scope to plan and act proactively, all those are tremendous assets for Albemarle. So looking at the U.S., this is the overall chart we use for the United States. We're going to do real GDP. Real is the term we use for inflation-injusted. So we've taken out inflation. We want to look at what's real versus Memorex.

[01:39:45] I don't know if anyone else is old enough to know what that means here besides me. And so we're going to, this is all inflation adjusted. That's out. So we're looking at some core fundamentals in the economy. Another term for real or inflation adjusted is current dollars, constant dollars.

[01:40:04] I'm sorry, constant dollars. I hope I have that. I think it should be constant dollars. I think I have my footnote wrong. I'll correct that. So we grew very well in the first half of 2024. Actually, the second quarter got revised up. We did 3% in the second quarter, about one and a half the first quarter.

[01:40:26] We're doing well in terms of 2024. We are now emerging into the pre-pandemic level of average annual growth. Now, these charts have been curated specifically for this presentation and report.

[01:40:45] I do them, I build them on the massive FRED database, Federal Reserve Economic Data. All of the federal data feeds into that database. It's interactive, and I build these by hand.

[01:41:02] The gray bar, all gray bars identify recessions. This shows the two-quarter recession we had in 2020. That's determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. and also I have 2017 to 2019 here we have been through if it feels like we've been through a roller coaster because we have you can see it here and so 2017 to 2019 we're using as the pre-pandemic point of comparison for context and not using one year using a three-year period 2017 to 2019 we do

[01:41:40] that throughout the report and we've been doing it ever since we started with this roller coaster So in 2020, we declined 2.2% overall the entire year. That's pretty good because once we kind of bounced back, we really bounced back.

[01:41:58] We got out of the jail free card and we went for it. And so the economy really started to pick up into 22. So we all over, even after the steep drop, beginning of the pandemic, minus 2.2.

[01:42:14] 2021, we grew 6.1% annually, adjusted annual rate of growth. Then in 22, we grew 2.5%. That was after the inflation adjustment.

[01:42:29] That's all inflation adjusted. Last year, we just got the new data. We have the annual update 2.9% in 2023, much stronger than we had really anticipated. So we were extremely resilient.

[01:42:45] And we're heading toward about 2.6% median forecast for this year. So we're rolling along. And the 2.6 looks like, if you can see it visually here, it looks like that pre-pandemic period.

[01:43:02] But we've been through this up and down. And so we're normalizing. We're normalizing. And it feels relative to the previous experience, but we're normalizing. Now, 2.5% growth after you've had 6%, you know, everything's relative, right?

[01:43:20] So we look back to that 2017 to 2019 period, and we were in a solid economy. But it is slower than that really those peaks and high of 6%, 3%. But it's a good manageable rate in terms of going forward.

[01:43:38] In terms of jobs, we have recovered the jobs that we lost during the steep, steep period of the pandemic. we have recovered those jobs by the middle of 2022 nationally, and we have continued to grow since then. Looking at September as of last month, we were 4.5% ahead on the total number of jobs in the U.S. as compared to February 2020, just before the pandemic. If you just drew a line from before the pandemic to now, we are on that trajectory and beyond. So we're back on that trajectory in

[01:44:15] terms of overall job growth. These are not the same jobs. They're not in the same place. They're not the same type of jobs, but they're jobs. So after every recession, there is some kind of adjustment. There's acceleration of previous trends. Every recession is an accelerant of whatever trend was already in the pipeline. And so we've had some changes in jobs, how we do that. Everybody's not in the office like they used to be. So those jobs have changed. And looking at our monthly growth, this is zooming in on 2021 to 2024 as of last month, latest data. We are now in solid job

[01:44:54] growth. But we have gone through hot, red hot. We were red hot. Then we got hot. Now we're solid. We are averaging 200,000 monthly new jobs first nine months of this year. Now you'll see some bumpiness there. And of course, every time we get a preliminary number, everybody loses their hair. But we all know, we know that the statistics get revised monthly for three months as more complete data comes in. And then they have an annual true-up, if you will, just like we do

[01:45:33] annual true-ups in all kinds of business and government. So we don't want to get overly excited about any particular month, but we do want to keep a watchful eye, watchful eye for trends. Solid job growth in the U.S. In terms of unemployment, I have three metrics here to expand our view, to have a broader view than beyond the headline inflation. The official unemployment rate is only one of the six measures that the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes

[01:46:09] monthly. We get six measures of labor underutilization. So U3 is the headline official, quote unquote, official rate. That's the official rate. And that is a very narrow snapshot. It is a four-week snapshot from middle of one month to the middle of the previous month. It's only four weeks. If you actively look for work six weeks ago, you're not in the data in U3. You're out.

[01:46:39] You're not even in civilian labor force. You don't exist in that data. So U6 is the broadest measure. We want a broader measure, especially so we know what's going on in the economy, but also especially for us in government. Our social services department knows very well these broader statistics. They know them very well. They live them. Those are the people they serve.

[01:47:06] And so U6 is a broader measure for those who have actively looked for work in the last 12 months. It's called a marginally attached. And it also includes the persons who are underemployed, part-time for economic reasons. Now, this is based on a household survey that BLS and Census does every month.

[01:47:26] And the questions, the series of questions. Do you want a full-time job? Yes. Are you ready, willing, and able to work a full-time job now? Now, yes, I want a full-time job. I'm willing, able, and ready to work a full-time job now, but I've had to settle for a part-time schedule for economic reasons.

[01:47:51] But I want to, this is what we also call maybe sometimes working, working lower income households, but we know that's with our social services. we always want to watch that at all times because that's almost oftentimes the canary in the coal mine. And so that's the orange figure, U6. The Federal Reserve has its own additional measure, non-employment index. The Federal Reserve has two mandates, price stability, but also maximum employment. So they also watch employment very carefully. The non-employment index uses the

[01:48:31] Bureau of Labor Statistics micro data, but they do a finer analysis. They look at each sub category to look at the probability based on history of being reemployed. That non-employment index is a little over 8%. The U6 is over 7%, it's about 7.5. In September, official unemployment rate was 4.1. All those measures have ticked up low recently, but they're still historically low.

[01:49:01] So with historical low levels, it's ticked up historically low levels, but we do have, you can look at the charts, the blue line, the orange line, the purple line, we have chronic underutilization of labor.

[01:49:19] Chronic. In good times and bad times, we have that. And the Harvard Business School calls those hidden workers. Those are the underemployed. They're already in the workforce or they really want to be in the workforce, and that's considered hidden workers.

[01:49:36] So focusing on that potential pull for relieving labor shortages, which are projected to continue and expand with our aging workforce and demographics. Looking at the consumer, we watch the consumer very closely.

[01:49:56] It's all about the consumer in so many respects. It gets so much of the headlines because consumer spending is nearly 70% of gross domestic product. Then we also have business spending and business investment spending, private business investment spending, government spending, and then net exports, exports versus imports.

[01:50:22] As goes the consumer, goes the U.S. economy. So we look at that quite a bit. Here we have the blue bars are real inflation-adjusted disposable income, that's buying power. The orange bars are consumer spending.

[01:50:39] The takeaway here is that once we got past the early part of the pandemic, the orange bars are above the line. This is the growth in spending as compared to a year ago. Even when inflation took a bite out of income in 2022, and the blue bars went below the line, the consumer drove on.

[01:51:03] So plowed through. The consumer has been cranky, but the consumer has been spending. The consumer has been spending, and that has been a firewall in our economy. How did the consumer maintain that spending even in the face of changing disposable income? One, tight labor market, increasing wage rates and growth and job growth. So they felt good about some future job opportunity, but also consumers spent down the savings that they accumulated while we were cocooning

[01:51:40] and nesting at home. And they have spent those down. In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco measures that all the excess savings that had been built up prior to during the pandemic have been expended. They had exhausted those by March, June this year. So spent down those savings, also increased debt. Orange line is the debt, blue line is the savings. That's how they kept the spending going. You'll see that those have improved slightly in the first part of this year.

[01:52:16] I'm sorry, during the course of this year, kind of slowed down on both dimensions. So the low savings rate, the high loan level have kind of slowed down. You have to service that debt. The high interest rates mean that those consumer loans have some carrying costs. So the consumer is beginning to really value engineer its budget, value engineer its spending. It's looking for value. So it's down trading, but also selective splurging. Selective splurging. And the first,

[01:52:54] number one thing they intend to splurge on is meals, restaurant meals. Go have a nice dinner, right? Second is some apparel and also travel, but they're looking for value in travel. So maybe we're not going to Tahiti this year. We're going to maybe have closer at home or maybe go to Canada.

[01:53:16] We can drive there, right? And so that's some of the trading that consumers are doing, the beginning to fit more within their budget because they've exhausted the excess savings. In terms of inflation, good news, we are heading toward Fed's 2% long-term target. We are heading there. Gradually, that's not going to be a straight line. There's some bumpiness, but we're heading there. Three measures here. Two that you hear about in the news. One, the Fed watches. So the Fed likes it. I like it. I'll start there with the purple line.

[01:53:49] They like it. I like it. This is where they're fine tuning. Purple line is PCE inflation, personal consumption expenditure inflation, also call PCE index, also call the PCE deflator.

[01:54:05] They're all the same. In that particular measure, the Bureau of Economic Analysis makes adjustments monthly for the substitutions we all do with changes in prices. I mean, I keep my phone in the store and I'm looking, okay, can I get this cheaper? And I won't call out. I won't publicize my favorite stores, but I have the apps. Oh, how much difference is it?

[01:54:31] 20 cents? Not worth driving for. Two dollars? I'm considering it, right? And so we all make those, well, I do. I'm my grandmother's granddaughter. She was our child care, so I was home with her, and I learned all my economics with grandma from Southampton County. And so she got me started on this trail. And so those substitutions, do I buy the store brand or do I buy the name brand? We all substitute. Strawberries are more expensive now, but it's coming into apple and orange season. So

[01:55:09] we make all these adjustments. So our market basket changes. That is very much getting close to 2%. It's a finer measure and the Fed is using that. Headline inflation is the blue line. That's over here, that comes from BLS. That includes, that uses a fixed market basket. So it only adjusts over time. And core inflation is the orange line that takes out food and energy. So two key takeaways, the inflation is heading to the 2% target, but also the orange line is above the

[01:55:44] blue line. Core inflation is above headline inflation. That's unusual. It's usually reverse Because food and energy are normally the ones that cause that to really bounce around. We're having some sticky aspects of inflation in terms of health care and housing.

[01:56:06] Those are really hanging in there, coming down slowly, sometimes not coming down in terms of elements of inflation. So those are the sticky, some key sticky areas of inflation, health care and housing. And so it's taking longer for that to work through.

[01:56:24] Also, on the housing side, they actually use renewals and not new vacancy advertisements. So those renewals actually have to come through the system. That takes at least a year to come through or more for that to come down.

[01:56:40] And also, we're having affordability issues in housing. In terms of the Fed, it has recalibrated its monetary policy. They started, so they recalibrated in response to inflation coming down, unemployment ticking up a little bit.

[01:56:57] And so we've made enough progress. They're doing two things. One is talked about all the time. The other is just going on and we don't talk about it. But it's important that we know what's going on. One is we've gone, we've given it, we've eased up on the interest rate. They had one start. They began the rate easing cycle.

[01:57:17] The projections that came out last month is they intend to gradually, they intend to gradually continue to slowly draw down rates to the end of next year. But it's going to be on a meeting by meeting basis, meeting by meeting based on emerging data.

[01:57:35] The other aspect they did last year is they're continuing to draw down their balance sheet. The balance sheet is how they flooded the market with liquidity to keep the financial markets going. They have not slowed that down. So think about driving with your brakes on. The brakes are still on the balance sheet drawdown. And they gave it a little bit of gas on the interest rate that's going to be happening gradually. So we are still in restrictive monetary policy territory. And it's

[01:58:10] going to take time for that to work through. We don't want to open up the floodgates and have inflation bounce back on us. So that's part of that piloting, right? You just can't let the gas and the brake go at the same time. So they're calibrating. This is a recalibration. We don't talk about the orange line, but it's a steep drawdown. Of course, they had a steep uptick too.

[01:58:38] So that's still going on. Oh, excuse me. So the thread, before I ask the question, can they thread the needle? I feel confident to say they are threading the needle. They've shown demonstrated commitment to, and Chairman Powell has said this repeatedly since July, since he first signaled the rate, August, since he first signaled the rate adjustment that happened in September, that the economy is in good shape and they committed to keeping it there, to keeping it that way. And so they are committed to threading this needle, tame inflation, maintain financial

[01:59:16] stability and avoid a recession. It looks like we're coming in to that. And all forecasts are predicting a landing and not necessarily, and no forecasts include a recession. That is significant.

[01:59:36] I know I've been here before and said, look for a recession. Well, that's not the case today. So where did, so, but the inflate, I'm sorry, the recession, the recession did happen. It just didn't happen here. It happened full out, drop the mic, period. It happened in Europe and in UK.

[02:00:00] They're struggling to get back to a 0.5% annual growth rate, annual. Canada grew at half the R rate, half. So less than half, actually. So we've had a resilient, solid economy. We're expecting some cooling, again, some slowing down on that particular, on that consumer, right-sizing, I would say we're doing some right-sizing, some normalizing, and we're expecting, so we're going to have, we expect some quarters that are going to be cooler, and then have a rebound in 2025,

[02:00:39] such that 2.6% is the median forecast, or the prominent forecast, and you have the details in your report for 2024 and overall hitting about 1.9% close to near-term growth in 2025 and then 2.0% above in 2026. So we have a number of risks to the forecast. There are a lot of things going on domestically and globally. Any one of the big things could create some imbalance in this forecast or accumulation of a number of small things.

[02:01:19] So that means we have to stay vigilant, stay watchful, look for emerging trends, detect, adapt, and adjust as needed in the rapidly changing environment. Of course, we all learned agility with the pandemic, right? All we had to do was watch the Fed.

[02:01:35] When the Fed did what they did in January and February, we should have known that something big was coming, but we didn't watch that that much. They were ahead of everything in retrospect. Looking at all of them all, Albemarle is a solid economy. So looking at Albemarle, we have annual data through 2022.

[02:01:53] We will not get 2023 until the end of this year for Albemarle, but we do have it for the state and for the U.S. Albemarle outpaced Virginia and U.S. in the recovery years in 21 and 2022.

[02:02:09] We actually fell deeper with the pandemic, but actually has outpaced U.S. and the state in real GDP growth. And here the data is available, Albemarle County plus Charlottesville, not the MSA. It actually has that plus sign. That's exactly how it's reported by BEA. So that area has done well on a year-over-year basis. Looking at unemployment, Albemarle County's unemployment rate consistently is below the U.S. and Virginia, expanding, having a broader context

[02:02:47] here from 2000. We want to know where we've been. When you only do three to five years, it just gives us a distorted view of what our journey has been. So we want to have that wider view. You'll see the big wide bar was the 07-09 great financial crisis. Where you're looking at 2020, those two little small quarters, it's just a thin period for recession, but it was a deep, fast recession. We were falling deeper and faster in 2020 than we did in 07 and 09. So, and we've bounced back very well. Consistently lower unemployment in Albemarle. We're pulling

[02:03:27] narrow. We're getting closer to the state, but we're still consistently low. And looking at the regional area, so hourly wages is available for the MSA, Charlottesville MSA. Those are below U.S. and Virginia since 2013, since we have that local data, and it is turned down along with the state in this calendar year. So that's something we want to watch in terms of hourly wages.

[02:03:57] However, as you know from the report, hourly wages are strong regionally. Looking at income, per capita income, this is real, again, inflation-ingested per capita income. That's per person. So this is all of the income, personal income in the county divided by the number of people. This is a metric that we can use compared to the state and compared to the U.S. You can compare it from any locality to another state. So you can look at it from place to place. Now,

[02:04:32] this does not talk about the distribution of income within the county. This is just the aggregate measure per capita, per person, all aggregated together. But this is the measure to see the amount of personal income per person in Albemarle versus Virginia, the U.S. It is significantly above. We saw in 2022, inflation took a bite out of all income, Albemarle, Virginia, and U.S. Not as much out of Albemarle as it did the U.S. and Virginia in this chart. Now, These two back-to-back, we had a conversation today.

[02:05:12] I'll back up. Wages below U.S. and Virginia. Income above. A good portion of the income in Albemarle, this is also addressed in the report, is not related to wages. And you see that here.

[02:05:30] Fewer people are dependent on wages, salary and wages, in Albemarle than in the state or in the U.S. So that's what's showing here. Also, that's looking at housing. That's important to know what's going on in terms of our business activity, but also it's important to all local governments in Virginia.

[02:05:52] It's the primary on local revenue related to housing. Sales volume is down, has been down since spring of 2022, improved slightly a few months on a year ago basis this year. But the sales volume is down. It's not falling as fast as it did earlier, maybe a couple of years ago.

[02:06:13] But volume, just basically that volume, the growth in volume is down. It's slowing. However, home values, home values are still positive. With that significant reduction in sales over the last two years, we still see that home prices have continued to go up.

[02:06:37] They're not going up as fast as they were in 2022 and 2023. The bar is a little bit shorter, but they're still up. So we've had positive value. Prices have continued to go up, not as much as in the past.

[02:06:55] We do see a slowing and a normalizing. You'll see a lot of these charts show a lot of disruption during that pandemic. And I'm showing as far back as I can. I can fill in the chart of where we are. We're normalizing now. And we're beginning to look in general, not necessarily exact levels, a little bit more than how we did pre-pandemic.

[02:07:17] So we're working our way through this. We economists call it dislocation. That's the euphemism, you know, whiplash. We call it dislocation. So you'll see that that price, the value is still up, but it's not growing up as growing as fast. It's a slower rate now.

[02:07:37] Now, how does that compare? You know, so now it's all relative. I'm trying to say we're kind of still ahead of where we were pre-pandemic, but it feels like we're not growing as fast since we had this meteoric growth in 22 and 23, really, really strong growth.

[02:07:54] In terms of medium listing price, now, the home value data I showed includes, it's from the Federal Housing Finance Authority, it's the broadest measure of home values and includes new homes, existing homes, and refinance, refires.

[02:08:11] So we're not looking at it just existing homes in terms of prices. We're looking at new home sales, existing home sales, and refinancing. That's value, the home value. And the valuation is what we use in local government. in terms of, and that's available quarterly. So that's available through the second quarter.

[02:08:31] We will get the third quarter information in November. It comes out two months after the end of the quarter. So we have some more frequent data that's available, and that's the median listing price per square foot. So in Albemarle County, it is above, that median price per square foot is above U.S. and Virginia, but it has declined since the spring of 2024. So that's an early warning. We want to look at that third quarter data when it comes out in November and we want to watch that closely. That's the offering price. Well, you just can't get the same higher

[02:09:08] price in today's market than you could two years ago. I have a neighbor trying to do that. The house has been on the market, I don't know how long. And I'm like, they just got it priced too high. They're just trying too much for too much. If you price the house right, it will sell. But you have some sellers that are really trying to get the price appreciation that they saw other neighbors get two years ago.

[02:09:33] And so these median, these offering prices are having to soften. We're seeing some softening there. We're going to see what comes up out in the federal data for the third quarter, watching closely. In terms of your business activity, your gross receipts, that's overall in calendar year 2024.

[02:09:52] As of late September, you were, your gross receipts exceeded last year's total. This is on a calendar year basis. Still have three months to go, October, November, December. I still count months and weeks on my hand.

[02:10:07] So you still have three months to go. And as of late September, you had already exceeded your gross receipts for all of last year. This is the calendar year basis. Top four industries are the same as they've been in previous years. but retail flipped in terms of the top category of the top four. It bumped back up to the first spot in 2023 as compared to repair, personal, and business services, which was the top source of

[02:10:40] your gross receipts in 2022. So those two have flipped each of the last two years and the percentages flipped too. So watch that for some indication of what's going on in your business activity, but your top four categories account for 80% of the gross receipts. In terms of, this is a new element that we've been adding this year in conversations with Jacob and with Andy, and so we've brought in some commuting patterns data, and the latest available is for 2020 based on the American Community Survey 2016 to 2020. These are five-year averages from the census.

[02:11:20] We have granular information in terms of every locality to and from where your residents go to work and where they come from to work here. Net-net. So I'll start with the green bar. Green bar is the majority of your residents. This is based on residents, people who live in Albemarle County. The majority of your residents work in Albemarle County, about 52%. I'll also jump to

[02:11:56] the purple bar. I'll jump over. And then you have a number of residents, purple bar, that go elsewhere to work. That's the purple bar. The orange bar are people who live in other localities, sometimes even states, regions, who come into Albemarle to work. So net-net, on a daily basis, you have 6,500 net in-commuters. That's in-commuters versus the out-commuters. Now, this is borderline um according to the federal reserve they did a recent study just um a little while ago on the

[02:12:34] commuting patterns in the in their whole fifth district and albumall is classified technically as an intra-county um community because of most of your because of the number of people that live and work here 52 but their threshold is like 55 56 so you're right there right and so we have number of features of the employment center at 55, 56%, you would become an employment center based on the end commuters if your end commuters were higher. So you're right on the edge of being

[02:13:14] an employment center. I can testify personally this morning driving in that for the 8.30 meeting, this is an employment center and there are a lot of people commuting here for work. And so I do not feel as though I work out of the Richmond area, our Richmond campus, I do not feel as though I left one employment center for another. It all felt seamless to me at the hour I was driving.

[02:13:42] As many people coming into Richmond has been going out, and as many people coming this way, it was only a little short period where there was maybe not that many people heading this way. I feel as though it feels very much like an employment center, 6,500 daily net in commuters to Albemarle County. Overall, you have a solid economy. You have a history of solid economic and job growth, low unemployment, strong hourly wages regionally, high per capita personal income,

[02:14:17] and significant employment in relatively higher occupations and industries of your residents and strong local business activity. So you have a solid economy. And Outlook, we have found in previous reports in this one as well, that we tend to follow the U.S. and Virginia, sometimes at a different level, but we follow that trend.

[02:14:40] It's therefore prudent to expect a continued solid economy, slight economic cooling in late 24 to early 25, and moderate growth in 2025. We're approaching that soft landing. So we're gonna have a cooling labor market, but there are going to be persistent labor shortages due to demographics. By 2030, one in five persons in Virginia will be 65 or older. Same for the U.S. And the percentage of 65 and older

[02:15:14] is going to grow. In the U.S., by around 2030, 2035, we're going to have more folks 65 and older then we have 18 and under. So the feed corn is thin, okay? That means that we're going to have some real competition for that working age population, fierce competition. We also, there's some trends that we're seeing in Virginia as well, of those trends and where that population is shifting regionally in Virginia. So we're going to have some persistent labor shortages

[02:15:49] just based on demographics. That's just math. Also, continued inflation reduction, gradual with some bumpiness, lingering effects of that tight monetary policy. So we're going to expect some cooling consumer and business demand because the Fed still has the brakes on and drawing down their balance sheet while they're gradually easing rates. It's a gradual process.

[02:16:17] Mild growth and disposable income, especially the cooler labor market. We're expecting the continued normalization in the housing market. It's going to be competitive because we have a supply demand issue there. But as interest rates come down, then we're expecting to see some activity and then some increased competition, but normalizing from some big swings we had before. And then moderate business activity due to milder real consumer spending.

[02:16:45] We expect this to vary, these potential impacts to vary across sectors and timing. And so therefore we have to monitor circumstances closely and always look at local being very different or ahead of some trends. We see median listing price per square foot ahead in Albemarle County of the metropolitan area or the state. So we always want to keep our ear to the ground of what's going on here at home. Of course, these are my enduring recommendations. Those who tune into the Finance

[02:17:20] Network see these every month. We want to know what our strengths and weaknesses are and our vulnerabilities. Albumall does that. We want to know very clearly about our strategic goals. Albumall's staff speak to that every time I speak to them, what those strategic goals are. That's your rudder and you live it. It's not something in a document you live it. The long-term financial planning, we talked about your discipline and integrated planning at ICMA last month and robust scenario planning. That has been the platform that has really fostered some real

[02:17:57] strategic action on behalf of Albemarle. So you're really thinking ahead. Early warning systems, engage staff. Your staff are very engaged. I had a lot of questions from this morning. And then the adaptive decision-making and agility in action to respond to any trends that we see. So in conclusion, the economy is solid in Albemarle County. We have some areas we want to watch closely. We want to stay vigilant as we approach this soft landing with some expected bumpiness in various areas. And your proactive management make a difference. And I've

[02:18:35] already commended you on the AAA, which gives you the financial foundation, which is also capacity for strategic initiatives. That's strong and your action is strong. So with that, I will conclude the presentation and are open to any questions you may have. Thank you very much for the honor to be here today. Thank you. It was our privilege to have you speaking before us. And we'll go through our order of questions, if that's all right. Starting with the Supervisor Pruitt.

[02:19:07] Sure. When we compared the annualized real incomes versus the incomes from wages, I see it very easy to craft a story between those two graphs that might characterize Albemarle as having a wealthy population and also a weak working class, just given that we significantly underperform on real wages compared to Commonwealth peers and compared to the country.

[02:19:37] I would like to know if you think that is an unfair characterization or maybe an overextreme one. We all choose our words a certain way. So I don't disagree. And I think the additional information we have is from the American Community Survey. And we have income distribution

[02:20:05] in large segments. And we can see that from that, there is a greater portion in Albemarle, I think over 200,000 annual income as compared to the state and to the US. So the fact that we, I'm trying not to use the statistics, I'm a statistician. I got my degree in economics and statistics. So I have to always try to translate my head. We call it a skewed distribution with

[02:20:45] a long tail. And so you got a lot of observations in the upper end that are pulling that up. We can also see it, even though the census has, it really makes sure you have bundles so that you can't identify people. They never create a bundle so thin you can say, oh, I know who that is. That's John Marion Soup, right? So even though they keep it in large bands, we know that we have a number of

[02:21:17] high income households that pull that average up just from the statistics of mean, median, and mode. So when you have the mean a lot higher than the median, you know, there's a few large observations that is pulling that up. So that's a way of saying that the data supports that there are some there are some households that pull that average up very much for overall income um and just

[02:21:52] to clarify maybe anticipating some questions from my peers my understanding is that fred data and economics data generally normally uses medians to specifically correct for rightward skew on income distributions i assumed that the charts we were looking at were providing medians vice means for that reason i'm using i'm speaking when i said median versus mean there's a chart in the in the um community um factors that i'm speaking to that actually reports from census median and

[02:22:26] mean so so that's what has been identified yes so it only shows median it only it shows medium median if it is listed that way that's helpful um or just to illuminate more of where we're thinking, we also talked about how one of the primary drivers of economic growth is going to be consumer spending. And that accounts for a significant portion of economic growth when we look at the recovery. It is not the multiplication of the wealth reserves of our wealthiest members

[02:23:04] of the country that has in any way helped our economic recovery. It is the marginal growths of real wages for working class people. When I see indicators that we might have a struggling working class or an underperforming working class in Albemarle County, I worry not just for the normative implications of that on its face, but also for what that portends to our overall economy, because it is the ability of the working class to actually go out and spend money in our community.

[02:23:38] That is one of the big drivers of our economy, both locally and regionally. We talked about it kind of at the macro scale but um that i think can very easily be transported down to our local community and that's something that worries me a lot about albemarle county um we're a robust economy there's not much cause to be worried if i was going to be worried about something it would be about this um the the one other thing i would just talk about you highlighted toward the end um that you gave us kind of an oodle loop um of the the steps of recommendations of how how

[02:24:13] governments can kind of, uh, operate with this and engage. And it does end in, um, in agility and action. Um, I do just worry if that is maybe not a fair way to characterize what local government does agility and action. Um, I'm thinking we talked pretty extensively about, um, fed monetary policy and how this is affecting, you know, the implications of cost of capital and overall development. And I worry sometimes that both us and our peers, I think Charlottesville is even more on the hook for this, did not have the agility in action to catch the wind of the sails of when

[02:24:52] the cost of capital was in the toilet. We spent three years where you could get a loan for pennies on the dollar and that incentivized faster development, that incentivized more growth because everyone thought, if I can get just 1% return, I'm going to make a buck. That's why you had so much explosion of growth during the pandemic and also during the recession where we saw there was also cost of capital was in the toilet.

[02:25:17] We are just now implementing more modernized zoning and we have just implemented our inclusionary zoning policies, which capture some of that growth and deliver it toward more affordable housing. And we've implemented those while the brakes are on.

[02:25:35] This is frustrating. I worry that this creates a potential for like political finger pointing, right? oh you have an inclusionary zoning policy and that's why the brakes are on um i'm very much concerned about that for charlottesville having just implemented their really radical zoning uh reform that i don't think is going to see immediate change because of the cost of capital um but i do just mention all this i extemporized for too much and i apologize um to highlight that we do have an urgency in the decisions that come before us that i worry we don't always

[02:26:13] capture that wind and that sails of macroeconomic factors. And I would highlight this. I would highlight the period of really fast and easy capital that I don't think we seized in a way that we could have through these mechanisms.

[02:26:30] Thank you. Just one comment. It's tough. Yes, of course, please. It's tough. It's really tough when you see the interest rate low and you say, this is the time to hit the gas on these capital projects that we've had. And also when you can get bids that are really competitive and even more so, it's hard to make those investments when you're not sure about your future revenues on the operating side.

[02:26:59] That's a really gut-wrenching decision. During the great financial crisis, some localities shall remain nameless in Virginia. I will, we can talk about it offline, assumed it was going to be a two-year recession.

[02:27:17] And they hit the gas on their capital spending and projects. But then the revenues didn't come back for almost five to 10 years. And so then they had to go for tax increases to cover everything. So, you know, we all we have the relationship.

[02:27:34] We have the experience we had the last time. But that's a very hard call to go hard on the capital budget. I've done capital all my career, directed the state municipal bond bank and directed capital programs, large localities and the state. It's a hard, that's a hard call to go when you're uncertain about your revenue stream and your future operating revenues. It's just a very hard, I'll just say, I'm not saying it's the wrong call. It's just a hard one. It's a hard one.

[02:28:07] And when I was at Chesterfield, the deputy county administrator, we equivocated on a, on a building renovation. The bids were crazy good, but we just didn't feel comfortable making that decision. And so we came along later and we redesigned it. It was more, but you do the best decision you have with the information you have at the time and the outlook. It's a tough call. It's a very tough call because when that really, really cheap capital, you have a lot of

[02:28:44] uncertainty on the side. So those who do make that call and get those projects at a lower price point, they feel better about it down the road. But when you're making the call, it's a tough call. Thank you. Supervisor Calloway. Well, we learned that lesson because while I hear your point about not hitting the accelerator, you don't also jam on the brakes. We jammed on the brakes and And RCIP is still trying to recover from those decisions.

[02:29:20] So point taken and understood, but, you know, you're always going to have to provide education. You're always going to have to provide services and you need the buildings to be able to do it. And our school division just got a report last week about their capacity issues. And we've got two new elementary schools and a center coming online, and we're not even close to handling the capacity issues.

[02:29:41] I better not. I better stop on that topic. Building on Supervisor Pruitt's point, which I agree with, you know, we have, it's mentioned in the report, we have a declining poverty rate. But when you think of increased home prices, increased rent, and wages dropping, it's not because we're raising the ships.

[02:30:01] We're not bringing all ships up. Those folks left. Our poverty rates probably drop. I don't know. Is that an incorrect inference to make? Is that an incorrect inference? So these folks can't live here anymore, so they have to go somewhere else. and then that maybe helps our in commuter rate because maybe they're coming back here for a lower wage maybe the wages i don't know where the wages would be compared to where they're living at and that's not something just albemar is dealing with i think nelson county is dealing with that now green louisa etc and louisa is getting an influx of northern virginia folks moving in so regionally this is kind of a probable well i don't know maybe it's a similar story i

[02:30:38] don't i don't know the counties as well as you do um so that's concerning you know it's becoming more especially when we have an affordable housing crisis if it's not fixed then we just give them more reason that they have to leave um the median home price you mentioned was somewhere was 574 515 and it was in the commentary of some normalization well the new norm some drastically increased new normal um so when we when i see phrases like normal it's getting back to some

[02:31:13] normalization well if we're in the high 500s compared to where we were eight years ago with median home price if the new norm that's too like i'm what i think 200 grand higher than where we were back then i mean i don't i'm working off memory so maybe it's not that extreme but but it's like gas right it's like oh well three dollars we're all thrilled about three dollars well that's the new normal we used to freak out when it hit three bucks not too long ago. Slower inflation is not deflation. Right. And and we had this conversation last year when

[02:31:46] there's great wealth here. And that's fine. I'm not judging that. But the folks at the other end of the spectrum are there. I don't I'm not hearing anything that's improved their situation from the last two years of reports based on that bottom. It seems to be going in the opposite direction for them the the gap seems to be getting wider meanwhile rent's going up uh housing prices are going up wages are going up now they have to travel further and you mentioned that which was

[02:32:21] interesting to me the credit card and the auto loan delinquency and i always wondered where a lot of cash came in from arpa or from during the pandemic that the government to stimulus and a lot of that went to car loans so all of a sudden people had three or four thousand dollars to be able to, which is what they needed to get the loan because of a, you know, a poorest credit situation. And now they're in loans where 22, 25% interest rates where all, you know, they can't make the payment. Meanwhile, the rent's going up and the wages are dropping. Um, so that was kind

[02:33:00] of concerning. Is that credit card and auto? Cause I think that was a federal in the reading of that That's right. Federal Reserve. It was a federal number, though. Do you see the same type of personal credit card balance and auto loan delinquencies happening in Virginia and the locality? We don't have it to that level published. The banks have it, but we don't have it.

[02:33:24] Certainly, lower income households have been having it tough for a while. The high inflation pinched them more. One thing that kind of kept them going for a while was the red hot job market.

[02:33:40] and there were a lot of job changes. So the quits were high and individuals were exercising the economic power and they were shifting to jobs that paid more. So that's why we find some other industries having a hard time getting that labor because they shifted to other industries that paid more. So the red hot job market helped a lot of households. We're now normalizing. So we don't have that red hot. It's more to the level that we had before the pandemic in terms of job growth.

[02:34:18] And wage growth is still a tad above. But the key point is, as you mentioned, slower inflation is not deflation. So all these households are dealing with price points that are elevated for everything. And the wage growth they were able to grab out of by shifting jobs or just through the wage growth that was coming, that has now settled down. And so they're pinched and they have been pinched for a while. And so the lower income households have been pinched for a while.

[02:34:56] They feel it first. A lot of our consumer spending is driven by the higher income households. But correct, the lower income households spend. They spend what they get because they have to to make it. Where higher income households can say, oh, we'll save. Maybe we won't spend. They're not pushed but money in the hands of lower income households get spent because they need it they need it the key concern is those consumer loans how they have used that to balance their budgets um and that's why we're thinking the cooling is going to take place in terms of consumer spending they're pinched and the student loans aren't even in there yet they're not going to be reported

[02:35:35] until the end of this year um this is just a detailed question well i'll say i actually could maybe do these in email because some of these were just like little lines in there i was like what does that mean? But in the interest of time, I go, we'll get into all those.

[02:35:54] Do you, well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, if I read something four times and don't get it, it's time to ask you, Dr. Bailey. Must have said it. Educating. Inventory investment, the decrease in inventory investment was one of them, but we don't have to get into that. That's going to ebb and flow. So inventory investment. Remember the port strike? Well, A lot of the retail, they bulked up on inventory, knowing that the strike was coming because the port workers and the ports did not agree in June.

[02:36:33] So at that time, they started bulking up inventory. So that kind of impacted our numbers. Yeah, it skewed our numbers. So we got some good private inventory investment in the second quarter GDP. Third quarter, we expect some correction there.

[02:36:52] So I'll ask the next question, because that kind of leads into that pretty well, because they were prepping for a situation that didn't necessarily transpire. Yeah. But if you had a bridge collapse in Baltimore that happened closer to two major hurricanes coming through on the eastern coast, the Baltimore thing didn't realize because there were other ports that they could get to along the eastern seaboard.

[02:37:11] So it really didn't. And there wasn't, aside from sugar, I think, was the big thing in Baltimore that tries to get out. But when you think of these, like the two things that seem to be missing when you're thinking of economic outlook, and maybe they just don't rise to the level of impacting it over a year.

[02:37:28] But I mean, to have two major, major hurricane events on the eastern seaboard and a port struggle, potentially, maybe the strike does go into effect. Like, how do you how do you get your head? You know, the pandemic kind of caught us all and we had to deal with that.

[02:37:44] But these are going to become more and more of a reality. And, you know, God bless the counties in North Carolina that are just, it's going to take them forever to recover. Yes, yes, yes. But when you're thinking of your economic outlook and prepping for that and how to, we have contingency funds, we have emergency funding and things like that.

[02:38:07] But I didn't see that kind of discussed. You talk about geopolitical things and bigger world kind of pictures, but I'm not asking this very well. But to take these major events, which we think is going to get more significant thousand-year floods, in addition to things that we can't think of, like a bridge, a ship hitting a bridge, like how does that factor into y'all's analysis when you're doing these type of reports?

[02:38:33] Severe weather events are increasing. I would just say very generally, what we find is that the severe weather event hits in one place, it really affects it deeply and can have significant long-term impact, significant long-term impact to that locality.

[02:38:55] but in terms of port activity, it'll shift to another port. So now if we get enough of those, then it will begin to bubble up and hit those national statistics. So blessedly, Virginia was not hit by one of those events to that degree. That would have created a much bigger asterisk for the Virginia outlook. From the U.S. side, it wasn't large enough and to the extent enough

[02:39:34] that we would see it bubble up to the point that of the national statistics in terms of the numbers yet but we do have to watch that and as they increase we had the fire chief here not at our last meeting and started to ponder the idea of as a county we have contingency funding we have emergency funding we have those things in place but to the extent that we're seeing some things having dealt with a fire and a drought and now some weather that we didn't even get the brunt of of putting aside some sort of in a budget beyond your contingency funding or department budgets

[02:40:08] and your safety like fire etc you know an emergency fund to try to think of those even bigger picture type items do you think that you know in your list of all the things we do well is that something that places are doing that would be a good best practice i think you have a good portion of that in your long-term financial planning now.

[02:40:28] The extent, in terms of financial resiliency, we not only look to plan for the things we can see, we also want to plan for things we can't see. And so we want to expect the unexpected, everything that we can identify, but also things we cannot identify.

[02:40:45] And so your fund balance policies, and that fund balance policy, your financial policies, Your capital reserves, policies, how you designate those, what do you have in terms of for some latitude for not only what you can see, but also you cannot see.

[02:41:10] So, yes, from a financial resiliency standpoint, yes, we want to plan for everything we can see. But we also want to plan for things that we cannot see, expect the unexpected, yet to be determined what it's going to be. As you know, we have an A team. We have a triple AAA team, and we proved it in the pandemic with the way this team literally pivoted almost towards the end of a budget.

[02:41:34] And we did not count on receiving any sort of aid because we didn't know. And that's all credit to Mr. Richardson and the entire staff and team that did that. Because you had the bandwidth to do that.

[02:41:49] So you had made provisions for the unexpected and your ability to make that move. Yes. And they equally pivoted because they pumped the brakes really hard, even on a lot of things. But we're able to, as soon as we knew some aid was coming in, then, yeah, just work the way through it.

[02:42:07] So, I mean, just well done on that. I'm not going to go through all of this stuff because it's, I'm going to take it. Please send me an email and we can set up a call. I love that you said something that I always said in the car business. If you price it right, it will sell.

[02:42:23] So, I was like, oh, look at that. The economist has just told us that if you price it right, it will sell. I guess some of this other stuff I'll follow up with the team or even you direct ask some questions, but I'd love to know if you'd even be willing to share one.

[02:42:41] You did share a little bit one because you said you discussed it today. I'd love to know what some of the toughest questions our staff asked you and what those answers were at some point. If the team would be willing to share some of those with us, that'd be great. So I'm not asking for that here.

[02:42:56] Well, they wanted to dissect that commuting path by locality, by zip code. They wanted to go through that by zip code, so I was pulling up charts, and so we realized that we had to get ready to come here, so we decided that we were going to follow up on that later. And that's clear. I mean, when you go, some places you go to, and you're like, oh, the traffic's going in one direction in the morning, and it's all going in a different direction in the evening.

[02:43:17] That's why we have both directions all day long, or pretty much seems like all day long. But as always, I appreciate and look forward to this report and a lot in here. I'm just, I'm thrilled that this is the, I think, of the first of the three years you haven't been talking about recession.

[02:43:36] So with no judgment to you, I was more, I was happier to hear that that wasn't part of your assessment today. Even though there are, it's not exactly clean sailing, but you use soft landings. I guess that's an airline metaphor. There's turbulence, but we're going to get the airplane down.

[02:43:54] Thank you. Thank you. We may bounce, but we're going to get there. Thank you. Supervisor Lupito Curley. Thank you very much. I loved your report. There are many questions I could bring up, but I'm just going to bring up a couple that we touched on here. You mentioned you kept using the term hard on capital. I'm sorry. You know, when we were discussing where our monies and everything should go, you know, once it's hard on capital, that term, what do you think we should, I mean, Are we in the right direction?

[02:44:32] What do you think we should be doing? Certainly. I said it's a hard decision. I think I said it's capital decisions are hard decisions. What I feel very strongly about is your integrated planning systems. And we actually presented that to ICMA.

[02:44:50] You don't have your planning in silos. You don't do the strategic planning separate from your long-term planning, separate from your budget planning. You have it fully integrated. And I find that to be a very robust process. And what that does, it helps us decide if we invest in this capital today, which has operating expenses ongoing once we put it into place, do we have the capacity to service

[02:45:23] that new facility or asset adequately with everything else we have planning? And so we lay that out for five to 20 years, and we see where our pinch points are. And then we adjust here, we shift here, we shift there, we shift that.

[02:45:42] So with that long-term planning with all obligations on the table, and that's the robust, full, full long-term financial planning, and we'll see how we can have the strategic initiatives, how they lay in. We see how capital and the key aspect about capital is all the operating obligations going forward.

[02:46:05] You know, you open a fire station, it's about a million dollars opening bid on on on staffing. Plus, you've got to get the trucks in there, a million each opening bid. Right. And so can we manage that? Can we staff it? Are we going to have them that fire truck staff with the recommended amount of staff?

[02:46:26] How is that going to impact our response times in the region? All of that is laid out. And we kind of say, well, maybe we'll shift this here, shift that there. And so that planning, I really strongly believe in that and know that it gives you options for that agility in action.

[02:46:48] It gives you a menu of options of response. So one of my favorite quotes is from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, not president, General. His quote says, in battle, I've always found plans useless and planning indispensable.

[02:47:10] It's the planning that gives you all the value, not just whether you had a clairvoyant, perfectly conceived plan. So I believe in that process and how you see you can make it all work with all your strategic initiatives, your capital, your operating, all your contracts, all your future obligations, all that together.

[02:47:30] And from your report, it sounds like that's what we're doing. Yes, ma'am. I like that. The other thing is expect the unexpected. That with climate change and everything, I mean, that concerns me very much. And it makes me want to be maybe a little more hesitant with going off and, well, spending everything in a lot of different directions because we don't know what's coming.

[02:47:56] I mean, that's always been frightening for me. We don't know what's coming, what's going to happen. Maybe it'll be a rosy future. Maybe it won't be so rosy. It doesn't look that good, frankly. But I expect the unexpected. That tells me we need to make sure that we plan for that, that we, I guess, save more.

[02:48:18] That would be an individual. Well, we look at the policies, your financial policies. We don't want to save too much. It's goldilights. Not too much, not too little, just right. And so because you don't want to forego opportunities for community advancement by holding on the money too much, but also you don't want to have too little.

[02:48:37] I think the response that you mentioned in the pandemic indicated you had it right then, that you could make some adjustments and keep things going until you have more information. So the team demonstrated itself in your planning.

[02:48:55] So the designations, the assignments within your reserves help you some. Right. I think our during the pandemic, our three, three, six month planning process was extraordinary. Last thing I just wanted to bring up, because it's the income, income, income, the income, income gap.

[02:49:18] How different are we from the rest of the nation, the rest of the state, the rest of the nation? Because I've been hearing about this and it's true. I mean, it is true. There is an income gap. Everyone's saying, you know, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poor. That bothers me.

[02:49:37] What is the solution? Well, that's a trend. I just read a study that is just not in America. It's a lot of the mature economies are having that. We have, and I'm going to lay some of this at the seat of my fellow economist.

[02:50:02] and some of them, some of whom may be watching right now. But anyway, I think that economists focus on total maximum growth and they don't focus on who gets and who doesn't get. And as the grandchild of a grandfather who was displaced by structural change in the economy and had to get on the road to support his family and send his kids to college, my dad was a younger, the younger

[02:50:37] son. And I can just really tell that Daddy Bailey was on the road. He had to leave the home of Norfolk to get income. He was displaced by structural change. Industry that he trained in had a postgraduate degree in, it changed. So I feel structural change in terms of families in industries when we shift industries across regions or across countries. Economists don't

[02:51:13] measure that, and to the fullest degree that I would like to think. However, good news is that the Nobel laureates for economics this year were awarded the Nobel Prize, that team, for the analysis of how social structures and systems contribute to inequality. So I am very, very happy that we're getting more focus on that and study on that. And that that was has been elevated as a primary area of study. We need to do more of that globally, also nationally, regionally and

[02:51:51] statewide. And there's very, it's very difficult for individual localities and families to respond to structural change by themselves. And we don't like leaving people or communities behind. I don't.

[02:52:09] I know, I just wish, I wish it was an easy answer, but I don't think there is. And I don't know how it's going to, I think we need to put more emphasis on it. I'm very, I'm very encouraged by the Nobel Prize for economics to speak about inequality and what the, what the systems are that contribute to that.

[02:52:30] I think we need to study it more. We need to elevate it more and regard it as something as policy and not an individual household or individual community issue. I like that. I would be very interested in knowing more about that. Thank you.

[02:52:47] Supervisor Malek. Thank you again for making my brain explode. I prepared, but I've still learned so much from these. So a couple of things. The chronic underutilization of labor, the hidden workers, has been something that I've been aware of working on the workforce side here.

[02:53:05] And so are there barriers that are involved in this, and are they considered in these statistics such as lack of child care, lack of transportation, the skills needed to do the new job, those kinds of things. I mean, how does that all work together? The statistics just report it.

[02:53:25] Okay. It doesn't, and you've identified all the, many of those factors that contribute to it, yes, but they, you know, it's just the facts, ma'am, in terms of reporting it. I like to include it in all of my presentations. So we don't ignore the full range of measures of labor under utilization, which don't get the headline. Only the snapshot, the four-week snapshot, gets the headline. So I

[02:54:00] maintain this so we can be aware that those individuals are there, and particularly they've expressed their desire to work. Well, it is that 2% that Albano County had for so many years for unemployment, I knew there was more to the story. I just didn't know quite where to look. So that's interesting. In your data or story, you had talked about the wage situation here and the gaps, the two comma families is what I would call them. There are nine or a dozen families who in the end

[02:54:37] of 2017, with the tax changes federally, sold monstrous amounts of their portfolios. And there was this huge bump in income in Amarillo County, which changed our local composite index dramatically. So I understand there is a pod of people, of families at one end of the scale, and they really have, but I think they do skew the whole measure because there are lots and lots of people in Amarillo County and certainly 30%, I think, in the district I represent who are way below the middle and hanging on by their fingernails and often have lived here for 70 years.

[02:55:16] And it is, the economy has left so many people behind. And that's a real, real concern about how we are going to be able to help in that circumstance. I just don't have an answer to that either. But it is the preparation that we're all trying to do and trying to improve the job skills and opportunities of so many different people who may have been left behind in third grade and never got the skills they needed.

[02:55:42] And now they're 45. And, you know, my former colleagues on the state workforce board would complain about the expense of providing job training to this cohort. And I said, well, it would have been better if they hadn't been left behind in third grade. And we cannot be proud of people working very, very, very low wage jobs in order to survive. Those aren't statistics we should be proud of. We had a big argument a number of years ago about leaving the term family sustaining wages in the vision for the State Department of Labor. I think that's why I got fired off the

[02:56:18] board but anyway it was fine because we won but uh it is it is somewhat and i was shocked by your fact of the median house value here i mean it's almost double what it was in 2010 so or maybe more than double so those uh those are all things that those higher end observations are pulling it up yes have contributed to my brain exposure the population change by locality this graph here really caught my eye because for at least 20 years, we've been below 2% in population growth, which doesn't sound like a lot, except that back in 2010, it was 15,000 people every 10 years.

[02:56:58] And all of a sudden you went, oh, where'd all these people come from? Well, it's been 10 years and they're all here. And now we're pushing 4%. So when we think about what's going on with traffic, you know, this is a dramatic change based on the changes of opportunity in the post-COVID, during COVID and post-COVID employment.

[02:57:18] And I think it's really going to be something we have to consider when we're doing our AC44 planning, too, is that it's not the same. You know, having all these office spaces is not the same now as it was five years ago. But thank you very much. Yes, the population is shifting across regions in Virginia, and some of it is in response to housing affordability, as you mentioned.

[02:57:41] And a number of them are leaving Northern Virginia, coming to the other metro areas in Virginia, but also leaving the state out of Northern Virginia, going to South Atlantic. They're passing us. And not because they can't afford Northern Virginia. They're taking their wealth into places that are not wealthy places.

[02:58:02] Supervisor McHugh. And we are really running long in the tooth because we just love your presentations. We're going to have to figure out a way to schedule you for a little bit longer next time. And if you want me, yes, ma'am. I'm going to really try and keep it very brief.

[02:58:19] And I will take this opportunity to say, I would love for staff to provide us with sort of a Q&A that, because I know they've asked you some questions and I would love to be able to read or the questions that they've asked you and some of your responses would probably be very informative for us.

[02:58:40] Just a couple of things. You're talking about how part of our strength is that we work across departments and that we for our strategic planning and our capital planning and and i would say yes and part of our strength i think is that we do that with our school system we don't leave the school system out because they in fact have a lot more buildings and facilities than we have when we're talking capital right so that that's just a really critical part yes um yes and resiliency redundancy

[02:59:16] is really critical. And just, we've talked a lot about climate change. Given some of what we're seeing happening in other communities, we couldn't save or put aside enough money to get us out of some of these crises that we're seeing. And I guess I'm going to, part of what we need to do in this community is not only think about how financially we're planning, but how we're changing our ordinances and our way of doing business to deal with what may be coming down the road.

[02:59:50] And I think we have some department heads that are looking at that right now. You know, hardscaping against fires and doing some of that work. It does make a difference. Some of those reports are coming out of North Carolina and other communities. Those who were more resilient and those who were not.

[03:00:08] Yeah, right. And I could go on and on, and I'm not going to. I'm just going to simply stop and say, thank you very much. This was very informative, and I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, and a lot of the time I am going to hold off on questions and look to staff.

[03:00:24] I've got things highlighted, written all over the place. I had already had commuting up on my search to look through all the documents, so I'm grateful that there have been discussions about that. I'm very grateful for your presentation, for your ability to do your handling of the questions. I think that there have been some excellent questions, and I've learned a lot from this discussion and just want to at this point thank you for coming and look forward to the next time thank you so much well this is i i clicked that accidentally but i guess that's where we are thank you so much and andy you can hold everything thank you thank you it's an honor and a pleasure

[03:00:57] thank you so much and have a safe trip back thank you and with that uh board i want to just look to the county executive just for a moment here we are 30 plus minutes behind we had scheduled two hours for ac 44 which would take us to 6 p.m but um we scheduled a 15 minute break at this point um and i know 6 p.m we're looking at you know matters from the public but uh i guess we take the 15 minute break and see where we end up yes sir it would be the board that that's certainly

[03:01:31] up to the board and then you know my presentation i can move around they'll move that to suit the board given time constraints and i'm happy to just remain flexible on that if that helps okay right well we will take a 15 minute break at this point and then come back and work on ac44 thank you not sure what okay what is going on getting back started again serious i apologize for the delay

[03:02:05] yeah we are well over our 15 minutes so i'm hoping that we can get started okay well we can start and our next item appreciate the patience show but our next item is the work session on ac44 community vision and growth management policy led by miss tanya

[03:02:42] Schwartzen-Druber, and the planning manager, Mr. Michael Barnes. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Apologize for the delays and look forward to the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so very much for having us. I'll get this presentation up on the screen here.

[03:02:59] Of course. We're running a little bit behind ourselves. Okay. Well, this is a lot of going downstairs.

[03:03:22] Is it possible that we don't even know? It's a surprise. And I came in and said, wait, where is it? I'm not crazy about it.

[03:03:31] You need to break your desk.

[03:04:18] Okay. Go ahead. So we're going to start the presentation from up to the first portion of it. And then Tanya will do the second half of it. And obviously, once we get the presentation materials straight, we'll work from this machine over here.

[03:04:33] But we'll start right now. First of all, very excited about starting the AC44 Comments of Plan discussion with you all to kick off a whole series of work sessions that we'll be having. purpose of today is to sort of warrant you all to the structure of the document, and I'll be starting off with that, and then talk a little bit about the growth management policy, a concept for development areas utilization review. Those things will both be in the second part of the document, and then we're going to give you a preview of one of the topic chapters in the third part of the document, which is the development area land use tools, and part of the reason we're bringing that

[03:05:13] to you is because those tools are being taken out currently to public groups in the community, and we want to make sure that you are aware of that, have some context before we come back to you on November 6th to talk to you in depth about them. And finally, we're going to talk about upcoming steps with you all, meetings we'll be having. So finally, we'll be going to be asking you two questions at the end of the presentation today. So we'll give them here to you now so you can think about them. The first one is, does the draft growth management policy meet the needs of the county? And the second one is, are the draft factors for monitoring the utilization of the

[03:05:53] development area appropriate? Again, we'll talk to those at the end of the presentation. So the document structure itself is going to have four major sections. The first part, it'll be an introduction. It'll talk a lot about, it'll provide some context, major trends the county's facing and what the community's vision is for tackling those trends and issues, and it will also include what you've seen before, the four guiding principles of the document, and the lens

[03:06:25] of looking for those of equity and climate change. The second part of the document, second section of the document, is really a lot of stuff we're going to talk about today, and that is a statement of the growth management policy, making sure that's clear and succinct for the county. This idea of this development area utilization review. How are we using the development area? We should be looking at that, especially in regards to any changes that we might have with the development area boundary. And then the final section, which we will not be bringing to you today, but it will be something that we'll end up when we end up going through all of these topic chapters. And

[03:07:04] that's just sort of like idea of being able to see the forest for the trees. We want to make sure we're going to these 10 topic chapters, and we'll talk about this more in a second. But the reader shouldn't have to read all 10 chapters to sort of understand what is it to county is trying to do. And so having this application of the development area and rural area or how the management policy, growth management policy applies itself in the development areas and rural areas across the 10 chapters will be a section that we will find when we bring you the last draft of this document later this year or next year, actually. The third portion of the

[03:07:44] document is these topic chapter areas. It'll be 10 topic chapters, and they will really, that's really the meat of the plan, if you will. These topic chapters will sort of have, from a structural standpoint, two halves. The first half will be a narrative that broadly describes what the challenges are from that topic area and how the county is broadly going to address those. And then there will be sort of identification and description of specific sets of solutions to those challenges. And the purpose of the table here is to sort of show you that the first half

[03:08:22] will sort of start to describe the goal statement and then the objections of the objectives and actions that will be tying those together. The fourth section of the document is really an appendix section, and it's a place we're going to put specific policies and plans. Our intent is for the reader to be able to go through these topic chapters. And if they encounter something like Project Enable, it will talk about some of the major highlights of what Project Enable is and what it's trying to get at. But there'll be a hyperlink to an appendix section so that you can find the document and really get down to the weed for the document if you need to find

[03:09:02] more about that. The other thing I wanted to do today is sort of like talk about if the document It had sort of a structure previously, and it's taken several months of internal work to come up with a revised structure.

[03:09:20] I sort of want to try and provide a crosswalk between where it was and where it is today. The previous one on the left side, there were three major sections. There was an introduction, there were eight topic chapter areas, and finally there was an appendix.

[03:09:38] The new one is going to have these four sections of the introduction, the growth management policy, and 10 topic area chapters. And so the real change here is putting the growth management policy front and center and giving its own things.

[03:09:53] It's a master policy that really governs everything that we sort of do in the community. So it's important to really put that up front and center. And then for the topic chapters, you'll see that the first two, the previous version, was a rural area, land use, and transportation.

[03:10:10] The second was a development area, land use, and transportation. That's being split. If you look over on the left-hand side, the rural area and development land use will be their own chapters. And then we're going to have a transportation chapter. We've also made some small tweaks, some of them as small as title changes.

[03:10:27] If you see the number one was economic development previously, now it's going to be called thriving economy. parks and recs is becoming parks rec and open space but we do have a tenth one in there which is resilient community and that's a lot of things of how we're tackling climate change i think as a general principle we're going to try and and deal with in these topic areas policies that are mostly germane to that topic area and really try to speak to them only in that topic area obviously policies sometimes touch across multiple different topic areas but to the extent we can compartmentalize stuff and to try and sort of deal with something like land use and

[03:11:07] transportation are closely linked but the need to sort of split them off and put them separately so they can sort of really dealt with as individual issues what we're trying to drive there and the resilient community one is to sort of act at the end in case we've forgotten something that's related to climate change that we can sweep up and put into that last chapter so that's the basic structure of the document and broadly speaking our upcoming schedule for the working with you all in the planning commission is that through now and into april we'll be going to the board and the pc with work sessions on these 10 topic chapters we'll be rolling those out and trying to

[03:11:47] get them to you as early as possible probably in advance of what you normally would receive packets of information in an effort to make sure that you have time to read and sort of digest sort of sip of this stuff uh and and be able to sort of help us with becomes of these work sessions um we hope to be wrapping that up uh in april we're still working on the the schedule and part of that is predicated on making sure you'll have plenty of time with your with your budget work session so we recognize the conflict there so we're still massaging that but the aspiration is it will be finished the topic chapters um by april and that we'll come back with the full set

[03:12:26] all three of these sections of the plan as a final rough draft for you. We'll go back through that, and then we're aiming for a public hearing with the Planning Commission and the board in July. Also, I wanted to touch on my last little part here on the public engagement.

[03:12:47] Obviously, we've been working with the AC44 Working Group Citizens Committee that has been a different group of citizens in each phase. Now we're in our third phase. We're working with a different set of citizens. And there'll be folks we can sort of use as a sounding board and sort of take ideas out to.

[03:13:03] We're also trying to reach out to the broader community. We have an all-CAC joint meeting scheduled for October. And then we'll be, as we start rolling out chapters, we're going to be coming and having community check-ins, sort of open houses, if you will, here at the building, where people can come in and find out a little bit more about individual chapters and sort of give input to what they're seeing in those chapters.

[03:13:33] And finally, when we get to that last part of we've sort of gone through the 10 topic chapters and we've sort of written a draft, you know, final draft for the document, we're going to have a series of open houses to allow the public to sort of see what's in the draft and ask questions and to learn more about what's going on before we bring it to you all for another run and review and make sure that we got everything right in the document.

[03:14:00] And finally, of course, there'll be a public hearing. So that is our engagement strategy. I would also note that we have updated the website with these, our Engage Albemarle website with these dates, and we're finalizing a public engagement plan with our consultant, EPR, that we will be bringing to both you all and the Planning Commission shortly.

[03:14:25] I don't know if you have any questions with that. be happy to answer anything real quick before we go to the order bi-monthly i i look it up and it says it could either mean twice a month or every other month which it means every other month okay okay uh we'll go through our order uh supervisor i don't believe i have questions at this juncture a lot of a lot of this seems like it is playing into what we previously discussed when we last had

[03:14:59] basically the plan to right-size the um the comprehensive plan come before the board so until we get into the section that we're looking at today i'm not sure i have questions or comments on this that i didn't have that um so i'm just what am i reacting to right now yes just what we just the upcoming schedule the structure structure the document as opposed to the particulars of the development uh growth management problems all right i think i'll just use this opportunity to set you made the point and i understand the point don't disagree with the

[03:15:35] point that you should not have to read the whole document in order to be able to understand to get some of the big picture items but to approve the document i'm going to need all of that so i don't want it i don't want anybody getting upset with this board member that when i finally have a complete draft that to me i finally have what i need to work on the comprehensive plan i get why we do it this way and others are better suited it seems to be able to do this it's very iterative it's very disjointed but i don't want anybody getting unhappy if it seems like you guys are pulling into the parking lot for the final time and i said let's go back out for a run

[03:16:15] um so i'm just going to use this opportunity to say that because i can deal with each chapter individually but until i see all 10 and i see a growth management policy listed i'd be able to draw the through lines that's when to me that's like okay i've got a working document now to really dig into so i'm just throwing that out that if i'm in the minority they're fine and i'll adapt but that's where i don't want any miss whatever the right misconception i don't know misunderstanding if we get to that point and i don't want staff getting unhappy with me no

[03:16:48] duly noted thank you supervisor lupisto kirtle i have no questions at this time thank you just one comment that your 10 chapters i understand that you want each one to stand alone and talk about its own thing but philosophically all 10 of them make up our quality of life and so they live together in the same bucket and we will get there eventually but i agree with ned we're going to have to keep stirring the pot until we get it just right and i am very happy as one person to have extra meetings to make sure we do this right because

[03:17:24] in 2015 we had a whole year every month we had an extra meeting that was only on the comp plan and made it survivable so please think about that as you go forward thank you thank you supervisor mckell i don't have any i agree with what's been said because i think at some point we're going to all want to see the totality but i do like what we're doing and trying to make it simpler and more readable i think oh that's great having said that i do have one quick question open houses for a complete comprehensive plan draft minimum of three held at various times

[03:17:58] I know it gets complicated, but I have a lot of my, a portion of my community that doesn't come down here and they probably won't come down here for various reasons, right? Will we be having some of these in various locations as well as various times? That's what I'm asking. And I know that gets complicated and I apologize. And you can just think about that, right? All right. Thank you very much thank you um i did ask that question bi-monthly because i'm looking at this beginning in december open to the public if you got december then the next month would not be so it'd be

[03:18:38] february and then april and then we're there we're done uh so i'm i'm i'm worried whether our public engagement still isn't quite robust enough um and would like to see more uh i know this originally said beginning bi-monthly in october and of course we're in october and we're getting near the end of october so um all of this is fluid but i but i would like to see additional uh in addition i know you know we're looking just at the at the sort of chapter headings and and and a four guiding principles with lens of equity and climate change was definitely in here

[03:19:13] right from the beginning i appreciate that um then when you mentioned resilient community i heard the words resilient community because that addresses climate change and i do think that there are two aspects to climate change one is resilience and the other is recognizing our responsibility for our emissions and so i don't want to see that get lost in resilient community yeah and i think so fair enough and a lot of what we do to deal with uh environmental impacts will probably end up in a couple of different spots whether it's how we're trying to uh deal with land use and

[03:19:49] transportation or direct environmental impacts to aquatic terrestrial resources yeah we'll try and deal with those in that obviously equity and climate change sort of touching a lot of these different chapters in different places even what we're doing with our public buildings etc so excellent and so what i would hope is that we would see equity and climate change repair throughout the document so uh that sounds great yes this would probably be the best time to mention this as well i know many if not all the supervisors listen to the planning commission meeting on this topic i would endorse chairman missal's request for a feedback loop for both

[03:20:27] when the planning commission i know we'll probably get into some of that today but having it before today moving forward especially as we get into the chapters i think would be helpful and that's what i was hearing their request of you the same thing us our feedback getting back to them um i'm sure we'll still listen to the videos but it's nice when you're having a conversation having the summary of the feedback there to be able to work through those meetings as well yes sir thank you i guess i'll add that i very much appreciate that we received in our emails today sort of a draft of what's coming but of course it was a draft of what's coming based on what's in the draft right

[03:21:05] now that we're only now reviewing so it's likely to change in significant respects if you get feedback from us today to ask for additions. So, supervising a piece together. Yes, regarding the open houses, would it be possible, just a suggestion, that maybe the open houses could be held with the CACs and then invite the public, and so therefore you're involving the CAC, but you're also inviting the public to come for an open house and maybe extend the hours or something, Because I know the previous open houses, VDOT has done those.

[03:21:42] They've had them from like three to six and people could walk in. But, you know, might be good to just have it. That's the CAC meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[03:21:59] We're all set. Not yet. We'll just go ahead and keep going then. Looks like they might be fixing the DAIS computer there. So give me a moment here. Good afternoon. We're having trouble hearing you.

[03:22:14] I'm sorry. Okay, I can do that. Good afternoon. I'm Tanya Swartz-Jerber with the Community Development Department here on behalf of the AC44 staff team to review a few key concepts of the comp plan or what we're calling AC44. I'll run through this afternoon's presentation. Please louder.

[03:22:37] Really? Okay. Thank you. Maybe the mic. Maybe it's not pointed at the right place. Never been told I'm too quiet before. So I'll review a few key concepts for the comp plan and run through to today's presentation and take questions along the way. So please feel free to interrupt.

[03:23:01] Let's start with what you have in your packet, which is attachment A, and is also called the AC44 outline. We're using this as a tool to give you an idea of how the pieces that Michael mentioned fit together and also alert you to upcoming work sessions. So what we're doing with the red box is alerting you to the subject of the current work session. The orange text will be

[03:23:33] upcoming work sessions. And then any dates that we've discussed this topic in a similar way, we've listed in blue. The attachment B that you have is, at least for part two, is where we're listing the draft text that will show up in the document. You did receive the draft development area land use chapter, which is part three earlier today in your email,

[03:24:08] and going forward, we'll continue to send those PDFs to you. The last attachment that you have, again, sorry, on attachment B, the text that is highlighted or boxed in red is the current text for the current work session that we'll be talking about today. The last attachment that you have is attachment C, which is the preview of the land use tools that we'll go through in a moment.

[03:24:43] We did make a few changes to this presentation since you received it last week. Mostly the PC feedback was was added um what we heard from the pc for just overall comp plan process was making sure there's sufficient time between commission and board meetings so that y'all can review the pc comments um support there was general support for the document structure

[03:25:19] and the comp plan language so far at pc meetings staff would our staff should provide an update to to the commission about what y'all have to say about the previous topic. So let's get into the growth management policy. The county established the growth management policy with the adoption of its first comprehensive plan in 1971. The policy designates a growth area, which is the development

[03:25:54] areas, and the rural area. Similar growth management policies are used throughout Virginia and across the country. Currently, the development areas are approximately 37 square miles, or 5% of county land, and the rural area is 95% of county land. The purpose of the policy is to encourage vibrant, mixed-use, dense, and walkable development in the development areas supported by infrastructure and amenities in order to protect the natural, historic, scenic, and cultural

[03:26:31] resources in the rural area. Having designated growth areas helps to avoid sprawl and supports the efficient and more cost-effective provision of public infrastructure and services. With AC44, the growth management policy is carried forward with several updates to the text to reflect community input and to incorporate equity and climate action while keeping the core purpose of the policy. First, we've made it clear that the county is planning for current and future

[03:27:07] community members. And secondly, the specific areas that the policy guide are listed, and those are land use, capital projects, and public service decisions. The last bit of language that was updated includes the provision for small-scale businesses and limited public services in the rural area to support the existing communities. The last component, which was having a distinct boundary between the rural area and development area, has always been a part of the growth

[03:27:47] management policy, but has also been carried forward, just are clearly stating that this distinct boundary is necessary for success. Here's the language itself, and I'll give you a moment to go ahead and read this for yourselves. Let's see. Yes, I will give you a moment to read this, see if you have any questions. You're just going to ask, is this the same as what was in our packet?

[03:28:21] It is. Much of this language does stem from our four guiding principles, including welcoming and

[03:28:35] equitable, green and resilient, thriving and prosperous, connected and accessible. Before we jump into the development area utilization review are there any questions on the growth management

[03:29:08] policy as it stands got a lot more of this presentation to go through so i'm trying to understand exactly what you want feedback on well the policy itself if you had if there were any just general questions um about the text yes what's on the screen if there are any questions we'll go through our order but maybe we'll be coming back to some of this i think as we go through the rest of it and and get our comments so i think all of us have tried to prepare as well

[03:29:43] okay we can wait until the end well i think it's better to go individually if otherwise we're going to get lost and each of us will have 15 things to do so i'm having a quick thing i don't know that i have anything that i would add to what is on the screen i mean there's certainly things that are in the ambit of the group management policy right i'm looking at page three i have several questions here, but that's not on the screen. Supervisor Galloway? Yeah, I'll give the caveat of my earlier statement about as things grow, I don't want any comment or non-comment about this

[03:30:22] today to have you go. We got it. There's a lot of feedback that we've received, some that I'm still trying to ponder if I agree or not agree with and haven't arrived at that decision yet and didn't feel I needed to arrive at that decision yet. So just throwing that out there, that's probably how this is going to work for all of us as we go through the comp plan. However, I will endorse what Planning Commissioner Bivens had to say about this. He was saying, where are we at now when we talk about growing equitably and sustainably? And I feel like this is a through

[03:30:56] line in different areas that we could be talking about today relative to this notion of thinking we're in a different state the the real state that we're in now is different somehow or better or more advanced than it really is and then if we plan for a future and we've got the starting point wrong we've just screwed up all the planning so his his overarching point was let's where are we realistically at what are the gaps now he was focusing on equitably and sustainably but i

[03:31:33] suspect if we gave him voice now he would continue with infrastructure and a lot of other things specific to the development area. But I think his point was spot on that we have to have a realistic notion of where we're at, what the gaps are, and then figure out not just moving everything forward, but how to close those gaps so that future things can build on top of the closed gaps. Does that make sense? It does. So that's where I'm at right now with saying, well, I don't know where I'm at with this wording because that is still percolating in my brain.

[03:32:10] Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtland? I don't have any questions at this point. I will shortly. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malin? So I guess where you start to talk about the rural area halfway down the paragraph here, it goes for agriculture. And what is missing here is mention of the drinking water, watershed protection for the growth area.

[03:32:44] So I have sent, so that you don't have to write it all down, I've sent some ideas along to add a few words there, because I think it's really important for the community to understand where their drinking water comes from, and to know that it's not just frou-frou scenery out there, but it is real survival out there that's being provided.

[03:33:08] And I'm looking at your attachment B in the box there. It talks about protect the ecosystems and natural and scenic historic cultural resources in the rural area. Again, the same thing.

[03:33:25] To provide urban services such as water, sewer, and sidewalks in the most cost-effective way was the reason why the growth area was created. So you will see those things written down.

[03:33:35] But in reacting to that particular paragraph, that was the one thing I wanted to make sure got out there now, because it's important. I mean, it's only taken 20 years of trying to bring this up to get the financial constraints of providing those services was the reason for the growth area to begin with, to keep this to be a lower cost community. And then the down zoning in 1980 that was required in order to protect the watershed for the urban area. Thank you.

[03:34:07] Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McKeown. Maybe I'm misunderstanding where Anne's going with this, but for me, this is your opening statement in a way and the details to follow. So the attempt here is to be very general in some ways, right?

[03:34:27] And then we're going to get into those details, which I think Anne's going for. And I understand she may very well feel like, but am I wrong on that? I mean, I'm looking at this as your sort of your opening statement. It is. And if you get it too detailed, it's not an opening statement.

[03:34:43] It's the policy itself. Yeah, exactly. We're intending to keep the purpose of the policy. Yeah, so it's sort of that. It frames where we are. And then you're going to get into many of those other details as we water and sewer and as we go through.

[03:35:00] And that is in the part two text that you were given in attachment B. Yeah. But the discussion of the watershed protection was not included in that text. So I think supervisors point is we should incorporate that information.

[03:35:17] I just think we have to be careful because we can't add everything into the first. However, if you're mentioning agriculture and forestry, you ought to mention two more words. That's all. Yeah. And I'm just and I'm not. It's fine. And I'm just was trying in my head to clarify exactly what I was looking at on the screen and putting into perspective.

[03:35:37] Um, cause I have some comments about some other things here, but I'll wait like welcoming community and, but anyway, um, so I'll pass for right now. I would just add one of the things that notice in the 2015 plan, there's not a distillation of the policy.

[03:35:55] It's spread across 10 or 12 pages, uh, sort of talking about what the, so this was an effort to try and distill it into a paragraph and hopefully that's a successful move on our part as opposed to having it, you know, more broadly spoken. And that's what I was trying to appreciate.

[03:36:12] And I understand Anne's points because those are very important, what she's talking about. Yes, ma'am. But it is sort of the very, anyway, thank you. And muddying up the work somewhat, but I am very aware that Feedback Environmental Council and Southern Environmental Law Center both have sent, you know, tied into additional language that they thought would help clarify that this is emphasizing as a foundation for the county's comprehensive plan and looking at the emphasis placed on density and connectivity, high quality, sustainable design, reinvestment, redevelopment, infill. And none of those things are reflected in this,

[03:36:49] but I would hope that they've been looked at and considered in this process so that perhaps this language could be improved if we consider some of that feedback. And I just, at this point, I want to reiterate all that feedback, but I know we've all received it, and it's specific to these two paragraphs. And I and I find it helpful. Thank you. Chair, if I'm in. Yes. I wanted to actually also mention that I reviewed SELC's and PEC's language. I actually, I think, agreed with almost every tweak they made.

[03:37:23] I thought it was quite thoughtful and it did address this. And I do, shocker, I actually want to go to bat for Anne's point that she was making a few minutes ago. And this, I think, was heavily informed by me as a newcomer to this community. And also, frankly, I mean, we're talking about a policy change from 71 newcomer to planet earth um i was not here in 71 or other where um but i did not originally appreciate as a newcomer to this community the role that water quality had made in the formulation of our our comprehensive plan um but talking with sally thomas and frankly

[03:38:02] reading a history of the environmental pushback and how that was heavily driven by the the neutrification of some of our streams due to the sudden growth of impervious surfaces frankly did make me think about how I think about environmental quality and our growth management policy differently and I do think that detail is something that is critical and something that when we communicate with frankly young people in the urban ring young people in Charlottesville people who have arrived in this community and don't quite understand the history of this plan I do think it

[03:38:39] is an important piece that was frankly lost on me until one of my constituents wrote a history article about it and sent it to me. So I do appreciate the point of emphasizing water quality and also the role of the development area in that, in kind of the core of the growth management policy, because it is like the ur-inciting incident of our growth management policy in a Midwest. Thank you. I agree with that as well. So Supervisor Calum. Well, I'll add to that and take

[03:39:14] it from maybe a different angle in thinking about the drinking water and the protection of water quality, because those who, you know, with folks that I'm having conversations with who would sit here and say, we should expand the development area, which can be a political conversation in this, well, should be, or could be, it is a political conversation. Folks, when the water quality issue comes up anybody in support of expanding the development area for other reasons immediately agree that the water quality should be protected so they don't they don't see that as a

[03:39:52] debate um so approaching this looking at the anywhere when somebody that's in agreement that a development area should expand and somebody that's in disagreement that it should expand if they're agreeing on the same point there's probably merit there um because i think i and i hate to say this but i think sometimes when we say agricultural forestry this language it gets lost into rolling vistas and scenics and aesthetics and that's what makes it go well oh well you know

[03:40:27] gotcha but this is a particular very specific particular thing that i think everyone would go yeah we we have to protect our the quality of the water that's coming in through the sewers and the birds through the sewers through the water pipes coming into our homes um and the infrastructure that's there um but it's like a hard it's almost the one thing i think everybody would say yes to nobody'd be like hell no we shouldn't protect our water quality so anything like that to me seems to be a win and for that reason i would say that that probably could be tweaked to be emphasized there

[03:41:01] especially if we're just continuing saying agricultural forestry and conservation of ecosystems like do we really agricultural and forestry just gets kind of dismissed for folks that live in the development area and who are looking for the density and the infrastructure and the expansion of the development zone so it could be a way to finally bridge those two camps if you would if that makes sense can we just add in their conservation of ecosystems including water quality something like that it's a different thing because conservation of ecosystems if it's

[03:41:37] unless it's defined to me that that gets to a whole different animal than protecting the watershed because the water quality is going into the development area plus because the rural area doesn't get the waters coming from their own right right wells right um if you're on the water system you're getting it from a system and it's you know especially the northwest part of our county yeah what would be an easy tweak to this i don't know i'm throwing it out there that's why i'm giving the caveat that it's going to take a little while to massage these things but the point is there that as we'll get into some other elements here about the development area and the boundaries

[03:42:14] this past week has been heavily involved on trying to find a win between the folks that would normally be on a divergent on different sides of the fence and water quality is certainly one where everybody goes we're all on the same side here on this one protecting our waterfall Even climate change and climate resiliency doesn't get you everybody in the corral.

[03:42:37] Water quality does. Well, and I think that gets to what Mike was saying as to why we have development area and a rural area, right? That was much of the intent to begin. So I'm understanding. And that's what you discovered at some point, right?

[03:42:53] Yes. Because a lot of people don't think about that when they move in. They don't know why we have a rural area and a development area. I mean, we say all the things we're trying to accomplish with our rural area and all that's true, but I think you come into this community and you say, oh, this is what I'm trying to accomplish with the rural area. This is what I'm trying to accomplish with the growth area plan. It doesn't say anything about it. And if we abandon it, I will not be able to drink water. But that is also true. Could be.

[03:43:19] i think the tweet could be made easily i mean i think that would be an easy tweak yeah chair if i may we're we're happy to go ahead and tweak the language as it does seem like the will of the the entire board so we'll be happy to propose some language um at our next meeting and that way we can take a look at take a look the appropriate language and get back to you okay if that's all right but i go back and say also there have been inputs from other community members as well

[03:43:50] PC, SCLC, and others that should be looked at in connection with us. Thank you. Thank you. I should have, I apologize, I should have reviewed this before we got into the discussion, but we did hear some feedback from the PC regarding the growth management policy. Housing affordability is a significant concern related to our policy, to the policy. Our community will meet the vision of being welcoming and equitable will not meet the vision of being welcoming and equitable without housing

[03:44:29] choice and affordability. We should also include more of the rationale behind the policy, including cost efficiency in providing public services and infrastructure in designated growth areas and avoiding sprawl in its associated negative impacts. On the maps in the comp plan, add more explanation of the different land uses and environmental features in the rural area.

[03:44:56] The growth management policy is carried forward in this comp plan as a means to continue to accommodate growth in the development areas and protect the rural area.

[03:45:12] There are a variety of tools we can use to implement the growth management policy and influence the performance of the development areas, including revising current land use designations through area plan updates, which we'll talk about more in a few minutes.

[03:45:31] Also including public investment in infrastructure and amenities to catalyze and support development in the activity centers. We can also update the zoning ordinance to support high-quality, mixed-use, and dense development and a variety of housing.

[03:45:49] And lastly, sorry, housing types. And lastly, we can expand the development area boundaries. But first, we need to know where we stand on the actual build-out and land capacity of the development areas.

[03:46:07] While the most recent land-use build-out analysis done in 2022 indicates there is sufficient capacity to accommodate projected growth over the next 10 to 20 years, this hinges on projects building at the high end of recommended density and intensity of uses.

[03:46:25] In the past, we know that rezoning projects, for example, have been built to 58% of the maximum recommended density per the future land use category. Monitoring the capacity of the development areas to accommodate projected growth and demand is a key component of a long-range planning effort and implementing the growth management policy.

[03:46:50] Staff proposes a development areas utilization review every two to three years so we can monitor actual build-out and capacity and evaluate whether or not we are meeting the goals for the growth management policy.

[03:47:06] This review will take the form of the land use build-out analysis and will include the factors listed on your screen. These factors can be reviewed by the board to assess the performance of the development within the development areas and help develop and help determine when and which adjustments are needed potentially using the tools mentioned on the previous slide we can come back to the slide to answer the question of whether these factors are sufficient for your review of the performance

[03:47:41] of the development areas again going letting you know what the pc said about this particular item um with the future area plan updates the pc indicated the need to increase the use of higher density future land use categories on the future land use map a significant amount of development areas land is designated neighborhood residential which is not sufficient use of limited development

[03:48:16] areas land the review criteria how well development in the development areas is meeting the objectives of the comp plan should be higher priority in the criteria list. There should be a quantitative benchmarks for this criteria and an explanation of what the county will do if we reach a certain threshold. We need to ensure actions in the plan implement in the plan implement the development and efficient use of land we we want to see in the development areas. For example, we need to

[03:48:53] incentivized density building height and redevelopment of underutilized malls parking lots within the development areas and lastly achieving the vision for the development areas and especially the activity activity centers will require public investments and projects i can pause here if you would all like to discuss the development area utilization review or we can continue on and take that at the end.

[03:49:25] I think this is a pretty key portion of the document for us to stop and take some comments. So if I may supervise the crew. I also do think I now have a slightly better understanding of how we're chunking this out, looking at our document. So I gather now that maybe comments on page three and the top of page four probably should have been included in the previous section because that is still under the growth management policy before you broke into it.

[03:49:53] I was just reading. Yes. Anyway, setting that aside, I guess on that note, just of something I should have mentioned before, but I didn't realize we were there yet. I have not. This alludes to the fact that there was previously before the existence of a comprehensive plan, we still have something resembling a development area in 1971 that was larger. I have not seen that it it alludes to there previously being uh a much larger acreage that was set aside for

[03:50:28] development in 71 that has since been shrunk down significantly i don't know that i'm sorry supervisor malik oh so before zoning in 1980 the whole county was a development and to do the watershed protection there was a down zoning it was approved by referendum in 1980 that took two acre lots and made them 21 acre lots and more in the whole watershed on the western and northern part of the county so that's where that reduction in acreage came the 40 okay i think i understand now i would still like to see what that originally looked like just to have a better sense of how that has changed somewhere there's a map with black dots for every development right out there

[03:51:07] and you can't see any white it's really shocking but somebody may be able to help us figure that out. Great. Thank you. Moving on to actually the development area utilization section. Also, do we have a separate chunk out where we look at we have a piece of describing notional uses and a preliminary flume? Is that going to be in a separate review section following this?

[03:51:33] It is. We'll preview that tonight, but then we'll discuss and give you more detail in about three weeks I believe November 6th okay thank you I'm just still trying to get I think a better sense of how we give feedback in this new uh section it was very it was very easy to guess how I could be structuring my feedback to you when we had the previous like criteria here's the three things we're looking at what are your feedback on that sorry this is not feedback on the plan this is just feedback on the process and how I'm now realizing a lot of my notes might not be

[03:52:13] applicable for tonight um and that's i think no one's fault but maybe uh just a learning experience we're going through together um so i i do think that the two-year build-out analysis kind of as a repeated iterative process makes sense but i would also agree with the planning commission's kind of feedback at some point there needs to be a forcing function right um it is the instinct of, I think, political actors, in which I'm obviously myself included, of avoiding the biggest question in the room. We've talked about this a little bit. There's a lot of

[03:52:50] things indicating that we might be nearing reasonable capacity. Maybe there is still 7% of our 4% that we can build in, but that's only 7% of 4%, which is a fraction of a fraction of a percent. And not all of that might be contiguous. Not all of that might be reasonably useful or economical. At some point, there needs to be a forcing function, and we will continue to avoid that unless these two-year iterative processes have, I guess, alarm lines on the end of them, or we commit ourselves to taking action in certain capacities. It will be something we

[03:53:27] will say, well, it didn't tell me to do that in the comprehensive plan, so I'm going to push that off to the next board. At some point, if our growth patterns do not change, I think the whole board recognizes that the development area will have to change um and i'm not saying that's today i'm not saying that's something we have to decide today but it is something that has to happen assuming there are you know catastrophic macroeconomic factors that change our growth patterns but um so with that i would also say i don't get a sense in our comprehensive plan we do

[03:54:06] talk about both the the when the where and the how right i feel like we've talked this uh document does talk a bit about the when um and the build out analysis also talks about the when but it does not seem to touch as much on the the how or the i know we don't we are definitely not talking about the where but we don't talk about the how either and i mentioned this just because something we talked about in the development area build out uh and the development area utilization section is the uh desire to make walkable communities the desire to make things that can be serviced by

[03:54:44] transport, the desire to be low carbon impact. I would worry that the kind of immediate instinct we have for a conservative approach to development expansion when we hit those red lines will actually disserve those purposes, right? The kind of instinct I feel like a lot of people have, myself included, is, oh, we will nibble around the edges where we have existing development.

[03:55:10] We will have a little bit off of Avon, we'll have a little bit off of 20, we'll kind of, there's two lobes on 29 in the Rio district, we'll smooth out those two lobes and make them a little more connected. Like, that is kind of the instinct, very much a nibble around the edge.

[03:55:25] And I do worry that disserves all the other things we are saying, because that just makes a more spread community. It does not contribute to any node building. It does not contribute to decisive placemaking.

[03:55:39] This is a very nebulous point that I'm making, but there is a, I would direct members of the board, and I will share it with you after this as well as with some key planning staff, to the 2014 Wolfson Prize award-winning submission, Uschester Garden Cities, which looks at the, basically the identical problem in the UK, looking at a hypothetical city and also Oxford, which is a city that very much resembles us.

[03:56:10] it is a medium-sized city it's a metro area of about one to two hundred thousand um it is bounded by green space that is owned largely by small farmers um and it is nearing development capacity and is anchored by a university it is almost a one-to-one comparison and it looks at how one would thoughtfully and sustainably expand those and it argues not to nibble around the edge but take what it calls a confident bite which is an alarming thing but their point is by kind of using a snowflake style development pattern in which you do take out a significant node right say oh we

[03:56:48] have a lot of commercial activity growing up around Ravana station we're going to take a big confident node out of there and build some periphery services around there and make sure that these are well connected through transit services that actually reduces your overall consumption of the green belt. And it also significantly improves how you're meeting those other goals of equity. And it also kind of combats some of the issues we've talked about with the place, which is how you fight off speculation and sudden land rent rises when you're just doing these little nibbles because people see them coming. Whereas a confident bite, there is not

[03:57:27] the time in the world to speculate the prices up when there's so many development rights that multiply out. I realize that's also a much more substantial policy change if and when that came up. But I guess the bigger point is none of this is contemplated as I see it in the comprehensive plan. The how does not seem to be touched on. And I see Jody has been rearing back.

[03:57:49] Thank you, Chair. Jody Filardo, Community Development Director. Supervisor Pruitt, you were right on the money. You're just a little ahead of the game here. What we're doing today is really trying to set the overarching framework for the plan.

[03:58:09] So it's really in the largest kind of 30,000-foot level, what you all want to accomplish across the entire county. The how and the specific what's are in parts two and three.

[03:58:25] And in the development area land use chapter that we sent out just at the very beginning of this meeting, i am hopeful that you'll see in that draft more of what you're hoping to accomplish so don't despair it's coming it's just not coming tonight that's not what we're trying to do tonight we're trying to get to the biggest picture tonight and then we'll start the drill down with the subsequent chapters that you'll see so thank you you're right on but just ahead of the the team here a little bit. Well, my apologies then. I think I do have a few other comments, but they

[03:59:04] are going to relate more to the future land use map, which kind of ties into, we're talking about development area land use, or development area utilization. Sorry, there we go. That's this section. But I think the things I have to say probably speak more specifically to the land use map. So I'm going to hold the rest of those comments. Yes, I may. My sense of where we're going with, the slides we're currently reviewing are close to answering the questions that were posed at the beginning, which are, does the draft growth management policy meet the needs of the county, and are the draft factors for monitoring the utilization of the development areas

[03:59:42] appropriate? And that's what I think we were looking at right now. So I thought, well, this is a good place to stop, but also to hold off on getting into the future land use map and other things. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor Callum, did you have additional questions?

[03:59:59] i i guess there's just one other comment i had and i grouped it with a later section of it but it's probably more appropriate here than um i do just want to i think i've mentioned this before in our discussions and i see it as one of the planning commission's kind of comments to make sure that we are not treating the the raw utilization of land as the deciding factor but rather the the extent effects that that is having right so we should not just be saying oh we still have more land to build um it should instead be an analysis that focuses heavily on what are we

[04:00:37] even able to build in there what is the impact that has on development costs what is the impact that has on livability um on affordability really is kind of the central thing i'm driving at and i i know in earlier earlier iterations of this i felt that was not something that we grasp or that we tackled fully with how this was uh touched on and i do want to make sure that that has to be a really central factor because I don't think we will ever develop the final 2% of the existing development area as identified. I think every developer is going to look at those last 2%

[04:01:13] and say, no, I will leave that for the next guy. And I will hold my giant pot of money until there's actually something I can make a decent investment on. So I hope we would primarily focus instead on You know, how is this actually affecting lives and investments rather than, I'm quite tired, rather than how much land is there simply left to build?

[04:01:44] Thank you. Supervisor Callum. With all the notes on this particular, because this is a large chunk, this development area utilization review. So I tried to organize these notes, but I really don't have this organized in a way that's, so it might not flow, but I'm just going to throw out some thoughts and ideas here.

[04:02:08] and see if i can tie them together um i have to agree with my plan to play it's interesting that two planning commissioners said no to the question one one's in support of the expansion of the development area and one was not and that's interesting to me knowing those two individuals and why they why they believe in what they believe relative to the development area but in trying to maximize the development area that's kind of where my notes are

[04:02:44] I don't think we can afford to do a development utilization review that this board only gets every two years. Maybe on certain elements, like our housing reports that we get, the building permits, you can do a comparison of what's happening in the development area versus the rural area.

[04:03:04] So we might not need that more regularly. But to the point, I think it's, where's your, I think, B under there, where you talk about how we say we've only been approving 58% of the density with the projects that's come forward, it's probably time that our applications for rezonings or upzonings, specifically in the development area, with each application, include a development utilization review as part of the application review.

[04:03:29] So that I can look at that, I, the board, can look at that and say, if we approve this application at 60% density, and it might be that the applicant's asking for that, isn't asking for more.

[04:03:46] We just had the deferral over by the Wawa in both the commission and the board i suspect if it had actually not been deferred would have been asking for more density there but if we in real time can look at each project and go if you approve this at 60 here's what happens to the big picture of the development area that it moves your 58 to 56 does that make sense so this development utilization review i think needs to be more of a tool for us so that we can measure where we're at with each project on capacity of the development

[04:04:21] area. I think it would also should include how or any sort of attack, I don't know what the right word would be, progress on affordable housing units as part of it and economic impact. So it has been, I don't know if it's been brought up here yet or not, but I know that Greene County and their rezoning requests, the application requires an economic, on the part of the applicant to provide an economic impact report.

[04:04:55] And we don't really do that. And I remember one of the first times a developer asked for my time when I first got on this board, they led with that, but it wasn't anywhere. So I remember having that in my head, but then when it came in front of us, I was like, well, there was no talk of it, even by the applicant.

[04:05:11] So it seems to me that if we're going to maximize the development area, because we've said we're not going to expand the growth there. I mean, this board has said that in an earlier meeting, then i then how do we in real time with each application whether it's 10 units or 500 units say all right is this the right thing to say yes or no to um not just because of the single individual property rio point i always like to use that as example because i was against

[04:05:45] higher density there i was against the project um for the reasons i laid out then but what was while I was analyzing the immediate area of where Rio Point is, I was not factoring in the bigger picture of the development area. And if allowing an extra 100 units there, well, that would have been a lot of more consternation from the folks that were out here lobbying against. But nowhere in that conversation do I recall us saying, well, if we don't approve the extra 150 units here,

[04:06:24] it means our development area boundary or maybe that buys us two extra years on when the inevitable some people think it's inevitable that the growth area needs to expand some don't and and sometimes that's just well i'm a republican i'm a democrat not i'm not connecting that but you know you just you dig your heels in and that's your thought that's how you view it but this gets at actual a nuance or a data point so that this board can go wow the applicant's asking for 500 um what's let me think of one ravanna uh the the one out in uh ivy whatever it's on old ivy road well old

[04:07:02] ivy road would be good but we actually approved some of that but i'm i'm thinking out in the by glenn glenmore the uh the one that eventually ended up being a hundred hill it's breezy hill this board wasn't comfortable i mean we ended up getting what one unit per acre in a development area what i mean that was baffling to me i'm not trying to judge the folks that voted differently than I did. But in that conversation, we should have said that's a defined development area.

[04:07:28] And if we only approve one unit per acre there, here's what that means for the rest of the development area. So this utilization review, I think we've been getting good information and feedback from folks about what should be included. And maybe there is a larger thing that comes every two years. But this is real time information that has to be considered for our land use decisions every time an application's in front of us.

[04:07:53] With the economic report that we received today, with the commentary about the lowing wages, the poverty dropping, but income's going up, that means people are leaving. And if we don't figure out the housing piece, which we all think density's going to solve, whether it's affordable or not, more units helps the affordability conversation, then we have to deal with that when the application's in front of us.

[04:08:21] even and and i guess we have time to figure out whether that's the applicant applicant's responsibility or ours or whatever i mean we can nuance that stuff out but i think that's what needs to happen and i think it should just be stated out there to begin with that the board will consider your application but also needs to consider the ramifications not just on the local area you're in but the entire development area that that exists it seems like that um i'm i mean we got such smart people in our planning commission listening to that meeting they are incredibly they're really smart um and and that's where that idea started the and if i'm stealing it i apologize

[04:08:59] for not giving the commissioners the credit for it um but this is something that is formulated through considering like well how do we move this forward so we're not just status quo but we're also not panicking and saying we need to expand the development area by five percent or six percent or whatever the other piece i think in the here which the planning commission did discuss village of Ravana would be part of it. We get hung up on if the development area should expand, but we don't talk about if it could shift. So if we're not getting the density out of a village of

[04:09:38] Ravana that's a defined development area, where can we get that density back at that's reasonable without necessarily changing the 5%? The utilization review probably needs to commence and get done to help us figure that out, but there could be something there that could be a reasonable conversation that doesn't you wrote you can rotate things in a way that makes sense

[04:10:12] that could yield us density in the proper spots um without changing the overall number and maybe that's i don't know i'm trying to find a pragmatic way forward you know there's still places for there's still room for redevelopment there's still places within the defined development area as it exists to get some density but the county can't force it um we have to wait for the applications to come in so my thoughts on this utilization review is what does it lead to action wise to help us get what we want if we agree that we're going to maximize the density we're only going to

[04:10:48] get so many stories because the costs go up after you go so high and developers just don't have the market for that in this area charlottesville and albemarle so they're going to stop at a certain height whether we allow it or not because of the cost involved so then how do you get them to do other types of development like when we get the advocacy letters they just say well just allow the dents to just redevelop those areas well that we can't we can't flip that switch and bulldoze an hoa so what do we do to help it the small area plan is one way it's an overlay it makes it easier for them to move through the process but nobody's really come out of the gate and tried to hit the

[04:11:25] small area plan at rio and 29 yet so what other things do we need to do so the two things that the Planning Commission did discuss, I think it might have been Commissioner Bivens again, talking about how we incentivize, we give people incentives to keep their land rural and not developed in the rural area. What is the comparable tool in the development area to help develop that area land to develop? And that goes beyond developer incentives targeted towards affordable housing, which is my next point. The analysis of whether or not, now this isn't,

[04:12:02] This is outside the comp plan, but does our inclusionary zoning help us? I mean, we're, what, what are we, eight months in? I'm not aware. Well, no applications have come before the board yet. I don't know if any have made it through the door to an application that are beyond 10 or 12 units.

[04:12:19] So I'm concerned, does our inclusionary zoning, is it helping? At some point, we have to decide if that's what we're going to continue to move forward with or not, because the development area utilization, based on what we're about, what what we'll end up putting into the comp plan, we can't have a policy in place that inhibits or does the exact reverse of what we're trying to do in the development area.

[04:12:43] And we may have to pivot and figure that out. So housing Albemarle is probably going to need some conversation about specifically for that development incentive piece. I still think not a lot of people really understand it fully. So I'm not ready to punt on that, but until we get some applications coming through that are at the two, three, four, 500 level that include that incentive package, I don't know that anybody else where a city's dealing with same thing, but theirs is a little bit more extreme in terms of big projects coming in to get the density.

[04:13:16] The last thing, I guess, well, I don't know if it'll be the last thing, but the last thing for now, when does infrastructure allow for better utilization? So in the last four to five, before the pandemic and getting some of these high density projects approved, the argument was, well, you can't wait for the infrastructure to build the density piece.

[04:13:41] And I buy into that argument now to an extent, but at what point does the lacking infrastructure inhibit or prohibit what the max density we're trying to go for and force us to a 58% or a 60%? Some of it's political will.

[04:13:58] I'm not trying to say it's not political will. Sometimes it's you just got to vote for it and then hope that the infrastructure will follow. But I'll use Rio Point again. Rio Point getting approved helped us get the roundabout that's happening.

[04:14:13] It helped with the Belvedere. but there are a couple of thousand units that are still getting built and are going to come online out there. And we've said that the infrastructure that's going in is what's needed to accommodate that. But what happens at the next step, when the next density comes in, and you've already planned for that density, is there, at some point, I have to think you have to have some infrastructure in place so that you can go from 300 units to 500 units, and then you're getting better utilization in your development area. Whether that's public investment, like in a small area plan, we've committed to putting public areas in and taking on the maintenance

[04:14:53] of them to help stimulate it. But it's not, we got now we're in wait mode to see that happen. So whether or not this, so I'm done with the infrastructure piece. I think that needs to be pondered as we go through this. I don't know if small area plans are the way out of, or the way to maximize development area capacity. But that probably needs to wait for the land use maps and some of those some of those conversations so with that i'll i'll stop for now thank you supervisor

[04:15:29] lapista i agree with a lot of what you said um and i think the problem just going back since i've been on the board but i think the problem was us we created this problem at least the the this current board minus mike pardon blameless blameless yes uh because we haven't approved what could have been approved, you know, to the density that the developers wanted.

[04:15:59] We didn't do that. We backed down. We caved in. So, and I'm guilty of that also. I mean, and unfortunately, I think that's something that we should have done. I think we're probably, hopefully, getting better at that because I'm not one that wants to see the development area expanded at this time.

[04:16:20] I think in the future, and I've told people that, maybe 10, 20, 30 years down the road. I'm not sure when. But I think we need to make use of what we have. I'm always in favor of going, and I've said this before, going higher. That's something, of course, that the developers would have to decide how high they want to go.

[04:16:41] They could go seven stories. That is more expensive. The rents would be higher. But there's got to be, maybe they'll go five stories. Maybe they'll go six stories. And then that would, to me, that would also bring the transportation aspect to it.

[04:16:59] When you have concentrated density, it's easier for transportation to get there. When it's spread out, you're not going to have transportation out there. It's just, it's not going to happen. So higher and denser would give us the ability for transportation, be it pedestrian, bike, and especially bus, to bring people into work and everything.

[04:17:32] I noticed you mentioned housing types. I was kind of curious about that because from what I've seen, we have a lot of different types of housing. I mean, are we suggesting more types of housing? I think that what we've been talking about is what we call missing middle, which is between townhomes and your roughly half an acre to quarter acre lot.

[04:18:02] So these could be in the form of a cottage home that is smaller lot type, a smaller home footprint potentially, and fourplexes, duplexes, and allowing those in more places, allowing those types of housing in more places right i would think that the developers would be more interested in getting a four plex six plex uh in a small area rather than just a cottage because that's not going to help solve our housing problem um but the other may you know or once again more

[04:18:39] density and the development area we're also talking about well in the rural areas going out there with water and sewer. That is hugely expensive. And so in order to expand the development areas, which we probably know it's going to be in, you know, maybe in the Avon area or in Scottsville, 20 south, 29 north in that area. But you have to bring water and sewer out there. That's very expensive. I think one of the other things besides going higher and denser to increase capacity so

[04:19:15] that we can have transportation. Maybe the timing of our permits, i.e. the length of time that our permits take for developers to do this. I know that we've lost, we lost RST because of the fact that everything took so long. And there was so much pushback from constituents that we, you know, they lost that. They couldn't get the federal funding. So we lost that whole project and they old out to another company that is building fewer homes there. I mean, I like what we're doing here.

[04:19:53] I just think that we need to focus on the density and maybe we as a group need to be able to have a fortitude, frankly, to be able to go with the developers because Supervisor Galloway is correct.

[04:20:14] We have to wait and see what the developers give us. They may not give us a lot. And we can't say, well, you're proposing, you know, 50 units. We want you to build 100 units. You know, it's whatever they're going to build. And then they come to us.

[04:20:31] But maybe streamlining things would be one way to do it. And then we go from there to see what happens in the future. I think it is, I agree. I don't want to do a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit everywhere.

[04:20:47] But I'm not sure we're there yet. I know we have evidently, and it says that we have enough for about 10 more years. Oh, you said 20, Ann? 10 to 20. 10 to 20, depending on what is built, right?

[04:21:03] If we build cottages, maybe two years. But if we build a lot of high density and closer together, and maybe even the county taking advantage of some smaller parcels where you can build a four plex or six plex something like that for affordable housing you know those are my comments thank you thank you please chair can i i just i think it's important you know and since it's work session mode i don't mean to be breaking the order but you know i think a couple of things as they come up like this it's not about

[04:21:40] a developer just going one extra floor if you take the expense on you got to double up you can't go to seven you got to go to 12 um and i don't know if that's the number so developers will have to help us help me understand that i just know that that's why they don't go beyond it and then i could just see the look on our faces if we had a 14 story something coming in somewhere you would talk about political will so but that's what we're talking about so when we're talking about four plexes and six plexes we're not talking about just the new stuff that's limited we're

[04:22:16] talking about the Huntington Road, the Old Brook Road, Northfield, in Jack Jewett, you know, taking these R2 areas that are one unit per, what, it's half acre, and allowing four to six or six to eight.

[04:22:33] That's that missing middle. So there are, it might as well be put out there, there are advocates calling on us in our development area to allow by right, not even at discretionary review, but by right to allow folks to go through like a north field and take half acre lots that have one house on it and all of a sudden allow six to eight units on that one particular lot we've seen what one i think come up in crozet that little where the and it's happened over by right there's a little unit over on penn park road that's happened where it's a smaller smaller lot but that's what

[04:23:09] we're being advocates are pushing us for to get the density to stay in that development area this is what the city did that they want us to do what the city's doing i don't know i'm not advocating or making any comment on where i'm at on that but i i just want us to be realistic here that um this isn't about some empty lot somewhere that we're going to allow six to eight units on this is about saying to a neighborhood that you've got 40 houses sitting on half acre lots and we're going to allow maybe 10 of them turn into six units mixed in with these ones on half acres and what are the ramifications of that we have to contend with that in this utilization and there's a political

[04:23:48] will and the other thing we what i'm thinking of with higher and denser is long 29 in the development everybody thinks that and everybody thinks we've got transit and walkability and we can get rid of cars in the urban ring and we don't and yeah i i i feel like the purpose today was to look at the factors to monitor in the utilization review of the development areas and to look at the growth management policy.

[04:24:19] And I'm hearing a lot of discussion about things we can do to increase density to affect this, but I'm not sure that we're answering the questions that are being asked of us in terms of looking at these utilization review factors and whether or not they're the kinds are things that we would want to look at when we get to the point where we're going to start to say okay as part of this process we need to find new solutions or to do other do things differently perhaps so correct me if i'm wrong but i just i'm feeling a little bit of disconnect between the

[04:24:56] discussion that's going on and what i thought we were reviewing thank you mr chair i think that is something on point there and of course what we're bringing you next is the development area land use chapter and you'll be able to review a strategy that broadly speaking looks to try and create more focus on several centers and takes advantage of the strategy of trying to do the route 29 and other heavily parked areas to try and infill them um and so it'll be interesting to get your all's reaction does that actually a policy direction that you want to go in or do you want to do something more depth that'll be an interesting conversation but right now yeah it's

[04:25:34] basically, we're giving you a series of factors to consider how well are we using the development area? Is it built in doubt? Are we getting to the point where we need to think about doing something that would change the boundaries of the development area? Okay, I won't take us on tangents again, but in a development utilization review, if we're talking about the capacity, then we need a baseline. And, you know, it is a policy decision to allow redevelopment from R2 to R6 by right. And if it's going to allow the development area to stay as it is longer,

[04:26:10] then we need to know what that means. So in the utilization review, I think that analysis needs to be done. I think that's exactly the kind of comment we need to be making, is that what is it we need to do in our utilization review? Well, I'm sorry, it took me 30 minutes to get there. It's okay. Supervisor Malek, I don't mean to, it's a great discussion, but I want to see if we can

[04:26:30] Thank you. All right. So I'm here looking at the red boxes so that I can answer your question. And this is number five, the development area utilization review. Yes. Okay. So first off, several people at the Planning Commission and other constituents have said F should be A, to make sure that F is how well development areas meeting the objectives should be the very first thing that we look at.

[04:26:58] to go along with that. What are the obstacles that are preventing it? So that's one. I know that in the 1980s, 36 development units per acre came out of God knows where. There was just somebody's bright idea. Now it's treated like it's out of the Bible. And there's no particular basis for it that I've found in all these years. I will say that 19 units per acre is the only place in the crozet area is the apartment complex in old trail and that's only 19 units per acre so if we're

[04:27:35] looking at 36 you are talking about six-story apartment buildings everywhere and that's the fallacy of 36 so i i hope we will not get totally bent around the axle about 58 of something that doesn't necessarily have a good basis for anything um now put that away the um okay comparison of demand. So I guess the concern we've had from several people who've written in is to track the use of development area spaces rather than basing it on some 2022 model that may or may not

[04:28:13] have had real flaws in the capacity analysis. If you're excluding, which I just learned by listening to the Planning Commission, excluding large tracts of property in the development area for even being considered for future capacity, then that is a problem for me. And I don't understand the details of it, but I would like to know all these things that are being left out. I mean, why are in a potential growth limitations like the available land cost of development or environmental constraints are not considered? They should be. If we're going to have a valid capacity,

[04:28:49] if something's a 40% slope or has all sorts of other environmental issues, we shouldn't be considering it, but also we should be understanding that things will redevelop if there's the right constraint to cause it to happen. One of the reasons why we haven't gotten, I think, the kind of growth area development that people dreamed about for 20 years is because it was always a greenfield to go to that was so much easier. 10, 15 years ago, a developer said to me,

[04:29:24] we are this close. A little tax incentive would be able to get a parking deck to be the same price, be affordable to a developer because the cost of land was going up so much. Arlington County, they have underground parking under every grocery store because the land costs a fortune and they have to do that. So our capacity discussion here was not taking into consideration these places with giant parking lots. To me, that's a problem. I don't understand what to do with it. So, okay,

[04:29:59] that's that question. For C, 5C, having a map would really help me understand where those things are that are not being considered. Sort of introduction to the review, revising future land use designations, making more places office flex LIRD. Fairfax County is having a huge budget problem because they have tens of thousands of square feet of 10-story tall or 15-story tall

[04:30:34] office buildings and they are empty. So we need to be careful about what we ask for in that. And I found just from talking to developers who have said, I can't find any tenants for my commercial space. I mean, North Point, they should be grateful that they didn't zoom through the process because at least they hadn't invested X millions of dollars in earth moving only to have it fall under the recession. You know, they were in greenfield status at least at that point. So it was not quite as bad as it could have been. But even after all these years, I mean, the five major

[04:31:11] rezonings that were done in four years between 2004 and 2008, none of them are finished because there's not enough demand for any of them to get finished. Stonefield was in the gate first. The owner died. It took three or four years to get going again. They are the closest to getting finished, but it's 22 years. And when I was absolutely going to pieces about the approval for Hollywood Town Center in 2004, one of the senior staff people at the time said, don't worry, Ann, it'll be, you know, it's going to take 20 years to get done.

[04:31:39] And I was looking at 60 acres of red mud being denuded of forest and nothing happening. Those 60 acres are still there covered in red mud. I mean, they may have weeds on them now, but it's going to take a long time. So that is a concern.

[04:31:55] I'm trying to standpoint here. Cost and vacancy trends. Also a long time ago, there was a lot of uproar because an occasional warehouse company would go to some other county to locate. To me, we don't have to have every warehouse, every distribution company in Albemarle County.

[04:32:18] And we shouldn't be having a nervous breakdown when some company decides, I mean, I was sorry to lose Patriot and Aluminum because they were actual manufacturers as opposed to a big warehouse. But sometimes people who need bigger space and truck access for tractor trailers, et cetera, need to go with some other place.

[04:32:33] So I hope that that is not something that is really driving our bus as far as this review that we have to have every business there ever was in here you know our our neighboring communities deserve some too and I think it's really compelling oh I talked about that already so the comments that are several people have written in about using really valid tracking the capacity in the development areas not the findings of the build-out analysis as a starting place to make sure as Ned was saying that we're starting

[04:33:09] in the right place not starting with a flawed thing and then trying to go forward from there so i think i stayed under the draft the development area utilization review and i will i did talk about that i will stop there thank you thank you yeah i just want to say point of clarification because uh of the um i keep advocating for the you know higher uh density and everything but i don't think that would be appropriate in Crozet. I mainly, in my mind, I didn't clarify that, that

[04:33:41] it's appropriate on 29, profit being the northern point and then down to hydraulic being the southern point. But in that area, to me, that would be more, that would be acceptable. Thank you. Thank you.

[04:33:58] So looking at what we have on the screen. Thank you. I agree with this. I agree. Having said that, I was in my mind thinking two years is a long time to wait. I agree with, and I was thinking, well, is a year, would a year be better?

[04:34:16] But I think the idea that Ned has is great because that's what actually will help us figure out. Because, I mean, I didn't know for a long time that we were only approving at 58%. It would be helpful to know.

[04:34:32] So if we could start getting that information as we're looking at these projects, that would be great. And for, I was just trying to get a couple of these, I was going to, I assume that the goal with this is to quantify how well we're doing, what we're trying to do.

[04:34:56] So that gets to that issue. The only other criteria I just wonder is we say we want the development area to have a high quality of life and be a place where people want to live.

[04:35:12] Where are we getting at that in this? That's hard to measure. And I understand it is, but it's about sidewalks. I mean, I don't have hardly any sidewalks in my district. Well, I have some, but I mean, all the new developments are getting them.

[04:35:28] But going back to the Rio and the Jack Jewett district, because we're in the development area, we have some of the oldest, we don't have them. That gets to quality of life. And that's really easy to quantify. It's looking at these older areas.

[04:35:45] I don't have a problem with the focus on the new developments, but let's swing back occasionally and say, you know, maybe the people in Berkeley need a sidewalk or, and we have done that occasionally. But I'm just saying that to have that lens would be helpful and to look at quality of life in the older, already built out neighborhoods to figure out how to get at that quality of life.

[04:36:09] Because if we want people to live in the development area, we're going to have to make it attractive. I mean, and what I see is people leaving because it's not, there are no parks. All the parks are out in the rural areas.

[04:36:24] I mean, I'm just saying, I don't want to keep going on and on. so trying to figure out how we get it that piece as well would be helpful at least from my viewpoint for for my magisterial district and probably the riot too because yeah yeah yeah but i'm just saying that yes that's true there's so much out there i think about that it's so new but but anyway so for the most part yes i agree with this and i will go back to the idea that julian had and and um ned's brought it up that we have a parcel at ravana that is never going to be built

[04:37:04] out i mean and it's been sitting there so if we can look at somehow or another and maybe this is not the right place to take to talk about it but trading land without expanding but looking at where there are possibilities to do some trade where it's actually going to happen and i'll stop with app because we're really running low on time so okay well i hope i can stick to my own advice i did agree completely with flipping a and f i think that's a great idea because we all say

[04:37:39] order doesn't matter don't pay any attention but it does so i would flip that i had said that in my notes when i first read that yeah sorry that's fine i would actually have started with this page and said, yeah, I also agree with flipping F to A. I didn't think of this as a priority list, but I think of F as an overarching sort of how well, and I would actually modify it to say how well development and redevelopment, or at least give the, recognize that we're not necessarily just talking about new development, but redevelopment or other improvements in the development areas meet the objectives of the comp plan.

[04:38:18] So, but from there, I do feel like some of this isn't looking at things in the way I think they should be looked at. So I'm going to jump around a little bit. Comparison to estimated, well, I'll go through it. Comparison to estimated demand for residential and non-residential land uses with estimated capacity.

[04:38:37] I think I just agree basically with the comments being made, although I agree also with the comment made that the statement, the potential growth limitations like the availability of land, foster development, environmental constraints are not considered. I'm not sure I understand why that's in there, and I don't necessarily think it helps us in this particular A.

[04:38:57] In B, the intensity density development through rezonings and special use permits compared with recommended density per future land use categories gets directly at this whole 58%, which I've been hearing about a lot. I'm almost a newbie in a sense that that 58% is based upon time before I was even on the board.

[04:39:17] and it is at this point is basically from I think it's 2015 to 2020 2016 to 2021 so it's a five-year period and now I've been on almost three years and it's not been updated and so I feel like well I don't even know if it's still really accurate and so I really do agree strongly that we need to get this more often than what we've been getting so we see we need to do it as part of this process perhaps and make sure and i like the idea of actually getting applications that come in that give us a sense of every single time we're looking at something are we only are we on track with uh

[04:39:54] the recommended companies for the future land use categories so um i do think it's important to track and this is comments been made by several of the uh other organizations track capacity as opposed to uh just looking at the build-out analysis to actually track capacity and and i will I'll go back to what I first learned when I got on the board was in that 58%, there was an extensive analysis of what is the capacity of the development area and what are the expected needs for the development area. And it was on that basis that this board, I think at that time said, you know,

[04:40:33] it doesn't look like we need to expand the development area. Then it was always this caveat, but we're only doing 58%. Well, I think that tracking the capacity is the way we should be looking at this and then, you know, take that from there. Remaining percentage of the development area is estimated to have capacity. I really, I keep hearing this, oh, it's 4% of the 7% of the there's an amount of land here. And that land is finite. And we can try to keep track of it. And we don't have to look at numbers, percentages that don't necessarily mean anything to us when we

[04:41:12] could actually have a better sense of what is the capacity? What are the undeveloped? How much acreage is there that's undeveloped? And what kind of acreage is it? So it's finer grains, perhaps, and maybe not as simple as talking about percentages, but I keep hearing the percentage and it sounds to me like it's a way to try to make an argument that doesn't necessarily tell me information about what's available out there.

[04:41:39] So I'd rather see the remaining area looked at and the capacity. Rather than just looking at percentages, I will make the comment that, you know, whether we do eventually, whether a future board increases the development area or not, it's not as if inevitability is something that you should expect necessarily.

[04:41:58] If you were talking about the city of Charlottesville, now that we have an agreement, they're not going to expand their development area because they can't. And so to us to say, well, it's inevitable we're going to expand our development area is saying something about what we think of the area around our development area and what we want to do with it.

[04:42:18] If we were an island, we wouldn't have that choice either. So I guess I want to keep that perspective when I look at it and say, OK, what can we do in the development area? So ratio dwelling units being built in the RA compared to the DAs, I worry about that one too, is something that it just doesn't seem like the ratio is telling me enough.

[04:42:42] Certainly one of the things that's looked at in the past analysis is the fact that, well, if we had more homes going up in the rural areas than the development areas, then we were doing something wrong. But that simple ratio may be not telling me what that is. So I'm a little bit worried about D not being specific enough in terms of what is it I'm trying to get out of that ratio?

[04:43:04] What information am I trying to get out of whether people are building homes in their rural area or not? I'm just confused by it, I guess, is what I'm saying. I'm not sure it's wrong. I just don't know fully. So that's kind of my comments on this utilization review.

[04:43:23] If we look at the previous slide, which was also something we were going over as part of this. This is, again, I see it as steps along the way to the dreaded number four expansion of the development area. These are some of the things that we've been discussing, revising current land use designations and trying to do more with that, public investment, zoning ordinance updates to support high quality. What I think is missing from this list, which be there in number four and moving the others down is is uh you know additional uh study of you know

[04:44:02] quantitative benchmarks followed by you know what else could be done to increase density in the development areas to otherwise allow for more homes in the development areas and a number of uh commenters have suggested that there perhaps should be a development area task force that would help us to parse what it is that we can use uh to use our tools better to be more efficient to make incentives necessary you know for for developing uh appropriately so so i would i

[04:44:36] would encourage adding an additional number there that that is allowing for feedback allowing for us to to bring in you know a harder look at what's going on before we jump to number four does that help yes super fast uh so i want to support and pile on to the comments and secure made about quality of life because without people's willingness to live in a place everything will fail and so and the other country i mean so that comes with the can

[04:45:13] sardines thing. And the more you pack in there, some people will leave and go out in the rural area or something because they need a little more elbow room or something. But there also have been many early field neighbors who have moved to the urban area because they are older and their kids are in high school and they didn't want them driving 20 miles one way. So it goes both ways.

[04:45:32] The other conflict when we look at numbers only is we are talking about bulldozing our naturally occurring affordable houses. One of my biggest panics for Crozet is all the blocks of houses which were built for the workmen for J.B. Barnes Lumber in the 40s. Lots big enough to have a garden.

[04:45:57] They totally surround Crozet Park. And the neighbors try very hard to watch and buy something when it comes on to pass to their children or something like that. But when we lose those hundreds of units in favor of more blocks of giant houses. That is setting us back huge steps in affordable housing and losing entirely a whole segment of our population. So I always have to temper looking at all those different things. And I'm absolutely convinced and have said this before that one of the major concerns that people have for something of higher density in their neighborhood

[04:46:36] is that they're already jammed at the stoplight waiting or the no stoplight and they're waiting at the at the traffic line or there's no place to walk or they are getting run over in the road by trucks going by and they have no sidewalks so that combination of infrastructure pre or post or planned or funded or something i'm absolutely convinced would change people's discussion about any of this new stuff but some people i mean they feel their back is to the wall and their only option is to say please don't do this to me anymore because i also you know i can't out of my neighborhood for 30 minutes. So those are just things to leave on the table for future

[04:47:13] discussion. Transit is going to be a big part of this. And just to comment in, because I appreciate that, because Ned and I have a lot of older neighborhoods. They are very affordable. They're an acre, they're an acre and a half. And we need to be able to maintain those, to be perfectly honest with you, because they're valuable for what they are. And I'm not saying we don't need density other places. But that's just my opinion. The wear is the hard part. And during the Crozet Master Plan, there was an element to try to have an overlay district to protect the oldest neighborhoods in Crozet. And then it didn't quite make it into the final draft, but it's needed in

[04:47:48] all of these districts around the core where we have a lot of older homes. And going back, Jim, to just the previous slide, I don't want to push back so much, but I do think there is the one we on the previous one i think there is value in understanding the next one there's value to knowing what is being built in the rural area i mean i it just because i drive out sometimes into my rural area and say oh my goodness what has happened to this road it is completely built up

[04:48:27] and I and it built up in what seems like to me a month that's really not that's an exaggeration but I'm just saying that I don't want to not know what the is being built in the rural area now maybe you're not comparing it specifically to the development area yeah it's the ratio but I don't want to take that out because if we're getting information I want information on the rural area too that's all I'm saying and then the monthlies or quarterly whatever is really valuable Yeah, I agree.

[04:48:57] Well, the one that I disagree with is the ratio. So I don't mind knowing how many units are being built in the rural areas, the development areas, because we have 95 percent of the land in the rural areas. So I think the ratio is going to be difficult to do.

[04:49:14] But I don't care about the ratio, but I don't mind knowing how everything is being used. Can you go to slide 18? Because we as a board agreed that we wouldn't expand the development area boundaries.

[04:49:29] So that tells me, if that's in there, that we are looking at expanding the development areas, which is going to really get everyone concerned. Maybe when, which I've always said, when necessary, you know, we would look at it.

[04:49:47] Because I've told people, eventually, there will be, the development areas will be, the boundaries will be moved, eventually. I don't know when we're going to be there. Right now, we have 10 to 20 years being okay as far as in the development areas.

[04:50:05] But I think to say that, we'll get a lot of people, we'll be getting a ton of emails about that. And I'd rather say something like, when necessary, looking at expanding the development areas. but not expansion.

[04:50:21] That tells me that that's a finite thing that we're going to be looking at that. Yeah, I tend to define that language just a little bit alarming. But at the same time, I also heard, and I think it may be appropriate, instead of saying expansion of the development areas, talk about changing development area boundaries because it may be that a shift of development areas may be the more appropriate way in which we handle this initially if we recognize that, well, you know, really this is the place that they should be developing and we know it's not going to happen with Anna or whatever.

[04:50:51] I think that's a great idea. And that did actually happen in Crozet, north of 240 along the Beaver Creek Reservoir, sorry, to move to south to just north of 250, just beyond the trestle. So that at least has happened before. Just a few points.

[04:51:08] We've invoked Village of Rivanna a few times. And the folks I know out in Village of Rivanna would often be quite eager, I think, to no longer be considered a development area. That being said, I personally, as a supervisor, don't know that I have a full sense of what we were even saying that would entail what the meaningful difference on the ground would be.

[04:51:28] We're not, that's the point. We're just simply identifying it as something. So I just want to highlight that, right? Like, what does that even mean? I don't freaking know. They've already got water and sewer. Are we going to dig about? Probably not. I do want to, I think we've all piled on in support, but I want to add my little voice on Supervisor Galway's idea of kind of an iterative process of analyzing these six factors during the ZMA process because we need to be reminded.

[04:51:58] And currently, some of us are often reminding the public, reminding ourselves, reminding our peers every time that these come before us. I think that'd be prudent. The only caution I might add is another thing that I at least have tried to point out is how the whole reason that we rely on ZMAs and that frankly that is the posture in which most developments come before us is because our comprehensive plan our zoning code are discordant um we are saying that we are uh planning for a density level that is not actually allocated in our own land use map and zoning code ideally as

[04:52:36] part of this comprehensive planning process that would be something that's amended which means these these opportunities we currently have to review these i would say ideally are becoming will become uncommon because we will not have people necessarily put in that posture as frequently because frankly those things would be by right because the fact that they're not by right comes is an oversight almost in our in our process i don't want to throw stones on that but that's just because we have updated our plan our comprehensive plan more recently than we've updated our zoning code it is an error that these things come

[04:53:11] to us in that posture um and lastly i do just want to throw my um my kind of cards on the table with the ratio piece, this is something I've spoken in favor of looking on before, because to me, it kind of captures something we say we are not analyzing, which is cost of development in the urban area. We specifically highlight how that doesn't play a role in the capacity analysis. But there is, I think intuitively, and maybe this isn't actually true, but the intuition, intuitive reasoning would suggest that if it is becoming more expensive to

[04:53:47] develop in the development area, then some of those development opportunities are going to squish out, right? It's like a bowl that we're just squeezing the water out of. And some people are going to splash out and be like, well, if it's going to be so expensive to develop my home or my community in this area, then maybe I should be developing a sub development, or maybe I should be developing my own personal mansion I've always wanted in the rural area, which is the worst of all possible worlds, right? That hurts our affordability goals. That hurts our climate goals. That hurts our aquifers. And that should be something that rings alarm bells. The only

[04:54:21] thing I would add is I think Chair Andrews gestured toward this. That is my intuitive reasoning that that would happen and that would be a factor that we see. I actually don't know if that's true. I don't know if those people would then go into the rural area. I don't know if that is a strong indicator. It feels like it would be. It feels like that would be happening. That's certainly what i say as a political argument happens um i don't have that data though and until i know whether or not that is actually what's happening i i would like to keep tracking it i don't understand because if they're only going into they're only going into the rural areas to build

[04:55:01] a single family home for the most part correct but there's also i mean like drive out by ivy right we have sub-developments of single-family homes that are sufficiently on large enough plots And there's limitations we put on that, but that is still a development posture that things take in the rural area.

[04:55:17] And we allow for it. I do have one addition. On 18, you can go back because I'll stay on point here and try to. I think number two should be public investment. Infrastructure seems to say roads, et cetera, things that we do.

[04:55:38] But either land needs to be under that or we need to add land. We just purchased 400 and some acres for economic development. Purchasing land by the government to effectively or to try to attack affordable housing is a viable path forward.

[04:55:55] We've never done it for economic development. We're finally getting into that. Stacey was here, what, the last board meeting with a piece of property we already own over by Monocello that we were going to explore as potentially putting housing on. but there should probably we at least during this process should consider if we should be purchasing land to land bank or to take the the most expensive cost of the land out of the equation and use it um i'm not saying i want to get in the development business but we can get land investment in albemore county is not a bad is a low risk thing and it could help us accomplish

[04:56:29] um where we're at but that has cip ramifications etc um when jim was talking about i forgot what you were talking about but it dawned on me in the utilization review of the capacity of the development area the development area you know the rural area has all this pressure on it from all these different avenues you know the scenic stuff the ecosystems the water quality but in the development area the pressure is both residential and commercial and we want all the residential density and we want all the commercial density to exist there so we as supervisor McKeel and I get nervous sometimes when we allowed commercial to revert to, I mean, residential to commercial to

[04:57:08] revert to residential. That project that got deferred on us at the last piece had a little piece of commercial, but it was taking a prime commercial piece off of 29 and going to convert it to residential. In this utilization review, we need to make sure we're understanding not just the capacity in large of the development area, but residential capacity versus commercial capacity.

[04:57:30] And then when the two compete against each other, we have a firm understanding of that. It's like the small area plan at Rio is not supposed to deliver us restaurants and steakhouses and coffee shops. It's supposed to deliver us a couple floors of businesses that are producing things with people living on top of it.

[04:57:48] So that kind of mixed use piece, I think, is baked in here. But when we start taking a track out of the development area that is primarily commercial, and I know office buildings aren't being filled up right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean that will be the trend ongoing.

[04:58:05] So that would suggest perhaps beefing up E to something that's more than just cost and vacancy trends, but somehow captured. Well, the capacity, because we're not passing. I'm flagging this because I feel like in my remarks, I was focusing on residential units. The capacity of commercial density, that pressure also has to be achieved in the development area.

[04:58:28] Because we've got folks advocating now, while we left, I was going to pick on Rob for a minute when he talked about appropriate business in the rural area. I don't know what appropriate is and who's defining that. So I don't know how I feel about that word. But we are saying that the densest bit of commercial is supposed to exist in the development areas.

[04:58:48] We just have to make sure we understand. I know I'm sure you have that. It's probably easier to track that than an application coming forward because we don't get as many commercial if they're doing it a by-rate commercial project. But that would maybe fall into that development area or rural area home piece where maybe that does come back on a different basis.

[04:59:07] And, you know, I can remember a day when we asked Roger to give us his feedback on every rezoning regarding economic development so that an impact, right? And that's kind of fallen away. We just have stopped doing that.

[04:59:23] But it gets to what you're talking about. And then just anecdotally on Northfield right now, some of the homes for sale, they're for sale for under $500,000. So these are the half-acre lots, which folks are saying that all their bigger land, there's only one unit on that half-acre lot. But to Supervisor Malik and McKeel's points, those are actually the most affordable houses in my Ryo district.

[04:59:45] Because if you get a townhouse in Belvedere or Long Ryo Road, you're looking at $600,000, $700,000, $800,000. You go get a little half-acre lot with a 2,000-square-foot home, and you can get that for $490,000, $480,000 right now. And Woodbrook's the same thing. Have a place for a garden.

[05:00:01] Well, Woodbrook's not half-acre, but... But still, I'm going to make one more comment, and then I'll look around. The ratio of dwelling units and the RA compared to the DAs, I guess I just want to recognize that we're going to have discussions of the rural area.

[05:00:16] And in those discussions, we will recognize that there are, you know, the two acre, the five acre, the 20 acre building rights. And whether those are working the way they're intended is an important discussion for us to have at that time and will help us to understand whether somehow we're pushing things into the rural areas that we really didn't want to.

[05:00:38] But I just want to make that comment because I think it's important to understand how things work in the rural areas. they're not just squeezed out but they have restrictions that have been imposed by zoning and may or may not be revisited at some point right or can we move on from here i know it's at 6 15 we're going to continue with this discussion as my expectation when we complete it we may look to see if we have comments from the public but then continue on so that we don't leave those people who might be waiting if you don't mind just prefacing that slightly so the next set

[05:01:17] of slides that you're going to be seeing is again information that we wanted to try and get in front of you all so that you'd sort of be familiar with it because it's going to be your constituents will be talking about it in public meetings we will be coming back on November 6th to talk about this stuff more in depth so to the extent that you all want to ask these questions of course we're happy to answer but I just wanted to give you the idea that this is more introductory to that extent appreciate it you've heard a lot tonight thank you we're happy to talk you know stay here all

[05:01:55] night i was going to say mr chair do we need to pause and see if anybody wants to give us public comments because i don't want people to wait another hour if they were normally we would have a couple things before we'd actually get to the point so we would have the county executive report and then we will do the comments from the public.

[05:02:24] How much more do you think we will need? I hate to suggest that. Tanya, what do you think? Probably maybe 10, 15 minutes of presentation. Oh, 10 or 15 minutes on your side. I did clarify.

[05:02:40] I would recommend, I mean, if we just say 6.30, we pause and take public comment. And if anybody's signed up. I think that if that can be something that we can line up for 6.30, we should try to do that. Thank you. I think that's reasonable for people who would ordinarily come at 6 o'clock expecting to come at 6.30. Thank you.

[05:03:00] Sure. So we'll take a look at the two major land use tools that influence the effectiveness of the growth management policy. Those are future land use categories and how they're applied to the future land use map, and then the activity center, activity and employment centers.

[05:03:20] Other tools will be included in the comp plan recommendations, like updates to the zoning ordinance for development in the development areas and encouraging the use of conservation easements in the rural area. We brought these concepts to you last fall.

[05:03:37] We'd like to preview these, the consolidated land use categories, map, and activity centers, since, as Michael mentioned, these will be presented to the public on October 30th. The land use categories map and activity centers support the objectives of the growth management policy.

[05:03:58] They're also intended to foster the desired features of the development areas, which are based on best practices and community input and include housing and transportation choices, a variety of land uses, walkable neighborhoods, and parks and amenities.

[05:04:18] Future land use categories provide recommendations for future land uses and the general form and scale of future development. They're used during the review process for rezonings and special use permits as part of the consistency with the comprehensive plan review.

[05:04:36] Future land use categories are applied to a future land use map with different colors for each category. The uses are recommendations for development. They are different from zoning districts and the zoning ordinance, which has requirements for development that must be followed.

[05:04:53] More definition of these tools will be brought to your next meeting, and we will end up treating development review of projects a little bit differently depending on whether they are in an activity center or not.

[05:05:12] That activity center will function as an overlay. I'll get more into that in a moment. The current comprehensive plan has over 20 land-use categories across five area plans.

[05:05:28] The area plans are places 29, Southern and Western, Pantops, Crozet, and the Village of Rivanna. Many of these categories are very similar, but with slightly different names and recommendations. The overlap in number of categories can make administration and clarity challenging.

[05:05:50] One of the anticipated outcomes of AC44 is having a consolidated and updated set of standard future land use categories that are applied across the development areas in a matching approach.

[05:06:06] This is intended to standardize the designation of categories on the future land use map and provide needed clarity. The 11 future land use categories can be organized into the following general sections. primary resident primarily residential mixed use commercial and employment and industrial and public uses this map shows how the proposed land use categories the 11 standard as well as the

[05:06:38] three legacy categories are applied across the development areas with ac44 the updated land use categories have been applied in a matching approach as i mentioned for example properties that are currently designated urban residential remain urban residential. More significant changes such as changing a property from urban residential to community mixed use would typically be done during an area plan update. This is the first graph that we have shared of an updated

[05:07:11] future land use map. In phase two we shared these the the actual categories. Your packet includes detailed descriptions for each future land use category and how the current master plan designations translate and apply to the proposed future land use map. We'll talk more about these designations and categories in our next work session in two weeks. Activity centers are places that have a variety of businesses, services, and housing options, either now or in the future.

[05:07:51] They help identify core areas of higher-intensity mixed-use development, which also helps to prioritize infrastructure projects and investments. Each activity center acts like a land-use overlay, providing additional guidance for development along with the underlying future land-use categories.

[05:08:16] Currently there are 30 draft centers proposed with AC44. In previous area plans there were as many as 50 so we have consolidated those. Many of these centers were small and not currently or anticipated to be mixed use.

[05:08:36] This consolidated set of centers helps focus development and public projects. Centers were identified based on existing development patterns, known plan development projects, recommendations in the area plans, and estimates for current and future job and housing totals.

[05:09:00] There are four center place types, and starting with the most dense and intense to the least, they are regional, which are shown here in red. for example, at Rio 29. A community center, which is shown in blue, and for example, could be Hillsdale Drive that parallels Highway 29 to the west. An employment center shown in purple, such as Centara Martha Jefferson Hospital in Pantops, and local, which is in orange,

[05:09:40] that could be identified as Southwood. Regional centers are where we will initially focus our public investment and services, increase transportation options, and increase our residential density and commercial intensity. These circles and ovals that you see on this map will be refined as part of an area planning process to take place in the future. In your packets is a center's quick guide that gets into the details of the expected features of each type

[05:10:13] of activity or employment center. This last slide really is about our next steps and when we'll be seeing you next. Currently we're in the blue box October 16th talking about the growth management policy. We'll be going to a joint CAC meeting on the 30th here in Lane Auditorium. We will then go back to the PC in October on the 22nd to talk about the land use tools and policy in more detail

[05:10:52] and be back in front of you on November 6th. We will be looking at specifically the goals, objectives, and actions for the development area land use in mid to late November and moving into the rural area land use policy discussion starting mid to mid-November to mid-December.

[05:11:18] We're still discussing the date for the board meeting for the rural area just because of the holiday break and where that may fall. With that, I am finished. I'll leave this slide up i believe that we answered these questions but we'll take questions on land use and or activity centers thank you thank you um yeah we have uh somewhat looked at these questions but we also have these additional slides that we've gone through so we'll look for comments and sure questions and concerns and i recognize i have four minutes before we jump but i will i don't

[05:11:56] tend to have many uh questions understand this bit is a preview and not the one that we're supposed to actually be sinking our teeth into i will begin just by saying uh i think it should stir something in us when we look at this notional future land use map um as we continue to say we're going to build up we're going to build densely in order to preserve our rural area and then we look and boy howdy there's a lot of yellow right it is it is evocative it should be frankly chilling as we kind of continue to say this and i think we need to think hard about how we're actually going to make use of that space and whether or not that involves changes to the

[05:12:34] future land use map that do encourage greater density in a broader area of locations, recognizing that the R1 that we have in there is mostly already developed. Whether or not that means looking at ways to utilize things that don't necessarily touch the future land use map, but expand what kind of uses we might find acceptable, such as by ride accessory uses might be something that we have to actually look into quite seriously given how much yellow how much already existing development 93 or whatever that has already been uh ground up so i would just suggest that um i do

[05:13:13] like the the center's framework as a way for us to think through how we're going to structure our own planning and development resources um i think that's helpful that being said i will want to know a lot more about what that is actually going to entail as we get a little closer whether or not that's going to have any kinds of overlay plans whether or not that's going to have any kind of restrictions or expectations that we're going to put on uh on landowners in those areas and frankly once we have a better sense of what the geometries of those areas are i'm sure we will have a lot of

[05:13:49] frankly like quite like thief-like uh arguments over where we should draw those lines because that's going to be we all agree our urban areas need amenities and those amenities need to include things like sidewalks but when we start saying well that means there's they're going to have to be limited to local centers local centers are where we're going to prioritize sidewalks i can see that being the intuitive step we take with what a local center means um i think we're going to probably get very deep in the weeds and uh back and forth as to how we draw those borders because that i mean if we for those of us who paid more attention during uh charlottesville's

[05:14:25] back and forth on their flume the flume alone uh which included their centered type things i think they went over over a year of back and forth just negotiating those individual boundaries because individual planning commissioners individual um boards of members of their city council had very strong opinions about what street line you drew things on and when that starts to mean who's going to get a sidewalk next is it going to be south what is it going to be fifth and avon is it going to be um old lynchburg road like that starts to matter um so i anticipate that while i think this

[05:15:02] is a good framework i think it makes sense with our limited resources that's how we have to think about it i just recognize i would have a lot more thoughts about it um once it has a little bit more texture on it thank you thank you with that i will look to the court to see if we have anyone signed up we don't have anyone here no one online then we will continue and consider that a close of the public uh matters from the public um i don't know whether there might be anybody in the in person today that might want to speak yeah the sign up is if anyone here is interesting

[05:15:41] then we will continue through our order supervisor go so just so i understand the activity centers are kind of like our rio's small area plan when you say it's an overlay does it work in the same way that meaning if I redevelop in the small area plan I've got a voluntary overlay it's catalog and approach because I can it's pre-approved by ARB and all of that stuff these activity center overlays what like what well first of all remember the comp plan is a guide not a regulatory vehicle so unlike the zoning ordinance we had the form-based code and it became regulatory and

[05:16:20] and a rule of stuff like this the intent of these things basically is to try and help us focus our resources um and it's hierarchical also in nature so the regional centers there's fewer of them they tend to be places we might see a lot of of redevelopment and i think what we're trying to do with the activity centers is sort of the underlying land uses categories in that they run in a range so we would like to see people going at the higher density into that range if you're coming in a rezoning and you're at a um you know we have an activity center there we're looking for you to

[05:16:54] try to get the higher end of that range of residential density commercial intensity it also serves as a guide for the public sector's investments in these um in our development area helps us sort of form where we might be thinking about transportation investments whether they are sidewalks in these centers or connections in between them whether it's transit or bike and finally i think that it's the idea of trying to create some walkable nodes within a development

[05:17:32] area that um is we you need to have some place to really start to to create a walkable dense intense area and by having some of these hierarchical things about regional ones being places we were going to look for our highest and most density, those are probably areas that we'll probably try to seek to, you know, co-join our public investments and future redevelopment efforts to try and really create an area for more residential development and intensity. I think I'm, I think I follow. I won't get, dive down into this, but it's, it's, I have to put my MPO or hat on. It's,

[05:18:12] it's like transit when they talk activity center and you're thinking lines and stuff. That's how I'm hearing you describe it but when I see on the what you you know the document that we have in our packet it says act like a land use overlay to encourage more mixed use and higher intensity development the voluntary overlay of the small area plan is designed that if you opt into it you benefit from the basically the runway of the catalog if you meet this it's approved so I want to make sure I'll just throw this out there I'm not looking for a response right now I don't want

[05:18:49] of confuse activity centers for those type of overlays or maybe i do maybe we want these overlays if we're going to use the word encourage more mixed use and higher use development then it should be more than just defining the area and the overlay should bring forward something that is the incentive like the small area plan does is it in my is my logic tracking here i think your logic is obviously the small area plan our intent is to not define the exact i don't want to get into a smaller area plan process like all these get into that yeah we would get into the smaller

[05:19:26] area plan that would be the time to define the boundary um and that the intent of the regional center for example would be that um yeah if you're in that area we're the county's looking for the development community to try and get as much density we're supporting and encouraging that in those areas i just would think process-wise it's if the activity center should if it's encouraging a land use up whatever the word is, then it should give them in the process to get there some greased lanes, if you would. And potentially they do become additional form-based

[05:20:05] code centers. There you go. That's what I'm hoping for. Okay, good. Thank you. I'm just going to pick on the map, the land use map, and it's, I'm sorry, I mean, which map? The map? That map can we not use blue for anything but water like this institutional and then i'm seeing like oh wait that's the reservoir that's not some institutional land that's the that's water because blue on a map is water could we just please not for my own sake of looking at this

[05:20:42] i was like wow we got a lot more water it ran out of colors well you and that i get that but blue is for water there are some standard colors that we use for specific land uses we can definitely work on having a greater difference between the two blues yeah well we thought we were getting there but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna die on this hill but blue is water okay um identifying the recreation and open space just tell me what's behind that

[05:21:17] based on, and I'm looking at my district and what these green areas are. So you tell me what recreation and open space means for this so that I know if my note, if I want to say my note or not. I'm going to look to maybe Tori or Michael for some help on the recreation and open space discussion. I know that in our previous plans, it was part of the green systems.

[05:21:45] designation we've got open space or green areas generally but when i start when i see a land use map that we're planning you've got areas marked that we have no control over and i don't and it makes it look like the development area has all this wonderful open green space that people can enjoy they that's sacca and uh it used to be i forget what the new soccer group is up there monu it used to be monu but it's something else now down here as you go down the river you've got um i think private property than dunlora dunlora now the revana trail goes along that but the

[05:22:24] revana trail had to get permission from the dunlora hoa to be able to use that so this really skews like this is going to be in our plan future land use map if i came here and i was a stranger i'd be like wow look at all that great open green space available to me in the development area they can't walk in it the belvedere area might pull in because i think some of that's going to convey over to help with our trail system but i'm questioning whether or not how that recreation and open space should be defined and then like where's our like the uh the riverside park on the west

[05:23:00] side of 29 between the you know 29 of the dams not is white so um is charlotte humphreys i'm assuming that's what this green so i think that may be charlotte humphreys but it's that green area so what i'm saying is like when i look and i maybe i'm confusing public park maybe that's institutional maybe it should be blue um but i think for for purposes of earlier conversations of trying to get some actual park like amenities in the development area this it may be appropriately

[05:23:35] marked somewhere like darden tau i think is marked green right yeah yeah so but darden tau is not what's behind Dunlora and in SACA and all of that so I think that needs to be cleaned up in my opinion just for reference versus private in a way yeah public access I mean we've got a lot of I mean I get it the yellow is private the or I mean there's a lot of private here I'm just saying when you when I see recreation and open space in a government document it seems to me to be suggesting that that's under our control and we're providing that to the public we're not and where

[05:24:13] we are we should identify that in your previous planning exercises uh the decision was made that these areas that were the floodplains or critical slopes got pulled into this green space so uh you'll have parcels there that um some of that includes just critical slope areas uh or hoa open space areas or floodplains and so it's not and it does also include some of your parks so um your point is well taken but that was it was a decision made on the previous plans and and what we're trying to do here is create some fidelity with the previous mapping exercises that

[05:24:51] went forward we're not really trying to change too much of of the land use planning per se um from the previous plans the descriptions maybe and the keys and all of that i guess i just don't want folks to misconstrue what our public and maybe they wouldn't go here for that anyway they'd go to a public park map and look up what their public park maps are it is a little bit so i'm just throwing it out we'll maybe track that a little bit and see um and then on your other map with the circles which i think are defining the activity centers and the employment centers

[05:25:26] um i'm guessing i mean obviously the the little circles the the demarcations are not specific to the property boundaries correct um the north i feel like number three is hollymead town center Whereas North Fork is number two, I heard you have this discussion about where to put the airport.

[05:25:58] Is that industrial? Is that institutional? I don't know. But the point I want to make is for North Fork, which is under Employment Center, but they just got their rezoning that that's going to become like a Holymead, well, hopefully not like a Holymead Town Center.

[05:26:16] It's going to have residential and other type of employment there, but it's not just going to be an employment center. So I just wonder if, I'm just looking at that labeling is all, and we can track that. I'm not, you don't have to respond. I think that moving forward, that if there we have a place like North Point, you have under Community Center, the North Fork rezoning is similar, I think, in nature to North Point because you've got residential and some commercial elements to it, although they're not shooting for stores and restaurants.

[05:26:48] So I'm just questioning that labeling there. They're a consideration for the predominance. So North Fork has 90% employment and 10% residential. And maybe that's something to think about the way you describe something.

[05:27:04] Well, I mean, when it builds out, I don't know if that'll be the percentage. We approve 1500 units out there. Yeah, but there's no new acreage taken away from the employment center, which is five times bigger. But it's all, but I mean, you would lose the residential aspect of it, I guess. North Fork is residential and then with the school going in there also.

[05:27:24] i'm just throwing it out i mean i'm not saying yeah i don't maybe it should be the way it is now i'm just calling it out for further scrutiny based on the rezoning that was allowed and that supervisor uh could you go to the two questions that you wanted an answer to these i think we've answered so i approve okay i'm done thank you I think I have belabored the concerns I have with the various questions, and I'm all set.

[05:28:01] Thank you very much. Thank you. Just a really quick question, because I know we'll get into more detail about this, but if you go to page 22, I'm already receiving emails from concerned citizens because they're saying that there's no designation here for residential one and two units per acre.

[05:28:28] this is all for new so that my response i just want people not to be if they're living in and they think they're going to be rezoned out this is new development i mean this isn't a new zoning i'm sorry correct wrong word this is this is land yeah so this is not going to we're not going to go back and retrofit some of the zoning that we currently have correct not with this couple that's what now not at this time correct that's the answer to their question yeah thank you i just

[05:29:04] want to confirm that i'm right on that yeah thank you thank you i guess i would clarify though to say that you know this is the comprehensive plan and therefore if somebody comes in with a proposal to rezone we'll look at the copy of the plan and say oh well maybe we'll rezone that a lot too whatever they're thinking they're being that sure we're not rezoning at this point we're talking about i think to be honest with you jim they're thinking about the city right and very future land use map immediately uh hold hold on different scenario right um and i do think that when it comes to the maps if we look for the next slide i guess this two slides i guess further is there

[05:29:43] that one and then the next one two there that you know and this is i guess the answer uh that i'm attempting to supervisor galloway's question uh about what we're calling these centers employment centers, regional centers. I mean, only employment center does somehow exclude the idea of residents, but I don't think any of these were ever intended to be exclusive, but just simply designations.

[05:30:08] And they're not boundaries. They're not like the other map in that they're not telling us what the land use is parcel by parcel. They're just simply saying that this is an area where we expect a lot of employment, but there also will be a lot of people living. I think that the employment centers might get confusing if there's residences in there but um in the others there's kind of a mix of use anyway um i guess i just didn't see the two maps as saying the same sorts of things with

[05:30:40] respect to what the land uses um are there any other additional comments questions i think we're good thank you thank you broadway has residential very uh helpful discussion i think i appreciate the effort and appreciate your patience with us um and here's the price oh yes we live for now you get to summarize what we said to the planning commission that's right good luck well they can

[05:31:13] listen they can listen to our all right uh now board uh we have we have just a few things before we go into closed session so i think we could just continue on and then take a break as we go into closed session if you need a break let me make a suggestion suggestion mr chair we've got one outside guest tonight that we've brought for introduction to the board and my suggestion to you would be that we uh that you allow me to invite our guest up and it's a great transition when with

[05:31:52] what the discussion has been and then the board may want to take a break go to closed session and you you and you and i can talk about what do we do not report later tonight or either or either at a later board meeting okay because all it is is just the county execs report and i'm checking in on some data and some information on the activities of the county but it's not mission critical that we do that at this point or even this evening depending on the board's appetite once we come out of closed session but mr lunsford is here he's here and welcome i would love to invite uh quinn lunsford forward uh quinn is the newly appointed director of the albemore county service

[05:32:32] authority and uh i thought it would be a wonderful opportunity uh for quinn to come before the board this evening and he's been in the position for several months he reached out to miss wall myself and county staff miss filardo who was just with us and said i'd love to talk to county staff uh in my new role and understand more about how we work together with the county and then what we did not know is by getting him here tonight i think he's been with us about an hour he got an opportunity to look at the board talk about the development areas uh and uh the comp plan and i

[05:33:08] think there's a real strong connection with what his team does every day with uh with uh water throughout our county so quinn welcome to the county and we'd love to have you talk a little bit about your experience and what you've been doing in your new role so thank you sir you're welcome thank you for your patience thank you very much for having me um so i started with the service authority in 2014 as the director of finance and i've served under i'm sorry i served under gary o'connell uh during his tenure he uh he served the service authority

[05:33:44] for about 15 years uh and his mantra was safe clean reliable water i can assure you that we're going to continue that. We are going to work towards being a world-class utility. And by that, I mean, we continue to provide incredibly clean and incredibly reliable service, but we further emphasize how we interact with customers, how we meet their needs, and how we work collaboratively with the community, with the county, with county staff, with Board of Supervisors, our board, Ravana Water and Sewer Authority, as well as the city.

[05:34:24] So we see ourselves as a contributing member to you, and we want to make sure that we provide the necessary information for the work that you all do. Our team of 83 at the Service Authority is incredibly passionate about the service that they provide. They're proud of the work that they do and we're proud of of what we're able to do in the community so this opportunity is for me to hopefully put a face with a name and an email please don't hesitate to contact me with any

[05:35:02] questions from your constituents or from from a county perspective and we we look to continue a really good relationship with the county thank you thanks sir or do we have any additional comments or questions from Mr. Pruitt, Mr.

[05:35:19] Thank you. I'm sorry you had to sit through that. That was good. I'm glad that we've had an internal candidate that knows the system and coming over. So good luck, sir. Thank you. Two gallons and a half for a penny is a really big deal.

[05:35:37] Appreciate it. Richardson, I think you're welcome to go ahead with the county executive report if you have one and Abby's here, so this is your moment to stretch okay board thank you this is the october county executives report miss stump as always does a fantastic job working with our departments to put what i hope you will find meaningful information in front of you this evening and as abby always does after this board

[05:36:13] meeting is completed she will send she will package and send this report out to all of the board members, along with talking points. If you have CAC meetings, if you have meetings in the community, and you need to borrow this information to push out to the community, we certainly hope you will. Okay, so we'll go first off and talk about Fire Prevention Week recap. To recognize the Fire Prevention Week, that's October 6th through 12th, our Fire and Rescue Department launched a county-wide campaign to share prevention tips and engage with our community members throughout the week volunteer and career members hosted open houses and fire stations they

[05:36:52] set up pop pop-up tables at retail locations they organized two large community events one at fifth street station and one at the hollymead town center through events our members contact we connected with over 1800 community members and in this particular photo fire prevention week prompted this family to develop an escape plan for their home complete with color-coded routes.

[05:37:19] And you know this is fun, but it's also a part of being safe with families and with young kids. And so 1,800 community members were connected too. All right. And Ms. Shiflett was here for a good part of this evening as well as Mr. Jacob Sumner. Our county staff recently attended the ICMA conference in Pittsburgh. I gave the board a preview that we would be up there for several days.

[05:37:42] Dr. Bailey earlier this evening referenced her work that she did with Christy and Jacob, where thousands of local government management professionals were there for about four days. Jacob and Christy, along with Dr. Bailey, gave a presentation titled Harnessing the Strengths of the Local Economy, Integrated Planning and Strategic Action in Albemarle County.

[05:38:04] And so, board, we do appreciate your support for our continuing education efforts. I'd like to talk for a minute about our CIP agreement for Bennett's Village. Bennett's Village is an all-abilities play space under development at Penn Park.

[05:38:23] The space will cover three acres and will feature fully accessible play structures, a treehouse, a sensory garden, cableway, a water play area, a restroom pavilion, and native landscaping. The project is being completed in multiple phases. Bennett's Village has successfully fundraised for Phase 1, and that's the accessible treehouse.

[05:38:42] and now moving forward with phase two, the central play space. Almar County approved a one-time payment of $65,000 in response to Bennett Village's request for funding to cover a portion of the construction documents needed for the remaining phases.

[05:38:58] Okay, going back to staff development for just a second, Captain Kevin Miller recently graduated just within the last month from the FBI National Academy. I'll tell you a couple of things about this academy. it's 10 weeks. It is super competitive on a national and international level. There are a lot of local jurisdictions who do not get folks through this. Captain Miller graduated from this prestigious academy. He was among 200 and he represented ACPD among 254 law enforcement

[05:39:35] officers from 26 countries, plus members of the military and federal organizations. The training Academy is in Quantico, Virginia, and it's the same location where the FBI trains its special agents and intelligence analysts. And so we're really proud of Captain Miller. So this happened, this is continuity planning efforts, and Board, you've heard us talk a lot about it.

[05:40:02] Over the past year, we've focused on improving and operationalizing our continuity of operations planning to ensure our county can deliver critical services during any unexpected circumstance. Our phase one accomplishment trained staff on continuity planning and analyzed how departments function, which led to the appointment of 17 continuity liaisons that helps with the planning process.

[05:40:26] We identified critical functions, key personnel, and we established orders of succession for 79 key positions. We developed an enterprise continuity plan and draft plans for individual departments.

[05:40:42] So phase two goals are to conduct quarterly continuity program meetings, provide department-specific continuity plan trainings and individual department exercises, and then implement plan improvements based on feedback. Conduct a county-wide continuity exercise one year from now.

[05:41:02] This photo was from last Friday. A training was held to raise awareness and understanding for why the county has prioritized emergency planning and training. So this was a seminar, Lane Auditorium. We had about 60 county staff, and we brought a retired police captain in from Virginia Beach who walked us through a half day of work on a case study of a critical incident in Virginia Beach.

[05:41:29] Several years ago, it was a shooting that was within the city of Virginia Beach Public Works Department, and all of our departments work through what we learned from Virginia Beach as they come up and walked us through. This happened about five years ago, and they walked us through all of the days and weeks after this event occurred. And so our organization is beginning to really understand that emergency management, it involves every single department in the county. When we have an emergency event. We flipped the switch, and you can see employees in there from the Parks and

[05:42:07] Recreation Department, from Social Services, and Community Development. And these are departments that I would suggest that years ago, they didn't really think of having an active role during an emergency management activity, whereas police and fire, it's really second nature. But we're continuing to get stronger in this area. ANSI Community Volunteer Events, September recap. I noticed that ed was here earlier this evening and i appreciate ed being here throughout september yancey hosted multiple volunteer groups including centera martha jefferson hospital the church of

[05:42:43] jesus christ of latter-day saints and the uva radiology department and it that contributed to a total of 146 hours of service volunteers helped maintain the yancey community garden they supported the curbside, no-cost food stand distribution, handed out 75 bags of fresh vegetables and beautified the native plant gardens. Also of note, the health department staff conducted free flu vaccination

[05:43:12] clinic on September the 30th. So this is a super active area in our county. This picture was just taken, I think, within the last week. Our Atmar County Police Department had a meet and greet with Sin Barreras to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The Albemarle County Police and Police Foundation hosted a lunch meet and greet at Sin Barreras's office. The event provided an opportunity for our police officers and local leaders to connect and discuss important issues within the Hispanic

[05:43:48] community. And this event celebrated ACPD's long-standing partnership with our local Hispanic community leaders. And you see a really nice turnout from this event. And I certainly appreciate police department's outreach efforts. Ward, we wanted to take a minute and just mention really to the community that, you know, two weeks ago today on October 2nd, Afton Scientific announced a $200 million investment to expand its operations in Albemarle County, enhancing local biopharmaceutical manufacturing. This expansion will boost production and increasing access to life-saving

[05:44:27] injectable medicines for patients, and it will create 200 new jobs. Our Governor Yunkin and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership have provided state resources to support this project, highlighting our region's growing biosciences sector. So we really do have a strong growing biosciences sector. We appreciate the CEO, Tom Thorpe, his commitment to our community. His story is amazing. He's been in our community for 30 years, and boy, does he ever invest in our community, and does he ever invest in his workforce, and that really was clear when we were out there,

[05:45:03] so I appreciate our economic development folks. I appreciate their leadership. I appreciate this board and our economic development authority. A lot of members from the community were there, And there was a lot of energy. So thank you. And let's see.

[05:45:23] I think we've got key dates and reminders here where our speed camera warning period is ending. We've talked about that. That's the 21st. You've discussed that. Trunk or Treat at Claudius Crozet Park is the 24th, Thursday 24th, 4 to 7.

[05:45:39] That is a high number attendance that evening. We have Drug Take Back Day on October 26th. Great service to our community from 10 until 2. and then tax relief for the elderly and disabled application deadline on Thursday, October 21st.

[05:45:57] So we're really proud of the fact that we've got some things that are happening here. And again, I'd go back and highlight this 45-day warning period for the school zone speed enforcement cameras. It's going to end soon, and we really need our community beginning on October 21st to please slow down when you're in these school zones.

[05:46:18] All right. And I think that's it, board. And I appreciate your indulgence this evening. I know you've had a very, very long and demanding afternoon. Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. We'll go through our questions or comments. Supervisor Pruitt. I don't know that I have any questions. I appreciate the report. I remember I was going grocery shopping at Fifth Street Station at the Wegmans, and I saw that big banner flying from one of the ladders of one of fire teams because they were out there doing their fire prevention work. Boy, howdy. I just get so excited every time I see that China flag. That's all I got. Okay. Supervisor Cohen. Yeah,

[05:46:55] it's impressive with Captain Miller. I mean, you said 250 some over, and that's from around the world. I mean, that's, it must be highly exclusive to get in. So that's great. And make sure you get pictures of the trunk or treats because I think some of us will be on travel and won't be able to attend. Bring some of the candy with you too. Supervisor Lupisto. And the trunk or treat of Darden Town, they always have a SWAT team vehicle and also a motorcycle and a fire truck, and so it's always exciting to be there and get inside those. Oh, and the kids, too.

[05:47:30] As always, thank you for the update and things to share with the community. I appreciate it. It's great to know, and I am really, really thankful and appreciate our staff and all the work around the emergency management, that will pay big dividends at some point.

[05:47:53] Thank you. And thank you. Again, I applaud the things that we've seen on there, the outreach to the community, the continuity of operations planning, I think is critical. And obviously, congratulations, Catherine Miller. So thank you for the report.

[05:48:12] This brings us to, from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda, which we would do before we go into the closed session in the evening with our last item. So we'll see if we can go through an order on this.

[05:48:28] Supervisor Pruitt? I have nothing for the part. Supervisor Galloway. All right, real quick, at the last TJPDC meeting, in fiscal year 24, at our cigarette, this is our blue red cigarette board tax, sales tax board. In fiscal year 24, total PACs sold was $8.5 million in the region.

[05:48:49] give you some context in August of 24, that was 764,000. However, that high number represents a 9% decline over fiscal year 23. So the trend has gone down. And apparently that's happening nationally as well. However, this doesn't take into account like vaping. So you wonder if the cigarettes are being replaced by vaping, but that's not out there. So that's your, for Albemarle, Fiscal year 24, 2.2 million packs were sold in Albemarle.

[05:49:22] We were only outdone by Augusta, who were at 2.6 million. And that gave us, we collected for fiscal year 24, $824,485 from that. And that would have been after the cost.

[05:49:39] So that's what we netted based on the cigarette tax. I just report that each year when we get that. So sharing that information this evening. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto Curtis. Nothing, thank you. Supervisor Malin. None for me either. Supervisor McHugh. I'm good. Thank you.

[05:49:55] And I just want to quickly report that we did have a Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee meeting. One of the things that I just want to mention that we recognize from our Climate Action Plan is that one of the low-hanging roots as far as solid waste alternatives is not the usual recycling, but actually compost and solid food waste, which is why certainly the discussion earlier of loaves and fishes, Jane Colony Mills, is now on the SWAC because of addressing food waste.

[05:50:27] And so there was a discussion, just to let you know, about considering a joint effort with the city to study how compost might be picked up in a pilot program or something. And so that's one of the things that's being looked at. There's also discussion about eventually coming to us to look at more information, finding out more information from haulers of trash and how they do that and where they're taking it and what it is.

[05:50:53] So look for those in the future. I just wanted to highlight those from the meeting. Just to add on to that, what's really upsetting about the haulers is a lot of them say that they recycle and they don't. So we're looking for ways to make sure we know what they're doing. Is there anything else on the board?

[05:51:12] I had a question to leave with you. That is, is there any discussion about diversion of edible food from the trash? In other words, whether there are... This is one of the possible programs is to develop some compost sites so that people could actually take compostables and food waste to those sites.

[05:51:35] But I'm talking about not to waste. Not waste. For other people to eat. Because I know if you go late to Bodo's, they don't even take this give the stuff to loaves or anybody they just throw it out and there i don't know if there's laws that require that or whatever there used to be a number of years ago restaurants and things were sharing stuff at the end of their day and you know packaging it up and there was so i don't know how to carry that out but i thought i would ask because i think there's a huge amount that goes into the dumpster that could be really used by uh and i think the united states is pretty awful about throwing sticks and other countries mentioned earlier loaves and

[05:52:11] fishes of course gets food from grocery stores that is nearing expiration but when we specifically asked uh jane about uh food waste food food from uneaten food from restaurants she said it's very difficult to use prepared foods in those contexts so that's one of the complexities shelters maybe you have to look at the best by date and you know certain foods can go a little longer but if it's eaten at a restaurant you don't know when it was as much well with that i think we're ready for motion to go into closed session i would like to move that the board of supervisors

[05:52:50] convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2 tech 3711a of the code of virginia first under subsection 7 to consult with legal counsel and receive briefings by staff members pertaining to actual litigation concerning a contract claim in the case styled sl williamson company incorporated versus County of Albemarle, Virginia, where consultation or briefing in an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the county and the board and, second, under subsection 8, to consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters requiring legal advice related to homestay requirements.

[05:53:25] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, a second from Supervisor Malik, without objection, if the court will call the roll. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. McKeaster-Kirtley? Aye. thank you uh to come out of closed meeting yep i would like to move the board of supervisors certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each supervisor's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirement of the virginia freedom of information act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered

[05:54:00] in the closed meeting second we have a motion from supervisor pruitt a second from supervisor Malik without objection if the clerk will call the roll yes yes yes yes I don't think there's anything else coming out of closed meeting if anyone has anything else otherwise I will say we are adjourned and our next regular scheduled meeting is on Wednesday November 6th 2024 1 p.m.

[05:54:27] in lane auditorium opportunities for the public to access and participate in this meeting are posted on the Albemarle county website on the board of supervisors home page and on the Albemarle County calendar. Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received, and good night.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com