Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular Meeting, Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 8h 23m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1268
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1268

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

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[00:00:15] Okay. Good afternoon. I am pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 15th of January, 2025 at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Ann Malick of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor B. Lepisto-Kirtley of the Ravana District, Supervisor Mike Prude of the Scottsville District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

[00:00:42] The quorum is present. We're also joined by our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, and our Interim County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our Clerk, Ms. Claudette Forgerson, Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris. Also, let me please welcome the Albemarle County Police Officers Present, Sergeant Matthew Riley and Officer Tavon Richardson. We thank you for your service here today and every day and the work you and your colleagues do on behalf of our community to keep us safe. If all present could now stand as you are able and join us in the Pledge of

[00:01:14] Allegiance. Thank you. And if you could now join us in a moment of silence. As always, our first

[00:02:03] order of business is to approve the final agenda. Note that there's an updated motion relating to the Innisfree Village Critical Slope special exception, but that's been posted online, and that's not really a change to the agenda. But other than noting that, are there any other changes. If not, then I'm looking for a motion to approve the final agenda. So moved. Second.

[00:02:27] We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Thank you, board. And we'll go through our order today for announcements by board members, starting with Supervisor Malek. Oh, goody. So, as everyone is very well aware we've had quite a dose of winter and there's lots more very extreme weather to come next week. Several things I would ask people to be especially careful about. If you are able and have a sidewalk in front of your property especially commercial owners

[00:03:05] and landlords, please make sure that your sidewalk, if it exists is shoveled so that your neighbors can continue to walk. Children can walk to school people can get groceries and not have to walk out in the road in front of the sections which are not being shoveled so far. The one sad thing if you wait is that then it gets melty and frozen, and it's a lot harder to shovel than it is when you do it promptly.

[00:03:27] And also for pets, when it's down in the single digits in teens, pets should not be outside in any houses, and the animal protection officers in the county can provide guidance for people on that. And checking on your neighbors as well is really important.

[00:03:44] So thank you all very much. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Yes, so I mentioned this last time, but I am, I've become election announcements guy. I let you all know the outcomes of our recent special elections, and now it's just time to remember that we always have one coming up.

[00:04:03] So this is going to be a state and local election year. There's quite a lot going on. There is a governor's race for which we have both Winston Sears and Abigail Spanberger running, Lieutenant Governor's race, which are going to include Pat Herity, John Curran, and possibly John Reed, running for the Republican nomination, and a crowded field of LeVar Stoney, Aaron Rouse, Ghazla Hashmi, Babur Lateef, and Victor Salgura, running on the Democrat side.

[00:04:29] Attorney General Mayars is running for another term. Jay Jones and Shannon Taylor are competing in the Democrat primary. Both our delegates in the House that represent Elmoral County, that's Katrina Coulson and Amy Laufer, have started their campaign for re-election, and to my knowledge, no one has announced opposing them.

[00:04:47] And three of our supervisors are going to be up for re-election. Those are the three that you see in the middle. Those are Supervisors McKeel, Galloway, and Andrews. So it's going to be a busy year. And also, the thing I like to remind people is this is the cycle during which politics is most proximate to you.

[00:05:04] Every single one of these people all the way up to the governor, you will probably be able to actually see and talk to in person during this election cycle. And it's a great way to really get a handle on how these issues affect you and your life. And on that note, it is also worth noting that the General Assembly has started. They gaveled in only to gavel out last Wednesday because of emergent crises in Richmond.

[00:05:25] But they are now actually back to doing business. They've already reported out three constitutional amendments that if they are able to vote on them again next year with the same levels of support will appear on your ballot in 2026. This is automatic voting rights restoration for returning felons, reproductive freedom protections, and LGBT marriage protections.

[00:05:48] So look forward to seeing those in 2026 on your ballot. And lastly, I mentioned this briefly, but there are incidents that are happening in the broader community that I think have really given me cause to appreciate the work that we do in Albemarle County.

[00:06:04] I'm thinking both the L.A. County fires that we are seeing right now and the Richmond water crisis that has blessedly abated at this point. Albemarle County invests deeply in services that often feel unsexy. And that can sometimes feel frustrating as a citizen, sometimes frustrating as a supervisor, that we're not doing a lot of the big flashy things you might see.

[00:06:26] But we center so much of the planning and the thinking that we go during budget cycles, during any of our decision-making, around these really big and critical issues of making sure we're providing clean water, effective sewer, and fire and rescue services.

[00:06:43] And I am reminded, particularly this week, how critical and essential it is that that is how we prioritize things here in the county. That's all I have here. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto Curley. Thank you very much. Just going back to the L.A. fires, which is where I lived for over 40 years, there's a toxic element also from the fires.

[00:07:06] So anything we can do or anything people as individuals can do to help out the American Red Cross there, they have lost everything. I personally have a friend who lost her home and others who have been impacted, and this is not the end of it.

[00:07:22] more winds are coming. The entire time I lived in that area, Southern California, L.A. County, we never, ever had 100-mile-an-hour winds. So if this is a precursor to what is going to happen not only in California but the rest of the nation, we're in trouble, which is even more reason that we need to make sure that we double down and we are safe.

[00:07:47] Health and safety is our priority. We have to make sure we have enough firefighters and police officers to be able to keep everybody safe. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McHugh. Yes, just to follow up, and I really appreciate the discussion this morning and some of the points that supervisors are making.

[00:08:10] To follow up on B's comment about the fires in Los Angeles, One of the problems they've realized is that their policies and their work on their water infrastructure has not kept up with climate change and the needs that they may need, they were going to need in the future based on climate change and fires that were going to be seeing.

[00:08:36] And that brings me to just a reminder to folks how important infrastructure is everywhere. the civil engineers in this country are now rating our infrastructure in the United States at a C-minus. But if you look at individual infrastructures like bridges and roads, you may get a different report, which could be more concerning. Virginia's infrastructure is rated as a C as opposed to a national C-minus. But I do think it behooves all of us to think about

[00:09:14] infrastructure. For example, in Richmond, they have had certainly a dramatic problem with water because they had some of their pipes were 100 years old. So I'm just saying that we need to be thinking about, even in Albemarle County, but all over this country, and specifically in our areas where this infrastructure touches our lives so carefully, or so importantly, we need to be thinking about infrastructure. Having said that, moving on, I want to remind folks that the

[00:09:51] Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce is hosting the State of the Community 2025 event. Many of us have gone to this in the past. It's always a great time for Jeff, our county executive, and Sam the city manager in Charlottesville to present to us along with hearing some great reports out and some good information. This event is Friday, February the 21st from 8 o'clock until 10 o'clock and this year it's being held at PVCC at Piedmont Virginia Community College

[00:10:31] in the Advanced Technology and Student Success Center. So it'll be an opportunity to get out to the PBCC and SIA, some of their new buildings. So, again, that's Friday, February the 21st, from 8 to 10, and registration is requested.

[00:10:49] And I think, I know Travis has kindly already registered me, and he'd be happy, I'm sure, to register the rest of us. So that is one thing. And the only other thing I want to thank is the Parks and Rec team that we have in Elmar County.

[00:11:17] The Charlotte Humphreys Park has some great walking trails that are highly used. They're macadam, they're paved. And I can't tell you how happy I was to see the way you all kept those going during the snowstorm.

[00:11:37] They were just wonderful, beautifully cleaned. And I was getting pictures from constituents saying, this is great to have to look at Charlotte Humphress Park and how the trails have been cleaned. So thank you. I see some of you sitting there. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:11:52] And that's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. I do not have any announcements. Okay. And I just double on gratitude to VDOT and to power companies, the electric utilities, for keeping the power on with these storms.

[00:12:10] And caution to everyone that we're looking at single-digit temperatures next week. I hope that we will be ready as a county, if need be, for warming shelters. I also agree that, you know, it's important to keep sidewalks clear.

[00:12:25] We're a pedestrian-friendly community. And that may be something that revisit at some point how car-centric it is to just clean the roads and not the sidewalks. Supervisor? One thing to add that I meant to do before, and that is I wanted to appreciate publicly the coordination that Amaral County staff has interdepartmentally for our emergency preparedness and how in advance of these storms they're all talking to each other and figuring out how to best anticipate where the trains are.

[00:12:57] And so that has put us so far ahead in the safety realm than prior to five years ago when that didn't really happen so much until afterwards. So it's made a big, big difference to our citizens. Much appreciated by your staff. Thank you. Bork, our next item, very happy to introduce the proclamation celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

[00:13:20] This will be a motion read by Supervisor Malik. Thank you very much. I move adoption of the proclamation celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Whereas just a century after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, Dr. King and Allied Forces marched on Washington and delivered the revered I Have a Dream speech, advocating for the end of racial segregation and societal inequality.

[00:13:44] And whereas Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders devoted their lives to the expansion of civil rights and public service to all Americans. And whereas in honoring his legacy, Martin Luther King Day is the only federal holiday designated as a National Day of Service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. And whereas Amarillo County has invested in creating a more equitable and inclusive society by centering community as an organizational value, which states that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into how we live our mission,

[00:14:19] to serve all members of our community. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, Amaral County Board of Supervisors do hereby honor and celebrate January 20th, 2025 as Martin Luther King Jr. Day and encourage our employees and residents to work toward his vision for a more equitable and inclusive society. Second. Signed this 15th day of January 2025, Jim Andrews Chair.

[00:14:44] I apologize, I in second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malik, second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Hi. And board, I believe we have a couple people here to, it looks like a group, here to help accept this proclamation. Sue Earhart, Executive Director of the Ivy Creek Natural Area Foundation and Historic Riverview Farm, and Mariah Payne, Descendant and Education Coordinator of the Ivy Creek Natural Area and Historic Riverview Farm, welcome.

[00:15:20] Hello. Mariah couldn't be here today, so she asked me, her mother, to read her remarks. Thank you. Thank you to the Algamar County Board of Supervisors for awarding me the Martin Luther King Jr. Day proclamation for my service to our community through the Ivy Creek Foundation.

[00:15:44] I'm sorry I cannot be there to join you all today, but I deeply appreciate this recognition. This work is not mine alone. It stands on the shoulders of the remarkable individuals whose legacies shape this community. It is a privilege to share and preserve the stories of African Americans in Albemarle County.

[00:16:03] I want to first and foremost acknowledge the Carr Greer family and their descendants, whose dedication and service have profoundly enriched our community and beyond. As a proud descendant of Riverview Farm myself, with Mrs. Texie Mae Hawkins being my third great-aunt, I carried this history personally.

[00:16:24] I also wanted to honor my immediate family. My father, James Payne Jr., who just turned 80 on Saturday, attended the Albemarle Training School and Burley High School. He graduated from North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, North Carolina, and in 1963, he joined a group that was arrested for protesting Jim Crow at a segregated movie theater.

[00:16:48] It is because of these individuals that Ivy Creek stands as a place of reflection, learning, and celebration. Their stories remind us of the not-too-distant past while also honoring the continued legacy of African-Americans in Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and beyond.

[00:17:07] Thank you again to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. Thank you. I have the privilege of working at Riverview Farm, a site founded by Hugh Carr, a formerly enslaved man, and his wife, Taxi Mee Hawkins, in 1870.

[00:17:27] Together, they built a legacy of hope and opportunity for their children, believing that education could transform lives and open new doors. Riverview Farm, now an African-American historic site, preserves the home and barn of the Carr-Greer family.

[00:17:44] During the Jim Crow era, Riverview Farm served as a safe haven, a place for education, club meetings, and a refuge for African-Americans seeking solace and strength. Mrs. Mary Carr Greer, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carr, has a profound legacy as an educator, principal, and community leader.

[00:18:04] A champion of voting rights in the 1940s, let me say that again, in the 1940s, she helped adults navigate literacy tests, pay poll taxes, and claim their political voice. Mrs. Mary Carr Greer's husband, Mr. Conley Greer, the first African-American extension agent here in Albemarle County, was equally pioneering.

[00:18:27] He worked tirelessly for African-American farmers to improve their agricultural output and achieve economic independence. Their extraordinary contributions were formally recognized in November of 2023 when Riverview Farm was added to the National Park Service African-American Civil Rights Network.

[00:18:46] Their other children, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh and Taxi May Carr's children, were Mr. Marshall Carr, Mrs. Virginia Brown, Mrs. Emma Witten, Mrs. Peachy Jackson, Mrs. Hazel Agnew, and Mrs. Fannie Washington, most of whom were educators and leaders in civil society groups in our community and beyond.

[00:19:10] Today, this beautiful site welcomes visitors from all backgrounds, offering education, reflection, and tranquil escape from the noise of the world. It is a place where history comes alive and inspires future generations.

[00:19:26] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, Everybody can be great because anyone can serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love. Let us heed Dr. King's words and recommit ourselves to service.

[00:19:43] our communities need us more than ever as mrs. Greer would remind her students be something let us continue to be something dedicating our time talents and heart to the work that remains we're not finished we're just beginning on behalf of the board staff and volunteers of the ivy creek natural area and historic riverview farm i am deeply honored and accept this proclamation Together, let us carry forward this family's vision of service, education, and community.

[00:20:17] Thank you. Thank you. And if you remain for a moment, first of all, though, I would like to ask people who are part of this Ivy Creek group for the proclamation, please just indicate, stand up. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here. We'll go through our order with comments.

[00:20:38] Supervisor Malik has the proclamation. Supervisor Malik? Thank you very much. I will bring this to you momentarily. But I grew up across Ivy Creek from the farm, and my father was a large animal veterinarian starting in 1942 and talked about how important Mr. Greer and the extension agents were because there was no fancy education except at Virginia Tech for a select few.

[00:21:01] And so the real improving livestock care and crop success and things was really brought about by the extension agents back then, and that's really important. And starting in 1982, I moved into the Miller Land, which is in Advanced Mills, and they're very active.

[00:21:21] All the brothers and Sarah are very active in the Minority Farmers Veterans Organization and helping to train new young people in middle school and high school all across the counties here about farming and helping each other out. So thank you all for what you do. Thank you.

[00:21:38] Supervisor Pruitt, please. It's an all-round robin. and we do six individual speeches before we let you out. Interesting, making additional comments. Supervisor Prude. Thank you so much, and thank you for the work that y'all have all been involved in, in kind of preserving black stories and black history in our community.

[00:22:00] I say, you know, whenever we come around to this day, I try and remember the man himself, Dr. King, and kind of the entirety of what he represented and what he means for our community and for our country. And I always like to talk about the more complicated and less sanitized elements of this.

[00:22:19] Dr. King is someone who led a movement that was fundamentally deeply intersectional. It drew heavily on the needs and demands of labor and organized labor, closely aligned itself with organized labor, closely aligned itself with pacifist movements, which were quite challenging at that moment in our history.

[00:22:39] And it was also deeply involved in international issues and anti-colonialism. Those were all part of who he was. He was someone who was fundamentally, deeply radical. He, after all, called on people to make an assessment of the moral worth of existing laws and finding them lacking, recognize that they should not be followed.

[00:22:59] That is a radical position. And he is someone who was fundamentally leading a movement that was unapologetically Christian, something, a movement that was rooted in the idea that to lead a life that is in accordance with the Gospels is something that is, requires courage from the individual and can require challenging the existing social order. These are all very difficult things to square. And it's really remarkable that in such a complex and challenging, right, individual, someone who would

[00:23:33] be challenging for a whole country to embrace contemporarily, this is a figure who we've gathered around. And I think it's also helpful to remember that when we talk about these black stories, these elements of black history, when we look at the story of the community that you represent, we see all of these elements.

[00:23:52] We see a fundamental courage just in the day-to-day work that is required to be black and successful throughout our history. And so I appreciate the work that you've done and for the values that that really embodies. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor LaPistola-Curley.

[00:24:08] Thank you very much for being here to help us all celebrate this very, really special day, celebration for a very special man who walked the earth, who helped us all.

[00:24:24] He really did help us all become better, no matter what race, religion, creed, he helped us become better people. And for that, it's an honor to recognize him. When you mention service, education, community, that is something that means a lot to me.

[00:24:47] And then I do know, for a recent example, the St. John's Community Center. It was one of seven schools for African-American children built by Rosenwald. There were seven in our community.

[00:25:04] This one is still standing. A couple are owned privately, but this one is still standing. and they turned it into a community center. So it's, in a way, he's still living because the people that have successfully contributed to the community center, they're still living and they're still doing good things.

[00:25:29] They're doing education, they're doing community service, and that's what I'm so proud of. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Supervisor Gallo? Oh, Supervisor McKeel, sorry. I'm happy to let Ned go first. Sorry.

[00:25:45] Okay, I guess I'll go. Thank you for being here, and I really would encourage anyone that has not had an opportunity to go to Ivy Creek, to the Nature Center, and to view all of these wonderful historic areas.

[00:26:01] It's just very moving and very educational, and they have been really taken care of beautifully. And you continue that work, so we do thank you for that. As our proclamation said today, Martin Luther King Day is our county, our country's only national day of service.

[00:26:24] And Martin Luther King said the time is always right to do what is right. And we have identified Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in this community to honor Martin Luther King's legacy and his work around community service and social justice.

[00:26:43] And so I just wanted to take a minute to point out to folks who might not know that there are activities on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday that folks can participate in. Some of them are outside, but some of them are inside, recognizing the weather right now.

[00:27:02] But, for example, on Saturday, trail work and story walk installation is going to happen on the Ravana Trails Foundation property. There's also spray painting bookshelves at the library is something you can sign up for.

[00:27:21] On Monday, there is invasive plant removal at Ivy Creek Foundation. And I think you all are spreading some mulch out there as well. So all of these events and opportunities can be found on the United Ways of Greater Charlottesville's website.

[00:27:42] and you can register, go on to that website and register for the event. So we hope we have a turnout regardless of the weather because there are opportunities inside. So thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Calloway. Yes, I join with my fellow supervisors in echoing their words and the work that you all are doing and share my appreciation for that.

[00:28:04] Like Supervisor Pruitt, this time each year I tend to do a lot of reflection and thinking of Dr. King, the individual, And more specifically, what he challenged everyone to do, not just in their hearts and minds, but in the actions that they took, which a lot of times starts with that.

[00:28:19] This year, I went back and re-read a lot of his speeches that he gave. And the one that stood out this time was on loving your enemies that he gave on November 17th of 1957. I'm not going to read the whole speech, although that would be great.

[00:28:37] But I have a couple excerpts that point out, and he talks about three things you can do. And this is specifically on the second thing. A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy. And every time you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there.

[00:28:57] And look at those good points, which will overbalance the bad points. Later, he goes on to say, so somehow the isness of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal oughtness that forever confronts us. And this simply means this, that within the best of us, there is some evil and within the worst of us, there is some good.

[00:29:17] When we come to see this, we take a different attitude towards individuals. I think given the time of not just this past election, but other elections and where we find ourselves in the state that we are in right now as a country, these words. And we could all look again to Dr. King to point us in the right direction to reflect on our isness versus our oughtness. And that's where I'm at right now as an individual. So thank you all for being here and thank you for allowing me to share some of those thoughts. And I will have my gratitude for your being here. I know you've been patient standing there and I think I

[00:29:53] should get Supervisor Malik to present the proclamation to you. And again, you are doing a of uh great work at riverview farm and elsewhere uh we're all trying to build the beloved community that dr martin luther king referred to thank you very much thank you all for being here appreciate it board our next item is the regular public comment on maverick matters previously

[00:30:28] considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings and supervisor McKeel. Vice Chair McKeel will read the rules and announce the speakers. And we do have two speakers that are signed up today, and we have no one signed up online. So with that, I will read the rules. During time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board, other than scheduled public hearings, the individuals may

[00:31:02] address the Board of Supervisors concerning these matters. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office and timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. 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 Elmar County, your magisterial district, address comments

[00:31:38] directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting materials may be given to the clerk. If representing a group of organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted, and please do not speak out from your seat.

[00:31:59] All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website. And our first speaker for today is Stuart Overby. Hello, everyone.

[00:32:18] Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Stuart Overby from the Samuel Miller District. And I'm here to speak about the spreading of biosolids in Albemarle County and specifically how this relates to the AC44 and the language we're asking to be inserted there.

[00:32:35] I'm part of Don't Spread on Me. We're a group of about a dozen farmers and landowners and residents, mostly from southern Albemarle County, plus a few Charlottesville residents. And I just wanted to take this opportunity to make a few points of clarification.

[00:32:51] First, that we aren't a super well-funded, organized organization. We're not even a 501c3. We're really just here because this is important to us. We're not being paid. We're not professionals. We're here because the more we learn about the application of biosolids onto land and forest in our county, the more concerned we become, and we really think that our concerns need addressing.

[00:33:21] So second point is that we're not asking the county to ban the practice of application of sewage sludge. We understand there's an existing statute that preempts that from the state. Right now, all we're asking is, step one, the county take another look at the issue, and my friend Sophie will talk more about that.

[00:33:42] Step two is that we put some language in the AC44, the comprehensive plan update, recommending that the county have a biosolids ordinance, and we're not even asking that it gets detailed about what the ordinance should say. The third point is that we have created a website called dontspreadome.org that's serving as a warehouse for all the incredible amount of information we have collected.

[00:34:11] And we've sent you links to that and attachments, but we understand that it's really not reasonable or realistic for you to spend hours pouring through all that. so we're endeavoring to meet you all in small groups and i sent an email out this morning for supervisors and planning commissioners from the southern albemarle districts of samuel miller and scottsville to meet with us and hopefully we can get all four together with us but even two or three would be great and i hope we get that scheduled soon and thank you all again for your

[00:34:45] time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sophie Massey. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Sophie Massey. I live in southern Albemarle in the Samuel Miller district. Yesterday, the EPA released a 300-page study acknowledging for the first time that the presence of PFAS forever chemicals in land-applied sewage sludge slash biosolids poses risks to human health exceeding the EPA's acceptable

[00:35:21] thresholds, quote, sometimes by several orders of magnitude. PFAS contaminates soil and water, and it bioaccumulates in animal tissue and in our bodies, and is linked to all sorts of cancers, fertility issues, developmental delays. It's a real sticky wicket. The last time the county looked at this issue was in 2011, well before the public knew about the threats posed by PFAS, when the staff presented a report on biosolids at the July 6, 2011 meeting.

[00:35:55] The staff report explained that the county is allowed to pass an ordinance to allow for local monitors of land-applied biosolids, and sadly we don't have an ordinance still. 17 counties in Virginia do have a biosolids ordinance, though, including our neighbors Louisa, Nelson, and Orange counties, and they have similar topographies and land uses to us.

[00:36:20] You know, we don't have an ordinance, but that's not because we don't spread biosolids and there's no appetite for biosolids. It's commonly spread in our county, particularly in southern Albemarle. As recently as August, it was spread in southern Albemarle. So we are asking the board to pass a resolution to direct staff to conduct a new report in light of this new emerging data coming from EPA about the very high risks of PFAS and sewage sludge.

[00:36:47] and that report could advise the county on the role that local government can play in the regulation of biosolids. I know it's limited what counties can do, but it's not nothing. Other counties are doing more than we are, and there are things that we can do, and in light of these recent developments, there are things that we need to do. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Board, our next item is the approval of the consent agenda. I've heard no items to be polled, So, we have a motion to approve it.

[00:37:20] So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lupisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Mallick? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt?

[00:37:36] Aye. Thank you. Board will now move to action item nine, Innisfree Village Private Central Sewerage System and Critical Slopes Waiver, which I understand will be presented by Mr. Frank Pohl, our county engineer.

[00:37:51] Good afternoon, Mr. Pohl. Good afternoon, Chair Andrews and members of the board. Okay, I'm ready if you are.

[00:38:15] We're ready. Good afternoon again. My name is Frank Pohl, county engineer, and I'm here to present two requests from Innisfree Village for the board's consideration today. The first item is for a private central sewerage system, And the second is for a critical slope exception request or critical slopes waiver.

[00:38:39] I will present both requests together, but there will be two resolutions at the end of this presentation for you to decide on. Also with us today is the design engineer for the central system, if you have any questions for him later on.

[00:38:58] And I'm sorry, there's the design engineer also for the critical slopes waiver request. The location of the project is in western Albemarle County. in the Whitehall District, in between, but just west of Mount Fair and Browns Cove, north of Crozet, at the foot of the mountains, the Shenandoah Mountains.

[00:39:25] That's a zoned rural area and is located outside of the jurisdictional water and sewer service areas and is within a water supply protection area of the Doyles River. Prior approvals on this project include a 1986 special use permit for group residences.

[00:39:46] Since then, several other applications have been approved, including site plans, plats, land disturbance applications, and a stream mitigation bank was approved on the properties. The existing buildings are served by individual conventional sewer systems. These systems are your typical septic drain field type systems, and there are currently 20 connections throughout the property.

[00:40:11] Over the past 30 years or so, the operation of the operation, several drain fields have failed and more are expected to fail. This led the owner to hire the engineer who specializes in these alternative systems to design and permit a new on-site system to replace the failing drain fields.

[00:40:31] The new system would reuse some of the components of the existing systems, such as laterals and the septic tanks, but would require installation of the new treatment plant, pumping stations, forced main and gravity mains, a new combined drain field, and a control system to manage and monitor the system.

[00:40:53] The system will also be on backup power, as is the rest of the community. The engineer submitted detailed construction drawings in a thorough engineering report, and the Department of Health has issued a construction permit for this project.

[00:41:10] Those documents are included in my staff report. Please note that this request is to allow for 21 connections on this property. The definition of a, excuse me, central systems are regulated by Chapter 16 of the County Code, and a central system is defined generally as a water or sewer system designed to serve three or more connections. Since this proposed system would serve 21 connections, a hearing and action by the

[00:41:44] board is required, which is why we are here today. Here is a site plan showing the property with the existing conditions and the proposed system. I realize this is quite busy, so I'm going to walk you through it here big piece of property there are a lot of buildings and so let me begin here by saying that you enter in on the right hand lower side of this screen on walnut level road

[00:42:14] i don't know if my cursor works here we're looking for your cursor yeah i don't uh follow the purple let me click on the laser pointer tool maybe that would help okay so you enter in from the bottom right hand side here on walnut level road and as you enter uh innisfree lane turns off right here onto the main campus or the the campus of the on the property um there are 16 parcels within this

[00:42:51] request so it's it's quite a few uh parcel lines are shown with this dark dash dot line you can't really see the dot but these dark lines are property lines the green line down here and in in the center and up in the top represents a stream buffer. The yellow hatching represents critical slopes. I may have missed a few little tiny areas, but for the most part, these are the

[00:43:24] ones that I think matter for this application. To the right is a map floodplain. The gray hatched areas are the nutrient, excuse me, the, yeah, the nutrient banks, stream nutrient banks. So this area, this area, this area, and also along the stream here. The buildings that would connect to the new system are identified with a number inside of a circle so there are 20 if you count them up

[00:43:59] there are 20 existing structures and then there is one proposed new structure number 21 and that we are reviewing that there's a site plan in review currently at this time for that additional structure other buildings without numbers are on this plan but we're only focused on the like barns and things but we're only focused on the ones that are requesting to be served there are water supply wells there's quite a few of those there with the circle and a dot in the middle

[00:44:32] there they're throughout the property properties i should say something not apparent on this plan it just got even way busier was are the contours this site is rather steep even though most of the site does not exceed 25 percent it slopes from left to right down from the mountains around the left and the site is also quite rocky which is is really the reason why a lot of the systems are failing the proposed system is highlighted in magenta I wanted to make

[00:45:11] this pop out for you so it starts here really because of these two or this this would only count as two connections so the third connection begins at this location and there would be a force main and and some other lines that would connect to this of course laterals down to the proposed treatment plant toward the bottom of the properties from this treatment plant there would be a pump station that pumps the effluent over to a new combined drain field over in this location and

[00:45:44] the engineer can explain why that location was chosen the septic tanks and laterals are not shown on this plan we can always come back to this map the factors uh favorable for this request are the engineered system would reduce the potential for groundwater contamination by replacing the existing failing drain fields wastewater treatment would exceed exceed state standards including removal of pharmaceuticals. Maintenance would be contracted to a licensed third party, and VDH

[00:46:21] has already issued a construction permit, so they've already, as you can tell by the package that you received, there's been extensive work done on this already. Unfavorable factors include the system would be privately maintained, and the complexity of the system may, in the future, limit the number of available licensed operators. With this request, I recommend the following conditions of approval first one is that the the system is constructed in accordance with the

[00:46:57] plans that were submitted and the construction permit as that was issued by vdh and then prior to number two prior to issuance of the co for the system that these documents that vdh also requires that they give to us at the county number three that the parcel ids here are responsible the owner excuse me, of the parcels shown here will assume full responsibility for operation and maintenance of the system. And then if requested that they document compliance with all state operation and

[00:47:32] maintenance requirements. On to critical slope impacts. As shown above, there are two critical, two impacts, excuse me, two impact areas where the system will go through or pass through critical slopes the one on the left there is between the treatment facility and the drain field this drain field area is completely surrounded by critical slopes and they're proposing approximately maximum 200 square feet of impact the area on the right is adjacent an

[00:48:12] existing alleyway or access way i should say and is next to that building so there was no issues for me with that one or the other one. Both impacts will be essentially a trench that will be required to install the forest main and any conduits for the control system. So it's pretty narrow, and I think it could be done pretty quickly, and I have no, well, I'll get to that next, actually. So, and they are also within heavily grassed areas, pasture grassed areas.

[00:48:51] Chapter 18, Section 4, is where critical slopes are regulated in the county code. The proposed impacts are not a listed exemption, and therefore board approval is required. The requirements from the board to grant the waiver are shown here, and I believe that the applicant has addressed all of these issues, and I believe each of the listed criteria are met with the application.

[00:49:24] Even though number three says at least one, I think I found all of them. Not think, I did find all of those were met. Factors favorable. In addition to my findings, an erosion and control plan would be required prior to commencement of the land disturbing activities.

[00:49:40] They've already submitted that application. And the areas of critical slope disturbances would be linear, have an area of less than 300 square feet, and would occur in well-established pasture grass areas. And I did not find any factors unfavorable to this request.

[00:50:00] But I did have one condition, which, as I mentioned, is a requirement for the application and for perimeter control measures to be installed before activities begin, which is a regulation in and of itself.

[00:50:15] So it's a bit redundant, but that's my condition for the critical slopes waiver. And with that, that's the end of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. And as I said, the engineer is also here to answer questions. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[00:50:32] We will go through our order. This is Department of Supervisor Malek. Thank you, and thank you for all your work on this. It's an institution which has benefited residents for decades, and so I'm glad that they have been stepping up to do the proper design and working well with you.

[00:50:49] So if I understand correctly, the location of the crossing of the critical slope It looks like it was the shortest possible place on the steep, but it goes down the steep, correct? Not across it as far as the grade is concerned.

[00:51:06] That's correct. Over this distance, there's a 10 or 20-foot elevation drop, I'm guessing, because it's a pretty steep slope over there. So they will have to be very watchful of the weather and everything else before they begin. And I don't even know if, are there possible sort of remediation things that can happen if things start to go badly, you know, drop steel plates or something in there to keep things from running if something gets away.

[00:51:36] I mean, it's right at the Doyle's River. So this is, and Doyle's River finally came back to good after years of being fair because of all the turf stuff that was dumped up there and washed all down into the river. So I'm grateful that it's come back a little bit. yes help me with understanding the process for the installation of that critical area there so uh it is a trend it would be a trench so there could they could use a trenching machine which is a pretty small machine to make the trench or a small backhoe with a bucket to make that trench and then

[00:52:11] at the top of the hill they could put a diversion to prevent any water from above it coming into that trench. I expect that they will plan to do this when the weather is clear enough that they can open the trench and cover it before any weather would get there. So that wouldn't be open to a weather event is what I would expect. But again, maybe the engineer can speak to that a little bit more with the experience he has with the site itself and what he anticipates maybe that would

[00:52:45] take. Would there be notification of your office when they get ready to start similarly to when people are starting a critical burn or something like that they have to notify the fire department only because i still remember when claymont was being built and they put in all these open ditches and then we got six inches of rain and all of that dirt went right down into the river you know straight down the hill so i'm just a little jumpy about the process of this we will be issuing a land disturbance permit and with our new system we'll be setting up reoccurring inspections every two weeks okay and we could go out there soon you know more frequently when this starts to ensure

[00:53:22] that everything is in place so yes we will be on it um it will be on our our list to make sure we inspect now that we have this not that we didn't have a list before but the new one will will help us with that okay great and the only other thing with the condition that was already in there number four i would propose that our condition be they will send annual reports rather than when you ask only because it's their responsibility to do these things and i would like it to be their responsibility to show that they've proved that they've done it rather than you having to chase

[00:53:59] them so i will ask you to comment on that sure um so i'm going to um state that this was these conditions were have come before you before and you've made that comment before um it in the past i'll say in the past because we have an epnl system now did i mention that earlier um and this is actually a case now in our system so we can set that up to be a lot easier before we would have to remember in fact i don't know how many central systems we have in the county

[00:54:34] all new central systems we will be able to track individually all the ones that i know about i'm going to input in not that that condition is on those projects but it will be easier for so i i do I have no issues with adding that, and then we can track that a lot easier.

[00:54:55] Appreciate it. Thank you. That's all for now. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I don't believe I have any questions at this time. Thank you. Supervisor Lopisto-Cruitt. Yes, just a couple. Thank you very much, Mr. Polk. You said that there are 16 dwellings that are being hooked up to this, correct?

[00:55:18] Did I get that number right? 12. There will be 21 connections. I'm sorry, 21. Some of those are, there might be two from one building. Okay, okay, 21. The ones who did not sign up, would they have an opportunity to sign up at a later date?

[00:55:37] Just wondering. I don't think the other ones have running water in them at all or any kind of need for it. They're like barns or sheds, and David can answer that a little bit better when he comes up. That answers that one.

[00:55:53] And your, the 100-year floodplain, is that, because I know they redid the 100-year floodplain. Is that the latest one or the one from, well, five years ago? 2005. Pardon? That is the currently mapped 2005.

[00:56:09] Okay. And last one, the 21 parcels you were speaking of, they're the ones that will maintain this. If somebody sells those, I mean, just to let you know, I'm in favor of this. I mean, we really need to do it, in my opinion. But if somebody sells, are the new owners obligated to keep this running?

[00:56:33] I believe that would be in the operation and maintenance manual that we have not received yet. But, yes, we are also asking for easements across the properties to ensure that if something does sell, that they have the right to remain there. But there will be an operations and maintenance manual that's required by the state, not only a plan that they must follow.

[00:56:56] So David may be able to answer that also a little bit better for me. I think that's fine. Thank you very much. I appreciate your answers. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Thank you, Frank. I appreciate that you made this presentation so that even I can understand it.

[00:57:14] And having said that, I was just talking about infrastructure earlier today. This is part of infrastructure upgrades, and I'm very much in favor of this. I don't really think I have any questions at this point.

[00:57:30] I am really pleased to hear, though, that our new systems that we have in place are going to make some of this notification and jogging of memories routine so that we don't have, as we have people changing jobs and moving and retiring.

[00:57:49] This is really very good news. So thank you very much. Yeah, appreciate it. Supervisor Galloway. Thank you, Mr. Pol. Can you go to the slide where your factor is favorable, unfavorable? I don't know if that's six or seven. I didn't track the number.

[00:58:05] Oh, there it is. Go back, six. So that number two and the fact that in the conditions you've got both under number two, the operations and maintenance agreement between the owner and operator, that has to be provided ahead of time.

[00:58:22] And then number four that you discussed with Supervisor Malick. so understood what's here but the length of the uh maintenance agreement operations agreement like if there's a concern about limited number of operators and we're concerned that we want the agreement ahead of time and i guess number four kind of gives the blanket protection here um i mean are the typically these maintenance agreements something that's more than a five year ten year kind of agreement meaning that if we if they get an operator now and for whatever reason that

[00:58:58] operator is not available to them down the road, and we're concerned that there might not be that many operators out there, how are we protecting in our conditions against that? I don't think there's any guarantee that there would be an operator. That's why I put that as an unfavorable factor. So unlike Glen Eyre, these are all owned by one owner. So the risk they take is if they can't find an operator, they would have to shut down the facilities, or they'd have to resort back to individual tanks and drain fields.

[00:59:31] So I can't guarantee, I don't think they can guarantee that. You know, David may have a better idea of the number of operators out there. I thought it was a risk, though, which is why I included that. And I'm not sure about how long the agreements are written for, the contracts.

[00:59:49] Well, but it sounds like you're hitting on my concern, though, that if for some reason there was not an operator, then they have to resort to other decisions, which would then continue to protect what we would, we wouldn't just want a system operated improperly or not correctly.

[01:00:05] In the state guidelines, they have to show that they're meeting that, I guess, is somewhat of a protection. So it sounds like my concern there will be mitigated without having to change anything. But I do agree number four should just be stated that the owner must annually submit the documented compliance with state operation and maintenance requirements without request.

[01:00:30] Whether that's at the county engineer or agreed upon date or whatever, I don't think it does matter. But if I were the person, if the county engineer, no offense, Frank, but if you don't ask for it until year three, they may not document in year one and two, and that puts them in a situation to have to go back and do some interesting work.

[01:00:53] So it seems to me that if we just require the documentation up front, they know it's an expectation that must be met, and then they just do it on an agreed upon date. that that doesn't create any issues. So if there's other agreement by board members, I would be in favor of Supervisor Malik's piece of changing four to state the owner must annually document compliance with all state operation maintenance requirements and submit it to the county engineer.

[01:01:20] Frank, could you clarify that? Because I thought that that was the point with the new system that we could easily do that. We can, but it still would be needed to be stated rather as a requirement. And I was agreeing with that. I should have specifically said that.

[01:01:35] I want the applicant to just do it, not us ask for it. Yeah, but we can also set it up as a reminder if we haven't received something to ask for. And I'm presuming with the way the conditions in here now that the applicant wouldn't have an issue with that because they're already having to. For the state, correct.

[01:01:51] So I don't think there would be any issue with that, but I think that would make some good sense. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm in agreement with that as well. This number four not only has that language, but it doesn't say annually, but the one in our packet does say annually, and I think that is an important distinction as well.

[01:02:13] Very quickly, if I could look at slide five again, I just want to understand something for my own benefit. There's a discussion of the system being able to remove pharmaceuticals and everything, clean system. That's in the proposed treatment plant.

[01:02:29] So what then gets to the drain field is already has that removed. Is that my understanding? I'll defer to the engineer of record for that question when the time comes, if you don't mind. Okay. He can explain a little bit more detail. I think it's a good time right now, if that's possible.

[01:02:52] Just because this is the one place where it ends up, and it's not that far from flood lane and stream beds. So I want to understand, if I may. Hello. My name is David Michalik, Aquanova Engineering. I'm the engineer of record for this system.

[01:03:10] And your question is a very good question. So one of the concerns Innisfree had from a study they did was the location of our drinking water wells surrounded by drain fields was pharmaceutical compounds getting into the drinking water.

[01:03:28] That's actually a concern everywhere, but Innisfree is one of the few people that have actually sort of looked into it. The treatment system has an extra stage beyond what's required by the state. It's a cutting-edge treatment component that's designed to remove pharmaceuticals.

[01:03:51] It's based on some research and some pilot-scale systems that have been built. It basically uses bacteria and fungus to capture and then metabolize certain pharmaceuticals.

[01:04:08] Then that water is further treated after that, just in case anything breaks through that treatment stage. that very, very clean effluent is then pumped to the drain field. So the water going to the drain field is basically as clean as it possibly would be for a system of this size.

[01:04:27] Thank you. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear and looking for assurances on. And when it comes to the documenting compliance with all state operation and maintenance requirements, is the integrity of that system part of that process as well?

[01:04:44] The state compliance requires that the whole system be operating as designed. And I would add to that that actually the size and complexity of this system is actually a benefit because you're going to be able to get better quality operators interested in this system.

[01:05:02] There are a lot of alternative on-site systems that are not really operated or barely operated. And then, of course, conventional systems which put out even more pollution, septic tanks, leech fields, have no maintenance or operation requirements at all.

[01:05:18] I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Board, if there are no additional questions or comments, we can look to a motion. Yes, since our engineer is here. So because of the 21 connections, I would assume that there will be media or something that's removed every year, the filters.

[01:05:40] You can't go for five years before maintaining this treatment plant. Right. First of all, the septic tanks will be pumped on a routine basis, which hasn't necessarily been the case. So we're capturing the primary solids in the septic tanks near the buildings, which is the most cost-effective way to do that.

[01:06:02] So they'll be on a routine pumping and hauling schedule. At the treatment plant itself, there are residuals, very minimal residuals are generated. We're not sure how long it's going to take between pumpings, but it's a three- to five-year kind of cycle because of the type of treatment system it is.

[01:06:26] And those will be, you know, pumped and taken to a treatment plant, as would the septage from the septic tanks. Okay, but the pre-treatment is by the building in the original? Correct. The tanks there. Okay, well, that helps because I think the systems have greatly improved from 2005 or so when there were so many massive failures.

[01:06:50] When AOSS systems were installed in rocky terrain and when they failed, it was a massive disaster. So much worse than a failure of a leach field. So I'm very glad to know that that's improved. So it's not a granular activated carbon in there. It's the bacteria, some kind of bacteria.

[01:07:07] In the treatment plant. In the treatment plant, there's three stages. The first stage is a textile trickling filter, very commonly used, called Advantix. There are lots of them out there. Really well-proven system, very robust.

[01:07:24] The second stage is to actually remove further nitrate because nitrogen is a water pollutant, right? We're trying to get as much of it out as we can.

[01:07:39] And then the third stage involves kind of an innovative reactor to capture the pharmaceuticals. And if you absorb them onto some media, everything eventually is food for bacteria and funguses.

[01:07:56] And so they'll find a way to, they have found a way to break some of them down. I can't say we're going to get 100% removal. I can't tell you we're going to get all the pharmaceuticals, but it's a step in the right direction. Very good. Thank you very much.

[01:08:12] Thank you. And just regarding the critical slope crossing, that slope down to the drain field, it was actually an old apple orchard. It was an apple orchard back in the 20s, I guess. So there's some terraces on the way down that are actually going to help with some of the runoff.

[01:08:30] And the soils there are actually amazing. Those are, well, the reason we're putting a drain field down there is the soils are very absorptive rather than hard panned. So that will help. And then at the bottom, there's a large, very gentle sloped area.

[01:08:46] In case anything does run off, it will infiltrate before it gets anywhere near the stream. Is there any kind of berm that's put nearer the stream setback? We'll be putting erosion barriers down the hill of the drain field. While they're digging the trench, they may put a temporary berm at the bottom of the trench.

[01:09:05] But, I mean, just I'm always in favor of permanent berms anywhere where you get sheet drainage so that you don't get stuff to get away from you. But that may not be what you're planning to do. Again, it's a managed pasture, so it's in their best interest. And industry really does take their animal management serious.

[01:09:22] It's in their best interest to keep it, you know, well-vegetated, no erosion, no bare spots. Very good. And the only other question I had was, I guess, for Frank, is there any stipulation that this is for the current user that these would be approved?

[01:09:38] Because I think that 50 years ago, the owners assembled all of these different parcels, but they're not individually owned by anybody. So I just wanted to make sure that this was not – I think this is appropriate for its current use, but I am not considering it appropriate for 29 different owners going forward.

[01:10:00] So I don't know if you can do anything to help me with that or not. That might be better answered by our legal folks. This all runs with the land. It's not contingent on any particular owner. Okay.

[01:10:16] Well, Barbara better live to be 200. I would somewhat address that question or the concern is no matter who owns these buildings and operates them, they're going to be way better off with the centralized sewage system than with the previous individual drain fields.

[01:10:33] And there are subdivisions, of course, that have individual owners and a centralized sewer system. It would need to be part of the deed, if you sell it, that you're paying for the maintenance of that central sewer system.

[01:10:49] It's just the proximity of 50 feet between buildings is very different than your normal neighborhood. But anyway, I get it. I understand my limitations here, so I will stop. Thank you. Thank you. We're looking for a motion then from, it's a Whitehall location.

[01:11:06] First, there should be in your e-mail a suggested motion from our county attorney. Thank you. I thought this was it. I have Frank's motion. Start with the attachment E.

[01:11:24] I don't see anything from Andy here. So with the corrected motion, a resolution to approve SE 220-24-34, Innisfree Village, Critical Slope Special Exception. Or do you want to do the... It's right there.

[01:11:41] Sorry, it's great. I move to adopt the resolution attached to the staff report as attachment E. Well, no, no, no. And now you want to say as amended here. Attachment E, with condition for amended to read, the owner must annually document to the county engineer compliance with all-state operation and maintenance requirements.

[01:12:02] Thank you. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malik, second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Right, and now we'll go to the second, which is, again, on the email, but it's related to the one we received.

[01:12:26] Critical Slopes. I move to adopt the revised resolution to approve SE 2024-34 Industry Village Critical Slope Special Exception, dated January 14, 2025. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if I could call and roll.

[01:12:42] Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Paul. Chair, can I just ask a question of Frank that deals with this before he leaves while he's here?

[01:12:59] We were just talking about how our new system will allow for this particular project. We had to specifically request that we add that as a criteria. Going forward, though, is there a way that we can just automatically do that without the board having to always say, We need to add that.

[01:13:22] I'm just trying to get at this, and I don't want to beat a dead horse to death here. My next request, we'll have it written that way. Yes, there you go. That helps me. Thank you, because that just makes sense. Sure. That the board, whatever the board, whatever we're doing, we don't have to remember.

[01:13:40] Or you don't have to remember to say to us. Thank you for that. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Board, our next item, item 10, is the calendar year 2025 real estate reassessment update from Mr. Peter Lynch, our county assessor. Welcome, Mr. Lynch. All right.

[01:14:10] So thank you very much, Mr. Chair, Board of Supervisor members. My name is Peter Lynch. I'm the county assessor. So I have prepared the reassessment for the year. I should say my staff has prepared the reassessment for the year, and I can share those results with you now.

[01:14:34] So generally, this is what we're going to be discussing today, the assessment process and obviously the results. I'm going to provide additional breakdown of the values in different ways. And every time we talk about ratios or results or increases, they're all overall, and everyone will experience, every property will experience a different result.

[01:15:02] So these numbers that I provide to you are all overall numbers in different breakdowns. I will explain the mass appraisal process because I think it's important. What I like to do is really to provide an explanation of how we do our job because we want the public to understand that we are following the proper procedures when we do our work.

[01:15:31] I'm also going to discuss the land use program, provide an overview of the review and appeal process. We talk about that every year, which is very important. And I'm going to introduce a pilot program for inspections that we're going to be doing. So the reassessment overall this year was the tax basis has gone up 5.09%, about 5.1%.

[01:15:55] As you see by this historical graph, 2009 to 2013 were years after the financial crisis, and we saw values dropping every year. And then they started to suddenly or generally climb over the years kind of in a calm, measured amount until we got to the period after the pandemic where values started going up a lot.

[01:16:26] There's a lot of kind of displacement of people where they were going to places they couldn't normally live because they could work remotely, and I think that increased demand quite a bit in Elmar County. It's a nice place to live, and if I don't have to live somewhere else to work, I'll work here. I think that's my idea of what happened during those years.

[01:16:47] Despite the increase in the mortgage rates that we've experienced the last two years, That demand has continued, so the values haven't gone up as much as they did in 2022 and 2023, but they are still climbing, and so I think the fact that we still have that strong value increase despite the mortgage rates is important that our market is strong.

[01:17:18] So I always provide these breakdowns by magisterial district. As you can see, those percent or average changes vary depending on what district you're in. It'll vary based on what neighborhood you're in within those districts.

[01:17:38] We had neighborhoods within the districts that have gone up a lot, some that have gone down. Overall, these are the averages. We also provide by property class. These are state property classes. With your urban residential, the definition of urban residential is that it has water and sewer.

[01:17:57] so that's what falls in the kind of the majority of the properties 6.9 percent overall and then you you move down to your larger properties that don't have water and sewer and then your rural area properties your multi-family and your commercial properties this year the commercial properties have had some challenges in their valuations a little more stress due to the economic conditions than the residential because they they have different stressors on or influences

[01:18:33] on their valuations so this is a kind of a historical last seven years of um the sales that we've had to support our work and where we end up plus i add in here how the state sales study relates to what i present to you because every year i come up here and this is my 10th time presenting to you the reassessment results and I tell you okay we're at 100% of market value and

[01:19:06] 100% of market value in our business means that the median ratio is 100% and that means that half the sales result in lower ratios and half the sales result in higher ratios so which the ratio is the assessment to the sale price so if the ratio is high it means the assessment is higher than the sale price. We don't really want that, but overall, the way we do mass appraisal, you know, we can't avoid a variance. We just try to minimize that variance. So the variance is

[01:19:41] calculated or is represented by a COD, which is the third column of data up here. And the IAAO, the International Association of Assessing Officers, has guidelines that say that your ratio should be between 5% and 15%, 5% and 25%, depending on the type of property. The fact that we're in the five range is very good. It means that that variance above and below that median

[01:20:15] ratio is very tight, and that's what we're looking for. The final column is what the state publishes in their sales study for all jurisdictions in the state. The State Department of taxation does this study. So the reason why their ratios or their percentage is lower than the 100% that I report to you is because right now we have looked in my office at the 2024 sales. There are

[01:20:47] 1,849 good sales in the county that we have set our new model on and the median ratio of that group of sales is 100%, 99.9%. But once the state looks at it, they will look at our assessments that we just developed, and they will compare the sales that happened in 2025 to the value we just set for 2025 based on last year's sales. So by the time those sales happen, there will be more

[01:21:23] inflation that causes the the sale prices to go higher and it'll cause that ratio to go lower so it's a normal thing for those ratios after the fact to be lower than the ratios when you're looking backwards at sales and to to show in our FAQs that we include and I think you you had one attached to the packet the executive summary on this and we send it to everyone with their notice that's going to be mailed on the 24th. One of the items we say is who tells us if the county

[01:22:03] assessor's office is doing a good job. And it's the State Department of Taxation. We use that as a guide to say we're doing a good job or we're not. So this next slide, it shows our ratio of 93.5, which is what the state determined for 2023 for our numbers.

[01:22:25] During that same period, all jurisdictions ranged from 56% to 98%. So we're toward the top of that range for all jurisdictions. Now, some of those jurisdictions do reassessment up to every six years.

[01:22:42] So when you're looking at those really low percentages, sometimes it's because they haven't reassessed in a number of years. And their COD on average is 19% instead of our 9.3. Now, if you narrow that down to only the 33 jurisdictions that do annual reassessment, which you expect to be a lot closer than the entire universe of jurisdictions, the range is a little bit tighter.

[01:23:09] It's still 61% to 93%, and we're still at the top of that range. So I think we do a really good job, and this kind of proves that we're doing well when it comes to statistics in determining these valuations.

[01:23:29] Now, I'm sure I break some rules with this slide because there's a lot of information, but I think it's really important to bring all of these different parts together to explain how we do our job and how well I think we've done our job.

[01:23:47] So there's always kind of a concern of are we assessing low-end properties at a higher percentage than higher-end properties. That's an issue in the assessment world. So this slide is broken down in eight different value categories from up to $150,000 up to over $2 million.

[01:24:13] And when we compare the sales in those ranges to their assessments, we still come up with median ratios that are right around 100%, no matter how high or low the valuation of the properties are.

[01:24:31] I also provide the counts within each range. So you can see that the majority of properties fall in the $450,000 to $650,000 value range. You can see generally the average increase in each price range.

[01:24:48] And then you can see the number of sales that were used to support the valuation of each of those price ranges. So one thing I noticed, you know, everybody knows that Albemarle County is an expensive market for real estate.

[01:25:07] One of the things I noticed on here is that the number of properties over a million in value is equal to or very close to the number of properties less than $250,000. So we definitely, and as we move forward, that keeps going up just as values rise.

[01:25:29] Now, the note at the bottom is this is something that is always of interest. What effect will the increase in value that we experienced this year have on the average person for their property taxes?

[01:25:46] So taking the median home value, which is now $486,600 in Elmar County, and if it experienced a 7.3% increase, which would be the average for that price range, It would cost them approximately $283 more in taxes if the tax rate doesn't change.

[01:26:07] So that's just a little piece of information for you to know the effect. So as I said earlier, everybody's assessment is kind of affected differently.

[01:26:25] We are updating information constantly in the office, and my staff has done a lot of work this year. they visited approximately 10 000 properties in person just in 2024 and that was that was a huge effort and it was very effective in helping us update the data on our properties now one thing that happens is we find out information and that information we find will adjust what what uh how

[01:26:58] that value on that property will be assessed. If we find out different information from what we had before, then it could cause the value to go up higher or it could cause it to go down lower. Also, properties that have sold, we are always visiting properties that have sold, whether we're able to get out and see other properties or not. And it's quite often we find when a property is sold that there is information on the property that we were unaware of. So quite a few of the the larger change properties are properties that are sold and we found out that they're in much better condition

[01:27:35] than we thought or that they have certain aspects that we were unaware of in their description. So while developing a model for for determining the valuation is very important as part of the assessment process, updating the data and making sure that that information is not old and stale is equally important in the assessment of the properties. So mass appraisal. A lot of people are familiar with the appraiser that comes to your house and does an appraisal for your mortgage. They take

[01:28:13] three to five comparables. They inspect everything. They look at your property from head to toe, and then they determine a value for your property. Mass appraisal is different in the fact that we don't look at properties singularly when we value them. We still look at them to determine what they have, what their style is, what their grade is, how big the square footage is, how many bathrooms, all of that information. But when we value it, we create a model that will determine the

[01:28:50] entire universe of properties from the average graded home with one bedroom and one bathroom room to the mansion with 10 bedrooms and 10,000 square feet. And that model has to incorporate the ability to value all of that appropriately. And now how well we did that was reflected in those ratios that I showed you a minute ago. But we then take that model and we apply it to all

[01:29:24] the properties in the county. Then we run sales reports to determine, based on every one of these criteria how well did we do so this is a just a snippet of some of the grades that we have in the prop in the in the county and how many properties so the count here is how many properties uh had that grade that sold in 2024 and then what the median ratio in the in the cod or the variance was on those properties so we use this to grade ourselves you know is the amount of adjustment

[01:30:02] we make for grade appropriate and based on these ratios we see that that it was this next one is based on the year built are we adjusting for how old that house is appropriately and as you see the the ratios are right at 100 all the way down the line and the cods are pretty tight so that's that tells us that our model is working this last one building size um are we are we uh valuing the 2 000 square foot homes properly and are we valuing the 4 000 square foot homes property

[01:30:42] and this is explaining that our numbers are working for those so if we saw ratios that started to vary from that it would show that we there was something wrong in our model so all of this is just to say that we believe that we put together an appropriate model that's effective and that the results are are effective also this is one last way that I've broken it down just to show you is by the neighborhood so these are the neighborhoods with the most sales and as you see here the

[01:31:18] neighborhood ratios are all within that you know a hundred percent range so that was it for the the model the reassessment model i'm going to move on to land use now so with land use i have a few things that i want to talk about and in the most important thing is that the land use program cannot be a passive program it has to be a very active program and of course you all

[01:31:51] know the importance of the program and the cost of the program in the sense of deferred value so the current deferred value in 2025 is $1.7 billion in how much we're reducing the market value based on a qualification for land use. And the deferred taxes are about $14.9 million in 2025. There are 190,000 acres approximately in the county that are qualified for land use

[01:32:27] currently. As you see by this graph, the numbers of parcels have come down appreciably from 4,500 back in 2019 to 3,700 now. That number tends to kind of go up and down a little bit, but it generally trends down as we pay more attention to that program. This is, we use the SLIAC values. We adopt the values that are created by SLIAC to value these properties for the acreage that is qualified. So as you see here, the SLIAC values for agriculture

[01:33:03] have come down slightly the same thing with forestry these are you know they're small they're they're not large decreases that we've experienced and compared to market value these are very small numbers so this is the slide I want to show you that kind of drives home the why we cannot be passive about our application to or administration of the land use program so we were talking about

[01:33:41] deferred value earlier. Now that deferred value is recaptured through rollback taxes. So rollback taxes are where we capture the current and five previous years, so a six-year period of taxes, when the property or a part of the property no longer qualifies. And that can be as easy as I'm building a house on my property and that two-acre area of my property gets rolled back. And that's why these numbers to the right of the graph are so much higher than the numbers to the left.

[01:34:20] The line graph here is the amount of money. The bar graph is the number of rollbacks that we've worked. So as you see during the period, I see the years aren't on here, from 2015 to 2025 is the period of 1 through 10 2016 I think is the first year actually in 2018 we had three properties that roll back for 1.3 million dollars so there was a huge rollback amount there's a large amount there but it was due to one large

[01:34:58] development that was the Brookhill development it wasn't because we were paying a lot of attention it was just because that happened to be one big rollback otherwise we had very low numbers each year and we were not out there trying to make sure that everything was properly recaptured that should have been thanks to you the board and the county executive's office we were able to add the land use administrator in 2018 actually as a request in 2018 so starting in 2019 we were able to turn this from a passive

[01:35:32] to an active administration of this program and we're able to properly capture the land use the the rollbacks that we should have been capturing and these properties as they change their uses and to make sure that those other properties that are that are qualified or continue to be qualified appropriately so a big it's kind of a big change I believe this year it's not a change in the the code but it's a change in the way we understand the code

[01:36:09] I worked with the county attorney's office this year to make sure we understood this properly. So as you all might remember, the deadline to file for land use was 30 days after our notice and then another 60 days after that as a late fee, with a late fee. So you had, let's say our notices are going out January 24th, you would have until February 24th to apply with $125 fee and then April 24th to apply with an additional, so a total of $250 fee per parcel.

[01:36:46] What we have found out is that there are two different parts of the deadlines, two different periods. So you're supposed to apply for land use by November 1st prior to the tax year. So the deadline to file would be November 1st of 2024 for 2025. Then we have a period of where you can file late until January 1st. So both of those periods are already over. So as of January 2nd, you cannot apply for land use however there is a contingent deadline which is the second slide

[01:37:25] and that's dependent upon if you have an increase in your assessment and that is specifically an increase in your land assessment for 2025 so if you receive a notice on january 24th or that's mailed on january 24th and that does not show an increase in your land assessment you are not able to apply for land use for 2025 at this point if it does have an increase in that land assessment then you are able to apply so that's the big change this year and then the time periods are

[01:38:00] the same for those people who qualify for that second group it took me a couple of days to kind of understand this i was gonna say maybe you should go back one more time while you're still there just to repeat that if okay if you all don't mind ask him to repeat that absolutely so two different groups everybody can apply prior to the tax year anybody can apply but once you you reach the new tax year it's all dependent upon if you have an increase in your assessment

[01:38:38] so the county code has always said that you had that first period and what we never understood was you know the second part what we thought meant if there's annual reassessment then you just use the later period but it actually specifically says you must experience an increase in your assessment in order for that second period to apply to you and that's what we did not do correctly before so the new the new rules are you must apply by january 1st generally then

[01:39:18] once we send that notice if you get the increase in assessment on your land then you can apply afterwards. This only applies to people who are not in the program that want to get into the program. It has nothing to do with people that are currently in the program. Now, this is a revalidation year, and I'm going to come back and I'm hoping to come back and talk to you in May or June about the revalidation. So I won't get into a lot of detail about that, but we will be conducting that revalidation this year. That will be due by September 5th, I believe it is.

[01:39:58] just some general information for you uh through the recordation of plats we have 386 new parcels that were created uh we're almost to 50 000 total parcels at this point uh as i as i've said already we we are mailing the notices on january 24th uh just like the tax bills we have the option for people to sign up for e-billing or e-statement so some people who have already signed up for that through their their tax bill will receive their notice through the email instead of through the mail which is great and we're hoping that that continues to increase the number of people who

[01:40:38] sign up for that we also with our nose just like in the past we include the faq and we also have the which we started last year why is this notice important why is this notice why this notice is important if I can get it out. And the reason why we include that is because we would get calls after the tax bills go out in May about the assessment. And then at that point, it's too late. It's past any appeal deadlines or the Board of Equalization. The land book will be created in

[01:41:15] May after you set the tax rate at the end of the budget season or budget process. And then on that notice um we don't generally talk about this but those notices go out and it's not just properties that had reassessment which all the results that i've talked about up till now have to do with just properties that had reassessment but if you had a new house built and you're getting your first assessment notice after that house is built it will say the reason the change reason will be

[01:41:51] a hundred percent new construction or it might be a partial new construction of something or it might be a new new parcel that's the division of property acreage changes also created by plats enrolled in or removed from land use so these are different categories that we use to separate the amount of change that's due to reassessment as opposed to due to other reasons and then as i said the review and appeal processes we always like to go over the most important

[01:42:25] thing, and I know you all receive phone calls when those notices go out. The best thing to do is to send them to my staff so they can get an explanation. Call my office. We can explain why any specific value has gone up if it's because of change of data of their parcel, their property, whether it's because their neighborhood has changed and we can provide the sales that have caused those changes to happen. So the best thing to do is to contact my office. The appraiser will explain all of that

[01:43:02] information to them. The taxpayer can then give us any information they would like. They can at that point, if they still don't agree with the change in value, they can then take out a review form, fill out a review form, so we can do a formal review within our office. Then we'll send a response to that. Sometimes that results in a change, and it's just that we didn't really know everything about a property necessarily. We're not able to see them all. If that doesn't work

[01:43:41] for the property owner, they can then go to the Board of Equalization. Now, that is a little more controlled process. While the review for, or the request for review can be found on our website, and just turned in to us. The Board of Equalization applications are controlled. We number them as we send them out to make sure we know who has gotten one so we know when we get them back that they have been provided and they're part of the process and we can track when we receive them and when they're due and all of that. And so the Board of Equalization, we expect to start having

[01:44:20] their hearings in April of this year. It's a little bit sooner than we have in the past, We were trying to get this process going a little sooner and ending sooner so we can then move back to the rest of our work of updating our data. And do you have any questions?

[01:44:40] Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. This is always an information-filled day. And when the presentation is circulated, there are all sorts of great slides we can snip out and put in our newsletters to make sure that people have a chance to know what's coming when the mail comes.

[01:45:02] Before I forget, the appeal process is only for residential assessment, correct? It has nothing to do with any kind of land use qualification. Am I right about that? That is correct. It's residential or commercial, but it's market valuation.

[01:45:19] Okay. So I don't know if that's already on the website somewhere. I know it's a really dense website and hard to find the right thing, but that's something that there's been confusion about. Let's put it that way. So I'll just pass that along to you. And let me go down here.

[01:45:35] So I was a little confused, or I thought it was okay until a couple of slides ago when I got confused again. So there was a November deadline for applying for land use that you described. And then at the end it said it was really January 1st. So can you go over that again, please?

[01:45:52] Yes, ma'am. So this is the initial deadline and then the late filing deadline. So the initial deadline is November 1st with a $125 application fee. But if you miss that first deadline by November 1st, November 2nd through the 1st, you can file as long as you pay a late fee of an additional $125.

[01:46:15] And this is new participants? Correct. Okay, great. And then, so that's all there is to know. And then the revalidation is something completely different. And, okay, I think I'm squared away for now.

[01:46:31] Thank you very much. Thank you. And the e-billing, e-contact stuff has been a lifesaver for people, especially people who are traveling and, you know, especially, I mean, I'm going to be 75 this year, so I have great empathy for people who are feeling like I'm old and I can't keep up anymore.

[01:46:47] So that really helps people to stay, and our postal service is still a disaster. So I'm really grateful for all the work you've done to make that extra electronic connection possible. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Prove? Thank you for all the details that you went through on kind of how we arrive at these numbers we get every single year.

[01:47:07] It's immensely helpful. I want to talk very briefly. I know during the previous year the town of Scottsville had significantly higher assessment value increases than any other magisterial district alone and more than the magisterial district of Scottsville alone.

[01:47:25] And you worked with both me and members of town council to kind of understand what some of the underlying factors are. Specifically, there were two big ones, as I recall, which is a small N size. There's just not many parcels in Scottsville. But there was also an interesting thing that you kind of uncovered when you were sharing that with them, which is that there was almost an echo of market trends that we had seen in previous years, right?

[01:47:50] It is a lagging market. So there was a series, we saw the increases in the town of Scottsville that other parts of the county saw two, three years prior. This is maybe an unfair question to put you on the spot, but I am curious, as we continue to look out for that, if there are other kind of market echoes that we haven't seen fully realized in parts of the community.

[01:48:11] Does that make sense? We have seen sharp increases in assessments over the last several years, And I'm wondering if there are parts of our community that just geographically have not fully realized that same spike in assessment value and that we might still expect to.

[01:48:27] So, yes, sir, I'm sure there are. There are always some kind of delayed or, you know, changes that are happening throughout the county that aren't always captured in a specific year.

[01:48:46] And it's, we only base our assessments on when we have sales, our assessment changes when we have sales that reflect it. So one thing, and I'm not a good person to necessarily know the cause of these changes.

[01:49:03] I can make guesses, and sometimes they're educated guesses, but I'm just reflecting the sales that have taken place. So, you know, we know that there's an improved broadband in the southern part of the county. And it's only when those sales start showing higher values in the southern part of the county that exceeds other places that we know that that really has caused a change.

[01:49:31] We don't know for sure that is exactly the change, the reason for the change, but we suspect it is. And yes, so in the town of Scottsville, you know, just like actually any other neighborhood that would show up on our large change list for neighborhoods, you know, it's just another example of, you know, in one year we had more support for an increase than we did in other years.

[01:49:56] Or that the sales actually showed an increase as opposed to not. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I don't know if I answered your question, but... You did. I appreciate it. Supervisor Lupista Crudley. Thank you very much for your... presentation it's always nice to see you regarding land use application or valuation even you're including the land and the actual home correct so just the price of the land so when we are assessing a property that is under the land use program that's what you're referring to the

[01:50:31] land use okay so we if if that property has a home on it we will be assessing that home and the two-acre typically home site that it sits on just like any other property in the rural area. So that part of it is not affected at all by the land use qualification.

[01:50:50] So it's only the land that actually qualifies for forestry, qualifies for agriculture or horticulture that is assessed at a reduced value. So if the entire parcel is under land use, then the entire parcel is going to be assessed that way.

[01:51:06] But if there's a home, if there's any other non-qualifying area that would not qualify for as agriculture or forestry, then we're going to be assessing it at full market value. And getting back to Mr. Pruitt's question, because I know you can't go to any, all the homes in Abomar County every year, because I think you do an assessment every, is it two years?

[01:51:30] We try, we alternate and we try to look at properties every five years, actually. Every five years? Yes. Okay, you look at... Okay, that particular property. So it's a running system where every year you're covering so many homes, and I think you said you did $10,000 this year?

[01:51:47] Correct. Last year? Correct, which is about 20%. So you try to do 20% of assessments every year visiting homes. So getting back to Supervisor Pruitt's question, that has to do with for an area to be affected, it's the amount of sales in that area, So, for example, if there are more sales in Scottsville Magisterial District than there are in Ryo, does the...

[01:52:22] It's the only time the number of sales actually affects what we're doing is if there's only one or two. We don't really know what it's telling us. You could easily have one sale that is going to sell for a lot less or a lot more without us using that to affect the entire neighborhood.

[01:52:40] What we're looking for is at least five, ten or even better, or more sales within a neighborhood. But the number of sales will not determine how much that neighborhood changes. It just tells us how much support we have for the amount of change.

[01:52:58] Thank you very much. You're welcome. And I do want to add, because I had it in the beginning and I didn't add a slide for it. I told you we looked at 10,000 properties. Those were in-person visits to properties this year. We are doing a pilot program starting this spring, or actually starting this month, where we're going to start looking at properties using our aerial photograph, photography, pictometry is what it's called.

[01:53:27] And that photography program allows us to look at all four directions and straight down at properties. It allows us to measure to make sure that we have correct measurements. Sometimes it's, you know, the rural areas aren't as good as the urban areas for resolution, but we are able to check things.

[01:53:52] And in some situations, we're not going to be able to see the property due to trees or some other issue, and we'll still go out and look at the property for that. We're still going to go out and look at properties for their permits, for permit work that's being done. We're still going to go out and look at properties for some land use issues and for sales.

[01:54:15] But we're hoping to look at a lot more than 10,000 properties this year by doing the aerial photograph and to update our data. I remember a few years ago that you talked about using drones to do this.

[01:54:31] So that's what we're talking about for aerial surveillance. So this is not drones. No, I'm not sure I ever talked about drones. But, no, these are actually fixed weaned aircraft that fly over the county. And the county and city, they do this together.

[01:54:47] And they create this set of pictures that overlap and do this. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Supervisor McKeel. Very interesting technology helping out. Yes, ma'am.

[01:55:03] But I understand it has its drawbacks, too. Well, and I don't think, Peter, this is always, your reports are always so thorough and really informative, and I appreciate the information. I don't think I have a specific question.

[01:55:19] I may end up calling you, but as always, and I know you will, you'll send us this presentation. Yes, ma'am. And you'll get out to us eventually. You'll send us the magisterial district information that you've always done in the past.

[01:55:34] You're talking about the change by neighborhood? Yes, ma'am. Magisterial districts and then within the magisterial districts. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, so that would be great. All right, and with that, I think I'm going to hold questions. I think I'm all right right now. Thank you. Professor Calloway. Yeah, I was going to ask about the neighborhood data as well.

[01:55:51] Is that like a couple weeks, a month? This week. You already have it? No, I just haven't been able to break it down by magisteries. No, I understood, but I mean I'm just curious about timing, not that I'm trying to press. No, it'll be this week. Awesome. Thank you, sir. So just so I understand, if you could go to the rollback taxes, I think it was slide 17.

[01:56:09] So I'm going to say some things out loud to make sure I understood it. And then go to 16. So where was the deferred tax slide? Oh, that's this one right here. So the net would be the $14.9 minus the rollback taxes is what we actually do not have in the coffers.

[01:56:30] Yes, sir. So for $25, that would be, what was the rollback, about a million bucks? We don't have the rollbacks for $25 yet. So you used the previous year, so 936 was for 24. Correct. Go back to the rollback.

[01:56:48] So 14 to 13 million in that case. Yes, sir. So I understood the rules about the contingent deadline, if the assessment goes up. Why did we do that?

[01:57:05] That's what the state law actually says. And was that a change at some point? It was not a change. It was a change in our understanding of what it actually says. Sometimes it's very literal, and it very literally says an increase in assessment.

[01:57:22] Do we know why? I mean, I understand, yeah, if your assessment goes up, but what's the rationale behind it? I can explain what I think it means, is that the state wanted to give people an additional opportunity if their assessment changed, increased after the original deadline.

[01:57:43] So it's like, wait a minute, I would have applied for land use if I'd known my value was going to go up. So here's another period to apply. That's my guess. Thank you. That's all the questions I had.

[01:57:59] Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Real quick, from my understanding, the 5.09%, does that include new construction or is that? No, sir. No, sir. That is reassessment only. Okay. And that is also true of the 6.9% on the single family?

[01:58:18] That is correct. All of those percentages that I provided were reassessment only. Some were for residential, single-family only, and some were general, but they were all just reassessment. And then at some point, we'll know how much additional value goes into the anticipated budget.

[01:58:39] You're talking about for the new construction? Yeah, typically I provide that to the budget office, and that'll be part of the budget. Okay, great. Thank you. I'm interested just to follow up on the inspection process, and this is just curiosity again as well.

[01:58:56] In the process of inspecting, you said sometimes you're surprised at how, you know, things have changed from what you thought they were. Is there any connection with, you know, whether there was a permit filed for those changes or? Yes, sir.

[01:59:12] Sometimes it's because there wasn't a permit filed. Sometimes it's because there was a permit filed and it just, we missed it in our process. With the thousands of permits that we deal with between the CDD and my office and the data getting to us, we might miss a couple of them.

[01:59:38] That was a problem around 2018 or so in our interface between our two offices, which we have since fixed. So sometimes it's due to something like that. it's not very often but sometimes it's due to a um the fact that a permit wasn't taken out we find out that a basement was finished and you know it could have been finished 15 years ago and we just never knew it because it wasn't a permit taken out 15 years ago um and it and it's been finished the whole time but we don't know until it sells and we're like wait a minute there's a finished

[02:00:14] basement in here i don't know that we go back on the other side and collect fees that were not collected for the permit, but that's a different question. Sometimes it's more nuanced. Yes. Sometimes, that's not the majority of the situation. It's more nuanced where the grade of the property is actually better than we thought it was.

[02:00:35] And that's not something that anybody's hiding or not taking out permits. It's just the fact that it's just a better property than we thought. Thank you. And this is more of a comment than a question, but I'm really happy to hear that you're able to use the aerial photography, but there has been a concern that the GIS system's images have not been updated of aerial images of Albemarle County since, I think, 2018 still.

[02:01:00] That is correct. We don't use the GIS system for this. The pictometry system is separate, and we do a flyover every two years. The last one was in January 2023. Sorry. The last one was January 2024, and then the next one will be January 2026.

[02:01:20] And they're relatively recent. Obviously, we can't use it for new construction because as things are built, but it's very useful for everything else. Sounds good. Thank you. You're welcome. We'll take that up at another time. And I just noticed Jeff leaned in because I could see him out of my periphery here and I wondered if he wanted to say something.

[02:01:43] Just when you've had a chance, Mr. Chair, to make sure the board doesn't have questions, I just had a couple of points I wanted to make with Pete's help, please. Sure. Are there any additional questions? Oh, Supervisor Malek. Sorry to hold it up. So will your new EPL software help you to get better connections with the permits that are issued, or have you already solved that problem in another way where there was the gap between CDV and finance?

[02:02:10] So we have solved that problem, but it's changing with the new system. So the new community development system, you know, we have to figure out, make sure that we're getting the data out of it. But the new financial system, we're not actually a part of in the assessor's office.

[02:02:27] We use a system that's not being replaced in that financial system. Okay. And that's, I mean, that's partly on purpose, to keep it completely private and secure, because I remember trying to get people in 2008 to apply for the real estate waiver program.

[02:02:43] And I had to actually take pictures of the locked file cabinets because they were so worried that all their data was going to be somehow floating around loose in the hallways of the county office building. So that's interesting. And the pictometry will also be very useful.

[02:02:59] You had mentioned years ago that if someone has a larger or a smaller than two acres house site, you're taking that detail involved so that if they have a 15-acre yard, they're not getting credit. But, I mean, that's all part of your taxable first, your residential building site, as opposed to just two acres and then a whole lot of other stuff.

[02:03:21] That is correct. And we've been using pictometry for land use checks for years now. So it is very effective to determine exactly what you just said. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Richardson. Pete, I was going to get you to talk a little more about e-billing.

[02:03:40] You've been in front of the board before, and you've talked about this. And, of course, you and I have not talked before today, so I know I'm catching you a little flat-footed. I'm sorry. But what's the percentage of the community that's using e-billing, and how's that going in your office, the effort?

[02:03:58] Do you have data on that? Is that something you need to come back with in terms of the usage of that? So I would have to defer to Jennifer Matheny because it actually, this is the first time that my office has kind of jumped on the bandwagon with the e-billing because the billing office has used it in 2024 for the billing statements.

[02:04:26] But this is our first reassessment since they started using that. So my question may be premature. We may need a little bit of time. And I guess, of course, my interest in Supervisor Malik first brought it up, but it's a way to remove, by going electronically back and forth, removing issues that occur with U.S. Postal Service and or other things that come into play.

[02:04:53] Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And Jennifer has shared some numbers with me, but I think it would be better for those to come from her to be more accurate. So the other thing, Mr. Chair, that I just wanted to not be lost on the board, I think Pete, he had 24 slides to go through, so he's trying to move through with a pace.

[02:05:12] But I don't want it to be lost on the board that he quickly hit the slide that reminded the board that several years ago, we asked for an additional position to help to proactively manage the program. And you can really do, probably off the top of your head, a cost-benefit analysis of the cost for that additional resource, but then the revenue that's been brought into the organization as a result.

[02:05:38] Again, not trying to put you on the spot, but that was good advice from the finance department, and it's paid off quite well for the organization. Is that accurate? Absolutely. Absolutely. I was nervous about my numbers, and at the time, in the budget process, I said, I think we can get $250,000 more by adding this position.

[02:06:02] It's been, I think, $7 million to $8 million in rollback taxes. I can actually go back to that slide, and we can get a better idea. We just re-edited that report. Sorry, it's right here.

[02:06:23] Pete, can you walk the board back through that for a minute, Mr. Chair? I think this deserves a moment, if that's okay. Sure. Oh, absolutely. So the solid line or the graph line is the amount each year of rollback taxes that we billed and collected.

[02:06:49] The bars are the numbers of rollbacks that were processed. So these are 2024 is the most recent, 936,000. 1.6 million the year before 1.8 million the year before that so the numbers that we are experience are because we are processing a lot of rollbacks on on smaller things not you know we're not doing the home run with the 1.3 million from brook hill you're not going to do that every

[02:07:24] year but you should be processing any other kinds of changes that affect rollback and and cause people to drop out of the program it's not meant to be a permanent uh reduction in taxes it's meant to be only experienced while you are qualifying and that's the part we were missing before thank you and interesting with this graph that revalidation began a couple of years to the left of the graph and that first year it was five million dollars in rollbacks approximately that came in yes ma'am that was that i'm glad you brought that up um because the revalidation

[02:08:02] was the first important step but then it was we had to have somebody who actually could pay attention to it and and track that so we weren't turning into what as you're aware of um people coming and say hey i can't i'm not really interested in in farming and then send them off to open space like cause other problems uh that that we know of so um it's really maintaining that and and on a regular basis and have somebody dedicated to it i appreciate that i would be interested in understanding how much of the rollback is due to sort of discovery that the

[02:08:40] property wasn't being used as it had been certified versus what i would think is something would have caught anyway which is a change in use that of course caused rollback i would have to get into the numbers to determine that that would be a lot more complicated so i understand thank you mr chair i had one more point and i'm sorry i know we're running short on time and we need to stay on track. But every section of every department in this organization is not connected to state data that shows performance. I wish it was. I wish we could easily track performance tied

[02:09:19] back to state data and such. But Pete quickly hit some slides that talked about the performance of this division. These folks were in the auditorium this evening. And of course, Pete's recognized them for their hard work. But we're at the top, and I don't want that to be lost on this organization as not just how hard they work, but the numbers bear out that we're doing some excellent work related to performance data and how we stack against other counties. And it's always nice. This board's good to our staff, and you really publicly support them. But the data bears out that we're doing some really good work in this organization related to real estate

[02:09:58] assessment so thank you sir and thank you team thank you just several years ago you had talked about how you were re-dividing rather than neighborhood by neighborhood then there were like properties all over the place i can't remember what it was called but i know that it protected the places like scottsville where there were so few sales that you were able to compare them with similar houses in other places so is that finished and in operation or is that still evolving and i probably didn't describe it well enough to so actually understand what i'm talking about so one of the things that i'm i'm very excited about over the last year 10 years is

[02:10:37] that every year we have made great improvements to the data in the process that we have that we assess properties by and so every year we have we have kind of tackled more information in our system that you know we couldn't find any support for necessarily it was in there but in an effective value but because it had no explanation we had to review it and it took years to do that so that's one one aspect that we've improved on several years ago we kind of reorganized the groupings of our

[02:11:12] neighborhoods so that we no longer had five parcel neighborhoods that would never create sales on their own. So we group them in the larger market areas, especially in the rural areas. So I believe that's what you're referring to. Yes, it is. Thank you. Board, we are just a few minutes behind, but it's time for a recess, and I would propose that we do a

[02:11:41] 10-minute recess. Thank you. Thank you very much. The item is the Lambs Lane Loop Road Study Update.

[02:22:58] Michael Stambaugh, welcome, Deputy Chief of the Transportation Projects. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. My name is Mike Stambaugh. I am Deputy Chief of Transportation Projects for Facilities and Environmental Services. After my introduction, I'll be turning the presentation over to Thomas Ruff.

[02:23:17] Thomas is a Senior Project Manager for the Timmins Group. He specializes in transportation analysis and design. He will explain the key aspects of the study that is the subject of this presentation. We'll talk about the processes and the outcomes and the executive summary.

[02:23:35] Jessica Hirsch-Ballering of Community Development will follow Thomas. She will lead the discussion seeking board feedback on the questions that we will discuss during this presentation. So a little bit on the study background.

[02:23:53] This study came after the Lambs Lane Campus Master Plan of 2022. FES initiated a project to review the options to complete the Lambs Lane loop road connector as recommended in the master plan, which is a key part of this study.

[02:24:13] The study was extended and took a little longer because the high school center 2 development, and that impacted the loop road alignment, and it also affected the traffic analysis. And also this report, which I think is really interesting, has an extensive analysis of the intersections between Lambs Road and Georgetown Road.

[02:24:38] And some of what was found through this study ends up there in that particular group of intersections. So we're not going to be asking for a vote of any kind. We are asking for feedback and comments and any questions that you have.

[02:24:55] So these are the three questions. You won't have to memorize these because Jessica will bring them up at the end. But does the board support recommendation improvement, the recommended improvements for hydraulic corridor between Lambs Road and Georgetown Road? Number two, does the board support an application to fund the hydraulic corridor improvements in the coming round of revenue sharing through VDOT?

[02:25:18] And number three, does the board support the proposed campus loop road alignment, the possibility of constructing the loop road as a private road maintained by ACPS, possibly, or the recommendation to not include design and construction of any portion of the loop road in the upcoming round of revenue sharing?

[02:25:39] So those three questions are going to show themselves again, but just wanted to bring that up as you're listening to the presentation. And I also want to mention that Matt Wirtman is back there with the Albemarle County Public Schools. He has, we have discussed this with him, so it's not a surprise to him.

[02:25:56] And the schools are integrated with our particular presentation, although they will not be presenting. So with that, I will turn the meat and potatoes of the study over to Thomas Ruff. Welcome. Good afternoon. Yeah, so Thomas Ruff with Timmins Group, also a member of the, or live in the Samuel Miller District as well. So happy to be here and talk about this project.

[02:26:23] We've been working on this for coming up on a year now, looking at the intersections you'll see there. So it does cover, mostly the focus was on Hydraulic Road, the Lambs Road intersection, starting there and working south towards the Georgetown Road intersection. So that's three, four, five, six, one and two.

[02:26:40] One is the Lambs Lane, Lambs Road intersection. Number two is one of the other entrances to the high school. And so that's the focus area that came out of some conversations with county staff, understanding the potential growth from the high school campus, as well as the loop road, which was part of the conversation.

[02:26:59] And we wanted to look at intersection spacing, safety, access management, kind of all those pieces together that have come up along the corridor. One of the first things we always do in looking at these studies is looking at safety, and that's a big thing that the public wants to hear.

[02:27:16] It also helps guide some of our conversations as we go forward. So five-year crash history that doesn't include 2024, all that data is not in there yet. So it's the previous five years, 2018 to 2023. Luckily, there are no fatalities in the study area and no serious type A injuries.

[02:27:38] But there were a number of property damage-only crashes in the area. And I think the focus, a lot of these crashes, and I'll show this on the next few slides. You may have gotten this in your packet, I think, with each of the intersections. But most of the crashes on the corridor are happening at the signalized intersections and the high school intersections.

[02:27:58] I think that's pretty aware there. Although 40% of the crashes did happen in the school zone, only nine of those crashes, about 12%, happened while the school zone was active. So although a number of the crashes are happening in that school zone area, they're happening after hours, which tends to mean people are driving a little bit slower.

[02:28:25] But this does, I did want to mention after we did talk to staff, I know the speed zone cameras that are now out there, this data does not cover that since that's very recent. Just wanted to bring that up. And you'll see on the next few, I've got the types of crashes at each intersection, but the majority are angle crashes, which for a four lane undivided roadway with 45 mile an hour speeds, that is the most common type crash.

[02:28:56] That's something you've probably heard from your Safe Streets for All discussions with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. That's very true here as well. Undivided roadways like this, that's a common crash pattern. So this is looking at the intersection of Lambs Road, Whitewood Road.

[02:29:13] You'll see a number of rear ends that are kind of lined up, and that's generally due to traffic signalized intersections. Tend to have quite a few rear end accidents. That's common as traffic. But there are a number of angle crashes that are occurring at this intersection as well.

[02:29:34] At Georgetown Green, so the entrance to the, one of the main entrances to the high school, there are a pretty good number of angle crashes occurring for traffic trying to enter or exit the high school property. And lastly, this is Georgetown Road, kind of on the south end of the study area.

[02:29:54] You'll see this had the most crashes within the study area in a very wide variety, and part of that due to the skew of the intersection, and so something we've taken into account with some of our recommendations. I will say a big part of what we did the next was look at, we did data collection during school peak hours and reviewed the operations of the corridor.

[02:30:20] So overall, for hydraulic road and the signalized intersections, those intersections are operating at a good level of service under existing conditions. Yes, you know, for some of the unsignalized traffic exiting the school, there is a delay during that 15 to 30 minutes of getting the students out.

[02:30:41] But in general, the traffic on hydraulic, on Lambs, on Georgetown, is handled by the traffic operations of the existing equipment. So that's something we wanted to kind of bring up. You know, there's the traffic is getting through.

[02:30:56] There are queuing issues in certain locations, and we've got some different recommendations. We did look into the future at 10 years in the future using a 2.2% growth rate. That's based on the historical average in the area, and knowing when talking to county staff, there's no major developments along the hydraulic road corridor that are going to change that growth pattern in kind of that 10-year period.

[02:31:22] I did want to note, and one of the big things as we get to the next slide on some of the recommendations, is there are over 300 pedestrians crossing hydraulic road at the Lambs Road signal. That is, we were looking to confirm, check in some different places. Outside of UVA, we think it's probably the largest crossing in the county for pedestrians.

[02:31:42] So just to put that in perspective of maybe something to focus on as we get into kind of the next recommendations and so these are the next few slides you'll see our recommendations along the corridor based on that operational and safety so starting at the north end at hydraulic and lambs you'll see we've made a big effort to reduce the curve the radius on two of the corners there's a lot of extra asphalt and so that means pedestrians are in the roadway longer the crossing is longer and that does give you a double effect right if you

[02:32:20] can make the crossing shorter the amount of time that the cars have to stop can also be shorter so you can kind of do a two for one you can increase the amount of green time because then the red time can be shorter for that crossing and and then you know secondarily we've improved moved across the frontage of the Albemarle High School campus to create that from a full 10-foot shared use path with a buffer area that would meet current VDOT and ADA standards across the campus.

[02:32:56] Moving a little further down, the central, I guess the northern entrance, this entrance today is a full access entrance to the high school, and this would be planned to be converted to a right in right out entrance and that's mainly due to the kind of the crash pattern of traffic interacting with the signal and some vehicles not not making decisions on when to turn left some folks that think they're in the signal uh left turn lane and some think they're making a left turn lane earlier creating some friction so changing that pattern and that also

[02:33:32] allows that entrance in the middle to be to be narrowed which helps with again the crossings there at the georgetown green entrance um looking to install what's considered an unsignalized continuous t intersection with a concrete median in uh hydraulic road um that would channelize traffic so you would be it would allow a little bit of a acceleration lane for for people leaving uh the the high school property um and then you know focus uh there's been one recently installed on Route 250 just across from Bergwood in a temporary fashion.

[02:34:12] I'm not sure if you all have driven out there past that, but VDOT has mentioned good success with that, and that type of intersection treatment is going to be seen a little bit more. This would be permanent. It wouldn't be made of the temporary.

[02:34:28] This would be a permanent installation, so don't confuse just the operations, not the look. And I will note we did look at a traffic signal at this location, um and the the signal is can meet the warrants with the volumes for only one hour out of the day so that does technically meet the warrants for talking to vdot and having a conversation the challenge is is that vdot typically does not like to have a signal that's only useful for one hour of the day and then it just stays green for you know there's no other option it kind of because what happens is you have traffic that just sees it green green green and then they're missing that

[02:35:08] time and it creates some challenges with the rest of the signal so it's potential in the future and and with this installation with the concrete median it would be an alternative intersection style you may have heard that with vdot discussions in the past it's something that is easier to get signal installed because it's not a traditional signal it's an alternative style of traffic signal but we'll you know that's a future future discussion that could be had once high school Center 2 is constructed, or potentially some other access points off of the loop road.

[02:35:44] And last, looking at the intersection of Georgetown Road, this traffic signal there, the biggest thing we, you know, from a safety perspective, we can't fix the skew of the intersection without major right-of-way impacts, and we didn't really think that that was appropriate for where we were with the project.

[02:36:04] However, looking at the volume of traffic, there's less than 10 vehicles that are actually traveling straight through from Georgetown Road into the dental practice that's on the east side but the north side of this picture. Because of that, we can implement what's called a through-cut intersection. This just allows the left turns from both sides of the side streets to go at the same time, and we can reduce the amount of green time given to the side streets, which will allow more green time for Georgetown and for hydraulic which we think will hopefully

[02:36:40] avoid folks potentially running lights or trying to get through the intersection during peak hours. So in total just to just to summarize this as we you know before we get to some of the other questions and we've we've kind of priced this out to around around three to six million dollars in twenty thirty dollars which is what the revenue sharing timeline would look like and so THAT DOES INCLUDE INFLATIONARY NUMBERS THAT VDOT REQUIRES AS PART OF THE COST ESTIMATION PROCESS. THIS COST DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY OF THE APPROVEMENTS FOR HIGH SCHOOL CENTER TWO THAT

[02:37:18] ARE CURRENTLY WORKING OR ANYTHING ON THE HIGH SCHOOL CAMPUS. AND I'LL MENTION, YOU KNOW, SO WE DID -- WE DID ALSO LOOK AT WHERE THE LAMBS LANE LOOP ROAD COULD GO. SO THAT WAS A PART OF the master planning process, you can see we had a number of different options there in the blue, green, red, and we'll call it cyan colored lines. As mentioned, when we began this process, the high school center two was in flux to its exact location. In working with schools and FES

[02:37:56] staff, we found that the cyan line, which I'll show here on the next path, would allow the loop road to be implemented with the high school center too. So you can see that connection. You can see both that with the construction of high school center too, that you could, that still allows the possibility of constructing that loop road in the future. And so yes, the road goes between the baseball field and the football field area. And the goal of this connection as stated in the

[02:38:32] master plan, as well as with this, is that it would provide some additional routing options for all three of the schools, the high school, middle, and elementary schools that currently use Lamb's Lane and hydraulic in Lamb's Road. So that's kind of the goal there. And I know with the, there are additional changes to the high school center two project that are adding additional connectivity through the site to connect to Lamb's Lane. I know that there's, that's a little bit of that project is ongoing as well um and as i mentioned that option alignment

[02:39:08] one option was selected with with high school center two uh kind of leading that discussion point and um and and uh that work the high school center two work isn't going to be ongoing and i wanted to mention as we we looked at that originally when we did the analysis we did the full road from hydraulic road all the way to lambs lane with a cost of nine to twelve million dollars As the, and again, these were using VDOT funds for $20, $30, VDOT design standards.

[02:39:39] With High School Center 2 constructing a portion of the road, that would bring that cost down. However, you know, as we've discussed with staff, we recommended not pursuing the loop road in addition to hydraulic improvements at this time, mainly due to the scoring process within revenue sharing, which we can discuss in more details.

[02:40:01] But the higher the cost, the less likely it would be selected by. And so trying to keep the cost in something that would be funded. And lastly, we did note a couple times we have different conversations with staff about there's potential cost savings if the road were to be privately maintained or publicly maintained or VDOT maintained.

[02:40:22] And so the current goal is to design the portion that's being built for High School Center 2 to be VDOT acceptable so that option remains next year or in the future to pursue the loop road and not have to fight VDOT down the road. So before we get back into the meat of the questions or anything, I certainly would be happy to answer any questions on all of the technical information that I just shared.

[02:40:50] Thank you. Appropriate time for us to go to the board. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. Since I drive by here from the country every day, I'm always glad to see some of the suggestions that you have made here to bring a little more or less chaos, let's put it that way, to this area.

[02:41:10] I did notice in both the Georgetown and the Whitewood that you're removing the right-turn lane and making a right-turn lane. Right now there's a very short, like one car length only, but right-turn lane going north on hydraulic from Whitewood that allows more people to go in the very short light that we have.

[02:41:29] The same thing on Georgetown. There are many people who go in the far right to head south into town that will now be not doing that because it's only one lane, including all the people going straight. So how do you analyze those impacts as far as the queue that's going to build up behind every time?

[02:41:46] Sure, and I can, you know, I've got my copy of the report and I can give you some of those exact posts. I couldn't possibly find it in there, believe me. But certainly, yeah, so we did take a look at, you know, what were the queue lengths and the number of vehicles. And based on the number of pedestrian crossings, we felt that the additional couple car lengths of delay that you would have was worth the pedestrian safety, given the high volume of pedestrians.

[02:42:13] Especially at Whitewood, absolutely, I get that completely. Well, at both, actually, because we see kids trying to walk to school at all those intersections. You're absolutely right. Thank you. Um, okay. And did, in one of your earlier slides, it was an aerial showing, did you have to deal with the approved development across the street from where Georgetown Green Road comes out? And I guess they would just have to meet up with yours as opposed to the other way around anyway.

[02:42:40] That's correct, yes. Okay. All right, then. And for the loop road, was it intended to be vehicles only as opposed to fully sidewalked since so much of Lamb's Road has no sidewalks already? I didn't know if that was. So included in that design is a shared use path that goes along that alignment.

[02:42:59] It matched the alignment that was in the master plan. There was a typical section included in that. We did modify that slightly while working with school staff on high school center too. But there is pedestrian.

[02:43:14] So, yes, there's two lanes of traffic for buses, delivery vehicles for the schools or parents, teachers, all that. But there is a shared-use path that would be along the Albemarle County, the north side of the screen.

[02:43:31] It's that kind of, I don't know if my mouse is showing on the screen, we'll see. The gray line. This, like, lighter gray line is the shared-use path. And so we've worked with the High School Center 2 project to make sure that would be continuous, that connection.

[02:43:47] So you could walk from Hydraulic Road to Lamb's Lane along this roadway. And it would be a lot shorter to get to Journey, for sure, which would be safer. So the main challenge is going to be keeping the parents from parking on the shared-use path to go to games because now they park on the grass everywhere, so it's really hard to control.

[02:44:05] They would have to go over a curb, but, yes, you're correct. Okay. Thank you very much. I'll stop. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? I don't believe I have any questions at this time, but I might have more after other people chat in a bit.

[02:44:21] Supervisor Lapista-Curtley? Yes, I just wanted to clarify. There would be a raised concrete barrier on the proposed loop road between the shared use path and the regular road? That's correct. Because of the slopes through the area, you're probably aware of some of the area behind there, we need to use curb, and there's some smaller portions of retaining wall.

[02:44:46] So, yes, there will need to be a curb to protect that shared use path. Good idea. Fantastic idea. I've seen that elsewhere. Really good. Thank you. No other questions. Supervisor McHugh? I looked at the presentation in our packet, and I said I really tried hard to figure it out.

[02:45:06] And I said I just have to wait for the presentation, I think, and I did it. Although I must admit, I did Google Throughcut to try and make sure I understood what you all were referencing. If you need anything, VDOT does now have a video of each of the alternative style of intersections.

[02:45:23] that you can watch it's about 30 seconds long we can send it out you know i'm sure and that would be great can show you what each of those different styles look like yeah that would be great um and i guess i guess i will say right off this is a campus that i represent and i live in this area so i am you know i live right down georgetown road on barracks but i'm this is my hood i guess is what i'm saying for 50 years so i'm going to start i guess with just asking or relating some

[02:45:59] problems that i really see and maybe you can address how you're taking and that might be the easiest way for me to do this right because i really am excited about the having 25 percent of the children all the children in almar county public schools on that campus with one egress right now doesn't cut it for me i'm just saying it's very concerning and we have this whole area is really congested.

[02:46:24] So let me just ask a couple of questions. So right now, or quick question, your traffic studies, and this always comes up, they were done during the pandemic? No, we did this. We did the data collection.

[02:46:40] I can double check. I want to say it was March, might have been February of last year. Yeah, so not that. Because I was seeing some dates that looked like to me there were some traffic studies and I was a little confused. And they were done, I'm sure, when the university was in session because that makes a huge difference in this area.

[02:46:56] Correct, yes. You're giving me the right answers. That's great. I've done enough traffic studies in the county to know. Yes, right, exactly. And I get that. So I can confirm to people, right? Sure, absolutely. Yeah. So Georgetown Road right now backs up during beginning and end of school, right, and when the university is especially in session.

[02:47:20] Georgetown Road backs up all the way to Barracks Road because of the traffic on hydraulic. Matter of fact, VDOT was hoping to get a roundabout at Barracks Road and Georgetown Road to solve that problem, partly to solve that problem, and a couple of other problems as well.

[02:47:40] So help me with understanding how Georgetown Road heading towards hydraulic, how that's going to flow. Sure. So with the through-cut improvement, so today, if you're on Georgetown, if you come up, you've got your dual left, but one of those lefts you can go through.

[02:48:03] And so because one of the lanes can go through into the dental property, and then there's an equivalent signal on the other side, Because those two green movements can go at the same time, the VDOT doesn't allow those signals to run at the same time.

[02:48:23] Because you could have a position where someone gets a green light that says, I can go straight and left. It's a shared movement. So you would then have the vehicles go at the same time, and you're creating an unsafe situation. So then you have to give each of them separate green, yellow, red times.

[02:48:40] So even if there's only one car at the property on the east side there, it would mean that it gets its own green, yellow, and red time. So the minimums are going to be, you're talking 10 seconds that you're losing every time one car goes in.

[02:48:55] That doesn't sound like a lot, but every red light is lost time for getting traffic through. So by changing it to the through cut, you don't allow anyone from that property to go straight. They would have to go right or left on hydraulic and then make a different maneuver. But as I said, during the data collection, we only counted less than 10 vehicles doing that.

[02:49:14] Oh, yes, not many. And so we can then take away a phase of the signal. And so that's something VDOT does speak quite a bit about is, you know, I don't want to bring up, you know, the Route 29 and hydraulic intersection, but one of the goals of speeding that intersection up was removing the lefts.

[02:49:32] By doing that, they removed a phase, which meant you could take all that time and give it to the other phases. And I got that. So this is the same. is the same you would take away that time and give it to georgetown or hydraulic to move more vehicles through and that makes sense to me i appreciate that okay so that's going to help uh and then you're going to have a barrier a concrete talk to me about the concrete at the school or going down yes yes yes so um and and you know there's not uh i'm trying i was trying to look for one here

[02:50:06] in the county that there hasn't been one um there are this style of intersection has we've done a number of these uh for other other schools um i know i i think i shared some with uh county staff on route 301 in hanover at hanover high school they've got one of these the same thing a left turn in with an acceleration for a left turn out okay um you know the median there's room within in the middle in that two-way left turn lane to convert that into the space for the median the concrete so that would again channelize vehicles who want to go to the school and give a space for a vehicle so you pretty much would look if you're sitting there to make a left

[02:50:46] you would look to your left you know you'd look and you'd make your your move to the middle and then you would have the concrete would protect you to then have an acceleration space to get up to speed to head north on hydraulic road so that's what's on abbey road correct what's on abbey road but those terrible temporary you've already addressed that correct this would be a permanent yeah it'd be a permanent uh permanent solution yeah and i can see that that would make it much safer so that's i i get that um one of the problems and i'm just going to say a couple of problems and you can say oh yes this will address that for 40 years i've been watching

[02:51:25] students coming out of Albemarle High School taking a right at coming out of the Georgetown Green intersection, taking a right and then doing a big U-turn and they usually go across into the one of the apartment complexes which terrifies the older folks and they go swinging in there and they make a big loop and they come back out and head the other way. They're not going to be able to do that anymore.

[02:51:56] Correct. They would, you know, they'd never go down to Georgetown, you know, and potentially do that there, or this would hopefully make them feel safer to come out. Because that's a huge problem for the apartment complex, to be perfectly, and it's a safety issue, probably is responsible for some of those fender benders that you're seeing.

[02:52:14] Correct. Yeah, yeah. If we could have, you know, if we could have a bird's eye view of every one of the crashes, we'd probably learn a little bit more about the congestion. Yeah, because I've been called over to that apartment complex many times with complaints about the kids from the high school because they can't, using that as a turnaround.

[02:52:30] Right, and so this is to provide that safer egress for those students, and hopefully, again, I won't stand here and say no one will do it. They're high school students, but certainly it would provide a safer route for them to get onto Hydraulic Road northbound.

[02:52:45] Okay, and I don't want to take up too much time. I'm going to open this up to some other people, but help me just one quickly about you were talking about the private versus the VDOT roads. Clarify that for me, if you don't mind.

[02:53:02] And I understand that VDOT requires a lot more, is a lot more expensive because you have to bring it up to VDOT standards, and I get that. That's great. So when we were, when we started this process and what we, as we worked with staff, the goal was to, you know, lay this out and provide the costs for what this would be to be a VDOT style road.

[02:53:25] Because if you wanted to do revenue sharing or SmartScale or any of the other VDOT funded programs, the roadway would have to be, would be required to meet all VDOT standards. So that's where we started in talking with, as we walked through and saw where the numbers were and the total costs, we began that conversation with staff about things you could kind of draw back on if you were to take on that maintenance on your own and different conversations there.

[02:53:56] I think ultimately as well, one of the other valuable pieces of doing it privately was also you would have the ability to do it quicker and that would require the board to make that action. But if you were to do it quicker, things do not get cheaper in the future.

[02:54:12] You all have seen that from all the VDOT projects and that's the challenge. Anytime, if you're going to continue to compete for those VDOT dollars, it's going to be six plus years in the future and the costs are going to be six plus years of inflation further along.

[02:54:30] And so that was another rationale for the potential private side is if you're working on the high school center too now, you could have an opportunity to use the same, I don't want to say use the same contractor, but use some of the work that's going on to get yourself a little further along and potentially build that road.

[02:54:49] Today, today's dollars are cheaper than future dollars. Well, and that's what I just wanted to clarify. So you were talking about the build-to-VDOT standards to the high school center. Is that what you were saying? It would have been to connect Lamb's Lane to hydraulic. Yes. That entire portion. would need to be a VDOT, correct.

[02:55:07] And that's because LAMS is part of the VDOT system, and so it would be connecting the two. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And I guess I may come back later, but I'll let somebody else have a turn at this. I don't want to take up too much time.

[02:55:23] I've got all day, but we don't. This is fun. Reacting to the technical aspects. So for the future piece of this, To me, now this is just my opinion, but the construction of the proposed loop road in conjunction with the improvements along hydraulic have to, like, did you study what happens if you just do the improvements without the loop road?

[02:55:52] Because this would go to the timing of the construction of the loop road for me. Sure. So the biggest difference is with the loop road, there's the potential that the Georgetown Green intersection, that would improve the odds of that conversation for signalization of that intersection.

[02:56:08] but the improvements on hydraulic are based around safety and improving the operations of each of those intersections. So they are two separate pieces and the high school center to traffic was factored into that kind of because, you know, in conversations with staff on how those, the different, there are a lot of changes that will be happening to parking areas and certain things. And so that moved a little more traffic onto Lambs Road, move traffic a little bit into different areas it's really the future build out of things off of the loop road and and in the back the other portions of the campus that would necessitate

[02:56:46] that to happen you know more immediately so i would say if they happen separately that's the hydraulic road improvements have necessity from a safety perspective and improving the pedestrian connectivity the the land the loop road is a more operational and for future success of the campus. It will certainly get more impact. I mean, the pedestrian activity at pickup in the afternoon versus the morning is different, and that's because people are picking their kids up across the street and going to the dentist office and the PT area and all that, and so you've got a

[02:57:26] lot more kids walking across and over there that if there was a pickup option that you need the proposed loop route for would cut the pedestrian activity that's crossing that road in the afternoon. I mean, that's just the, I mean, I've been, I've got my third kid at Albemarle. I know the tricks of how to get in and out at pickup time. Um, the trick is there's too many people that know the damn trick. So it's all a cluster. Um, so the loop road, and I got to say that the current principal of Albemarle, uh, uh, Barfield, Mr. Barfield of all the years that I've had kids

[02:57:59] going there has figured out the, I don't know if it's commitment level. He's doing a hell of a job of dealing with the internal site control of what he has to contend with at drop-off and pickup. So I commend him for that. So I almost want to, and I don't know if that's him or if he's directed somebody to figure it out, but he's doing a good job.

[02:58:21] But how that works internally on the parking lot, which I know you didn't study, is really going to impact all the improvements that are being done in the other areas. So I can't leave that out of this because, you know, I know you didn't go in and study the traffic directions and where the cars are queuing on the site, et cetera.

[02:58:41] But I mean, I can look at this and just determine like two or three alternatives that get rid of a lot of queuing issues at the two main areas based on where you could start doing pickup and drop off for the high school. but if you don't have that loop road you still have that issue and even these improvements while a little bit more safe will be more will be addition safety will will be improved won't necessarily fix the bigger issues i i get tickled with these engineering studies with your c grades and stuff like that when i look at it and i'm just like come on no i mean i get it and i've

[02:59:17] stopped being snarky about it i guess but well no i haven't i was just snarky about it so the um but but the fact is is that you know there's the engineering studies which i'm not disrespecting i get it i understand them um but then the reality of watching people contend with it just because your engineering study over a period of time such says it's a c mondays might be an f and thursdays might be a c and maybe a day when you know seniors don't have to go in may there are days because i see what happens in may on drop off and pick up um so all that has to be taken

[02:59:54] into account so there's going to have to be a lot of coordination i think based on decisions made on the main roadway with the principal or whoever's responsible to figure out the internal site movement for pickup um not to mention journey and greer as they start to figure out i have an additional way to get to hydraulic because this the proposed loop road without it you still have the issue of all them converging where all the pickup and drop-off stuff's coming out of the school and it's a morning and we haven't talked about the residents and I'll say

[03:00:29] I have done enough traffic studies to know that me saying all the letters of the alphabet doesn't help the conversation and and if we're all on the same page that again the goal is to assist getting the students in and out of the school one of the items that we do talk a lot about you know outside of that vehicular discussion is that level of stress for a walker or biker along And the improvements on hydraulic and the portions in orange there that are going to be done with High School Center 2 are going to provide, you know, a reduced level of stress by improving all those pedestrian options and also giving some more space.

[03:01:09] And I don't actually have the latest. This does not include the full layout of improvements that are happening at High School Center 2, which do provide a much larger, there's a lot more internal changes that are going to occur to address a lot of those. And I think we've been working with school staff, and that whole project does have a much larger number of improvements.

[03:01:29] We do know about it, but in terms of what's in this study, it's not. I would just imagine that the principal, he's using personnel tremendously to help with what he's doing over there, with what's happening. So if that could be freed up, he could use that personnel for other things.

[03:01:45] I would think that they would be more interested in using that staff for other purposes other than just directing traffic through the parking lots. And I'm sure I'd love to see him look on his face the first day that he was at school and said, what do we have here when he encountered all that?

[03:02:01] So I'm still confused about the concrete medians, just where they're at. I thought I had it, and then, so tell me exactly where the concrete, that's a concrete median, I got that. But over here at the main entrance, that's not going to be a concrete median. So we'd shown this, you know, just because it's a little bit larger.

[03:02:18] Oh, the green is the concrete. Yeah, that would be – it's a little bit larger so that the space within Hydraulic Road isn't large enough to make it landscapable because of the smaller area. So this may have been a little bit of an oversight just in terms of what it looks like. That is large enough that you could landscape that, so it's green.

[03:02:37] So apologies. So where you have the painted yellow lines where right now they can turn left in there. I'm huge support to get rid of that left because once they turn left, then the traffic coming off from the other direction has to yield to the left turns getting into the site, which is a problem because that backs it up into the intersection.

[03:02:55] So that's just going to be painted yellow. So the main reason to not have that is that, you know, as you said, certain days the left turn lane at Lambs Road extends a little bit further. And so to preserve that ability so someone could be there.

[03:03:11] If you do put the median in, you would then have traffic potentially, you know, stopped in the through movement of hydraulic, which would create additional kind of weaving. And, you know, the biggest safety issue is speed differential, right? Zero versus 45 is way worse than even 45 to 45.

[03:03:30] And the concrete barrier will be designed in a way to, see, over it on pantops, where you're not supposed to, if you're heading east at Wawa, People are turning left to get into Wawa even if they're not supposed to. So it's going to take a wall to stop them, which I think we're eventually going to do.

[03:03:47] But to stop people from wanting to turn left in there, paint the design, I guess, of that. I mean, it'll take education for sure, but, I mean. And this, you know, yeah, again, and I won't speak for staff. I believe that the median going in on 250 is somewhere along the line of occurring to help future that future.

[03:04:09] But that median island for the right in right out can be designed to be even further, you know, pronounced. So the one that you're thinking of is a rather small one. You can make it much more difficult for vehicles to make that left turn.

[03:04:27] That's something we would go into the design for this. Great. And then I was thrilled because I thought the data was collected earlier, so I'm thrilled to hear it was last, post-COVID. The link for the crash, I'm pretty sure this was this study.

[03:04:42] There was a link to the VDOT site that shows you the crashes and all of that. I think it was embedded in the packet somewhere. It wasn't captured during the study time. That takes me to the current live data, right? Not the time of the study. I can double check. It should take you to the today.

[03:04:59] Today's version. I don't know what's today. Today's in January. It's less of a deal now that I know the data that you did was collected later than what I thought when I read the program or read the packet material. Sure, yeah. Usually VDOT updates that data roughly, it's usually about a quarter behind, so they probably have up until sometime in the fall, but they may have all of it for 24 currently.

[03:05:20] And then just my last clarifying question, on slide 13, where you had some numbers there, so did you say that that three to six does or does not include inflationary number of dollars? It does, it does, because we're looking to that, yeah, that 2030, And that, again, that's to represent the revenue sharing application time period.

[03:05:41] If it is successful, we're in the boat for the next six years to get that. Got it. And I would just put in my vote for anything that may have a signal down the road, make sure it's prepped. I was thrilled to hear you say it's easier to, maybe the warrant is easier to get for a signal at a green tea.

[03:06:02] But just like at Belvedere when we're doing a green tea there and it's decided now to be signalized, It should just be assumed to be signalized and built to be signalized, whether or not it's actually signalized at the start or later. Correct. It's easier to put the conduit in when you're digging up the asphalt today.

[03:06:20] I would be a fan of putting that in right off from the get. Sure. That's a very cheap installation to do now to prep yourself for the future. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm not going to add any more to this.

[03:06:36] I know there's more to be done, so I want to just get to give the feedback. I think we'll have another round here. Okay. Jessica Hirsch-Ballering, Principal Planner with Abbaugh County Community Development. Jessica, pull your mic. We're having a little.

[03:06:52] That's great. Thank you. All right. I want to thank Mike and Thomas for describing the study process and outcomes and addressing the board's questions. Now we'd like to discuss how to move forward. So we're seeking from the board on the following three questions, all of which were included in your executive summary and you saw earlier in this presentation.

[03:07:09] While these questions are connected, we're going to take them one by one. So first, does the board support the recommended improvements for the hydraulic corridor between Lambs Road and Georgetown Road? I have a brief summary of the recommended improvements from Thomas's presentation outlined on the right of this slide.

[03:07:27] In the interest of time, I'm not going to read them to you. It's what you just heard, but they're there for your reference. I'd like to take a moment for you guys to respond to this question and give your feedback. Okay. We'll go through our order, and again, we have a lot to do here, so let's- I'm just pleased to say, too. Yeah. Starting with Supervisor Malek.

[03:07:44] Yes, I'm in favor of this. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Ditto. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley. Another ditto. Supervisor McKeel. Yes, please. Supervisor Galloway. Yes, enthusiastically. And I am as well. Great. Next. Thank you.

[03:08:00] The next question is, does the board support an application to fund the hydraulic corridor improvements in the coming round of revenue sharing? On the right, you'll see some reminders about the revenue sharing program. So, Amaral County must provide 50% local match for all funding requests.

[03:08:16] So, for every dollar we request through revenue sharing, the county needs to also provide a dollar. Also, Amaral County can request up to $10 million over the lifetime of the project. To clarify, that means we can request $10 million while providing a matching $10 million, meaning the total project cost cannot exceed $20 million.

[03:08:38] As Thomas said, the improvements along hydraulic will likely cost about $3 to $6 million, and he did include inflation in there, but I will note that revenue-sharing applications typically include significant contingencies and escalation for inflation, so that total project cost may increase from there, but we do not expect it to exceed that $20 million mark.

[03:08:57] If awarded, funding would be available in fiscal years 29 and 30. Also, total requests across all project applications submitted in a year cannot exceed $10 million. So the only other project county staff anticipate requesting funding for in this round of revenue sharing is for a previously funded project that may need a small amount of additional funding to complete.

[03:09:22] Together, both that project and the hydraulic road improvements should not exceed that $10 million request limit. Also, staff will return to the board in spring for a resolution of support for this and any other project applications.

[03:09:38] That will be the board's opportunity to officially support or disallow the final revenue-sharing application. Answering today's question affirmatively simply allows staff to continue to investigate this project as a potential revenue-sharing submission and prepare the pre-application due in the spring.

[03:09:56] Lastly, local match for this project must be added to the Capital Improvement Program to make this project competitive. So the Revenue Sharing Program ranks projects by tiers, with Tier 1 projects receiving funding first, Tier 2 projects receiving funding second, and so on until funding for that year runs out.

[03:10:13] Tier 1 projects are projects that have already received funding through the Revenue Sharing Program. Tier 2 projects are projects that are already in the locality CIP and receiving revenue sharing funds would allow the project to be completed more quickly. So if the board supports an application for these improvements, the board should also be prepared to include this project in the coming CIP for fiscal years 29 and 30.

[03:10:38] All right, and I can pause now for your feedback. All right, Supervisor Malek. Okay, so to me, I don't know how to wrap my brain around between $3 million and $20 million. I mean, that's the Eastern Avenue Bridge all over again here, so that's a really big problem.

[03:10:55] 2020 is just a maximum for any project. It's not this project. Oh, yes, I understand, but I just – I'm just showing my difficulty here. The – and you said the only other one. So this would basically – this and whatever the other project is that needs topping off would take care of 2025 applications for revenue sharing.

[03:11:17] Correct. Period. Okay. Go over this decision again. Oh, yeah. No, I'm just trying to understand. Okay, so I don't have any other questions. Thank you. The question that's being asked is whether or not we will support application.

[03:11:37] And it's only support in the sense of ask the staff to continue to pursue this as if we were going to go forward when we get to the spring resolution to decide which projects go forward. And there may be some more detail at that point that will let us know if it's 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever.

[03:11:53] I really broke my heart to see how much effort had gone in by staff over all these years on the bridge to have it just explode when nobody was looking. So I'm just trying to avoid that ahead of time. But yes, I'm happy to go forward to the next step. Thank you. Sir, Professor Pruitt? I have a few very quick questions on this.

[03:12:10] First, I mean, if we all endorsed Statement 1, is there another way to skin this cat without endorsing Statement 2 here? We could look into alternative funding options as an alternative.

[03:12:25] This leads me into my second question, which is you have brought this to us as a request for an application for revenue sharing. Everyone on this dais has at least four more years of experience with these kind of funding mechanisms, but the question that I might maybe ignorantly see that that is begging is why do we not look at other, is this precluded from other funding mechanisms, is smart scale not something that would be eligible for this, does not have the right funding, do we not think it would score well?

[03:12:54] If you could just talk me as much as is relevant through that kind of calculus, that happens before it comes to us. Yeah, so I'm going to invite anyone else from my department to come up and add to what I'm about to say. But what I would say is that we are bringing this to you as a revenue sharing option because we think it probably is the best option. This is going to be the program in which this kind of project is most competitive. That being said, if this is something that the board did not want to move forward with, we could look at alternative options. I don't think that smart scale would be the right fit for this particular project. Is there a cliff notes kind of what are

[03:13:33] the big chunky aggregate things that make you say that right because what i kind of my folk understanding my my lay understanding of smart scale is that it does score better when there's things like multi-use paths when you have evidence of high crash history and when you have high throughput in urban congested areas right i look at this i'm like oh aren't these the things that i look for in smart scale so i guess that's kind of where i'm unclear so you're not wrong historically but if we look at how the smart scale scoring rubric has been changed in the last round,

[03:14:09] the state is looking to fund through smart scale larger projects, things that cost much more than what this project would cost, and they've also deprioritized land use as one of the scoring factors. So having things like a school nearby and businesses and retail won't help this project succeed in the smart scale scoring rubric, whereas we think that revenue sharing would be the right fit.

[03:14:35] Okay. I think those are all the questions I might be able to ask on this. So, I mean, yes, because I said yes on the last one. It has to be yes. Supervisor Peacel-Curley? Yes. Supervisor McHugh? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway?

[03:14:51] The small little project, is that Berkmar Extended? Yes, it is. No, it is the Berkmar Shared Use Path. The Berkmar Shared Use Path. And where does the Commonwealth sidewalks and all of that fall? So Commonwealth, we asked for additional funds in the last round of revenue sharing to complete that project.

[03:15:08] We were awarded our full request. We anticipate that that is fully taken care of, and that one's... Oh, I got lots of heads nodding yes on that. Good. Build it quick. We're good. Good. Yes.

[03:15:24] But when you said something there that I didn't catch, this tiering about the transportation leveraging that's in the CIP and us needing to add in the dollars here. The tiering... We may not want to get into this today because we can punt it to the budget, but this tiering thing and transportation leveraging, I either missed it or there's something here that I'm like, wait a minute, what is that?

[03:15:49] Yeah, so really briefly, the revenue sharing program divides all of its project applications into four tiers. The first, like I said, being projects that have already received funding through revenue sharing. Those are the ones that they're going to fund first. They want to finish up the projects that they've already given money to. Tier two is reserved for projects that are identified in a locality CIP.

[03:16:10] The locality has said, we want to do this. We just can't do it as quickly as we want to, or we can't do it without other funding. So that's where they want to put their money. They want to leverage funding that the locality is already willing to put towards a project. Then you have tier three and tier four.

[03:16:26] If this project is not in our CIP, this project would qualify as a tier four project rather than a tier two. And historically, revenue-sharing funds have run out before getting to Tier 4. So the leveraging dollars that are in there are just programmed. We need to add the dollars to program for this.

[03:16:43] Yes. Okay. Understood. Thank you for that. Yeah. And I have a yes as well. Thank you. Great. One question I should have asked before, the PPTA would be a possibility if we decided to go on our own. But that could be decided after or parallel with the application, I guess, or before the application was sent in.

[03:17:03] I'm looking to my PPTA experts. Technically, yes, is what I hear. And part of the answer is that we have to give for number three here. Right, exactly. It's coming up. Great. All right, and third and final question is, does the board support recommendations regarding the proposed campus loop road?

[03:17:20] So specifically, does the board support the proposed alignment? Does the board support continuing to evaluate the possibility of constructing the loop road as a private road maintained by ACPS? and also does the board support not including design or construction of any portion of the loop road in the upcoming round of revenue sharing that is to say we can still revisit a revenue sharing application for any or the whole the whole loop road or portions of it as part of the next round of revenue sharing which will occur in 2027 supervisor malik yes yes and

[03:17:59] yes supervisor pruitt yes supervisor lopisto kirtley yes supervisor mckeel i would say yes but i want to just question so elmar county public schools is weighed in on all this yes okay so i'm going to say yes okay supervisor galloway well yes but i don't know if having a yes right now is that critical yeah probably not because i think the road should be built to public standards so that if we want it put into vdot system that it should be unless there is a strong rationale as

[03:18:35] to why that shouldn't be the case cost timing something like that i'd be open-minded to that so I don't want to say yes to anything now that's going to go well let's be creative here I want to see that loop road get done as soon as possible relative to the other improvements because I think that that they play into one another and I know how these things can sometimes play out whether it's the private public partnership or it's some other maneuver that could happen that all of that should be on the table for us to try to figure out how to get this done sooner rather than later so that i mean yes to the question but you you all know because you've done it where you come

[03:19:14] back oh we got this and we encountered this and we went this way and now so yeah just keep doing your creative stuff to get this loop road done as soon as possible and i mean yes continuing to evaluate the possibility thank you great 40 million versus 5 million is a big difference that concludes the presentation thank you so much for your time thank you that's great thank you Thank you.

[03:19:37] Exciting. All right. Our next up is a micro-CAT update. Mr. Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director of Planning. Welcome. I had some last-minute updates on this presentation, so I'm going to reload here.

[03:20:11] All right. Thank you, members of the board. Supervisor Andrews. I'm Kevin McDermott. I'm the Deputy Director of Planning, and I'm here today to introduce the discussion for the micro-CAT update presentation.

[03:20:29] I am joined by Ryan Davidson, the Deputy Chief of Office of Management Budget, Garland Williams, the Director of CAT, and Selah Hampton and Joe Petrick of our contractor for MicroCAT, VIA. So just as a quick reminder before I bring them up for the presentation, I wanted to say that where we came from, this project began back when we performed the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Plan.

[03:20:57] That was a plan that was funded by DRPT and performed by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and completed in 2022. Ultimately, that recommended that we look to microtransit to serve the Places 29 North and Pantops development areas.

[03:21:15] Following that, CAT submitted a successful demonstration grant to DRPT, which funded a micro CAT service that would operate for two years. There was a local match to that, and we were required to pick up anything to fulfill those two years beyond the grant.

[03:21:33] Moore County was required to pick up the bill for anything beyond those two years. So after evaluating our options for implementing that service and an RFP that was competitively procured, we ended up hiring VIA, the contractor for this service.

[03:21:54] So that service then started in October of 2023, making it October 2024. After having a successful year, we renewed that contract for this next year. So we've got it going until October 2025 now.

[03:22:12] So what I'd like to do now is just bring up Cela Hampton from VIA, and she's going to walk you through some of the highlights of this year of service. Welcome. Good afternoon to Chair Andrews and the entire Board of Supervisors. Thank you so much for having us this evening. Afternoon, we'll see.

[03:22:32] Firstly, again, to reintroduce myself and the VIA team that's present today, my name is Selah Hampton. I'm the Partner Success Manager for the service, and I'm joined by the General Manager of MicroCat, Joe Petrick. We'll walk through a bit of the background, talk through highlights, again, of MicroCat have at one year of service, and talk through some opportunities and next steps.

[03:22:51] A bit on VIA, we're the world's leading provider of advanced public mobility solutions with over 750 partners, serving over 140 million rides globally, with a real dedication to transit in Virginia in particular. We have over 40 partners in the state of Virginia, and have over four years working on micro-transit-specific partnerships with DRPT.

[03:23:14] And I wanted to give a shout-out to my team, the VIA Schools team. We launched a partnership with Albemarle County Public Schools just this past Monday. So we're really excited to see the growth and continuation of that service as well. On to MicroCat.

[03:23:29] As Kevin mentioned, we are celebrating now more than one year. Here you'll see some 2024 totals. So over 51,000 rides completed, over 4,000 accounts created, and an average ride rating of 4.9. Just the other minute, we were looking up that over 7,000 rides have received five-star ratings in the year 2024, which is within the top 10% of all VIA-powered services.

[03:23:54] So certainly a kudos to you all. MicroCat is a natural extension of the public transit ecosystem. The fleet is 100% private. Right now, the service is fare-free, which is consistent with the rest of the network. And there are a number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles within the fleet, making it accessible for everyone.

[03:24:12] and we could not be more proud of both at via and of the the cat team of the monthly ridership and the growth that the service has seen again the service was launched in october of 2023 you'll see that in that first full month of ridership there are 500 rides and in december what looks like our zero moved over but it's looking at over 6 400 rides in the month of december 2024 and 3.5 passengers per revenue hour means that in each revenue hour that a vehicle is in service there's between three to four riders on an individual van, which is in particular to call

[03:24:50] out that, again, because it's public transit, these rides are shared. And so the more ridership grows, the more efficient the service becomes. And you're seeing your cost per ride drop very steadily from the beginning of the year in Q1 2020-24, looking at above $30 to now closing in right above $17 at the end of Q4 2024. And we expect that figure to continue to fall as ridership grows.

[03:25:14] what does that mean for residents of albemarle county and what their access and transit looks like so what you'll see here on the left is an image of the fixed route lines and then on the right you'll see an image from one of via's tools called remix where you can see how long it takes for this particular figure it's the stick figure with with the bob her name is jane and how long it takes her to travel from the place that she is and so you'll see that the access on the left was about 15 minutes but really within a tight locale whereas on the right and with the introduction

[03:25:49] of micro cat jane can now get up and down the zone area that is outlined within 15 to 45 minutes and as always we like to hear directly from the riders themselves it's it's one thing to hear our numbers it's one thing it's another thing to hear directly from constituents of albemarle county 70% of riders reported not having access to a personal car.

[03:26:17] 30% of riders have an annual household income of $25,000 or less. And 40% of riders have a long-term disability. So it's extremely, I think, valuable and fulfilling for us. And also a testament to the service and the continued growth of the service that riders are finding it to be stable, reliable, and are using it from everything from commuter use cases to getting to shopping centers and doing groceries so a really staple a really important and growing staple in the community and this would not be accomplished at all without the help

[03:26:53] of of our contacts here at the county and at the city really strong marketing pushes i know that we've had screens in the airport that talk about microcat as you can get to and from the airport on the service. We did flyering in a number of local organizations around the county, and then the VSI supported with digital assets, so advertisements across social media. We ran a radio ad campaign for six months and have continued to see really strong rider growth attributed to those advertising materials. Some opportunities and next steps. So when we think about the future

[03:27:32] of what transit looks like, especially in a place where now you have a really strong micro transit program and fixed route that continues to steadily introduce improvements it's about integrating that network and so what you'll see on the left is a example of what fixed routes look like within a city and then what you'll see on the right is kind of how we visualize microtransit that there are a number of virtual bus stops if you will because every destination becomes a pickup or drop-off point and so when vn particular thinks about the future of transit and understanding that in many places fixed routes are still the most efficient mode of transportation there's never a suggestion

[03:28:10] of getting rid of them rather thinking about what makes most sense in a cost-efficient way and for riders to get where they need to go when they need to get there and so we have a number of options to think about integrating those modes in a one-app solution that's what we call integrated transit and you'll see here different images of what that looks like so that means that a rider could take a microcat to a nearest fixed route bus line and then take that fixed route bus line to their final destination and they see all of the real-time connection information in app so those are conversations that we're continuing to have with the team and we at VIA could not be more excited

[03:28:46] to to be here this afternoon and to speak to the highlights of the microcat service thank you so much thank you we'll just open it up for comments or questions from you all okay there's nothing you specifically are looking for at this time there's not okay thank you supervisor malik well certainly the ridership is astonishing and so well done on the communication plan to be able to get this word out i even though i live outside the zone i do have flyers in the early eastville

[03:29:21] post office in hopes because i've heard from people who have used it to be able to get a ride to hollywood town center and then get on the microcat to go somewhere else and that's less of a burden on their neighborhood driver and really facilitates them being able to use the system. And I'm especially impressed of the riders, the low-income riders who are benefiting from it.

[03:29:41] And so we'll have to figure out how to continue that going forward. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? When we project out the, I thought it was a helpful graphic showing how the individual cost per ride decreases as we continue to improve ridership, I can also imagine that there would be a hypothetical plateau we'd approach right that's going to asymptote out because eventually you're going to need to hire more and then costs go back up to accumulate to accommodate the

[03:30:11] additional demand do we have a sense of where that um that asymptote would be it's a great question we think about it in a number of ways and you're exactly right that it will fluctuate as ridership grows but then we bring in another vehicle put more hours on the road you're able to serve more riders one of the metrics of efficiency that we use is called utilization and so it's looking at the number again of riders that are on they're in a vehicle per vehicle hour and as long as our as that efficiency metric stays consistent and continues to grow we consider that a productive

[03:30:50] and healthy service in terms of what the kind of limit is it depends on ridership it depends on the size of the zone. It depends on how many vehicles and how many vehicle hours are on the road. I will say that we have services that have a cost per ride as low as $10, and we have services that have a much higher cost per ride. This is an extremely strong showing from you all. So that's not to say that that is a floor, but it is to say that we would expect it to decline significantly for at least the next few years?

[03:31:28] Additionally, so I don't contract for fire service. I don't contract for public school busing. I do contract for fixed route service, but I do so with another government entity that is nonprofit.

[03:31:45] So with that said, I would be interested for how you would articulate the value add that VIA has in this realm and why we would want to contract to a for-profit company for that. Sure. I think that when you look at the range and scope of, again, where riders are able to transit to and the cost efficiency for that amount of transportation, that's where microtransit as a concept succeeds.

[03:32:17] I have heard, actually, the mayor of Winchester, Virginia, said that transportation used to be determined by, and no offense to any of you all, by planners who decided where people go and when they go. And that microtransit really hands that back to the riders.

[03:32:34] Riders get to decide where they want to go and on their own schedule. And so I think that that availability and opportunity and what that means in terms of further economic growth within a certain region, what that means for, again, cost efficiency across an entire transit network is incredibly beneficial.

[03:32:51] I was expecting you to come up here and also help tease out this point. Thank you. Perfect. First, I haven't seen... Garland, introduce yourself so everybody knows. Thank you. I'm sorry. Garland Williams, Director of Charlottesville Area Transit.

[03:33:07] I haven't seen all of you since the New Year, so first let me say Happy New Year. Mr. Pruitt, to answer your question, Supervisor Pruitt, I think the value add of having VIA is we bought expertise. They are the leader in this mode of transportation.

[03:33:25] We could have gone out with a less experienced organization and our numbers probably wouldn't have been as successful as we've seen. Buying VA or getting VA to be the premier agency in this market, what we have baked in, I hope, is that we've baked in the success rate.

[03:33:47] And we're seeing that. There was pent-up demand. We were able to execute that at very low cost. They were able to add value just by coming on board. And they've expanded the model without increasing your costs. So I think that's the real add that you have. There's the part of me that would wonder, this is a program we're scaling up.

[03:34:08] There's a degree to which we are going to scale it up. And it will probably at some point naturally plateau, right? We are not going to deploy it to every location in the county. I guess I'm curious, does there reach a point where we're mainly paying for software as a service And that expertise is no longer a thing that we're routinely coming back to.

[03:34:29] Great question. As your transit director, hiring staff is expensive. Getting vehicles and increasing our fleet size is all an expensive endeavor.

[03:34:45] What we avoid in this model by bringing on a third party is all those upfront costs. and we're able to potentially keep that cost down because they have the efficiencies of running the system and they know what they're doing.

[03:35:01] We would be dabbling in an area where we would be learning. So our numbers would continue to grow, and you would be asking why would our numbers that were great now start going back up, and it was because we'd be learning on the fly. So I think the value add continues to be having an organization that is the marquee talent in this field, The value add is that we are very good stewards of the public money.

[03:35:30] And I do have one more other question for Vaya. So we've, and I'm going to lean into your expertise, right, that we've been talking about. We have explored a few different ways, especially on the regional transit partnership, that this might be expanded over time.

[03:35:49] And we've also talked about how there has to always be a limiting factor because otherwise eventually you make it so that for the individual end user, there's no point to fix transit or to fix route transit anymore. But I would be curious, currently, other than service area, we don't have limitations, right?

[03:36:10] We are not means testing individuals. We are not having limits on the frequency with which you can use it. I'm curious if in your kind of broad spectrum of products that you deployed across the country, whether there have been other limitations that have been imposed within a service area.

[03:36:31] If you could talk briefly about non-service area limitations that have been imposed as both a throughput control and a cost control element. Sure. So there are many services that introduce fares, primarily in response to great demand. And what is important to note about services that introduce fares is that they continue to maintain eligibility often for certain vulnerable populations to make sure that they always have access regardless of their income status or their ability status.

[03:37:01] It's a great question. I'm thinking about other limitations that have been introduced. Certainly services introduce no-show and cancellation policies, and that could be just operationalized by if you have missed five rides in a week then you are not able to book rides for a week it can go as far as there being fees associated with that as well so if you've canceled and the policy is up to yours to create but if you've canceled x number of rides in x period then you are charged a fee of likely what the fare of the service is so there are a number of ways um that that other municipalities

[03:37:38] and counties think about introducing limitations to make sure that the the service is still efficient and conducive to additional rider growth so that it's not stagnating have any of your services implement stayed with a fair free model but implemented a means testing element for the ridership population yes okay i could see that being a technical challenge that's why i asked that an administrative challenge more than anything so i'd be curious to to learn more about that if that's something that you could channel through garland that's all i have thank

[03:38:13] yes could you go back to the slide where it shows the the types of people you serve that's it um frankly to me that says it all that one slide says it all because we're helping in my opinion we're helping the people that really uh need the most help this provides a service for them because you can see the limited service.

[03:38:45] We need fixed transit routes, but that has a limited service area, whereas microcat has a larger service area and can really, especially folks with disabilities or who do not have a personal car. So that says a lot to me, that one slide.

[03:39:05] I do know that when this was instituted a couple years ago that they talked about rides that would be less, let's see, less than Lyft or Uber. We're still not charging people, is that correct, or we are?

[03:39:23] We're not charging. We're not charging, so it's really affordable because there's no cost. And I think when we started this, you had the number of buses or small cars, vans, You had three of them in each area, or you had two and then you increased it to three.

[03:39:47] Am I correct? The original model was six. Six, okay. And we had four, I believe, in the 29 corridor and two in the Pantops corridor. Okay. Has that increased? It has. We have eight vehicles now. Eight vehicles now, and that's due to ridership demand.

[03:40:05] That is 100% due to ridership demand. And we have the hours of operation. Have gone up, but we've been able to control those costs within the allotted budget. Okay. But we have longer times where we service the people in need.

[03:40:22] The span has not grown, but the amount of hours has increased because we added vehicles. Okay. Okay. Well, like I said, to me that says it all. I think it's a great program, and your plan for increasing the service areas?

[03:40:45] Plans are contingent upon all parties coming together and deciding really what's the next phase, whether we continue down this path of having microCAD as an option longer than October of 25, And then we can have a conversation about what does that look like more on a regional basis.

[03:41:08] I think that's probably a real conversation that needs to probably happen at the CARTA level, kind of the policy board, and then bring back to each one of the jurisdictions, the supervisors and the city council, about how do we move forward and what's the correct path.

[03:41:24] And so you plan on incorporating this perhaps into the newly yet-to-be-formed regional transit authority? Part of it, I think that's probably, in my mind, one of the viable paths where we would have the philosophical policy discussions at CARTA, and then that organization would bring back recommendations to each one of the jurisdictions.

[03:41:48] And last question, when do you anticipate or can you estimate when you would anticipate that the ridership would have to start paying for some of these, either fixed transit and microcat? Great question.

[03:42:04] So the TRIPS grant that we have currently ends funding from the state this fiscal year, so June 30th of this year. We are required to continue it one more year based on the grant funding.

[03:42:22] So we have to pick up, the jurisdictions have to pick up keeping it fare free for one additional year beyond the financial support from the state. So that means June 30th of 26th would end our required obligation to keep it fare-free.

[03:42:42] And that would be both fixed and micro-CAT? We're continuing to make micro-CAT fare-free as long as the rest of our system is fare-free. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. And the last conversation was sort of a couple of areas where I was going to go to because obviously a grant is paying for this program right now.

[03:43:04] The grant is paying for it to be fare-free on the fixed route, and we have just extended it to micro-cat. That's correct. That's right. So you answered some of my questions about at what point we would need to be having those discussions.

[03:43:23] And those discussions would include possibly expanding the program. Because the one thing I hear from people are not complaints. They just want to know why their area is not served. We hear that often. Just saying, yeah. And I was curious as to how this would marry with and interplay with our new authority and with CARDON.

[03:43:48] So I think you've explained that. So that discussion will take place at the point at which we have that authority established and working. So I don't want to step over that because I have not been in all of the conversations with Carter, and I'm going to look at the deputy county executive, Ms. Ann Wall, make sure that I haven't said anything incorrect.

[03:44:22] Ann Wall, deputy county executive, I think that Mr. Williams is correct, Supervisor McKeel. I think the idea would be the idea of the Regional Transit Authority is to really promote a regional transit system and to understand what the transit needs of the community would be.

[03:44:40] And so it would make sense for expansions, changes, major sort of regionally significant items would be something that Carter would review. It is important to point out that we are standing up an organization right now, and so we may work a little bit with the existing regional transit partnership as well as the regional transit authority if we need to get some feedback and make some decisions and potentially submit grant applications in this period of time

[03:45:19] as we stand up the organization. That was very helpful. Thank you. And I'm just curious about, and I don't know exactly how you get at this, but we're trying to get our community on to fewer, using fewer services.

[03:45:45] We have Uber, we have Lyft, we have UTS. I mean, you go through the list, right? It seems like to me that this is an opportunity to reduce the number of services in the community and still provide good transit or transportation for our community, but reduce the number of cars, vehicles on the road, I guess is what I'm going to say.

[03:46:08] Is there any data around that, about how you all, our state microcat, how this service in the long term is able to provide environmental benefits, I guess is what I'm saying.

[03:46:26] So I'm going to start. Is that too hard to answer? I mean, maybe I'm way off in la-la land somewhere. No, I think it's a fair question. So what I will say is I look at microCAD as an extension of fixed route because it solves the first mile, last mile conundrum that many public transit agencies struggle with.

[03:46:48] And having a system once we do the integration where you'll be able to truly plan out your trip from fixed route to having microCAT integrated is going to be a big plus. We're working on that, and our goal is to probably have that up and running sometime in the spring.

[03:47:06] There's some back office things that we're trying to clean up, so we have to have a very clean file to be able to integrate with VIA's information. So that is CAT's goal, to get that as clean as we can before we start testing it, before we launch it. So the more we can solve those first mile, last mile, we know that there's a direct correlation between people taking their cars because they don't have a connection.

[03:47:33] So if we can solve that, then it's the cause and the effect. So we have solved that problem so they can let their car stay at home and use public transportation. The ultimate goal is a robust public transportation system that allows you to move around without your car.

[03:47:55] That's the ultimate goal that I have. Yeah, and that's what I was trying to get to, just to reduce the... The one thing that I have heard Kevin say over and over again is that microCAT, and you were saying this before we started the program, MicroCat will provide us with the areas that are interested in using transit and show the demand, and I think we're seeing that very clearly.

[03:48:28] Yes. Yeah, but your growth, I knew there was pent-up demand. I did not know the ridership was going to grow as fast as it did. When I first came before you over a year ago and I said, I know there's pent-up demand in this system, The map showed, I mean, the chart showed clearly that we started off with 500 riders on that first month.

[03:48:51] And it's grown to over 6,400 riders a month. That is clearly pent-up demand for a service that is clearly working. Yeah, interesting. And then that's all I have. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Supervisor Calloway. Yeah, I mean, it shows that we finally have a working transit system in the urban ring of the county.

[03:49:08] That's right, yeah. And we better figure out how to not just continue it but expand it or else they're going to load me, my constituents will load my butt into one of these vans and drop me off and throw me out over a cliff or a bridge somewhere because they love it. And the only complaints that I'm getting is the restriction on the boundaries of the pilot. I love that we got an email a few days ago. The whole board received the email from one of my residents who was like, well, why doesn't the person across the street in the apartment complex have it? Because they need it more than I need it, and I love it. So when they start calling out the equity issue for other people, that's phenomenal.

[03:49:43] So that means that not just pent-up demand, but it's being solved in a way that speaks for itself. And it is a service that we owe to our constituents. I mean, one of the fascinating things I learned about our trip to Champaign-Urbana was that the state of Illinois considers transit a civil right.

[03:50:02] And when you think of transit that way, then shame on us for not having figured out how to get people moving around in transit. I know when you first came on, Mr. Williams, I yelled about, well, it sucks. Transit sucks in Rio. I mean, it was that point blank.

[03:50:18] MicroCat is helping figure that out. I don't remember if you were here yet or not, Mr. Williams, but in my first year or two, I remember there was a workshop at TJPDC at the Water Street Center. And MicroCat, I don't believe, was ever on the radar. But it was a huge workshop, and we were all tasked with how to figure out how to plan a transit system.

[03:50:38] That was through the partnership meeting. And I remember, like, you'd have a 15-minute route here, and maybe it connects to a 30-minute route. And the whole point was to look at it from a higher-level view of showing how you have an operating system. I often think back to that workshop and introduce the element of microCAT and how it wouldn't mean that you add to the way we were planning.

[03:51:01] It completely changes your planning eyes to look at a system that way. So, like, when I hear, well, this doesn't get rid of fixed route, but, boy, they could identify where fixed route would, in fact, be advantageous for us to invest in, in the urban ring or beyond, that the microcat will then add to.

[03:51:20] So, obviously, I mean, I know this is budget ramifications. I know that it does, but we owe it to our citizens, not just because we owe them good transit, but for a lot of other objectives that we've stated strategically that we want to achieve, this helps us achieve it.

[03:51:35] And VIA, which, you know, you probably have a national account to buy all your vans, your fleet. Yeah. So you're not, you know, when I hear like, oh, well, we could take it on and do it ourselves. Well, no. But if we just had just the purchase of vans on a much larger scale is a huge cost savings to the service you're able to provide because you're, you know, you get the scale of being able to buy hundreds and hundreds of these vans where we would have to buy, what, 20?

[03:52:08] And the cost differential, that alone could be a huge detriment to wanting to try to bring it internal to the points of why would you vend this out? Because if you can do it on scale for the Commonwealth and for a lot of other states, well, that, yeah, that purchasing power is huge for your, what's your main cost? Probably the van, I guess, is your main capital purchase. And then the people that know your personnel. So I'm enthusiastic. Microcat has won me over just because of how many folks especially in my district are using it and getting creative in

[03:52:44] how they use it and i know that when the boundaries expand or the service grows that it's going to just be met and just like our not to get i feel like i got momentum going here um the uh but we provided a free electrical vehicle charging service out here in the parking lot for a while knowing full well that eventually we would have to start charging some a fare for that and when we speak when we did this the analysis it wasn't about making money it was about covering helping to cover the cost so even the amount that we charge i doubt we've seen a letdown and how many people

[03:53:21] are using it because i know the amount we're charging out there per hour however it's charged is lower than all the commercial pieces that are out there so even though it costs something it is still uh it is still provided in a way that's more cost efficient than other places and i see the same thing here eventually especially have you mentioned that certain income limitations things like that can be handled and taken care of just like in other areas but those who can do the fair the fair will probably not cost what it would cost to take an uber you know from one spot to the other good lord have you seen what from dunlora to the airport so i looked at this and i'm having

[03:53:57] flashbacks every time I see you, Mr. Williams, from 4 a.m. wake-up calls to get to the airport. But it costs, you know, there's no difference between Uber and, like, taxis. I mean, you're talking $30, $40, $50 to go, what, it's a 15-minute ride. And I know that if this scaled out and there was a fare, the fare from the center at Belvedere to the airport is not going to be $30 to $40 per rider or per ride. So, okay, I'm done. Thank you.

[03:54:24] Thank you. Good to see. Just a last quick thing. If we go back to slide 12, I just want to make sure, if I understood this, take numbers.

[03:54:40] And so I look at this, and I say $30.16 times $8,235, that would be the cost of the program. Am I right? You thought you didn't have to get up at any time.

[03:54:56] All right, Joe Petra. The $82.35 is actually the quarterly rides. Right, but, I mean, if it's an average cost of $30.16 per ride, And then times the number of rides gives me a total cost. I just noticed that if you do the calculation, we saw a jump in quarter four of the total cost.

[03:55:15] It went up from the 250K range to 313K in quarter four. And that is starting to tell us a little bit about this plateau, I think, and where the sweet spot will be. So when we talk about expanding the program and using it efficiently, we might be looking at...

[03:55:36] you know, at least $15 or more, $20 per ride on average. Now, I don't know whether that covers rides to the airport versus rides that are just within a one or two-mile radius, but that's something we can look at in the future.

[03:55:51] I just want to make sure I understood this graph because I thought it was informative beyond what is just shown there. So thank you. Supervisor, ma'am. Last again, I may have missed this in your report, but is there already data existing about riders who transfer to CAT?

[03:56:08] And that's something you're building, perhaps, as you go. Yes, so we do have some data about it. I can make sure to share that with the team here to circulate the post. I believe when we last looked in October, when the team was here for an executive business review, I want to say it was 40% of rides were connecting to other forms of public transit.

[03:56:31] Okay, thank you. But we'll get those updated, figures, and circulate. Thank you. Thank you very much. awesome very uh very interesting data very important you know i did have a few folks just a few months ago who thought that microcat was only to take them to a fixed route they didn't know it was curb marketing um now i don't think that's that's probably an outlier i don't think there's a lot of folks like that but i mean the fact that folks were already thinking well this is supposed to take me to a bus route not to a destination not that that's not a destination but

[03:57:06] But if you're taking it to the bus route and then taking a fixed route to Target when you didn't know it could take you right to Target, I don't think that's a huge amount. But it's interesting that people thought that's what this was about. In closing, if I can, I would just want to say publicly thank you to the county executive.

[03:57:28] He wrote a very great appreciation letter for the team that pulled our thing together to go to Champaign-Urbana. I just want to publicly say thank you to him. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, darling. Thank you. Board, this brings us to our closed meeting portion.

[03:57:46] We are a little more than 15 minutes behind, so we've got a very full session. I would like to move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, Text 3711A of the Code of Virginia under Subsection 1 to discuss and consider both, first, the performance of the interim county attorney and second the appointment of a county attorney.

[03:58:11] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lutista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Thank you.

[05:01:15] Okay. Thank you for your patience. We'll now come back from closed meeting if Supervisor Pruitt has a motion. Yes, I would like to move the Board of Supervisors certify by our accorded 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 in the closed meeting.

[05:01:41] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, Hork will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Thank you. board our first matters I've asked if the county executive has any report tonight no sir I do not have a report this week thank you okay then we will turn to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled for public hearings and

[05:02:16] we don't have any speakers we do not all right then we can proceed to our public hearings for this evening, the first of which is a public hearing to consider the adoption of an ordinance to modify real estate tax relief for elderly and disabled persons. Welcome, Jennifer Matheny, Chief of Revenue Administration. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Andrews and Board. I am Jennifer Matheny, the Chief of Revenue Administration. It's my honor to be with

[05:02:55] you this evening for this public hearing and requested action from the board to amend almar county code chapter 15 specifically to modify real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled i have about 10 slides to go through you've seen this information before leading up to the public hearing i shared this data with you in november so we'll just go through that again and look for

[05:03:28] in action at the end for the ordinance. The staff is requesting that the board consider modifying the program criteria for tax year 2025. We did start this earlier than normal in hopes that we could get our applications for the program updated prior to sending them out. Based on our application cycle for existing participants in the program, there is a three-year review and tax year 25 does generate, it's that bubble year that generates more of the full applications than the other two

[05:04:07] years. We're going to go through the current program. I'll do an overview of the current program and then the proposed program updates, which will be the subject of the public hearing.

[05:04:23] Then we can transition to the public hearing and conclude with our staff recommended proposed ordinance. Let's begin by reviewing the current program. And I just want to highlight, as I always do that most of the participants in this program are not able to afford the taxes to maintain home ownership without this program and it is a vital part of what we do here in almar county for the elderly and disabled the current program you have to be at least 65 years old or totally or

[05:05:02] permanently disabled you have to own the property as of january 1 and the person seeking tax relief may not be using that residence as a business. And then we have certain income and financial net worth criteria.

[05:05:22] What you see here is the current program. Net income maximum is $88,800, and the financial net worth criteria maximum is $305,000. Excuse me. The table shows the thresholds of percentages based on the income.

[05:05:43] and i want to point out that that net worth excludes the applicant's subject dwelling and land up to 10 acres we've talked about that before sometimes people get confused so the residence in 10 acres is eligible for the exemption but it doesn't mean they can't have more than 10 acres it's just that over 10 acres is not part of that exemption so let's take

[05:06:16] a look at our 2024 program. So when the income and net worth limits were raised last year, it allowed for more people to be eligible. We had 95% who applied get approved. That was up from 94% the previous year. But the big difference in 2022, it was 89%. 89% of the applicants who applied

[05:06:49] receive relief. That just shows the positive impact these changes by modifying the income and net worth limits is making. In 2024, 857 households participated in the program for a total dollar amount of $1.9 million awarded in relief. The average income of last year's

[05:07:19] applicants was $33,359, and the average net worth was $54,500. This is an average, but it does show that this program is definitely helping those who are the most economically vulnerable. To illustrate that point further, you can see here on the chart, 74% of the applicants did get 100% relief, and 6% receive 50%. Again, moving that income threshold is kind of sliding everybody up in

[05:07:58] those brackets, which is a positive impact. You've also seen this chart before, but I wanted to share it again. That orange line is the county average tax bill, which is that $3,869. I do want to remind everyone this is 2024 data, not the new data that Mr. Lent shared with you earlier today.

[05:08:25] and you can see from this that the majority of the applicants are to the left and these are people that got 100 relief and so looking at that you can see that most of the participants are to the left of that orange line as i mentioned to you in november those outliers to the far right the average median age of that group is 85 years young most of them have owned the property for a very

[05:08:58] long time. There are widows and widowers in there, and a couple have over 10 acres. That means they are still paying taxes, but not on the residents. I feel like this slide, again, reinforces that we're helping the most economically vulnerable. So let's talk about the proposed program updates.

[05:09:32] Based on your feedback from meetings and work sessions, we're recommending changing the existing ordinance. From the feedback, staff has developed a recommendation that will expand the program with basis that is reasonably understandable, grounded in prudent financial management, and has minimal administrative and system impacts. Those are the three things we always try to make sure are present in those recommendations. In terms of expanding the program so that it's easy

[05:10:12] to understand we're recommending an increase to the net worth and an increase to the income limit and then this recommendation will be in the planned fiscal year 26 recommended budget so that those numbers are already being considered the total amount of relief we're expecting from these changes to expand by 120,000 this can be done in the system very easy with minimal administrative

[05:10:51] and system impacts. For the past three years, the income limit has been tied to 80% of the area median income for a family of four. That metric is tied to the affordable housing policy as well.

[05:11:16] Using that same approach for calendar year 25, that would increase to $97,650. And this can be easily implemented. It's a simple system change that we can implement to increase that limit.

[05:11:43] It has an increased cost, but it's reasonably predictable, and we're projecting that for fiscal year 26 to be $100,000 based on this change. Again, easy to understand, can easily be implemented, and it's grounded in prudent financial management. Currently, the net worth is $305,000.

[05:12:19] The staff is proposing the board increase that for county year 25 to 312,000. This has been increased the past two years to trend with inflation.

[05:12:41] And we're estimating this change would increase or expand the relief by 20,000. Again, can be easily implemented, easy to understand for the applicants, and reasonably predictable for budgeting.

[05:12:57] And our intent is to bring this program back to the board on an annual basis so we can maintain this 80% of median income and trend with the rate of inflation.

[05:13:17] So this concludes my formal remarks. This slide highlights the recommended changes for a public hearing. Green, that is our current program. Blue represents what we're proposing it be updated to or changed to.

[05:13:34] So I'll now turn it over to Chair Andrews for questions from the board and to conduct the public hearing. Then I ask for a vote on a proposed ordinance on my next slide. Thank you very much. We'll go through our order, starting with Supervisor Malik.

[05:13:50] Thank you. I do not have any questions, but I want to thank you, Jennifer, for meeting years ago with the Whitehall folks who agitated to start this process. And I'm so grateful that you've carried it forward. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I have no questions. Supervisor Lupista Kirkland.

[05:14:07] No questions, and thank you for the presentation. Supervisor McKeel. No questions. Thank you. Supervisor Connolly. Yeah, on what's presented, no questions. I'm trying to remember the purpose of the public hearing.

[05:14:24] Is it state code that requires us to do? It's an ordinance. It's an ordinance. Is it our ordinance? It's an ordinance. State law does not require public hearing on ordinances. Albemarle chooses to. The only thing that's required by state law is that it be publicly advertised. Public comment is not required, but that is how morals practice is to invite public comment on the ordinance.

[05:14:44] I'll pray make some comments later. Thank you. And I have no questions as well. So I will open the public hearing. No one signed up to speak, and this is a matter of just no applicants. So we will close the public hearing.

[05:15:00] And the matter is back before the board again for comments and then a motion. Supervisor Malek. I'm entirely in support of this because we are fortunate in the county to have many very, very elderly folks who have lived here their whole lives or maybe only the last 10 years or something, but have outlived the economy on which they had worked for so many years.

[05:15:24] And I want them to be able to stay. And this is a really important way to help that happen and protect our nationally occurring affordable homes as well. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Thank you. For the public who might be listening and does not know, this is a thing we've gone back and forth and discussed at some length prior to this moment to arrive at this.

[05:15:44] So don't be troubled by what seems like a little discussion, because I assure you there's been plenty. I would just take this moment to say on the record the things I've already said on this, which is I, of course, support this. I think it's very clearly, as you've shown, like effectively and well means tested to show that we're capturing the population that we mean to be serving.

[05:16:03] It's a vulnerable population. It's critical to helping them stay in their homes. The only thing I would add is I am at times frustrated that there is not a mirror image for this because currently we help subsidize and ensure that low-income seniors are able to stay in the homes they own.

[05:16:20] We don't have an opposite program that helps seniors in rentals, which can have the effect of actually trapping seniors in homes that they are increasingly not able to afford because they do not have a mirroring subsidy that would allow them to downsize or to live in a lower difficulty to maintain community, which is a real shame.

[05:16:43] And so I think this should, in the future, be partnered with probably a local vouchering program for the elderly. And I would look forward to seeing how we might come down on that one day in the future. But I'm supportive. Thank you.

[05:17:01] Supervisor Lupisto Curdley. No questions. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. I'm good. Thank you. Supervisor Gallagher. I guess mine's just a procedural comment, and it's not something that I'm going to fight over. But the idea is, like, you know, when this came back a few years ago, we had the proper discussion.

[05:17:21] This has budget ramifications. I just wonder if there's a way to get ahead of this without having to do the continual public hearing. If we're in agreement that we're going to do the program and it's going to follow on the median income and we're going to up the net worth by the inflation why can't we make that decision last budget time so you don't have to come do this and spend the time to do the public hearing the budget has a public hearing tied into it so i get that okay future boards might not feel the same about this program etc as the current board but it wouldn't remove the ability to have the public hearing it just might be able to make it a little bit more efficient to arrive at what we're

[05:17:56] doing people can count on it sooner i'm sure the county executive needs to know the answer to be able to prep his budget he would know sooner than what what do you got a few weeks to go so i'm just throwing it out there as food for thought thank you right we have discussed it previously and come to a consensus on it uh but i just wanted to add it's very true because we do have people that want to start applying on january 1 so we've already gotten applications in with the old the old limits but we explained to them this is going before the board this could change if

[05:18:31] your percentage change of course we get in touch with all those people but there are people ready to fill out their application on january 2nd we're not here on the first but january 2nd on the next business day we've already taken applications well we could in futures we could take a look at whether or not we might tie the ordinance to inflation just put put inflation right in the ordinance that's something that our office would need to look into i think that's maybe the most effective solution to Supervisor Galloway's question, and I can't guarantee that

[05:19:06] we can, but that's something our office can take a look at going forward. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also very supportive, and so we are looking for a motion, I guess, on this proposed ordinance. Attachment A. Go ahead, Annie. Sorry. I move that the board adopt the proposed ordinance in Attachment A. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel without objection if the court will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms.

[05:19:40] Laquista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Our next item report is SP 2023-00017 Walnut Creek substation. This is being led off by Mr. David Benish,

[05:20:09] Development Process Manager. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Excuse me. I'm David Benish, Development Process Manager with the Community Development Department, and this is a public hearing to review SP-2317 Walnut Creek substation, a special use permit. It's a proposal to construct a new substation by Dominion Energy Virginia located on Old Lynchburg Road near the intersection of its intersection with Red Hill Road.

[05:20:47] The property is owned RA, and the special use permit use being requested is energy and transmission facilities. The site is 10.9, almost 11 acres. It's in the comprehensive plans.

[05:21:04] Land use plan is rural area, and the surrounding uses in the area are rural residential, a church, a private school home occupation, and there are obviously two existing power lines in that area.

[05:21:22] Again, the property is zoned RA. There are no overlay districts on this property. This map shows the mustard color is critical slopes, and the blue is floodplain. There are neither of those resources on these properties.

[05:21:40] The components of the proposal for the development of the site does require the removal of trees. Again, it's about 10.9 acres, and about half that property, almost five acres, is being retained and wooded in tree canopy.

[05:22:01] The substation equipment height is 35 feet or less, but there will be some new poles that are 75 to 110 feet tall. Those are consistent with the existing poles and structures within the current right-of-way and transmission lines.

[05:22:17] There's one housing unit, if you will, for control panels and substation controls. There will be 12-foot perimeter security fencing. Landscaping will be provided around the site.

[05:22:35] Both new and existing landscaping will be used. The existing landscaping will be augmented as needed. The substation material is gravel, and there will be stormwater management facilities installed on the site. There was a community meeting held in January of this past year, 2024, at Walton Middle School.

[05:22:58] The summary of the concerns were concerns with change to the rural character of the area from the proposal, the visibility of the site from adjacent properties, potential noise impacts, environmental impacts from erosion and runoff and the negative impact to the home occupation art school on an adjacent property these are quick renderings are that we can look at as needed the applicant will probably have better ones in their proposal

[05:23:33] this is the site shown on top of the existing landscape of the site you can see the existing right-of-ways and the wooded area that will be removed for the substation excuse me we also have a rendering of the landscape plan a landscape plan was submitted at the planning commission meeting that did reflect some of the recommendations of staff and was reviewed and considered acceptable to the planning commission at the time that's been provided as an attachment to your report so you have the updated version again i think the applicant

[05:24:12] is going to go through this so i will maybe hold off on this presentation happy to answer questions on it but we have this and the applicant has a part of his presentation to go over it the evaluation for special permits we look at four criteria whether there's substantial detriment to adjacent properties whether the character of the nearby area will be changed whether it's in harmony with the purpose and intent of the zoning ordinance and whether it's consistent with the

[05:24:47] comprehensive plan our evaluation was that the impacts or substantial detriment to adjacent properties is being mitigated by the landscape plan and the conditions of approval controlling for sound levels the character of the area is already impacted by the utility transmission lines our opinion is the substation properly landscape will not create a significant additional impacts to the rural character it is in harmony with the purpose and intent of

[05:25:26] the zoning ordinance one of the purposes is to provide for adequate public services and necessary public improvements such as power and it is consistent with the comprehensive plan and also providing for essential public services Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval with conditions recommended by staff they did recommend that the conditions be modified clarified so it was more specific to the provisions of the ordinance that needed to be addressed so you have updated

[05:26:06] conditions which specifically note those sections of the ordinance and those requirements that need to be met and again the revised landscaping has been provided to address the issues that staff had with buffering on some of the properties.

[05:26:26] The staff report did discuss the potential and desire to shift the site a little bit as far away from the adjacent property as possible. The applicant can explain this better, but there are some limitations with how far that site can shift because of its need to connect to the existing power grid and power lines.

[05:26:49] So we felt like we believe that, according to the applicant's information, And that marginal move that we had wanted to see achieved has been done to the extent possible. So the factors favorable, the project helps to meet utility needs and supports electrical power in the area.

[05:27:12] It is located adjacent to existing right-of-way lines, which limit the extent of the change in character of the area. And the visibility of the site can be reduced by landscaping and planning. Factors unfavorable to date, documentation and verification of sound levels had not been provided.

[05:27:36] The applicant, I think, will be presenting some information that does in their presentation. However, we also have provided for conditions that require this site to meet the rural area sound limits that are provided in our zoning ordinance.

[05:27:53] Power substations are exempt from the noise ordinance, and that's why the condition is needed. The site, another unfavorable impact is that until the landscaping matures, there will be visibility of the site. And also, just given the scale of the existing and proposed developments at its scale, it's impossible to completely obscure the visibility of this from all directions.

[05:28:20] So staff has recommended approval of SB 2317 Walnut Creek substation with the five conditions that you have in your resolution of intent. I won't go through them here. I'm happy to answer questions that you might have with them. But that's our recommendation, and I'll open it up to questions you might have.

[05:28:40] Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. I guess there may be more information that you wish me to wait for the application, because I did not, for some reason, read the details about the fencing that was being offered, but there is the option for a completely solid fence.

[05:29:06] There was a recommendation somewhere for 12 feet tall, but I don't remember what it's made of to be able to be both a sound barrier as well as a sight barrier. Can you update me on that, or should I wait for the application? Well, the applicant can correct me, and they can expand on it.

[05:29:21] I think they are proposing a 12-foot security fence. That height is for safety purposes. I think it's chain-linked. they can explain whether they intend for it to be completely obscured with shields or not.

[05:29:40] But my understanding is it's not. It's just chain link at this point in time. Okay, I'll come back later. Thank you, with others. Supervisor Pruitt. I have a few, but I would like to just briefly note for the public that our meetings are always audio and visually recorded.

[05:30:02] If you don't want to, you do not have to take the limited space on a phone because we do have these saved for posterity, and you can easily go back and clip that. I would like to ask briefly about what the lighting situation is going to look like and what exactly we would be restricting the applicant toward.

[05:30:24] I've said before from this dais how I value the beautiful night sky that we still preserve in the southern part of the county, and I'd like to understand how this is going to impact that. Yeah, my understanding is that the lighting would need to meet the down-shielding requirements of our lighting ordinance.

[05:30:42] The spillover aspect of the lighting ordinance appears to be addressed on the plan that they have provided. There is no spillover in excess of what the ordinance requires. I haven't looked at the detailed aspects of the lighting ordinance, but their intent is to meet that ordinance, and they are intended to be downshielded.

[05:31:07] Certain lumens at a very low level are exempt from that, but they're exempt in all cases. Can you help me understand what a sound study would entail and look like? Yeah, sounds, what the staff had been looking for is just some information that verified what the noise levels would be at the adjacent properties.

[05:31:35] Sound study doesn't have, doesn't necessarily have to be super technical and long. It's just some documentation that, in fact, what they are proposing can meet the ordinance and the conditions. I believe the applicant is going to show in their presentation an analysis of what the noise would be at the property line and adjacent to it.

[05:32:01] We think from a look at what they are going to present, that's probably sufficient for us. But it's really just to verify what that noise level is going to be at the property lines. We're not noise experts, so we'd have to make sure that what they provided is factual, but that's what we're just looking for, that factual information.

[05:32:27] Last, and this may be more appropriate for a later point in the hearing, but when we have questions concerning economic activity that might occur adjacent to an applicant's location, and there are allegations that that economic activity might be hindered, I'm curious if this is something that we do see, whether or not the applicant or the county could be exposed in any kind of suit and nuisance, if that ends up being true.

[05:33:00] So I imagine the answer might be yes, no, respectively, but I'm not sure. The answer would be no. It would be entirely a private matter between the involved private parties. Which is to say that the applicant might still have that exposure, but the county would not.

[05:33:22] Potentially, yes. I think that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lupita Kirtley. I'm just wondering about the 60-decibel level during the daytime. And you said that's to the property line.

[05:33:39] And then how far would it be from, because that's actually on the loud side, how far would that be to the house, to the next-door neighbor? Or should I ask the applicant that? Yeah, I've got a distance.

[05:33:56] I just have to remember it off the top of my head. But I believe the home is 200 feet from the property line.

[05:34:13] From the property line. Okay. I actually, I must. That's good. Okay. Yeah, it's 200 plus feet from the property line. Okay. And the other question would be, could they, I know it would take a while for trees.

[05:34:31] You know, they're going to put up a fence, but it would take a while for trees to grow. Could they put in taller trees? Could that be part of the application or recommendation? Do you have taller trees? Pardon? Taller trees planted? It's possible.

[05:34:49] I think the general recommendation from, and I'm not one, but what I hear from our landscape experts is that smaller trees actually grow faster and hardier. So there is a little caution about to what extent you do larger trees. I think that is possible, but it's something that we tended not to do lately.

[05:35:09] We used to do it a lot back when I was young. Okay, so that is something that would be taken into consideration, the height of the trees. It is certainly an option, but, yeah, back in the dark ages. I didn't say that.

[05:35:27] Okay, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. David, thank you. I don't think I have any questions. I think I have questions for the applicant, so just one thing. Supervisor Galloway? Yeah, most of my questions will be for the applicant.

[05:35:45] I'm good. I guess some of these were touched on, the question about the recognition of a home business and whether that would entail a different level of scrutiny by the county for an application like this.

[05:36:07] The initial reviewer and I both took into consideration the existence of that activity, the home occupation. We generally, when we do begin our research on an application, we will look at adjacent properties and all the approved activities or existing activities on the site.

[05:36:27] So we were aware of that use being there, and we took that into consideration in our proposals, as we do in any proposal and on all the properties that surround this site. Also, when we look at plantings for buffers, I guess I have two concerns.

[05:36:51] One is, you know, the maintenance of it in addition to the planting of it, and also whether it's ever taken into account in the site planning stage the location of existing trees that might be on the adjacent property whose root systems might go through.

[05:37:08] Yeah, it was actually one of the concerns, as I mentioned in the staff report, what we were looking for in the staff report for shifts was really more subtle shifts that were sufficient to allow for maintenance of the roots system on the adjacent properties to ensure their health.

[05:37:30] So we do take those into consideration. I think the applicant can speak best to their limitations to be able to move the site any further away. The new plantings will be required. There will be conditions of the concept plan and will need to be retained.

[05:37:50] And we can enforce the retention of those or replacement if they die. So we do take that into consideration. These particular trees that were agreed to in this area are a little bit shorter than some of the more mature trees you can grow, but given the topography, this site is about six feet down from that borderline, the way it's graded, so it's set down a little bit.

[05:38:15] So those mature heights of 20 feet plus that six feet of difference give about 20, 25 feet of protection, and these are shrub, small, medium tree types that do a pretty good job with screening at ground level.

[05:38:37] Thank you. If there are no other questions, then we will open the public hearing. We do have at least one sign-up, but first we'll be the applicant. And Vice Chair McKeel, you'll read the rules for the applicant and the in-person comment?

[05:38:57] I will do that. Correct. And my understanding is Mr. Stephan Brooks from Dominion Energy is here, and Thomas Pupps, substation engineer. She'll read the rules before you start, but you'll have 10 minutes.

[05:39:17] Thank you, sir. Go ahead. One person signed up, but let me read these rules first, please. During public hearings, the board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed for public hearing.

[05:39:34] Speakers are listed to one appearance of three minutes per public hearing. Applicants are limited to a 10-minute presentation of their proposal and are allowed a five-minute rebuttal at the close of the public hearing. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium.

[05:39:53] The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light will indicate you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired, and you'll be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

[05:40:10] When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle 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.

[05:40:27] Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. and all comments are live-streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. Thank you. Welcome, Felix. Mr. Sarfo.

[05:40:44] Good evening, Chair, Andrews, and Board. My name is Felix Sarfo-Kentonka, External Affairs Manager with Dominion Energy. We are sorry and regret to hear that our temporary construction activities for the proposed Walnut Creek substation are connected to the McLaughlin's decision to voluntarily close their home-based business, Mountainside Arts.

[05:41:09] In January 2022, we experienced a very challenging winter storm, and I assured Albemarle County Executive Jeff Richardson that I would work with my colleagues to provide opportunities to improve our reliability and to keep the lights on.

[05:41:29] This project will aid in maintaining reliable service to our neighborhoods in communities in Albemarle County. Based on the substation design, we did not need to acquire the McLaughlin's property. I now turn over the presentation to my colleague, Stephan Brooks. Thank you. Mr. Chair, members of the board, thank you. My name is Stephan Brooks.

[05:41:57] I represent Dominion Energy Siting and Permitting Team here to talk about the merits of the project proposal. Mr. Benesh, thank you for those notes and summary. Four basic things here we're talking mount, which is to create a stronger electrical grid. We're looking to extend or enhance it beyond this immediate site area, but also for the bulk electric system in general to improve also the service connection points for CVEC. And we'll talk about also the siting of this project as it pertains to the transmission lines that are already in existence on the property. Specifically, we're talking about meeting contingencies for voltage variation. And this is a critical piece

[05:42:37] here because it does impact substations that are also owned and operated by Dominion specifically into the Charlottesville city area. So we've got PJM which is the regional transmission operator overseeing utility companies such as Dominion Energy, 17 other utility providers. They've identified a possible voltage drop violation which is where we're talking about a proactive response here with this proposal. Could cause outages and even failures in other Dominion facilities. Within the project scope we're talking about the merits of it. Mr. Benish previewed the heights i wanted to point out here where we've got the backbones as proposed the 12

[05:43:17] foot fence i know that was a question asked we've got an actual sample material here if the board chooses and then the supporting substation equipment that's inside the substation facilities you'll note here that the siding of this station too is also adjacent or parallel to the existing transmission overhead lines as i share this site is ideally located being that we're adjacent to the existing corridor that dominion currently operates it happens to have a 500 000 volt line and 115,000 volt line we're connecting to that 115,000 volt line 115 kV as we say the assemblage

[05:43:54] of these three parcels allows for the construction but also potential future build out pending planning needs or pgm needs to operate possibly at a 230 kV voltage as was stated earlier this proposed sedation footprint has been minimized as much as possible including exceeding the setbacks as required by the county and i'll touch on that in a little bit if approved construction should be completed by the end of 2025. Circling back to setbacks, we've got a quick summary here in which we've got a front setback. We're at 80 feet as opposed to the required 75. 25 foot setbacks are

[05:44:34] required on both the sides. We're at 45 to the east and over 150 feet to the west. Most of that is because the right-of-way cannot be built in for the substation due to clearance needs. And then we've also got a 40 foot setback provided whereas 35 is required. Talking about the siding here, I'll walk through this. The red line that you see on the screen is that 115 kV line that we're tapping into. The backbones I've highlighted here, those are the tap points that allow for

[05:45:10] the overhead line to come down into the station equipment. Talking now about landscaping opportunities, and I'll go through all four sides of the property. In the front here along Old Lynchburg Road, our closest security fence is that dashed blue line, and that's at 80 feet.

[05:45:28] We're proposing installation in the green area of four rows of trees to include these species. And these were picked based on the county's landscaping for both native and non-native opportunities with factors such as durability and so forth, deer resistance, things like that, because we do not operate an irrigation system.

[05:45:52] But Dominion is committed to provide that these species survive and thrive and will be maintained in the future. Additional plantings are here listed in this green area and also in the gray area. The gray there as shaded, I should say, is an area that's not to be cleared as a part of this.

[05:46:10] This is outside of what we've proposed as a limits of disturbance. So Dominion would look for opportunities to supplement in that area fronting Old Lynchburg. The side setback is this western line here too in the green. Similar type of species selection looking to supplement within that existing area of trees.

[05:46:32] This eastern line, the blue is the fence, and then we've got 45 feet distance between the fence and the property line that's shared. Here, too, we're talking about two different areas. This northern area is where we're trying to really enhance the area. It's currently just grassed area, and so we're proposing these four species to help supplement that area, both deciduous and evergreen trees in supplement there.

[05:46:57] To the south area, a little bit of a preview was given, but we've got a hillside that we're planting on, um but also a grade and so the the opportunity is there that the grade itself of the pad we call it where the station equipment would be installed is on average five to six feet lower than the shared property line area grades uh that too provides a challenge but we are proposing the fortunes osmanthus since the original proposal came in we doubled it up to be now 82 approximately 82 units of this fortune saw samanthus to have an expected growth height of 20 feet in height

[05:47:35] i'd like to switch gears here my colleague thomas props to talk about the sound welcome tom props substation engineering um before i begin discussing the content of the slide it should be stated that the content of the slide is really only applicable if the substation is internally expanded to include the 230 000 volt level at initial construction there will be no significant sound producing equipment on the site will effectively be silent. So planning is identified if the site is expanded, that would include 224 MVA transformers as shown here, which

[05:48:12] per our current specification, permits a maximum of 75 dBA sound production when measured about six feet from the tank. Using a standard attenuation calculation, we looked at what that sound production would result in at the property line, at the fence, and at the nearest residence.

[05:48:30] Values shown here, approximately 45.5 dB at the fence, 42 at the property line, and then about 32 at the nearest residence, measured to be about 140 meters away using the GIS system. These should be compared against the 60 and 55 DVA sound limits that were referred to in previous slides.

[05:48:50] For reference, on the left, there is an OSHA graphic illustrating what comparable sound levels are at those DVA levels. And it should be stated that this sound attenuation does not include the beneficial impacts of the vibration-damning pads, which would be included as standard as part of these transformer designs, and any sound attenuation that would be due to the screen plantings around the facility.

[05:49:17] I see that I've got just a bit over a minute left. I'll try to be brief in the summary here. But about a year ago this time, as Mr. Benes mentioned, we did participate in the community open house, And we did, through the course of the last year, acknowledge property owners' concerns in person and virtually on several occasions, including updates to the landscape plan and also with photo simulations that are part of the packet.

[05:49:42] We also reviewed and updated the infrastructure to reduce the footprint as much as possible, as I stated, while still maintaining the siting as necessary to be exactly under that 115 kV line. As shared already, we upstated the landscaping plan, the additional rows of landscaping where possible.

[05:50:03] We are constrained in the sense that right-of-way is an area in which we cannot plant, but we did try to enhance the other areas, as I shared with the board a moment ago. And then, as Mr. Props just shared, committing to methods to minimize the transformer operational sound levels if the site were to go to a 230 kV operational level.

[05:50:27] I think I've got not enough time left, but thank you. If you'll remain for questions from the board. Absolutely. Thank you. We'll start with Supervisor Malek. Thank you. So if I understood your map here, the very narrow, the disturbance on the east side, which is, I think, where the neighbors have been concerned, the lower purple circle here, you're saying that that drops away.

[05:50:58] And how wide is the green, the narrow green strip there? I can't really tell from the scale. 15 or 20 feet? Yes, ma'am. So proportionately, for reference, the property line, which, let me see if I can get this. The shared property line is right here.

[05:51:19] Yes. And then the fence is 45 feet away. And the green is how wide. So that's 15 or 20 feet, which would be enough room to plant something before it starts to slope down, if you were willing. Yes, ma'am. And that is the proposal at hand for the two rows of fortune sauce manthus.

[05:51:38] Which is a deciduous shrub, I understand. Evergreen, believe. Okay. And I guess the native plant rules apply to this, David, or Mr. Benesch did on these. Okay, because Arborvitae, I don't think, is native, but anyway.

[05:51:56] And what about the suggestion about having a solid fence for noise attenuation and the visual barrier, at least on the sides where the houses are?

[05:52:13] Okay. I've got actually a sample, if the board desires. I've got a sample of the chain link fence that is proposed for the 12 feet in height. Oh, yeah. I've got one of my colleagues here. We can see that from the photograph, but it doesn't stop any visual or sound. It's just keeping trespassers out, which is important.

[05:52:32] Yes. But it does not help the impacts on the neighbors at all, in my opinion, anyway. And so the solid fence was discussed with you, and you decided not to do it? Is that? No, ma'am.

[05:52:48] We have had discussions, so there are, as you rightly stated, security concerns, and I don't have the direct answer for you on that right now. The 75 decibels is astonishing for the noise that was in your slide.

[05:53:09] So that's what the advertised sound level is from the machine, if that's what a nameplate means. So that's way above what our noise ordinances would allow. That's at the transformer's body.

[05:53:24] At the property line, it's 42. It's a low-frequency hum, even at a much lower decibel level, as we found out in Crozet for three years when it drove people absolutely berserk. It's very penetrating, and the constancy of it was really, really difficult.

[05:53:43] So I have a real problem with the emanation of the sound over this. without the ability, the willingness to do more barrier to protect people around. So that is a concern.

[05:53:59] Let me run down here. I think I had one more. What about disturbance to the soil disturbance to the property line as far as going under the canopy of neighbor's trees? Because we know that the roots go out at least as far as the canopy does above.

[05:54:18] So I understand you would be grading to within inches of the property line. along the east and west according to your plans i'm i'm not an arborist i cannot answer to that no ma'am sorry but go ahead that's a fact so i'm just i'm not asking if that's correct or not i'm just saying you're going to be grading to within inches of the property line okay which will certainly okay and so that's cutting down all the existing trees which are there and some mitigation Okay.

[05:54:55] That's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I want to dig back into the fence thing because I'm not quite sure I caught it. Am I to understand that it was discussed or entertained at some point to have a solid fence or maybe a sound damping fence, and that was set aside to have this semi-opaque chain link?

[05:55:16] I saw it's heavier than a normal chain link, but it's still a chain. And that was set aside, but we don't have the precise reason why on hand? I work with the security team at Dominion to conclude if it's appropriate for a solid wall or not.

[05:55:34] But unfortunately, I'm just being honest, I don't have that answer for you right now, sir. I don't mean to be unkind, but I find this a little baffling and frustrating. We once had, shortly before I was on the board, there was an applicant for a kennel that came with so much freaking research about the different kinds of materials that they could have made their fence on and the sound dampening qualities of them for a kennel, which we spent an hour on.

[05:56:09] But it is baffling that that similar level of scrutiny has not been performed by one of the most powerful companies in Virginia. So I'm simply expressing my shock because this is something that I think directly touches on the community concerns, and I'm confused by the lack of information on being presented on it.

[05:56:32] So I just submit that for you all. I hope you can understand why this is something that this board would care about because we're trying to be responsive to constituent concerns. How are the transformers mounted? Is this inside the skin of a facility that I'm looking at in this?

[05:56:50] If I can go back to another slide, I'll show you exactly where they would be proposed. For clarity, we're talking about potentially one here. And why I say potentially, sir, is that at this time, and if you'll follow my cursor, approximately from my cursor to the red line is the equipment being proposed for current construction scoping the pad in its entirety is being built out but the equipment such as mr prop said if the station were to go to the operational voltage of 230 kv that's when and

[05:57:28] i'll hold still for a minute this is one transformer and this is another and this is open to air, though? Yes, sir. Okay. And it's sitting on top of a concrete pad? Yes. Is there, what does the type of material mounting look like for that? There's different ways that we might mount machinery onto a concrete pad. Is there like a sound damper? Is there a shock absorber? What does it look like? What is the connection to that concrete pad? Yeah, so typically sound dampening is either placed within the tank, between the core and the tank itself,

[05:58:06] or between the bottom of the tank and the concrete foundation. So it depends on the manufacturer and the transformer exact size. So this transformer would either be resting directly on the concrete pad if it had internal sound dampening. If it didn't, then you would have the, like, what's typically like an open cell or closed cell high-density foam, like a neoprene foam, between then the base of the transformer and the concrete foundation.

[05:58:29] It's held in place by its sheer mass. It doesn't require any additional, like, fastening. Gotcha. Thank you. That's helpful. When did Dominion acquire the property? I'm not on the real estate team, but it was 2023 to 2024, possibly.

[05:58:52] It was in the wake of the identified deficit in the infrastructure following 2020 that we were discussing. It is a recent acquisition. Yes, sir. Maybe this is not the right set of people, but do you have a sense of what that due diligence looks like when Dominion plans to acquire a parcel for such a project as this?

[05:59:16] I could just, well, for one, it has to do with, as I led off with, a lot of it is borne by the planning team. As for identified needs, it's that team that coordinates with, as I indicated earlier, PJM, the regional transmission operator. So that's just one part of it. And then furthering from that, it becomes then finding that location to get that adequate solution for the electrical need.

[05:59:45] Is it part of Dominion's standard practice, to your knowledge, that there be any kind of community outreach, solicitation, coordination prior to an acquisition that really starts getting you path committed? May I ask you to restate that question? I'm sorry. I'm trying to think about the resources.

[06:00:09] at hand? I have less money in the bank than Dominion. If I were to acquire a parcel that I want to develop for a purpose, I would do a lot of advanced work, not just on understanding the planning and the geography of the location, but I would want to know the impact it has on my surrounding neighbors. I would want to have some community conversations. I would want to do all that in advance of really deeply committing myself financially to the project. I'm curious if that is a standard part of Dominion's practice or if the fact that Dominion has quite deep pockets that allow it to make those decisions before it becomes path committed if

[06:00:46] that is not part of dominion standard process before an acquisition there would be conceptual options considered possibly on other properties and then that may not be something that in the sense that if it's vetted internally it would not proceed to the extent that we've done here today and up to and including the initial open house with reaching out to the county to understand the steps that would be needed for meeting the zoning ordinance requirements so it's

[06:01:20] it's there are conceptuals possible but to proceed as planned it's it's it's done so with the assurance that it's meeting that electrical need that's that's the main driver as i brought forth a couple times i think do you know if dominion explored other locations for this facility yes thank you Supervisor for pistol curdling.

[06:01:51] Well, I, for one, am curious. I'd like to see the chain link in person. Is it okay if he step through here? Do you want to physically touch it? Oh, no, no, I don't need to touch it.

[06:02:06] But, no, just holding it up is great. Wow, that looks very heavy. It's very small. Yeah, so that's nice, I think. So thank you for that, by the way.

[06:02:23] Appreciate that. I didn't want you to have to bring it in and then not show us. That would be a waste. So we're enlarging an existing substation, correct? No, ma'am.

[06:02:38] This is what we call a greenfield site. A greenfield site. Yes, ma'am. So from scratch. Pardon? From scratch. From scratch. And the voltage is going to be able to serve more. The reason Dominion is doing this, refresh my memory, even though it was recent, just for everyone's benefit, is voltage drop violation potential, which is to say that if that were to occur, it could domino through systems that Dominion operates.

[06:03:15] There's also a need to assure that that existing 115 kV line that serves into, and as I said, Before, within the city, there's a substation called Sherwood Sub here in the city. I know we're not talking to a board representing a city, but just physically for the geography of it.

[06:03:34] It gives to many an opportunity to isolate in a good way so that restoration operations can be more successful. Isolating it, say, as I had from the focusing again, and this is the line that comes into that Sherwood Sub.

[06:03:55] So this would allow for that isolation either which way from an electrical standpoint. Beyond that, as to the technical detail, I'd have to defer to the electrical engineers, but it's a reliability focus as to the focus for, or excuse me, the reasoning for driving this and getting this developed.

[06:04:17] Okay. Also, it's helpful if you talk more into the microphone. Excuse me. I feel like I'm talking loud enough, but I apologize if that was not as well heard. Not a problem. So basically, this is to force for yourself, for Dominion, if there's an electrical outage, to be able to assist Dominion in their entire grid.

[06:04:42] Yes, it strengthens the bulk electric system. What I mean by that is these higher voltage lines, which then come to the customers at the distribution level. Right. So then when you're doing that, you're also helping the surrounding customers. Absolutely. You're helping the customers in Albemarle County regain or maintain electrical power.

[06:05:02] Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So it seems like the big question is the noise factor, which I now understand is 4.2 decibels, right, from the property line? I think you had that one.

[06:05:20] 4. 42. 42. Oh, what did I say? 4.2. I said 4.2. I meant 42. Excuse me. misplaced my little decimal point um so yeah 42 so that's below a normal uh range i mean 60 is is is getting up there but i i understand that so but my question is are you able to do anything additionally since noise seems to be a factor anything else additionally that you could see that would help mitigate on one side or maybe it's just one set of neighbors and

[06:06:00] not the others not sure yeah okay yes ma'am sorry just trying to make sure the there is a transformer sound wall that could be put in at least on two or three I'm trying to remember the specification but a transformer sound wall that could be mounted nearby or at least right around that perimeter of this transformer that could be done

[06:06:33] is that something you would entertain yes yes and that would bring the sound level down a lot or help the three things that mr props has already proposed we feel are adequate but given the question here we're ready to commit to adding that wall as i mentioned okay all right i like that Thank you.

[06:07:02] Sure. Professor McKeel. Sure. So let me just understand. So you have a sound wall. What's the material of the sound wall? Well, sound walls are not standard practice for Dominion. We typically try to engineer the transformers to produce an sufficiently small amount of sounds that it's not problematic for the surrounding areas.

[06:07:24] So sound wall materials vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. We don't have a standardized solution for that. We do it per site. Yeah. Okay. And it would be also dependent on how much attenuation would be required for the transformer if they would spec the material and the system design to achieve that purpose. I should just mention, just to make sure it's clear, the sound levels we're talking about here represent the maximum capacity of the transformer, which does not represent how wood, once it was installed, if it was ever installed, would actually operate on a day-to-day basis.

[06:07:51] The transformers are sized so that they can meet contingency operations for the transmission network. Under typical operations, they only operate a fraction of their capacity, and the sound is commensurately reduced. So the values that we're looking at here represent what would really be the maximum amount it would ever put out, and that would probably only be seen during a contingency network operation.

[06:08:13] Okay. So in simple language, this area is losing power. Power is dropped. They have outage, power outages. And you all have picked this site as a place where you believe you should site this particular equipment to keep the power outages from happening.

[06:08:39] Is that what we're talking about here? That's what I thought we were talking about. What I'm trying to relay is that this is for the high-voltage systems, not the distribution-level systems that get the power to our meters, to our homes, and things like that.

[06:08:54] But it all works together. It does, yes, ma'am, yes. It all works together. So this is at the very high end coming from the generation. Which is why it's so large, and I get that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, just directly answering your question. It is from the high levels, from the generation through these high-voltage lines to the substations and then to the customers at the distribution level.

[06:09:13] Yeah, I'm just trying to bring it down to the average person's thought process and thinking, right, which is what I am. Okay. And what you were saying was this would also impact the city because of the distribution. Ultimately, yes, because the way that it ties in, I'll use my cursor, This line is what goes up to our county area here in the city, the Sherwood substation.

[06:09:40] That makes sense. Yes, ma'am. So tell me a little bit about this. Maybe David was talking about it. The elevation is down in a basin, so it's low? This isn't the best plan.

[06:09:58] And, Mr. Benish, I don't know if you have the capability to go back to your... David was talking about the elevation. i don't think mine is any better because it's actually a okay but it's snipped so it's going to be blurry supervisor mckeel i'll just say that yes your your analysis is correct and that is to say that the property line is a high point and then the site is cut down it's down that five to six feet on average relative to the property line that's shared yeah which i would think would

[06:10:29] be advantageous yes would be um and there's concern about i think david addressed that too perhaps but there's concern about the plantings and the trees the existing trees and um it sounded like you all would be replacing trees or shrubs that died um and i think you were answering ann's question that you're going to be digging up within an inch of the of the um help me with how

[06:11:07] what that conversation was all about right and it it has to do with the need for the space okay on the property and that is best represented uh here and i'll use my cursor okay what we're seeing though is only the fenced area which is uh what did i say 40 45 feet away from the property line but in order to make sure that we're lining up with this transmission line this red line this is the physical location that all of this equipment needs to lie the spacing of that is as compact as

[06:11:47] possible and the result is that with dominion specifications this is very very flat if you can imagine for instance a accessible parking space in a parking lot that's generally about two percent maximum dominion is afforded one to three percent so from this high side of the property it goes downhill no more than three percent that's a very flat grade for a sustained length that was one of the drivers and how this was determined as far as what elevation the entirety of the pad is which

[06:12:22] then translated to how that got cut down into that hillside or from the relative existing property line down the six feet because on the low side where we've got the stormwater basin proposed it's all interconnected it's a grading operation of balance with touch points for how we lay into the land in this area across this 11 acres but we're using maybe half of that i think for right

[06:12:51] now i'm okay thank you ma'am yeah thank you supervisor galloway um the so the you had mentioned And just so I can confirm I heard correctly, the sound of the first phase would not produce any sound?

[06:13:10] Is that what you stated? Correct. So the worst-case scenario was presented if the expansion occurs at the property line, as you just mentioned a few minutes ago, about how it has to wait. If full contingency gets put in, that's when it could produce the 75 DBA at the site of the equipment.

[06:13:29] Yes. So the expansion of the original, what is it, the 115 to 250? I'm assuming the decision to do the expansion is a demand-level decision, or is it like how does, I mean, you may not be able to guesstimate, but you've put plenty of these in around the Commonwealth, and there's got to be some point where you go, we've got to expand.

[06:13:56] Can you give me an idea of what causes the expansion or what triggers the expansion? Typically, as I think I mentioned earlier, the Dominion planning group looks at those in a five-year window. And at this time, it's known for the voltage drop violation that the 115 kV station has proposed is what's appropriate to have the electrical solution.

[06:14:18] If it were to come up in that future five-year planning outlook, then it would be considered. It also has, as I mentioned, influence, say, from PJM, the regional transmission operator. So more people come online or need the, I'm just trying to take this beyond, what did you say, layman's terms or whatever we were doing?

[06:14:45] Simple people's. But if the system, more things come onto the system to put the pressure on it, ultimately it would be what would lead to that. I would equate it to our house circuit breakers. You're doing an expansion on your house. Yes, you have to do it, yeah. You now see that you've got something that's a 15-amp breaker.

[06:15:03] It needs a 20-amp breaker. that's basically that decision point you added more plugs you added more things in your home you're going to need more amperage and that's where that upgrade would be needed on the bulk electric system when you got to your point uh supervisor galloway that yes if more customers more demand comes online in a sense i hope i'm representing this right but yes it's like a circuit breaker mini circuit breaker or a large scale circuit breaker but in a context as your home goes that's what i find to kind of possibly equate that i hope that helps so if i so then

[06:15:39] your point of view would be dominion's point of view would be that initially there is no sound issue to mitigate that at some point if it expands um it may not even need to be mitigated with the expansion until the expanded complete facility meets full contingency and i mean that's i mean I'm just restating that so I understand what your position is.

[06:16:08] Is that accurate? I don't believe that's correct. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah, I mean, if any mitigation were ever deemed to be necessary, it wouldn't be until the full build-out was complete. But, again, the expectation is based on our specifications and the distances and the initial calculations, it wouldn't be needed because it's a relatively quiet site even once it's fully built out.

[06:16:28] Now, I know that if we don't figure out this sound piece now, we can't do anything about it later. So you're not necessarily in the habit or the, I mean, I can't imagine we're the only community that's been concerned about sound before when you've had to go against these. So these sound studies, do you go and go to actual sites where these exist and then do the analysis that you presented here, or is it theoretical?

[06:16:55] Yeah, I mean, for an existing site, yes, we would, if we were expanding it and we had to demonstrate compliance with the sound ordinance, yes, they would do an initial study to measure ambient level noise, and then we would give them the information corresponding to the final proposed design of the site, and then they would form a corresponding calculation, and if the sound levels are too high or need to be attenuated, then they would design mitigation measures to bring the sound levels down to the appropriate volume.

[06:17:21] And then, is this okay to ask staff a question? Sure. Of course. How do we, so we're taking a study. Since we have to get it right now on the sound piece, because you can't do anything later, that means our expertise has to be as good as, if not better, than the person submitting the study.

[06:17:46] So how do we, I mean, I can only see us taking a study and going, yep, take your word for it, or how do we go double-check that what they're providing to us is accurate and can be relied on? That's a good question. We would defer to our engineering office, who has the most potential background, but I don't know that in our office we have sound engineers either, so we may have to solicit input from others just to ensure that.

[06:18:16] The condition of approval theoretically does address this issue. Our concern is understanding what the impact is and the complication with a facility of this sort. If it did violate that ordinance, what it would take to bring it into compliance? But that is the reason for the other condition to meet the noise ordinance.

[06:18:36] So if it is installed at a later date and it does violate the noise, that condition, theoretically we have the option to cite them in violation and have them address that issue.

[06:18:55] We prefer to staff to get it right up front so we know what we're approving and we don't get into that situation. But I just wanted to remind you that condition is sort of an attempt to be fail-safe as possible. So it does give us the option in the future that if it's not met that we can then hold them accountable.

[06:19:13] Yeah. We wouldn't necessarily go out and we don't monitor that stuff. It would be probably complaint-driven, but that's how these issues have arisen in the past. But, I mean, substations are something that exist. So, I mean, I've gone a few rounds with some applications in my district that have sound issues, but they're all kind of made up because the condition doesn't exist yet.

[06:19:36] I'm thinking of the stone crusher out on 29 North there for a while, and we got into a whole rigmarole about sound. But we can go to a substation and do a study. White Hole Road, I nominate that one. So, I mean, is that something that you all would or could do to try to say, well, what is the sound levels at some other existing substation?

[06:19:56] I think that would be a suggestion that we offer, I suspect the engineering department would look at is something that is close to the equivalent of this and have actual measures. I mean, assuming it's the same equipment or similar size in what it's doing, I mean, we have the substation up at, I don't know what the size of the substation is up in Hollymead, Forest Lake.

[06:20:19] That's right. Hollymead was an existing station, so they were able to do a better study of the expansion because there was some existing facilities. Many of our substations are in very remote areas that don't quite have the situation where there's a little bit closer home.

[06:20:35] And I don't think that's been expanded yet, but there haven't been noise complaints coming from up there. It was there first. The substation was there first. This is dropping into the neighborhood, which is a very different situation. That's good. Thank you for that.

[06:20:55] Oh, but the expansion doesn't need to come back to the board. No, that's correct. This is for the potential expansion. So we've got to deal with, which I appreciate the sound study being, to the worst-case scenario from that standpoint.

[06:21:15] I guess I'm, well, Supervisor Pruitt. I mean, has it been thought of or considered? We deal with, on a lot of development applications that come before us, the neighboring trees and the root systems and what could be there.

[06:21:35] So, I mean, it's obviously been a concern that's been stated. I happened to coincidentally be at the planning commission meeting for this one, so I got to hear some of this stuff. But, I mean, knowing that there's been some time and you guys deal with neighbors all the time, is there something that you can offer or have offered or discussed to try to mitigate that if neighboring property trees are damaged, destroyed, that can be offered to try to help with that situation?

[06:22:04] I don't know if that was part of a discussion or not, or could it be? I'll just suggest that, and I should say confirm, that we would just continue to work with the McLaughlins on that. Because the, you know, from our standpoint, it's hard to hold back to account.

[06:22:25] But it's a, you know, and again, you haven't, it's not like this is the first time you've encountered this issue, I'm sure. It just seems like it could be a reasonable, it could be a reasonable thing to try to figure out what you could hold to that everybody could rely on.

[06:22:43] The landscaping, I'm always a little bit, I mean, I get it. I understand. I don't get as worked up about it in the development area when we're putting, we get rid of the mature trees and put the new trees in, and then we have to wait until they, I mean, right at the front of Dunlora and Ryo Road, there's the utility box, and they put the little things, and they're dying, and I think that's VDOT.

[06:23:03] But to put in a mixture of the stuff that could grow, and to David's point, even though it was a century ago, to put in more mature landscaping as an initial piece when screening is such an issue, especially in an area.

[06:23:21] Like I wouldn't be bringing this up if it was like in the Holymead or right in the middle of the development area. It's just a different animal in the development area when it comes to that. But the nature and the siting of this, of what you're dropping down in, I mean, would not be one that you would necessarily conceive that could happen.

[06:23:41] So going that extra step to do the landscaping for screening purposes, to help with the immediate impact, but also knowing that other stuff could come online. I mean, would you be open to putting more mature stuff in, mixed in with the new stuff, so that there could be a better screening option for the first five, eight years?

[06:24:02] I guess just to make sure I understand, you're talking about at time of planting, more mature. Yes, we can agree to that. We can look into the species that have been proposed, and, of course, we would be working with staff as an approvable landscape plan in the forthcoming approval process there.

[06:24:19] And that wouldn't necessarily have, I mean, condition, I understand. If you want it, then you have to put it in as a condition. But since the landscaping plan ultimately gets signed off on by the direct, is it Jody? Who's getting sign-off power on that?

[06:24:36] I forgot the title. Director of Planning. So we could work that into the requirement for sign-off, or would it just have to be conditioned? Sorry, can you repeat that question? To get, I mean, I appreciate the response, but if we wanted more mature stuff to be intermixed in with what's being planted, but already, regardless of what we do, the sign-off authority lies with the planning director.

[06:25:04] Correct. So is it enough to give directive to the planning director that more mature stuff has to be in? That's correct. That would be sufficient because the existing condition, as you note, requires approval by the Director of Community Development. So just your instruction to the Director to make that a condition of approval that no further amendment to that condition is needed.

[06:25:25] Got it. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I think I'm good right now, and if I have additional, I'll loop back around.

[06:25:42] Okay. We've heard a lot about the planting. We've heard a lot about sound damping. I'm looking at the conditions and I understand and I am comforted by the idea that the director of planning at the stage of installation can say, you know, this is appropriate.

[06:26:00] And I really don't want to judge whether a larger is better or not because it could be that it would be less hardy. So we do want it to work. But this condition just talks about sound as submitting a sound study and complying with code, which frankly isn't particularly rigorous in requiring 60 DBA during the daytime.

[06:26:25] What we've heard, what I think are some excellent points about how you would, first of all, not be doing this right away, but then secondly, that there would be from the planting and from a sound damping pad and potentially from a transformer sound wall, ways to mitigate these, do we put these in as conditions, even though it's not happening until later?

[06:26:52] Well, the board can put in additional conditions. As a matter of fact, I've been drafting up some conditions here to address some of the comments that have already been made regarding a sound wall, for instance. But I would encourage the board, if there are additional conditions, that the board wishes to impose, in addition to what staff has already put in the resolution, that those be made express now?

[06:27:13] Yeah, well, that's what I'm asking, because I want to make sure that we capture this. Because I actually think, you know, that the pad will help. The transformer sound wall should likely help. The growth, of course, of the trees, I know you're going to have to do, because that's part of this already.

[06:27:29] But those things otherwise are not considered, and the law itself is not very strong as far as protecting the boundary. So those are my, otherwise I've heard a lot of concerns from others and I'd like to hear from our speakers.

[06:27:44] So if there are no other questions for the applicant. I was just going to, and I'm sorry. No, you go first, that's fine. I was just going to say it would seem like to me that the sound would be especially louder with the larger, with an addition, with the larger buildup.

[06:28:04] It wouldn't be any sound until they do that. What I'm asking is if when there's the larger addition goes on or you make this facility larger, if that's at the point at which it would trigger a sound wall, I'm just asking to speak to what Ned was talking about.

[06:28:24] Fair enough. Put the sound wall until you put the 230 kilovolt transformer. Well, oh, okay. I missed that piece. So you're saying that you're going to put a sound wall up at that point? Yes, ma'am. I missed that. We're in the course of the discussion. I think Ann missed that too.

[06:28:40] We didn't get that. I heard what he said about we would do it now. So that's what I wrote down. Yeah. Okay. When I asked him. My understanding is the reason for the sound issue is the 230 kilovolt transformer. Correct. Which is not initially proposed, so there really isn't any reason for a sound wall until they put that in.

[06:29:00] And that's my point is if we could put it into the criteria, at that point the sound wall goes in. I was just wondering. Along with the pad. I mean, there's no reason for a damping pad if you don't have a transformer on it. But the regular machine, until the 230 goes in, there's still going to be a machine there that is going to run sometimes at low capacity and sometimes at very high capacity.

[06:29:22] They're not building this for nothing. There's going to be a machine there. No, that's not true. Let him know. The equipment that's to be installed in what I'll call phase one, the current 115 kilovolts, And if I could refer you to the screen, I'll circle in general.

[06:29:40] But it's all the equipment under the red line. And then we're following up here just short of, remember I was pointing out, this is one of the transformers that would be if the build-out were to be an up rating, we call it, to a 230 kV station.

[06:29:57] We're coming just short of that. So parallel to this red line, as I'm drawing the laser cursor, Everything from the cursor to the red line is the current equipment, which does not generate noise. They're transformers, or whatever you call them, the thing that brings the power down.

[06:30:14] No transformers are being proposed with the equipment that would be built out prior to the potential operating to a 230-kilovolt station. What is all this machinery under the red line right now, then?

[06:30:32] this is equipment that doesn't generate noise I'm not an electrical engineer I can help by getting some of the folks who could identify it if you wanted the more technical answers of what those pieces are okay that's the point at which I was suggesting that the sound will go in of course with the build-out yes ma'am yes that's what I was thinking we agree with that in the criteria David so that when the build-out happens the sound wall goes in right we can agree to that Yes, and that's reflected with a yet-to-be-determined timeline beyond five years.

[06:31:08] Five years or 10 years? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And that would be easy to put in the criteria because you'd have a trigger. I think there was going to be an additional comment about the current Phase 1 and why I'd like to hear that.

[06:31:28] So just to answer the initial questions, the equipment that's going in as part of Phase 1 is switches, like a light switch, just a large high-voltage version of it. Circuit breakers, same idea of what's in your house to large version of high voltage and then some power sources for the local equipment, which are basically pole top transformers that would feed your house or pad mount equivalent in sound production.

[06:31:49] So there is some sound production, but it's basically the same as a pad mount or a pole mount transformer that feeds a residence or a business. Now we're not talking about a large piece of high voltage equipment like a large power transfer we're discussing otherwise. And my comment would be the inclusion of the requirement of a sound wall absent any other specifications probably won't be very useful.

[06:32:14] You would need to identify to what sound level the facility would need to be attenuated in order for us to design a sound wall to achieve that end. Does that make sense? For consideration, cutting in half the 75 decibels that the nameplate says it's going to generate would be at least if you want to have a number to play with, then that would be one to play with.

[06:32:37] David just pulled down his microphone. Are you going to say something? The decimal scale is logarithmic, so half is not. Yeah, I know. But 60 is unbearable. No, I agree with you that 60 is a...

[06:32:56] A few meetings ago I mentioned that we needed to be cutting that number immediately. Right. I think at this point, do you have additional further... Well, I just wanted a point of clarification regarding the sand wall since, you know, I brought that up to see if there's anything else you could do.

[06:33:14] You were saying, explain that, that that would, if you go to the 250, 230, excuse me, decibels, then the sound wall would be helpful?

[06:33:30] So if the need to expand the site to include the 230 kV portion of the facility was identified, then the transformers would be necessary to step the voltage up to the 230 or between the 115 and 230 facilities. And then we would look at whether or not additional sound attenuation measures are necessary because now you have your sound-generating equipment.

[06:33:55] And what do you think would be the sound level with the improvements? So right now, the 42 dB, as we're saying, with the current proposed system, that's what it would be. So what I think typically we would expect to see is the county would then say, this is the sound level we would expect to see at the property line, which is currently specified, as I understand, to be 60 during day and 55 during the night.

[06:34:21] And we would do a sound study to determine what we would need to do to get the sound level down to the level that you identify as required. I think what we were looking for is that sound attenuation at the property line. Guys, there's too much talking going on. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but I can't hear who I'm supposed to be listening to.

[06:34:41] I'm sorry, I just made a comment to Ms. Malek. I apologize. And I might have wanted to hear that, but I had three people at once was talking, so I can't hear. Continue, David. Yeah, I think what we were looking for from a staff standpoint was meeting the rural area sound measures at the property line.

[06:35:05] So that could be the measure that we would apply that would allow you to determine what type of wall would be necessary. This projection shows it at 43 below that. So if that turns out to be the proper estimate at the time, then the question is, do you still want the sound wall built?

[06:35:28] But that would be what I propose to be the measurement is what level we're looking for at the property line to meet the rural area noise ordinance requirement. Right. I mean, if they meet the requirements, even with the improvements, if they meet the requirements of what we're asking for and they need to put in additional sound attenuation measures, fine.

[06:35:50] And if they don't, they don't, right? I think the discussion has up to this point been that we recognize that as designed during the stage two build-out, they would conform with the noise ordinance.

[06:36:09] And we're kind of acknowledging that our own noise ordinance is not a condition under which we would like to live as a neighbor, right? We're constant. You know, my husband has tinnitus. We would move decisively if it was 32 decibels in our home.

[06:36:31] I'd like to hear from the public. Oh, you're ready for the public. Sure. We can do that. You'll have a chance for a rebuttal, and we'll come back if there are additional comments or questions. So we have one speaker tonight, and that speaker is James McLaughlin.

[06:36:48] And it seems like a long time since I read the instructions. But you're good. right on the instructions thank you thank you my name is james mclaughlin my wife rachel and i own 2413 old lynchbrook road which is as you mentioned the adjoining eastern property to the proposed substation and we're extremely anxious about the detrimental effects we will feel as a result of this substation being constructed so close to our shared property line as you know rachel is the proud owner of a small business on the property called mountainside arts she teaches art to

[06:37:28] children and adults, and those with disabilities. She acutely feels these same detrimental effects, as she will no longer be able to offer certain aspects of her art and nature lessons due to the environmental impact and eventual permanent noise caused by the substation.

[06:37:46] So out of all the properties in the county, we got the losing ticket here. So we're just trying to make this as tolerable as we can. We understand that the infrastructure needs of the county and the commonwealth are vitally important, And they do supersede the needs of any given individual property owners.

[06:38:04] But we would ask that the impact on our quiet enjoyment of our home and the pursuit of livelihood be given serious consideration here. We see it as the duty of the Board of Supervisors and Dominion to ensure that the substation doesn't unnecessarily intrude on us.

[06:38:22] And Dominion certainly has the wherewithal to be able to address our concerns and accommodate our reasonable requests. but so far has been unwilling to do so. I'm asking for your help. I'm asking for you to include as official conditions of approval the following issues that we have that will create a meaningful and lasting impact on the quiet use and enjoyment of our property.

[06:38:47] The first, at minimum, a 75-foot setback from our shared eastern property line to their limits of disturbance in an effort to better buffer the visual and sonic impact of the construction and continuing permanent operation of the substation and to protect the roots of our existing forested area along this property line.

[06:39:05] We ask for more robust screening, specifically where this existing design brings the substation closest to our shared property. We ask that you require Dominion to improve the grading plan to allow for a similar planting schedule as the rest of the shared line. We simply want the same larger schedule of buffered trees uniformly planted along the entire property line.

[06:39:26] We ask for a sound study, and we ask for more robust sound mitigation strategy, including, as you mentioned a more robust fencing and wall option around the transformers and along our property line that would mitigate the noise produced by these transformers brought online in the plan 230 kilovolt expansion phase these are reasonable requests and you can easily hold dominion accountable to make us living next to this substation the most tolerable situation that it can be for us and for our future if you live next door to this you would want the same so thank

[06:40:02] you. Thank you. Dominion has a five-minute rebuttal. In response to Mr. McLaughlin, and I

[06:40:37] appreciate his comments and the comments of the board here tonight, but as for the ability to provide the setback, I've stated several times on behalf of Dominion that this is compacted, the site is compacted as far as possible based on the equipment spacing needs and other criteria of the property to be able to develop it in compliance with stormwater, as well as the operational needs of the substation. The landscaping we're proposing, we do feel it is enhancing that

[06:41:11] area, but it's in excess in some cases as to what the county would require. The setbacks that we're proposing are in excess on all four sides as compared to what's required. The sound study, we've obviously talked about that. We're committing to doing that sound study, and I think that that's important to note that we are committing to that and also the sound wall as has come about in the course of the discussion here with supervisors thank you before you close the public hearing

[06:41:48] may i ask yes any additional questions there were two things that came up in presentations that i didn't have time to or react to properly i would like to have a little more background if possible about what felix had said at the very beginning about the impact on the business and secondly some discussion was made a reference was made about purchasing possibly purchasing this lot and the decision was made not to uh and what were the for buying the mclaughlin's property and was either of you who made some comment about that so i just would like to have a little more information about

[06:42:24] what the reasons were for that decision because so anyway that's those are the two questions that are outstanding that i had thank you okay i was just taken by surprise by felix's announcement so Good evening. I'm William Clark. I'm one of the project managers that's supporting this entire project on this.

[06:42:48] Can you pull your microphone up? Just bring them over. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Thank you. I say I'm William Clark. I work with Dominion Energy. I'm the project manager over this entire project. So we did look at other properties to purchase on this. But the feasibility of those properties would damage more of the area we would have to take up to get the line routing to the new substation than taking the properties that we have purchased at this point to get the line back to the Sherwood tap line. So this is the ideal spot for us to do this, to put this station in this location so we can better provide power here because we're going to damage a lot more property if we move this to

[06:43:26] somewhere else. So when we looked at this, it was going to be miles of transmission line that we're going to have to reroute through Albemarle County because that's the only location this county provides for us to get back to Sherwood. So I hope that makes sense as far as that goes.

[06:43:43] um and then what was your other question i'm sorry it was about the impact on the business uh felix had said that they had said the business was going to close which i didn't know but that's well that was information i'm sorry that was yeah that was information that we found out this week that the business was closing um and i think felix you might be able to touch on that one a little bit more um that was news to me this week sure um supervisor malik it was brought to our attention that um the business was voluntarily closing due to our temporarily construction activities

[06:44:22] as we are proposing this proposed project there are temporary temporary construction activities the mclaughlins have chosen to voluntarily close their business um as i said we are sorry to hear that we regret that but our construction activities are temporarily for this proposed project they're unable to continue once it's is there any way for the company to make them whole or

[06:44:56] find another place on their property where they could carry on do you ever assist in some of the impacts that are going to spill over in perpetuity you know going forward once this site is developed we we've been in ongoing discussions with um the neighbors other community members and we are continuing those discussions we received a note from the mclaughlins i think it was literally two days before this hearing we had provided all that information from the mclaughlins all the

[06:45:31] information we've provided to staff has been on site i think there was a technical difficulty we switched that all that information was correct with staff so once again we continue as stephan said to work with all community members all stakeholders including the mclaughlins we're doing um what we're all do as we've done in all our projects but as i said as mr clark said william said um that was brought to our attention and um we're sorry to hear that but our construction activities will be temporarily just for this proposed um project basically by the end of 2025

[06:46:11] you would expect your construction to be finished did i understand that correctly yes ma'am i was Just making sure William was behind me. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Chair, if I may, is that going to not change when you have your phase two build out?

[06:46:27] Can you give me a sense of what the additional construction activity is going to be? Because we're now talking about a multi-phase project as demand levels change. And I hear multi-phase project. I'm like, well, that sounds a lot more damn intrusive than just having it all done at once. Okay.

[06:46:45] So as far as the phase two part goes, if we switch this line over to 230 kV, it has to go to SCC filing. All right, this isn't going to, this is five years out. We have to touch nine different substations to do this upgrade. This will be 10 years minimum to get this thing updated to a 230 kV line.

[06:47:04] I mean, you're talking about, I'm speculating, but it's probably 45 miles of line that would have to be upgraded, plus all the stations that it touched or anything else before we could do that. I mean, that would be a long process, and as of right now, as of the end of 2024, it was not in a five-year radar to upgrade the line to 230.

[06:47:26] So it was never, it was not identified that this line would need to be upgraded to 230. It's going to stay at 115 for now. Now, I can only tell you the next five years, but if they decide in five years to do this, it's going to be a lot of back-end or front-end work that needs to be done for permitting, filing, and so forth.

[06:47:44] Thank you. Yep. If there are no other questions, before I close the public hearing and just ask the interim county attorney, you mentioned something about drafting conditions, and I don't know whether those can be...

[06:48:01] If the board is interested in adding a condition regarding a sound wall, I can send that proposed condition and warning to the board. I was more concerned initially that we at least have the condition that a sound damping pad would be used, since that was part of the original offer and something we know that they were planning on doing regardless.

[06:48:20] okay i i hadn't heard consensus from the board on that issue but i can certainly add that as a condition my concern is that foam crushes and unless it's replaced at some interval it's not going to do its job for very long so i'd like the idea of the walls but that's something that's you've all have i mean i think there's a solution written but i will various failures on my part have been burned into my memory when we have not put in conditions and so i really encourage everybody to write things down, get Andy to write things down. I do, but I do appreciate

[06:48:54] the applicant is saying that they haven't even got a measurement yet. So they know certain things that you do routinely, like the vibration pad, but the sound wall is not something you would ordinarily do. And then the question is, are you willing to commit to it without knowing, so that we could put this in as a condition? I think the issue would be that sound walls are specifically designed to attenuate to a specific level so saying we would build a sound wall

[06:49:30] without any further performance requirements is not particularly meaningful right mr chair yes i had a thought while some other questions was happening but the way this is written by the applicant is stating that the at the property line the 42 is without any mitigating items right so if the condition is such that they have to achieve that without any mitigation and then we require mitigation in addition to that, then we can get at lower numbers than what they're presenting on their study.

[06:50:07] Yeah, I agree. So can the condition state that sound has to be met without any, like they'd have to first say, well, here's where we're at. I mean, I get what you're saying about the sound wall, but I'm trying to say that the sound numbers are met without any mitigating initially, and then mitigation must be put in on top of it because then it would just reduce it even further and how can we get at that in a condition so i've just sent the proposed condition that actually includes a number to be specified by the board again dominion is indicating that they can reach a 42 decibel level even without a sound

[06:50:45] wall if the board feels like they wish to specify a lower decibel range than 42 decibels and that a sound wall is needed to reach that i provided some suggested language that hopefully will reach that objective. I haven't seen that. I haven't seen anything. It's sent. Maybe it's just taken a while.

[06:51:09] While we're waiting for it, why don't you ask your question? So this is on a different topic, and it's for the county attorney. At one point in the communication we received from the McLaughlins, it had talked about the property that they have, that they're limited by their division rights to be able to even build a different structure or move a structure on their property. Is there any way that we could get at helping in that situation, if necessary?

[06:51:43] So as the board's probably aware, there is a provision under the zoning ordinance for an applicant to apply for additional division rights or development rights in the rural area zoning district. So division rights are not just the formula of how many division rights existed as of 1980, an applicant can come before the board asking for a special use permit for additional division rights. It's not something that the board grants very often, but that would be an avenue if the board wanted to consider that.

[06:52:14] Thank you very much. So the proposed resolution would be to, prior to final zoning approval, that's final zoning approval, which probably precedes by a long shot the installation of the 230-kilibolt transformers so it would be basically upon completion of of there's no certificate of occupancy that's required for this structure but it's basically the equivalent it's the last step

[06:52:47] before um before they can actually begin operations that's the the trigger point uh for when this improvement would need to be completed but okay so we can't do anything that would just be triggered by the 230 kilovolt transformer?

[06:53:04] It would be basically upon completion of construction. If the board is looking for a different trigger point. Well, there are two construction phases that we're talking about, and we're only worried about the second one, which is by right. But you're saying this would be for the second one. It's not clear that this is for the second one.

[06:53:19] It's not clear whether we're talking about the first one or the second one. Is this what we're saying? Yeah. What you have here is not clear that it would kick in for the second phase. All right. Instruction for phase two or something. Yeah, it would be for the 230 kilowatt.

[06:53:41] Right. It would be for that. I would, at the risk of putting him on the spot, I would look to the zoning administrator to see if he has additional suggestions as to the wording. It's just an unusual situation to try to require something in advance. Okay, here it comes.

[06:53:56] The time of this walk will give us all some time to think about what it could look like. I think what we're trying to do is to sort of institutionalize what the applicant has offered to do and make sure that we get it right. That's all I'm trying to do.

[06:54:12] Bart Spavoda, Deputy Director, Zoning Administrator. It's going to depend, as Andy stated, as Mr. Herrick stated, what do you want the trigger point to be. So the site plan would come in, and there's finals involved in that. The first phase of that would have its own final.

[06:54:32] The second phase would have a different final. If you wanted the trigger to be the transformer in our process, that's more difficult because there's not a permit necessarily for the transformer, right? There's some inspection for the pad because it's equipment under the building code, and I'm speaking a little out of turn because I would need to consult with the building official.

[06:54:55] The applicant may know, but some of this is not required to have building permits per se because it's equipment as opposed to structures, right? So if we wanted to tie it to a site plan or things like that, then we'd be able to do that probably a little more easily than to equipment that doesn't require any kind of approval from us in a later phase.

[06:55:17] So it would be similar to adding a machine within a factory. The electrical connection in the factory might need a permit, but the machine installation itself doesn't. And in this case, the electrical connection doesn't need a permit because it's the power line itself.

[06:55:33] I don't know if that helps at all. Any suggestions as to how one might condition this approval so that when the 230 goes in, it goes in with some sound damping? So if we're worried about the noise, don't worry about the 230-volt transformer.

[06:55:54] Just decide what you want the decibel to be. So whether or not, it shouldn't matter in the first phase if there's no noise produced. And in the second phase, no matter what they put in, you want it at a certain decibel. So it's 60-day and 55-evening is what the sound range is in that rural area, 42s.

[06:56:15] I guess I would want to know from the applicant if 42 is what you're expecting at the property line currently with that 75 dB transformer at the one meter or whatever point, what do you think you could get to with the damping pad and the screening and a sound wall?

[06:56:50] The reason why I'm asking this is because I'm well aware that the kind of low-frequency constant hum is something that's a little harder than what our sound ordinances are used to dealing with, which might be a party or something, where, you know, it's just not the same kind of constant.

[06:57:11] Okay. I don't know if this is too simplified, but I think based on what Mr. Props has put together, Dominion is committing to at least surpassing or exceeding the ordinance requirement by what's shown on the screen, which is to say, at the property line, 42 decimals.

[06:57:30] Maybe we mark that into the record to at least make that part of it based on what we're looking at here. And then at such a time as the wall is put in, then that could be studied. Because we have, again, there's nothing there to test to make that sound study now.

[06:57:50] So if we're here now proposing that this transformer operationally would be, and again, as I think Mr. Props put forward, this is at the peak operating level, which is yielding this. And statistically, that's not the case to be at the peak operating level.

[06:58:10] So potentially, if it is appropriate for me to suggest, that we suggest that the 42 DBA be the property line level, and then we study it further with the mitigation of the wall to be installed.

[06:58:26] Because in this case, we're already meeting the ordinance, as I understand it, which is 60 DBA and 55 DBA. Mr. Chair, by your leave, I feel like you're really talking past the point we've been trying to make as a board here, which is that we recognize that our own ordinance is insufficient to adequately protect the interests of the neighbors here, and we would be interested in Dominion coming to us with, or at least some members of the board feel this way, and we would be interested with Dominion coming to us with what is an achievable mitigation beyond what you've presented here, because we recognize you're surpassing the ordinance, and we're also saying we don't think that's good enough for the neighbors

[06:59:05] if we were to stand in their shoes. So while I appreciate the point you've made, It does not help us reach a decision now, because we need to identify an achievable number lower than this to be able to proceed with the amendment that we're discussing currently. Fair enough. I was hoping to contribute, but I respect your statement. Yes, sir.

[06:59:26] Follow-up question. Yes, please. Starting with what was here, because they've stipulated that they're going to be 42 decibels at the property line, whatever the wording is, to institutionalize that.

[06:59:44] Further, they have committed to put the sound wall on. I hope we don't need to try to guess what that new improvement is going to be, but they've already agreed or offered in their application to be at 42 at the property line, so that's a given.

[07:00:01] And they've also agreed to do the sound thing around the new machine when it comes in that hopefully will cover it because there's no way for me to be able to pick a number that it's going to cut it down to. But the fact that the sound thing will be there will help it be below the 42 that they've also offered, committed to do.

[07:00:23] So that's all I have to offer. The point that the gentleman with the cool beard was making is that absent a specific identified decibel level, he could put a sheet of crap paper around this and satisfy what you've just what we would be describing right um and it would still be a sound damping wall um so he would need the team would need and i an identified degree of mitigation if

[07:00:58] we were to actually memorialize that in a way that is meaningful thank you got it at the risk of being arbitrary is it what if we moved the number that's at the house to the property line 32 to the property line knowing we would achieve better based on no mitigating factors it's 42 but if we move the criteria at the residence to the property line then that gives us a target that seems reasonable it's a factor of 10 difference between those but but yeah that's 140 that's 100 meters

[07:01:35] that's why i was asking you the question before which is you know assuming 42 is what you would get with the equipment without the damping pad without the screening if we were to simply put in a number that reflected what you could reasonably expect to accomplish by including the damping pad in the screening that would give us a great deal of comfort that we are still meeting our requirement to make sure that this is not substantial detriment to the neighbors.

[07:02:11] Regardless of the sound ordinance, it's a question of substantial detriment to the neighbors that we're trying to make in here. So in order to determine how much additional attenuation these additional measures would improve the site.

[07:02:32] Oh, sorry, sorry. You'd have to perform a detailed sound study. So, I mean, we would have to make a bunch of assumptions. And one of the reasons we're hesitant to do a sound study is because this is based on a preliminary design, based on conceptual figures, worst-case conceptual figures. We don't have final design values yet.

[07:02:49] That we would have to go and do a detailed sound study, making a lot of assumptions based on what we know right now, And then figure out what that level, a proposed level of attenuation could be based on the results of the study. I like Ned's idea only because it could come back when 10 years down the road they have the details.

[07:03:13] If they realize that the 32 at the property line is not doable, it's not a way to carry out what they have already stipulated they can do, then they can do something else. No, I understand that. I'm just not sure whether 32 is something that you would want to go with.

[07:03:29] understanding you know that if 42 is what's there i don't know how much you normally would expect from some of these and i'm not asking you to go all the way to how low they could take it but if you gave me some indication that a damping pad should take that 42 down to 40 or 38 or 37 and the screening on top of that then then we could put in a number that you could feel comfortable with those mitigation factors put in place you'd meet and we could feel comfortable that the

[07:04:04] property next door is really being protected i think the amount of attenuation achievable using the sound damning pads is probably something we could work with the manufacturers to determine an approximate figure for because that's an engineered product as opposed to natural products like tree screening we would have to then go do it like i said i would think that would involve a sound study at that point because it's not a specifically engineered product for a specific performance. So you could design to meet the number with your structure as opposed to the shrubbery. Is that what you're saying? Do I understand that correctly? I'm saying the sound

[07:04:42] vibration dampening pads would have a predictable effect, a more reasonably predictable effect. And that's the pad underneath, not the wall around, which you've already... Correct. So I mean the issue with the wall is walls are specifically designed for a facility. So in order for me to how much sound the wall would attenuate i would have to design the wall first and we would design it to attenuate a certain amount of sound so this can be achieved if you pick 32 at the property line and your pad moves it whatever the number is then you're designing a wall to do the rest

[07:05:16] the degree to whether or not a sound wall can sufficiently attenuate uh the transport sound at the um border or at the property line to be 32 i would have to consult with a specific sound engineer sound wall designer on and what that would require you got ten years ten years to do it what if it was 42 at the property line 32 that's without the others we want to see that doesn't know I mean normal conversation is 60 so in ten years if they can't hit 32 can't they also I mean we have schools come to

[07:05:51] us every day saying I would like to amend my criteria that our previous zoning approval was made with because I'm no longer able to meet it because I have increased student capacity so I apologize I'm probably not hitting the mic there point being if engineering determines this to be unfeasible which I'm hopeful that it doesn't hopefully we can get a resolution but if it is ultimately unfeasible we can revisit this and change the number based on what they're able to determine and are not able to provide us today I realize that's

[07:06:26] unsatisfying sounding but i mean we do it it is a thing we do as a board so i mean i i think the idea of picking the decibel level at the house albeit arbitrary and moving it to the property line that that is something to work with that we can actually enshrine in a in a condition 32 is pretty quiet and it's using their own information which they've offered to us as part of their application and i'm always in favor of that can i just throw out a different idea taking it out of different tact. We have a proposal from Andy. Go ahead. Well, the notification point that we were

[07:07:03] saying, it seems to me that could we condition that upon decision that phase two must commence, that they must notify the county, and then at that time get at an improvement that is better than 42 at the property line without stating a DBA. That might be one alternative. I think, though, that what Mr. Svoboda has indicated is that the county approval is going to be needed at the at the end of construction regardless and that if I'm understanding the discussion from both

[07:07:40] the applicant and from the zoning administrator that objective criteria like decibels at the property line is probably preferable to to having one without. So what you've proposed if I could state it would be that prior to final zoning approval of each phase of construction the owner must have demonstrated it will attenuate noise at the property line to no more than 32 decibels to the satisfaction of Zoning Administrator.

[07:08:12] This is what we're reading. I think everybody has this. Yeah, everybody should have this from Mr. Herrick, and I'm just reading it to state that it works in the sense that it doesn't require any specific measure. It does put the 32 at the property line instead of at the residence.

[07:08:30] It is asking you to then come back if you have to and say, we can't do the 32, but we need to put this 230 kilovolt. But you've indicated that with the screening, vegetable screening, the damping pad and the sound wall, it's basically, you know, trying to do the equivalent of that extra distance.

[07:08:55] You want us to read it again? No, we were just indicating that there's beneficial impacts that aren't accounted for in this simplified calculation. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, so what's shown on screen is without the on-site factors, such as the landscaping screen.

[07:09:12] Right, which is why I think this works, because it would mean that you just have to come down to that level with all that and go from there. Okay. Mr. Chair, the board has worked extremely hard on this, and I've been looking for about the last 15 minutes to try to find examples for the board to consider at 32 at the property line decibel level, and I can find 30.

[07:09:36] so it's 30 decibels quiet for a room i'll read this to the board a quiet bedroom is usually a decibel reading between 25 and 30 right no 30 is very very low and uh 30 is soft whispering at three feet away rustling leaves and mosquitoes buzzing yeah well i mean you have to be a certain distance um but yeah there's no question that 32 is a very soft sound it is a different animal though, to talk about a constant low hum at 32 versus the rustling of leaves and other white

[07:10:15] noise at 32. And so because of the specific nature of the kind of noise that's going to be created by a transformer, I'm a little less convinced that the usual things that we use to determine what 32 sounds like or 30 sounds like apply. I don't think they do apply as well when you're talking about a constant low home so I'm I'm comfortable with this if there are no other

[07:10:50] questions I would propose that we close the public hearing matters back before the board this has satisfied me and I'm ready to make a motion but I want to look to ask if there are additional comments yeah I just want to know that if let's say 10 years down the road they're not able to meet the 32-decibel level, they could come and revisit it and ask.

[07:11:20] Of course, correct. Okay. It would require an application to amend this special use permit, to amend this particular condition that the board seems inclined to propose. So, I mean, a special use permit is subject to amendment, an application for amendment.

[07:11:37] Yeah. Is that agreeable to you all? You're aware of what we're talking about, and that's agreeable to you all? Right. My understanding is we're going to set forth a requirement to be 32 decibels at the property line.

[07:11:56] And then if it is determined later, it is unable to be met through the engineering that Mr. Props outlined. It would be incumbent upon us as applicant to come forward again to the board to request an alteration of that requirement. That's a phase two, obviously.

[07:12:12] Yes, ma'am. That's a phase two, right. Of course, you're permitted to make the measurements so that it doesn't include rustling leaves and other things. It'll just be from the transformers, what we're worried about. Okay. But directly to the question, the applicant, we're agreeable to that provision.

[07:12:32] Thank you. Because we can still have discussion, Board. I move to adopt the resolution attached to the staff report as attachment E with condition 3 modified to read as follows. Prior to final zoning approval of each phase of construction, the owner must have demonstrated that it will attenuate noise at the property line to no more than 32 DBA to the satisfaction of the zoning administrator.

[07:12:58] Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Andy? I don't know whether the board has formally closed the public hearing. I think I did. We did. Okay. I did. We talked about it. Yeah. And the back matter is for discussion. So we have a motion and a second.

[07:13:15] Is there a discussion? I just have a clarifying question about the, you did mention that the directive to the Director of Planning would be, for the mature stuff, that that directive, so I'm just wanting an acknowledgement that that has been made clear, because it seemed like there was consensus on that.

[07:13:35] We don't have to add that in as a condition. That's correct. I mean, Condition 5 already specifies that the landscaping plan must meet the approval of the Director of Planning, and we have various folks. Okay, we have a motion from me, a second from Supervisor Malik.

[07:13:56] If there is no further discussion, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your patience.

[07:14:14] Thank you for your working with us on this. Lord, this brings us to item 19, proposed lease of a portion of the Yancey Community Center property. This is led by Mr. Jason Inofuentes, Program Manager, Broadband Accessibility and Affordability.

[07:14:34] But I also see Mr. Mike Culp also coming forward. Good evening, board. Thank you for the opportunity to present. A wonderful opportunity for the county, and I'm honored to be here this evening. I'll start with a little bit of background, and then Jason will aptly go through the executive summary.

[07:14:56] As you're aware, the board has been very gracious and shown a lot of leadership in bringing fiber throughout the Albemarle County region. Not only have we led the county to a fiber future, we've also set a mark that the rest of Central Virginia is following.

[07:15:16] And one of the reasons is the partnership with our ISPs. And one of those ISPs, Firefly, which you all know is a subsidiary of the Central Virginia Electric Co-op. So a pure non-for-profit decided to use their assets, electrical assets, to help their members become fiber aware.

[07:15:39] Fiber, they could buy fiber or lease fiber or do whatever they need to be fiber connected. What they've done is over the last five to ten years worked with us to build a fiber network in Albemarle County, and now they're hoping to work with us to provide what's called a fiber hut, and that's the purpose of the executive summary, to bring the board up to speed on a simple resolution that would allow the county executive to sign a lease of property, which is the county statute that any time lease of county property comes into play, there must be a public hearing.

[07:16:17] So that's the purpose of the public hearing. Take it over, Jason. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Chair and members of the board. Here we go. Do introduce yourself for the record.

[07:16:34] Yes, my name is Jason Inafuentes. I'm the program manager for the broadband office here in Elmoral County. As Mike mentioned, we have a proposed lease agreement for a portion of the ANC Community Center for the installation of a fiber facility.

[07:16:50] The lease will support efforts to expand broadband access throughout the county and is going to directly serve the areas of Keene and Esmonton Southern Albemarle as part of the VODY22 grant. Another brief look at history. If you start on the left, that's where fiber coverage was in Albemarle County in 2020, right at the height of the pandemic.

[07:17:11] By the end of 2025, it'll actually be even better than that map right there. THIS IS A LITTLE BIT OUTDATED AND TO DATE OVER 3,000 LOCATIONS HAVE RECEIVED FIBER BROADBAND SERVICE THROUGH THE VODY PROGRAM IN ALBUMARLE COUNTY. VODY 22 WILL BRING THAT FIGURE TO MORE THAN 8,000 WHILE A BAAO ARPA GRANT WILL BRING AN ADDITIONAL 1,400 LOCATIONS. SOUTHERN ALBUMARLE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PRIORITY FOR DIGITAL INCLUSION EFFORTS IN ALBUMARLE COUNTY AND GETTING BROADBAND TO SOUTHERN ALBUMARLE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED is very, very important. This map actually is a demonstration of the affordability gap

[07:17:48] in Albemarle County, and it highlights that not only has there been a lack of availability of service, but there will persist a lack of affordability of service without additional efforts to be made by the county and by this office. The site we're looking at is a parcel adjacent to the anti-community center. A little bit closer look shows the sanitary sewer plant and drain fields that are on that parcel right now. And then the red area is the 3,200 square

[07:18:26] feet of the fiber hut lease area. The plat is shown as here. The facility itself will be a pre-fabricated concrete structure that is hurricane-proof, we're assured, sitting on a concrete slab.

[07:18:45] There will be a small parking spot nearby. There will be upgrades to the fencing and security fencing on the property already. And then there will be the addition of a generator with a propane tank on the facility in order to provide backup power for that site.

[07:19:02] And if anybody has any questions about specifics, members of Firefly are here, and we also have some information provided ahead of the meeting. The lease information, 3,200 square feet portion of this county-owned parcel, plus a temporary construction easement and land required for permanent erosion and sediment control facilities.

[07:19:23] The nominal rent of $1 per year over an initial term of 50 years renewable at tenant option for up to four successive years is all part of the lease agreement that has previously been discussed at length by the county executive's office, our office, as well as the county attorney's office.

[07:19:42] Our staff recommendation is that the board adopt the resolution to authorize the county executive to sign a proposed lease agreement in support of the VADI-22 and ARPA fiber broadband projects. thank you we'll go through order with questions supervisor malik thank you one very brief one which may or may not be appropriate and that is in the whitehall district the propane runs out right away and therefore the whatever there's that machinery stops working when there's power outages do we have any idea how long the service would be able to be maintained by the propane

[07:20:13] facility uh if jason palmer is here from cbc looking at jason welcome there's also battery backup that happens before the propane comes on. Oh, good. Okay.

[07:20:30] Jason Palmer, Vice President of Operations at Central Virginia Electric Cooperative and also Firefly. Appreciate the living in your district, Ms. Malick, so thank you. So back to the question on the generation backup. So what the generator does, just to be transparent with the whole operation of it, so this generator will run once a week. It'll be either on Monday or on a Wednesday at the same time every week. So all the different facilities we have um just uh half of them will run on monday half will run on wednesday if in the event we have a

[07:21:04] loss of power the generator will operate uh we do have battery backup that'll roughly run about 24 to 48 hours depending on the amount of customers that we serve out of this uh fiber hut um in the event that after the batteries go out um the idea is not to use the batteries though so as soon as power goes out it is an automatic transfer to the the uh lp generator um and that will run approximately four to five days depending on the load um so just it just really depends on that

[07:21:39] the uh all of our systems are designed through our the vendor that we use for the lp it's all remotely monitored so it's autofill um they don't want them they usually run about 50 percent and then they get a refill. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Proop. I don't believe I have anything. Thank you. Supervisor LaPista-Curley. No questions. Thank you. Supervisor McHugh. I'm fine. Thank you, Jason. Supervisor Galloway. No questions. And I have no questions as well.

[07:22:11] Thank you. We will open the public hearing. And we don't have any questions. We don't want to sign up. So we'll close the public hearing. The matter is back before the board. By the absence of questions, I will, as Supervisor of the Samuel Miller District, offer that we should move that the Board adopt a resolution to authorize the County Executive to sign a proposed lease agreement in support of the VODE 22 and ARPA broadband projects resolution in the form of Attachment B.

[07:22:46] Assembly. We have a motion. Second from Supervisor Lopisto-Kirtley. Without objection, the Clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malick? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. And board, I will not let this moment pass without recognizing the huge contribution of Mr. Michael Culp to bringing broadband to Albemarle County.

[07:23:14] If you would please, as a last meeting. Mike, we know you're disappointed how quickly this happened.

[07:23:35] We could talk for another hour and a half if you'd like us to. I'm trying to make your last run very memorable. How long is that generator going to be anyway? The weighting and its anticipation. 53 decibels. I will say I saw that little white circle on the map in Advanced Mills when you threw the map up there, and I'm going, oh, please don't let that be my neighborhood.

[07:24:00] No, seriously, your contributions to broadband in Elmorrow County have been so significant. You have a legacy that we'll live on. Thank you. You can come back any time for a meeting, you know.

[07:24:15] Yes. Hang out. I'm happy to see you. I do have your mobile home number. Thank you. I know where you live, buddy. So who are you going to call? Abley helped by Mr. Inafuentes, who will take over.

[07:24:32] So we're thrilled to have you. All right, board, this brings us to from the board committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda. Supervisor Mallon? I failed in my message to Jeff that I would send an email about this ahead of time.

[07:24:50] But I've been asking off and on, where are we with the ordinance development to require sidewalk shoveling by landowners along our roadways where there are sidewalks? And I was reminded that the board had never gotten four votes in favor of doing this.

[07:25:06] And so that's why it isn't on the work program. So I would ask you to think about what you think about that so that we can come back to deal with this. Watching the kids walking to school at Albano High School in that little path next to the cemetery on Hydraulic Road when there's a sidewalk there that could be somehow managed.

[07:25:26] Or, I mean, there's so many places where the Rio and the Jewett and the Whitehall residents drive by, all of us sharing the same roadway. That's the part of the county that I see the most, but I think it exists in all the other jurisdictions of the magisterial districts as well. So I hope we will get to that at one point.

[07:25:45] And just one little sidebar, in watching the bills dropping in the General Assembly, one of the ones that made me yell yesterday or Sunday in my reading was a bill by Schuyler von Valkenberg from Henrico, I think, Requiring that every county in Virginia have a 7.5% increase in housing units every year.

[07:26:11] We have never had 7.5% increase in population in any year in the 75 years I've been alive. So I just thought, wow, this is, you know, we just, here we go. So that will give me energy to go forward because we can't sustain that kind of improvement and provide infrastructure to go along with that.

[07:26:32] Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I don't know. You know what? So I have made as a New Year's resolution that I thought I might share with the board. I am trying to learn more about my region and my peers.

[07:26:49] So I am trying to reach out individually to members of the boards of supervisors of neighboring and regional jurisdictions. And this Saturday, I had a wonderful tour of Nelson County with a Nelson County supervisor and learn quite a lot about their history and their current challenges.

[07:27:07] It's so far very early in my New Year's resolution, but very illuminating and something I might always encourage other people to remember what other peers are doing. Thank you. Supervisor Lupista. Yes, I just wanted to announce at our SWAC meeting that we have, this past year, we have collected through the plastic bag tax approximately $100,000, a little bit less than $100,000, and 961 bags of trash of litter were cleaned up in one year.

[07:27:45] So that's something we can be happy about, hopeful. It would be nice to have nothing having to be cleaned up, but unfortunately, that's what was cleaned up. And also, at one of our CACs, they're really looking into meeting virtually 50% of the time because that was the new, you know, last year was passed that you could meet 50% of the time.

[07:28:10] If you did it in advance, you can't have two consecutive meetings. But, you know, they're looking into that. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. I don't really have anything other than, Mike, there was a time when we did that among ourselves for board members to show the other board members around their district so i'd be happy to to join you on a tour of your district if you'll join me on a tour i can remember doing it with norman dylan his brand new leaf and we almost ran out

[07:28:43] of power just saying but it is a great idea yeah supervisor connelly just to mention that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, we did hold a special meeting earlier this month primarily to give direction for a compensation study that the TJPDC will be doing relative to their organization.

[07:29:07] I know that most of the local jurisdictions have all completed them over the last handful of years, couple of years. So just be watching as that one comes forward to pay attention to what it will be the newest compensation or the latest one, I guess. See how it, because any time anybody else does a compensation study, it can inform what you're doing in your own area.

[07:29:28] So just calling attention to that. Thank you. I have no announcements, but as some know, we had a rushed closed session, so we're going to ask to go back into closed session. And Supervisor Brute, do you have a motion?

[07:29:45] Yes, I'd like to move the Board of Supervisors to convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, TAC 3711A of the Code of Virginia, subsection one to discuss and consider both first the performance of the interim county attorney and second the appointment of a county attorney. Second. Motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. LaPista-Curtley. Aye. Ms. Malek. Yes. Ms. Kiel. Yes. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Great.

[08:23:09] All right. We're live. We're live. Okay. We'll come out of closed meetings. I would like to move that the Board of Supervisors certify 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 authorized in the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second. Motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes.

[08:23:41] Ms. LaPiesto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Great. With that, Board, we will adjourn to our next regular meeting on January 22nd at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium.

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