Coraggio Consulting Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting, Wednesday, May 21, 2025 Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025 Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia Length: 5h 37m (video) Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1360 Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1360 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 2026-10-14. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:00] Good afternoon. I'm pleased to call to order this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 21st of May at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium in the McIntyre office building. I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor B. Lupisto-Curtley of the Red Anna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor Ann Malick of the Whitehall District, myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District. [00:00:26] The quorum is present. Supervisor Galloway is not able to be here today, but our thoughts are with him and his family. We are also joined by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our county attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgerson. Also, let me please welcome Albemarle County Police Officers present, Master Police Officer Dana Reeves, and Sergeant Matthew O'Reilly. [00:00:47] We thank you and all of our first responders for your service today and every day on behalf of the residents of the county for our protection, safety, and security. If all present could now stand as you are able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. states of which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [00:01:18] Thank you. And if you could now ask to join us in a moment of silence. [00:01:45] Thank you, Board. Of course, our first item is to adopt the final agenda, noting that item 18A, we have an additional item, which is authorizing the Chair to sign letters of support for Congressional Directed Spending Program, a dam repair application. Other than that, I don't know of any other changes. [00:02:02] Is there a motion to adopt the final agenda as amended? Salute. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. Lapisto-Kirtley? [00:02:17] Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Thank you. And, Board, we'll look to the first item, brief announcements by Board members, and we'll go through our order for today, starting with Supervisor Lapisto-Kirtley. I have no announcements today. Thank you. Oh, wait, other than don't forget to vote, it's very important. [00:02:37] I think the deadline is May 27th for early voting, so that's extremely important. May 27th is the last day to register, but I think the voting goes until the second week of June. Oh, the early voting goes until the Saturday before, okay, the Saturday before our, and the actual voting day is June 17th. [00:02:59] So don't forget to vote. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Proven. I hope you will forgive me. I normally have the election information off at this time, and I don't today to give that exact information. But I think that was all generally correct. And I would just reemphasize that point. [00:03:14] There's going to be a lot of issues that are up for primary, and that's going to be important. It's going to be potentially decisive as to who some of our key leaders are. Additionally, I would like to just thank this board's attendance at the Scottsville joint meeting with the Alamoa Board of Supervisors down in Scottsville. [00:03:36] For the members of the public in attendance today, I thought it was a really excellent opportunity to connect on the board's priorities on how to best support and enable the town of Scottsville to thrive. And I thought it was particularly poignant that it came in the midst of some serious flood warnings so that we could see kind of the critical work on maintenance that the town of Scottsville holds for the levy as well as the incredible work of those Scottsville volunteers in actually operating that there levy. [00:04:04] That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Just a shout-out of thanks. We've had several events in our community lately, and I want to thank the Fire and Rescue folks, Elmar County Fire and Rescue and Elmar County Police Department, for great service to our community. [00:04:25] A shout-out to both of those departments, I guess I should say. So thank you, Fire and Rescue and Elmar County Police. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much, And I will echo that tragedy is all around us, and it's almost hard to process. [00:04:44] There are so many things coming all at once. But we have many more days of possible rain, so we all need to be respecting the power of water as well as fire. Another memorial today, Jerry Connolly, who was a friend of local government for decades and longtime at-large chair of Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and then a congressman after following Glenn Davis in Northern Virginia passed away this morning. [00:05:18] So he will be long missed and was very ill, but really fighting the good fight right up until the end. So he was very helpful to me on a lot of advice, and I really appreciated all of his guidance over many years. Secondly, on a strange count, for warning for others, my daughter received a text scam yesterday, which really got her attention because it said, Mom, and anybody who gets something that says Mom and you have children scattered all over the place, my phone's managed to break. [00:05:55] Can you text me back on my new number when you see this, please, and then a number. Beware, beware, beware. This is the first time I've seen anything like this, but it is, other than phones being spelled, the grammar being wrong, it was not obvious. [00:06:12] And she looked at it and looked at it and looked at it and said, I'm just going to contact my kids instead. And, of course, if you can control your emotions long enough to contact your children before responding to something like this, it may save you a whole lot of pain. So I did want to announce that. [00:06:29] On a very good note, Memorial Day in Earliesville is Monday at 10 a.m. at Earliesville Green. Everyone is welcome and invited to come. Colonel James O'Kelly, retired U.S. Marine Corps, will be the keynote speaker. [00:06:44] It is always a wonderful event, lots of music and lots of fellowship, and lots of old soldiers who come out of their far-flung homes to this event. So everyone is invited. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just a couple of quick notes. [00:07:01] Obviously, congratulations to all the graduates near and far. We have many coming up, but we also, of course, got through our big weekend at UVA, which is always a big day for the community. I also want to mention that there have been a series of meetings, community design nights associated with Resilient Together, and the last one will be coming up May 29th at the Greenwood Community Center, 6 to 8 p.m. [00:07:24] A chance to participate in that process. I think it's really important, and I hope people take advantage. If there's nothing further, our next item is a proclamation recognizing May as Older Americans Month, and this will be recognized by Chair McKeel. [00:07:41] Yes, thank you, Jim. As the liaison to Java, Jefferson Area Board for the Aging, I'm thrilled to read this proclamation, and I read it in the form of a motion. Proclamation recognizing May as Older Americans Month. Whereas May is Older Americans Month, time for us to recognize and honor older adults in Elmoral County, Virginia, and their immense influence on every facet of American society. [00:08:08] And whereas Elmoral County recognizes how, through their wealth of life experience and wisdom, older adults guide our younger generations and carry forward abundant cultural and historical knowledge. And whereas Albemarle County recognizes that older Americans improve our community through intergenerational relationships, community service, civic engagement, and many other activities. [00:08:37] And whereas Albemarle County benefits when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate and live independently. And whereas, Almar County must ensure that older Americans have the resources and support needed to stay involved in their communities, reflecting our commitment to inclusivity and correctness. [00:08:59] Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Almar County Board of Supervisors, urge every resident to flip the script on aging, this year's theme, and transform how we talk about and perceive aging, celebrating older adults' profound impact on our local community, empowered by social connections, health resources, and support for older adults. [00:09:21] and be it further proclaimed that we, the Almar County Board of Supervisors, hereby proclaim May 2025 to be Older Americans Month. Signed this 21st day of May 2025, Jim Andrews, Chair. Second. Thank you. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Malek, without objection if the clerk will call the roll. [00:09:40] Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Thank you. And I believe Ms. Christina Evans is here. Yes. maybe not i don't someone on behalf of java okay we'll get it to them and i think we'll move on okay thank you um board this brings us to public comment on matters previously considered are currently pending before the board other than scheduled for public hearings and vice chairman [00:10:20] q we'll read the rules and introduce the speakers you have a list yes she's getting it she thought we had some time but i don't know thought we'd be doing the whole proclamation thing yeah that's custom and someone's here to receive it more comments are they all in person yes yes all right so everyone is in person today so let me read the um directions matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing during the time set aside for public comment on matters [00:10:55] previously considered or currently pending before the board individuals may address the board of supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the board or that are pending before the board, other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing. Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. In order 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 directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting materials may be given to the [00:11:35] clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Back and forth debate is not permitted. And I skipped over, but I will say timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking, and the red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. All comments are live-streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. And with that, let me just get the list, and we have 10 folks, 10 people have [00:12:15] signed up, and the first speaker is Mona Kafeef. There you go. Welcome. Please adjust the microphone. Some of us can't see people because of the screen, so I was looking. Welcome. Welcome. [00:12:38] Good afternoon, Supervisors, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Mona Al-Khafeef, and I'm here today as a member of the Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee, a faculty at UVA School of Architecture, and a resident of the Scottsville District. I'm joined by Christine Putnam and J.D. Brown, as well as Robert McGinnins, and asked the board to consider a resolution to have Albemarle County join the Biophilic Cities Network. [00:13:05] As you could read in the letter from our chair, this partnership proposes a truly exciting regional initiative. Today, I would like to highlight why this moment matters. As you might know, the Biophilic Cities Network was born here at UVA under the leadership of Professor Tim Beatley and J.D. Brown. [00:13:22] Since then, cities like San Francisco and Singapore, but also Richmond, Norfolk, Arlington, Reston, and D.C., have joined and are embedding nature into the city's fabric. Abamalek County, rich in biodiversity, cultural heritage, and forward-thinking planning is uniquely positioned to help initiate a next evolution, the biophilic region that crosses political boundaries to support our rich environments. [00:13:47] Together with the city which passed its resolution last month, Charlottesville and our county could become the world's first designated biophilic region. At its heart, this initiative is about recognizing and strengthening the connections between people and nature. It's about building health, resilience, and identity through the assets we already have and which makes Abermale unique. [00:14:09] It is not about constraints. It's about strengthening commitments we already made, protecting biodiversity, investing into healthy, livable communities, and planning for resilience in the face of climate change. Joining the network gives us a framework to celebrate and connect existing efforts from the Biodiversity Action Plan and the Ravana River Partnerships to the AC44 goals in nature-based tourism. [00:14:35] UVA, and specifically the program that I'm directing, is fully behind this effort. My students and I conducted a biophilic acid analysis of the region, and we are currently preparing an exhibition that will open September 12th at the school. I'm also planning to apply for another Jefferson grant to this fall to help pilot the collaboration. [00:14:56] With your support, we could take the next step and formally apply to the Biophilic Cities Network. The process is modest and highlighted in our letter. The benefits are significant. Regional alignment with the city and UVA, an international platform that allows us to learn from other cities and feature our achievements, and a boost to nature-based economic development, education, and tourism. [00:15:18] This initiative gives us a really positive and proactive opportunity to tell a story, one that reflects of who we are, strengthening our identity, and a story who we aspire to be in the future. Just imagine the headlines in the New York Times. Thank you for your considerations and all your service. [00:15:35] Thank you. Thank you. Our second speaker is Kim Biasioli. Welcome. Good afternoon. Kim Biasioli with the Piedmont Environmental Council. [00:15:53] My comments today are about the cost of community services study. First, we appreciated the recent presentation on the county's conservation programs on February 19th, which highlighted the many public benefits of land conservation. One of the most impactful of those public benefits is minimization of residential sprawl in the rural area, which has tremendous fiscal impacts. [00:16:19] The cost of community services study we'll hear about today underscores those impacts. Cost of community services studies matter because localities provide essential services that residents depend on and those public services require revenue. While it's tempting to look to greenfield development as a source of economic activity in the short term and as a way to increase the residential tax base to cover future services, these studies show that it actually generates new costs that quickly overwhelm any fiscal benefit. According to the study, in FY22, [00:16:57] residential land uses generated a deficit of $82 million, while commercial and industrial and agriculture and open space land uses generated estimated surpluses of 70 million and 4 million respectively. So one key takeaway is that residential land uses do not generate sufficient revenue to support the cost of services while these other land uses do. The study also recognizes the importance of managing growth and avoiding sprawl, stating that the county's rapid population growth has focused attention on the potential loss of prime farmland, forest, and open space [00:17:34] to development. Increases in sprawling and low-density residential development could have negative fiscal impacts that result in excessive demand for existing public services and infrastructure or increased tax rates. Sprawl will not solve the county's fiscal challenges and will further compound the non-monetary costs to our community, including loss of air and water quality and loss of resiliency. Instead, we encourage thoughtful and intentional planning for smart growth that incentivizes density and redevelopment within the development area where affordable transportation [00:18:13] and services already exist. This strategy will also help protect and conserve the rural area, its resources, and the public health and quality of life for our community members. Thank you. Thank you. James Walker. Welcome. Thank you. Afternoon. James Walker with the scottsville community chamber of commerce i saw you all in scottsville last week wanted to say thank you for coming it was a good to see you there and the presentations were excellent i do [00:18:49] want to say that uh make a suggestion next meeting next time i think it's once a year that you come down if there is any way to work in public comment or an opportunity for us to ask questions to the counselors it would be appreciated general feeling for everybody that i talked to was a little bit of the big brother came come down to tell us how it is without much collaboration the other reason I'm come to speak today is to speak on behalf of the volunteer fire department as you saw during the meeting two volunteers had to leave the meeting to go cut the pumps on on schedule and at that time [00:19:27] the volunteer fire department presented everything that they do outside of running calls to keep the levees in shape and keep the water out of our town. It's a very important organization to keep our community safe and I don't think it's a financially sense-making to have that be paid positions. I think it makes sense to keep it in the hands of the volunteers, the people that are going to be able to react at three o'clock in the morning when they see the flood stage is [00:19:59] unexpectedly risen and get down there in a timely fashion to do it for next to nothing of cost. to the county anyway. Right now it's nothing to cost to the county to keep those pumps running as far as the demand hours that go. The current placement of the engine that has come to Scottsville is viewed in general as beginnings of a hostile takeover. The fact that it's a half mile from the current volunteer fire station shrinks the, they were told has been headed, will shrink their [00:20:37] response area by over half there was mention of collaboration and as to this project they were notified that this was the way it was going to be two days before the engine was acquired by Amar County and then not not being able to have any communication back and forth about it Scottsville volunteers are open to working with the county they work well with the paid firefighters they appreciate the help, but they do want more collaboration, which is why I'm here. I'm asking [00:21:14] for more communication. I've already reached out to Dan Eggleston. I plan to keep on reaching out to him. There is no reason it needs to be viewed negatively. Y'all are trying to help. I recognize that, but best efforts without communication can be perceived otherwise, and so please help me help you i guess is what i'm trying to say thank you keisha washington [00:21:38] welcome good afternoon i am keisha washington i'm the associate director of special relationships and initiatives at habitat for humanity i am here today to um give some recommendations towards the affordable housing investment fund um i hope you see this as me um asking for choice [00:22:16] for future affordable housing opportunities for families. I want to highlight two sections. First, Section 3, the funding priorities. I ask that we consider the current language. [00:22:32] So currently, the current language gives preference to applications that ensure 90-year affordability terms. In practice, the only type of project capable of meeting this requirement is a community land trust. While land trusts play a valuable role, this preference significantly narrows the pool of potential housing providers and restricts affordable homeownership models to one form, namely one that limits homeowner equity. [00:23:03] This is particularly problematic for communities of color who have historically been excluded from homeownership opportunities. As a result, we now see a 10 to 1 ratio or racial wealth gap in the greater Charlottesville region. [00:23:20] Policies that prioritize such restrictive models risk perpetuating this inequity by limiting pathways to wealth building through homeownership. Also, Section 9C, the affordable for sale housing. [00:23:36] the requirement that homes sold as affordable must remain occupied by a low-income owner for 40 years needs to be more flexible. While the goal of maintaining long-term affordability is important, there are legitimate reasons why a home may need to be sold on the open market. [00:24:00] A more balanced and flexible approach would be to grant a 40-year right of first refusal to the original builder or seller. This would allow them to repurchase the home, either reselling it affordably or reinvesting the proceeds into new affordable housing development within the county. [00:24:18] So in conclusion, I ask that we support or want you to know that we do support the county's goal of expanding permanently affordable housing, but we must also recognize the importance of wealth building through homeownership. The current policy proposals lean too heavily towards permanent affordability at the expense of homeowner equity. We urge the county to adopt a more balanced approach that activates the full range of tools available to address the [00:24:52] region's housing needs. Thank you. Thank you. All right, the next speaker is Richard Tremblay. Welcome. Good afternoon. [00:25:12] Do you want to adjust the microphone? My name is Richard Tremblay. I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller District. I'm a volunteer with Habitat, interested in affordable housing, and speaking today as a supporter of Habitat and its mission of providing affordable homes in this area. [00:25:30] I have three concerns on the draft guidelines for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which you'll hear more about from the staff this afternoon. These particular provisions that I'm going to touch on don't treat habitat fairly in the competition for this fund, and it should be treated fairly. [00:25:52] I have three concerns on the draft guidelines, but first of all, let me thank the county for establishing this fund and appropriating the initial money for it. My first concern is on the priorities that are set out in the draft, which gives top priority and, in fact, sole priority to land trust model projects with a 90-year affordability period. [00:26:22] Habitat does not operate as a land trust. Charlottesville Habitat does not. But it does provide for long-term affordability, 40-year term of affordability with its right of first refusal and has a long record of providing families with the opportunity to grow well through the appreciation sharing. [00:26:43] So my question is, why shrink the potential number of providers to just a single form of homeownership when others like Habitat can help the county achieve its housing production goals? Secondly, the distribution of units, the provision that for-sale homes be the same square footage, The same number of bedrooms and style as the mix of market rate homes in a mixed income neighborhood is really not practical or advisable, not in all cases at least. [00:27:18] For example, at Southwood, Habitat homes, although they're mixed throughout the community, do have less square footage and sometimes less number of bedrooms than the comparable Southern development and Atlantic builders' homes. [00:27:34] This helps Habitat with construction costs, and it's working well for the families at Southwood and the community at large. And finally, the affordable-for-sale compliance period. There should be some more openness to how this 40-year low-income residency provision can be satisfied. [00:27:55] Habitat homes do go on the market, and in those cases, Habitat either buys the unit back and resells it to another qualifying family or uses the proceeds to build another affordable unit in the county. Either way, the long-term objective is met. [00:28:11] Thanks for your continued support for affordable housing and taking these concerns into consideration. Thank you. Next speaker is Neil Williamson. [00:28:31] Good afternoon. My name is Neil Williamson. I serve as president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a nonpartisan public policy organization focused on local governments in Central Virginia. Details matter. Often such details are not terribly exciting. [00:28:49] But as staff attempts to prepare policy documents that meet the Board of Supervisors' intent, things may be lost in the translation. This afternoon, you'll be discussing your Affordable Housing Investment Fund. This document outlines your goals and purposes well, yet it forgets a key part of the purpose as it describes the grant funding and loan process. [00:29:14] I quote, 40% of the annual AHIF balance will be reserved for non-profit housing providers. These funds will be provided as grants, and projects will be selected through a competitive application process with submitted applications assessed against a set of evaluation criteria outlined in Section X below. [00:29:34] Grant funding may also be provided to for-profit developers if a project is comprised of 100% affordable housing. In addition to being unclear and conflicted within itself, it's misguided. [00:29:51] Albemarle County desires to have affordable housing product integrated with market product. This policy effectively prevents for-profit developers from making that dream a reality. [00:30:07] To be clear, the non-profit could have market rate product in their proposal, and even commercial, as we see in Southwood, but the for-profit could not to receive a grant. This discriminatory draft document goes even further in the loan section. [00:30:26] Where it's proposed, without reason, non-profit developers will receive 0% interest loans and for-profit entities will pay 2%. I know it's deep in the weeds, but the bottom line is this creates an uneven playing field where non-profit developers who compete in the same market as the for-profit brethren gain an unfair advantage. [00:30:50] If increased affordable housing stock is the goal, why does Albemarle favor one developer corporate structure over another? The Free Enterprise Forum believes more housing is good for our community. We also believe in equity, equity for buyers and equity for builders. [00:31:13] The AHIF rules for all enterprises should be the same. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Our next speaker is Christine Robertson. Welcome. [00:31:33] Please adjust the microphone. A little bit down. A little bit. Good afternoon. My name is Christine Robertson. I am with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville. I'm the Director of Grants and Grant Compliance. Prior to starting with Habitat two years ago, I've spent three decades in the affordable housing industry working on both for sale and affordable rental development. [00:31:55] And as you might guess, I'm here to talk on behalf of the Affordable Housing Investment Fund. I wanted to comment specifically on page 7, section C, where it indicates a sale price limit. That sale price limit is 65% of the current HUD home limit. [00:32:15] That home limit is already 95% of the median sale price in the community. Before coming to this meeting, I looked up what is for sale in Albemarle County that fits that limit, which is $247,000 today. [00:32:35] There are 780 properties for sale, 4% of them, 29 properties fit into that category. So first of all, we think that limit is not realistic in terms of producing something with the fund. Second of all, we have concerns about what that drives developers to do in terms of selling homes in communities. [00:32:57] Think if you're in a neighborhood where the average sale price is $500,000 and somebody comes in and wants to build an affordable unit next to you, and they're going to sell it for $247,000. How are you going to feel about how that affects your property value? So we feel like there are other ways to get to maybe the objectives that the fund has in a different way, perhaps limiting the per-unit subsidy limits, using restrictive covenants. [00:33:26] But we suggest, and what works well for Habitat at places like Southwood, the reasons we've been invited into mixed-income communities to build alongside other market rate developers is because we sell at the value, fair, full value of the house as it's built instead of driving the price down. [00:33:47] And so that's why we would like for you all to reconsider that guideline and come up with alternatives that get to your objectives but don't cause what we see as maybe driving those units into areas of concentration, which I think we all feel is not the right way to go for affordable housing. [00:34:07] Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. The next speaker is Christine Putnam. Hello. My name is Christine Putnam, and I live in the Scottsville District, and I serve on the Natural Heritage Committee. [00:34:29] First of all, I'd like to thank you for the additional funding in the 2026 Budget for Climate Action Program. I appreciate your leadership and support of this program in a tight budget year, and I look forward to seeing the program fully staffed soon. [00:34:45] But today, I would like to ask you for your support for something that will require little in terms of money or staff that can pay big dividends for our community, including to help build green or support green infrastructure to build climate resilience. [00:35:06] So please consider a resolution to join the Biophilic Cities Network. You've heard from my NHC colleague already about the program, and we've sent a letter to you just yesterday providing background, justification, benefits, and what would be required from the county to participate. [00:35:27] but I would like to take this time to specifically highlight some of the many benefits of joining with more than half of Albemarle County's population living in the development areas working together with the city to advance elements of biophilic urbanism can improve the health and well-being of all Albemarle County citizens. Albemarle County has already committed to protecting biodiversity and natural resources through many of our planning documents including the AC44 and joining the city will help to promote those actions and to work across administrative [00:36:06] boundaries to realize those goals. Joining the network could produce economic opportunities while making the county a more attractive place to live and work. Tourism, including outdoor recreation, agritourism, and nature education could further benefit from the biophilic city's network identity. We can more effectively capitalize on many of our biophilic assets already identified in and around the county, including the Rivanna River Corridor, the Shenandoah National [00:36:40] Park, and our many county parks. Joining the network could provide another opportunity for Almaw County to work with the city and UVA on a shared vision, and it provides an opportunity to connect, share, and learn from other communities in the Biophilic Cities Network, both in Virginia and around the world, and perhaps to solve some of the pressing problems that we have, including affordable housing and how we protect our natural resources. [00:37:10] So again, I hope you will consider this to join the other communities in Virginia who are already part of the network as a way to celebrate and capitalize on the great things we're already doing. Thank you. The next speaker, and I'm going to apologize. I can't tell if this is J.D. or J.B. Brown. J.D. All right. Thank you. Just to follow up on our last speaker, I'm J.D. [00:37:41] Brown. I'm the Program Director for Biophilic Cities. I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville. So we are located at the University of Virginia in the School of Architecture, and we get a lot OF QUESTIONS REGARDING WHAT'S THE PURPOSE AND INTENT OF THE NETWORK AND WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS ACTIVITIES THAT ARE INVOLVED WITH PARTICIPATING IN THE NETWORK. [00:38:08] SO I JUST WANT TO OFFER MYSELF AS A POTENTIAL POINT OF CONTACT IF STAFF WANTS TO PURSUE THIS AND MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS. THERE'S THREE PARTS TO THE APPLICATION. IT'S REALLY SETTING OUT WHERE THE COUNTY IS TODAY IN TERMS OF ITS NATURAL RESOURCE PLANNING. [00:38:24] are the elements that it has in terms of parks and trails, all of the different aspects that make up what we think of as a city or a county that's rich in nature at your doorstep and all the benefits that that provides. So the network is really just a resource. It's not a certification. It's not a fee-based entity. It's merely an opportunity to work and share with other cities in the Commonwealth. So Richmond, the county of Arlington, Norfolk, as well as Reston, Virginia are already [00:39:03] part of this network. It's about 50% cities in the United States, 50% of cities globally of all sorts of different sizes. So as large as places like Singapore, but also Costa Rica, which is 30,000 people, but very focused on how do you use kind of natural resource planning as a means TO MEET ALL SORTS OF DIFFERENT SOCIAL PRIORITIES AND GOALS, ECONOMIC GOALS FOR THE CITY. [00:39:33] SO YOU'VE HEARD THAT THE CITY IS MOVING FORWARD WITH CREATING YOUR OWN APPLICATION. SO THIS WOULD BE A FIRST OPPORTUNITY FOR THERE TO BE A REGIONAL COLLABORATION. SO WE HAVE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY AS PART OF THE NETWORK AS WELL AS ARLINGTON, BUT THIS WOULD be across jurisdiction so the city and the county working together to prioritize things like natural resource planning resilience planning thinking about biodiversity support and how that's incorporated into the urban [00:40:06] landscapes so all sorts of different concepts and ideas but please use me as a resource share questions and we're happy to to support this application so Thanks very much. Thank you. Our last speaker is Peggy Gilgis. Hi, good afternoon. I'm Peggy Gilgis. I live in the Jack Jewett District. I would like to see Albemarle County join the city as biophilic region, but I'm here today as a member of the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory [00:40:45] Committee, a committee appointed by this board to provide information and recommendations about sustainable materials management policies. I wish to thank the board for its support, especially our board liaisons, Supervisor Lapisto-Curtley and Supervisor Andrews, for steadfastly attending all of our meetings, listening, and participating in our discussions. [00:41:10] Over the past 10 years, the county and Ravana Solid Waste Authority have implemented recommendations to improve our waste disposal and recycling services and to divert waste from landfills. Our progress on this is important, as Ravana has warned that at current rates of disposal, Virginia landfills will reach capacity within 20 years. [00:41:32] As with energy efficiency, efficient management of the materials we use saves us money, conserves natural resources, reduces pollution, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, all of which benefit human and environmental health and well-being over the long term. [00:41:53] The SWAC has recently sent the board two recommendations among the legislative actions likely to come before our state representatives in 2026. We've asked that the county express its support for extended producer responsibility policies, which would make producers responsible for the end-of-life stages of their products. These policies prolong the life of landfills and reduce waste expenses for localities. [00:42:23] We also strongly recommend support for a beverage container deposit system in Virginia, which would significantly improve recycling rates while also reducing litter. There are potentially other waste reduction measures on the legislative docket, which we have recommended and look to you to endorse. [00:42:41] Our second recommendation is for the county to implement permitting and reporting guidelines for waste haulers handling municipal solid waste, recyclables, organic waste, and construction and demolition materials collected within Albemarle County. While many residents use Ravana facilities to dispose of waste, recycle, or compost, we don't have statistics on waste and recycling by companies that contract directly with county residents or businesses. In other words, we don't really know how much waste or recycling we're producing and as the saying goes to manage it you have to measure [00:43:18] it we're happy to answer any questions you may have about these recommendations and we want to thank you again for your considered continued support of sustainable materials management in albemarle county thank you thank you that's it thank you board our next item is approval of the consent agenda. I have not heard of any suggestions of any amendments. We're looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Motion from Supervisor Malik, second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? [00:43:57] Yes. Ms. Lepisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Thank you. On to our first presentation, and this is on the cost of community services study and this will be led by our own deputy county executive and law with tariff prep hand a regional economist from weldon cooper center public service welcome [00:44:19] hello uh chair and members of the board nice to meet you my name is terry rephan and i'm a regional economist at the weldon cooper center at uva and i'm sure you're familiar with weldon Cooper Center, and I know some of you from presentations on other topics related to Albemarle [00:44:51] County, so it's good to see you again. This study was published actually back in the end of 2023. It seems like ancient history, doesn't it? And it was produced for Scott Clark, who was, he's the conservation program officer for the county and community development and he would he was involved in the process of updating a comprehensive plan and he wanted a background document to help assist in sort of that effort to inform it and at the cooper center we've actually done several of [00:45:30] these studies and so we've done one for fock here county the next one we did for clark you're the third one. We actually have another one up in Northern Virginia that we're going to be doing. And so we have some experience doing these things now and some credibility and a lot of folks knocking on our door now to do these. But I want to provide you a little bit more background on the study, the methodology, the history, and show you the warts and everything, the good aspects of these studies and some of the limitations of them. We're not an advocacy organization. Actually, [00:46:09] the organization that started doing these, the American Farmland Trust, is an advocacy for land preservation for farm agricultural uses. We're a general public policy shop. We work with a lot of local governments and obviously the state government and do some federal work too. [00:46:30] So my outline, first of all, I want to talk about the purpose of the study, and it's really conceptually pretty simple, and then get into some of the history, the methodology, the limitations, and the data collection process, and then dive into the results. [00:46:50] So the purpose of the study, obviously, was to provide some background information for the comp plan. And in the process of doing this, we compute a ratio that indicates whether a particular land use, and we divide it into three categories, is sort of a net burden or a net surplus to the community in terms of fiscal surplus. [00:47:19] So we look at revenues and expenditures, and we assign them to one of the land uses based on what the demand is the source of demand for that particular category of expenditure who's generating the revenue and then we compute these revenue these ratios and if it's greater than one then you say well it's a net burden if it's less than one then it's a net contributor okay so as i mentioned it was developed by the american farmland trust in the 1980s and its motivation [00:47:55] was, well, there's all this urban sprawl occurring, and farmland was being lost in these large metropolitan areas like northern Virginia, the Washington, D.C. area. And they did approximately 100 studies, and then they sort of went out of the business back around 2004, 2005, and that's when our telephone started ringing. And since then, a lot of universities and private consultants have done these sort of studies I actually spoke to an AFT representative [00:48:31] the other day and since their federal funding has been cut off in a lot of different areas they're thinking about getting back into this business to generate some some revenue but as I mentioned the the methodology fairly simple you sign revenue and expenditures to particular land uses and you compute that ratio. This category of study comes out of a sort of a family of category studies called fiscal impact analyses. And I used to serve on the fiscal impact advisory [00:49:07] committee. Is that still in existence? But it gave recommendations to the board on particular housing developments and proffers, things of that nature. And I remember the time at Steve Owl's house, he was the, shepherded that committee through the meetings. [00:49:32] And so now on to the limitations of these studies. First of all, there's some sensitivity to the methodological choices made in the studies. We have, by and large, adopted the American Farmland Trust methodology. part in a few few ways that we document in the appendix methodological appendix to this study but as you go across you know states are organized in different ways they have different revenue sources different jurisdictions in some states educational districts are subordinate to the county overlap them some they're [00:50:11] incorporated there multiple educational districts in some places they cover multiple counties. So that can make a difference in some results that you get, as well as the land use definitions. And why is that important? Because K through 12 is a lot of what you do, right? And if those boundaries differ, then you can get wildly different. If you don't consider K-12 expenditures, then your results are going to look vastly different. The other thing to recognize about these types of studies is if they're there are one point in time you're looking at things in [00:50:48] a static way not at the margin so we're not looking at a new subdivision that's being proposed for instance we're not saying all housing is is going to be a fiscal deficit for you there could be ones that are very very good in terms of generating more revenue than than expenditures and it depends on the community, too, because if you're a community at capacity where you've got to build lots of new infrastructure, then the average cost of services is not going to be a good representation of what the cost of those services are. It's going to be higher. On the other hand, [00:51:25] if you're lagging, you're losing population, then you may not have any cost at all to providing those services, just keeping the schools open and the lights on. Their cost is shutting those facilities down so so it matters the type of community that you are another thing to be cognizant of is market failures and tax incidents and I don't want to get into this is economist jargon and theoretical stuff but just because somebody is charged the tax doesn't mean that that entity bears the [00:52:00] tax so the incidence of tax could even though a business is paying it it could be born partly by residences and ag and vice versa so important distinction we make in economics that that can happen and there are also things called public goods like police service right that benefits everyone it may be for the general public you know they may be for an event a commercial event but it's protecting everybody in the community farm farmers and everyone so assigning [00:52:36] that to a particular land use well they're there you know you somebody could take an issue with that and and lastly there are various metrics of community welfare other than this sort of cost community approach there's also economic impact analysis the social cost-benefit analysis and you could actually do these different methods and come up with contrary answers or contradictory answers. So this is one piece of information that you have to digest in combination with all kinds [00:53:13] of different things. But we're presenting this for your decision-making process and for your comp plan so that you're aware of this particular dimension of the problem. Okay, so in looking at Albemarle County, how is it different and how might this influence the results of the cost of community services study. Well, first of all, you get a relatively high percentage of your tax revenue from ag land uses. I don't know if you realize this. And this is an old study, Virginia Local Tax Rates 2019. It's a survey that we do. We actually revived it after five years absence, [00:53:52] but we don't ask the land use tax question anymore. So I'm relying on 2019 data here. So you actually get, comparatively, a lot of revenue from ag. You also are unique, well, not unique, but you're a community in central Virginia that has a conservation easement program. [00:54:16] Most counties don't have them, so you're different in that respect as well. The land use categories that we used, we got from the county assessor. [00:54:33] And this is a state legislated, you know, what all communities are supposed to use. And we used that and aggregated them into the three land use categories of residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural open space. There's obviously a residual category there. [00:54:51] You'll say, well, where's UVA? Well, it's in that exempt government religious charitable. Don't ask me any questions about UVA. They are not in this. So anything government, nonprofit, university, it's basically thrown out. [00:55:07] We're just looking at those sort of private land use categories. Okay, so the steps, we've defined the land use categories. We collect a bunch of revenue and expenditure data. It actually comes from your annual comprehensive financial report from all those statements at the back of the report that have all the numbers in them, revenues and expenditures, schedule, and so forth. [00:55:34] And then we collect information to help us to assign those revenues and expenditures to particular land uses. And we got a lot of that information from individual departments, like the police department, like the fire department, like community development. [00:55:52] And then we allocate those expenditures and revenues to land uses and we calculate that ratio. Okay, so here are some of the sources that we used. It's the annual comprehensive financial report now. [00:56:08] A bit of a typo there. The county assessor provided a lot of the information that we used, and the public safety incident reporting systems, the fire and police, we used information, caseload stats from circuit and district courts, and additional information from county staff. [00:56:27] We leaned on the budget office to provide us a lot more budget detail than was available in the annual financial report because we needed more granular descriptions of particular items to assign them to one of the land use categories. [00:56:44] In some instances, we had a tough time making a decision about these things like general administrative stuff, like the county administrator. What do we assign him to? well, we use a fallback ratio, and that's basically the property taxes by land use. [00:57:03] We say, well, we don't know where to put it. Let's just use this general ratio based on property taxes. And that's standard AFT approach, so we're not varying from that. Sometimes we use hybrid methods, a combination of administrative records and fallback ratio, and sometimes we, though I don't think we did this time, rely on professional guesstimates. [00:57:27] provided by staff uh however we have in in previous studies so here's here's sort of the bottom line when we made those assignments and you see the breakout here in the different land uses and so you see that gap and one of the speakers earlier referenced the the 82 million dollar gap there at the back for residential um and then the surplus commercial industrial and ag open space and so That's the breakdown. [00:58:01] And then when you start computing the ratios, obviously, I said 1 over 1 is bad. Less than 1 is good from the perspective of generating revenue surpluses. And so this table shows a couple of different things. [00:58:20] One is the ratio, just a pure ratio based on your budget, your actual numbers for FY22. And then we make an adjustment to make it a balanced budget. So, you know, obviously if you are engaged in a lot of deficit spending that year, then your expenditures are going to tend to be higher than your revenues. [00:58:45] And so this must have been dipping into your surplus fund in FY22. So the balanced budget ratio goes down for residential a bit for all three categories. And then we did a series of thought experiments, sort of a sensitivity analysis just to say, well, if we varied some of these assumptions, what would it look like? [00:59:11] So we removed federal and state revenues and expenditures, which tend to be more oriented toward residential. They get assigned to residential, and you can see the impact it has there, a fairly negligible impact. We remove use value assessment, meaning we take it away from ag and make them pay that extra tax. [00:59:32] So they're contributing more, and that brings their ratio down. And then we make an adjustment for public safety, because one of the things I noticed, and I'm going to show you a slide here in a second that benchmarks your results versus other communities in Virginia and other studies. [00:59:51] And you're going to see that you're a little bit high, so you might ask why that is. Well, first of all, you have a conservation easement program, so a little bit. But mostly it was because of the public safety data, the way it was geocoded. And so, you know, I wanted to say, well, what if it looked like the other communities that we had done studies for in Fauquier and Clark? [01:00:13] And let's say the data quality wasn't very good, then it would have brought it down to .359 for ag. And then we add dwellings to open, the farm dwellings that people live in to ag open space. but didn't add in the service demand to them, and that brought it down, too. [01:00:30] So these are just things to show that, you know, you can do things to bring it down. You can do things to pump it up. And here's a benchmark comparison to other studies. You see your numbers there for ag open space residential compared to the American Farmland Trust, the 125 studies that they reported on in a study about 10, 15 years ago. [01:00:57] And then Virginia 8 studies, of which two of them are our studies. I think five are American Farmland Trust, and one is another nonprofit conservation organization had done a study. And so that's how you compare to that. But it is within the range of what you see in these types of studies. [01:01:19] And so I just wanted to give you a deeper dive and a greater understanding, and also an understanding of some of the limitations. Obviously, you've got to balance a lot of different considerations, and this is one piece of information that you have to consider. So thank you for your attention. [01:01:35] Thank you very much. And if you remain, we'll have questions, I'm sure. We have an order in which we go through. We'll start with Supervisor Lupisto-Curvin. Thank you for the presentation. So bottom line, to cull all this down, I understand, my understanding is it's about $1.30 or $1.30 for residential land use. [01:02:03] So that means from the taxes, real estate taxes we receive, it costs for every dollar that the county spends on services, it actually costs us $1.30 from the residential, okay? [01:02:22] So residential costs more to serve. And if we spend a dollar that we collect from commercial, then that only costs us $0.32 in services. Exactly. And if we collect a dollar from agricultural ag, open space land use, it costs us about 50 cents for services. [01:02:47] So clearly, it costs a lot more from real estate taxes. That's a big demand on us, but that's something I think we're probably looking into. [01:03:03] So do I have that correct? Yes, that's spot on. thank you you explained it better than me actually thank you okay so i think that it lets everybody know where how things cost because people will say well build more houses okay that's good we do need more housing but then that also costs us more in services so people just need to understand that so where we're really getting the best bang for our buck so to speak is commercial industrial [01:03:41] because they don't require necessarily police fire schools parks and wrecks things like that so the the the money we get from commercial industrial uses that gives us a lot more bang for our buck so to speak right now now we did assign public safety i mean if there's a fire call, if there was a police call, to a commercial enterprise, then we did assign that as a cost. [01:04:09] The biggest factor is K-12. That goes entirely, I think, almost entirely to residential category, and that's 50% of your budget, something like that. So that's obviously... And Parks and Rec? Parks and Rec, yes, that also goes to residential. [01:04:27] Right, right. But there are less services for police and fire for commercial. Because the amount of residential we have is compared to commercial, correct? Right. And there are also services that we assign to commercial, industrial, and ag. [01:04:44] I mean, obviously conservation easement, and there were some ag programs for cooperative extension, for instance, and soil and conservation. You fund a small part of that, so we assign some of those to ag uses. [01:05:00] And economic development, I think we assign to the business community. And there were maybe some infrastructure projects, some street scape, commercial street scape projects and some things. So there are expenditures associated with them. But when you consider the revenues that they generate, you know, there's a considerable surplus there. [01:05:18] Right. And one last thing. I understand that 24% of our land is under a permanent conservation easement, which helps protect the agriculture, basically Albemarle. [01:05:33] Okay. And then 40% is farmland. I thought that was interesting. So we have a robust thing there. Thank you. That's all my questions. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? As a point of clarification, when we're looking at land that is under conservation easement, and we still tax some of it, right, is that being classified as agricultural open space in y'all's analysis? [01:05:58] I believe so, yeah. Yeah, if it's under easement. And there's some, is it five acres? there's some minimum for you to be eligible even for that I believe the lower battery boundary vague was I'd have to look at that make sure that they completely overlap well actually classification I mean some of that could actually be in the residential category I think AG is 20 and above according to [01:06:36] land use categories here okay okay so so if it was less than that then it would would have fallen in the residential? There is some blurring of the boundary there a little bit. A comparable kind of question. It is not common because it's unprudent, but sometimes people make mistakes or don't know about programs that are available to them. [01:06:58] When we're looking at folks who own substantial tracts of land in the rural area that aren't used for residential purposes and that also aren't being productively farmed, right, They're still paying taxes on those, and they're paying taxes at a higher rate if they're not under any other kind of land use. [01:07:19] Are those being reflected as residential? That's a good question. You know, I can't say I don't have enough familiarity with the โ€“ I basically take the computer file and process it, I'm afraid. [01:07:40] I understand. I'm at less familiarity with the particularities of individual properties. You had alluded that our public safety allocation is statistically anomalous compared to some of our peers, and I was expecting a slide on that, and then we didn't. [01:07:58] Can you kind of talk us through that? Of how your results were different from the other communities? Yes. So the number, the ratio, and we're focusing on the ag result. Is that the one? I can go back and pull that slide up. [01:08:18] So that's the slide you're interested in here. So the 0.537 versus, say, the 0.349 and the 0.5 up, that's... Well, I'm not strictly, I'm asking you for clarification. You had said that there was, that we had an unusual distribution related to public safety that made some of our results unusual compared to our peers in the Commonwealth. [01:08:44] Right. I think you said made our residential numbers higher, but I might have misheard. And I guess I don't know what you're talking about. I would like you to clarify that. Yes, I was focusing on the ag open space, since that's sort of the focus of the cost of community service study. [01:09:01] And the .537, why is that relatively high? Well, it's not relatively high to the American Farmland Trust, 125 studies of .50. It's pretty close to that. The Virginia 8 studies that have been done is a little bit high compared to that. [01:09:18] And since I've done two of those, when I look back and saw the reason for the discrepancy from those is the public safety side, that there's a lot more assignment of the incident reports to these sort of rural areas. [01:09:36] I don't think that's wineries, people getting out of hand or anything like that, just to let you know. I think it's like road accidents and things that we weren't able to maybe accurately categorize. So that's why I did the sort of the sensitivity analysis where we borrowed some of these benchmark numbers and said, well, if we changed them to that, then you look exactly the same as the other Virginia communities. [01:10:02] I don't want to put you too much on the spot, but when we're looking at this as a comparator point to peers in the Commonwealth, I know you probably can't sum it up the comparison universe for all eight of these, but you mentioned you worked on two of them. Are we, who are our comparators in that Virginia study? [01:10:19] Is it the whole Commonwealth? Is it the specific communities in the Commonwealth? Yeah, the folks doing these studies are places under urbanization pressures, right? So I mentioned Falk here, and they're right on the edge, the ex-urban area, metro area, and Clark. [01:10:37] They're this oasis right in the middle of all of it. And the rest of them are, you know, it's like Loudoun. One county that's atypical, I think, is Acomack County is one of the counties. I think Frederick County is one, maybe Page, which is a little unusual, too. [01:10:55] So there are a few rural places, but it's generally Northern Virginia. Okay. I guess I would just observe that I think we're all very familiar with what the high-level takeaway of this is, right? Like, it costs more to build houses in the long run than it does to build anything else. [01:11:17] I would say it is an interesting, like, kind of tertiary takeaway that it seems like compared to our peers, we spend more dollars to donuts on providing public safety to our rural communities, right? That is what I'm hearing is an unreasonable takeaway, right? [01:11:35] We invest more deeply in rural public safety compared to our peers. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it for the report. I guess I'm thinking about, well, in my world, everything is a balance. [01:11:58] You have to balance everything in relation to everything else. And so if you skew either way too far, there's often consequences and often negative consequences. But just we're talking a lot right now about maybe this is maybe I would ask Jeff to jump in a little bit on this as well. [01:12:22] But we talk a lot right now about how our real estate properties are really very high, obviously. And because we have so much of the real estate property, our revenues coming from the real estate properties, trying to explain this in the correct way, our commercial is only at about 11% of our revenues. [01:12:51] And our real estate properties are about 70%, which is really a challenge for us right now because of our community finding us very unaffordable because of the real estate. I'm just trying to tie this in because we're trying desperately right now to diversify our tax base, which I think gets to some of the questions, well, not questions, but some of what we're seeing in this study as well. [01:13:18] And I don't know, Jeff, do you want to say anything? And I hope I framed that correctly. Dr. Rappan, thank you for being here today. We really appreciate you being here from the staff level. We were excited to get you before the board. A couple of comments I'd make, Supervisor McKeel. [01:13:35] First of all, I think that we are out in the community a lot and have been during the budget process, understandably. I think at one point I heard the board quote that we'd been in front of the community about 33 hours in total with our work sessions our community meetings our budget town halls and such related to this past year's budget and one of our one of our most common comments from the community that i truly understand that that intuitively the community believes is when they see residential [01:14:08] housing going up they see that as a a revenue cash flow for local government that's going to help to solve problems and issues. And I think you being here today, it's very helpful to show that with 125 studies, if I'm understanding you correctly, eight studies in Virginia that you focus on, and then of course Alarmar County, in any of those you see that it costs more to serve in residential communities that are built overall aggregate than for the revenues that we receive. [01:14:43] And then I heard you hone in on schools, and in fact, you said it's about 50% of your budget. Public schools and our funding of public schools, it is about 50% of our budget. And so I think that's very helpful for us to be grounded with this study on what some of the drivers are. [01:15:03] I think what Ms. McKeel is pointing to is the fact that when we look, and you probably know this, at looking across at the three categories. Residential, as Ms. McKeel said, is about 72% of our tax base. Commercial and industrial is about 11.3 and agriculture is about 15. And you probably know that we're an outlier with the 95 counties in Virginia. We have a market higher level of agriculture and open space. And we hope in the diversification of our revenues that we're [01:15:38] able to drive that 11.3% commercial and industry, I'd like to see that as county executive be at least in the 15 to 17% range. And I believe at least one of our board members have reached back and said in 05, 06, 07, that we were in the 15 to 17% range. And I would tell you, sir, that we've not lost commercial industry per se as much as the residential both growth and assessment growth has overtaken in terms of that growth percentage versus commercial and industrial, and so we've lost in an aggregate level. [01:16:16] And so that's one of the reasons it's so important for us to have you here today is to make sure that we fully understand the study. And there's a study there, Jeff, excuse me, a slide that shows what you wrote. Yes, I was looking at that slide. [01:16:32] Yeah, it's right there. That sort of summarizes your point, I guess. Right, yep, and that's wonderful. I appreciate that. And, Ms. McKeel, I'll try not to interrupt the board again, but I think the other point I would make is Mike was trying, or Supervisor Pruitt was trying to really say, what's our high-level takeaways from here? And he attached to public safety in the rural area. [01:16:51] I thought that you were talking about the fact that without in the rural areas with the open space, we do have a lot of emergency response calls in the rural area, a lot of traffic accidents and such. And that may be some of the cost drivers associated. [01:17:08] I believe you showed that we're at about 0.53, but the average was about 0.5. And so I don't see a market increase there. I think what I'm much more interested in, if we went back to the residential board, is that out of 125 studies, it was 1.18, and we're 1.32, and the cost driver is schools. [01:17:30] I'd be curious to know out of those 125 other communities what their per pupil funding is because ours is one of the highest in the state, and that's the cost driver on that residential side. So I think it puts us in a very advantageous position when we look at how we're funding schools compared to those other 125 communities because we're at 1.32, they're at 1.18. [01:17:56] That's about a 13%, 14% increase. It's not alarming to me, but I think it really speaks to the county's commitment to public schools. Because that is the cost driver at about 50%, about 50 cents on every dollar of revenue that we bring in locally. [01:18:15] And I would just add to that, as a former school board member, I would say that part of that certainly that plays into it is very low class sizes. When you look at the perpetual funding, just talking about education. We have, and our community has chosen to have that, but very small class sizes. [01:18:33] I apologize for being long-winded. Our community has chosen to have very small class sizes, and I thank you. That was very helpful. He says it much better than that. I have another question. You said that UVA was completely taken out of this study. [01:18:49] Help me a little bit with that because we are really struggling right now with the University of Virginia. You're smiling. I have a conflict of interest here. Well, that's true, but I'm just trying to figure out. Because we really have, we're losing a lot of acreage and continue to lose a lot of acreage to the University of Virginia as a state agency, right? [01:19:10] And I'm just curious, even with your conflict of interest, do you have any comments on it? Not to put you on the spot, but. Well, first of all, I did adhere to the methodology that typically every study I've seen has thrown that sector out. [01:19:29] Actually, you do have incident reports, I mean, like, of all places, prisons or jails, right, and courthouses. You go and you see there's a cluster of all these incidents, and they're not counted or assigned to any land use either. So there's a reason that we don't consider it. [01:19:49] So then the question is, what do I think it would be, and what do we know? and I know you've digested some numbers on the revenues that are contributed by the university directly, and they're primarily foundation, right? You get a little bit from the university physicians group, about $38,000. You get a little bit from this category of faculty housing that according to Virginia statute, they have to pay half of the residential or the real property tax [01:20:23] on that so it comes out to a few million dollars and the whole assessed value of the property is pretty vast right so i don't even know what the rotundo what that would be appraised at a billion dollars and it's it's irreplaceable right but um so um on the other hand um it does provide some of its own services it does provide campus police services um i don't know that anyone [01:20:54] has ever compared like the service use of college faculty to to the general resident I don't know if they're a huge user of rec visit facilities cultural facilities etc maybe they use a more so there's no objective data really to look at these other things it does create a local amenity I mean obviously I mean And UVA is a class of, you know, it's a public IV. [01:21:24] People are in Albemarle County, retire here because of their connections to the university. So it's one of the things that drives up your housing costs, makes housing less affordable, but also contributes more. [01:21:42] I mean, there's this indirect effect of contributing to the real property tax base, right, through this sort of amenity effect. So you get some surplus from the presidency of the university. Then imagine a world with and without the university. [01:21:58] Let's just say we take it out of the community tomorrow, right? What's going to happen to the commercial businesses that are supported by the students? And so there are these indirect spinoff effects, these tax revenues that are contributed, faculty, staff, students supporting. [01:22:14] Spinoff businesses that come out of the licensing and ventures group, et cetera, wouldn't be there anymore. so forth. And as I understand, there's actually one spinoff that employs 200 people, some sort of a waste product company. I was told that they're generating revenue. So do I have any recommendation for what kind of a payment in lieu of taxes you should be charging? [01:22:44] I wasn't getting it back. It's a really complicated issue. I wouldn't want to say whether they should pay or shouldn't pay. You'd have to do an exhaustive analysis, and at the end, you know, it's a judgment call, I think. It is interesting because when you were just talking, I was remembering back, and I hadn't thought about this for a while, but I was remembering back, because, of course, you have all these little items that impact. [01:23:12] But I remember when we were doing a few years ago the work on the court renovation, And I remember several of the judges saying to us that over their judgeships, they were seeing definitely an increase in their court proceedings with students from the University of Virginia. [01:23:32] They were seeing a lot more students in court. It was just kind of interesting, and that stuck with me. Yeah, and they were talking about it specifically that we have all the parents coming to town because their children are in court. [01:23:48] and they were trying to find the courts, and they're downtown, and neither here nor there. And it was about wayfaring, which I'm going way down into the weeds here. But I thought it was interesting that the UVA students are increasingly challenging our courts. And maybe that's a natural as it gets bigger. [01:24:06] But anyway, just a comment. But I really thank you, and I really appreciate Jeff speaking to this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Malek? Great. Thank you so much for being here again and helping us understand this. And I have appreciated the answers to the other's questions, and I just have a couple to add. [01:24:24] So could you go into a little more detail on, say, agricultural land, but there is a house and children. So is the house and its two acres put into the residential category as the assessor does, and the rest of it might be in the agricultural? [01:24:43] Right. It's just the farm land. Just the dirt. And the farm buildings. Yeah, the farm buildings. Okay, great. That's terrific. Back in the 80s, when there was a challenge early on to our agricultural use taxation, and I came to the board and said, you know, my cows don't go to school. [01:25:05] So it does not have the same impact on the budget. And I still believe that. I mean, they haven't told me that they're coming to school. So the question you talked about public safety at first being higher, Is that because of the distances for these public safety things in the rural area? [01:25:28] Because I know that the highest incidence of all of our public safety fire stations is Station 8 right in the middle of 29 North. And often the rural stations have to come in to backfill in the urban area. So I don't know how the data is based. [01:25:44] And I should be asking Dan, I guess. Is it based upon the station of origin? So if Earliesville Station goes into backup Station 8 at Seminole, then because they're busy with all the accidents that happen on 29, where does that data fall? I'm just curious because I know you're looking at an encyclopedia Britannica of data, and believe me, I don't understand it all. [01:26:06] Yeah, that would be a great question for the fire department. They were very helpful in providing the โ€“ and GIS actually then processed the data for me. I didn't have to touch that. Fantastic. But I guess I still am troubled by someone else's takeaway that we're spending more public safety dollars in the country. [01:26:34] And maybe it's because of the geography, but just I would love to look, I'll try to get some more information about that. Yeah, it's relative to the revenue contribution, I guess, is a comparison. And so it's a minority, the revenue contribution, right? [01:26:51] So I'm just saying it's disproportionately high compared to these other studies that have been done. And just trying to describe the reason for that anomaly, that difference. [01:27:06] It's not necessarily that you get this huge problem in the rare areas. And part of it may be a classification error, which is why I did the additional analysis. And I'm not saying it's an error. I'm just trying to understand. But it begins to make more sense now when you're talking about the part of the fraction is the value of the asset, the building real estate value in the growth area versus the scattered houses in the rural area. [01:27:38] Okay. And that is all the questions I have. Oh, I'm glad you brought up, even though you didn't want to, the in lieu of taxes because this is something that makes me grind my teeth a lot. And that is, my husband was a dentist for 40 years, and he had his dental office in a privately owned business and paid taxes and everything else. [01:28:01] And the same dental office medical people over at Fontaine are always trying not to. And that is something we have not fixed yet, and I hope that we will all continue to fix it, because we're being taken advantage of, and I'm not appreciative. Thank you very much. Thank you. I guess I want to start by making the comment that it does seem like there's a lot of caveats in here. [01:28:21] It's descriptive, not prescriptive. It's an average, not a marginal, and that's important to keep in mind. And I know that when we start talking about commercial and industrial, that most of the commercial industrial that we'd be interested in has employees, and those employees have to live somewhere. [01:28:42] And we would hope that they would live here, and this wouldn't cause people to commute from far away. But that brings me to a broader question that you may not be able to give you any insights to this in a way that asks, do you see in studying this kind of phenomenon everywhere, not just here, certain trends that you can take away in terms of, well, our county executive mentioned high cost per pupil school expenditures, [01:29:18] that they tend to drive the relative ratios differently. Are there scale effects? Do you see that, you know, well, in the smaller of the locality, either geographically or in terms of population, or the more distributed urban-rural mix? [01:29:36] I'm asking a lot of questions at once to see if there's any sort of trends that you might be able to point to, even demographic ones, because obviously when we talk about cows going to school, well, the elderly don't go to school either, But there are other services that are required, and I don't know whether there are, you know, demographic effects that are part of this as well. [01:29:58] You know, being a bedroom community versus not a bedroom community. That's not, I don't expect a question. All of those are framed as, do you see trends when you look at all of the studies together? That's a great question. [01:30:14] And actually, it's not research that I've done, but I provided a couple of references of some studies where university researchers have taken all of these studies nationwide and characterized them, categorized them in different ways, and done analyses, statistical analyses to try to differentiate or explain why they get different results. [01:30:42] And indeed, K-12, you know, the portion of the budget you dedicate to K-12 is a driver of that residential result. And there are other features of the locality, you know, the sort of fiscal position and the jurisdictional makeup, you know, the different types of educational districts and waste districts. [01:31:10] Those things have some bearing on it, too, and the intergovernmental relations and methodological aspects of the study. There's all these different things that affect the results, but, yes, you're correct that there are these patterns that you can see in the results. [01:31:28] Off the top of my head, I can't tell you what those studies said, but the references are provided. Actually, one of the researchers is a former UVA grad from the Econ Department. [01:31:45] His name is Chris Clapp, I think. You'll see him in the references there. He did one of those studies. Little known fact. I may do a deeper dive. It's interesting stuff. Good question. Thank you. Supervisor Lupita. [01:32:01] Yes, I'm going to take the right of first speaker, which means I get to ask another question. This is what I want to clarify, and I have said it before, that the cost, once again, for residential taxes, costs the county $1.30 for every dollar they give. [01:32:29] Commercial industrial costs the county $0.32 for every dollar they give. Agricultural open space costs the county 53 cents for every dollar they give. It seems to me that this is not a good road to go down regarding residential taxes. [01:32:52] And it would seem to me that this board, and I'm glad for this study because it's a cost of community services study, And this study has made it clear that we need to invest more in commercial, industrial. That's where we get the best bang for our buck, which would then hopefully be able to reduce residential taxes, which is, I think, our goal. [01:33:17] That's the reason why Supervisor McKeel mentioned about diversifying our taxes. I think we need to do that instead of constantly relying on our residential taxes, which are going to continue to go up unless we do something. [01:33:37] Okay, yeah, that's a conclusion. I mean, you're perfectly justified in drawing that from the study. I mean, I pepper my remarks with so many caveats that I tie myself up in the knots, right? So on the one hand, on the other hand, you know, economists are... [01:33:55] Understood. Thank you. Those are all my comments. Just one that brought to mind one last thing, and that is this math that we're all struggling with of the 88, 13, 11, whatever it is, is that as long as for 30 years we were growing in 1 to 1.2 percent population, and now it's jumped up to 4 to 5. [01:34:16] So 15,000 more people in the last four years, I mean, that is unsustainable big time. But it also totally precludes our ability to rebalance anything if we have continual increase, monstrous increase in the expenses to cover the residential services. [01:34:33] So we can't do only one segment. We've got to, everything's got to come in balance. The other two that are generating some surplus are never going to be able to offset if we continue to grow at 4% a year in the residential side. [01:34:50] That's all I've come up with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation and the information. It certainly is fascinating that we draw on it appropriately. [01:35:08] And, Board, that brings us to our next item, which is a work session on economic development strategic plan. And this will be led by Ms. Emily Kilroy, our Director of Economic Development. Welcome. [01:35:32] Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Emily Kilroy, Director of Economic Development. [01:35:47] Thank you all so much for the discussion. It's a good lead-in, the previous discussion into this discussion. And I think the item after this is also another good discussion point in the full frame of the work that we're doing. And so today we're going to have a work session on the Economic Development Strategic Plan. [01:36:07] I am virtually joined by our consultant team. So Stephen Pettigo will lead us through a presentation that his team at Resonance has put together. [01:36:23] This is the culmination of a lot of data analysis and also a lot of conversations in the community with stakeholders, business owners, people working in the workforce development space, education partners. even some of our regional partners. [01:36:40] I had a really wonderful conversation on Friday with some of the folks who work at the state agency on some of the findings that we're looking at and some of the work that we can do in the years ahead. So a lot of really positive work going into this point. [01:36:57] Just to sort of lay out where we are in the process, we started this process in January with, again, a lot of desktop data analysis work. And then February through April has been a lot of conversations, one-on-one, and then roundtables, some online conversations as well. [01:37:16] Today is a draft framework for a strategy. And so Stephen will walk through a draft vision statement and some goals and the start of some strategies. And so this is a really wonderful check-in point with the Board of Supervisors to hear from you all if we're on the right path. [01:37:33] and the goal would be that you have on your calendar a joint meeting with the EDA in August, and that would be a point at which the board would be in a position to take an action to approve the new plan if you're ready to do so at that time. [01:37:51] We had a work session with the EDA yesterday on this topic, got some really wonderful conversation and some good feedback from them. Internally, we also were able to spend some time with residents last week. We all had, we had conversations with you all last week as well. [01:38:08] And so we're excited for, for this next step in the process to really reflect on where we are and make sure that we're heading in a good direction as we try to work towards fleshing this out more fully and wrapping this process this summer. And with that, I'm going to invite Stephen Pettigo to lead us through his presentation. [01:38:28] Okay, friends. Can you hear us? All good there? Yes. Well, it's good to be with you this afternoon. I can't see your faces right now just because I think we've got the slides up and you can see me kind of talking as a big, like, kind of Dr. Oz head maybe. [01:38:46] But what I'll do today is hopefully just spend about 15 minutes walking through the economic development strategy and sharing a little bit about what we've done and the strategic plan and then look forward to our questions and discussions. I will say that part of this plan, we have done a lot of engagement work and, you know, and have had an opportunity to meet with many people in the community, meet with you all in our two by twos, as well as do a lot of data analytics to support the plan. [01:39:21] But I thought before we started, I think one of the things that I wanted to really hint at is that, you know, as the county starts to think about its economic development plan, I think one of the great things that we're excited about with our team is that we're really kind of starting at a point of strength, right? We're not working on an economic development plan for a community that's in decline. [01:39:40] We're not even working on an economic development plan for a community that's really stagnated. There is a lot of momentum happening in the county that really sets us up to do really outstanding work together. You know, first, that starts, I think, with you all as the Board of Supervisors, the EDA being committed to this work, as well as the staff and the community partners who we all met with wanting to think about how we build out an economic development strategy that drives with innovation. [01:40:05] We're really lucky as a community to have good anchor institutions in the University of Virginia and PVC to really help drive our research and entrepreneurship, be that catalyst for our local economy. We start with a really great location. We've made big investments in Ravenna Futures. We, meaning the county, have made a big investment in innovation, supporting Ravenna Futures and thinking about the opportunity there. [01:40:32] And then, you know, what a great place to live. The county is obviously a really beautiful place. It's got a lot of amenities, access to outdoors, wineries, all those things that make Baladie a place really, really wonderful. And then every day there are people moving to the county. So it's highly educated in terms of the residents, about seven and ten of our residents actually have a college degree or higher. [01:40:54] So I say that to say, as we talk about an economic development strategy, it's the level of field, the playing field and the foundation to say we are starting in a good place. And that is always a good place to be in terms of building a strategy. As Emily mentioned, before we get to the strategy, I do want to talk a little bit about process because I think process is important in these planning processes. [01:41:14] You know, doing economic development strategy consulting is almost, it's kind of like mental health and mental therapy for communities sometimes. You get to meet with a lot of stakeholders, look at a lot of data, and use that to drive a path forward. To support the work that we've done here, just to remind you of the things that we've done, we did a deep dive into the county's assets and challenges, looking across communities, more than 50 indicators or so. [01:41:38] We did a really detailed cluster analytics, so to really understand what was driving the economy. And I think this is actually one of the first times this has actually been done for the county is to say, let's dive into the economic landscape, understand what are those sectors that are investment ready and that we should be focusing on and really be, so to speak, in our storefront window as it relates to our economic development strategy. [01:42:00] We did a lot of stakeholder engagement. Emily and team did a survey, community survey. We met with over 100 folks as we went throughout this process via roundtable discussions and 101s. We met with you all on the EDA board. And then there's been a lot of just deeper stakeholder engagement with our stakeholder committee, which is this committee that's going to be really important with our partners, you know, workforce economic development partners, our institutions, our key companies, as they will be really important partners as we're implementing that work. [01:42:31] And they've been deeply engaged with this work. And then finally, we've had a really fun time just engaging with your staff, Emily and the team and Jeff and others. And just to really be supportive of the work. And it's been a robust process as we've done this process. [01:42:47] So today, as Emily mentioned, we've been asked to present on the economic, on the strategy. And the part that we're really going to spend time on today is really our vision statement, offering a foundation for what we to be to be kind of our preferred future. [01:43:03] What are we going to be working towards as we achieve this strategy? We're going to talk about the goals and what are those desired outcomes. I like to think about this as if people were if constituents and residents and business owners were saying, well, what's the county doing as it relates to economic development? [01:43:19] Our goals should be those high-level we statements that are our elevator pitch about what we're trying to achieve out of our plan. And then finally, we'll talk about strategies. And then in the coming weeks, we're going to be working with Emily and the economic development team on a robust implementation plan. [01:43:39] So what are the things that would be first? What are the things that would be kind of middle of the plan? What are those resources that are needed? And what are those partners that are needed? All of that to say, again, that will drive how this plan gets implemented over time as we move forward in putting the plan into action. [01:43:56] You know, so again, as I said before, you know, just to hit on a couple of key points, you know, we believe this strategy is really grounded in what we heard, kind of what we measured, and really what we collectively imagined together as a team and as a group working on this work. [01:44:12] You know, we aren't presenting the insights tonight, but just today, but just to recap again, you know, the county is growing, the economy is evolving, and there's a lot of momentum. And so the challenge that we face with this strategy is how do we take all of that momentum together, all that energy together, and really put it together in a process and a strategy that brings clarity and commitment and the action steps to move that forward. [01:44:36] So we're going to present a vision statement today, as I mentioned, and those five goals all rooted in community priorities that have been shaped by the data and what we think really kind of reflects some of the values that we heard as we go throughout this work. So I look forward to your feedback as we move into it. So in terms of a vision statement, our vision statement as it relates to this plan is that Albemarle County, we are rooted in innovation and we're open for investment. [01:45:02] So we are going to be a destination for entrepreneurs, makers, and growers, and thinkers, really centered as a place where bold ideas take root, businesses scale, partnerships thrive, leading the way in Virginia's next innovation economy. [01:45:20] So let me just repeat that really one more time, just to really set the stage for us. So Albemarle County, we're rooted in innovation. We are open for investment. We are a destination for entrepreneurs, makers, growers, and thinkers. where bold ideas take root, businesses scale, and partnerships thrive, all with the idea that we are going to lead the way in Virginia's next innovation economy. [01:45:42] And we'll talk a bit about how we're going to do that. To achieve that, we are building our strategy really centered around five goals. So goal one is leading what's next. So we will lead Virginia's intelligence and national security innovation economy. [01:45:58] So we're really centering in on the investments that the county has made to support the innovation-based work around natural security and defense innovation. Goal two is supporting our biotechnology sector, our life sciences sector. [01:46:14] So we will grow into the Mid-Atlantic's premier destination for our biotechnology life sciences innovation. Again, great thing is that there's a lot of this happening already. It's just about scaling and providing the support services around that to be successful. Goal three is really leaning into the fact that we as a county have a real legacy in agriculture. [01:46:36] And the question for us is how do we transform that into a modern-day agricultural business economy? So we'll transform the county's agricultural legacy into a modern-day agribusiness economy. It's goal three. Goal four is really centered around our placemaking, making sure we are a community where people and entrepreneurs kind of want to stay stale, stick and succeed, meaning that we are holding on to the talent that we're developing. [01:47:03] And then goal five is really centered on, to do that, we've got to compete for what's next, meaning that we've got to ensure that the county is positioned for investment. So we will position Albemarle County as Virginia's most investment-ready county, ready to compete, build, and lead. [01:47:19] Those are our five goals. We're going to walk through each of those one by one in just a second. So, you know, I like to ask the question at the beginning of this. So if we implement this strategy, how do we start to know that we're winning? And so as part of the work, you'll see that we've outlined some KPI metrics and some metrics to measure our success. [01:47:42] Enough metrics to really to gauge progress, but also not too many metrics in a sense to paralyze the process that we're doing. So if I'm thinking about this strategy and wanting to understand if we're having success, you know, in the 18 months, three months to the five year range, how do we think about that? [01:47:59] Well, first and foremost, we should be looking at business expansion. So growing jobs and companies, expanding our innovation based economy. I mean, one thing that I heard from the stakeholders as well as I think we heard from you all individually as well is the need really to expand our private sector investment in our county in terms of really utilizing our institutional assets to scale the opportunity that the private sector is doing in innovation. [01:48:24] And so that business expansion metric should be something that we're really thinking about. Secondly, you know, holding on to the talent. We are lucky as a community, as I mentioned before, to have two strong anchors. But the need to really hold on to that talent, particularly that talent that is in that 25 to 44-year-old range, is really important. [01:48:44] So measuring that talent and keeping tracks on how we are doing in that space. And then finally, the thing that we've heard from you all, we heard from our stakeholder groups, we heard in almost every roundtable, is being really sure that we're kind of focusing in on this growth of our commercial share of our property tax base. [01:49:02] So looking about trying to bring some resiliency to the way that we are thinking about our tax base, where we're not so overly heavily reliant on residential taxes. So by measuring these three areas, you know, business expansion, talent, and our commercial tax base, that's a really good sense of understanding how we'll understand if we're having some success as it relates to this plan. [01:49:24] So goal one, leading Virginia's intelligence in national security innovation. Why this? Well, first and foremost, you all have made a big investment in this space. Ravana Futures. We have made a real effort to position the county as a place for intelligence and national security innovation. We're not doing this alone, by the way. We're doing this with our regional partners, and we've got a lot of research that's coming out of the university to catalyze that ecosystem, so it's important that we're doing that. Now, the challenge we face is that we've got to ensure that we are thinking equitably about this, meaning that we want to be sure that we're we're thinking about how do we create the career pathways? [01:50:02] How do we ensure that we are creating the opportunities for folks to come into this sector, think about what the next job is, what the next job, and what are the skills to wrap around that as well? So there is some workforce development work that has to happen as it relates to this goal as well. [01:50:19] How do we achieve this? So we've outlined five strategies to do this. First and foremost is activating Ravana Futures as a next generation innovation district. So, you know, we've made the purchase of the land. We've done all, we're doing the, we've got targeted land use planning that is in process and moving forward. [01:50:41] We also have to think about the business plan for that. Meaning like, what is the infrastructure? What's the strategy around that to ensure that we're really commercializing and leveraging into that space? You know, good innovation districts, by the way, do three things. They pull together all the economic assets. [01:50:57] They think about the placemaking physicality piece, but they also do some of the programming work as well, meaning they're connecting communities together. Secondly, we really want to lean into our regional partnerships around the Central Virginia Innovation Corridors, particularly in the national security space. [01:51:14] That partnership is always much better. Remember, regional labor shed decisions are also a lot of times made regionally. They're not made hyperlocally. So that regional connection and leveraging those assets, and there's a lot of work already happening in that space with our regional partners, as well as the University of Virginia. [01:51:32] And I believe there's actually even a study going on to look at this commercialization out of the University of Virginia and how that connects into this sector as well. 1.3 is we want to think about those pathways, as I mentioned before, workforce development, the connection of workforce development with our educational partners, UVA, PBC, K-12. [01:51:52] That alignment is really, really important. And what's great about that is if we if we are engaging in what 1.4 suggests, which is our sector partnerships, sector partnerships is, I think, a refined way to think about economic development. You know, a lot of times in economic development, we think about meeting with companies one on one. [01:52:09] We go out and do our business visits and those types of things. Sector partnership says bring those companies together, bring those companies together with the workforce providers, the economic development officials, and really start to address collectively what the sector needs to grow. sub-sector partnership work there. And I know Emily and team are already leading in this space and it will be great to see that. And then 1.5 is really about telling the story. So economic development is about storytelling. It is about how you market and how you tell a story about who your community is. So we really want to be telling a really clear story as it relates to what is going on in our innovation space, in our national security space. So for instance, there was a great [01:52:48] quote in our stakeholder engagement work where someone says, when you think about Fort Meade and others, there's a real clear story about what they're doing as it relates to economic development. We want to make sure that we're achieving and doing the same thing as it relates to our plan. Goal two is really about growing our community into a premier destination as it relates to biotechnology and life sciences. This is really centered on scaling. There's so much opportunity here as it relates to this sector. You look at the sector overall, it's about 76% more concentrated than the U.S. average. We know that Seville Bio has done a really great job of [01:53:27] helping to position early stage capital. So when you look across the country, the county and the region, I think ranked seventh in the country as relates to VC dollars or early stage VC dollars for medical devices. So there's this need to scale, this need to create the space and create opportunity to do that. So to do that, you know, we see sort of five, again, five kind of ideas here one is how do we think about that uh that space that's really needed so you know lab space wet lab small scale manufacturing space to really kind of build into this by the way if you care about workforce development life sciences is actually a really great sector to do that because [01:54:06] a lot of the downstream work that comes in the scaling of those businesses can create family wage creating supporting jobs if we can create the space where those products and services can be made locally. Two, you know, we want to be leading and thinking about how, again, we capitalize on the regional partnerships that are happening with our corridor partners. We want to leverage the great work that Seville Bio does in 2.3 around our workforce and sector partnership work. Again, that sector partnership work is really, really critical. 2.4, there's an absolute opportunity around targeted retention, attraction in this space. And so attending the right types of trade [01:54:46] shows in the economic development space, meeting with the right types of economic development officials, and even going so far down the road to at some point to do a really sophisticated analytics around what's the opportunity around FDI investment in this space. And then finally, just partnering largely to think about how we get to the growth capital, not the early stage capital, but the gross capital. So a coordinated effort with our CVO Bio partners, our other partners in the area to think about how we grow the gross stage capital to help companies scale. So goal two is about supporting life sciences, but it's about scaling the scale. Much of it's about [01:55:24] scaling the opportunity that we have to create those jobs and really capitalize on the R&D and investment that's being made here early stage, using that to really be an accelerator and catalysts for job creation here in the county. So goal three is about transferring our agricultural legacy into a modern day business economy. Again, strong legacy when you look at the food economy here, about two and a half times the U.S. average in terms of our assets. We've got, you know, traditional farms. We've got emerging entrepreneurs doing some really great stuff. [01:55:59] I've joked before that what's been fun about this county is to do very high life science, high discussions around national security, but also been having to have opportunity with some of your farmers and food entrepreneurs in this space. It's quite interesting to see the innovation that's actually happening in that space. We are making an argument that the county can really lean into that in goal three. How do we do it? We want to, first and foremost, think about modernizing some of our land use and zoning policies to support valuable, flexible agricultural businesses, value-added production and new technologies. I think one of the things that [01:56:37] stood out to us as a research and engagement team at this work is that how much innovation is happening in this space and how much more flexibility agricultural businesses need to support this. So for instance, I'll give you an example. We heard a lot about turkey farming, for instance. Turkey farming is a high technology business. It requires incubation. It requires sensors that are sensors. It requires better broadband, frankly, to measure, to manage those sensors. So the technology and the innovation space that's needed. 3.2 is really helping to [01:57:14] deliver critical infrastructure, cold storage, food processing, broadband, the manufacturing capability to really scale these businesses. So again, a lot of smaller opportunities to think about how we grow and scale. 3.3 is thinking about the work as it relates to the resource hub. So a lot of small business support services in the county. That is a great thing. We're not asking to actually recreate the will there. What we want to do is just make sure that those resources are being connected to our rural and agriculture businesses. Succession planning will be a big thing for many of these places, thinking about financial planning to create that opportunity [01:57:52] for scale. 3.4 is rather than doing, you know, there's a lot of opportunity that's happening already in buy local, but let's think broader. Let's think about opportunity to scale in the whole scale space. So connecting local producers to wholesale and regional distributors as it relates to our practice around economic development, the attraction efforts, supporting all of these folks to come together in that partnership piece that we talked about earlier in the other two sectors and doing that in a way to address the issues that are necessary. [01:58:24] And then 3.6 is about continuing to do the work with the Convention and Visitor Bureau around supporting agriculture through agritourism. I think a lot of the efforts around agriculture in the county has been either one, from a protection of a kind of a lifestyle and legacy standpoint, or two, utilizing it as a really important part of your tourism economy. [01:58:50] Those are good things, but we're leaving a lot on the playing field, so to speak, as it relates to business development opportunities if we can get the right support structure and infrastructure around these businesses to grow and scale to really kind of move the economy forward. So goal four is about making the county the place where talented entrepreneurs want to stay, scale and succeed. Again, we are, you know, one of the greatest exports that we have right now in the county is a lot of our young people that are leaving the university. And so one of the challenges that we face is trying to hold on to some of that, but then also thinking about how we [01:59:27] really focus in on that 25 to 44 range, as well as create opportunity for folks who may be getting left behind as it relates to workforce training and skilling. And so four is, our goal four is really about making sure that we're thinking about people and putting people at the center of the economic development strategy. So how do we do that? We want, you know, one is to partner maybe with our university and our community college at PBC to think about how do we get a talent initiative that connects our graduates to local jobs and careers. Again, that connection is really [02:00:02] important. Collaborating with the region already has a young professional group, but continuing to utilize that as a platform for civic engagement. I think one of the things that's really important to remember when you think about economic development is that, yes, we can create all the economic opportunities, but the opportunity and the work that we do around social capitalism and the creation of community is really important because that is why ultimately individuals decide to stay and stick in a community. So if we can make people sticky, they're less likely to leave, they're more likely to be invested in our community, and that's the idea of 4.1 and 4.2. [02:00:37] We want to continue to do all the destination development work that Emily is doing around retail and entertainment and experiences, utilizing that in a very proactive way to think about how we redevelop some of our aging retail centers. We want to be sure that we align economic development and workforce development together. [02:00:57] This is why those sector partnerships and making sure that economic development and workforce development are brought to the table at the forefront together is really important. And doing that around target sectors, I will say, one of the most robust conversations that we had with stakeholders was really in the workforce development space. [02:01:15] It was highly attended. But I will say it was highly attended, but there was a lot of folks still not sure what the partner next to them was doing. So there's a need for us to think about alignment and ensuring that all of our workforce development partners are on the same page as it relates to our target sectors. [02:01:34] 4.5 is about just going through and coordinating around our small business ecosystem, getting it into a way that folks can sort through. The county is not at disadvantage for having not enough small business support services. There's plenty. It's just about ensuring that we can create the right type of mapping service to ensure that we can figure out how to connect the entrepreneurs and business owners to those resources. 4.6 is about supporting the efforts that the county is doing around housing and possible child care initiatives. Again, knowing that housing and child care are both economic development and workforce development issues. [02:02:13] Again, not center focuses of this plan. This plan is centered around how we think about supporting business development and talent development, but knowing that as an economic development strategy, we really do have to be centrally focused on the work that you all are already smartly doing around housing and the work that we can even do more of around child care initiatives for instance and then finally gets us to goal five and i'll be i'll wrap up pretty quickly we can open it for discussion goal five is really is is it's an important goal and it's this is the goal where um to do all the things that we want to do in goals one through four we as a county governing body community have to make a commitment to ensuring that we're investment [02:02:52] ready um to to compete and build and and really lead in this space um one of the things that we heard, you know, over and over was limited commercial availability, you know, some of our development processes taking a little bit longer than in other places, and sometimes seeing barriers to investment. And so one of the things we have to think through, and you'll see in the strategies in this plan, is about addressing what those barriers are, and trying to make us a position to really lead in this space. So to do that, we've got a lot of things that we want to do. [02:03:25] We want to look at modernizing our permitting and development process. Let's just go through, really think about how we can do this and review this process. And by the way, there are a lot of counties in Virginia and the Commonwealth that have done this. Arlington County has done this. Fairfax County has done this. [02:03:43] Loudoun County has done this work. Just recently, Montgomery County, Maryland has done this work because they understand the importance of understanding how you get people through the development process. if you're really wanting to be investment ready. Two is bring all of the developers together quarterly to talk with us about what challenges they see and how we can work together in a public-private way to ensure that we're being market ready to accelerate the growth. [02:04:11] 5.3 is continuing to do our business expansion efforts that the county is already doing. Emily and team are already meeting with employers. We want to continue to do that. We want to leverage the EDA. As Emily mentioned, the EDA is really excited about this plan and thinking about how they will work with us to drive public-private partnerships around the strategic investments that are needed as we get to the implementation of this plan. [02:04:33] We want to make sure that we're maintaining a pipeline of sites that are needed in the region and in the county. Just having a clear understanding of what inventory is available is a starting point. Partnering with our utilities to make sure that we're really ready to go when there's utility needs that are needed. And then finally, just be broadly speaking, coming back to this idea of storytelling, that economic development is storytelling and marketing. [02:04:56] And so ensuring that we're investing in a comprehensive marketing strategy around business development, you know, talent development, but also just the site selection and the business attraction efforts that are also needed to support this plan as well. So with that, again, I'll just hit the five goals again. [02:05:12] You know, leading in the innovation-based national security economy is goal one. Growing our life sciences and biotechnology sector is goal two. Goal three is about modernizing our agricultural legacy into a modern day business economy. Goal four is about ensuring that we are a place where talented entrepreneurs want to stay around and scale and stick and be very successful. [02:05:35] And then goal five is ensuring that the county is ready and positioned for investment. So with that, I'll stop. I do want to acknowledge my colleague, Brandon McComas, who's on the call with us, too. He did a lot of work on this plan as well. This has been not just a Stephen Pettigo show at Residence. It's been a collective effort of our team, Brandon and his research channels, and they've done a lot of really great work to support the plan. [02:05:55] So with that, I'll stop, and I look forward to your questions. Thank you. I appreciate this. We will go through our order with questions. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley. Hi, Stephen. How are you? This is Bea Lupisto-Kirtley. Hi, how are you? [02:06:14] Delayed reaction. I didn't know if I โ€“ no, that's fine. I thought Emily was going to tell me when I could speak. That's fine, but I'm good and ready to talk. Yes, so can we go back to the last slide that we just showed? Not that I don't want to see you, but I think it's good for the audience to also see that. [02:06:31] Yeah, of course we can. Just let me get those up really quickly. One moment, friends. Yeah, it's coming, I promise. Okay, thank you. [02:06:50] Yep. Okay, of course I've been through this, being on the team and everything, And goal one, I agree with it. Do you want us to go around, Supervisor Andrews, to just make comments on each one of these? [02:07:08] Discover what's next. I think the biotechnology life sciences innovation corridor up 29 north. I think that will be very important for us as we grow. Three, I do believe in transforming the agricultural legacy into a modern agribusiness if they are going to survive. [02:07:32] I know James King is also on this committee, and I've spoken with him, and they are concerned in the future of things not going well for the vineyards, for the wineries. They bring in a lot of dollars, not only just they themselves, but also the tourism dollars. [02:07:56] We're getting multi-millions of dollars from the tourism industry. So this is something that's very important. And I think we need to be flexible and maybe in certain circumstances for maybe using a special use permit. [02:08:11] But being able to get restaurants into a couple of these wineries, everyone's heard me on that before, that's because it will bring in millions of dollars. [02:08:26] And is it going to be for everybody? No. Is it going to be throughout the county? No. But in certain circumstances, I think we should have an open mind and have the flexibility to be able to do something like that to bring in more commercial revenue. Goal four, if we want talent entrepreneurs, if we want people to stay, there's a few things. [02:08:51] Our 24, I think it's 24 to 45 age group. Okay. There's really nothing, there's not a lot for them to do. If you read the report, there's like, I think it was four items that they could basically do compared to other districts, other counties that have a lot more. [02:09:14] The young people, I mean, they go to the corner near UVA. We don't have anything in Abomorra Corner that attracts young people. We don't have, believe it or not, a wall-climbing business, young people like that. But there's no place, there's no reason for them to stay. [02:09:32] So they go out, they make their money, and then they come back when it's time to retire or raise their family. Speaking of raising families, it would be very important. I think daycare is extremely important. Childcare centers, that attracts young people to stay because they know they can work and then have some place for their children. [02:09:55] Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Prode. um i have several specific things but first i want to do two uh kind of initial overview questions and the first is is going to be somewhat pointed so i apologize but um i was trying to follow along in our documents and this document is not of course with us currently which also means it's not with the public um and this is a trend that i find somewhat frustrating that we produce a lot of kind of important guiding documents about county policy that don't have [02:10:32] a clear public place to live I recognize that this is a draft um but in the same way that we have public drafts that have very public places to live for the AC44 plan I think that would be prudent for other key county documents and especially as drafts which I don't think are discoverable in ways that are consistent and coherent for the county um as a very brief anecdote before I continue this point short after I was elected before I joined the board there was a concern about what the policies for gatherings on county buildings are and in front [02:11:06] of county buildings are related to teachers union um it took myself supervisor price everyone in the teachers union quite a few days to actually find where that policy was articulated because it lived in the agenda and in the minutes of a specific decision so i just point this out as i don't know that we're doing a good public service with how we maintain documents of policy, including ones that are in draft form. [02:11:36] Can I just address that about this plan for a second? Yes, please. I appreciate that comment and duly noted. One of the things I think Emily may share with you all at the conclusion of this is that we actually are planning to do a public open house about this plan, and I'm really excited about that to address these questions. [02:11:56] So that public open house is scheduled I believe, um, to be the first, uh, Friday of the month. I think we're doing a brown bag session where we're going to present this plan and open it up for feedback, um, to the County. I think that the idea was to present this for you all today, get feedback, make any adjustments that we needed, and then have it uploaded for the, for the public to have an opportunity to review before we do do that lunch and learn. So highly, um, believe that engagement's important. It's central to what we do. It's how we think about the work at residence. Um, and we're planning to, uh, hopefully address some of your concern with that, not about other plans, but about the work that we're doing, the goals to do that in the next two weeks. [02:12:36] Yeah, thank you, Stephen. And this document, actually an expanded version of this document that we went over today, will be uploaded onto the Engage page for this plan today, as well as a feedback form for folks to provide input. [02:12:53] And we did that at the start of the process as well. So we're continuing to keep that page updated so that folks can have that as sort of their central hub. And that's the same platform that the AC44 process is using as well. I realize I got you on launch day, so you're a little bit caught out. [02:13:09] But I want to take the opportunity to make a broader point. The one other kind of, I guess, kind of top-level point I would make, and I apologize, Emily and Diantha, you've heard a lot of the comments I'm going to make previously during our two-on-twos. [02:13:29] But I think as a kind of overall principle, I think it's important for us to think about what, when we're talking about economic development, what the demographic effects that we're expecting to come out of that are, what the direction of the flow of benefits and capital would be from some of our proposed developments. [02:13:48] And I say this because we are government. We are political actors. I think we should have a normative vision for what those outcomes should be if I would not entirely be supportive of an economic development plan that would heavily focus on capital benefits that flow either out of our community or to a particular tier of our community at the very top, as opposed to things that provide significant opportunities across income levels and that also bring benefits, bring permanent capital reinvestment into our community. [02:14:26] So I would say that needs to be kind of an essential part of how we view all of this, and that is certainly the lens through which I view all of this, right? Can we go to the one for goal one? [02:14:48] As we're navigating there, I'm going to begin by saying I think it's interesting as we compare and contrast kind of how we think about goals one and two, right? these are both very technologically dependent, very high-tech kind of industries, but it seems like the shape of them, at least how they're manifesting in the county, is quite different. [02:15:09] When we look at two, this is very much increasingly a boutique industry that we're trying to develop out. It's coming to us in the form of either small industries or startups, whereas one where we're already doing quite well, and I think we want to continue doing well with what I would would call a big box enterprise, your Raytheons, your Northrop Grumman's, and that's kind of where that emphasis is. And I think that is fair in that it reflects the market, but I think it would, when we look at goal one, it would be prudent for us to think about, well, there is such a thing as [02:15:45] defense startups. There is such a thing as intelligence startups. And in the same way that we are being thoughtful about how we're creating opportunities for startups in the biotechnology sector and grow those kind of from the ground up. I would be interested to kind of get a sense of what it means to create opportunities and help develop out defense startups, because I do see the startup model, I mean, it's more challenging, but potentially something that can scale in a way that aligns with that first point I made, right? [02:16:17] Something that benefits derived primarily and flow into our own community and stay there. And I think we see with Afton, right, that this can be something that does have actually really the kind of demographic outcomes that we want, the kind of effect on our community that we want. [02:16:34] By which I'm, of course, for the public, referring to the fact that Afton overwhelmingly is employing quite a lot of high-quality career wage jobs that are interable at kind of a new collar level, right? may be required. Maybe they want some tech certificates that they might be able to get at PVCC, but really things that don't require a college degree, but are still professional career jobs. Moving into two, kind of... [02:17:00] Can I address that point just a little bit? Yes, please. Absolutely agree with you. I think if you... I appreciate the comment. I think one of the things that I would say is that as it relates to the plan, one of the reasons that we're saying in strategy 1.1 supervisor is that we don't want to just think about the re-advented futures as just a sort of land use development piece. We do want to tie that back to the innovation district piece, which means as we think about the innovation district and just looking at innovation based innovation district strategy, it is asking those same questions that you're that you're presenting, [02:17:35] which is how do we leverage the large scale anchor firms that we have already in this space, as well as frankly, the large scale public sector investments to spur new innovation. And to think about how new innovation can be connected to this sector. [02:17:51] I will say that when we met with many of the stakeholders as it relates, when we pulled this group together, a lot of the firms that we were meeting with that Emily put together and did a really nice job of curating were smaller firms, were firms that were not the large scale Raytheons or the Deloitte's or the professional Booze Allens of the world. [02:18:13] If they were smaller firms that were offering a particular almost boutique service, so to speak, to to the the national intelligence installations that they were serving. And so I think your point, we can maybe articulate that a little bit better to say we want to do this innovation district to ensure that we're connecting business development and entrepreneur growth strategies to that. [02:18:35] But I just want to note that when when we put one point one together, we were we were very much thinking about the same things that you just addressed. Great. I'm realizing also, while I have this slide up, that there's one other thing that kind of caught my attention. So 1.4 kind of rhymes with 5.2, which that's the development process goal, in that both of these seem to be directing the formation of a stakeholder convening, a recurring stakeholder convening. [02:19:08] I know we have existing stakeholder convenings with these sectors. I know I'm going to make some people slightly. I saw Michael and Jody give each other this little look when they heard 5.2 about their quarterly stakeholder meetings for business development and land use process, right? [02:19:29] I guess I want to make sure that with these goals, what we're committing ourselves to as a county is that we're going to lean into the intentionality of that purpose, but not necessarily create new procedure, right? Like, what is the process versus what is the procedure? [02:19:47] I want to make sure that the outcome isn't we've created another working group. It's the same stakeholders as are in this working group, and they just meet on a slightly different periodicity. I'm sure that is not lost on y'all, but I just want to make sure that that gets actually realized in practice. [02:20:03] Sure. Let's cut to three. And so I'm sure we're going to get into this, but three is actually, like, three is actually hairy, right? [02:20:21] Like, it's a little politically hairy, especially when we look at 3.1 and 3.2, in that, yes, that is what it takes to make a successful agricultural industry, right? We need things like processing. We need things like infrastructure. We need these kind of intermediary processes, warehousing, you know, poultry processing, right? [02:20:45] Like, those are poultry processing, right? Like, that makes people's hair stand up. That is what 3.1 is about, or at least that's what I read 3.1 is about, and I don't think that's unfair, right? Because I think when our stakeholders in the industry come and say we want, like, we want more robust land use for, I forget the language that the comprehensive plan used, but you used the phrase, like, intermediary processes, I'm almost certain that is what they're speaking about, things like warehousing, things like animal processing. [02:21:19] And co-packing. If you think about the farmer's market stall, the granola vendor who then wants to work up towards the mid-Atlantic Whole Foods market, they need packaging facilities to get their product in a state where they can sell it on a wholesale level. [02:21:38] Sure. I guess what I'm saying is I'm looking at the faces of my peers, right? I think this is a bigger conversation than we're going to have today because those are really challenging asks for this community and how we've construed and, I think, historically understood what agriculture means, right? [02:22:00] We already have people who live next door to farms, on farms, but on their personal estates, and they live up next to productive farms and are disturbed and distressed by the existing land use that we understand in what I would think of as low-intensity farming. [02:22:20] I think when we start to expand our understanding of what agriculture means in our rural area into what are disruptive land uses for surrounding neighbors, it is going to be jarring for this community. [02:22:36] I'm not saying it's not appropriate, But I think we need to have a really significant conversation that exceeds what we have on the docket for today around this, because this is going to be challenging for the community, and I think it's going to be a significant reckoning that I don't know that we have the space for. [02:22:56] If you think I've mischaracterized anything, Stephen, here, let me know, or Emily. I think you chimed in in a helpful way, helping me kind of think of some more intermediary processes and kind of what is called for here. Yeah, yeah. And I think for the purposes of this plan and where we are in the plan process, if there's something in here that you feel like is a hard no, that's good feedback for us to hear. [02:23:23] The plan itself is not going to deliver a solution to any of these items. You know, this is really setting up the list of things that over the next few years would be areas where we would be working to advance things. And so if there's anything on here where you say, you know, not interested, take it off the list, that's really good feedback. [02:23:42] How we achieve the things on the list is really the work ahead. I see this as a major public engagement topic, right? Like I want to hear, I need to hear what the horse estates think about this. [02:24:00] I need to hear what the Farm Bureau thinks about this. And I don't know that they're blowing up my phone yet because I'm not sure it's on their radar. And I think this would be, I would expect that this would be a really substantial and, frankly, time-consuming public engagement process. [02:24:16] And if you're saying, like, this is step one in that process, then great. Whatever it takes to tee up that kind of conversation, because this is a conversation we need to have as a community. What does agriculture mean to you? Write an essay question on it, you know. [02:24:32] What does agriculture mean to me? Anyway, 3.4 through 3.6, that's great, right? That is, I think, very consistent with what this community already understands agriculture to mean, and I think what this community would celebrate as being very conducive and, like, coherent with the other goals that we're trying to execute, right? [02:24:55] Like, we look at our goals under four about, like, livability. I think that is only further enhanced, right, by some of these goals, right, if we're trying to incentivize the availability of local produce in our markets, if we're trying to incentivize our tourism. [02:25:12] Those are downstream things that are also going to improve livability. So great. Let's turn to four. Four is my favorite, right? And as I told Dianne, it's because I campaigned on four, right? Like it was the one-sentence summary of my political campaign. [02:25:29] Can I just make one comment about goal three? Yeah. Your point is well taken on goal three. I think one of the things that I would, so it's interesting that you identified 3.3 through 3.6 as kind of no brainers. And I agree with you. Those are, you know, you want to connect businesses in a particular sector with the right types of services to scale. You want to make sure that we bring them together, continue to kind of support them in the way that we would do it. The one thing I would say, and I hear you about the idea about needing to do more, you know, more engagement, more thinking about this. We're not asking, obviously, for critical decisions to be made [02:26:05] today. So maybe the language of 3.1 and 3.2 could be soft in a bit. However, to that, I would say that we heard over and over throughout the engagement, particularly from the folks that participated around this sector partnership, was in order to be able to do the things like scale to market, to be able to think about accessing additional growth capital, to think about how we expand businesses. The infrastructure piece and the way we think about how we have got our land use, some of our land use constraints around them is really important to think about. And it's [02:26:40] necessary, I think, to have that as part of the plan, at least the opportunity to have a conversation because without engaging in that conversation about, you know, do we allow a restaurant on a winery or do we think about how we scale broadband, et cetera, we're actually limiting from the start for many of these businesses that are in this sector actually to to be able to to think about growth to think about how they access capital some of this modern support structure is just needed will be needed as well so i think it's all i guess i'm trying to get out in the comments back to you is that i understand more engagement but i would also say let's not take it completely off the list [02:27:17] let's let's leave it as a as a conversation point that would be my advice as a is your advisor to say it is worth a conversation about what do we want this agricultural legacy to be And if we're thinking about large-scale scaling and distribution and all the things that would come as it relates to thinking about exports, more growing exports, there probably is a need to think about some of the infrastructure that's needed to support that in different types of ways. [02:27:41] I don't question that 3.1 and 3.2 are essential components of scaling agribusiness. I think that's true. What I'm saying is that I and everyone else on this board stands for election. And I'm not sure 50% or more of our voter base cares. [02:27:58] So, I mean, to put it very pointedly, they might, but I think we need to do the engagement to see. So, yes, so, sorry, four is my favorite. I think that, like, the message that I knocked doors with was we don't currently have a place where someone who, like, turns 19 wants to go from high school to PVCC to get a certificate in welding and marries high school sweetheart and have a home. [02:28:32] that person does not get to live in Albemarle County that person has to move somewhere else and frankly like not get their welding certificate not do any of the things that we want right not build that kind of stickiness right so I am thrilled by seeing this kind of realized as as county policy and I also I find [02:28:55] I find 4.3 to be surprisingly insightful because I think this is a very well put point and the way I articulated it for others as someone who is kind of sitting on this edge and as a person who is an old person in law school, right, as in old for law school. [02:29:15] We are a great community to be a 30-something in, having your first kids, because we have all these mid-tier career opportunities and we have great schools. We are a bad community to be a 20-something in, because we do not have mingling singles, we do not have nightlife, we do not have the kinds of things that 20-somethings want to spend their time with. [02:29:39] They feel isolated here. I had a great time living here, and my peers in law school had a great time living at law School but not in Charlottesville right not in Albemarle County um and so I think this is a this is a very insightful point and it will be interesting to think how we solve for this under the restrictions that Virginia already has right we talked about nightlife well Virginia kind of says on nightlife how do we solve for that home but I appreciate the point and I realize I've been yakking for a long time I've already talked about 5.2 and so I will I will go to the [02:30:14] next speaker. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Oh, sorry. Would you like to comment? Nope. I was just saying thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Sure. In an effort to keep us on time, I will say I would like to thank Mike for some of the comments he made because I think they're really good points. But having said that, for me, I really, just broad picture, I really like the measurements you're talking about, that we're going to go back and look at and measure what we're trying to do. [02:30:50] I think that is really critical. You're talking about business expansion, talent and commercial tax base growth. So measuring all those points, I think, is really critical. It's interesting because I was watching, we had some different people in the audience earlier, and we were talking about diversifying our tax base and economic development. [02:31:14] And I was watching some of the faces in the audience who had real concerns, you could tell by their expression, and I see those same concerns when I go out into the public and talk about economic development and diversifying our tax base. And I think it's really going to be important for us to talk about why this is important, why economic development is important. [02:31:36] I think they don't always connect, because for many people in our community, they're very satisfied, they're very happy. They don't see any need to change. And I think there are many other people in our community who aren't able to live in our community. [02:31:57] And so it's really going to be important for us to tell the story about why it's important. Because we all know that we have teachers and firemen and police officers living in the hinterlands and other communities and driving in. [02:32:13] And some of those same people that are concerned about the thought of economic development and diversifying, right, are also folks who are very concerned about the environment. And they don't like to see diesel fumes or car fumes or, you know what I'm saying. [02:32:33] So to have somehow or another to marry those ideas together, I think is going to be important. And that's kind of aside from this, but I do think when we're talking about economic development, it's worthy of consideration because I see lots of frowning faces when we talk about economic development. [02:32:50] It doesn't mean we shouldn't do it because I'm all in favor of it and we have to do it, but we have to get our community to understand why it's important. I would just, and a couple of other quick comments. 1.3 on page 10, I automatically go in my brain, and we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but we're talking about workforce development and, again, partnering with the schools, even with economic development around careers and non-college careers. [02:33:23] They're looking at that. We're looking at it from multiple lenses. Let's make sure we're not in silos. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know me and education. I definitely think that we need to really carefully consider 4.6 on page 16, which is child care. [02:33:41] Child care is really holding us back a lot because when you have two children and you're spending $25,000 and $30,000 a year for child care to keep a job or even have a job or move into this area and think you can get it, it's a crazy world. [02:33:58] I mean, that is wackadoodle. So we've got to figure this out. And enough said about that. I have a note here about page 14, which I think was agribusiness economy, and I agree with much of what Mike said. [02:34:19] Although I kind of view what you all have on that list, and again, this is really big picture, but to some of Mike's points, I would say we talk about data centers. And when we talk about data centers, you can talk about mega data centers that take acres and acres and acres of land and lots of water, but you can also talk about data centers that are not that invasive, that are not that. [02:34:47] So thinking about what your comments were, Mike, I go back to what I said earlier. It's all about balance. You can do some of these things without a chicken poultry plant that is that huge, what I think most of our community would not want. [02:35:06] So just to think about the balance and how there are options that I think would be acceptable. Tourism is interesting right now because we certainly have a very robust tourism sector. [02:35:27] And I have said before, we need to be very careful about eggs in that basket. I don't think we should move away from it. I think that it's a good thing to have, but again, it's a balance because I see tourism falling off all over this country right now. [02:35:45] We have nine, I just saw the data yesterday, that right now business travelers from overseas coming in the United States has dropped by 9%. Now that's business, but we're seeing, and I don't think that that is just going to be this year. [02:36:03] I think that has a tail, and it's going to last for a while. So when we look at tourism supporting some of what Bea has talked about, about allowing our vineyards to have more restaurants and marrying our tourism as best we can to the ag business and supporting, I think, for the local community is really going to be important and not just looking at it through the lens of tourism, people that are coming here. [02:36:32] Tourists from Canada are way down, too. I mean, and they're selling their houses. Not here, necessarily, but they are selling their houses in Florida and along. So it's really something to look at through that lens of how do we support those locals and make them more successful. [02:36:50] And I guess, Jim, in the effort of time, I'm going to stop. Thank you. Supervisor Malin. Thank you very much. I've learned a lot and appreciate both the presentation and the questions that others have already asked, so I will not repeat that. [02:37:08] But let me zoom back to the beginning here, sorry. All right, here we go. So these are all out of order, sorry, but that's the way the notes went. Modernized ag economy, what does that mean? [02:37:26] Because if some of this is too much for now, then that's okay. Are we talking about the local food direct-to-consumer, which we've been working very hard on since 2010, or something else? [02:37:36] So I think what we're talking about there is getting back to Mr. Pruitt's conversation that, you know, some of the ag businesses described when we were sitting down with them at a round table, for them to be able to scale their business, having, they need some light industrial type facilities that the current zoning code does not allow in the rural area where their business is located. [02:38:09] um and so there's some um uh there's from their mind there's some challenges for being able to grow their business further um when you think about the resources that are available and then there's other examples um getting back to the co-packing um idea that um businesses have to drive they have to make a commit to a large capital investment to do something for themselves at their own facility or there's not many co-packing facilities in our region and so they're having to drive five or six hours every couple of weeks to be able to package their product in a way that [02:38:45] they can access wholesale markets. And so that creates just a barrier for them to be able to scale their business when that's kind of the world that they're navigating. And so I think it's a combination of policy and also access to particular assets, maybe a combination of 3.1 and 3.2 there. So maybe if there are minutes from the stakeholder groups and we can catch up on the background and understand it better that way because I mean Allie Hill spent years developing her cannery down in Farwell so it's an hour away yes but the jam people and everything else go down there and use it but the fellow at Red Hill doesn't transport his tomatoes and stuff like that [02:39:24] they somehow figured that out and they're selling at Whole Foods and everywhere else all up and down the east coast so I guess I would love to be able to know more and be perhaps more receptive to the what comes off is gimme, gimme, gimme, and I don't want to do the work. [02:39:40] So I would like to learn more to make sure that this is, because we're talking about, I mean, if we're talking about dollars, which is the whole point of this whole organization and figure out where to invest, then we have to have more information as it becomes available later on. I think the whole process that we're doing right now is really important and will help to organize my brain for sure. [02:40:03] Let me zoom down here now. So I brought my sign from the Monticello Artisan Trail. We were the first one in the state. And I just banged the microphone twice. Sorry. Sorry to blow out everybody's ears. Founded in 2010, J.T. Newberry was the CDD person in charge of helping all the local business people to get their licenses and all that kind of thing to sell. [02:40:29] And the state sort of dropped this. But Nelson County has never stopped. So we had 150-some participants and the brochures and all that stuff and a very robust website that helped people plan their trips when they came here and they could make itineraries. [02:40:46] Also, our local artisans could sell through the marketplace there directly. Really, really helped people, especially during COVID. The leftovers of this were still going during COVID. And the ability to sell direct without having to go to Chicago go to the arts and crafts fair and sit there for three days while the tire kickers came by your table, was a tremendous asset for them. So just as we've talked in the past about supporting our local studio tour and those kinds of things that bring in thousands of people from other [02:41:18] areas for those weekends during the year, this is of a scale that benefits directly our local producers. So the size and scale that was mentioned by others, I will not be supporting a 10,000-bird CAFO in Albemarle. [02:41:37] It's just, if Rockingham chooses to do that and they have the flats, confined animal feeding operation, the regulation, we need to talk about regulation, what the DEQ has to go through for those and the water quality issues that have to be dealt with are, as the folks in the Scottsville District are well aware. [02:42:01] But Kelly's Turkeys up on the mountainside in the forest in Greenwood or the western part of, yeah, it is Greenwood by then. Completely appropriate. Four or 500 birds, top dollar selling around the world. It is scaled right for what the family can do. So to me, scale does not always mean big. And I will tell you a little story. And that is with when Jeff and Michelle Sanders founded Glasshouse Winery after they had, or yes, and vineyards after they lived in Central America and all over the place, they built the winery into a rock. And the reason was to prevent them from [02:42:39] ever wanting to double it or to make it bigger because they could grow enough mostly on their own to have 3,000 cases of wine. Between 3,000 cases and 10,000 cases, there is no more profit. You have to be bigger than King to be able to really say, aha, I finally made it again after that long dry period. So I'm just, this is always something in my mind people have, it's not, and when you're bigger and then you have to be, instead of beef selling for $10 a pound direct to a customer, you go to the grocery store and they pay you $2 a pound. How is that beneficial to our [02:43:18] local growers? There is a whole different level of finance that has to be thought about for all these types of things. I will say that I'm grateful that there seems to be a resurgence of young people interested in agriculture, and I'm very proud of Darby Lowry, who has founded a certified Future Farmers of America chapter. It was. She's a senior this year and going off to NC State. So very cool thing i think that sometimes you start with children who grew up on the farm and sometimes it's people who just fell in love with the idea and have learned as they did through the environmental [02:43:54] sciences academy which really helped a lot of people without farm experience to learn that there was a whole new world out there for them so while that was operating the uh okay let me run down here can i make one note about darby's turkeys because i'm so glad that you brought that up Because that is a prime example of, I think, what we're trying to get at in this plan. [02:44:17] And that is, Darby's Turkeys was part of our roundtable discussions. We met with the entrepreneur there. And she made a very good point about how some of the needs around infrastructure to support agriculture businesses are limiting. [02:44:35] So, for instance, they need some additional utility access on their facility to ensure they've got the right types of broadband access to monitor all the turkey hatchery type of things was a really good example. [02:44:51] The idea that when you look at her farm, there's limitations about STRs and there's a limitation about the types of other sort of enterprise use on her land that she could have. [02:45:07] when she was suggesting that an opportunity around even thinking about some hospitality space on her land would allow her to diversify her business line to make sure that the Turkey Project, by the way, her Turkey Enterprise, could be more successful and could be more resilient. [02:45:26] So I think what I'm trying to get at in that comment is to say, completely hear you. I don't think one of the things that we're suggesting by any means is poultry slaughtering plants or large-scale animal production processing. It is about just making some tweaks around the infrastructure support to allow some of your micro-scale businesses to actually grow and be resilient and have an opportunity to scale just at the margins. [02:45:55] Because even her turkey business right now is so thin at the margins. She described how her husband's still having to have a full-time job and all of that types of things. So there's just a need, I think, around ensuring that we gather those businesses back together. [02:46:11] I think that's really important to hear about the needs, and I think that will influence some of the conversations that we can have around this space. So that turkey example is a really great one to come to life of what we're trying to get at in 3.1 and 3.2. Great. Well, I know that they've had a problem with not being able to get three-phase power for their chiller, and that's been five years we've been working with Dominion about that. [02:46:32] So that's another meeting coming up for me in the next week or so. trying to solve that issue. And I didn't know that they had even applied for any hospitality things, which would certainly be, as an active farm, they have all sorts of opportunities to do that, and maybe they're not aware. So that's good. [02:46:48] Let me run down my list here quickly. Thank you. [02:46:59] Just some comments of others that I thought were particularly poignant. The demographic impacts and benefits of all of the economic development. Someone during the One of these discussions several years ago talked about for every PhD you add four to six certificate level and undergraduate level, as I was working in Harvard Medical School, jobs are created and incredibly essential for the success of the lab. [02:47:30] So those are the kinds of jobs that I think all of our high school graduates, PVCC graduates, would be able to jump into, especially if they've had the opportunity, as I did during summer in high school, in college to be able to have local lab experience using our local assets because that helps on your resume to when you go to get some big-time job as a college graduate well look she's already worked in labs and knows how to do all this stuff so that is i think helpful um i guess with my [02:48:06] previous farming question and someone can get back to me later about this so the zoning issue questions were not about the agriculture it was about the ancillary projects okay never mind on that i will do that the um talked about that boutique scale talked about that one of the things in addition to the artisan trail back in 2010 that was a tremendous push to make it easier for farmers markets to assemble on previously any operating commercial spot in the countryside that [02:48:42] already had parking lot could be used with minimal or zero process the zoning clearance i expect is and that really helped to make the kinds of connections that residential or urban neighborhood people but also rural people can go to buy from their neighbors so I get my sausage from somebody who is in Jim's district who brings her stuff to the farmer's market in early still which is great we had the second highest number of farmer's markets to Fairfax back in 2013 or 2012 so I think they've fallen off a little bit now but that's certainly something where during COVID we [02:49:18] all learned that the only food available was local food that was grown right here because the grocery stores didn't really have a chance to get stuff in and all the local growers sold out very quickly you know my freezers were empty back then because everybody was calling and saying i really want some beef and i can't find any well sorry i'm sold it so that's good let's see um talked about that that sorry i'm taking so long i think that the i agree that in improving the job opportunities up and down all of those career ladder spots. I mean, I've got three grandchildren [02:49:56] and I would dearly love to have them be able to put down roots somewhere around here because I grew up in a three-generation household and have a three-generation household right now and I would really like that to continue to be possible for them and for others as well. One of the issues that I came to in doing my homework for tonight was one of the great attributes the county has is the natural beauty and the scenery and this is why people want to come here and live here [02:50:31] but then the other side is but the rules get in the way and so i want to do what i want to do and the reason the scenery looks the way it is is because of the rules that our predecessors created and we have so far upheld so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here i guess is what i'm asking people to consider um the career pathways comments were really excellent but I will encourage Amal County Public Schools to join in because they're the only one in the whole central region here who's not participating in the workforce efforts with Workforce Center. [02:51:10] So I hope that we've tried numerous times and hopefully we'll be able to get those conversations going. We had wonderful participation from folks from the ACPS workforce. [02:51:26] They had someone at every stakeholder group to be able to listen and begin to build those relationships. So we had a very positive experience. Okay, good. I've been trying to get them together with Sarah for six months, and it just, no, we can't do it. So anyway, I'm glad to know that. Thank you for convening that because that made that happen. And I'll stop there. [02:51:44] Thank you. Board, we're burning about an hour late, so I'm going to try to be very generic, I guess, because I agree with a lot of the comments, and I think there's a lot to like here. At the same time, I look at the vision, It doesn't really seem like it drives Albemarle County. [02:52:04] It looks like a generic vision of what a lot of places would want. And I recognize that we've been talking about in the goals things that are really tied to what we think our priorities are as a county. [02:52:21] But I want to ask if we're talking about economic development, we're talking about where we're going to put public money to benefit the county. And I would say that, you know, that's where we are looking at return on investment. And that means, you know, that we take advantage of opportunities like Home Depot, maybe, at times, which aren't really reflected in here at all. [02:52:46] And so I feel like this is a nice roadmap, but there are ways in which I think that we're not really being honest about why we're going to put tax dollars into economic development. So we've talked a lot about, but it's not really in the document, about tax diversifying our revenue sources. [02:53:06] And I don't know if we're fully being honest there when we kind of put the document together to talk about building these different things without recognizing that's what we're trying to do. And that we're building it based on the leveraging possibilities that come from those kind of investments. [02:53:23] It is in the document, by the way. Sure. So just a point of reference. Sure. so so what you saw today was just the framework piece i'd encourage you to go back and look at the full strategy there's about 13 insights that are written um in pretty detailed work and we do acknowledge that part of this the goal of this plan is to diversify the tax base it's actually it's it's it's referenced actually multiple times in the plan it's in the insight piece so hopefully you'll get a chance to take take a look at and if we haven't addressed it strongly enough we can always go back but it is included in the work okay no i i and i did read the whole document. I also read the large [02:54:02] set of papers, sort of data analysis. And I have some issues there because there's a lot of data in there that I don't understand at all. It says there are only 1,000 people in their national security and intelligence, yet we say there are 3,000 at Brevanna. It has a lot of numbers in here that don't make sense to me. Job categories dropping by 99% in the past five years. I don't know what's going on some of the data in the document but some of that's because some of that data that so the data that'll that's coming so national securities are really interesting one i'm glad you brought that up um what the what the cluster analytics is looking at is looking at private sector [02:54:42] investment in that area so it's looking at private employment it's not looking at public employment when we do those analytics so so when we talk about rate of anna futures being having a larger employment number much of that is because that is capturing public employment number dollar numbers. What we did in the analytics was to go back and say, as we think about the clusters that are in the county, what does the private sector investment around that economy look at? And that's really what the work is doing in that space. But I'd love to sit down and walk you through the cluster analytics if you want to have an opportunity to do that. There's a ton of work [02:55:19] we can talk about. I think we'll save that for another time. I'll just give you another quick example, though, business and financial services lists 1,065 jobs and 477 are in landscaping services, which suddenly just, well, that's not what I thought we were talking about when we got into that. [02:55:35] So there's some data in here that I'd like to parse better. I'm just going to make one more comment, which is that another thing I think is kind of missing, it's been alluded to a couple times, is the recognition and resilience and sustainability and perhaps, you know, realizing that we also want to lead with our climate action plan in developing green businesses. [02:55:54] And so I just don't see that reflected in the document adequately in my opinion. Thank you. Chair, could I have, I promise it will be so short because I recognize the time. [02:56:10] But I admit to mention this and everyone else touched on 4.6, child care, the importance of child care. We've said from this board frequently the importance of child care. And kind of to your previous point, Chair, I am concerned that sometimes this is something where we're not being honest with ourselves. [02:56:29] because I don't know that the rubber has ever hit the road with that as a priority in that things become policy rather than beliefs when they're backed up by action and dollars. And I am not aware of any investment by the county in child care other than the ways in which we are custodian for federal pass-through money. [02:56:49] So if this board continues to say that and if we're going to include it in this action plan, I would just raise that as a thing I don't think we're doing at all. that's okay we could also um ask private industry to come in and provide child care that's also do that i just wanted to touch i'm glad we hit on the turkey farm because i think too many people on this board thought that we were going to have a you know chicken farms all over the place like in arkansas and such and that's not what this was all about this was specific regarding this turkey [02:57:25] farm. You know how much those turkeys bring in? I learned this yesterday at the EDA meeting. $200 a turkey. So that's a lot of gobble. And I think it's important that we make sure that something like this doesn't go out of business because we do have businesses that are on the verge. They can decline. They can go out of business. We need to support them. [02:57:52] Steve, you made a very important statement. You said we need to gather the businesses, and we need to hear from the businesses what they need to succeed. And that's something I think that, I don't know, hopefully we're doing or we will, because I think that's extremely important. [02:58:09] We don't have all the answers. The businesses need to let us know also. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much for the presentation and for the discussion. Board, we are over an hour behind schedule, but I believe it's time for us to take a recess. [02:58:30] And if we could be promptly back by 4.50. [02:58:48] Welcome back. Board, our next item is a discussion of presentation about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Dr. Stacey Peth, the Assistant Director of Housing and Academic Chief of Human Services. [02:59:06] Welcome. Good afternoon. I am Stacey Pethia, Assistant Director of Housing. We are also joined by Kaki Dimmick, Chief Human Services Officer, and Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer. [02:59:23] Yes, got that right. And we are here to talk a little bit about affordable housing trust funds. [02:59:39] And so we're really going to look at three different things this afternoon. First is just a really big overview of what makes a housing fund a trust fund. provide a few examples from across the state and the country, and then a proposed structure for an affordable housing trust fund for Albemarle County. It's important to stress right at this point that the proposed structure that is in your agenda packet is just that. It's proposed. It is open to all kinds of changes, so it's really a starting point for discussion, and really the staff is looking for two specific questions for the board to provide direction on, and the first [03:00:19] is, does the board support the proposed structure for grants, loans, and affordable housing needs? And the second is, does the board support the proposed composition of and proposed charge for the Affordable Housing Review Committee? And we'll bring these questions back up at the end. [03:00:36] So just to start, what is an affordable housing trust fund? Basically, it is a fund that is established by a federal, state, or local government, and it represents a stable, steady source of funding. It has a purpose generally behind them of addressing affordable housing challenges through any variety of activities that would be identified by the local government, so the Albemarle County Board. It could include new construction, preservation of existing units, acquisition of either a vacant land on which to build housing or acquisition of, say, an apartment [03:01:11] building, home weatherization for homeowners and rental properties. These are just examples of a few things that a fund could be used for. Common characteristics of trust funds, they are flexible, so they could be used for a variety of different activities. What makes a trust fund different from a general housing fund is a dedicated source or sources of revenue. So trust funds do not rely on strictly annual appropriations to the fund through the board, through the budget process, or when just other funds come available. It's really dedicated sources of funding. They focus on local [03:01:49] housing needs they have formal administrative guidelines and a fund structure they also generally have an oversight body which helps really track progress usefulness of the fund how it's doing and recommend any changes some examples of housing trust funds the city of Alexandria has their housing opportunities fund it was created in 1998 the fund is administered by the housing division in a city of alexandria the funding sources for their trust fund one percent [03:02:26] of the meals tax collected each year real property tax revenue equal to one penny per one hundred dollars of assessed value they take developer contributions so those would be cash in lieu payments for proffer units also loan repayments so they provide both grants and loans through their fund and so the loan repayments would go directly back into to the fund to be used for other projects the fund is structured again with grants and loans and it is a non-competitive application process so they accept applications for funding throughout the year they use their fund primarily for [03:03:05] pre-development loans and projects that can are consistent with the goals and principles of the city's housing master plan and strategic plan so there's a large variety of really long list i didn't want to put on one slide they have a housing affordability advisory committee it has 14 voting members three non-voting members that represent city of alexandria themselves and that fund sorry the advisory committee does that it really oversees helps oversee the fund make sure monies are being used properly helps review the applications and makes recommendations for [03:03:43] funding. Loudoun County's Housing Fund was created in 1997. It is administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development. It has a variety of funding sources that in fiscal year 2026 will equal about $17.3 million. Funding sources include proceeds from sales of affordable dwelling units. They have an affordable dwelling unit program ordinance through which they collect revenue from selling those affordable units developer contributions they accept private [03:04:17] donations into their fund board designated funds also loan repayments it is structured as a loan they provide loans and grants through that and they have both competitive and non-competitive application processes the funds are primarily used for multi-family gap financing down payment assistance grants, particularly for Loudoun County workers. They use it for their affordable dwelling unit and workforce dwelling unit purchase programs and the revitalization and rehabilitation of housing. They also have an oversight committee. It's a housing advisory board, and it has 17 [03:04:55] members. It has a long list of things that that housing advisory board does, not just help oversee the fund. Henrico County's trust fund was created very recently, so in 2024. This is a time Limited Fund. It expires on July 1st, 2029. The administering body, they have actually partnered with a non-profit, the Partnership for Housing Affordability, or PHA. The funding comes directly from revenue that has been collected from data centers, so it's a one-time allocation to that [03:05:27] fund. They provide grants strictly. It is a non-competitive application process. They use it for affordable home ownership development only and the oversight of the fund is the non-profit staff finally looking across the country there is boulder colorado and they have their affordable housing fund it was created in 2009 and is administered by the department of housing and human services their fund sources include developer contributions commercial linkage [03:06:02] fees and general fund contributions obviously in virginia we at mara county does not have the authority to charge commercial linkage fees. But this just provides another idea for where funding could come from. They also provide grants and loans through their housing fund. [03:06:21] They use it to cover site acquisition, construction of affordable housing, both ownership and rental, the preservation of affordable housing, and also to help with pre-development costs. And they have an affordable housing technical review group which is seven members they definitely review the applications for funding that they come in they review those they score those they make recommendations of which ones should be funded they also help oversee the committee the sorry the fund and its activities and identify any areas for improvement so in your packet was a draft [03:07:01] set of guidelines for the affordable housing investment fund to move from what it has been used for so far into an affordable housing trust fund the sources of fund sources of funds that are included in that draft packet include annual annual real property tax revenue as the board approved through the budget process developer contributions so the cash in lieu of affordable unit payments that the county receives now those can only be used for affordable housing so they would go directly into the fund potential loan repayment should this act as a loan and grant [03:07:40] program transfers from the general fund as has been traditional for the fund as well as the potential for any private donations there is a list of funding priorities and this would be above and beyond what is already ready, and sort of helps rate the quality of the applications that come in. So households with incomes at 80% and 60% AMI, so 80% AMI for home ownership opportunities and 60% AMI for rental housing. Units with permanent affordability would receive [03:08:19] a slightly higher consideration. The base requirement, as you all may remember, is 30 years affordability period for rental housing and 40 for homeownership opportunities. That is within Housing Albemarle. So there will be extra consideration given for any project that went above and beyond that, hopefully moving towards a 90-year affordability period. Projects that bring in significant leveraging, part of the application process would include a listing of the other sources of funds that are being brought into the project by the applicant. And so [03:08:53] hopefully the county would not be the primary funder it would be on the lower level but be able to the funds would be able to be used to leverage additional funding priority would be given to shovel ready projects there have been a few occasions where the board has approved funding for a project and that funding has then sat in the fund for a year or two before it's ever used so this is really prioritizing projects that are coming to us that are ready to go shovel ready in the case of low-income housing tax credit projects would include that the applicant is ready to [03:09:33] submit a low-income housing tax credit application during the next round. Also projects that support economic and social diversification of neighborhoods and those that provide on-site resident services. Again, a few of these are not required under current housing policy with the county, but are things that we would like to strive to achieve. Does not mean other projects would not be considered. Excuse me. There would also potentially be target populations that are prioritized, and these would be identified by housing and human services staff and approved [03:10:12] by the Board of Supervisors, and these can change each year. Some examples of that would be senior households, so housing for senior households, or for families with children under the age of five years or persons experiencing homelessness. Again, these would be brought forward to the board for approval by staff. The plan, the guidelines suggest a distribution of funds, so that 40% of the funds going into the fund each year would go towards grant funding for non-profits. Loans, 40% of the balance of the fund would be used for loans. And 20% of the [03:10:51] fund balance would be set aside for emerging housing needs. And emerging housing needs can include things like during the pandemic when we needed to find ways to help cover the cost of housing for persons experiencing homelessness to move them off the streets into at that time was hotel rooms that could be used for that purpose it could be that an apartment complex such as mall side which is affordable housing is going up for sale and a group from within the community comes to the county. They've gathered some money together to be able to make an offer to purchase [03:11:28] the property, but just need a little boost from the county. It could be used for those types of things. Currently, the county does not have that type of funding available, so that would start that pool. Projects that would be eligible for funding through the Housing Trust Fund, there's new construction of affordable housing, projects that convert non-residential to residential housing or substantial rehabilitation of existing properties the projects would be located within designated development areas that is consistent with county policies the applicant [03:12:07] should have control of the site and the project should be in compliance with county policies overall so with the comprehensive plan or zoning ordinances the housing policy etc eligible activities. Proposed eligible activities include pre-development costs, land acquisition and development, buy-down of construction loan interest. That came from, if some of you may remember, the work session that the board had with developers in November of 2022 or three. That was an idea that was brought forth by one of the developer participants during [03:12:46] that time. It could be used for water and sewer connection fees, the new construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing, again, conversion from non-residential to residential uses, and for home ownership projects. The fund would not be able to be used for paying off property tax penalties or anything cost associated with community meetings. They would not be able to be used to rent a community facility for a meeting, couldn't provide food, could not be used for required mailings and should not be used for administrative staffing or other operating costs. [03:13:25] A process to apply for the funds or request funding, there would be an annual notice of funding of availability. Applications would be submitted through an online application portal. We are updating the one that the county has and currently uses for the human services funding program. [03:13:42] The idea is to be able to use it also for the housing fund. Applications would be evaluated against a set of criteria with a minimum score of 75 of the total points needed for funding consideration. [03:13:59] And then, as always, the Board of Supervisors would have the final approval on all funding requests. Here is a general overview of the evaluation criteria. You will notice that there is a difference in points between rental projects and ownership projects. [03:14:16] That is because under the project budget side, for rental properties, they would be required to submit a 30-year pro forma. That is not something that you would have with a home ownership project, so therefore there's a 10-point difference between those. [03:14:37] And also the capacity and experience of the development team for rental housing, that would require experience with property management. Again, not something that occurs with homeownership projects, so that's where there's a difference in points. Again, as long as both types of projects scored 75% of the total points or more, they would be considered for funding. [03:15:02] Fund management and oversight. The administering units would be the Office of Housing in partnership with the Department of Finance and Budget. guidelines also the draft also proposes the creation of affordable housing review committee it would have seven voting members representing real estate professionals lenders with residential construction loan experience builders those could be non-profit or for-profit a non-profit housing organization two county residents and a resident a county a representative from the county [03:15:38] the proposed charge for that committee would be to review the applications for funding review the progress and effectiveness of ahip including providing the board with an annual report which the office of housing already does so it's just expand on that information review the progress and effectiveness of the housing policy so just making sure that the county is really tackling all of the strategies that are within there and meeting the goals of the policy and then make any recommendations for improvements and it is [03:16:12] recommended that that group meet quarterly. I know that was kind of a whirlwind tour and I do seem to have lost the initial slide that had questions on it so let me go back to the start. Where are we? [03:16:30] There we go. And so I now open up to you for questions. Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Leopold. I have some questions regarding number one so I don't know yet. Number two the composition and of the proposed charge for the affordable housing review committee I have some questions about that so nothing yet for me um shall I go through my question yes thank you [03:17:01] um let's see page 18 if you can go to slide 18 please yes the units with permanent 90 year affordability would you tell me more about that please absolutely that is really restricting the resale price for a 90-year period. I know there has been some concern and comments from board members and the public that that is only possible with a community land trust. But going back and looking at the activities from other Virginia jurisdictions and other jurisdictions across the [03:17:38] country, Fairfax County restricts the resale price of their affordable units for a 30-year period. That is for for-profit, non-profit, community land trusts, whatever. Everybody has to do that. Loudoun County restricts the resale price of their affordable for sale units for 15 years. [03:17:57] Montgomery County, Maryland, is a 30-year affordability period for their for sale units. Again, that is anyone who provides affordable units in the county. And Boulder, Colorado, requires permanent affordability, so 90 years or above. I guess I'm asking that because we have a 30-year or 40-year, 30-year and 40-year, right? [03:18:20] Correct. Yeah, for rental and purchase. Why the 90? Again, this is a lofty goal that should a project go above and beyond the base requirements of 30 or 40 years, that they would gain extra consideration. [03:18:36] Okay, so instead, could it just be, if you reach this goal 30, 40 years, then you are eligible to have an additional X number of years? Well, the baseline requirement in the housing policy is 30 years for rents, 140 years for that. [03:18:56] So anybody that meets those goals will be considered for funding. You will get extra consideration, like bump up a few points or, you know, just become looking better with longer affordability periods. It's like a little boost. No, no. [03:19:12] And I understand that, but is that boost going to be guaranteed? No. Okay. They still have to meet all of the โ€“ they still have to meet all of the โ€“ Okay, so it's basically you reach this point, and then, yes, you're now eligible for another, you know. [03:19:29] They would just move up a little bit. It would just move up, okay. Okay, got it. This would be, Supervisor, this would be a condition that they are proposing as part of a funding request. At the beginning. It's not like it's unlocking something. Correct. [03:19:44] It just means that as you're looking at, if you have two projects that scored the exact same on their applications and one had the standard 40-year affordability period that we already asked for, but the other one said we will make these affordable for 90 years, that would give them a little extra weight. [03:20:05] Got it. Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Let's see. Page. I do like, well, the boulder came out with seven members, and I'll get into the delineation of the committee. [03:20:22] Can you go to page 27? [03:20:35] Oh, that's the review committee. Yes. Okay. I don't have a problem with that one. That one's good. For, I really wanted to ask you whether the things that we are doing for homes, you know, for a single-family home, they need weatherization they may maybe they need new air conditioning or heating or something like that um you had a list of things that they would qualify for are all are all of those uh do we have [03:21:09] some kind of a lien on the house so when it when and if when it sells that the county could then recoup those costs to be able to put back into the trust fund uh currently no but i do believe it is a state requirement that we could provide grants or loans for affordable for for homeowner rehabilitation um and we could design it as a loan to the homeowner that is how we work with ahip with community belt flock grant funding when we do rehab projects with them um they are provided [03:21:48] to the homeowners loans and liens are placed on the home okay so liens are placed on the home and they would be repaying the the county we could certainly design it that way pardon we could make it that way yes okay okay i think that's important because then that tells the person you're helping me out but then when i sell a home i'm also giving to others by putting that amount of money back in the back into the trust fund. Okay, thank you. Page 22, you went so fast, I was taking those [03:22:23] all over the place. Okay, those I, I like the eligible activities. There was one regarding, let's see, oh, shovel ready. Yes, ma'am. You mentioned about shovel ready. Do we have a list of people uh do we have the list that we've been talking about for a while now of either eligible homeownership or eligible renters oh we have started a list yes um those are for the proffer units so that's difficult to get people interested in those because you don't know when they're going [03:23:03] to come online um so the shovel ready projects here if they were with a non-profit there would always be if it's rental housing there will always be people available um but obviously the county would work with the developer to help them advertise those units to people we just need the units to come online so that we can advertise and as we've had in the past we've had a a limit when you um want to purchase a home that there's a certain number of days that the developer has to sell that do we still have that not in this program uh we could consider [03:23:39] placing it in there because i'm thinking if if a homeowner they you know built a house for sale and no one buys it and it's on the market for a year two years i mean that developer is losing money so that's associated with the proffer program um that is not typically associated with the projects we fund through the housing fund which means that if they couldn't sell it we would probably expect the developer to pay back the money that we gave them for that unit. [03:24:12] So if we funded them, and there would be agreements written to get a memorandum of understanding. That's it. Thank you. You're welcome. That would lay out all of these have not been drafted yet. We really want, Steph wanted to get your feedback on the way it is structured now before we went into more details. [03:24:33] But there would be a way to pull that back. So if they are unsuccessful in actually selling a unit to an income-qualified buyer, then there would be some sort of mechanism that the county could get back that cost per unit. Okay, good. And then go back to the last, I think it was the last page where you had who would make up the, is that it? [03:24:59] Who would make up the, yes, right here. I agree with bullet one, two, three, four. I have a question. Well, you say county residents, and when you say county representative, you mean someone from the Alomar County government. [03:25:16] Okay, okay, okay, that I agree. Two county residents, my only concern, I think there should be input, but my concern is you don't have someone that's a professional. I mean, I've seen this on other boards where someone who knows nothing about what is being done, They're, you know, you're getting their opinion, but that's all because of their limited experience. [03:25:42] I mean, I have a question about the two county residents. I'd rather see maybe two county representatives or maybe two people, two different non-profit housing organizations. Well, I think part of the problem, we have to be careful with non-profit housing organizations. [03:26:00] Okay. if this is a committee the board would want to move forward with, we would need to make a requirement that whatever non-profit organization sits on this committee is unable to apply for funding during their term of service on that committee. That would be a conflict of interest if they sat there and then sit on a review committee. [03:26:20] It would have to be someone from BRAC. Just musing out loud who it would probably be. Right, right. That would would not be good. So maybe another different type of professional that you can come up with. [03:26:36] So maybe just one county resident or no county residents. I think having county residents on this committee is really important. They bring a perspective particularly if we can find someone who has needed affordable housing in the past or is looking for affordable housing at their time of service. Brings a perspective that the professionals don't always have. Okay, and I welcome those comments. I mean, I welcome someone, you know, attending a meeting and letting us know about their situation, that I welcome. Do the, would the Board of [03:27:13] Supervisors approve all these members? Absolutely, yes. Okay, all right, so in my last comment, I'm going, you're rubbing off on me, Supervisor Pruitt. My last comment is that would we ever want to look at this as a pilot program for a year to see how it's working? [03:27:35] And the reason why I say that, I want to make sure that this is successful. And if the people or the developers come up, and residents come up with something different, that we're not stuck in a silo saying, oh, it has to be like this, has to be like this. [03:27:59] Maybe there are other, maybe a developer could offer something else that gets us to the same place, but in a different percentage or something like that. The structure for any housing fund can always change at any time. [03:28:15] I mean, it's important to always review how housing policies and housing funds are operating and how successful they are and making changes as you go along. Absolutely. And actually, I lied. I still have one more comment. I think one of our biggest problems with the county is our processing of being able to be able to get something moving in a good amount of time. [03:28:40] I mean, we've lost out on a project that was going to give us a lot of affordable housing because the process took too long. And, I mean, that's on us, that we have to make sure that things are correct, but do we have to have a checklist of, I don't know, 200 things? [03:28:59] I don't know how much our checklist is, but is there any way to, which goes into our permitting process and everything, you know, how long everything takes. I don't think other communities take as long as we do, or do they? [03:29:16] That is out of my area of expertise and authority. I thought you might answer like that. Okay, those are all my questions for now. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I'm going to start with the committee because it's on the screen. And I will just begin by saying I don't think we had this list prior to the meeting. [03:29:36] So I've not had time to muse on it or solicit public comment as much as I thought it was going to be administered by you. And I was honestly fine with that. I'd actually fall for that. previously because committees can be unwieldy and they can slow down process that's not to say they're wrong um i had an almost opposite concern from supervisor lapisto curtley's um which is that there is not enough that this could too easily be captured by industry concerns um with its current composition um that would be especially true if the non-profit housing provider was a [03:30:12] housing developer right um because then you'd have four industry folks um in a seven-person board um if they are not if they're required to not be voting on it and that would realistically result in them being kind of a different type of industry in order to avoid losing business um i may be less concerned but i would just raise there is a going concern in the industry around community land trusts right now as increasingly being captured as in the community land trust use a tripartite board model where one-third are real estate professionals and experts one-third [03:30:52] are community members and one-third are actual beneficiaries of the land trust and realistically what happens is those first two-thirds become the same kind of technocratic industry people um they're they're all realtors um and that ends up significantly undermining the goals the community but these are advisory only correct no they're voting on what comes to us they make recommendations so they would sit and review the applications and provide them a score it would work very similarly to how the human services funding program works so they give the scores [03:31:31] and then staff am i we would have say over that sure am i understanding correctly that they would basically be convening once a year? Four times a year. And we could very easily change a non-profit housing organization to a non-profit only. [03:31:48] Which would open that up to, it could be Java, it could be BRAC, it could be any other organization. That is a minor tweak that I might appreciate because frankly the universe of organizations that have interest in housing are not a housing organization. Java is a great example. [03:32:04] I would value Java's input on this board. they don't have a seat right there unless they were a county resident which then kind of accentuates the previous point i made i think there would be efforts made to make sure that there was not dual representation right you could not represent the county and an organization residents and an organization i am tentatively comfortable with that change made with this list i i might want the privilege to revisit this again before we implement this part of it just because I haven't had as much time to sit with it. [03:32:36] I'm cognizant of time, but I have a lot to say. I'm going to try and go very quickly. I want to appreciate that you flagged cash contributions in lieu as a funding capitalization method. I am so grateful that you put this policy together. [03:32:51] I hope that some hard, concrete things I can point to on cash in lieu can be the next thing we're expecting to see, and I'm excited for it. So I want to begin by grabbing kind of the biggest bull by the horns of public pushback, which is around the 90-year affordability piece. [03:33:12] And the 90-year affordability piece, understanding that's the goal, it's also around the 40-year affordability piece, right? And the recommendation to change that has come from a lot of organizations and individuals who I consider very close friends and partners and allies. [03:33:27] So I say that. I am supportive of the staff recommendation in here, And I am not supportive of kind of the community pushback against shortening that affordability period. And just I want to briefly explain where I'm at on that, right? The main rationale for this is that this is an important wealth generation tool for historically marginalized communities, specifically black folks who have been illegally denied access to housing through credit tools, right? [03:33:58] I believe that the data pretty strongly shows that race-neutral tools cannot solve race-coded problems. And if anything, the best outcome would be a race-neutral outcome for wealth generation. The worst outcome, and frankly, the possibly more likely outcome, would be an even deeper segregating effect. [03:34:20] Because the people who are going to have the networks and the familiarity and the amenities to access and capture the benefits of the subsidy are more likely going to come from historically advantaged communities, even if they are within the AMI range, right? As in, it is your UVA student who is going to be staying here to do a startup, who is going to be very likely the kind of people who are capturing the housing availability goals. [03:34:46] That's still a commendable goal, but if we're saying our goal is wealth generation, that's who is going to be benefiting from that, and I'm not sure that would be consistent with county goals. So I'm comfortable with the recommendation as written for those reasons. I do want to just note you said in the funding priority that the affordability AMI level would still be 80% for homeowners as the priority goal. [03:35:17] that is not reflected in the funding priorities in the text here in the document you gave us. I'll have to thank you for pointing that out. Another thing I do want to just quickly flag is I want to make sure I'm correctly understanding how something like a 90-year affordability period would work in the context of a development that has a lifespan. [03:35:45] So I would assume that a rental multifamily would have a 90-year affordability period, but that gets vitiated when it needs a redevelopment because there would be a new contract that would be entered into, a new MOU that would be entered into for funds for a redevelopment. [03:36:07] And the only way that 90-year affordability period basically comes, applies for whatever the difference between the time and redevelopment is or if somehow they limp along or get private funding for a redevelopment. Am I correct in understanding that, Or is there something else going on under the hood that I need to explain to me? [03:36:26] That level of detail has not yet been put together. The initial thinking was that that 90-year period would not renew. It would just keep extending. So if at year 30 they came back and said we need to substantially rehab this multifamily unit, housing, the property, they need additional funding to help with that, then we would not make another 90-year affordability period that would help that building extend through that 90-year period. [03:36:59] Got it. Helpful. I think that's about what I thought, but that's a better way to phrase it, frankly. Thank you. When you were talking about priority communities, I do want to very briefly flag something for review for council, which is the second one. [03:37:18] One and three I don't think are a problem. second one i just might want to have council on the back end make sure that that is actually okay um because i can think of a reason it might not be but i'm not sure um uh so distribution of funds section four um i i like this i like the identification of it um i first want to very quickly you touched on this i want to make sure i'm understanding it you talked about emergency housing needs something like an intervention to acquire mall side would be an emergency housing need. Would this also be emergency housing needs that aren't necessarily speaking to public housing [03:37:57] stock? I'm thinking the Salvation Army. Would that be an emergent housing need or would that be something different? That could be. We have specifically not defined emerging housing needs because we don't know what they are. That's fair. We don't want to limit that to very specific categories um i mean it really could be again um with the sale of cavalier crossing um it could because so many people needed to be relocated it could be using that pool of money to help with relocation um so we don't want to limit what that is for i i've said this before i'll raise it here [03:38:35] i'm not saying i want action on this i i like my money to be appropriate for discrete things and when i think of the housing trust fund i think of things that are designed to build publicly available housing stock and i get a little wary of proposals to use the funds in ways that don't realize that goal um that being said we don't have a separate pool this fiscal year to do these key things with so i'm not pushing back on that because we we didn't approve a capital expenditure for um for the salvation army and we might have an emergent need other [03:39:14] than Gavalier Crossing like that so I'm not saying I don't want that but I just raise that as a kind of continued concern I might like that to be a separate pool for things that are not housing stock related to be a separate pool moving forward that this board can grapple with then the kind of bigger thing on section four is I read this as being strict guidelines with the flexibility point being other silos can go to plus up emergency housing needs, but they [03:39:46] cannot shift within that, which does give me concern for everyone. The kind of visual metaphor I've been thinking, I've been using for this is if I have like a five-gallon jug and I've got three little like drink dispensers and I pour my five-gallon jug into all three of those drink dispensers, they've each got a little spigot that is not at the bottom of the drink dispenser and realistically by pouring them into the three jugs i have reduced the amount of water i can drink out of my five gallon jug because they will all go below that spigot at which point they are no longer usable but there's still water there [03:40:23] right the siloing things off and having them not transferable making it so i can't pour my drink dispenser back into my jug and drink it um makes it so i can't necessarily do an efficient spend down so i guess what i would say is is it possible that this could be a distribution guideline rather than a distribution rule or do you have thoughts on that oh i think a guideline is good but i think starting each fiscal year with that application period knowing once the board adopts a budget how much money will be in the fund for that upcoming fiscal year [03:41:00] it gives people an idea of what's available right so i mean it's just you could just throw a bunch of money in there and then you don't know if it's going to be grants you don't know it's going to loans. I think if it comes in and we get through the application period and we have nobody asking for loans and everybody asking for grants and we feel that those projects are appropriate for grants, absolutely staff would come forward and recommend changing that. But I think having a structure set out to sort of help guide everybody's thinking and planning is appropriate to start with. We can always change. I like that idea of kind of an initial funding cycle that uses these strictly followed by a potential tweak based on what is left over what the universe [03:41:40] looks like um the kind of similar thing i would ask is the emergency housing needs fund would theoretically keep hanging out right um are you envisioning a spin down period right like i'm thinking on a ship you have a certain amount of money you're allowed to use per division for like personal gear for people and at the end of the fiscal year if you haven't bought those everyone's like hey everyone order your boots right we we have this money that's going to disappear um i'm curious if you envision anything like that or would we keep carrying over an emergency fund [03:42:16] i think that's really it for the board's direction um that we could do it many ways it could be we get to the end of the fiscal year um and we have that money left over nobody's used it and we do another round of funding applications like we have this money available send us some ideas we could roll it over into the next fiscal year and then maybe top it up with a little bit if we think something is coming down the line. I think in human services and housing, we have a fairly good idea of what needs might be coming up. We just don't know when. And so I think if we saw something [03:42:53] that was going to be a potential problem that would need some help from the county, then staff could come back and say, let's hang on to this because we think this is going to happen. But not having any type of funding has put the county in some tough situations in the past. [03:43:08] Are you picturing like it's midway through Q3, and so you come with something on the consent agenda, or you come with a very short proposal saying, board, aha, do this. Got it. [03:43:24] That makes sense. We had public comment that was pushing back about how we're treating certain types of developers and equally with the fund balance, I'm okay with that. Developers are different. A nonprofit is a nonprofit because it has a public-facing mission and a corporation doesn't, so I'm fine with them. [03:43:45] I would not want that extra 2% going to the shareholders of Southern Home Developments. I'm not trying to pick on them. They're just literally the first developer I can think of by name. So I'm fine with that. 100% for the grant funding when you say a for-profit developer can do it, but it has to be 100%. [03:44:05] Is that 100% at 60? Yes. I would say 100% if it's home ownership, 80%, if it's rental, 60%, to meet the housing policy guidelines. Okay. If other members of the board have opinions on that, I might be able to be persuaded for some kind of mix or maybe a unit mix that nets to 60% kind of mirroring. [03:44:29] I think LIHTC does that. They do. I would be comfortable with that, but I know that's harder to administer. My guess is I would anticipate a for-profit developer coming forward with a low-income housing tax credit project, in which case that would be available for a grant. [03:44:53] I guess I would not want to be in a position where you have a good LIHTC proposal that's coming to us that needs us to succeed, and they're penciling out using a net 60 that's allowable in my tech, but they have like 400% units that they're using for cross-subsidizing some deeply affordable units or something, and we say no, right? [03:45:12] So if we need to enshrine that as an exception, I might be interested in enshrining that as an exception. Does that make sense? I'll have to think about that. 60 months seems short. Is that normal in the space? I thought 10 years was normal, but this is five years like a chattel loan. [03:45:33] It depends. Different localities have different timelines, and they really focus on... They look at the pro forma. So that is open to change. I just picked a number. Generally at the end of construction, and I don't know if all board members know this, but there are two types of financing, particularly in rental housing construction. There is the construction financing. Once construction is complete, all rental properties then refinance to permanent financing through a bank. So that's like their mortgage. Construction financing, depending upon how long the project [03:46:09] takes so they flip it over so it could be that you know we could get paid back through that refinancing process obviously if it's a home ownership project um the refinancing of those units comes from the sale of the property to another person so it's it can it can definitely be altered i guess the thing i would say is like at some point we need to be able to give something concrete to put no guidance before we approve it so that's the only thing i pitched to you right Like, I want to know if it passes the smell test to developers, and at some point we have to actually settle on a number that's going to be there, if a number is going to be there. [03:46:46] Correct. Five years, just a number I chose. It's sort of at a point where it helps bring money back into the fund on a faster basis and help those loan funds turn over, but obviously we are open to changing that to whatever. [03:47:03] Eligible applicants, nonprofit. You say a 501c3 nonprofit. This is a habit I see organizations do a lot, but there are non-501c3 nonprofits that might be in a position to develop. I'm thinking some churches don't file 501c3 status because they don't necessarily have to depending on what they're doing, their activities. [03:47:24] They get automatic tax exemptions without filing. And also, like, I have a friend who runs a 501c4 because they want to endorse candidates sometimes, but they also are in a position where they might be a co-fiscal sponsor on, like, an LGBT elder homeless center. [03:47:40] And I would not want us to be in a position where things are getting automatically disqualified for arbitrary reasons. I might suggest you could just cut the word 501c3 there. I'm not sure it's a delete, like, accomplishing anything other than, like, excluding churches and 501c4s. [03:47:56] And there's probably other C schedules that aren't on my mind that might be apparent. The third rule for eligible applicants, This is kind of the experience criteria. And I know we're already using experience in the judging criteria, which I would just raise sounds like we're double tapping that same concern. [03:48:17] But also, it feels a little monopoly protective, right? Like if we're saying we apply to be eligible, you have to have experience doing this here. I find that challenging. [03:48:34] So I guess I'd pump that to you to see what you would reflect back at me on that. This is the bottom of page four. the packet i i was looking in the actual did you say it was on the bottom of page five four uh it's third bullet under section five i'm getting worked up so if you within the guidelines [03:49:10] themselves yes um there is no requirement that experience has to be in albemarle county it is applicant has owned and or developed at least one development that contains profit affordable housing units or county funded or otherwise supported affordable housing units so this could be anyway um income restricted units or market rate housing units that have been placed in service so there's no requirement that it has to be in outmorrow county okay i guess i'm i still have some pause over it right because like the the developer startup that's like we're gonna do [03:49:49] this we've got we've identified all these capital streams yada yada yada um they have to start somewhere it would not surprise me if other localities also have things like this and i'd be worried about chilling out good plans for that developer experience when we're already also going to be dinging them on like their their applications already going to suffer based on our evaluation criteria i wonder if that suffer is not sufficient if they're able to like still perform and get 75 and wow the board right khaki you look like you had something thank you yes [03:50:24] Kaki Demick, Chief Human Services Officer, this criteria is reflective of this board's longstanding philosophy that taxpayer dollars should not be used in the first year or two of somebody's operational sort of function in the community. [03:50:42] So, for example, in the human services funding process, an organization has to have been in existence and met the standard 501c3 registration. those kinds of things requirements and have operated the particular program they're proposing to us for at least two years. [03:50:59] There's just been a longstanding interest in using the money in a less risky environment than to support startups. So this is reflective of that standard, and that could be a different standard for the housing fund based on the board's guidance, or it could be the same. [03:51:21] Since it was the time I'm using, so I guess I would let the board reflect what they feel on that. I want to flag the development area eligible projects requirement. This is section 2. I would flag that as potentially redundant and getting us into accidental. [03:51:40] So this is, sorry, top of page 5, so section 6-2, eligible projects development area. The reason I flag this is the occupancy and affordability requirements section for every type of development separately says consistency with comprehensive plan as, like, a core requirement. [03:52:02] I see that as accomplishing what we want to accomplish there. But we could imagine the project for, like, a large rural subdivision that meets all the standards that is doing tiny homes. or maybe this board in the future adopts some kind of rural cluster something or anything, and there is a rural use that is consistent with the comprehensive plan, I don't want us to have already said we can't do that. [03:52:29] So I would just flag that as a standard that I'm not sure needs to be included if we're separately requiring everything to be consistent with the comprehensive plan when they apply, which would also, I mean, create the issue of people couldn't apply before they've gone through a rezoning, which is complicated in Albemarle County. [03:52:46] but I mean I would say that's what consistent with comprehensive plan means um um I'm on page six um the distribution of affordable units this has um I've heard the phrase impossible thrown around I've also heard someone suggest it makes them ineligible for Virginia housing money I I don't know where that second bit's coming from I wonder if you could speak to that very well first that's consistent with county practices um when you are coming in for rezoning [03:53:26] we expect the affordable units to be evenly distributed throughout the community not clustered in a back corner right way back from everything else oh i'm in favor of this as policy um it's something i've talked about before i i guess i'm i'm asking if you have heard other concerns about like technical feasibility either from a funding structure or from a construction [03:53:50] I think the concerns around low-income housing tax credit projects, if a LIHTC project is in a mixed-income community, these funds would only fund that low-income housing tax credit affordable housing portion of it. [03:54:07] And because that would be 100% affordable, it's not an issue. We consider those distributed evenly. sure okay um that what would your sense be if this was converted to one of the guideline the priority targets instead of a hard requirement would that be complicating well i i so this was written um to conform to other county policies and practices uh and so i hate to make this different and have it conflict with something else makes sense okay i'm not sure i want to pick on [03:54:44] this um so a few um non-profit developers have raised issue with the maximum affordable for sale price being pegged to 65 of the federal home values and i think a public commenter said that that effectively says that our maximum affordable sale price is something like 270 something right no 247 247 240 oh so worse okay better but harder um and so i i raise that to just say i i'm sure [03:55:20] there's a very good reason you're using this in in no small part because it's probably easier right it's it's like it's a standard that the feds have already given us correct um if you look at other jurisdictions particularly northern virginia they're um they have committees separate from review committees that actually sit and determine um the the annual affordable sale price um we don't really have the capacity to do that within the county so this was an easy way to do that can we i feel like the previous standard right qualifying tenants and the understanding of [03:55:57] we know what affordable means is 30 of my housing costs right can we not extrapolate out that a maximum affordable for sale price would be whatever would be affordable at 80 ami at prevailing interest rate um at 30 of their income i think it's easier having a specific number or tied to something so yeah the standard used to be 65 of virginia housing's maximum first-time home buyer price uh that was easy for developers to go to virginia housing's website find out what their [03:56:34] maximum sale price for first-time home buyer programs is and then they know um so they're having a standard makes it easier to go forward is is this limit so low that it would be hard to find qualified buyers because it sounds like it's lower than our current qualified buyer standard for proffers we have difficulty finding buyers for our proffer units because the price has been too high. Speaking with... Too high, okay. Correct. So this brought it down to something that is easier for developers to find income qualifiers for. Oh, sure. Okay, yeah. Basic math. Okay. Convinced. [03:57:16] You previously, I think, mentioned this, but I had a note to ask about trailing deeds for right of first refusal. That sounds like what you were talking about with Supervisor Lepisto currently briefly. It sounds like you're vaguely a minimal to that as a resale, as a deed that trails for the purposes of resale is that fair or is that am i being overly generous to what you had said at the moment i'm not sure the county really has capacity for for right of first refusal for the county so that would be difficult okay but staff is happy to look into all those options um help [03:57:54] me understand what project budget means as a valuation criteria it's really to make sure that the project the the project it looks like it is reasonably priced costed out um they've they've done some good budgeting they have the money to fill those needs and that they're coming to the county and asking for you know 10 not 70 of the funding that's pretty standard in applications can we can we require um the creation of a tenant displacement plan um as a condition of funding I'm not certain about that. [03:58:35] Part of the reason staff has not come back to the board with guidelines for the anti-displacement policies, we are trying to figure out how to make it work within the Virginia guidelines. Can you tease that out? I'm thinking like the developer agreeing in either the funding agreement or in some kind of encumbrance that they would not even necessarily contribute assets to it, but develop a plan and be thoughtful about how they manage potential displacement during a re-dev. [03:59:06] We're still trying to figure out how to make that work. Okay. That could certainly be a prioritization or an extra points opportunity so that those projects that had anticipated anti-displacement activities and had appropriately funded them would accumulate additional points compared to those applications that did not. [03:59:26] That's easy enough for us to add, not as a requirement, but as a funding criteria. It sounds like you're less confident that I make a 90-year deed, multifamily, that I can make them comply to some kind of committal to a non-displacement policy for when they re-dev. [03:59:47] Correct. We're still trying to figure out if we can do that. I do think some of our peers do that. I don't know what it looks like, but I'm fairly certain some of our peers require that. But that might also be part of their site planning process. I'm at the end of the document. [04:00:02] Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much, and I will just touch on a couple of things that were in the notes I sent you because I'm going to follow up on also what other people said that I may not have understood. [04:00:22] Never mind on that. Okay. Let me go back over here. Where are you? Okay. So one of the things that was on the proposed list for funding was homeownership, counseling, that kind of thing. [04:00:48] And so I wondered whether that was something that nonprofits perhaps should be doing. As I've mentioned before, with funds from taxpayers, I really want to see bricks and mortar things, not soft services. And so that's where I'm trying to focus my attention the most. [04:01:05] And that's perfectly fine. There are jurisdictions, Virginia, across the country, that use their housing funds for those types of programs. It is perfectly fine. If the board does not want to do that, we can remove it. I guess, and also listening to the discussion about the 90 years business, if it's being given as a stipulation to get extra points, my suspicious little mind is saying, yes, and later on they're going to say, oh, by the way, we can't make that work, and so we want a waiver. [04:01:36] And by the way, they've gotten already the leverage up to. So anyway, I'd rather not have that just because I think it sets a trap that we are likely to fall in, And that disadvantages the other people who were perhaps more straightforward about what they planned to do or could do. [04:01:55] Under Section 7, in my note, I did say I'm very concerned about all these soft skills and funding, especially for beginners. I don't want people learning on county taxpayer money. That's somehow they need to get that work done, either working for an established business or something in order to figure this out. [04:02:18] I'm just more straight-laced about that. To have the construction of homeowner-occupied bullet, that's already required. And so I don't know why we would be putting money into that when it's already required as far as our housing album law is concerned. [04:02:37] This is the seventh bullet under Section 7. So we have so many needs. I'm worried that it's being spread way too thin as far as opportunity is concerned. [04:02:54] and trying to focus the effort on where we can really help the most people. Others have mentioned Section 9, this distribution of units. I cannot understand how this would work, even though I've tried to figure it out. [04:03:11] So I look forward to a whole lot more information about this as far as how it's used in other places because the numbers of bedrooms and here, there, and everywhere in a multi-unit. That's already part of the county review process when a rezoning application comes in. [04:03:30] There is a requirement that the affordable units be evenly distributed throughout the community, that they should have, if you have 50% of your units, market rate units, or two-bedroom, you should have 50% of your, we're not exactly strict on that. [04:03:48] What the county has been most strict about is making sure that we do not cluster all of the affordable units into one floor of an apartment building or one corner of the it whereas even with the positive staff recommendation that has what's come forward unfortunately in montclair for example there were all these big apartment buildings and that was where all the affordable units were stuck or these 500 square foot basement something or others but anyway it's all i remember seeing in staff reports is a chart and so i just haven't quite made the leap from [04:04:24] that to what's written on here on page six which is still a concern i'm worried we're making it so complicated that i'm not sure it's going to work um the i still think that the 40 year or some kind of right of first refusal even though we may not have money in the bucket for it today is a far better thing that's somehow encumbering a future owner to um to limit what they can wait [04:05:01] they can do the where's the thing about um there was something about limiting the the amount of equity that people can have and i think that when non-profits do this they have an already ahead of time if something is a 50 increase in value over 10 years or whatever then the resident would get half of that and the non-profit would get half of that to put back into the loan fund seems much more reasonable than a far smaller amount going to the homeowner. [04:05:35] And I think that's what Supervisor Pruitt was talking about, about continuing to disadvantage the people who really need to have a level playing field. So I have a slide on the screen that I just pulled up that would give you an example of what this means. This is a very basic example of how this could possibly work. [04:05:53] There would be more opportunities to increase the amount of equity that they earn. But if someone were to purchase an affordable unit today, say at $245,000, and they stay in that home for a few years and they want to resell it under this 40-year affordability period, they would come to the county and the county would work to create a formula that would determine what that resale price would be. [04:06:20] It would definitely include an increase based on the consumer price index from the time they purchased the house until the time they're going to sell it. So let's say it increased by 7% during that time period. That would increase the sale price to $257,000. [04:06:37] There would be allowances for capital improvements that have been made. Many localities will create a list of approved capital improvements, so you're not paying for things like hot tubs. That means they have to be permanent. So they would need to have documentation that those actually happen. [04:06:54] So if you put in a new water heater, you keep that receipt. You can add real estate commission in there. um i don't know what it is these days i just remember it used to be six percent so i threw that in there that would give you the resale price of 283 285 they would earn subtracting the initial sale price from the resale price that would be an earned equity of 38 285 under our current policy the person could purchase the house for 245 000 today and then next month sell it for $500,000. [04:07:29] That does not seem, one, that unit goes away. So we are constantly chasing units. It also seems slightly, what's the word I'm looking for? Help me out, Kathy. [04:07:48] We fail to have a home ownership time period in order to get in one of these units to begin with. As we do with family divisions, you're not allowed to flip it for 15 years. And that's maybe too long. But it was the same issue of people using the family division excuse as a way to get an extra lot. [04:08:05] And then three months later, poof. Correct. And so the county board put a stop to that. And so there definitely needs to be a way to fix what we're doing now. And I don't know exactly what the right answer is, but I appreciate you working on that. Someone else made a comment about cash and loo. [04:08:23] that to me has been the source of the failure that we have for people buying out for $16,000 instead of building a $200,000 house. For 15 years, we have lost out on hundreds of structures that were already zoned into Crozet. And it's created a huge amount of animosity amongst the citizenry who really wanted those 300 units that were never built. They were bought out instead, and the money's gone poof. So I'm very glad if we can figure out a way to get away from that whole process because I don't think it has helped people when it's the units, it's the bricks and mortar that we really, really need. [04:09:00] I'm a little concerned about the later on adjusting between loans and grants and emerging needs only because I remember when there was an attempt to get back into a CDBG loan process and it never could get back to the board in time for the approval and so we lost out on that and I do not want to fall in that trap again. [04:09:27] also so i guess we'll have to figure out a way to not have that happen i don't know what the answer is there but i'm not i think everybody six people have six different ideas about what the percentages should be but um and do we have any way to benefit or to prioritize people who build and manage and hold for a long time as opposed to approving and flowing because to me that the very successful residential experiences of emerald county residents in our various [04:10:07] supported complexes has been based upon the fact that there were long-time builders, managers, who still manage them and have the responsibility to keep them up and make sure that their residents are doing well. And when the residents of Brookdale and Treesdale tell me how well taken care of they are, that means a lot to me. So I hope that we will somehow find a way to prioritize those folks we already have a cluster ordinance i don't know why people aren't using it more but it's been very successful in the places where it was used and certainly could be again [04:10:45] so in your mind is the preponderance of this aimed for light tech or is it the preponderance of this aimed for which is rental only and sort of capital profit driven outside money profit driven, as opposed to the local ones who are doing a combination of rental and homeownership? [04:11:11] It could be for any affordable housing project. Okay. Because I've sort of gotten sour on the whole LIHTC idea when I found out that there was a big percentage that was taken out for admin, for the people who are running it, and also for the investors. So anything we can do to prevent the bleed out of the money to not provide the books and mortar, that would be good. [04:11:33] And I will stop there. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope I don't regret saying this, but I think I agree with just about everything Supervisor Pruitt said. And I don't want to belabor that. I will say, though, that, you know, as I look through, I want to emphasize the word flexibility because I think there are some places where it feels inflexible. [04:11:56] And I'll jump to the evaluation criteria, which maybe if you put on the screen just real quickly will help guide this. We've talked already, and I'm trying to understand this. You've got maximum points, 190, 170. Does that mean that these are evaluated by the same committee and scored so that it automatically, proposing a rental unit, you've got more points that you can get, therefore your project's higher? [04:12:21] Or is it just a happenstance that this is how this? So the owner, the maximum points for the owner side, the ownership applications, does not include scores for a property management experience because there is none with home ownership and also removes points for a 30-year pro forma, which is also not included. [04:12:47] So that's the only difference. They would be evaluated differently. So separately, it's not as if you're competing against each other and suddenly one's got the possibility of getting more points because they have more criteria. I just want to make sure that I understand it. It's really looking at as long as you have 75% of the points, and that would be taken in consideration, right? [04:13:07] And so really looking at balancing the two, and there's going to be ways to do that. So ultimately percentage of the possible points is going to be the way to score it, not based on raw score. So you also made some comments that suggest to me that some of these evaluation criteria already have sub-criteria that you've been contemplating, And I think that would take care of a lot of my concerns about these because they're just kind of vague and I don't understand them. [04:13:34] The one in particular that I worry about is county priorities without recognizing that, you know, there are several things earlier in the document that I think maybe could be counted in that, whether we're talking about target populations, socioeconomic diversity, and whether other things. [04:13:54] I'm not sure where affordability periods come into this and whether that would come into as a priority or what. But if those are sort of taken into account in the explanation, then I can be supportive of this. The other question along the same lines is loan versus grant. [04:14:15] Obviously, we've got this 40-40. but they're not competing against each other in this case because there's a 40% pool that's for loans and 40% that's for grants. And so when they score them, they will... Okay, I just want to make sure I ask that question. [04:14:32] If I have others, I will follow up with them. I even agree with the comments about the team. I'd rather just see nonprofit rather than nonprofit housing and restrict it that way. I did want to make sure I understood this, that you don't double count. [04:14:51] Certainly some of these other people should, I hope, be county residents, but the two county residents are representing a different population than any of the others. I don't know if there's a way to help flush it out, too. It would be very specific. [04:15:07] So you could not have someone representing, say, Jabba also come in. It could be one of their board members. I'm representing the senior community as a non-profit. They could not also represent, if they happen to live in the county, they could not also say, well, I'm a senior resident in the county, so I'm representing senior residents. [04:15:30] That would not happen. So you would have that person representing Java, and then you may have a separate county resident who happens to be a senior. Okay, who happens to be a senior or maybe happens to be otherwise affiliated with another non-profit that could have been represented but isn't. [04:15:46] We're going to make sure that they are true residents representing residents of the county and no non-profits, companies, anything. That will be a requirement. And they're appointed by the board. I have one. Yes. So I have one other question. [04:16:01] We're way over time. I know. This is going to be short like I am. Okay, so on page 6A, the distribution of affordable units, they should be basically the same throughout the whole development. I agree with that. think that's great the second sentence the mix of affordable unit styles square footage and number of bedrooms must be equal or greater to than the mix of market rate units I think we're cutting off our nose to spite our face because I think there could be smaller units that are very adequate and [04:16:35] I want to make sure that that opportunity is there I don't like the word must I think if that in fact Frankly, if some of the units were smaller, I mean, let's face it, New York City, 400 square feet is a mansion. [04:16:51] But I think if that unit were smaller, you might be able to have even additional units. So maybe it could be based on something like that. But I want to make sure, same thing with the bedrooms. I just want to make sure that they're there, but it's not must, so that taxpayers' dollars that are helping to pay for this, that you don't have the exact same unit that someone's paying fair market value for. [04:17:20] We can certainly change that must to issue it. That's fine. Good. And the last thing, I know I spoke with someone who was affiliated with a large church-affiliated organization, and they said how their church is building, I think, a duplex or a quad in the back of the church for lower-income families, and I would encourage all the churches to do that, to build a duplex, to build a quad, to build a triplex for low-income families. [04:17:52] That's something that would really, really help out our population and be no cost to the county taxpayers. Thank you. Thank you. Are there additional comments? I was just going to leave that the county resident, Someone who, one of the residents who'd worked in the planning process through Southwood for the last years would be a very valuable person on that committee. [04:18:13] And that's really what we would, the type of person we would try to get. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation, for the discussion. I hope this has been helpful, and we can try to provide any additional comments independently in writing. [04:18:31] With that, we'll turn to Supervisor Pruitt to take us into a closed meeting, which we hope we have time to do. Mr. Chair, I'd like to move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, TAC 3711A of the Code of Virginia, first under subsection 1 to discuss and consider the annual performance of the county attorney, and second under subsection 3 to discuss and consider the disposition of publicly held real property in the Whitehall Magisterial District group, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect bargaining, position, or negotiating strategy of the county and the board. [04:19:01] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor Lopisto-Curtley. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. Lopisto-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Thank you. [04:19:17] We're good? [04:19:41] Okay. Welcome. Supervisor Pruitt, you have a motion to bring us at a closed meeting. I would like to move to the Board of Supervisors certified by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements 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. [04:20:01] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Ms. Lapisto-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malek. Yes. Great. Thank you. Now we're back in session. I believe the next item is from the county executive. [04:20:19] And Mr. Richardson, you have a presentation for today? Yes, sir, I do. Thank you very much. Thank you. And this is the monthly presentation on the Progress Album War, some of our operational updates. Thank you, sir. [04:20:55] What's the name? [04:21:21] Sorry, sir. [04:21:51] No, no problem. I apologize. So, yes, sir, this is the May 2025 monthly report from county staff. And, board, I will just again say for audience members who may be tuning in for the first time, on a monthly basis, we do try to give the board an operational update. [04:22:08] it's connected to our strategic plan and our strategic plan has six strategic goals it's a five-year strategic plan and we are trying to look for things that may not get public or community media attention but yet has meaningful impact on the day-to-day work and the quality of life of our citizens the work that our departments do and so each month our cape staff they do a really good job connecting to the departments and we usually have about 10 slides i'll move through quickly. So first, Biscuit Run Park. It continues to draw strong community use since its opening. [04:22:43] This board celebrated in the opening this winter. We now are at just over 50,000 visitors since the opening in December. Construction is now underway on a dedicated mountain bike area called Biscuits and Gravity. This project is being developed in partnership with the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, which raised all of the construction funding required for the project, and that's about $80,000. Features will include jump lines, pump tracks, and trails for bikers of all levels. Volunteer support has already began with weekly trail building events with [04:23:23] professional construction work that will kick off next week. So this is a lot of fun on a beautiful piece of property down in the southern central part of Albemarle County. Okay, the Greg Davis memorial track meet brought together roughly 300 middle school athletes from across Albemarle County. Named for a former PE teacher and coach, this meet includes the full lineup of events from sprints to long-distance races and various field events. The annual event showcases the strong partnership between Parks and Recreation and Albemarle County Public Schools. Special [04:24:01] recognition to the Parks and Recreation staff members Steve Davis, Terry Hughes, for their work in getting the grounds ready for this big event. So thank you. The Bluebird Project is a regional initiative that promotes awareness around foster care and adoption, especially during the month of May. [04:24:22] The initiative is a collaborative effort between social service agencies and nonprofits through the Albemarle-Charlottesville area, highlighting a commitment to supporting vulnerable youth and families. County staff Amanda Hodgson, Janie Hunter, and Amy Casey played active roles in planning and promoting a May 16th event that featured messages of support, community resources, and encouragement for local families that are considering foster care or [04:24:52] adoption. Three county employees were recently honored as Peacekeepers of the Year by the University of Virginia's Batten School of Public Policy. Sergeant Jonathan Hickory for his leadership in advancing de-escalation training for police officers with the tools, skills, and options they need to defuse a range of critical incidents successfully and safely. Logan Bogart was recognized for her calm professional management of internal and public communications [04:25:26] following the death of a firefighter. Stephen Hitchcock received recognition for his role in building and developing the HART program and all of his vital work that they have done since it launched over a year ago. So these are outstanding efforts in our community. We're so proud of these staff. This is a little bit of information about our Emergency Communications Center. Eight new recruits began training in the Emergency Communications Center Dispatch Academy. [04:25:59] The program provides intensive training for 911 call handling, dispatch coordination, emergency protocols, and communications technology. Once complete, these new dispatchers will be critical in ensuring timely, accurate emergency response across Albemarle County. [04:26:19] And I will remind the board and our community that we enjoy a three-party relationship with Emergency 911. It is a joint E911 system that encompasses the University of Virginia, the city of Charlottesville, and Albemarle County. [04:26:36] That joint operation, that partnership, it saves money, and we are able to provide the critical 911 services at less cost. Board staff from departments across the organization, including police, fire rescue, communications, public engagement, parks and rec, facilities and environmental services, finance and budget, completed a full week of incident management team training. [04:27:07] The training prepared employees to coordinate on internal response to significant incidents and planned events without relying solely on external services. Led by the Office of Emergency Management, the Incident Management Team program strengthens our ability to manage complex emergencies while minimizing disruptions to our continued operations. [04:27:33] So this is cross-departmental work. Board, we're just getting better and better at this, and the timeliness of this effort is extremely important because it feels like on a regular basis we get to exercise some of these skills and this training as we support our community. [04:27:52] The Board of Functional Exercise recently tested the organization's ability to respond to an escalating active threat incident. This simulation emphasized coordination across emergency services, including command structure, police, police and fire rescue, and the deployment of rescue task force teams. [04:28:17] The exercise built on the ongoing work over the last couple of years to strengthen Albemarle County's joint emergency response capacity through realistic scenario-based training. Again, I'm very proud of our folks for this continued training in order to be prepared, again, cross-departmentally to use our resources appropriately. [04:28:40] On May 16th, 80 people from local houses of worship attended a safe worship event hosted by Albemarle County and Charlottesville Police Departments. The event focused on helping faith-based organizations develop emergency preparedness plans and strengthen their physical security. [04:29:03] Topics included building safety assessments, threat recognition, and coordinated response planning. Proactive engagement fosters trust, partnership, and preparedness with our faith community. Board County staff hosted a site visit from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, VEDP, and KPMG as part of a $14 million grant application through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program. [04:29:36] That's the state. During the visit, reviewers noted the county staff's strong cross-departmental collaboration. This picture actually is the site out at the Ravana station, and if we are successful with the grant, the visit included on-site visuals such as flagged future road alignments, large renderings to showcase opportunities with the Ravana Futures property, which is again adjacent to Ravana station. [04:30:05] If we're successful with the grant, this would help with site planning, clearing, grading, utility design, and extension to make our site more competitive and for future development. We believe that there will be a final decision on this grant application in June. [04:30:24] That's it. So if I had to say what our theme has been with this month, it's certainly cross-departmental collaboration, training, preparedness, emergency event coordination, all of the above. and it includes all of our county departments. I'll be happy to try to answer any questions that you've got. [04:30:41] Thank you for your time. Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Lupita Kirtley. Great presentation. No questions. Will we be able to send that to us? Thank you. Yes, ma'am. As always, every month I send the presentation. We send the talking points for the board members to use at your discretion if you're out at community meetings, CAC-related events, and so forth. [04:31:04] So we'll send that out after the meeting. Thank you. Supervisor Proop? Thrilled to see the progress being done at Biscuit Run. And appreciate the highlights for all the work that the staff are doing and the Baton Award. That was fun to see. I'd like to see Sergeant really took advantage of how that photo was set up to really, really flex on him. [04:31:26] You know, you always got to be thoughtful about how your photos are being set up so you can showcase those guns. And I appreciated that. That's all I got. Supervisor Merlin? Thank you very much. It's wonderful to see how the strategic plan all across so many different elements of county life and quality of life here have all been focused in this report. [04:31:47] And I'm continually impressed with the new Office of Emergency Management, new four years, I guess, but still all that they've been able to accomplish. And under John's leadership, it's really been great. Thank you. Thank you. And again, I thank you for the presentation. I'm very happy to hear these things. [04:32:04] I love the way it's organized around the strategic plan. I always appreciate that. And the UVA recognition from that school, very important. But, yeah, it's great to also see so many different departments represented in that one picture. So, thank you. Board, that brings us to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings. [04:32:31] And we'll have โ€“ oh, yeah, that is โ€“ can we reach him? That's George. I know George. So Supervisor Lepisto-Curtley will read the rules. [04:32:50] Thank you. During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending for the board, other than scheduled public hearings, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board, other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing. [04:33:17] Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. [04:33:36] The yellow light indicates that you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will 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. [04:33:53] 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 you're representing a group or organization, you may ask others to present or others present to raise their hands in recognition. [04:34:17] 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. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website. [04:34:34] Our first speaker this evening is Owen Sayeli. Pardon? Okay. [04:34:49] OSI. Okay. Thank you very much. And if you would adjust the mic to your mouth so we can hear you clearly. Thank you. Hello. My name is Owen Sayeli. [04:35:06] I am a county resident attending the community lab school. I am here today to discuss our environmental crisis. There are several threats facing our ecosystem. Most prominent among these in our local region are invasive species. that wipe out native competitors and cause trophic cascades that devastate other creatures. [04:35:24] With the balance threatened to such an extent, we must take action now. Historical records show the full extension of destruction that these deadly and overcompetitive species bring. We need to take action, give the funding to programs working to repair the damage, and share information from the county. An example is a chestnut plate, a deadly Asian fungus that killed billions of native chestnuts, causing a devastating trophic cascade, destroying populations of wildlife and severely impacting the economy. [04:35:48] A newer threat to our ecosystem is the invasive plant, kudzu. The plant covers everything, strangling trees and destroying diversity. The vine is common across our region, and attempts to eradicate it have never been carried out to an extent for it to have any effect. The plant kills many species of grass, tree, and shrub, which triggers trophic escase to the species that rely on the plant species. [04:36:06] The destruction caused by the species is well underway, but we are far from lost. Our plants, animals, and the people of Albemarle County are just starting to feel the effects. Baths, swaths of the land have been overtaken and destroyed by this vine, and highways are surrounded by it. As Kudzu spreads, it slowly wrecks havoc on our native ecosystems. It needs to be stopped fast. [04:36:22] It may already be too late to eradicate it from our county, but we can slow its spread and reduce its impact. In addition, there is a newer invasive to Albemarle County, one that will have a massive impact on our economy and ecosystem. It has a toxic sting rated 1.2 on the skin pain index. [04:36:38] It builds large mound-shaped nests, often up to 2 feet tall, with underground tunnels extending up to 6 feet. It's the red imported fire ant. This species has been invasive to the United States since the 1930s and arrived in Virginia in 1989. It is a quick-spreading species throughout regions of the county, and once it becomes established, it is almost impossible to eradicate. [04:36:56] It has been spotted in Albarro County, and only quick action to identify and destroy any colony in our county can prevent its takeover. Fire ant kills many native species, including other ants and insects. They can destabilize ecosystems, resulting in collapsing crops. The ants can devour swords of grain and injure livestock. [04:37:11] Our only hope is to act fast. I hope you'll pass legislation to prevent red imported fire ants from making presents in this county, to destroy kazoo, and to heal our forest from the scars the chestnut blaze has left. Potential solutions include creating programs to eliminate these species and parks to protect those they threaten. A small park with natives reintroduced and invasives removed would be enough to make a difference. [04:37:29] Anything you can do, however big or small, is needed now. The younger generation needs this. We will inherit this planet with all the problems you leave behind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next we have Alicia Lenehan. [04:37:50] Welcome. My name is Alicia Lenehan. I am a county resident in the Scottsville District. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. [04:38:06] I spoke at the last meeting because of my concerns about recent ICE actions in the county and the city. Since then, I've learned more about the scope of cooperation that is occurring between local government and the administration. That now includes a joint exercise that occurred without notice or permission yesterday at Albemarle High School. [04:38:25] What comes to mind is intimidation. We're here, and we're watching, and that is at the heart of my remarks this evening. Charlottesville was granted $150,000 to purchase a data acquisition system called Peregrine. Albemarle County was granted $26,585 to purchase I2 Analyst Notebook, which is also a data acquisition system. [04:38:49] Both these products rely heavily on artificial intelligence, which finds connections that may or may not be relevant. These open source searches have expanded to include information which no one should ever have access to. [04:39:04] Our health data, our financial records, or any other digital data these vendors scrape up and add to their package of information for police. The public has a right to know what data is being collected and how it can be used. At a minimum, the information gathered appears to include profile or contact data, first and last name, email and phone number, web page interactions, IP address-based location information, resume, job title history, and LinkedIn profiles. Today, AI is a popular policing solution. This carries a list of dire risks, including privacy violations, [04:39:45] bias, false accusations, and the sabotage of our civil rights. At a minimum, the adoption of such tools requires community control of whether to acquire them and, if adopted, transparency and clear guardrails. The Supreme Court has said that the Fourth Amendment's overarching goal is to prevent permeating police surveillance. Data acquisition systems that include the ubiquitous ALPRs, the cameras we see at almost every intersection, will have the capability to build out a consolidated database of people's movements and locations, all an officer or [04:40:21] government employee needs to do is type in a search and provide a generic reason and hit enter. Today's civil rights groups are increasingly worried that ICE is using surveillance technology as part of its mass deportation efforts. That laser-like focus can easily be turned on any one of us. Your oath of office requires you to support the Constitution of the United States and your constituents demand it. We too are watching. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [04:40:50] Next, we have George Stevens. Just to double-check, the secondary six-year comments will come next, if this is on that. Okay, that may be what we're talking about. Okay, we'll get you in the very next item. No problem. [04:41:07] Make sure we get that. No problem. Karen Mann. Thank you. My name is Karen Mann, and I am not a Elmore resident. [04:41:24] I am a resident of Luvanna, but down near Scottsville, and pastor of Sojourners UCC here in Charlottesville. This morning I heard from a family in my congregation that has a child who intends Albemarle Public Schools. And yesterday they were made aware of that situation you just heard about with the Albemarle County Police conducting a training on a school field with the Department of Homeland Security. [04:41:46] This practice field is located near the Boys and Girls Club, as well as the Newcomer Center for Children Who Have Newly Arrived and Need to Learn English. I've been pleased with the response from the school system themselves. it appears to have been appropriate. They asked the police to leave, and the school board is similarly concerned and looking into it. But I'm left wondering why the Albemarle Police are collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security, and what was the motivation for conducting the training on that particular field. Our community is already fearful after the two ice raids that have already happened in this community. To conduct such a training unannounced [04:42:22] near a sensitive location like a school, especially a location such as for an at-risk population, as this was is appalling. Scaring and intimidating vulnerable children and their families is unacceptable. Even if this was merely an oversight, it still demonstrates an egregious lack of judgment. And I and other members of this community want to know, if this board has oversight over the county police, what directives have you given them when it comes to cooperating with ICE? [04:42:51] What agreements written or verbal has the county entered into with the Department of Homeland security? Why are our law enforcement officers seemingly cooperating with them? Who has oversight over these training exercises? What do you, the board, plan to do to prevent these kinds of fear and intimidation tactics from happening in the future? And what steps are you going to take to protect the residents of this community? We don't want our local police cooperating with ICE. It only exacerbate a climate of fear and further contribute to a feeling that residents, especially [04:43:27] our immigrant residents and vulnerable residents, cannot trust our local police. No child should be afraid to go to school or to the Boys and Girls Club or anywhere in our community. So I urge you, I want you to be proactive. Don't just let these things happen. Resist the actions of ICE and homeland security in our community thank you thank you thank you and that is all thank you thank you then uh board our next items are the public hearings for this evening and the first [04:43:59] is vdot's albama county fiscal year 26 to 31 secondary six-year plan and this is presented by mr albert karina plund planner one transportation welcome and kevin mcdermott good evening chair [04:44:36] Andrews board. My name is Albert clean up one and I'm a transportation planner and planning within community development. The agenda for this presentation will be focusing on three major items. The adoption of the draft secondary six year plan, the updated rural rustic process with the creation of the rural rustic resident toolkits and the retained unpaved road list. We recognize that the name has changed slightly for clarity for the unpaved or for the retained unpaved road list. The names are different in the packet, but we just for the presentation, we felt it'd be easier. [04:45:07] say less words for every single time. And the board approval of the priority list, which includes roads to be added to the retained unpaved roads list and requested and validated roads for future secondary six-year plan lists. At the end of the public hearing, the board will be asked to make three motions for each of these three items. This is some background. The secondary six-year plan is a VDOT document that applies to roads in the secondary system and identifies funding allocated for the next fiscal year and estimates the available funding for the next five fiscal years. [04:45:46] Telefee funding stems from utility companies paying a fee to VDOT to put lines in their right-of-way. These funds are being used to help fund the Berkmar Drive extension by Airport Road. District grant unpaved funds are used on both Rural Rustic and other paving projects. [04:46:02] This plan is updated and adopted by the board annually each spring. There has been increased interest in the past year of the Rural Rustic process. and the desire to have a more streamlined process the board gave staff guidance on what they would like change about the process staff has rewritten portions of the albemarle county unpaved road policies and review process created the rural rustic paving resident toolkits and adjusted the albemarle county priority list these are the big three changes for rural rustic moving forwards previously staff was directed by the board to transfer the collection of signatures regarding [04:46:42] the paving of a road to the requesting resident. VDOT will validate the paving possibilities following a demonstration of support, and roads that do not meet the two-third approval threshold will be brought to the board for a decision. The board can choose to place these roads on the retained as unpaved roads list or not. Roads that are added to this list are unable to be requested for six years after they have been placed on the list. I will touch on the specific roads after the ssyp recommendations that was too far and the flow chart of this process is also [04:47:21] included in your packet after we complete the roads that are funded for completion this is the list of roads and the priority order that will be added to the bottom of the secondary six-year plan list these are the five roads that received enough signatures this year to move forward world rustic paving a portion of sutherland road was previously approved for paving a continuation of paving to the end of the state maintenance being recommended. Bleak House Road and Pea Ridge Road did not receive support for paving. Staff recommends that these two roads be added to [04:47:55] the retained unpaved roads list and roads on this list cannot be considered again for six years or until 2031. In addition to these two roads there are five other roads already on this list. This year we had two roads under consideration that did not meet the two-thirds support threshold. [04:48:15] We will continue to work with residents on these roads. And as requested, staff would like to clarify voter eligibility. Property owners of the occupied parcels that receive their primary access from the unpaved road or property owners of occupied parcels whose driveway touches the unpaved section of road will be eligible for paving. [04:48:43] And then as a reminder, these are your three motions for consideration following the public hearing. The first one is to adopt the secondary six-year plan. The second is to approve of the updated rural rustic process, and the third is to approve of the Albemarle County priority list for secondary road improvements unpaved roads. [04:49:02] This vote will include the vote to add Leakhouse Road and Pea Ridge Road to that do not pave that retained unpaved roads list. This concludes staff's presentations, and I'm open to any questions you may have. Okay. Before opening the public hearing, we'll go through with questions. [04:49:18] Supervisor, would you still currently? Yes, thank you very much. can you go back to slide nine okay so i have a question on bullet point at the bottom one vote per owner i think i brought this up before but now that it's before everyone um if an owner let's say you have a road with 10 people 10 homes and somebody owns five of their five of the homes is that one vote per home one vote per owner or is that five is that five votes or one vote it's [04:49:58] one vote it's one vote okay uh just wanted i wanted to clarify that thank you the other one is prop um bullet number one b i guess property owners of occupied parcels that receive their primary access from the unpaved road so that would mean that uh if you have a road you know long road with once again 10 houses on there but you have two or three other little roads that are not being paved that are off of that road is this saying that those property owners would also have [04:50:36] a vote the ones on the not on the main road where it's going to be paved but on the other roads where it's not going to be paved yes that is correct okay so my concern about that is that you you could have the people that are most affected with paving are the people that live on the paved roads. So now you're introducing the vote of other people who don't, who wouldn't be, who aren't on [04:51:09] the paved road. You're saying that, you know, they can, they have a vote. And I've got a problem with that because the people on the affected road for reasons of dust and dirt and gravel and everything they may want that main road paved and so they could be outvoted by people who don't live on that road that's my concern am i correct is that yes that that you're correct in saying that people [04:51:42] who live off of spur roads um if they get their primary access from that unpaved road they would still be eligible. If you don't mind, I'd love to just talk about that for a second. And obviously up to the board on this decision, we're happy to go anyway. I just want to explain the thought there. So you can imagine that you can have a dirt road and then a spur road, both of them unpaved. And the people that live on that spur road only have, they can only get to their [04:52:16] home by driving on that unpaved road so they are affected every day they have to drive that road a lot of times concern is with maintenance of unpaved roads and so we wanted to make sure that those people would have the ability to nominate and vote that road additionally vdot will not allow us to pave those spur roads unless the road that connects that they connect to is also paved So if those people ever wanted to get their road paved, then they would need to get the primary road paved first or at the same time. [04:52:53] And once again, if the board sees fit to say we'd rather not have those people on the spur road, part of that voting public, we're happy to change that in the policy. Okay, so point of clarification for me. The primary road, okay, the people who live along the primary road vote to get it paved. [04:53:12] The people who live on the two or three, whatever number, spur roads, if I'm using the correct term, they would have the ability to block the paving of the primary road. [04:53:29] Is that correct? That's correct, yes. That's what I thought, yeah. Okay. No other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? I have no questions. Supervisor Malek? Thank you. Excuse me. So on your wonderful toolkit chart, let me just clarify one thing. [04:53:48] On the first bullet, must own an occupied parcel and live there. This is a resident who is living on the property, not an absentee landlord or an investor person. The resident or the requester must be a person who lives there, yes. [04:54:05] Okay. And I especially like all the prohibitions. That's very clear and helps people know ahead of time before they get started. I know with Bleak House Road, the tributary streets were also very much in favor, similarly to the people on the main road, so I'm not sure it's ever necessarily a discordant approach. [04:54:27] So I think that your plan is a good one. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I will open the public hearing and see other people. There are people signed up to speak, including George. [04:54:43] Right, I haven't. Okay. No applicant. No online. No applicant. There's no applicant, so the rules. Thank you. During public hearings, the board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed for public hearing. [04:55:07] Speakers are limited to one appearance of three minutes per public hearing. 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 that you have one minute to finish speaking. [04:55:24] The red light indicates your time has expired and you will 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. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district. [04:55:45] Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. [04:56:03] Back and forth, debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website. And our first speaker is Mr. George Stevens. [04:56:20] Thank you. George Stevens, Sammy Miller District, Albemarle County, and I live on Starlight Road, and I'll be speaking in regards to the paving of Starlight Road. [04:56:38] First of all, we thought that Starlight was going to be paved last year, but then found out later it was going to be put off and then was really surprised when I saw the zoning signs changes for the public hearing. At that time, I contacted the office and followed up by contacting my other neighbors to make sure that they contacted and made reference to that. [04:57:04] So I can speak with great confidence that the residents, not just the residents that have voting rights, but also the adjoining landowners that don't quite have voting rights by, what I'm learning is that, have also contacted, are in very much support of Starlight Road being paved, and I'm glad to see that it is on the list. [04:57:25] One thing I would note after living there myself for nearly 50 years, my wife for about 70 years, the fact that there have been other traffic accidents on that that wasn't noted in the material provided. [04:57:45] One thing I would note, the current situation with that road, there's a small portion of it that is paved, and then it transitions from paved to unpaved just after you crest a hill and enter a paved turn. That's where two of the three accidents that I'm aware of have taken place, which is a hazard, and our house itself is the closest residence to the road, which we've had the joy of consuming that dust for our entire lives. [04:58:15] So we're very, very much in favor of it being paved and look forward to that as we went as far, well, before this, paving our driveway and some things, just trying to control the dust. So, again, I am and my neighbors are very supportive of Starlight being paved. [04:58:35] Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, and our next speaker is Derek Luck. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. my name is Derek Lucas I have a um could you adjust your your microphone so we can hear you yeah all right yeah um I don't actually live on any of the roads that you guys list up there for now but I do live on a road that was previously partially paved so I was just wanting to come and see if there's any way we might be able to add to the six-year plan or something like that I'm not I guess I'm not sure if it's if it's on the list I don't have the list right now but I will say [04:59:14] I am here to discuss some issues on behalf of the community that also live on Hammond's Gap Road. We live on Hammond's Gap Road is where they're at. It says we would like to be added to the six-year plan and finish remaining two-thirds of our road. So we have talked before with the Planning Commission, I've talked to you before, and when the first section was being done, it came to the conclusion that a small section of the road needed to be widened in order to meet the rural requirements, roughly about 50 yards is all it needs. [04:59:42] So some of the major problems we face have to do with maintenance of the unpaved portion We believe a majority of these can be fixed with the road was hard surfaced One of the biggest problems we have is the dust Although VDOT will occasionally spray dust control It's still not enough to allow us to enjoy the fresh air of our open windows in our house Says the other problem we have is gravel that gets washed out after a hard rain Causing large ruts to be cut through the road Making it very unpleasant to travel over and also Extremely dangerous for us who ride street bikes since we would love to see our tax dollars get used in our community that would benefit us [05:00:19] sometimes so i do also have a signed petition from everybody who who wants it paved if you need that thanks again sorry right here and you may give that sheet to our clerk thank you thank you and [05:00:37] next we have gary grant remembered this time to put the microphone in front of my face Gary Grant, Rio District, and a Bleak House Road resident for 39 years. [05:01:08] During February, March, and April, I and a small group of non-professional, yet resiliently and equitably engaged Earliesville residents from the Whitehall and Rio Districts were forced to confront Jeff Richardson's Planning Department staff over an attempt to pave over a safe and peaceful one-and-a-half-mile gravel portion of Bleak House Road. We were forced to confront a list of 33 voters that Mr. Richardson's planning department staff arbitrarily declared eligible [05:01:46] to decide the future of this rural gravel road, even though only 16 owners actually have driveways touching the affected gravel segment. As a result, our small group wanting to protect walkers, joggers, bikers, and yes, for Ms. McKeel, even stroller pushers. Supervisor McKeel said to me, we were forced to find 12 out of 33 property owners opposed to paving the gravel [05:02:23] instead of convincing just six of 16 owners who actually have driveways touching the affected gravel segment. Due to the efforts of our small group of, again, non-professional, resilient, and equitably engaged residents, we convinced 14 out of the 33 arbitrarily eligible voters, which is 42 percent, to oppose the paving, while those in favor of paving only came up with nine, [05:02:56] 27 percent, far short of the two-thirds approval needed for paving. By the way, the person who put this confrontation into motion does not have a Bleak House Road address, does not have a driveway touching the Bleak House Road gravel and only moved near the paved half of Bleak House Road less than two years ago. The 14 of us who defeated this paving and saved taxpayers $543,000 in the [05:03:33] process now expect this board to follow your policy relating to rural rustic roads and decide tonight to vote to protect the Bleak House Road gravel from becoming a paved racetrack for at least six years. Thank you. Next, we have Scott Gentry. Welcome. Hi there. My name is Scott Gentry. I live in the Rivanna District of Almar County, and I've lived on Hammocks Gap Road, [05:04:13] who the Speaker before talked about, for all my life, 75 years. And I live right at the very end estate and maintenance and previously a couple years ago they paved about a third of the road where five houses are and from that point forward there are 16 other houses toward the end of that road the other two-thirds and not not only is it the the uh dust and all that kind of stuff living right on the road but the i've noticed the the since the paving on the first third the other two-thirds has gone not as well managed by vdot as it used to be uh it seems to like they see the paved part and just keep on going, I guess. I really [05:04:52] don't know. But I'd like to be added to that list of finished and paving the other two-thirds of Hammonds Gap Road. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and that's the end. Thank you. And that brings us back to the board for continued discussion. [05:05:12] We'll start with Supervisor Lopisto Kirk. Yes, I'd like to... And I will close the public hearing. Thank you. Sorry. Go ahead. Yes. Bullet point number two, one vote per owner, I've heard from the audience that I now have clarified that if you own five houses, you still only get one vote. [05:05:39] And is that because you have to live in one of the houses that is on the road to be considered? No, Supervisor, you don't have to actually live in the house. So we do have some homes that may be rented out. [05:05:58] We ask for the owner's approval for it, not the renter's approval, but it is only just one vote per owner. Okay, but should it be clarified one vote per owner, even if they own multiple houses? [05:06:18] Because that's still, it doesn't clarify, I think, for our audience. it should be that should be clarified because if i read that i'm thinking i have five houses once again and i have five votes but that's not the case and that it should be stated that it doesn't have to be owner occupied so madam supervisor if i might call your attention to attachment c paragraph to a final sentence does say when determining the percentage of owners in agreement an owner owning more than one parcel abutting the road in question is equivalent to an owner owning one parcel so that is already addressed in the policy proposed policy and it stated that [05:06:55] they have they have to what they don't have to live there they own it they don't have to live there they get a vote it's it's the owner refers to an owner does not refer to a resident thank you that's all for me thank you supervisor proof i don't think i have any further questions i feel like you know we're in the position where we have actually just very recently earlier this year reaffirmed our commitment to the policies that are being applied in this instant. [05:07:27] If we wanted to change them, that was the time to do them. Everyone who's come before us today has asked that we invoke our own policies and apply our own policies, or in one case, look at a place to apply our own policies again. So I don't think there's any real room for discussion. [05:07:45] We're just going to vote for the staff. Yeehaw. Thank you. Supervisor Mal. yes and again i thought that i understood but now i want to clarify because i understood you say the requester needs to be resident and an owner i mean an owner and resident of the parcel with the driveway to the gravel that was my previous question that i thought was answered in the affirmative that it needed to be the resident owner sorry as opposed to a resident landlord or a non-resident landlord person it needs to be in according to the policy that we [05:08:21] have written it needs to be an owner of an occupied parcel they don't have to be the one occupying it the the distinction there is that there may be lots that have a significant land adjacent to a road however they don't have any home on it at all and we didn't want them right to have a vote so that's why we say occupied uh but we require just an owner not actually an owner resident okay well that's a problem for me because what a result can be is someone who [05:08:59] doesn't even live in virginia is saying i'm going to raise the value of my all my properties by getting this going and it's going to bring assets back to me as a land owner and i don't even live there so that's why i had understood and why i asked about the occupied owner um so i don't know if others will support me on this because this is what i always thought was the answer and i needed to have that clarified, but I will just leave that thought with others because I think that's important to consider. I really appreciate the toolkit. I think it has made some huge steps [05:09:35] forward, but that was the one big concern I had. Okay. Thank you. I support the policy as it is written, but I did have a question, and that is that as I look through particularly attachment E where it lists roads uh that are either not suitable or otherwise are in the current queue i don't see hammocks gap on there at all i had a question asked me about batesville i don't see that on there i know i live on a dirt road it's not on there so there's a whole nother list [05:10:08] somewhere of dirt roads that are in the county but not being considered or or where are they in the process um so as far as hammocks gap goes uh it's not on the list because it was requested to be paved uh vdot went out analyzed the road and determined that only a portion was qualified to be paved so that portion qualified to be paved was paved however there's we understand that the road the public road does continue beyond there vdot at the time had determined [05:10:45] that section could not be paved under rural rustic standards so we didn't we didn't add that distinction in the list that there may be a road that's partially paved but partially not but then regarding your other question about other roads the list only contains the roads that had previously been requested to be paved so there are there is a whole host of other unpaved roads in the county that are not included on this on any list right now okay but i would have expected then the hammocks [05:11:21] cap to be on the list of unpaved roads not suitable for robustic even though it's partially paved because the portion that's not paved is in that category and then i guess my next question would be uh is there a process for us to look at how how much would need to be done to make it eligible and i and i just question that because if it's a major project obviously we may not prioritize that but if it's a very minor tweak it may be something that we can talk to VDOT about absolutely agree entirely we can reach out to VDOT have them reassess that road and I also agree [05:12:00] with your statement that it if a portion has been requested to be paid then it's not eligible it should be added to this list so we will work with VDOT determine if the rest of that can be paved or what it would take to get it paved. We'll respond to that information and determine where it needs to go from there, so we can work on that for you. [05:12:22] Okay, thank you, and I know I've submitted some additional requests about roads that are not reflected here because they came in too late for this cycle. Supervisor, I have a list that's separate from all the secondary sector plan of roads for next year, so I have them tracked down, they're just not part of this right here since it's at this point very internal and just up in the air. [05:12:42] Fully understand. Thank you. Board, are there any other? Yes. Yes. Regarding Hammocks Gap Road, if VDOT determines that it's not eligible to be paved, is it currently gravel or can it be tar and chipped? [05:12:59] That would be a question that VDOT would have to answer. I couldn't answer that. I'm sorry. Okay. About the specific treatment for the road. Could you, when you contact VDOT to ask about that, if it could be paved, Could you also ask them if it cannot, because of whatever standards, is there an alternative? [05:13:19] Can they do something else to, you know, for the road? Yes, I'll ask. Thank you. If there aren't, if you could put the motions up again, just to make sure we do everything correctly. [05:13:36] So the first thing that we need. Does anybody else have any concerns about non-resident owners being able to run the table on this? I don't. I mean, you were talking about protecting the people who live there from somebody else making decisions that impact their lives. So that's why I want to see if that one word could be added. [05:13:55] Just to make sure I'm understanding the problem, it sounds like they can trigger the vote process, but they themselves can't vote, and you still need to reach a two-thirds threshold to actually initiate a pay. They get one vote. [05:14:12] Okay. And my concern is this now puts another burden on staff. Well, you have to get the signatures, and you have to determine this person doesn't live here. I'm in favor of what we have. [05:14:31] Because it's one vote, and I don't think it's going to make it. If it was multiple votes, I'd agree with you. Well, the first motion would be related to just the secondary six-year plan paving that we have proposed in it, and that's as a form of attachment F. [05:14:53] Do we have a motion to adopt the resolution? I move to adopt the resolution attached to the staff report. It's attachment F. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, I call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. Lupisto-Kirtley? [05:15:09] Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Okay. Now we've come to the policies and review process, which would incorporate this clarification of the owner's right, even if they're not living there, to be the one to vote. [05:15:28] And again, we've had some discussion, but we have a quorum, and we will need a motion to go forward if we want or otherwise send it back. I move to approve the updated Albemarle County Unpaper of Policies and Review Process attached to the staff report as attachment C. [05:15:52] I will second it since it's an improvement. Okay. So we have a motion from Supervisor Lopisto-Curtley, a second from Supervisor Malik. Is there any other discussion? if not we will call the clerk call the roll mr pruitt hi mr andrews yes miss lapisto currently i miss malik yes okay thank you uh and that brings us to the uh third motion detachment e and uh relating to the priority list prior to making the motion may i ask um if we ask regarding hammock [05:16:29] scape road is that something that could then be if if everything works out is that something that It could be, and we get the signatures, is that something that could be included in the six-year plan? Let's say we do an amendment, maybe in a month. [05:16:44] No? Next year. It could not be included for this year's, but next year's could be a possibility, perhaps. It's a leave-out process. Okay. Okay, I move to approve the Albemarle County Priority List for Secondary Road Improvements. [05:17:00] Unpaved roads attached to the staff report is Attachment E. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor LaPista-Curtley, a second from Supervisor Malik, without objections to call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Thank you. [05:17:17] Thank you, as you've been here for this. Appreciate it. Board, that brings us to the next public hearing, SP 2024-25, which is 400 Ryle Road West Outdoor Storage Display and Sales. [05:17:35] and this is being presented by christopher taggart senior planner one welcome mr taggart good evening chairperson andrews and board uh one second my name is chris taggart i'm senior planner [05:18:13] with a planning division alamaro county community development also present night it's mark malachewski who assisted with the review i'll be giving staff presentation for the special use permit application subject properties code located 400 ryle road west and zone light industrial the The surrounding area is mostly residential, with additional light industrial parcels adjacent to the west. [05:18:39] As a reminder, Ryle Road is the entrance corridor. The site consists of two parcels, which are mostly paved with chain-link fencing surrounding much of the paved area. At the front, the property is a brick-faced office building. At the rear is a large metal shed. Special permit requests for outdoor storage, display, and sales of plumbing, material, and equipment. [05:19:01] In the entrance corridor overlay district, I'll refer to this as outdoor storage. The proposed use is by right in the zoning district, but outdoor storage is especially used in the EC. SPs for outdoor storage are reviewed under Section 30.6, which limits the factors to be considered to determine whether outdoor storage is consistent with the EC design guidelines. [05:19:24] The original proposal included a storage area to the north and west of the existing brick-faced building, which is highlighted in orange on the concept plan. There is also an existing storage area at the rear of the site, indicated in blue. A berm, landscaping, and metal picket fence replacing the chain link fencing along the right side of the storage area to minimize visual impact and landscaping between the main building and the street to screen existing equipment and coordinate the landscaping proposed along the storage area. [05:20:03] The Architectural Review Board and Site Review Committee reviewed this proposal in January and requested revisions focused on the screening of the proposed and existing storage areas from the view of the entrance corridor. At its March 3rd meeting, the ARB reviewed an updated plan that included revisions to show the existing vegetation along the eastern and western perimeter of the site will remain, and adding screen shrubs along a portion of the western perimeter site directly east of the [05:20:36] building and in the planting area along the front edge east of the entrance to the employee parking line. On February 10th, the required community meeting was held at the places 29 hydraulic CAC meeting and on April 8th, the planning commission unanimously recommended approval of SP with no changes to ARB's recommended conditions. The conditions are listed here and we can bring them back up if needed. Staff did not identify any unfavorable factors and the favorable factor [05:21:11] for this request is the outdoor storage use would be consistent with the EC design guidelines if the ARB's recommended conditions are upheld. For this reason, staff recommends approval of the special permit for outdoor storage. I'm happy to answer any questions and can bring up the conditions of approval and motions when the board is ready. Thank you. We'll go through our order with any questions. Supervisor Lupisto-Curley? No questions. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? No questions. Supervisor Malek? None right now. Thank you. And I have no questions as well, so we can [05:21:45] proceed to open the public hearing. And do we have anyone signed up to speak? We do not. So if you read the rules for the applicant only, although the applicant only, we have the applicant. And I think that Valerie Long is quite familiar with our rules. She waives the reading. Is that a lot? Thank you. Then we can proceed with the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Lapista-Curtley. Save you the trouble. I know you've had a long day and a lot of [05:22:18] issues on your agenda today and I believe Mr. Taggart covered most if not all of the issues so I am going to just go through my slides very very quickly sorry is that better that's good thank you I'm going to go through my slides very quickly I'm happy to come back and answer as many questions as anyone may have but I don't want to take your time unnecessarily I will say I'm for the record Valerie Long with the law firm of Williams Mullen we are representing the applicant which is also the new property owner. They are proposing to lease the property if the permit is approved [05:22:55] to Ferguson Enterprises, which would relocate or establish a new use here. It's Wholesale Waterworks Division, which just in case you're interested, is different from their consumer plumbing businesses that you may have seen in the area. And I can't resist the urge to note, based on comments I heard you speak about earlier today during your discussion about economic development that this property was owned for decades by the phone company and if I'm correct was not generating any tax revenue for the county so this new use will change [05:23:31] that and contribute very significantly I think to your towards your goals of diversifying your tax base the parcel the property in question has two parcels the one in yellow or the site is that what That which is outlined in yellow in terms of what would be subject to the special use permit. [05:23:52] It's the entirety of the rectangular shaped parcel and then a portion of the back piece. This area in the back is also part of parcel C1. The area in the middle, as noted, is now owned by the state. That is land that was purchased by the state for the Western Bypass Project. [05:24:15] And when other property owners bought their land back from the state, for whatever reason, this land was not purchased back. Presumably, the phone company did not need it. It doesn't have a lot of use. So it continues to be owned by the state. [05:24:34] So we'll just clarify that. Thankfully, coincidentally or otherwise, the project was never proposing to use any of that land anyway. Ferguson and our clients B&D Holdings were always planning to just keep the new use constrained or confined to the area that had been used historically by the phone company. But I just did want to clarify that issue. You're probably fairly familiar with it. If you drive by it, not a great aesthetic look. It has been used by the phone company as noted for many years, mostly the storage of their vehicles there and equipment. We also have some historical photos [05:25:12] that I just found interesting demonstrating how the property has looked very, very similar for five decades over the years. And Mr. Tyrick showed you a lot of the images already of the existing site, little to no landscaping, not very aesthetically pleasing because it was developed again in the 1970s, long before a lot of your current regulations were adopted. So these are all existing condition photographs. These are examples of the types of materials that Ferguson [05:25:49] proposes to store. These are all from other locations, but just to provide some examples of the types of things, these are actually fire hydrants, part of their waterworks system. The facility would not be really open to the public. It's not where any of us would go and buy plumbing supplies. It's for wholesale general contractors, those building infrastructure projects this is just the existing conditions again i'm happy to come back to them the area in the back in the purple shading was determined by staff to be existing non-conforming so it's [05:26:26] that can be used now for outdoor storage without any further action but we're proposing to bring that area within the special use permit application as well to make the entire site compliant. So there's an existing chain-link fence. There's five small trees. Other than that, not really any other plantings. This is the proposed conceptual plan. The area in orange would be the new area for proposed outdoor storage. We're proposing to replace the chain-link fence [05:27:01] along the front, along the Rio Road frontage, with a black picket fence. I have a picture I'll show in a moment, but most importantly, a fairly robust new landscape plan. I should have mentioned Timmons Group is the project civil engineer and landscape architect, and their representatives are here if needed. So adding a lot of vegetation, including a berm to help screen the materials that would be located behind the fence on the site, and you can see the red dash line that's 50 feet [05:27:34] from the fence and that area, one of the proposed conditions of approval is that any materials that are stored that are taller than the fence will be beyond that red line. So they'll be further back from the road and the terrain slopes back away from the road. So that will help further minimize the visibility of anything taller than the eight-foot fence, which we don't actually expect much. Again, this is just a little bit of an enlargement to show you the proposed plantings [05:28:10] in the berm. This is a site section demonstrating how the berm would help screen the outdoor materials in addition to the plantings. An example of the type of fence envisioned, and this is just obviously an aerial view with a conceptual rendering of how the plantings would look. [05:28:36] I will note that, as Mr. Taggart indicated, at the second ARB meeting, ARB suggested some additional plantings in this area. So those have been added to the official plans. They're just not reflected on this particular exhibit. And these, again, the site was developed before or at a time when it was legal to put mechanical equipment like this along an entrance corridor. [05:29:02] It no longer is. Even though screening or planting, screening those equipment and putting plants along the front edge of the building is not required for the special use permit because that's not screening outdoor stored materials, we thought that it made a lot of sense to go ahead and add more plantings there and improve the look of the entire property front edge. [05:29:23] So adding lots of plantings there and screening those pieces of equipment there. So again, these are conceptual renderings showing how much better the site will look once Ferguson's use is in place again compared to what's there now. [05:29:42] And there you can get an idea of how the berming and the plantings over time can grow to effectively screen the vast majority of the materials to be stored. Again, more renderings. This is the most recent photo that was actually taken from the photo to show this particular angle, which was a request to the Architectural Review Board. [05:30:05] And so we enhanced the screening even further based on feedback from the ARB, adding some plantings here, among others. And again, you can see the improvements. So that's it. I am, again, happy to address any questions that any of you may have. [05:30:23] The use is a wholesale waterworks is a by-right use in the Light Industrial Zoning District. But the reason I'm here is because if you're storing outdoor materials along an entrance corridor, special use permit isn't required. Thank you. [05:30:39] Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Lupisto-Curvin. That was very clarifying. Thank you very much. No questions. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I have no questions. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. No questions, but thank you for the picture of the materials because I was going to ask if this was culverts and drop inlets and stuff like that. [05:30:55] The last question is, will there be a gate that will close after hours to keep the colorants from walking out the door in the middle of the night? There is, yes. The gate would be replaced. Yes. Thank you. Hopefully no one is able to bring their flatbed up and take things away, but certainly they'll be surprised. [05:31:12] That's true. We won't give anyone any ideas or make it easy. Flatbeds will travel. And I have no questions. Thank you. This is certainly an improvement to the current appearance. Thank you. you have additional time if you do not you do not want thank you then uh i will close the public hearing matter is back before the board does anyone have any additional comments or questions and uh actually rio district but if you could go ahead i'd like to move to adopt the resolution [05:31:48] attachment d to approve the special use permit for rio road west outdoor storage display sales with the conditions as recommended in the staff report second we have a motion from supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Ms. Lopisto-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malek. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. [05:32:14] That brings us to item 18 from the board. Before we talk individually about matters not listed on the agenda, I want to call your attention to a form of a letter which was previously distributed, which is a letter of support to be sent to our representatives relating to a congressional-directed spending program on dam repair. [05:32:41] And I'm looking for a motion to authorize the chair to sign that letter. I support that. We have a motion to... So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, a second from Supervisor Malek, without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. [05:33:01] Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. Lovista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Mallett. Yes. Thank you, Board. Then other matters that are not listed on the agenda. Supervisor Lupisto Crittley. No, we haven't had any meetings because of everything else. [05:33:20] No. Thank you. Supervisor approved. The 5th and Avon CAC had a meeting that was surprisingly not well attended because it's very compelling. They did technically have a meeting because it Fair. Well, you can have a community meeting. There was a community meeting that was convened at the same location in time as the 5th and Avon CAC would normally be, had there been a quorum of the 5th and Avon CAC. [05:33:49] But it was compelling and something that this board should, frankly, have on its radar because it concerns the former Cavalier Crossing property, which has, of course, already been very present in our thoughts. but the future use of it is going to bring into question our developer incentive and inclusionary zoning standards because they have made what they think is their best effort at compliance and it still falls slightly short of our own standards and it is basically a request to revisit our existing standards. [05:34:27] I would encourage the board to try and look at this problem ahead of time because it is, I mean, it begs a policy question that goes beyond the redevelopment ask. And it is interesting, and they make a compelling point. That's all I have. Thank you. [05:34:44] Supervisor Malek. Nothing to do. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll just mention that Supervisor Malek and myself and Mr. Henry attended the VACO Regents 3 and 5 meeting on legislative priorities, and we got to hear from many other jurisdictions. [05:35:02] Hearing a lot about housing as a priority, additional funding for schools in one way or another as a priority, and then land use authorization, land use control as a priority. Those were the highlights, and not surprising. [05:35:20] Somewhat shared by us, but Mr. Henry made also an excellent presentation on Ravana Futures and its statewide significance, and we really appreciated that. If there is nothing else, then board would look to Supervisor Pruitt for a motion to go back into closed session. [05:35:39] Mr. Chair, I'd like to move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, Section 3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss and consider the annual performance of the county attorney. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor Malek, without objection. [05:35:57] Call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Ms. Lopista-Kirtley. I would like to move the Board of Supervisors to certify by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements 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. [05:36:35] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malik. Without objection, I have to call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. board, then we will adjourn to May 28th, 2025 at 2 p.m. in room 241. The meeting opportunities for the public to access this meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar. Thank you. [05:37:03] Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com