Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with the Economic Development Authority, Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 2h 9m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1380
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1380

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.

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[00:00:02] Recording in progress. I'm pleased to call to order this August 13th meeting and introduce the supervisors who are present. Ann Malick from the Whitehall District, Ned Galloway from the Rio District, B. Lepisto-Kirtley from the Ravana District, and myself, Diantha McKeel from the Jack Chewitt District.

[00:00:23] A quorum is present. Supervisor Mike Pruitt is unable to join us today, and Supervisor Jim Andrews has requested to participate remotely in accordance with applicable board rules of procedure, rule number 8.B.1.D, enacted pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

[00:00:45] So, with that, I'm going to see if we, there, is Jim there? Looking for Jim. That's Frank. There's Jim. We found you. Jim, would you please share your reason for remote participation and your location?

[00:01:02] Sure. I'm in Sorrento, Maine, a family business. Well, we miss you, but we're glad we see you in the corner of the screen. I need, then, a call for a motion and a second so that we can admit, Jim.

[00:01:21] So I'll call for a motion. So I heard Ann first. So a motion from Ann and a second from B. Claudette, would you call for the vote? Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Laquisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Joining us also today at the table, Jeff Richardson, County Executive, Andy Herrick.

[00:01:48] There you are. I was looking for you, Andy. Andy Herrick, County Attorney, and Claudette, of course, Morganson is our Board Clerk. I also want to take the time to recognize Dr. Jean Runyon and Helen Coffrey and Ron McGinnis is back there somewhere. I saw him and I thought, there you go, you're hidden as well.

[00:02:27] Those three folks are joining us today, but they were part of the stakeholder committee that worked with our group on the strategic plan. And others at the table will be introduced as they present. I'd also like to welcome today two Almar County police officers, Angela Jamerson and Joshua Wright.

[00:02:49] We thank you for your service today and for the work you and your fellow police officers do every day to provide our community with safety and security. And with that, I'm going to turn it to Don for his part.

[00:03:07] All right. So I will call the Economic Development Authority meeting to order. Present today with us are Jeff Morrill, our vice chair, David Storm, Bill Mecknick, did I do that right?

[00:03:26] And Steve Hood. And our liaison, who has already been introduced, B. Lepisto-Kirtley. And then staff from the Economic Development Office, Emily Kilroy and Avery Thompson, are up today.

[00:03:44] So we have two members who are participating remotely. Frank Friedman and Angela Johnson, so if each of them could state their reason and their location. Frank, you want to go first? Yes, hello, Frank Friedman from the Ryo District.

[00:04:03] We're on a family vacation in New Jersey. All right, Andy? Yeah, Andrea Johnson from the Jack Jewett District, and my schedule wouldn't allow me to get all the way to the meeting place and time for this meeting, so I'm doing it remotely.

[00:04:24] In Albuquerque County or where are you? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm in Albuquerque County. Okay. So is there a motion to allow them to participate remote? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All right. All in favor?

[00:04:40] Aye. All right. So the EDA is now in session. I'll turn it back over to you. We're both in session. That's lovely. It's just really wonderful to welcome everyone in the audience and everyone at the table today.

[00:04:57] The last time we convened was August of 2024, and the momentum we built around three topics carried us forward in meaningful ways. Since we've received, at that meeting first, we received an exciting update on the Rivanna Futures Project.

[00:05:20] Since that time, Albemarle County has been awarded a $9.7 million grant for site readiness work. An investment that will extend utilities and support clearing and grading of the portion of the property. This substantial award builds on the $600,000 in funding we previously received from GO Virginia, and together these resources position us to begin unlocking the full potential

[00:05:53] of this site. Second, at the meeting, we agreed to participate in a work session to adopt a memorandum of understanding. That would formalize our collaboration and shared goals, and that memorandum of understanding was adopted in December 2024, making a significant milestone in our partnership. And third, we began an initial discussion to launch an economic development strategic plan process would include engaging with the planning commission, stakeholders,

[00:06:29] and community members. Those conversations laid the groundwork for what brings us together today to consider and hopefully adopt a strategic framework that will guide our efforts in the months and years. This is a pivotal moment. The decisions we make today will shape the trajectory of economic growth, opportunity, and resilience in Albemarle County, and I'm really grateful for the dedication and vision each of you bring to the table, and I look forward to a productive and forward-looking discussion.

[00:07:03] Thank you so much for being here. Thanks. Well, I know, I speak for myself and the board, that we really appreciate the opportunity to get together. I think our meeting last year was very productive. I've been really impressed by the communication between, as we've really worked to build that communication between the boards.

[00:07:26] Diantha, as the prior liaison with the EDA and now B, I think I really get good communication, and hopefully that the board feels that as well. I really appreciate all the efforts that the Economic Development Office staff has put in to getting us to this point, organizing meetings, working with Stephen, and it's been very impressive what's happened, and I look forward to our discussion today.

[00:07:57] So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Emily to start the presentation. and let me just make one note for the board of supervisors just as we did last year we're not going to use our call our speaking order we're just going to have a free flow of conversation which is what we did last year just because of the format of this meeting so with that emily thank you excellent thank you so much and welcome to the joint meeting of the board supervisors and economic development authority it's um it's fun for staff um to be together again just about a year later than the last time we did this and to be able to reflect back on some of the work

[00:08:35] that's been done over the past year. I'm really excited to have Stephen Pettigo, Vice President for Economic Development with Resonance, who's been really instrumental in working through with the team, sort of managing deep data analysis alongside a lot of community vision and community conversations, stakeholder engagement to bring us the draft document that was part of your packet today. And he'll step through the details of that. I'll spend just a couple of minutes sort of setting the stage for how we'll spend the next just under two hours at this point and a little

[00:09:10] bit of process of how we got here. So our time today, again, I'll just take a couple minutes to tee up really Stephen's presentation of the plan. And there's a lot of data analysis that went alongside the plan. There's a technical appendices that's a couple hundred pages long that was a subject of work sessions with the Board of Supervisors and the EDA this past spring.

[00:09:36] Because we've presented that information before, we'll kind of go straight to the goals and strategies. And really, our goal is to leave a substantial amount of time in the meeting for discussion between the EDA and the board, where you'll be able to obviously ask any questions that you want, and then hopefully engage in some good conversations about the contents of the plan.

[00:09:57] And then for the Board of Supervisors, this is an action item today for approval, and so there's a resolution also part of the packet that, if so desired, we can look at that before we adjourn the meeting. So before we dive into the plan, sort of just a quick where we've been.

[00:10:17] So Project Enable is the county's first economic development strategic plan. It was adopted in late 2018 after a multi-year process to work through sort of identifying the first, the county's first formal approach on economic development.

[00:10:35] There were seven target sectors identified in that plan and then seven goals sort of adjacent to those sectors. And so a lot of, there was a robust amount of ground to cover in that plan. And you can see what those target sectors were on the screen.

[00:10:51] Part of the data analysis that went into this next second Economic Development Strategic Plan really started with those sectors and then looked at what's changed based on some of the work that's been done regionally through the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, the SEDS work that was led by Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission that wrapped last year, as well as information from the state, the state strategy, to see sort of a current look at both the data and some of the opportunities in the future.

[00:11:21] might work for Albemarle. Where we are, this is not totally meant to be red, but just a lot has changed since the first economic development strategic plan was adopted in 2018. This is just a couple of private sector, regional efforts, private investments, future-facing opportunities, Things that we think will really set sort of establish some momentum and set some direction that this economic development strategic plan was really mindful of and trying to plan around.

[00:12:00] How could we leverage some of those some of these opportunities and really meet the moment, meet the momentum and really build an economy that diversifies the tax base more than its present state? And, you know, so that really led to the plan that's before you today.

[00:12:21] It has five goals that includes in those goals the three target sectors that we're looking to focus on. Again, Stephen will go into a little bit more detail about those. But you can see the first three goals here are really around the targets, three different target sectors.

[00:12:39] And then across the board, focus on talent and competing for investment, which is really sort of the policy framework in which the county can create an environment where businesses can thrive. How we got to that draft document was a lot of conversations, a lot of listening, a lot of data analysis that, again, was reviewed with the EDA and the board in the spring.

[00:13:04] But just sort of an inclusive look at the public engagement that went into this process to date. We did, we had over 2,400 people involved. The Communications and Public Engagement Office put this together for us.

[00:13:20] So we can see the Economic Development Strategic Plan is the fourth most engaged public engagement project that the county has worked on over the past roughly six-month period. The Three-Notch Trail Shared Use Path Master Plan in the lead.

[00:13:38] And then you can see the Comp Plan, data center regulations, and Resilient Together, which is a part of the climate action strategy of the county. We've had a lot of reach organically and also through some paid ads on social media. 18,000 people have opened a newsletter that had the Economic Development Strategic Plan included in it, just to get a sense of where this project stacks in relation to some other projects that the county has worked on.

[00:14:07] We also focused really heavily on stakeholder engagement. So the names and organizations identified on this slide are who served on the stakeholder committee. We had 21 stakeholders participating in the process. We had four formal meetings with them, a lot of conversations between meetings.

[00:14:25] They had opportunities to review materials ahead of us sharing them with the EDA and the board for us to refine some of the work that had been done. We also asked the stakeholder committee to help us convene roundtables as part of the sort of the listening portion of the project.

[00:14:44] And so we were able to organize six roundtables that were co-hosted by another organization or more where we were able to have some really focused conversations around target sectors. And we had over 70 local people participate in those, which was really, really valuable time together.

[00:15:04] So really just wanted to thank the stakeholder committee for their work and their thoughts. And then one question that we've received several different times. We had a lunch and learn for the community in early June.

[00:15:21] This question came up. There's been some emails as well about how does the economic development strategic plan fit in with other county policy documents? And so this slide is attempting to lay that out. And I know our Zoom is blocking one of the labels on here, so I'll walk through it.

[00:15:39] On the left is time horizon. In the center is the governing document. And then on the right is the intent of that document. So the comprehensive plan has a 20-year time horizon and really sets a vision for the county.

[00:15:55] Strategic plans have a tighter time horizon of five years. They help set the strategy. So what will we work on? How will we try to attack achieving the vision over the next five-year period? And then the one that we talk about a lot in the winter is the annual budget process, and that's really how we assign resources to be able to get those done.

[00:16:17] So the strategic plans fit sort of in the middle. They try to look at what's achievable over sort of a short-term time period and then having obviously to be prioritized against all the other strategic plans that the county has in the annual budget process looking at what resources are available to support those and those are both financial resources and also you know our largest revenue expenditure in the county is staff so resources is also very much staff time and so where do we where do we program folks to to spend time and so the economic development strategic plan is a strategic plan

[00:16:56] It sits alongside a really wonderful body of other strategic plans that the Board of Supervisors and others really wrestle with. How does an individual policy item coming before them address or not address all of these? They're always having to balance the economy versus housing affordability versus climate action.

[00:17:17] And so we're proud to have the Economic Development Strategic Plan sitting alongside some of these other plans. um so some some questions that we've received are you know why doesn't this plan address this particular other issue um and really it's because generally speaking the county has another strategic plan that focuses really deep on that issue um and so we want to we want to recognize um the work that that plan and the staff assigned to those work areas are doing um and and this one is you know much more tailored towards the economy that is my last slide um and i wanted to formally introduced Stephen Pettigo, again, VP for Economic Development for Residents, also Assistant Dean at

[00:17:56] the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, a really wonderful resource in the economic development world. He's worked around the Commonwealth and the country doing these types of planning efforts, as well as implementation. So he's not just planning, but he also gets a lot of exposure to the doing side as well. And we've learned a lot from him and are grateful for the work that he and his team have done. With that I will turn it over to you. Emily just reminded me my summer is over as of next week. I go back to school summer camp is over for me.

[00:18:29] So it's good to be with you all. Thanks for the Board of Supervisors to the EDA for having me here. What I thought we would do today is talk a little bit about the overview of the plan. This plan should not be foreign to anyone. We've spent a lot of time together through this. I've work sessions both with the Board of Supervisors. We've engaged both in the kind of beginning of the process and the middle of the process and also had some time with EDA and out of the EDA's session on this as well. So what I thought we would do is really run through this plan pretty quickly just to provide an overview for folks that are going to be with us for the first time

[00:19:04] and I'll then do the best I can do to answer your questions, which is I think the most engaging part of today's conversation 2400 people engaged that's pretty amazing that reminds me that my I told my husband tells me all the time my work can be boring maybe it's not actually that meant many people reading about the plan I will say that you've got this document here this is actually the formal strategic plan document there are two other documents with this work as well Emily's going to hold those up for you right now so you can see

[00:19:39] If you are very interested in all the data analytics that went behind the work, there is two appendices that have got analytics, both a kind of a competitive assessment work where we did a lot of benchmarking work with the county to its peers, but then in addition to that, a really detailed analytics around the industry sector work where we landed on the cluster work.

[00:20:02] You can follow that, and if you want to have access to that, Emily will provide it to you, and I'm happy to answer additional questions. So out of this plan, one of the things that we really worked with Emily and team on was to start to establish a mission statement for the Department of Economic Development.

[00:20:21] I think one of the things that's interesting is we all met last year, and it is true that economic development has went through a little bit of a reimagining process, right, under Emily's leadership in terms of what the department will do. And I think if you read that statement, one of the things that I would say about that mission statement is, in my line of work, economic development can be a one-trick pony where you're just doing business investment or traction or business expansion efforts.

[00:20:52] But I think if you read this work, this mission statement, I think it gets to this idea of the concept of which we believe is what's called complete community building. And that's really the emphasis of this plan is that complete community building says to do economic development right, you have to do lots of different things. You can't just do one thing.

[00:21:08] You can't just pull the lever of business investment and business attraction. You really have to think comprehensively about your community. That's business investment. That's expansion. That's small business work. That's also workforce and then some placemaking work as well. And so you'll see that both reflected in the mission statement of the county as well as the plan as we go forward.

[00:21:29] And why don't we do it really all to be driven by the idea of trying to drive prosperity for our residents and for our businesses that live and work here in the county. Our mission statement for this plan is pretty broad. It was really built on this idea of the county being open for investment and innovation.

[00:21:49] This has been a county, I think I can say this, that has for a while not been the most open place for business investment. Let's just call spade a spade, say the quiet part out loud a little bit. This is an opportunity for us to kind of reposition ourselves to think about how we are wanting to be in a place for, you know, looking at folks that are looking to make investment, but also supporting a lot of the businesses that are here doing some entrepreneurship work and really center that around this idea of innovation.

[00:22:19] You're a highly educated community. You've got one of the leading anchor institutions in the country, and you've all made big bets on big anchor institutional investments around innovation. So why not build a plan that's really centered around innovation? And you can see that in our mission statement, saying rooted innovation, open for investment.

[00:22:38] Ideas are going to take root, business to scale, partnerships to thrive. We kind of want to be that place that's going to lead on the innovation-based economy. To do that, the plan is really built around five key goals. And I'll go through the presentation and then open it up for questions and discussion.

[00:22:54] As Emily mentioned, the first goal is really around you all have put a flag in the ground, so to speak, around national intelligence and national security, particularly with the work around Ravana Station. We want to execute on that and think robustly, not just about that investment, but how do you build around the ecosystem around that.

[00:23:14] The second goal is really going all in on life sciences, particularly medical devices, biotechnology. A lot of opportunity here, both with Seville Bio, which is a really amazing group that's done a lot of work to support startup technology enterprises in that space.

[00:23:33] But also, again, you're home to the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center here. So that makes another reason to think about that. Third is really thinking about the agribusiness economy. So obviously a place that is really rooted. It's a beautiful landscape. It's a wonderful place.

[00:23:49] It's always a beautiful place to fly into. It's a beautiful place in terms of the agricultural legacy of our community, and we want to think about how we are supporting those small businesses. We spend a lot of time engaging with entrepreneurs and business owners in that space about what are the needs that those businesses need to really activate on that.

[00:24:06] And so goal three is really centered around the agribusiness economy. Goal four is our people goal. It's this idea that you don't just invest in enterprises and economic development. You invest in people, and you want to make it a place where people who are talented and entrepreneurs can stay and scale and succeed.

[00:24:24] You know, one of the interesting things that we found in the research work, particularly the benchmarking work, is your greatest export outside of the county are really smart college students, but your college talent. That's not unsurprising. The question for us is how do you keep some of that talent here to really help grow your enterprises?

[00:24:43] And that's really what goal four is centered on. And then as Emily mentioned in her opening remarks, goal five is really centered around the policy framework. what's needed to make sure that we can do this from our permitting process to a regulatory environment, all those things that really are necessary to make sure that we can track that investment that's needed.

[00:25:01] So those are the five goals of the plan. In the plan, you'll see one of the things that we've outlined goal by goal are some KPI metrics and outlined some metrics that make sense to follow and track as you are building towards the execution of this plan.

[00:25:20] But one of the questions that I think came up, our county executive asked me, you know, how do we know if we're winning in this plan? And what are the things that we should be thinking about, broadly speaking? And so out of that, if you had to say, what are the three things that we really want to put on our scorecard, so to speak?

[00:25:37] First and foremost is really thinking about business expansion efforts. Again, those are the jobs, the companies, and the people. That's not just attracting of investment. That's also the helping of companies that are already here. This isn't about a fishing expedition a lot, but we do want to be some frontward basing. But it is about supporting the companies that are here.

[00:25:56] Metric two, pardon me, is really around talent people that are here, 25 to 44-year-olds, that kind of mid-career individual. We call that that prime talent age. In fact, I think when we looked at the metric for that, the county has a population that's 25 to 44.

[00:26:13] That's about 10% smaller than what its share should be for its size. So what it says is that you're pushing people, you know, you're getting a lot of folks here, when it's time to make that stickiness or come back, we're not able to hold on to them. So really thinking about how we can move that metric forward in terms of 25 to 44-year-olds, that kind of prime working age, that's our talent goal.

[00:26:36] And then obviously there's some skill metrics and skill identification needs that are around for that. Let's just be really frank. Today's economic development space is really about workforce development as well. And you'll see that in the plan, particularly around that goal. And then goal three, a goal that we heard a lot from both the directors but also our board of supervisors was let's start to really under – start to figure out if we can see the growth in our commercial share of our property tax base and really track that over time.

[00:27:04] And that's where we've landed in terms of our third metric. So those are the three ideas of metrics that will help us understand if we're having success as we're starting to implement this over the next five to seven years. So goal one, really around the national intelligence space, you know, lots of, you know, it's interesting to me that as the federal government is pulling back on R&D efforts across the country, particularly in life sciences, One of the areas that we see real investment continue to happen if you track R&D dollars from the federal government is the intelligence and national security space.

[00:27:42] This is not a space that has seen a lot of big, significant pullback. And so this makes sense for us to think about this as a sector. We've obviously made a big effort and a big investment around the Ravana Futures Experiment, but also the Innovation Corridor.

[00:27:59] One of the things I think that's great that Emily and the team and I saw that our regional partners here as well as our university partners a lot of efforts are going into thinking about how we act as a not just as a county but as a region in this space and region and really driving a regional approach to this so that that's a real win and something that we want to continue on moving forward.

[00:28:19] So what do we do? How do we activate on these? Activate Rihanna Futures as an innovation hub. You're already doing that through a lot of the site planning that you're getting and the business attraction efforts. I wrote a $9.7 million grant in first year. That's not a bad way to come out of the gate. So really, really awesome job there.

[00:28:38] We talked about the work around the Innovation Corridor. I know the Innovation Corridor is just a really interesting work. I think you guys are also doing a really interesting study that's being supported from a GoVirginia grant, looking at how that's connecting around the ecosystem, both not just in life sciences, excuse me, in national security, but life sciences.

[00:28:57] Those are sectors that we see a lot of opportunity for overlap. Thinking about career pathways is really what Strategy 1.3 is around, particularly with UVA, but also the PBC. There's a really strong community college here, right? And so we want to lean into that community college.

[00:29:13] One of the things we heard over and over about the engagement process was that we want to build an economy and we're building an economy for folks that have, you know, higher levels of educational attainment. How do we do that for some of our other residents that are going through technical programs?

[00:29:29] And this is a really great opportunity to do that in terms of making that connection. Launching sector partnership, sector partnership being the vehicle to drive a lot of that work. We bring all of the employers together, educational providers together to advance those efforts. And then 1.5 is really centered around telling the story for the county as it relates to the innovation brand in the space.

[00:29:51] Economic development, frankly, is storytelling, and it's a really important part to economic development. So then we go to goal two. Goal two is around life sciences. Oh, and by the way, in the plan, you'll notice there's a lot of next steps in here. There's an implementation metrics. There's lots of steps on do this, do that.

[00:30:10] And we've actually scaled that into some planning for Emily and team to take a look at as well. But goal two is really around continuing to promote us as a life sciences destination. The thing I love about this goal is that it's a continuation of a lot of things that you were already in your regional strategic plan efforts.

[00:30:28] It's not new. You've got a strong group in Seville Bio that's here. You know, if we look at the strength of this sector, geeks like me measure economy through what we call location quotients. 1.0 is an equivalent to what anyone in the national average would have.

[00:30:46] Here it's about a 1.76, so it's significantly higher. And so there's a real strength in these companies. The opportunity in this space, if you read the report, is that there's a lot of opportunity to scale. So you get a lot of firms that get into the gate, they're smaller, but they need room, they need space, They need capacity, and they need the growth capital to scale, and this is really centered on this, the county working with its partners to do that, to achieve that goal.

[00:31:11] So how do we do that? Expanding the infrastructure to support scale-ups. So thinking about lab space, multi-small-scale manufacturing facilities maybe. We're not talking large-scale. We're talking small-scale space to allow these companies to scale.

[00:31:26] Interesting enough, there's been a lot of workforce studies across the country that have looked at life sciences, and life sciences being a way to connect innovation-based economy to mid-career or missing middle jobs, because they don't require, some of the missing middle jobs don't require four-year degree institutions.

[00:31:47] You can get a technical degree program at a community college, et cetera, so there's a lot of opportunity in that space here as well. 2.2 is continuing the innovation corridor. 2.3 is working with Sevo Bio, a group that does amazing work already acting as a sector partnership.

[00:32:07] It's one that I've talked about a lot in my actual work after learning a lot about what they do. And really, they are a really great best practice in that space. 2.4 is about the attraction efforts. So giving Emily and team some runway to think about how to go to doing some attraction efforts outside.

[00:32:25] So that's when, you know, one of the great things about a sector partnership is you talk to a lot of the companies in the ecosystem and say, well, what are you missing? What types of companies are we missing in our ecosystem? And that helps to drive what our attraction efforts should be. And then 2.5 is thinking about the access to capital in the space and what's needed to do that, particularly in the growth stage, to help these companies scale.

[00:32:51] Goal three, this goal's changed a bit since we've spent some time together because we got a lot of feedback on this goal. We just got a lot of feedback on this goal, both from you all and as well as other folks. And so this goal has changed a bit in terms of just adding some things and tweaking some of the language.

[00:33:11] The intent here is still pretty much the same, which is you have a robust cultural legacy group of businesses here, enterprises here. They just need some support to scale. and some opportunity to do that with infrastructure, as well as just support programs around that.

[00:33:28] And so this is really helping them to do that. Again, going back to the way that we think about the metrics of industry sectors, if 1.0 is the U.S. average, the agriculture-based economy here is 2.3, right? So it's 2.3. It's significantly concentrated.

[00:33:44] It's just the question here about how we make these businesses scale and also think about support services, particularly as these businesses transition and it needs some succession planning and other things around that as well. So how do we do that? So 3.1 is just kind of exploring some policies around can we create flexible opportunities around what's needed there, around value-added production, also thinking about how do we diversify our revenue streams.

[00:34:13] I know we heard a lot of that from our board of supervisors around some of our businesses needing access to different types of diverse revenue streams around the lodging and hospitality sector. So we've got that in there. 3.2 is really around the modern kind of infrastructure.

[00:34:31] You know, agricultural businesses today are extremely innovative. They require technology as well. Expansion of, you know, do we need to expand that, add additional cold storage in spaces? In terms of shared cold storage, do we need expanded broadband? I think many of you have heard me talk about turkey farming and the need of that.

[00:34:48] And I'm going to talk about that with my class, actually, at LBJ this year. But the idea of how you have to have the technology to support these businesses as well. 3.3 is about programming around the succession planning and business support. 3.4 is about supporting wholesaling in the space.

[00:35:07] So we've done a lot around supporting small-scale consumer product and buy local. We want to think with Emily and the team about what are some wholesale or scalable market pathways. 3.5 is making sure that we continue to engage those businesses together through our partnership.

[00:35:24] Engagement is a really key to economic development. It becomes, you know, a lot of times in economic development, we engage one-on-one with businesses, but there's real value in being smart about how you bring businesses together because you can create that synergy, but not only between your economic development staff and the businesses, but also businesses between each other as well.

[00:35:44] So we're going to continue to do that. 3.6 is supporting the wine economy here that's quite robust and continue to be a real star. And 3.7 is about ensuring that we are thinking about the connection that we're doing around our visitation economy.

[00:36:01] So our visitor bureau, a lot of the efforts in supporting to support some of that agro-tourism-based economy that's really important. So then we're on to goal four, which is about talent. Again, ensuring that we've got people that can support here and stay here.

[00:36:18] We want to make sure that we're able to hang on to our talent, not just our talent at UVA, but just also our workforce that's coming out of the community college at Piedmont and others. So how do we do that? We want to align with career pathways.

[00:36:34] As Emily mentioned, we did several roundtable discussions, and I think we did one of the most robust discussion we had was around workforce. And I think there were 24, 25 workforce providers around the table. So there's a lot of interest here.

[00:36:50] The question just comes back to creating systems in that space and having a system approach there. So doing that and having an opportunity to do that. Same around entrepreneurial ecosystem. A lot of this is not about creating new. It's about mapping and connecting. You'll see that play out throughout the report and through the plan.

[00:37:08] 4.2 is just about mapping and making the connection of a unified brand around that unified platform. 4.3 is about supporting kind of the students who are here. There's a lot of really great initiatives across the country that have done this where you try to close that town gown initiative where students come to campus and they kind of hang out on campus, and that's all they do is hang out on campus.

[00:37:30] And so when they leave their community, they have no affiliation with that community. One of the most successful examples of a place that's done that really successfully is actually the city of Philadelphia, believe it or not. So Philadelphia, through an initiative called Campus Philadelphia, has brought all their colleges and universities together to attack this idea that why are they losing their students? And they've actually closed their gap around kind of that loss around that early stage where from the Boston to the Washington, D.C. corridor space is really some really good

[00:38:07] examples. Other small cities are doing this too. Greenville's doing this. Asheville's doing some of this as well. So a lot of other examples that we can look at. 4.4 is leaning into our young professional network that is here, just making sure it's robust. Social capitalism is an important part of economic development, connecting to people, and so that's really what this is.

[00:38:26] 4.5 is making sure that Emily can find the next Chili's or the next Olive Garden. I'm just joking. I'm going to get it. But 4.5 is around destination development, and 4.6 is as Emily mentioned, there's a lot of other plans in place, so we just want to continue to support the work that's happening in the housing plan connects back but child care has become a front center issue as we know and so we want to make sure that's included in our plan as well one more goal and we'll be able to take your questions goal five is really around investment so ensuring that

[00:39:04] we're ready to lead compete and build so go back and just scope 1.5.1 is giving the county an opportunity to really go back and think about its development process and its zoning processes.

[00:39:25] I will say the most pent-up demand of conversation we had, or the most vocal group that we talked to, was the development community here. We actually had multiple convenings with the development community, and there was real conversation about is there a way to make the county think about how it can think about its zoning process, zoning and permitting processes better. By the way, I heard this in every community I work in.

[00:39:51] This is nothing strange. This is not just y'all. This is every community from... I just did the plan in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington, Vermont, that city staff got raked over the coals about this as well. All the way, I'm doing work in Cedar Valley, Iowa. It's the same thing. But it is this opportunity developers are asking us to think about how we can better serve them as customers.

[00:40:14] And so we've got an opportunity to kind of explore that. To that end, just as we're commuting our businesses, commuting our developers in a partnership, 5.3 is about our BRE program. Continue to do that. I don't know if most of you know, but Emily and team visit about 50 to 75 businesses a year.

[00:40:31] Continue to do that in a formal way, using that to inform policy. 5.4 is leveraging the EDA to help drive investment. 5.5 is Emily and team are going to start keeping a pipeline of all the sites and things that are necessary. so that we're ready to have all of those materials together when we're ready to position ourselves for investment.

[00:40:52] 5.6 is just about infrastructure. Continue to work with our infrastructure partners as well as our airport. You guys are really lucky to have an airport like you do. I mean, let's just be really honest about that. You punch above your weight in terms of the airport that you have here. So utilizing that to really support your economic development efforts are really important.

[00:41:12] And then finally, 5.7 is around marketing, making sure that we've got the marketing efforts to support economic development. As mentioned before, it's a real key piece of economic development and storytelling. So with that, the goals, I'll leave them up there on the board, but look forward to your questions and discussion.

[00:41:35] Thanks for having me. Thank you very much. That was a great synopsis, and we appreciate it. And we will just open it up for questions as you all have the questions. and Don will help me identify folks because we don't want to miss anybody, especially the folks that are on the screen.

[00:41:54] So make sure, Frank, you all raise your hands as you all have questions up there as well. Can I go first? Not so much a question, but I did want to mention something to the Board of Supervisors, which was we had a special session with the EDA a couple weeks ago specifically to talk about the plan And I know the members of the EDA will want to share their individual thoughts, but I thought it was useful to just kind of give an overview of what we talked about.

[00:42:27] We did have a public comment period. We had one person who spoke and one emailed comment that came in for that meeting. And I think a lot of the discussion was about the vision, mission, and sort of a high level. And those discussions were a lot about quality of life and how do we match up quality of life with the economic development plan.

[00:42:53] And what Emily did was very helpful. She also brought up the county's overall vision and mission, which include a lot of those concepts. So we had, I think, a very good discussion and understanding, as Frank actually said, quality of life also means different things to different people.

[00:43:13] So a lot of this discussion was how do we line up the economic development plan with those other things and how much should they reference each other. And they do show up. I mean, I know one of the things that just showed up in terms of the things, the empower talent section was housing.

[00:43:34] Yeah. So, I mean, you know, they all, you can pull bigger pieces back and forth. And so I'll let people share their individual thoughts, but I just wanted to kind of give the board a good concept. And then the other thing was a little more specific, and that was related to the agribusiness and the wineries and looking at how food service happens there and what we can do to help facilitate those, because there's a sense that those are having more comprehensive rules

[00:44:10] for how food service happens at wineries would be beneficial, and most of the EDA was in support. So I just wanted to share that before we got going, so the board was kind of on our discussion. All right, so with that, we'll open it up for comments or questions.

[00:44:30] First one out of the gate, don't be shy. All right, see you guys. One of the things that, as I was reading through the plan, that i was hoping to find and i found many things i was hoping to find in the plan but the one thing that was missing for me was the the balancing act the county as special as ours has to undertake with respect to environment and quality of life i think it's important that we

[00:45:03] recognize that these things are in intention if we bring in a lot of people that will affect traffic it will affect the number of homes we need it will affect the number of services that we have to provide we know from a recent melbourne cooper study that residential taxation is not the way to get there so commercial tax base is what we want to focus on but but that's a those are dangerous shoals to navigate is the way i see it all gas pedal is not the solution i'm not saying

[00:45:42] that the plan is all gas pedal but i was hoping to find just a little more steering in terms of focus on the things keep all the moral the all the moral that people who are already here really and the feedback i get from my neighbors when i talk about it some of the communications i got from citizens i didn't even know it was focused on those things like they understand that that residential tax rates are going up and we need to find some solution for that because it's gonna But it's going to push so many people who are already living here.

[00:46:16] It's going to push them out. But at the same time, they also love Alomar very much the way it is. So how do we preserve the things that we like and support rural farmers, for instance, in a sustainable, ecological way and increase their ability to earn a living without gaving over any more of the county than we need to do?

[00:46:44] So I don't know how that gets reconciled. One of the things we talked about in our session, our special session, was adding some language in the mission and or the vision with a caveat at the end that we're pursuing these goals while protecting our environment and exceptional quality of life.

[00:47:04] And I was hoping for some language like that just to keep us all focused on the goal of all this effort is human flourishing in the end. GRP and commercial tax base and county services, all these things are very relevant.

[00:47:20] But in the end, we want people to do really well and have that quality of life, and we want to protect the environment that we all depend on. So that's really, for the supervisors at this point, I guess I'm interested in hearing, after hearing the perspectives from the directors on the authority, I'm interested in how the supervisors.

[00:47:44] And if there's not a consensus there that this is important, then I get it. I hope there is, and even if it doesn't get reflected in the plan, I hope that it gets considered as we make these decisions in the coming years.

[00:48:04] Would you go back and read just one more time, Jeff, for us what you heard? Sure. So to start, I had revised the mission slightly, so my proposed mission was going to read in this way. Deliver lasting prosperity for Albemarle residents by expanding employment opportunities, strengthening and diversifying our task base, and supporting local businesses and redevelopment while protecting our environment with exceptional quality.

[00:48:37] I'm going to move because Ann, you had something you wanted to say. I did, and I didn't write that all down fast enough, so I'm going to come back to that another time. Emily's going to help us keep track of that. Thank you very much. I definitely, as someone who's been in that sort of clean air, clean water space for a long, long time, I think that this kind of inclusion in some fashion will help to build support for the entire plan across the county residents.

[00:49:08] And so that, to me, is a good step forward to build that support. So there are many, many things. I am an absolute neophyte about economic development. I've learned as much as I could since 2008.

[00:49:23] a lot of themes are flying through still hurry up hurry up hurry up you have to be ready is one of the themes that people talked about all the various consultants who have come ever since 2008 have talked about how you have to be ready but we don't really know quite what to be ready for so I'm glad that the work that you all have done the staff has done within the last year or so has made tremendous careful thoughtful steps forward to do the things that you just really very well received and successful. So I appreciate that. In the ag space, let me just jump back up.

[00:50:01] I did write some things because it is my very small business. And that is, yes, I'm not clear on where this is going. And so I would love to, at some point, see the notes and catch up via the notes on what the stakeholder people were really talking about. I will share some things because I I did talk to Ellie Hill, who back in 2010 was part of the Java local food process.

[00:50:36] Bill's nodding his head, so he did that too. And there was a lot of research done on the need for processing space and the need for shared cannery space. And I spoke with her this morning just to say, is your cannery still going? And yes, it is. But it's tremendously supported by Prince Edward County local government.

[00:50:54] They consider it as a public service and part of a park environment, but it is busy and doing great. She also mentioned that soon, or just barely opened, is the Vegan Kitchen, which she thinks will very much meet the needs for the value-added people, the strawberry jam people, those kinds of things, who might not have enough product to want to drive.

[00:51:23] It's only an hour to the canary, but that certainly is more suitable for people doing hundreds of jars as opposed to 25 or 50 to get ready for the fall apple butter season or something like that. And her main concern was that do we have, and this is for future information gathering, the sustainable process, production in the truck gardening space, for example, for that business enterprise that we were referring to, I think, in some of these statements to succeed.

[00:52:00] For 35 years or more, various ag groups have researched, do we have enough animals to be able to have a processing site here? And we have found that we don't have enough sustained production throughout the year for something to go there now in the last five years.

[00:52:20] Two very small ones, one in green and one in Barbersville, which is helpful because that reduces that time for people to travel and sustains the meat sector very well. But those are the kinds of things rolling around in my brain that I would love to be given homework assignment to read and study and catch up on what the work is that has already happened, that I don't want anybody to reinvent the wheel, but I would like to know.

[00:52:46] And the metrics, are they also to include local farmers markets and what the connections are between producers and consumers? Those were the focuses of the Java study many years ago. We used to have 15 farmer's markets. I don't know if any of them, all of them are still alive, but that was a pretty big deal in 2015 because the only county with more was Fairfax, with their million and a half people, so we felt pretty proud about that.

[00:53:13] So measuring the job increases and working on ways to empower, get good agriculture training into our high schools in order to get more, I mean, it's a wonderful background for people who want to be a mechanical engineer is to go and build things with your hands and learn how to weld and all those other things too.

[00:53:35] So I'm probably going down a giant-sized rabbit hole, and I'm sorry, but I will just think about that. So you make some really good points. And while you're looking for that, I just want to say that as we go through this and people have comments and even questions, I want to make sure that Steve and Emily and Trevor, Jeff, if you have something you want to add or answer, I think this is the time, right? Rather than pushing it down the road. So I'm just going to open it up and then we'll come back to your others.

[00:54:09] And I have one other point totally different, which is the recreational economy, is that when you look at Roanoke, they created about 10 years ago, took off on themselves as outdoor capital of whatever. And they have that 15,000 acre reserve there that they use for that as the main focus.

[00:54:29] But there's interesting people who have reached out to me to say, we should be grabbing some of this as well. At a minimum, we should be quantifying the multiplier effects of economic impact, cycling, running, bird watching, kayaking, hiking, botanizing, rock climbing, etc., and taking full advantage of that kind of economy as well.

[00:54:50] So I will just drop that on the group and go from there. Thank you very much. And I don't want to reduce the time that our board members have to talk, but I think it'd be great if Steve or Emily or Trevor or even Jeff would like to respond. No, I'll just try to react to all of the comments. So first and foremost, the comment about, I mean, the mission statement is a mission statement that can be edited.

[00:55:10] The reality is, is that as Emily mentioned, this is an economic development plan that sits in concert with lots of other plans, right? And so in terms of environmental protection, in terms of the way that we think about balancing quality of place, all of that, my argument to you is that you have a comprehensive county plan, right, that really speaks to that.

[00:55:32] This plan is a part of that. And, yes, we can finagle the language on a mission statement, and we can indicate that this sits within that. But the reality is that your comp plan is doing that work. The idea of this, right, if we're doing this in the right way and having the right hierarchy, and push back on this if you don't think this is the case for staff, is that your comp plan should be doing that work for you.

[00:55:56] And your comp plan is set up to do that. And, in fact, you all, by the way, as a county, had very stringent development constraints, right? Right. So you've got development constraints. And so what I would say to you is that the plan, this plan is trying to is trying to operate within those is operating within the constraints of those of the development, development limitations that you've put forth.

[00:56:21] Can I ask a question based on what you just said, the limitations? In your past experience, when you have done something akin to this, where it succeeded, let's just say Asheville, because you cited that, but a city comparable or area comparable to Almar, what was the level of land that was developed?

[00:56:48] Because as I understand it, only 5% of the land in Albemarle County is open for development at all. 3% has already been developed. So what we're really talking about, I think, I could be wrong, we're really talking about 2% of the land in our county that can be developed.

[00:57:09] And so how do we get there from here? Yeah, unless you as a governing body decide to activate all that. Well, what's the norm? What have you seen succeed in your past? I mean, what is there? I mean, that just seems kind of small to me that just I'm astounded by that.

[00:57:29] I mean, I'm new to local government. You are constrained. I mean, I don't think this is this is you are constrained by the amount of developable land that you have. But what would you think would be? Pretend like you're king. I'm not going to answer that question.

[00:57:49] I'm not going to answer that question. Although what I do think you said about this historically, what have you seen succeed? Look, I think that communities, again, I think a lot of it depends on what are the values that you're looking for in a community. So you guys, you know, you are, you, there are constraints that were, there are, there are big hurdles that we're dealing with here, right?

[00:58:12] Let me, I mean, you are going to, you're kind of going to the shopping mall and say, you know what, I want everything at the shopping mall, but I only have this small of a budget, right? Let me give you what I'm explaining to that. And that's where hard choices come into this. So you have 5% of land that you want to develop on.

[00:58:31] You want to highly protect your environment. You want to be an innovative capital. And you want to create missing middle jobs. Oh, and by the way, everybody wants to have a single-family house here. That's affordable. Good luck to the economic developer who has to deliver that, right?

[00:58:48] But other than that. right you did it so so that is to say is that there are trade-offs here right i mean so the idea of saying we want to protect quality place we want to be a place that's that's open and support our natural i totally get that but as you were saying that as well part of the argument for that a lot of times i hear that argument in communities and i'm not saying that's what you're saying i hear that to say we don't want development and we want to kind of just keep it the same way we are and then if you talk to a lot of you know a lot of your other stakeholders who aren't the most active people that come to your stakeholder committee meetings your residents here they can't afford to live here y'all they need better jobs they need housing and so it's a trade-off and it's

[00:59:28] a balance right um and so i think one of the things that we tried to do in this plan is try to say well we're operating in a and you'll see that in this plan we're saying a lot of things like explore so your point around the agricultural goals well taken do you need a food processing plant i'm not sure i'm not an expert in that space um do you need better broadband in that space most likely you probably do need better rural broadband do you need um a better activation of your farmers markets and their protection yes you probably do what the plan does here and what

[01:00:02] the goals in this plan do is it outlines you as an opportunity to go out and do those deeper dives you're not going to solve all of the details of this in a five-year strategic plan the strategic plans trying to and in fact i would submit to you that this strategic plan is actually of the strategic planning processes that i have led over the 125 of them i've done across the country this is a lot more detailed frankly than we would normally do because you all were wanting some some of those details and so we tried to if we try to we try to get to that level of detail around some of these some of these goals one of the things that you know that we could imagine if

[01:00:41] we're looking at an agricultural kind of what is needed to support here well the reason we're saying that you've got to think about engaging small businesses in this space and looking at the toolkit is because if you want to advance economic development in this space and that you got to kind of give yourself the opportunity to go out and explore that and that's really what this plan does this plan says to emily and team one of the things that we think you need that we know that you need that that we know that needs to happen is that you need to bring your small businesses together you do need to do some exploration around around infrastructure in this space um these are from the businesses that we heard from in terms of the site visit saying

[01:01:18] we need to think about some of these issues if we want to scale and we need to support services around that so um the the plan is trying to give you a level of specificity um that i think you're all desiring to have in terms of your shopping everything in your shopping cart but it's also saying we're not going to solve everything in a strategic plan and this is the opportunity for the economic development staff to go ahead and have an opportunity to explore those those efforts i will say you know if you look at this plan outside of all of the business investment pieces

[01:01:52] of the business investment pieces of this is relatively small footprint right outside of ravana futures but you already made the big bet on ravana futures right that was something that we but like when we look at you'll notice there's a lot of small support around life sciences business here, technical support program. Those are all small enterprises. I'm not arguing for you guys to go out and get the next largest, you know, Eli Lilly manufacturing facility. What I'm just suggesting is, I'll tell you what we heard in the roundtable discussions as the wake-up call was all of the mid-sized, small-scale life scientist companies said here that we can incubate

[01:02:30] at the university, we can get enough space to grow and scale, but if we want to test our ideas and get into that mid-skates, where do they leave? They leave you. They go. They go away. They go to Boston. They go to Philadelphia. They go down to the research triangle. And so all we're saying in the plan is that if you want to hold on to a piece of that, then maybe you've got to kind of scale and think about what are the other parts of the ecosystem to do to support that, right? And all that happening with the constraints that we are operating in a 5% development land, but a lot of that opportunity to do some redevelopment

[01:03:07] in that space as well. Think about that space. And you'll see that this is what this is giving you a skill to do is to say, let's go back and redevelop some of this space. You've got an industrial quarter that can be rethought of a little, right? There's lots of opportunities. The only thing that I would add to that just quickly is that that was probably the first conversation that Stephen Pettigo and I had about, you know, the comprehensive plan is very clear about 95.5.

[01:03:33] And so, you know, the plan needs to be developed with that in mind. I also wanted to just note that Mr. Andrews had his hand up recently. Thank you. We can see that. We only see Frank right now, so. Can you hear me?

[01:03:51] Yes. Thank you. Yeah, something that I was just going to push back. I really didn't want to have a discussion today about the 5%. I'd be like to think of it as unique to the geographic and other constraints that make us who we are and therefore going out and trying to compare to other places isn't helpful to me.

[01:04:13] But it did, like a lot of what I was hearing from Mr. Morrill, about just making sure that we put a few buzzwords in here to make sure we're not saying that we're just economic development for economic development's sake.

[01:04:29] I looked at, for example, I think it was in the vision where we say we're open for investment. And I wonder if it's possible to throw a modifier open for strategic investment where we don't really necessarily have to define strategic, but we recognize that we're not just open for anything that anybody wants to do with an investor.

[01:04:59] And I'm not sure that's the right word, but that's just one of my thoughts on it. Similarly, if we go to slide 14, the very first thing it says is growth in jobs. Well, we could have warehouses for distribution centers and probably get lots of jobs, but they wouldn't be the middle jobs.

[01:05:20] They wouldn't necessarily be the career ladder jobs. And so when we get to those kind of words, I just worry that a lot of people looking at this are worried that we're trying to open ourselves too much up and not being consistent with our comprehensive plan.

[01:05:37] I do appreciate all the comments that have been made about where this fits, and I agree with that, but I just want to make sure that we can speak language here and there to recognize that this is fitting within that plan and quality of life and the environmental sustainability that we've heard of. Thank you.

[01:05:57] So the reality of the market, so thank you for that comment. I will say the reality of the market is you're never getting warehousing jobs here, right? You're too expensive. You don't have space for it, right? So, you know, the markets of investment is that other companies will look other places, investors will look other places.

[01:06:18] I think the idea of tying the jobs back to the sector, I will say that as we're defining jobs broadly, it is defined to be jobs within the sectors that we're working towards. So we're working towards life science jobs, we're working towards jobs in national security, we're working towards the job investment in the agricultural space.

[01:06:40] All of that is to say, completely agree with you, never thought, you know, when I look at, as an economic developer, when I look at this plan, And I have never thought this is a plan for growth for growth sakes. This is a, and in fact, the critique of this plan could be that it leads too much in the idea of being innovative and really picky on the types of jobs that you're trying to create, right?

[01:07:01] It's being, it's being, it's a bit too curated probably in the sense that we're saying we're focusing all of our efforts on these three sectors. Other communities would not play in that space, but it makes sense with the values of who we are as a community to say we're going to play in quality job creation. So that's a really easy addition to do is just to make sure that we change the metrics because in reality, as we define the metrics here, I can promise you, wasn't thinking about job for job six, we were thinking about quality jobs.

[01:07:29] And you're right. As a community that is doing environmental work, you have a point of view about the types of jobs that you want to create in the community, right? You don't want to just grow for growth six. Places that are just adding jobs to add jobs, there are headaches that come with that, right?

[01:07:45] And there are externalities that come with that, that have input. So this is really centered about kind of making sure that we're kind of creating the next level of jobs that are going to create career pathways and career ladders. You see that. Hopefully, you can see we've even connected that in through goal four, which is around the people piece, which is saying, let's be sure that we're thinking about how we connect the job career pathways to that space as well.

[01:08:10] That was really very helpful. I just want to make sure Emily and Jeff and Trevor don't have anything else they want to add while we're thinking. So I'll open it up for other comments or questions from the folks at the table. Well, I have pages of stuff that I'd like to go through, but I've got to react to the most recent conversation.

[01:08:28] I just want to say as a sitting supervisor that I appreciate people's fear that somehow this is going to change who we are. I get that economic development is the reason why it hasn't been a strategy for the last eight years. We first put our plan in place of why economic development was considered an evil.

[01:08:47] In fact, we just got called evil or ignorant in an email the other day because of our data center conversation. So, you know, I appreciate the points and the concerns, but if we really think that either supervisors or economic development staff are up here conniving through the economic development strategic plan to change who Albemarle is, that's an unfounded fear.

[01:09:13] We have to find ways to pay for this. And those who want us to protect what we have in Albemarle and it's come to exist costs money. And I wish we would have had this realization 20 or 30 years ago.

[01:09:29] But economic development is about trying to get that revenue to allow us to continue to have what is defined as Albemarle and the way we do things. And if we don't embrace that, then your taxes are going to go up every single week.

[01:09:44] And there probably are some in this county who would say, great, because higher taxes would probably mean less people. And you have to start wondering what that box is out when costs get that high.

[01:10:04] That's the alternative argument. Now, you know, I also have to push back against that redundancy somehow brings power or commitment or something. Every single plan does not need to speak to that. The point's been made. I agree with it.

[01:10:20] I look to our school division. When you look at the school division, the mission, the vision, all the statements in there, There's nothing in there that really specifies a commitment to concern about climate change and climate action and being environmentally responsible. Does that mean our school system isn't? No.

[01:10:37] In fact, they've been a leader in this state for many years in doing the things that would be best practices to help achieve our climate action plan. But just because it's not mentioned in the mission vision of our schools doesn't mean it's not there. Redundancy doesn't make it so or make it more powerful.

[01:10:55] So I walked into, I didn't do it very well at one of our first comp plan meetings because the co-comprehensive plan was going to be looked at through two lenses, climate action and equity.

[01:11:11] And at the time, the same argument was being made that we needed an additional statement in the comp plan to bring home the importance of climate action while we were looking at the whole review through a lens of climate action. And I pushed back on that, and you would have thought that I became a climate change denier overnight.

[01:11:34] You should have seen the emails, right? And I met with the green grannies. They sent the green grannies in on me to explain my thinking on it. No votes had I ever taken in public could have suggested that. But because I didn't support yet another redundant statement in a document, that's what happened.

[01:11:53] So the only thing I can say is that's fear-based. you have to trust that the comp plan to the point made by uh steven is true now the last thing i'll say in this kind of context is that like it was mentioned in your presentation that we we put a flag in the ground around national security and intelligence well that's not true elmore county didn't do that the military did that so we have to remember that sometimes you don't get to pick your industries right we didn't did we go out in and beg for them to come set up shop here no but keeping them is our job oh oh but we didn't stake the flag in for them to show up here it was an

[01:12:33] industry that developed here based on their own choice probably because they liked how albemarle was defined what existed here they're like that's not a bad spot so we're still trying my point is it's in the private but the biotech and all that it's not that albemarle went out and said we're going to create this industry industry decides where it's going to go it's up to the county to say well do we want that or not want that i guess or support it or not support it to your point about not having warehouses in albemarle county hell no place would go bonkers if we try to

[01:13:11] put up a big warehousing district here not even getting to the points that you made about why it wouldn't happen so industry is going to and they don't want to come here i can't imagine there's a warehousing place out there that says you know what albemarle county would have a hell of a place up a distribution center right so that says that Albemarle is defined what exists what's created why people value it why everybody loves it has a staying power that has some positive ramifications that also has some negative ramifications but when we start talking about staking or putting

[01:13:46] flags in the ground some it's not so much that we did that if an industry starts to develop because there's a university and all this innovation and entrepreneurship creates it then the county government can say, do we want to support that or not? And then that's where we go. So really, it's about seeing what's happening and going, wait, that is fitting within the definition of Albemarle County. If some sort of entrepreneurial, innovative warehousing situation set up that was going to need, oh, I don't know, a million square feet in Albemarle County, I can't imagine we'd be coming up with incentives to help them do that. We'd probably, to your point, say, we'll let that

[01:14:23] one go. That's right. So we'll allow these other things to be there. To bring it all home at the end of the day and this wasn't even in my notes of six pages well understanding the fears and appreciating that we that any word with development in it can be scary you have to trust you have to trust what we've set up in the plan and that we're going to follow it and what we say is important is important and if you're going to redo an entire comprehensive plan through the lenses of climate

[01:14:58] action and equity then if we say anything outside of those two things then we're we're not doing our job, that everything must be looked at through those two lenses. I'll stop there. I've taken up a lot of time, and I have a lot more time I could take up, but I'll let every other day.

[01:15:18] I think you've made some really valid points because at the end of the day, whether it's a mega data center or a big warehouse, this community is not going to be going there, number one. The land is so expensive that it would never happen anyway.

[01:15:35] But having said that, thank you, man. I appreciate it. And I want to open it back up for Bea's comments. Well, I agree with probably everything you said, which is good. I like the idea, I've always kind of pushed on this, of being open to new ideas.

[01:15:57] The fact that we're being innovative. I know we have the set guidelines. I know we have the bioscience, Vibana Futures, et cetera, et cetera. But I really do like the idea of this point, keeping our minds open because we don't know what's going to happen in the next 20 years.

[01:16:19] We don't know what's going to happen in the next five years. Frankly, the next two years, something could come up that doesn't, quote, may not fit in our plan now because we don't even know what it is.

[01:16:35] But something could be developed. I think we have to be open to that. And regarding your point about the 5% versus 95%, we don't know if that's always going to remain. You get a new board of supervisors and, you know, I don't know, may change in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

[01:16:55] We don't know what's going to happen. That all depends on the board at that time. But I do believe in keeping an open mind and keeping flexibility because we don't know what's going to happen.

[01:17:11] But I'd like to see what is available. I like what we have. I like what's been planned out. I think this is great. There are a lot of openings for great things to happen. And the fact that if we improve our, modernize our systems and make sure that permits don't take 18 to 24 months and encourage people, that will also bring innovation.

[01:17:36] I personally, and maybe I'm being Pollyanna-ish about this, But I think we can do it. I think we can protect the rural area and yet have businesses and everything. And also some types of businesses in the rural area.

[01:17:53] I'll give you one example. In my area, we have Stony Point Market, okay? That was just sold, and now it's being renovated, so to speak. That's the only place to get something to eat in that whole area without going into Charlottesville, okay?

[01:18:09] They are restrained by some of our regulations. They can't add, they wanted to buy across the street and build a new Stony Point market. They can't do that because of our regulations. I mean, there's got to be a way of, and people want that.

[01:18:28] They want that store there. Like I said, there's nothing else around. And we want community, not activity centers, but, you know, community places like GAMC and things like that. If the people want something there, for example, someplace to shop, someplace to eat, I'm not talking McDonald's and things like that, I'm mad at me, but, you know, mom-pop type restaurant, you know, we should be able to support that.

[01:18:56] We should be open to what comes before us. We can decide, oh, yeah, you want to put in a Wawa right in the middle of, you know, prime farmland, it's not going to go anywhere, but we can decide those things. And I think this plan lays it out perfectly what we can do.

[01:19:15] I just want to see, like I said, innovation and flexibility in what we do and to let people know we're open to new ideas. Bring it forward. But yet they will know our constraints because we do have some constraints, and I think we want to protect those, too.

[01:19:35] You know, we don't want. Do we have comments from folks? I just want to say one of the things that I just want to reiterate. I think you all have said this. There are already guardrails about the type of development that you would like to have.

[01:19:53] The plan kind of outlines and says, we'd like to think we'd like to really grow our life sciences sector. We want to support the investments around national security, so on and so on. But there are definitely guardrails in place in this plan. So, for instance, some of you have mentioned earlier, you have a development portion of the county that can only be developed in.

[01:20:16] That's a guardrail. that's a very big card bill. Any incentive deals that would be done if the county decides to advance an incentive policy and think about the tools that would be needed to do that, Board of Supervisors would have an opportunity to set that plan. In addition to that, every year the Board of Supervisors and through the county executive and the department approves an annual work plan and an annual budget and that's another time to do it that you get an opportunity to check in on the types of investment and the types of things that are happening with your staffing. So all that is to say there are there are guardrails in place that you know as you're talking about

[01:20:55] wanting to be who you are represent the values of the county there are those uh those those those expectations that make sure that we're sort of coloring in the line so to speak already and um could be said in this plan but necessarily don't really necessarily i don't believe need to be said explicitly in this plan um i think a lot of times by the way folks look at uh businesses are investment opportunities they will, those individuals will look, site selectors particularly, will look at these plans just to understand how committed is a community open to really wanting the type of investment that's there. And so

[01:21:34] you know, I think this plan signals that you are open for a type of investment, and I think it explicitly says here, but it also signals to us, in my mind, that it's not just investment for investment, it's like there is real expectations about the type of So all that is to say, I think there are cardinals in play.

[01:21:57] I'm sorry. I just want to make one comment regarding what he said. We have to remember also, unless we have more commercial, light-dustral, in our county, property taxes, real estate taxes will go up.

[01:22:13] And if you want a fast way not to be able to afford affordable housing, not to have affordable housing, then let your tax rate go up. So I don't think that's something we want. what we have to be aware of. Well, I just want to say I'd like to come out, and one of the things early on in this session, Stephen asked me, what did I want out of the plan?

[01:22:39] And from the EDA's perspective, I think what's important about this is it does give us a framework where we can look at opportunities as they come in and say, okay, what do we want to do? And if somebody comes to us with something, we can say, okay, does it fit within the framework?

[01:22:57] Maybe it doesn't hit one of the exact goals, But, you know, is it a life science? Is it a national security example that I've used? Is, you know, if somebody says, I want to build an amusement park in Crozet, does that fit within the plan? No, that doesn't fit within the plan. And so I think that's what's helpful to me.

[01:23:15] I know this is going to seem strange as one of the lawyers up here, but I tend to not worry about the exact wording in these things. It's really more of a period or focus because you don't know what opportunities are going to come up and you don't know what things are going to present. It's more about, okay, what are our goals?

[01:23:33] Where do we want to focus with this particular word here or there? And one of the things I'd like to adopt this plan is really to focus on that implementation section and say, you know, Frank has talked about, well, if we just create this plan and then no one looks at it, if we've all just wasted the last year, I think we've got to keep it forefront and say, okay, what can the EDA do?

[01:24:01] which of these things should we be focusing on how do we how do we get to the next steps and i think that's really one of the important things i was just in terrell texas we did the plan for terrell texas it's a different very different community than y'all uh different set of community values but but we worked with their one of the things that we did just this past week uh what last week uh was spend time with their eda thinking about uh now that the plan was in place what are the investments that the eda wanted to make and how to business plan around that plan right strategic plan can only take you so far in the implementation you've got to then move to an

[01:24:37] implementation and a lot of times that goes back to your professional staff or an implementation planning process to do that and you've got Emily by the way who will just you know really great to leave we'll be able to leave this in a way to make sure that you're moving on to work right pressure is the same oh Frank okay great hello can you hear me yes I just want to go back to a very basic question. Why should we want economic development? The only reason I've heard so far

[01:25:13] during this discussion is that we need to increase the revenue on the commercial side to keep the residential taxes low or lower. That is clearly one reason. And for most of us on this call, That is the reason we focus on, because we already have good jobs, or we already have significant retirement nest eggs.

[01:25:44] And therefore, that's the only thing we're focusing on when we talk about economic development. But I think there's another side that has not been mentioned. If you all recall the Orange Dot report that Rich Schuyler did, I don't remember the exact number, But something like 15 to 20 percent of all Alamara County residents are struggling to be self-sufficient due to the cost of housing, the cost of child care, the cost of living, and the fact that they are in low-wage jobs.

[01:26:23] We must recognize that hospitality, tourism, and retail is the lowest-paying economic sector, and many of our residents are working in those areas.

[01:26:40] I think we want economic development to create middle-wage, middle-skill jobs that many of those folks can aspire to and move up to. That will give them more money, which will make the county more affordable.

[01:26:56] So I think we need to recognize that for many people, economic development will not serve their interests unless it lowers their taxes. But as leaders of a community, we have an obligation to that other 20 percent who need to make more money to have a higher quality of life.

[01:27:22] And I think that has been missing from our discussion so far. That's a very good point, Frank. I mean, I think the idea that you do, the reason you do economic development is not just about investment, but it is about creating career pathways, creating better jobs, doing quality of place efforts, all the things that you want to do to build that complete community.

[01:27:41] One of the things I would say to all of you, and maybe to give you a homework assignment, because I'm a professor, is, you know, to Frank's point, is when you're out talking to residents and talking out to stakeholders about this plan, I'd be curious to know how you're pitching the plan, right?

[01:28:00] because i think everyone should have a pitch statement about this right there's a value about who we are as an organization as a county and why we are doing the work we're doing but we should all have value statements to come back to pitching to the idea the reason that we do this work and frank's frank's point is is well taken um it doesn't have to be the same around it doesn't have to be the same around the community but it should be much more than just talking about investment you know so you know perhaps you're pitching because you want to support entrepreneurs Whereas you're doing it because you want to support agriculture or you want to do it because you want to think about the connection between climate and economic development.

[01:28:34] But we should all be having a really clear pitch about that. And that's a great assignment for, you know, as a board of supervisors working session, even the EDA to think about how do you how do you communicate this? Because that becomes a real important part to storytelling. You kind of gave us a clue how to brand that discussion, use the term complete community building.

[01:28:56] So that sums it up to me and basically everything we've been talking about as a board for the reasons for this plan and what we've been stating, you know, our own reasons for wanting to support this are based on building a complete and supporting a complete community.

[01:29:14] I mean, the reason that people, the reason their residents fear, I mean, so economic development has become a boogeyman. We have literally talked about it around this table enough, right? It becomes the thing that communities are scared about. And a lot of that is because residents see economic development happening to them rather than with them, right?

[01:29:32] And so the reason that you want to kind of talk about this in a way that not just talks about we're just bringing investment for investment sakes, but we're doing it so, you know, the mom that dropped me off in the Uber today whose kid's going to be an HVAC can stay in the county, right? Or the kid that is at Virginia Tech can launch a company here, et cetera, et cetera.

[01:29:50] Or if you're a small business, you can succession plan. The narratives around economic development is really important. And so to advance the plan to get to the values you want to do, you start to tell those stories that folks can say, this isn't as scary as it sounds. It actually talks about why we want to be here and how we connect that back to the people that are living and working.

[01:30:08] And to get to that point, I would just love to have a quick discussion about what I see happening is that our children are graduating from high school and having to leave here because there's no jobs.

[01:30:27] We're frustrated about the fact that we've lost that middle piece, right? And we have, right in our own backyard, we have PBCC and we have the University of Virginia. But we also have a public school system right now that is focusing on career exploration and career pathways.

[01:30:48] And I would love in this document to somehow or another get at that because these are kids that are graduating from high school. They need to figure out what they're going to do and maybe it often doesn't have to mean a degree running away or it can mean a degree from PVCC as opposed to just going into directly to college and then dropping out of college the first or second year because it didn't work for them or it was too expensive.

[01:31:15] So I would love to elevate in this document Almar County Public Schools of Public Education somehow to get that along with PPCC and UVA because I think it's an important piece that we're leaving on the table that we're not actually utilizing to the best possible extent.

[01:31:40] Yeah, and I think if you, you know, the largest announcement that we had last year, the Afton Scientific Expansion, I think speaks directly to that two-thirds of the jobs that they're seeking to create would be manufacturing jobs that they have said do not require a degree in order to be qualified for. And many of the jobs, the kids can take these jobs and then work into another job if they want further education. And so I would really love, the only thing I would change in this document is to elevate that public education piece however we want to word it

[01:32:15] right along with pvcc and and the university of virginia it was mentioned it's mentioned but it's mentioned in the footnotes and they are about this i mean i it just needs to be elevated so that when people look at this document public education is mentioned in here and k-12 is mentioned but i'd like to see it elevated in the document so that when you see it you're really thinking about it. It's mentioned all through the document because I went through and circled it, but it's often in these little small, what I call the footnotes at the bottom, which is great,

[01:32:52] but I just think it needs to be elevated in a little different way. And I'm sure Emily can figure out how to do that because you understand what I'm saying. Yeah. Yes. I'd just like to echo that a little bit because when you talk about a 25 to 44 population, most people are going to have the school-aged children as well.

[01:33:14] We are seeing families later in life, but you're going to have people in their 30s and 40s who are going to be looking to these schools as well. And we want them to have that great public education opportunity. We know that there are tremendous schools locally, but the public schools here can be a crown jewel for that.

[01:33:33] And I think you're mentioning that, and I am certain because I serve on the School of Long Range Planning Committee, that when we come to the school board in a couple months and then they come to you with our big, and it'll be big, right, the capital requests.

[01:33:49] But I'll be sure that we tie that back in to economic development in this piece and just being able to tie it all together because the schools produce the first generation of workers, then they become that next generation of workers that we want to keep.

[01:34:05] And I remember when I was a liaison on the EDA, we had several conversations around public education and what could the EDA do to support the public education work that they were doing to help educate the kids to build these jobs.

[01:34:27] So I just think it would be a great addition to the document. Just one follow-up comment, because I didn't know anything about workforce in 2008 when I was assigned that liaison to the board, but I realized very quickly a positive cause of the kids who get to the end of whatever their current education is, whatever that is, high school or a certificate or whatever, and then need really good employment, and not to have to go off to college and come back with a huge debt and have the same job they could have had out of this.

[01:35:03] That is a crisis. So much has been done over the last 15 years by the state and the certificate program and the community colleges, and I really appreciate watching the high school graduation, how many of those students already have certificates and things.

[01:35:19] So your comment about having, it also is good for the schools to see that this is an expectation and helps them to boost it on their side as well, because it is really important that all hands on deck is what we have to be doing and all the different, it's impossible to do all the different classes.

[01:35:37] but partnerships and things can help with some of those skill sets that are sort of outside the purview of the high school but could really benefit some water building ideas. So other comments? I'm your official timekeeper, and we're still okay, Emily, on time, I think.

[01:35:55] So just to make sure. So other comments? Well, I have a question. I guess my comments were all taken care of by everybody else, which is great. I know we benchmarked various communities, but I didn't know if there was a plan or I already used a plan, an excuse if I'm ignorant of it, there was, to benchmark the implementation part of this and interview and talk to folks who've done this successfully.

[01:36:18] Have we done that already? Yes. So during the version that we looked at in the spring that residents prepared, for each goal, there was at least three localities, even beyond just that comparative benchmark list, But three localities that kind of illustrate in real life what success could look like for that.

[01:36:43] Yeah, I saw that. I'm more interested in the nitty-gritty, dirty stuff of how we actually implement this and talking to their planning and zoning department and people like Michael. People like you specifically.

[01:37:03] But, yeah, like, what were their challenges, you know, where folks, you know, actually did streamline things a little bit, their strategies, how long do I, you know, all the metrics.

[01:37:18] I mean, obviously, and I know Frank is interested in this too, but we have work to do, right, to basically metricize, if that's a word, this plan and to align it with our community metrics, thresholds, capacities, infrastructure, and all that, and then to just, you know, implement it in a way that it's aligned with our values.

[01:37:41] But anyway, there's a lot of work to be done, and it's my point, and it gets down to some of that, you know, nitty-gritty. But how is it actually done? So I have ideas, but I'm interested in learning more from folks who've actually done it, accomplished some of these goals, and how exactly they did it, and what were the lessons learned.

[01:38:02] You don't want to react to that. Just that we've kind of put together, we've kind of mapped the case study locations and said, you know, is there an opportunity in the future when the plan is adopted to say, Man, if we went up, there's a couple clusters.

[01:38:22] And so whether it would be a trip or just some Zoom lunch and learns to engage the staff that would have worked on some of those initiatives to hear from them. This looks like a great idea. What were your lessons learned? What were the challenges you encountered along the way?

[01:38:38] It seems like we have a fairly obvious path to implementation, but there's a lot of details. And there's a lot of fears and concerns that are based on unknowns that we can, I know, between very skilled people in this community, planners and planning department and whatnot can figure out and put in context.

[01:38:58] So I'm not worried about that. And I'm confident that this can be aligned. I see some hands up, and I think Jim has a hand up in Frank, so I don't know who was first. But how about Jim, why don't you speak, and then Frankie go next.

[01:39:15] Okay, I'm looking at sort of the picture here, and I thought this was where this previous comment was kind of going for. There's a lot of talk about marketing and branding and having a unified brand.

[01:39:31] And then in the particular sectors, I know we're going to help the ag sector to develop their own individual brands. but the bioscience doesn't say as much about that. But the one that I was just curious about, and maybe you can help me just understand this branding process, is the branding of defense and intelligence as a sector.

[01:39:57] What does that mean? And what do you see as our goals for branding? Well, it's a wonderful question.

[01:40:14] And marketing and branding shows up in the different goals several different times. And we know a lot of that is just around this idea that we know a lot of the assets that we have here. We know what a lot of the opportunities here are. But if you talk about, you know, Charlottesville Albemarle at a national conference in any of these sectors, most of the time they're not very familiar with our region. And when you start talking to them about our region they go i had no idea or oh i didn't i you know i genuinely didn't even realize

[01:40:52] that's where the university of virginia is um or that you have or i've never heard of urbana station i've heard of fort belvoir in northern virginia urbana station is a sub installation of fort belvoir but had no idea that there are those substantial intelligence national security footprint in the charlottesville area and um and so so really that's what that it's it's not coming up with like a pithy slogan and a cool billboard but it's very much about how do we tell that story and build that recognition where you know 10 years ago people may have struggled to identify what

[01:41:26] Huntsville Alabama is good at and now they know that it's aerospace and so how do we elevate the profile of our community where we can sort of be a place that's synonymous with some of this innovation economy work that we're hoping to do with the plan Stephen I don't know if you would You know, it's just making sure that when folks mention the sectors, they can align your region with those sectors.

[01:41:50] You know, which most people would know that this county is the second largest place for VC investment for medical devices for early stage companies, for instance. You can put that in your talking points when you go to a cocktail party tomorrow. But, you know, things like that.

[01:42:06] It's just the idea of being able to make sure that as you are communicating to the target audience that would care about that particular sector, just being able to align that with a story and or a point of evidence that could dictate that why this would make sense for why is this a place where we start to see defense investment or national intelligence investment.

[01:42:30] I think there is a question, and there is a larger question, about does the county need a larger, broader story around economic development in terms of how it's communicating its messages? It's in the plan for something to explore over the course of the next five years.

[01:42:51] It may be time to think about an investment brand. Your competitors already are, by the way, in the Commonwealth. You mentioned Roanoke earlier. Roanoke is currently working with residents this year around an investment brand for their economic development efforts. Lynchburg did this last year. Richmond has done this. So you need something to be able to have some way to say we're open to economic development and here's our story and here's our story platform. And again, it is as important, you know, that is part of economic development that is just as important as thinking about incentives or the land use or all those

[01:43:28] types of things economic development is directly at storytelling and with that i'm conscious of time i want to move on to frank if i can't frank when i when i look at the report there are the five goals and each one has about seven sub goals so that's about 35 total with limited staff you can't pursue 35 things at once so my question for our consultant is did you give any thoughts to what is the priority or what are the top priorities where do we get the most bang for our effort and

[01:44:04] our bucks for instance if we were going for a budget amendment from the state or go virginia proposal where should we concentrate what is our highest um return on investment priority so there is there is um so i will say there is a five-year implementation matrix that we provided emily where we outlined uh what are the things that you should be thinking about in year one year two year three year four year five um that has been provided um though there's still some work to do with that for instance i mean i think when you think about uh implementation a lot of communities wants to

[01:44:43] go through strategic planning process well then spend uh you know the next sort of 12 to 18 6 to 18 months saying let's think about the business plan for this whatever the what are uh looking at how we had matrixed out what we think that you know three to five years would look like what are those things that we want to invest in first i think those are conversations that frankly the eda should have a conversation around saying what are you going to invest in um it's also a conversation with emily about how she's going to deploy her staff but we we did take a stab at that in terms of outlining and starting to do that work so we're not starting

[01:45:18] from a green field there is a there is a matrix in place so probably share with frank Other comments or questions? Ned. This, I think, captures some of what's been recently discussed, going back to Frank's good point about the workforce, not losing sight of that.

[01:45:42] So I'll try to tie these different comments together. There are a lot of things in here that say invest and convene, which does require dollars, resources, whether it's staff time.

[01:46:00] And it's usually around things that seem to be identified as gaps that don't currently exist, which is smart. And I think that's why I like the what's needed approach versus specific action steps, because I think it calls attention to those.

[01:46:18] But I want to make the bigger point of how does local government and its role in the community really do something to fill those gaps besides providing the incentive or convening?

[01:46:36] are we really convening? You know, I've made, Diantha's had to hear me go off on tangents on this in some meetings that she's pulled together, but it's always been a critique. I hear businesses in economic development meetings talk about how the education system is not producing the workers they want or need. That's lobbed at public education at K-12, that's lobbed at the community colleges, it's lobbed at UVA. And sometimes I hear them not talking about the skills that are needed for their jobs but for the type of employee they need to hire who they can train with the skills

[01:47:16] they need to do the job to me that's a gap in workforce development it's it's it's the subjective not subjective it's not the right word it's the things like the importance of being on time it's those kind of soft skills that i think you know that i think edu formalized education institutions have so much that they have to do that getting to that too can be a problem because they're also working against whatever life experience i made the point about well how can

[01:47:52] you preach to a student to be on time when their parents the one making them late and i have to fire their parent because they're late getting to the job well if they're where do you fill that gap so that's just an example of what's local government's role then to say well that's a gap we hear people saying they want it, that it needs to be done, who stands up in the midst of all the responsibilities they have, and then what are the tangible things that can be done to fill that gap?

[01:48:20] I think we can say that about a lot of the gaps that this plan identifies. It's up for industry and community colleges and UVA to figure out on their own what they're going to do about that, and I understand that's what the convening is about, to get in, to try to figure that out, but I think to the point about leveraging and benchmarking other communities that that can't be an over thought or an afterthought or something we do when we have time to get around to and i'm gonna use the nfl is getting ready to start up i'm sorry i'm a huge

[01:48:52] nfl fan and every week what do teams do but they come they when if they want to compete they better research and go to the film and figure out what they're competing against figure out what that other team does really really well and then figure out how to leverage their own strengths and weaknesses to fill any gaps in order to win the game so we have a whole chapter around competing we have a whole understanding of what our gaps are and i don't think these gaps are unique to albemarle county in our region so it can't just be about the three or four communities we benchmarked

[01:49:30] for this report it has to be about what county is doing something to keep talent here and then figure out a component that says maybe it's providing down payment assistance to employees to be able to afford to stay there because now they can afford to live here and they can consider different jobs that are here and that's just one example right who does that really really well who does uh like the count the i think of the counties that don't have a university they're not university towns they have nothing i don't mean this pejoratively but they don't have

[01:50:07] a whole lot to keep people there that it's a constant i think of my hometown of wheeling west Virginia the talent that exits that community is profound and you can see it with the population decline and the fact that they have no viable industry in that town what would they do well you'd have to figure out a way to incentivize people to want to stay and live there and what can local government specifically do somebody's doing something to make that work and you got to go to the film and figure out oh man what how can we do that you know benchmarking I think looking

[01:50:41] at other places and what they do i think is is so critical that it can't be something like i said that's done when oh we got two extra hours this week let's take a look you're limited because our staff is only but so many people and there's only so many hours a week i get it i guess i'm making the advocacy to get to what to frank what frank is speaking about that it would take a lot of effort to look at the 50 states and all the 3 000 plus counties and that doesn't even get at the cities but boy there's people out there doing really good things and we could probably get at

[01:51:16] that through going to the film and figuring out how could we and i say compete but i don't mean like to beat them to outmaneuver them but to win and filling the win is filling the gap i'm going to open it up to jeff because jeff thank you chairman keel i've got i got a lot of things on my mind right now and i'm going to ask staff to help i'm going to lean to my left first, and I'm going to ask Trevor and Emily to talk for a few minutes, the metaphor of looking at the film. Let's talk about, for a second, the St. Louis trip and use that as an example to share with our boards something that's happened in the last year. In fact, I think it was last August. So

[01:51:55] it was about a year ago that we spent several days in St. Louis. And can y'all talk about that for a second? And while you're gathering your thoughts for a second, the second thing I'm going to do after they talk about that is I want our chief operating officer to have a minute in front of both boards to talk about our strategic plan and the SPIR report that we do every August. So this will be coming to the board next Wednesday night on August the 20th. And I'm going to ask Ms. Shiflett to come forward just for a second and talk about with that SPIR report, how that connects back once the metrics are completed out of this plan and how you work with Emily and her team to talk

[01:52:32] about that. I think both of those comments could help just a little bit. Trevor, I'll turn it over to you. It may have been at this meeting a year ago. Jeff, Emily, and I had just returned from St. Louis. St. Louis is a location of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency headquarters, NGA.

[01:52:51] St. Louis, 10 years earlier, was in a position where they may be losing that function, which was a main employer out. And so we went out to see the work that had been done.

[01:53:07] We watched the film, if you will, of how a whole community had rallied around this industry and became competitive. And it was not just St. Louis City. It was the region, how they aligned to basically win through a procurement process, new construction of NGA West, the headquarters.

[01:53:29] And through that process, and we could talk about it for an entire hour, but through that process, They aligned, you know, the geospatial study from middle school all the way up through the university. And at the university level, there's an institute that was created, has 14 universities.

[01:53:50] So there is a direct line from, you know, opportunities within that, you know, within the inner city of St. Louis where they could see a path to a career that just wasn't there before. And so what we went out to do was to kind of understand how that was built, and then we have kind of looked at what elements do we have here in our region and what's missing, what are the gaps.

[01:54:17] And so that, I think, is some of this work. The strategic plan will help us do that. And I agree, what are the other localities that have had success? And it's not to compete with geospatial necessarily, But it's to understand how they built that alignment of work and created that ecosystem.

[01:54:39] That's what we want to capture here, as it is unique to our area with national security, biosciences, kind of these core industries that we're calling out in strategic. That's great, Trevor. Thank you. And I'm going to try to. I'll ask Ms. Shiflett if she wouldn't come forward.

[01:54:58] Ms. McKeel, as Christy makes her way forward, I think the board knows this, but our EDA, board members may not, that our chief operating officer, Christy Shifflett, her responsibilities across the organization, one of the key areas is strategic planning, but it's performance in strategic planning.

[01:55:15] And she's got a team that works out of the county executive's office that works across every department in the organization and works with not just what are we planning to do, but let's measure key metrics and then let's report to our board. I think we have about 220 metrics that's tied back to this report.

[01:55:33] The final thing I'll say, and Christy comes forward, because Frank asked the question, how are we going to measure this? What are we going to do first? And those are great questions by practitioners that have worked and you know that you can't manage what you don't measure. And we want to get better. We're a needs improvement organization, and it doesn't bother our staff anymore when we say that because you're measuring what you're doing well, but you're also looking for the gaps and what do we need to improve.

[01:55:59] And so Christy is waiting to do meaningful connection at the end of this work to work not just with Emily, but across departments where we've got goals that will be working. It's a very small team in economic development, but we'll be working across the organization to move the needle in the right way.

[01:56:15] Christy? Yeah, so Christy Shiflett, CEO. Thank you for all the comments. I'm excited. I've got new team members because you're all going to work with us on this. So actually, the second year of the SPHER report, we call it SPHER, Strategic Plan Execution Analysis Report.

[01:56:36] So we're really trying to measure and really be transparent to our community. What have we done and what did we accomplish and what was the progress on those things? And each objective that we have in our strategic plan has metrics that we've developed. So in our strategic plan right now, 4.2 says update project enable to include the county's role in economic development.

[01:57:00] So we've been waiting for this moment to update the economic development plan so that now we can have that business plan that Stephen spoke of to really figure out, okay, so what's the next step? What do the next five years look like? What are those metrics going to be?

[01:57:16] And then they'll connect in. Just like Emily had shown earlier where you had all those plans. So each plan will have its own group of work, but they're going to connect back. So that intention is absolutely there so we can communicate. But first, we have to determine what are the things in each year that we need to accomplish we think we can do.

[01:57:36] Thank you. Very helpful. Thanks, Alex. I am always conscious of our time. You're always conscious of our time. Yeah, because I don't want to start losing people. No, and board members may be ready to wrap up, but Ms. McKill, I have a couple of other comments I'd want to make.

[01:57:52] If you go back to slide nine, because Christy talked about our strategic plans, Emily talked about them earlier. There's also something that I want to make both boards mindful of, and that is also that we do five-year capital planning.

[01:58:08] So we have a five-year capital plan, and we also do five-year, Mr. Sumner, our CFO is here, we do five-year financial planning. So the capital planning drives our capital investments, both in schools and in county departments. Our five-year financial planning is in the area of operations, where we're looking three to five years out to how do our revenues look, how do our out-year expenses look, and, you know, what do we look like?

[01:58:33] What are we going to be able to do? That's just one of the lens that we look through, and that's the affordability lens. And that's really something that board member Galloway talked about, too, is, you know, this is going to take investment in order to move the needle and move forward. And as part of our budget process every year, we talk about our economic development funding and what do we need moving forward in order for the department and the organization to be successful.

[01:59:00] So, Ms. McKill, I'll wrap up and turn it back over to you. But before I do, I also want to go back and just make point to board member Morrill's comments about the connectivity to this. I want to look. There's a slide that's in the presentation that I don't think we were going to get to, but it's slide 33, and it's the county's vision.

[01:59:21] It's the county's vision. So it's not the economic development vision. I've been here. I'm in my eighth year, and this was in place before I came. I looked at it when I came on board because it was a lot about what I needed to do to be successful. But just let me make a couple of points about the balance.

[01:59:39] Look at the bullets. We envision a community that has abundant natural, rural, historic, and scenic resources. We want a community that has healthy ecosystems. I'll skip down. We want a physical environment that supports healthy lifestyles.

[01:59:56] Now stop. That's the environment and the sustainability. Now let's go to the balance side of the equation. We want active and vibrant development areas. We want a thriving economy. We want a thriving economy. Then stop. Go to the last one. Exceptional educational opportunities for present and future generations.

[02:00:18] We want to be an exceptional educational community, not for our kids to grow up and leave and come back when they retire. And therein lies the connection to all of this back to the economic development strategic plan. In order to have a vibrant economy, we need good jobs.

[02:00:37] And that's what a lot of you have talked about today. And I was looking at this and I'm like, this is amazing. When we look at the connectivity that's there and the balance that's there and the guardrails, which are not a bad word, in order for us not to lose who we are, absolutely the case.

[02:00:55] And I think that to see the thread is quite inspiring to me. So I'll turn it back over to you. I appreciate the time that staff has had. Thank you. You did a great job of connecting it all. and certainly um i do think we need to wrap up i i um at some point we're going to want to have a motion to adopt this i believe but i would like emily just to speak to your takeaways and where you think where we're going right now and give us a comfort level on what we would actually be voting on if that makes sense yeah yeah so this is a slide um that i put together um that just

[02:01:33] next steps. And the document that you received in the packet and that there's copies of on the table is the first draft of the final draft document from Resonance. There are things that we need to do, including copy edits, not knowing what the layout was ahead of the final plan.

[02:01:57] We need to send more local photos to be able to replace some of those stock photos with local photos. Now that we know how many and what is on the page of them, we can do that work more effectively. And then we also have the ability to address any as amended edits from today's discussion. And so I know from the notes that I was taking, one thing that I wanted to offer, and I'm glad that Mr. Richardson had us bring up the slide with the County Vision and Mission, one thing that I wanted to offer to address some of the comments that

[02:02:33] came up today was perhaps if we added the county's vision specifically to the economic development strategic plan that that would then embed move the slide that would then embed you know the abundant natural resources and put that you know directly into the plan so it's not adding and amending some of the statements in the plan but certainly bringing those connections more concretely together. So that is one edit that I would offer.

[02:03:08] So Emily, I'm seeing a lot of nodding of heads, just to move us off. That's good. Excellent. And then on the metrics, just cleaning up that the jobs are jobs in the target sectors, or with a focus on the target sectors.

[02:03:25] Nods there. And that we would elevate public schools in the plan document. And I'm looking at page 21, which is talking about our anchor institutions, educational institutions. So that could be a text edit on page 21.

[02:03:44] And so that's what I capture. Is there anything that anyone feels like is missing? Our edits changes that will come out with the final draft.

[02:04:00] And there's a comfort level that we can take a vote on this today as amended with what you just described for us. And I'm not going to try and go through it again. So, in an effort to get us out one time, and it has stopped raining, which is the good news.

[02:04:17] I would entertain a motion and a second. I move that we pass a resolution to approve the Amherst County Economic Development Strategic Plan with the amendment that was listed. And I think it was attachment C, and then we can say as amended.

[02:04:32] Does that work? Okay. All right. Okay, we've got it. Is there a second? All right. And for the public, only the Board of Supervisors is voting on this, just so everybody knows, because the EDA does not vote on this.

[02:04:48] So we have a motion and a second, and I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Pisto-Gurtley? Aye. Ms. Malick? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Andrews? Aye. Excellent. Excellent. What a great discussion we had. This was really wonderful. We should meet together more often.

[02:05:13] And Steve, I want to thank you for the wonderful work you did. And the response to our questions were so helpful. It's just really great work. Thank you very much. Mr. Andrews does have his hand raised. Okay. Well, I took it back down again, but I just think that's really crucial and not worth discussing the reason.

[02:05:37] But you're still fixing it up is what I heard you say. From one part to the next. Approved as a method.

[02:05:56] I just want to note that our agenda, Jeff, you just leaned in. Is there something? I have an announcement to make after you wrap up. Okay. Well, I'm going, that's perfect timing because we have from the board matters not listed on the agenda. I want to make sure that no one has anything they want to add.

[02:06:14] And then we have from the county executive matters not listed on the agenda. Or we can fudge that a little bit if you have an announcement, so feel free. You want to go right now? I do. Our other Deputy County Executive, Ms. Ann Wall, texted me several minutes ago to let us know that Dominion is reporting that 4,200 customers in our area are without power.

[02:06:37] And so I want everybody to travel safely home this evening. I hope everybody's got power. Ann, do you have an update on that since you last heard from them? No, I'm sorry. Chief Appleston reports that a lot of this is on the north side of the county. There's a small issue at a substation.

[02:06:57] So Dominion is aware and they're working. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. So the EDA needs to adjourn. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just going to sneak this in under from the board. Okay. Just because there's ears here that aren't often here.

[02:07:14] One of the things called out in the plan seemed to be concerns about infrastructure and infrastructure bottlenecks. It'll be coming back before us in our legislative priorities, and I'm going to be making the call then, too, that for those of you, we get some tunnel vision about what we're focused on, but if the levels of government above us did their job and funded their responsibilities properly, local government would have more resources to do the things we want to do.

[02:07:41] So when we talk about not just raising or keeping tax rates the same, if we use the revenue we have in a more localized fashion, we could really get after some of these problems. But if the state is not funding VDOT properly to handle road projects, maintenance, and new projects properly, then we can't get at these infrastructure bottlenecks.

[02:08:05] Same with cap building schools. So there are things that happen in a general assembly session that we all could impact. And a lot of times we here at the local level hear the brunt of the impact if a road project doesn't go through or a school building isn't hit. So I'm calling on all of you as you have relationships and you go out and do your own advocacy for your own things with our local GA representatives.

[02:08:29] And at the federal level, even, for their responsibilities, to use that influence to think about what you could also do to partner with us to help us get these unfunded or misplaced mandates from above that are costing local dollars for their responsibility so we could be better fine-tuned at using those dollars to handle real problems or the gaps that we know exist.

[02:08:50] Thank you. And I would suggest if we can figure out that for a bumper sticker, it would be great. Let's work on that. All right, with that. So I will adjourn the EDA meeting. All right, sounds great.

[02:09:07] And hearing no objections, I'm going to adjourn the Board of Supervisors to August the 20th at 1 o'clock in Lane Auditorium. Thank you very much, and everybody be safe.

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