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

Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 55m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1404
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1404

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

[00:00:28] A quorum is present. We're also joined by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, county attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgerson. Also, let me please welcome Albemarle County Police Officers President, Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Officer Lauren Daly.

[00:00:45] Thank you for your service today and every day on behalf of the citizens of Albemarle County for our safety and security. If all present, could now stand as you are able to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, like a God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:01:15] Thank you. And I now ask you to join us in a moment of silence.

[00:01:33] Board, as usual, our first item is to adopt the final agenda.

[00:01:53] I've heard no recommended or requested changes to that final agenda, so I'm looking for a motion to adopt the final agenda. So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel, Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Mallett? Yes.

[00:02:09] Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista? Kirtley? Aye. Great. Board, of course, the first item is then announcements by board members. I'm going to make a couple quick comments, and one is that my understanding is that County Executive Mr. Richardson will be talking about AstraZeneca perhaps a little bit at 6 o'clock.

[00:02:30] Yes, sir. And so any comments, we'll get a chance to make comments about that event at that time. And there was a big event on Friday, and we have a special guest in the audience, and I intend to come back around twice. So when it comes to me, we'll get that part of this started.

[00:02:47] But for now, we'll go through our order for today, looking for announcements, starting with Supervisor Pruitt. Yes, I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that early voting is ongoing. so the last day to do your registration or update your voter registration so if you've moved is going to be on the 24th of this month that does not mean you cannot still update your registration it just means you'll be voting by a provisional ballot the easiest way to do this is always just go into early voting you can do everything same day right there in person just have a doc have some basic identifying documents with you you're easy to go early voting continues

[00:03:24] until the 1st. As a reminder for folks in the audience, early voting is conducted at the 5th Street office building, same place where the police and social services are, and the actual election will be the Tuesday following. All right, that's the 4th, and that's all I have.

[00:03:40] Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Sure, just one quick item. We sent out a press release yesterday, meaning Albemarle County sent out a press release yesterday, that Fire and Rescue, Albemarle Fire and Rescue is launching a platform to assist our community in emergencies, and because of the growing number of calls for service for fire and rescue incidences, the Fire and Rescue Group are trying to figure out a way to help us help them in helping us. The new tool allows residents and

[00:04:16] business owners to share essential details about their home and properties that could make a life-saving difference in emergencies. And so what this is called is Community Connect, and it's a free, secure platform designed to help responders when they arrive at your home to be fully prepared. And in order to find out more about it and to sign up for it, you can go to Community Connect, and it'll give you the information you need. They're looking for information like do you have someone on oxygen do you have someone with a disability that lives at

[00:04:54] your home there you can just imagine the information that you could share with fire and rescue that would help them in an emergency at your when they're arriving at your house so community connect and that's all i have thank you thank you supervisor malik thank you very much i will take all the time that's been left by others because it's a busy time. This Sunday, August, wow, October 19th at 11 a.m., Piedmont Baptist Church on Half Mile Branch in Crozet will be celebrating their 155th

[00:05:29] anniversary. And this is an amazing congregation. A number of years ago, the church caught fire. A Crozet volunteer fire person was driving by at 11 o'clock and managed to call out for help and save everything but the roof but anyway they have lived through many trials and tribulations and come through stronger than ever so it's a wonderful recognition for them the parish there november let's see time to prepare your front porch or fence or business storefront for operation green light 2025 you can dress your house with green lights to recognize the service of our veteran

[00:06:09] pardon me veteran and active duty neighbors remind them to seek services at the va even if their claims were denied previously new rules for pact act eligibility were enacted in 2024 and the va clinic locally and mcguire is in full operation america's counties have a long and proud history of serving our nation's veterans and this legacy continues today as we work with all of our federal state and local partners so let's show support for veterans by lighting our building green from November 4th to 11th, or all year round, as I do. By shining that green light,

[00:06:46] county governments and our residents will let veterans know that they are seen, appreciated, and supported. It is apple butter season. In addition, outside the Sammy Miller District, Mount Moriah is busy on October 18th and has a fall festival then. And then on the 25th of October, it's as if the whole world is coming to our area because there are so many things going on. The owners of the Bluebird and Company Bookstore and Crozet are in their third year now of the Crozet Book Festival and are partnering this year with the Crozet Library. There are school

[00:07:20] events and events also Saturday, October 25th, at the Mud House at Bar Botanical, the Yellow Mug, and the large author events at the library. There are 33 writers coming for the weekend. Many will be going to schools on that Friday. Sounds like a wonderful, fun time. The Whitehall Ruritans, who maintain and care for the historic Whitehall Community Building in the village of Whitehall, is having their apple butter on October 25th, cooking from midnight to noon and buying from noon to four. So I hope that people will come. It sells out quickly, so plan ahead.

[00:07:58] Also on October 25th is the health fair, the Get Better Crozet Health Fair at Crozet Park from 1030 to 4.30. Many, many partner agencies. This is in its second year. And public safety as well as private business agencies and lots of children's activities. So put that on your traveling around Crozet-Western Albemarle route. Someone else may mention this, but October 25th is also National Drug Take-Back Day. And ACPD, in partnership with Sentara Wegmans and the DEA, have four drop-off

[00:08:33] locations this year, and they are getting there. The Wegmans Grocery on 5th Street, Sentara Martha Jefferson at Martha's Jefferson Drive, also Sentara Crozet Family Medicine on Park Ridge Drive, and the Forest Lakes Family Medicine on Profit Road. Last, two things in November, the race at Mint Springs. It's an adventure race, a four-hour and an eight-hour orienteering and mountain biking race up through the mountains.

[00:09:05] And at the beginning of the eight-hour race begins at 8 a.m. and the four-hour family race begins at 10 a.m. on foot and mountain biking control points, and racers will navigate the rugged terrain using only a map and a compass. Crozet.racing slash home base.

[00:09:23] And this is where to get information, and this supports the Crozet Cares closet, which is another thrift share. And lastly, November 8th and 9th is the 31st annual studio tour founded right here in Albemarle. And there are 31 artisans, I'm sorry, 47 artisans at 24 studios throughout Amaral County, the city, Green, Madison, and Nelson.

[00:09:50] And so there are lots of things coming up to do on your weekends. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Calloway. Thank you. I have no announcements today. Supervisor Lupita Kirtley. Yes, I have just a few announcements. In our EDA meeting last night, we had a presentation by Go Virginia, which is Growth and Opportunity Virginia.

[00:10:13] We've received $600,000 from them to the EDA for what's being done in Vibana Futures, especially in the AstraZeneca area. And we also met, it was a joint meeting, our second time having a joint meeting with the Charlottesville EDA.

[00:10:35] So that was very productive. A lot of consensus regarding working together. What can Albemarle and Charlottesville do working together for economic development? So that was productive. The other thing is Thursday, October 23rd at 4 to 7, Claudius Crozet Park.

[00:10:58] And Friday, October 24th at Darden Town Park is our annual trunk or treat. This is where the police and fire get together, have a wonderful, this is an exciting event, a wonderful event.

[00:11:16] If you haven't been to it, it's really exciting. If you've got children or adults, you want to go there. I've been there. I took, frankly, I took family last year from France. The kids loved it.

[00:11:32] They get to climb around police, the SWAT car, the fire engine. The kids love it. And lastly, on October 6th, we had what's called a steel topping out, and this was for the Manning Center. Why do I bring this up?

[00:11:48] Since it's in Charlottesville, I bring it up because it closely aligns with our innovation corridor and what we're doing in the area of bioscience. Thank you. Thank you. And a couple of quick ones, just a note that I don't think anybody's mentioned.

[00:12:04] There's an all-CAC meeting here in this room on October 30th at 6 to 8 p.m., and that's going to reveal a number of excellent reports, community well-being profile, Orange.Report, Map2 Health Report. But most importantly, I'm going to take an opportunity to bring us together again and give everyone a chance to comment again.

[00:12:24] And on Friday, several of us joined a room full of staff to honor the retirement of Chief Dan Eggleston. And, you know, not all of us were able to share or be here at the time. But this is a man whose impact on the community is huge and deserves community-wide public recognition.

[00:12:49] He has announced his retirement effect at the end of October after more than 40 years in the fire service, including 23 years leading Albemarle County's Fire and Rescue ACFR. Under his leadership, ACFR grew from, I believe, a staff of like nine to what it is today, a modern unified career volunteer combination department.

[00:13:08] And believe me, those of us reading the report know that combining career and volunteer departments is not an easy task. During his time, he's overseen the construction of four new fire stations to reduce response times, hired over 200 career firefighters while continuing strong partnerships with the volunteers, secured more than $10 million in FEMA grants, safer grants, to enhance staffing, training, and equipment, launched nationally recognized health and wellness programs to protect firefighters, modernized our fleet, expanded and advanced training programs.

[00:13:44] He's also been the voice of the fire service nationally and internationally. Chief Eccleston served as the president and board chair for the International Association of Fire Chiefs. He testified before Congress on critical public safety issues. He's built international partnerships, sharing best practices with fire organizations in Europe, South America, and the Middle East, honored by the Netherlands Fire Officers Association for his contributions to global fire leadership.

[00:14:11] Chief Eccleston's career has included service during pivotal events, Hurricane Floyd, post-9-11 operations in New York City, August 12, 2017, civil disturbance in Charlottesville, Albemarle area. I understand just in the past year he's had a couple of opportunities to talk to the governor when crises have come close to home here.

[00:14:30] So he's a man who has a major, major impact, and I want to make sure we publicly congratulate you for your service. Thank you. And I do want to ask if the board might add on to that. I know not everybody was able to be here.

[00:14:46] Let's go back to Supervisor Pruitt. Yes. So first off, I want to personally apologize. I was capping out my vacation when you were celebrating your retirement ceremony and was not able to be there in person, and I regret that. I think we first met when I was running for office, and I sat down with you and some other members of public safety leadership and was instantly struck by how stupid lucky this county was and I was coming into leadership in this county because I immediately clocked, oh, this is a man who could be like working 10 hours a week,

[00:15:26] making bank as a consultant anywhere in the country if he wanted to be. And he has chosen to lead this fire system, a complicated, sophisticated, complex system that you help build from scratch. The steadying hand you've had and the incredible work you've done in really navigating some complex growth issues in this county, some complex human political issues in this county, I think has left an incredible and indelible mark on this county.

[00:16:00] It's something that has been very important to my district. Your leadership has been tremendously important to my district, and I will always be grateful for that. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel? Dan. And to many of us in this community, you are a fire chief, but your warmth and your ability to connect to people is just outstanding.

[00:16:24] And we really appreciate your service and your ability to work with many different types of people. And your ability to manage the volunteers and the paid staff over the years and get us to where we are right now has been mentioned multiple times.

[00:16:45] On Friday, we had a room full of people, many current staff, but lots of folks that came back from the community that had worked with you over the years that just wanted to say thank you. So we all say thank you again.

[00:17:02] Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. And I was very pleased to be able to be here and get after him one more time. But thank you. I think after decades of volunteers working together at wit's end from 1910 on until today, the birthing of our formerly designed combined system and its evolution into the successful 10 volunteers and five paid stations that we have today, that's a powerful legacy that probably stands alone anywhere in the fire history here.

[00:17:35] So I'm glad to hear that you are staying in Crozet and you will continue to visit now and then. But fair winds and following seas, as the Navy guys say, because you deserve every second of fun outdoors on a beautiful day like today. Thank you, Dan. So, President Galloway.

[00:17:52] Dan, I hold you in such high regard and so much respect. You get choked up just because of an event back in May and what care your department has, and it's, I know, because of your leadership. So, appreciate that. Okay, pull it together.

[00:18:10] In attending NACO, you learn to hang out with Dan because you hope NACO is the National Association of Counties, and he's got a reputation at the national level. And you hang out with him, so I hope some of that regard and respect rubs off on you.

[00:18:29] So you have been such an ambassador for this county beyond just the work that you do and your expertise and your career and your history. So the fact that you have done that for our county I know has raised our esteem, Not just because of the service you've done here, but the work that you and what you've contributed outside of the county as well.

[00:18:48] These are always bittersweet moments, I know, but I know hearing your last motorcycle trip and what that was about, that I'm really just happy and smiling for what I know your experiences will be as you enjoy the next chapter. So, Dan, thank you again so much.

[00:19:04] Supervisor Lupita Kirby. It has been my honor to be able to work with you, and I think all of us, because you are an incredible person, an incredible leader. You're innovative, forward-thinking, and that shows through all the things that you've done for this department.

[00:19:27] Me, speaking personally, what you did for Stony Point Volunteer Fire Station, on the verge of being eliminated help bring that back being innovative by putting in three career staff during the day and then an ambulance stony point never had an ambulance i think they use that ambulance more than anything else so that is really really appreciated you're a problem solver you listen that's what i truly truly respect about you and you you do come up with all these

[00:20:04] different creative ideas that's really exciting and you've been such a such a monumental force in this county and we are going to miss you but i know you're going to continue to be involved in the newly created fire rescue foundation and that's going to be really something that can help a lot of of our firefighters so we're going to miss you but i know you're not going away otherwise I think this board would vote not to let you.

[00:20:44] Can we do that, Andy? No. Okay, but thank you very much, and congratulations on your retirement. And so I just say that, you know, personally, whenever you've had to come forward to talk to the board, it's always filled me with a great deal of confidence.

[00:21:06] And I invite you, if you have any interest, to come forward one last time. But otherwise, we'll certainly applaud your time here. I love that picture, by the way, Allie, of our family, Addie. Dan Eggleston, Fire Rescue Chief.

[00:21:23] I guess I can say that one more time here. But, yeah, I just want to take a moment to thank you all. This position as a fire chief here in Albemarle County is the highlight of my fire service career that goes back to 1977. It's hard to say that out loud, but I want to thank the board.

[00:21:42] I want to thank our county executive and his team, the department heads, and our outstanding team of career and volunteer members. You know, recently somebody said, gosh, you know, every time I attend your meetings, it's like this. And I said, well, you know, this creates some good policy sometimes.

[00:22:01] It doesn't necessarily all have to be harmony. Sometimes that conversation and friction leads to something good. so uh it can't be too hard but not too soft i'm sure you all are well aware of that you're legislators um but i just want to tell you that um one last time that i truly believe in in our collective vision the vision that you all worked really hard to try to put together to make this the best county we can ever hope to have um and i see it playing out in our community i'm out there in the field working with our folks and i see it i see it driving home i see it in my own community

[00:22:36] and Crozet. Albemarle County is my home, and it'll always be my home. And my intent is to stay connected and continue to contribute in any way I can to help you all bring this vision to reality.

[00:22:53] So I just want to thank you one last time for the opportunity and your trust and guidance over the years. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with you all. This has been great. I'm a local government nerd, so this is like right up my alley, and I really appreciate it very much. So thank you, board and and mr. Richardson for your your guidance and your trust in me to do this job

[00:23:11] appreciate it thank you board our next item is proclamations and recognitions and I think we just had one so this brings us to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings and we have a sign up so vice

[00:23:50] chair mckeel will read the rules and names of speakers we have one person who signed up and no one in person and no one online so during the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings individuals may address the board of supervisors individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting the sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium.

[00:24:23] The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

[00:24:40] When addressing the board, state your name and, if you live in Almar County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition.

[00:24:59] Speakers may not share any unused time. Back-and-forth debate is not permitted and do not speak out of turn. All comments are live-streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. And our speaker for today is Sophie Massey.

[00:25:14] Welcome. Please adjust the microphone. Thank you. My name is Sophie Massey, and I live in the Samuel Miller District.

[00:25:30] I'm here today to speak in support of Albemarle adopting a biosolids ordinance. Come closer. Okay. I grew up in Rappahannock County, which has had a biosolids ordinance for decades. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a place where biosolids have never been spread.

[00:25:47] Sadly, that is not the case for my children. In the last year, I've learned that biosolids are routinely spread on thousands of acres in Albemarle. Biosolids are treated sewage sludge marketed as cheap fertilizer for farm and timberland. There are all sorts of problems with biosolids, chief among them the preponderance of PFAS, so-called forever chemicals, because they do not break down in nature.

[00:26:12] PFAS are linked to multiple cancers and infertility. One source of the biosolids spread here is the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant in D.C. Imagine what goes into a major metropolitan sewage system, then expand your imagination to include landfill leachate the goo from landfills because that also goes in there this sludge is tested for heavy metals and treated for pathogens but it is not treated for pfas i live in the totier creek watershed a designated drinking water protection area for the town of scottsville farms around me receive biosolids i don't worry about my friends

[00:26:50] in scottsville because they are the beneficiaries of robust water filtration from being on municipal water. But I do worry about people in private wells. I worry so much that I had my own well tested and the tests came back with higher than EPA recommended levels of PFAS. I have the wherewithal to put in a whole house PFAS filter so my family is now protected. But I knew how to test, what to look for, and I could afford to remedy the problem. Most of my neighbors don't even know to be looking for these contaminants. And yet I still have to live with the knowledge that my young children spent the first years of their lives drinking contaminated water

[00:27:25] and i nursed my youngest while i was drinking contaminated water i don't think my well is the only one contaminated i think a biosolids ordinance like rappahannock's would go a long way towards protecting rural drinking water so please consider the adoption of a biosolids ordinance because rural folks deserve clean water too thank you thank you thank you board our next item is the economic outlook report this will be led by andy bowman our assistant chief financial officer with Dr. Cheryl Bailey, visiting professor of practice, Institute for Policy and Governance,

[00:28:02] Virginia Tech. Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair, adoption. Did we do the consent agenda? Oh, sorry. Consent agenda. Turned too soon. Thank you. Board, I forgot the consent agenda, and do we have any changes to the consent agenda or anything to be polled? I move we approve the consent agenda.

[00:28:22] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Malek, without objection of the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lepisa? Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. And now I turn it over to Mr. Bowman and Dr. Bailey. Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon to the chair and the board. My name is Andy Bowman, assistant chief financial officer. My comments will be very brief today because I'm here to introduce our speaker and I know the board has a very full agenda today and also just to frame what today's topic is. Today is really the first of three items where we talk about long-range financial planning with

[00:29:01] the board this fall I will be back with staff on November 19th to talk about the board's five-year financial plan how we take the strategic plan of the board in line that with our long-term revenue and expenditure projections on December 3rd there is a joint work session around the school divisions capital needs and but today is really taking a look at what's going on not only locally but in the state the nation of the world in our economic outlook report this is the fourth year that the county's contract with Virginia Tech, working with Dr. Bailey to prepare this report. And this report provides a lot of value because it takes the work that our analysts and others in our department do to analyze our local revenues and what we see and relate that

[00:29:40] to as we look up and look around us, how does that change and what's going on in these very unusual times that we've lived in for the past few years. So with that, I will introduce Dr. Bailey. She has nearly 30 years of experience at the local and the state and the public and private sector, providing senior leadership. And she's been at the forefront of policy initiatives at all public levels. She served in the gubernatorial cabinet as a state authority director and directing Virginia's largest municipal bond bank. She served on the board of directors for the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board with approval by the Security and Exchange Commission. She's been a visiting

[00:30:20] economist with the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. She's presented policy briefings on Capitol Hill, and with all of her contributions as a practitioner, she also has extensive academic credentials, having earned her bachelor's degree, summa cum laude in economics from Norfolk State, and master's and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.

[00:30:39] She's been on the faculty of Harvard, Virginia Commonwealth University, Hampton, William & Mary, and Virginia Tech. I think I got them all. So with that, I'm very privileged and honored to introduce today's guest, Dr. Cheryl Bailey, to present the Economic Health Report. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back. And I want to thank Andy for that very generous introduction. And it is my honor and privilege to work with your esteemed staff here and to be back. I'll say, Mr. Chairman,

[00:31:16] members of the board, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Herrick, Madam Clerk, other staff, members of the dais and staff that are here, thank you so much. And it's my honor to be here and to share with you Some more that's going on here lately.

[00:31:32] It seems like these are times of change. When I met with the staff earlier this morning, I'm from Hampton Roads. I'm Virginia-born and bred, but I'm from Hampton Roads, and we have a lot of military metaphors there. You probably have a touch of those, too, with DOD presence here.

[00:31:48] But we have every military command and the Supreme Allied Command of NATO, so it's just in the air. And so the term, the military term, military has used VUCA. It's an acronym. Volatile. Uncertain. Complex. Ambiguous. And we're now living in a VUCA world.

[00:32:11] Business adopted it, and I think in government, since we are at the point of the spear, especially a local government, we can certainly embrace VUCA because we are coming up with solutions in this VUCA world. So it's a time of disruption. The likelihood of disruptions is increasing. I've been saying that for 10 years, and I'm getting to live it a little bit more often than I'd like.

[00:32:31] so uh we are back at a time of significant change um earlier this year it almost felt like we were in the covet time trying to figure out what was going on economically um with forecasts being constantly updated and um webinars from moody's s&p and fitch coming out weekly and fitch also has a division um bmi so they have fitch has webinars and it's bmi subsidiary has webinars and so same thing with Moody's, Moody's analytics, Moody's credit agents. So we're just all trying to keep up with things as well as the conference board and many others that I keep up with. And so

[00:33:09] we are all figuring out what's going on. And the good news is that the economy is resilient. It is slowing. It is definitely slower, but we do have a resilient economy, but there's still more to happen. And so I gave you the punchline even before I told you I was going to give you the punchline. And so we're going to talk about the bottom line for U.S., Virginia, and Albemarle County. Then I'll get a quick review of the U.S. trends and outlook. Then also focus and zoom in on Albemarle County relative to Virginia. Some things are happening here that are different than the national level and some closing comments. And there's some additional detail in the appendix

[00:33:47] for you. There's some additional detail there for your reference. So again, bottom line up front, We have a slower U.S. economy. It has definitely slowed down with modest growth, but not a recession. And our resilience is showing up where we are now, but some of the impacts are delayed.

[00:34:10] So we're still, there's a lot of uncertainty there. I worked very hard to get these pictures, and so we have some sun, but we have a lot of clouds. A lot of uncertainty. So a lot of uncertainty. And so I've said, using Sesame Street U is the letter of this year. Uncertain.

[00:34:27] you're hearing uncertainty every day. And this is a lot going on. The Virginia's economy has cooled faster than the nation's in the first half of 2025. So that's our current immediate environment. I'll talk more about that. But Albemarle County has a solid economic base, and I'll review that, and you still do. And that, along with your proactive and prudent management, gives the county and leadership a lot of scope within which to plan and to act proactively. You have a lot of

[00:35:07] much more scope there than many other communities that we work with or that call us for help. So that does not mean we are immune to the current realities, but it does give a lot more on your tool belt. So in terms of U.S. trends, the economy grew overall between the first and second quarter less than half as fast as our annual rate in 2024.

[00:35:35] We came into 2025 with very solid, actually robust growth, above trend, long-term trend, 2.8% last year, 2.9% in 2023. Very robust recovery.

[00:35:51] And we were heading, and we had a solid job market. But things changed, and we have a lot of policy changes in the whole world order. global economy is in flux. In the first quarter, we dropped minus 0.6 percent. Two primary reasons.

[00:36:11] I would say, well, there are a number of reasons, but I'll give headline reasons. Headline reason is consumers' pullback. Consumers, so gross domestic product, this is domestic product, that's how we measure our output, our productivity. And real in this presentation is inflation-adjusted.

[00:36:32] And real is a lot shorter word to put on a slide than inflation-adjusted. So we use real, and that means inflation-adjusted. You also see constant dollars. It's another term for that. We fix it in a certain time period, and most of these dollars are in 2017 dollars for the federal statistics.

[00:36:50] So something else, blue is for the U.S., red is for Virginia, green is Albemarle County, And light green is Charlottesville MSA. So those are the colors codes that we use. And I hope that we've been consistent because sometimes the green, light green, we worked real hard to get that.

[00:37:10] Also, the shaded areas in the graphs delete or denote, delineate recessions. And those are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. And they're not necessarily two successive quarters of negative growth.

[00:37:29] That's for the rest of the world, but here we use the three Ds, depth, duration, and dispersion, like how wide, how deep, and how long. So that's dispersion, depth, duration, so that's wide, deep, and how long.

[00:37:45] So we use the three Ds to determine that. We don't do it. The NBER does it. In fact, NBER used to own the GDP statistics before World War II. The government federalized it in order to prepare for World War II, to get arms on our economy.

[00:38:07] So that's all the backdrop. That also says we don't have a lot of data beyond before that. So what some of the area that we're in now with tariffs goes before are federal statistics in terms of being covered in the way they are.

[00:38:23] because many of the statistics were proprietary before that and were not managed by the federal government. So we are in some uncharted territory in terms of what the impacts will be, because we don't have data, consistent data for the times from the tariffs we have now, but go back to Smoot-Hawley at the beginning of the 30s.

[00:38:42] We don't have consistent data there. So it's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of uncertainty, uncharted territory. We've lived it before. We don't have data to tell us how it went. So what happened in the first quarter, consumers pulled back.

[00:38:58] Consumers are one of four legs of GDP, gross domestic product. Consumers are the most important piece. They're nearly 70% of GDP. We are a consumption economy. Second in terms of contribution, second largest, is business, private, domestic investment, not spending investment.

[00:39:22] This is equipment, structures, the productive capacity, intellectual property, software, those things. That's business domestic investment. Third is government. I had one of the nurses at my, you know, I'm always chatting about economy or whatever.

[00:39:42] And one of my nurses said, well, you know, the government is making the economy go. I'm like, no, it isn't. We are, you know, the government is third. they're number three in terms of contribution to GDP. The fourth leg is net exports. That's our exports minus our imports. So imports are a negative deduction to GDP. So two main things happened in first quarter. Consumers pulled back and businesses really increased inventories and

[00:40:22] imports to front run the upcoming import tariffs, the taxes. So they loaded up on inventory. We are still benefiting from that built up inventory now. So some of the full tariff effects have not come about. And that also bolstered our economic activity this year in that attempt to front run those tariffs. One thing that consumers did buy was cars in March, again, to front run the impending tariffs of April. So that was first quarter. And with the huge imports coming in

[00:41:00] and the buildup of inventories, although that's a positive contribution, but the imports were a negative reduction. So between the consumers pulling back and all those imports coming in, which is a deduction on GDP, it went down. So when you can look at the second quarter compared to the first quarter, it looks good because we don't have, you have less imports, so you have less of a deduction so automatically you go up right uh and so we had that got revised up though because consumers did do a bit more spending uh and um we we see that um we that grew 3.8 percent

[00:41:38] in the second quarter some of that is mathematical with the imports up and then down but that is giving us some that's actually bolstering all of that buying in the first quarter is going to bolster us this year. So some of the impacts of the tariffs haven't hit yet. Moreover, those tariffs have been delayed. Now, looking at jobs, our job recovery was very solid coming into 25. We have significantly slowed down since January. But as of August, we had recovered and exceeded by 4.8%,

[00:42:15] almost 5% of the jobs we lost in the pandemic. The pandemic, again, I show this chart so we don't forget because you say, you know, our long-term memories can get really rosy. And so we see here the previous two recessions. We see the real estate bust of the early 2000s. We see the great financial crisis and we see the pandemic. We dropped faster and deeper in the pandemic because consumers stayed home, 70% of your economy, right? And so that had a big difference.

[00:42:49] We have recovered those jobs and exceeded it by 4.8% by August. If we had kept growing like we had been in 23 and 24, we would have gotten farther along. However, job growth essentially stalled in April of this year.

[00:43:05] So as of from January to August of this year, on average, the monthly average contribution job growth was $75,000. That compares to $168,000 a month average of 2024.

[00:43:22] and over 160,000 again in 2023. So that's a big change in the job market. Even though the job market was normalizing from the red hot of 2021 and 2022, our job growth pace has slowed significantly.

[00:43:40] So when we do look from January to August, we have 75,000 average a month. When we look from just May to August, we're looking at 26,000 a month. So we've added very few jobs since April, and one month we had a significant reduction.

[00:43:58] So we now are in a low-hire job market, or labor market, and also low-fire. The layoffs have not really kicked in that were expected.

[00:44:14] So low-hire, low-fire is what we're now calling the labor market. But that means if you lose your job, it's going to be really hard to find a job. And you can see from the chart on the far right-hand side, the job market, for the data we have, we do not have September.

[00:44:32] That data was not released with the shutdown. So all this data is what we have through the shutdown. We have not gotten any data since October 1st. So we don't have September data from the federal government. I have included data from other sources that are available from September.

[00:44:50] In terms of the unemployment rate, that's kind of in a holding pattern, too. And the curious kind of balance is what Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell calls it. The media calls it weird. But his actual words were curious kind of balance.

[00:45:09] That's what he called it in August. So the unemployment rate has ticked it, has moved up slightly. And that is the blue line here, the blue line here, which is the official unemployment rate, which is U3. I've labeled it as U3 to accentuate that the BLS on most months, not this month, issues six measures of labor under utilization.

[00:45:37] U3 is the official unemployment rate, but there are three more that go on. And U3 is a four-week look back from the middle of the month to the middle of the month. And if you have not actively looked for work in those four weeks and you're not working and you're not on vacation and you're not on a temporary layoff waiting for recall, then you are outside the civilian labor force and you are outside the numbers.

[00:46:02] It is a very narrow snapshot. So with U6, which is the broadest measure, which also corresponds to the Fed's measure, so U6 extends the window to the previous 12 months have you actively look for work.

[00:46:21] You know, if you hit the holiday wrong, you could be out of the number, you know, if it's the wrong holiday. If it's a month, if it hits on maybe, Christmas or whatever, you're just out of the labor force, just out and just not involved in the labor market. In the U3, four weeks. So 12 months, have you actively looked for work? And also U6 includes what we call the underemployed. And this is the household survey. This is the survey of individuals. And this survey is conducted in conjunction with census. So BLS and census conduct this together. And if you say I'm part-time, but I really want a full-time job,

[00:47:00] I want a full-time job, I'm ready and willing to take a full-time job now, but I've had to settle for part-time schedule for economic reasons, then we are in U6. And so that's the underemployed.

[00:47:16] I always include this chart when I'm working with governments because our social service knows U6 and the broader measures. That's their customer. That's their customer role. This is the working, underutilized labor, working underutilized labor.

[00:47:42] So they're in the labor force. They actively want to be in the labor force, but they can't connect. That's the future line here, U6. And then the Federal Reserve has its own measure of unemployment.

[00:47:58] Federal Reserve has a dual mandate, price stability and maximum employment, and it uses specialized measures for both parts of that mandate. So it has its own measure of unemployment called the Non-Employment Index. Actually, our Richmond 5th District Fed maintains this index for the whole system because two of the founders, creators, were Richmond Fed economists are and were.

[00:48:27] One is retired since then. And so this measure uses the BLS microdata, but it does a finer analysis looking at each subset for the likelihood of being reemployed. And so it also includes part-time for economic reasons. Short answer is the broader measures are close to 8%, right, plus or minus 8%, 7.9, 8.1.

[00:48:51] And the official unemployment rate is 4.3%, which is ticked up from about 4.1, 4.2. But the curious balance is because you have this low job creation. Why isn't the unemployment rate up? There's a low demand for labor. The supply has gone down.

[00:49:09] The labor supply has gone down in tandem with the labor demand. And that's why the unemployment rate is not reflecting what we're seeing in the job market. And all of that is because of federal policy, federal policy changes. And so that's this curious kind of balance.

[00:49:25] So the unemployment rate, the official unemployment rate, is not the barometer it used to be because of this labor demand and supply moving together. And so I want to share that.

[00:49:42] That's why we say the unemployment rate is still historically low. Yeah, well, we're not creating any jobs. So also the consumer is still spending, but the consumer is reacting.

[00:49:59] The consumer behavior has been called volatile in some of the Fed surveys of businesses. The businesses say they are volatile behavior. But you see that this is the month-over-month expenditure rate, And you can see some behavior changes on consumers and their spending, particularly in the goods area, in anticipation of tariffs.

[00:50:20] Remember, they bought cars in March. Spending went up. Spending here is the orange bars, the real, this is inflation adjusted. Blue is the personal disposable income. If we see the orange bars to the right, they're spending outside of their monthly income.

[00:50:35] And they're using credit and savings to do that. Yes. And so, but we see that the consumers pull back, then they hit the gas in anticipation of tariffs in March, and they pull back again.

[00:50:52] And then in the summer, back to school purchases picked up early because the tariff extensions were expiring in August. But consumers continue to spend in August. We don't have September data, So we are looking to see what the consumer is doing next.

[00:51:11] But this summer spending brought us out of the doldrums. The question is, can it continue with the labor market stalling and cooling? And we're just waiting for the data to come with that. So you'll see that the orange bars have gone up more than the blue bars in most months.

[00:51:28] And so that's the consumer spending, real consumer spending, versus the change, monthly change in the disposal income. And this chart tells us how. We have low savings. They're drawing down their savings. And the debt, their total consumer credit balances have gone up. What's not in these numbers is the buy now, pay later balances, which are not reported to the credit agencies. But the credit agencies are concerned about it, and they're planning to add that information.

[00:52:02] I read an article last week that one young woman over the last 10 years after keeping up with, she grew up in New Jersey in a very wealthy area. Mom and dad were working, sent her to private schools, but she was around wealth constantly.

[00:52:17] She went to New York. And long story short, she got married, hid it from her husband. And long story short, she had $50,000 of pay now, by now paid later debt a year ago, accumulated. She had maxed out on everything. And so a lot of young people are doing that.

[00:52:34] some articles are showing that some families are doing it for groceries. So we don't, this is hidden debt. Student loans have now been reported and they have added to the balances because they started being reported fourth quarter, first quarter this year. So we're seeing debt show up and there's more I expect to see once the buy now pay later balances are added to the institutional reports. Inflation is trending up. We were heading toward the, last year I told you where we're heading toward the 2% long-term target of the Fed, not anymore. So we continue to

[00:53:13] trend down early part of the year, but it turned the corner late spring, summer, and is now ticking up. It is ticking up. And so CPI headline inflation is the high 2.8, 2.9%. Core is higher than that.

[00:53:32] That is concern. Core is less food and energy. It is higher than headline. That's not typical. It's been that way for the last few years. So we have some sticky inflation in services, primarily health care, and in housing, and shelter.

[00:53:53] And that includes the imputed cost for home ownership as well. So we have some sticky areas in terms of services, particularly health care, and shelter. Now, the Fed, with its dual mandate, price stability and maximum employment, has a finer measure.

[00:54:11] And it uses PCE inflation. It's also called GDP deflator. It's also called PCE index. PCE is personal consumption expenditures. And this measure, unlike the CPI, does not have a fixed market basket. It takes in consideration the substitutions we make when we encounter prices.

[00:54:36] I'm always comparing brand price to one of my favorite stores. I won't mention it. my granddaughter knew it before she could read okay with the little yeah I'm gonna mention it but I'm always in the grocery store I'm comparing okay what's the price here what's the price here what's the price here because they have this pick it up in two hours I'm like by the time I finish shopping it'll be ready for me if it's not perishable and so I'm always making those prices making those adjustments trash bags aluminum foil paper towels whatever I'm always making that

[00:55:13] adjustment and we all do that hopefully I hope we just don't buy and I hope we're all comparing prices. And so we compare prices, we change our market basket, and the PCE inflation number takes that into consideration. It is now laying right over CPI, so it's the high, it's pushing up against 3%, and core is right at 3% and above. So we are not heading toward the long-term target.

[00:55:40] Despite that, however, despite inflation ticking up, the Fed took a risk management move and they reduced the federal funds rate last month after they resumed their rate easing cycle. They had put it on hold early in the year because some inflation bumpiness and then all the fiscal policy changes and the uncertainty. So even though the inflation is pushing up with the labor market cooling the way it is, it's pushing the Fed to take some action. So the Fed is now

[00:56:14] coming into a stagflation environment. Inflationary pressures and also slowing economy. And so that is putting opposite forces on the Fed as it tries to steer into that. We were on that soft landing and now it has to really change its instruments, its instrument readings. And so they reduced the federal funds rate in September. The projection from their also updated projections, they would have two more. They would have another, probably another two cuts this year. We don't know.

[00:56:53] We don't have the data now. We don't know. And so that's the blue line. Federal funds rate was reduced. The orange line is the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed significantly increased its balance sheet. It bought securities from its member banks, treasury securities, agency-backed securities, in order to maintain liquidity and the financial market functioning. We had a significant disruption with the pandemic and they did not want the financial market to freeze implode like

[00:57:28] it did in the great financial crisis so they've and you see they've done it more than once they really flooded the market with liquidity to keep the financial market functioning and we have had that financial market stability that's one thing we've had not to worry so they are continuing on a regular schedule um rolling off that balance sheet when renewals come up they are not renewing them all. They're letting some of them slough off. They did slow down the pace in March, but it's not discussed at every meeting. It's only discussed when they decide to change the automatic plan.

[00:58:08] That's still going on. So they're pulling back on all that extra liquidity floating around in the market. I won't say floating around, but supporting the market. So they're gradually pulling that back, not too fast, not too slow, just right, the Goldilocks approach to that.

[00:58:25] So the Fed is really threading a needle. I need to tighten this needlehead to avoid recession with all we have going on, to tame inflation, and to maintain financial stability. So although we're close to the soft landing, now economists are talking about the soft landing of the future. We're still working on that.

[00:58:46] So far, so good. In terms of the outlook for the U.S., we're looking at slower, but still we have a slower but resilient economy with continued high levels of uncertainty. It's like the fog I encountered coming here this morning. It's actually worse.

[00:59:02] Earlier, the fog was pull over, pull over, and wait for some light to come to help burn off the fog. And that's a lot of what consumers and businesses have been doing. They've just been kind of on a holding pattern, waiting for some clarity to come.

[00:59:20] So the expectations for 2026 are mixed. I was just listening in between the meeting with the staff this morning, the wonderful staff of Finance and Budget Division, and here the conference board had this monthly update.

[00:59:38] And I was listening and downloading information, and it's mixed expectations, and the National Association of Business Economics updated their, released their update on Monday and so forth and so on last week. So for 2026, there are differing opinions. Some are expecting the delayed impacts of tariffs to begin to materialize into this year, into early next year.

[01:00:05] And that projection is we'll have lower growth next year. Others are thinking we will have been able to absorb that and begin to pick up and grow. So for this year, the median forecast is 1.8%. It's a tight band from 1.8% to 2% range.

[01:00:21] No, 1.6%. But the 1.8% got updated to 1.8% this morning, just a few hours, a couple hours ago. So it's a tight range in terms of expectations for 2025. No, the Fed is at 1.6% for this year. So not a wide range for 2025.

[01:00:39] 2026 is a wide range. It's a whole point difference from 1.3% to 2.3%. And that is just different expectations about the impact of tariffs and how they're going to come through. The conference board had a huge unpacking of that this morning, and they're of the opinion that we'll go from 1.8 to 1.5 next year, that some of the impacts are yet to be materialized because two things.

[01:01:07] One, the significant delays in the imposition of those tariffs, and two, all of the advanced buying that we had this year. So some of that is still yet to be working its way through. There are many risks to the forecast. This is the uncertainty. This area is larger.

[01:01:23] Yes, the letters are smaller because there's more in there this year. Trade and fiscal policy changes. We just got some new tariffs announced in the next week. Some new ones just went into effect on Tuesday. So a lot of unpredictability there, uncertainty. Our cooling labor market, the inflationary pressures and sticky core,

[01:01:43] And those pressures, the pressures on disposable personal income because of the cooling market, consumer and business demand cooling, the Fed pressure going in two different opposing ways, challenges to the Fed's independence, what's the market going to look at that, tight credit conditions still and lending standards, commercial real estate, how that's working through, The housing market, how that's going to unfold, the shifting supply channels.

[01:02:23] Manufacturers are looking all over the globe for where they can find the replaced manufacturers. When they hit tariffs this way, they go there. I understand a lot of it is actually moving to Central America to be within the North American corridor or in this side. Geopolitical list continued, although we have had some recent peace announcements, which are much appreciated.

[01:02:42] And then the slower growth overall globally. The growth for 2025 and 2026 is slower than it was last year. So those are all the swirling winds that are out there that we face. So staying vigilant, keeping up with all the changes, and being ready to adapt, adjust, and main agile is important in these times.

[01:03:09] Now let's zero in on the county and Virginia. So going into since 2021, we have GDP annually is reported for Albemarle plus Charlottesville City. And it's actually reported that way with the plus sign.

[01:03:26] That's how the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports it. And that GDP growth, real gross domestic product, has exceeded the state and nation through the data we have. The latest data we have is of 2023. We'll get 2024 data in December.

[01:03:41] It's delayed a year for the metro areas, local counties, counties and metros. So strong base there, strong backdrop of growth. In terms of average job growth, it has slowed in Virginia and in the Charlottesville MSA.

[01:04:02] We have the Charlottesville MSA in the monthly job growth. We have it more on an annual basis for the county. So for monitoring, we look at the MSA. and it has slowed. It is definitely job growth has slowed in the first eight months of this year from the 2024 annual rates. It has slowed significantly at the state from over 6,000 jobs average a month to 1,000 a month. That's the state perspective. And I think from about 300 a

[01:04:33] month in the MSA to about 100 a month is the monthly average is what we're having now in terms of how we were last year and you see there's a lot of bumpiness and we lost jobs both in the state and in the MSA this year on some months. In terms of I made sure to pull this chart and I've gone through this for us to we see that the profile of the job loss is not what we expect. Every economic season is different. No slowdown is like the last one. They're like your children. They're all unique And so even though we are related, they're just different, right?

[01:05:14] And so we see here that Virginia's job growth is very slow. In fact, we were negative two months ago, net, net over the year. So we've got done better in the July-August numbers, helped a lot in terms of what this looks like.

[01:05:31] And we were going at 2.4% annual growth, solid growth in 2024, 2023. We were catching up with the nation. But now you see that we've grown, you know, not even 0.2% since the end of last year.

[01:05:48] The profile is heavily hitting college-educated professions. Long-term unemployed in America is college-educated. College grads, but college-educated.

[01:06:04] And professional and business services is the number one industry category for the job growth. I mean, some job loss is second to the federal government, and also professional and business services is the number one industry category for the long-term unemployed in Virginia, as reported by the VEC and Virginia Works.

[01:06:29] So this profile is different, and you see that most of the government job loss is federal between January and August. So the state and local job changes would hide that. When we report government altogether, it looks like we're only minus 3.3,300.

[01:06:50] But it's actually 11,500 federal jobs where we had increases in state and local. However, the amount, the extent to which the state and local job growth is compensating for the federal job growth has slowed the last few months.

[01:07:05] This is January to August. It's eight months average. So the profile is different. And one of the key things I want to mention is Albemarle has a higher percentage of its residents in the management, professional, and business services sector.

[01:07:25] So in terms of that sector being a leading sector for impact, then we want to be very alert for Albemarle. It has shown up in the Charlottesville MSA data. I don't show it because the MSA data is not as strong as the Virginia data.

[01:07:46] And the industry breakdown just doesn't tick and tie because it's too preliminary. We have to wait for that data to cure a little bit more for it to be solid. I mean, for me, it at least has to add up, right? And so I go with the summary data for the MSA as opposed to the breakdown of the industry.

[01:08:02] I tried to prepare that chart, but those industry breakdowns are too preliminary. And the BLS tells you, it's listed, it has a P next to those columns, so you know for two months it's preliminary. So we have to wait for that data to be updated, and it will over three months it gets updated.

[01:08:20] They update it every month for three months. And that's a part of their process. And so we are seeing that professional and business services and financial activities are an area where job loss is identified for the Charlottesville MSA as well. so it's not showing up in the state but it is showing up here in terms of financial activities being as one of those areas of where we want to pay attention one of the mitigating factors here is that you have biomed health you have a lot of employment in health care health care has been an

[01:08:51] area health care and social assistance has been an area of growth for jobs and for area of growth And you have a high percentage of your population of your residents in that. And also, your federal government work is very heavily DOD.

[01:09:13] And DOD got additional funding in the Reconciliation Bill, Public Law 119-21, back in July. So those are some mitigating factors. A lot for us to keep a close eye on. I wanted to bring you that data so we can sharpen, get our magnifying glass there, keep that sharp.

[01:09:31] In terms of unemployment rate, the county is consistently below Virginia and the U.S., although the distance between the county and Virginia has narrowed. It used to be big, and now it's narrower, but it's still there. In terms of wages, the wages have been, for the metro region, the MSA, Charlottesville MSA, has been below the state and nation since 2013.

[01:09:59] And it's been real bumpy the last year or so. In terms of real per capita personal income, this is an aggregate number. This is total income, personal income, inflation-adjusted income in the jurisdiction divided by number of heads.

[01:10:21] But it's a way to look at, it's a measure that you can, it's a measure you can compare. And Albemarle County has had a higher real per capita personal income above the U.S. and Virginia as far back as the data goes that's available in FRED since 2008.

[01:10:44] And, of course, we know there's a lot of distributional change within that, but that does give you an economic base here. That's a level of spending you can have here that's short that base. in terms of home sales growth that's mostly declined since 2022 in terms of the sales the number of sales i get this from virginia association of realtors and this is the latest data they have through august however home prices i'm very happy to report this year home prices are keeping that growth is keeping pace with 2024 last year i flagged the slowdown in the pace of growth in home prices last year.

[01:11:24] But this year, the pace through the first two quarters is almost right to the decimal, maybe third decimal point on pace to the annual rate in 2024.

[01:11:39] So it's holding us on, but it's slower. The pace is slower in the U.S. and Virginia in the first eight months of 2025. So the Charlottesville MSA is holding us on. This is the house price index, all transactions.

[01:11:55] This is one of the broadest measures of home values. It includes new, existing, and refinancing values. And this is the measure that the Fed use. Fed likes it, I like it. And this is the only measure they use for home prices.

[01:12:11] It comes out quarterly. And so, so far, so good in the first half of the year. We'll have to see when we get some more data. We don't know. No data is being released except CPI next week.

[01:12:28] Only CPI, so the Social Security benefits can be set. And then also in terms of median listing price per square foot, in terms of Albemarle County, it is above U.S. and Virginia through September since 2016, but it's been up and down since 2024.

[01:12:44] This gives us a read about the current market. It's bumpy there and kind of going sideways, but it's not going down overall. It's not a downward trend. But the steady upward trend has been moderated, but it's holding us on and it's still above Virginia and the U.S.

[01:12:59] So Albemarle has a very solid economy, you have solid economic and job growth, you have higher per capita personal income that does give you that economic base, lower unemployment, strong hourly wages regionally, and I demonstrate that in the specific detail slides in the back, even though you're below the state and nation, you're above, you hold up very well in terms of hourly wages regionally.

[01:13:28] Significant employment and relatively higher income occupations and industries, which is a blessing and also a challenge since those industries are the ones that are being impacted heavily by the current changes in the economy.

[01:13:45] So we want to watch that. But you have some mitigating factors in terms of heavily being in health care, having bio-med coming, and then also having a strong presence in DOD when it comes to federal employment. and you have had long, strong local business activity.

[01:14:00] That says the wind is at your back in that regard in terms of your base. In terms of the outlook, it is prudent, my recommendation is prudent for Albemarle County to use the U.S. and Virginia as a benchmark. We have found that to hold up in our previous research with some different levels, albeit at different levels, but the general trend.

[01:14:23] So you may not be at the same level, but the trend is relevant. And so in that regard, it is prudent to expect a slow economy with muted growth in 2025. That's, I would say, a prudent expectation. And then modest growth in 2026.

[01:14:39] The outlook is 2027. As what we can see now, we think we may get back to trend growth, normal trend growth, close to 2%, but there's a lot of uncertainty. So we have a lot of uncertainty. And in this recommendation, greater weight is given to Virginia's slower growth outlook given its high exposure to federal cuts in terms of federal civilian employment, in terms of federal contract employment, and in terms of actual federal prime contracts.

[01:15:11] We are top one or two in all of those dimensions in the nation. And then also we're going to have this many things are in flux, a lot of uncertainty, the cooling job market and expectation of anemic to modest growth.

[01:15:27] I say modest because the county has done and the region has done slightly better than Virginia, but we have to wait. So still a lot of data we have to see for the rest of the year into early next year because so many of the separations at the federal government did not take an effect until September.

[01:15:48] And we don't have that data, or December. So there's a lot of unknown there. The inflationary pressures, we want to continue to expect that, expect inflation to continue toward that 3% next year, and do not actually see much improvement until the end of next year, into 2027.

[01:16:07] And that sticky, some stickiness there. We expect the consumer and business demand to continue to be cool, especially the cooling job market. The cooling job market is going to put pressure on those real disposable personal incomes. Let's hope that the credit doesn't go out of whack too much there for the consumer because that will have an impact down the road.

[01:16:28] The housing market, we're expecting it to benefit from the expected lower mortgage rates with continued rate cuts with the Fed. It's going to continue to normalize, but it's still going to be competitive. So we've got some push-pull there. Housing starts and building permits have been slow, but with the rate adjustments and anticipated rate adjustments, the housing market is feeling, the home builders and the realtors are feeling good about the future with the rate reductions.

[01:16:58] In terms of business activity, we expect that to be modest. They are facing inflationary pressure. They're facing supply issues. They're facing cooling, consumer spending, and our small businesses in particular. Our small businesses do not have the margins to deal with all of the supply.

[01:17:18] Many of them only have one supplier. They don't have the wherewithal to shop all over the world for the replacement supplier. And so they are concerned about passing on the price increases. They don't know how they're going to continue to absorb it. So our small businesses, we want to stay very much attuned to.

[01:17:36] And I want to say that the county's strategic economic development initiatives are bearing fruit. and your prudent planning and methodical execution. And so they are expected to bring economic vitality, economic diversity.

[01:17:54] Grandma said, don't put all your eggs in one basket, or even two baskets. And my grandma said, child, you know you've got to learn how to do more than one thing. And so, you know, we've got to be good at more than one thing. And also, it's going to help augment your job growth. So that's all very good news and bearing fruit.

[01:18:12] And so the timing of all this will vary. It's not going to be the same for every business, and those sensitive interests and consumers will be impacted more than others. So we have to stay vigilant in watching out. Enduring recommendations. So I was asked, what's the recommendation for the board?

[01:18:30] And I would say, stick to the basics. I've been saying this. These have been my enduring recommendations for like 10 years. I only added a couple since the pandemic. And these are my recommendations for financial resiliency and agility.

[01:18:47] In terms of knowing your financial foundation, you do that. You have a schedule to do that in the fall. Being clear on your strategic goals, you do that because you attend to your strategic goals, you manage them, and you report them, and you watch your progress. In terms of long-term financial planning, that is part of your regular process.

[01:19:05] That's not something you do every now and then. That's an annual basis. Robust scenario planning, financial planning gives you that. You see those bottlenecks ahead, and you get a shopping list of options. Early warning system and engaged staff, the three, they go together.

[01:19:23] We also want to have adaptive decision-making so when that new information comes in, we can adapt and we have agility in action, and I think Ravana Futures and your AstraZeneca is a demonstration of your strong discipline in terms of management and governance in that regard.

[01:19:44] So you're bearing fruit, and so stay the course. With that, your solid economic growth base and your proactive management will make a difference. It has made a difference. It is bearing fruit. And so stick with that is my recommendation because it puts you in good stead.

[01:20:01] The solid economic base gives you scope within which to plan and to act proactively. The history of prudent financial management cannot be overemphasized. Albemarle is one of only about 1% of counties in the nation with a triple AAA rating from all three rating agencies.

[01:20:23] That is a critical asset, and that also means there's a whole culture of behavior and planning that will also help us steer through this time. So this gives you financial foundation and capacity.

[01:20:41] Many communities don't have the capacity, so this actually produces that community capacity for strategic initiatives, and it's very strong. And your methodical, systematic planning and analysis, management and governance will continue to advance the community toward its strategic objectives.

[01:21:02] So you just not only survive, but you thrive through the VUCA world. So drive on and lock arms like we've been doing, and we're just going to ride this one on out. But again, with our eyes peeled in all directions, I thank you so much.

[01:21:19] appreciate the time, and I very much appreciate the opportunity to work with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And if you'll remain for a moment, I'm sure the board may have a few questions, but looking at the time as well. Yes, yes, yes, I understand. Supervisor Pruitt? Dr. Bailey, thank you so much. And I apologize.

[01:21:35] I do have more than a few questions, so I guess I would just say if we could keep answers as direct as possible, because I also am mindful of the time. Yes, sir. We talked about the kind of the almost bubble of business-to-business sales in anticipation of the tariff shock and how that's insulated us so far. Do we have a, are there kind of prevailing industry expectations of when the other shoe is going to drop there? So one of the resilient pieces had been the consumer spending

[01:22:10] to that. So the business total investment is slowed, but one thing that is really keeping us going is the AI investments. So the AI investments are giving us a buffer as well as the continued consumer spending. Those are the short answers in terms of buffers. Every business is going to have to calculate through. The diversity of the impacts is very, very broad, and we do not have a solid, broad measure of how each of them is going to be impacted. But AI, consumer, thus far. Consumer is

[01:22:50] questionable given the cooling labor demand. You said that there is an issue that we have a reduced supply in the labor market. And I just want to make sure I'm correctly understanding what you mean. Is that total like able-bodied people who are in the labor market, or is that specifically speaking to kind of what you were talking about at the beginning of the tightness of the market generally, right? Not many people quitting, not many people being fired.

[01:23:20] Labor force participation is down. So, yes, fewer people. Got it. When I've talked with my peers at the TJPDC, the Regional Planning District Commission, something I recently asked was, hey, we're seeing decreased home construction activity, at least anecdotally, right, looking at the zoning modification amendments that we have.

[01:23:49] And I asked this, like, is everyone else seeing that? And the answer is no, right, because it's primarily driven by just cost to build, and you can get better dividends inside of our cheaper neighbors right now. But obviously, there's still sometimes an appetite to build inexpensive out in Morrow County.

[01:24:06] I imagine that's driven by the capital stack, right, the cost of capital. And this is probably too weedsy of a question. But in high-cost communities like ours, are there any kind of prevailing estimates or prevailing thoughts as to like what Fed discount rate do we need?

[01:24:28] Like how low does it have to go before you start to see that inflection where you start to see new construction starts in kind of high-cost communities? Demand is a very key factor there. The suppliers will respond to the demand. So as long as there's demand for Albemarle and it has to be at a certain price point, then the builders will build.

[01:24:49] But it's just not the supply side. It's also the demand side. And if there's demand, good business people will find a way to meet that demand. That's what business people do. So the question is that demand factor. And so we do see that it is slower in Albemarle versus your neighbors.

[01:25:09] There's a lot faster growth there. That's correct. But that doesn't mean there's zero demand here. Sure, of course. Something that I have anxiety, I feel like a lot of amateurs and navel gazers and people who write think pieces have anxiety over is the idea that we're in not just a single industry bubble, but a multi-industry bubble driven by a really long period of low cost of capital that we see across all these apps and services.

[01:25:38] Netflix doesn't turn a profit. Facebook doesn't turn a profit. All these different things. And that there is a possibility of kind of a system-wide collapse as people are suddenly put in a position where they have to actually turn profit. That being said, I've not had the opportunity to push an actual economist on whether or not that's a serious threat or something that is being seriously considered by any of our Fed systems.

[01:26:05] So is there actual concern over some kind of multi-industry bubble that we've been running it too hot? Right. So there actually was an article yesterday on this by some prominent economist. And so let me just put a couple of things.

[01:26:25] AI investment has drawn a lot of investors, and it's heavily impacting the stock markets. There's like seven industries, tech industries, are driving the stock market movement. And so there's heavy investment in that.

[01:26:45] There is concern, there's a wide discussion of when these investments in the technology are going to actually come forth, produce identifiable productivity benefits and earnings returns. Business is pushing heavy for technology because it knows it is facing a shrinking labor supply because of demographics. The largest cohort, the largest segment of the baby boomers will all be 65 by 2030. So we have aging America and we're going to have more

[01:27:25] people 65 and older than 18 by about 2033 or sooner. So they're really pushing into technology because typically population growth, labor force growth, was a source of growth. So there's a heavy investment there. Are they getting ahead of their skis?

[01:27:42] Maybe. We'll have to see. It has to be in the transfer to real productivity and real earnings. And if they do get ahead of their skis, then there will be a rebalancing. So there is concern there about how much the technology is dominating how we feel about how things are going, but it's also where business is putting in investments for the future.

[01:28:06] So we don't know yet. I don't think there's a prevailing perspective, and I certainly cannot speak for the Fed. Great. And if they could speak, they wouldn't. I want to ask a few more questions that are maybe more locality-specific, and you mentioned demographics.

[01:28:24] Yes, sir. Something I've heard a little bit of hand-wringing about is that there also might be some kind of higher ed cliff. We know about the administration's threats to higher ed and how that's having, you know, concerning effects. But there's the demographic piece, right?

[01:28:40] Like my age cohort is the last big age cohort, and most of us have collected all our degrees at this point. So enrollments are going to be down. And on top of that, there's, as we've just learned and discussed, right, chilling of the actual dividend that you get from college education, which is driving people away from college education.

[01:29:03] We are a community that's heavily driven by higher education economically. Do we have a strong sense of indicators from kind of other people who are positioned like us, other localities that are positioned like us, about what kind of the, if there are serious concerns about some kind of higher education fiscal cliff, some kind of drop off in that market and how we might be equipped to weather that?

[01:29:33] Well, the good news is we're only talking about the educational enrollment cliff now here. When I took retirement the first time, I was a municipal advisor to higher ed, and I work with higher ed institutions all over the country, heavily in the Midwest. Big Ten, some Big Ten universities.

[01:29:52] The enrollment cliff hit the Midwest ahead of here. So the enrollment cliff is actually hitting K-12. It's hitting K-12 before it comes to higher ed, and many of our school divisions have experienced that. It's coming through, and it's just demographics of the community.

[01:30:10] So it's an enrollment cliff that's there. That's there is just the numbers. We have a birth rate. The birth rate is not the replacement rate. And so there, what it means, that there is some rebalancing in the higher ed sector.

[01:30:32] It has been going on for 10 years. It's hitting us here more, but it's hit other parts of the country earlier because their demographic, their 18-year-olds dropped off a few years ago. And one thing that I would say here, in that repositioning, and this is what the rating agencies say to Moody's, S&P, and Fitch with regard to the higher ed sector.

[01:30:55] And I keep up with those reviews each year. I was born and raised on a college campus. I can't help it. And so what we find is that the flagships are having strong demand. So when you're looking at value of education, the flagships get strong demand.

[01:31:15] UVA has had, tech has had, record applications every year for about five years in a row. And so we break every record every year. So the flagships, I would say being the community of a flagship is not, I'll just say what that trend is.

[01:31:35] The smaller institutions are, and the smaller private institutions are the ones that are feeling those challenges first. And Moody's, S&P, and Fitch all say that. So it's different if it's for public or private school because the private school only has endowment.

[01:31:55] It does not have state E&G education and general fund support. And so in that rebalancing, whenever you have a shrink of, even during recessions, don't you get bids from the big contractors that didn't bid on your certain kind of work before and the smaller contractors scream they're pushing us out?

[01:32:19] That's what happens when there's a shrinking pool. And so having a flagship would be less of a concern in terms of UVA being your primary, but also the other universities, the smaller private institutions, are going to have.

[01:32:35] And so you're seeing consolidation amongst those private institutions, and you're seeing some privates, some publics taking over those. So you're seeing all kind of patterns across the country. Can you help me understand what the data story behind the kind of construction labor force growth that we've seen in Virginia?

[01:32:52] I might guess it's like an echo of the low cost of capital four years ago, but that's a guess. We've been identified as the number one state for AI data centers. Oh, duh. Yeah, that makes sense. It's data center construction.

[01:33:09] That's a huge part of it. I haven't, but that's a huge part of it. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. I think I'm mostly out of questions. I would just say, you know, we looked at slide 20 and 21. You heard me say this last year. I'm going to say it again. I think correcting that mismatch in our per capita wage and our per capita income, which clearly points to the fact that people in this country is wealthy because people in it are wealthy and our incomes are heavily driven by dividends off of wealth.

[01:33:44] And we are, in fact, depressed on wages compared to our peers in the state and the country. I see that as deeply alarming. I see that as, frankly, in my perspective, the primary thing that our economic development strategy should be aiming to correct.

[01:33:59] And I know we talk about other goals of the economic development strategy, but I see that as the most critical thing we should be talking about. We talked about the hidden bump of the buy now, pay later schemes that have emerged, right? There's an extra, there's excess debt that is not captured in measures.

[01:34:16] I just want to just highlight how deeply insidious this is, because not only is it a greater amount of the overall debt that consumers carry, which has already increased, but it is also displacing traditional financial products, right?

[01:34:33] It's displacing traditional financial products that have superior underwriting, have better safety protocols, right? Like I, four years ago, I had a really catastrophic home issue on one of the homes I own. I had to replace a sewage pipe, right? Cost a lot of money.

[01:34:49] And, of course, they offered me a buy-now-pay-later scheme. There is a known financial product for this, right? I could have taken a home equity loan, a home repair loan, which has a lot more protections on it, and it has insurance on it, all these things. But that was not the first thing, and that is where consumers are being pushed.

[01:35:08] It's deeply, deeply insidious because there aren't the levels of protection. There aren't the levels of underwriting. You can even buy a DoorDash burrito with buy-now-pay-later. Yes, we had someone come and speak to this board about that not that long ago.

[01:35:24] And finally, this is a question, but I'm not sure I need an answer for it, because it's thorny, and it's actually not for you, it's for Andy. Which is, I hope this isn't, I don't want this to come off as pointed, but we're talking about weathering financial strains, and the next big brief we're going to get is going to talk about all the new things we need to pay for.

[01:35:45] This is an incredibly robust report that we receive annually. i obviously enjoy the content of it and digging into it a lot i'm not sure i use all of the content of it in my decision making and i i might ask whether or not in our budget development we use every part of it um and this is just a question on whether or not we think this is adequately scoped moving forward or it could be slightly de-scoped and just frankly framing that as a broad thing i hope we are thinking about as a county moving forward obviously i'm not going to be in the weeds on this but so i would say uh the short answer is that is something that we

[01:36:24] review on a regular basis there is some work with the team that we de-scoped in this year's process but that is something we'll continue to look at but in terms of how staff uses that report i offer in the interest of time i could follow up with a report to the board on that for everyone's understanding oh yeah thank you and i apologize for taking so much time i had a lot questions. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Sure. I just have a comment to make and then one question because I know we're running out of time. I really appreciate you coming to us every year. This is always fascinating information and thank you. But I really do want to just give a shout out once

[01:37:01] again to our county executive, our financial team, and our staff because they make us look good because we're continuing to follow their recommendations and they're leading us in the right direction.

[01:37:21] And I just want to send a shout out and say thank you because I couldn't do this as a board member on my own. So I really appreciate their strong work for us. And your report just shows that over and over again. Having said that, I do have a question. We talk about lack.

[01:37:40] I heard you say over and over again, lack of data. Yes, ma'am. And I understand lack of data can be a timing issue. I mean, I get that when you come to us and what we're waiting on. But my real question is that I am seeing a reduction of data coming to us from our normally trusted sources of data.

[01:38:03] And that's concerning to me. And I don't know what I expect you to answer to that. how do we over i guess there are other sources that we can use rather than the ones we've historically used so the concern about the budget and staffing pressures for our federal statistics is not new it's been happening for some years the national association of business economics has taken stands on that through the years okay so it's being gradually been defunded over some

[01:38:40] time and and staffing has been removed it's been accelerated this year but it didn't start this year and certainly given the previous gradual reductions and the accelerated reductions this year it does bring it into question um chairman powell was asked this question this summer actually and and the concerns of some additional adjustments that were being made because of some actions earlier this year and his response was we're getting the data we need thus far and it's extremely important to the Fed's work and to the business sector's work and to government's work.

[01:39:17] He emphasized the importance of it. So those statements have been made, and the National Association of Business Economics has gone out there and taken stands through the years, as recently in their annual conference this past weekend. So, so far, so good. We'll have to wait and see what's coming forth. One thing I can say is during the pandemic, when things were changing faster than the federal statistics could reflect it because it was a week-by-week, day-by-day thing.

[01:39:47] We did develop some high-frequency data analysis capabilities in the field of economics. So in terms of consumer behavior, let me get this out, anonymized purchase data.

[01:40:05] Did we buy at home? Did we buy away from home? Did we have it shipped on that? Mobility data. So a lot of economic activity is about mobility and leisure and travel. Are we at home or are we away from home? Of course, my cell phone told me where home was before I told it where it was because it had been monitoring me.

[01:40:26] So I just said, yes, save that. That is correct. And it told me where work was before I told it where work was. It just said, this is work. It identified our Richmond campus as work. So it's sometimes smarter than it needs to be or smarter than, well, that's not as smart as it claims to be.

[01:40:43] But all that data is there and is being anonymized. And Raj Chetty has done a lot of that at Harvard Business School in terms of analyzing that.

[01:41:00] ADP puts out employment data before the BLS does every month, about a few days. But it's incomplete. I'm not going to say that ADP identified that we lost jobs in September because it was incomplete. And we always want to get the federal data because it's a broader measure and includes more businesses that just have ADP.

[01:41:24] So we have these other pockets. My concern is that they're incomplete and they may become proprietary. So let's keep saying that this is important to us in government, as individuals, as businesses and investors.

[01:41:41] Yeah, and that's the second time you've mentioned becoming more proprietary. That's what I'm concerned. You know, what isn't a subscription now, right? Right, yes. That was very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. And the only other comment, and I don't want to take us down into another rabbit hole, but the university is a very positive influence and does a lot in this community, but it's a double-edged sword.

[01:42:07] And in my experience for 28 years, it has been one of the reasons why we have to press salaries in this area. And you're smiling at me. So while it's wonderful and we need it and we appreciate it, we have to be conscious of the fact that it does impact us sometimes in negative ways, as well as a lot of the positive ways.

[01:42:30] I've heard that for many years. Harvard and MIT were really mentioned in that in Cambridge. Can you imagine you've got Harvard on one and MIT on the other? Two big employers, and that's it. So, yeah, it's not unusual. And it actually shows up in our public schools with our achievement gaps in our students.

[01:42:50] But anyway, that's another story. But I really appreciate the information, and thank you for the data. Thank you so much for the discussion about data. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I want to echo my highest esteem and thanks to your wonderful staff. And they are data hogs and deep thinkers, And they always give me some really tough questions, and I appreciate it.

[01:43:10] Well, I just always feel like when we get credit for our triple, triple, triple A, it's not Diane McKeel who sat at this board for 12 years or 28 years. It's those folks out there. And they do think about it very deeply. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek.

[01:43:26] Thank you. And always mind exploding, and I appreciate it. So a couple of clarifications. And staff is also wonderful about their patience, and you are as well, because there are huge comprehension gaps that we have to wade our way through that you all seem to get easily.

[01:43:44] You had mentioned the low hire job market and the 26,000 corrected hires for August. And when do you expect or will the massive layoffs at the federal level in Northern Virginia and also throughout the state, will those not even show up until 2026 actual calendar year or do you think they're already beginning to be felt in the data?

[01:44:10] They're not showing in the data yet beyond what's already there. We do see 11,500 jobs. Now, those are jobs. Not people. Those are not people. Those are jobs. So the people impact will take longer to show up in the jobs.

[01:44:26] That's just the jobs that were domiciled in Virginia because some of our residents were working in the district and in Maryland. So that's not there yet. it's going to take a while for that to show up. Also, many of those reductions in forced rifts were delayed until September 30th or December 31st. We don't know how many. The projection was 150,000. Now, the latest number from OMB was 300,000 overall. I don't know if that was before the shutdown. We don't know. I have a fellow intern, state intern, that I teach for a class,

[01:45:03] and they say VEC. We don't know. It's not published. So we don't know. Well, like the old folks that will understand it better by and by. And so that gives us a lot of uncertainty. So September 30th data we will not see until the October report, which normally will come in November. There's a question now whether the October report will actually be done. That's what I read yesterday from Wells Fargo Economics. It's unclear whether we will get, when the shutdown is over, if they will go back and pick up October and do a monthly report or just resume

[01:45:39] in November. So we don't. So the data availability, the schedule has been disrupted. So it could be November before we see anything. And so we'll just say, oh, if it's November data, it's going to be issued in December. We don't know. So the September 30th end dates has not shown up yet.

[01:46:00] And we don't know when we'll see it because we don't know the release. The December 31st ones we won't see until 2026 so there's a lot of opaqueness opacity as to what's going on and it's not clear all we can get is snippets from federal officials about what the projected total reduction is well it's a great way to have data not ever be found because nobody asked and i'm a little concerned by your report that powell said you get the data you need or the fed is getting the data they need but if they don't even know what's missing how do they ever know that they're getting

[01:46:36] That was June. That was July. That was a July statement, so we have to date and time that comment. The construction jobs, do you think these are already impacted by the self-deportation in so many construction job workers who have left the country?

[01:46:56] That is coming up. The Federal Reserve does a monthly survey of manufacturing, monthly survey of services, and also there's a full scan beige book before each Fed meeting.

[01:47:15] And the Federal Reserve banks are indicating that their surveys with businesses are showing that the availability for labor in the construction sector is getting tight, tight, especially for certain trades, which are certain trades are very much manned by foreign-born.

[01:47:38] I didn't say illegal, just foreign-born. Drywall, plasterers, many of those are foreign-born, but they can be legal. They're illegal. They're just born outside of the U.S. I'm not saying undocumented, just foreign born. So we are dependent there. And then another aspect in the construction area is a lot of trades are age.

[01:47:58] The average age is 50-something years old. So we've got a demographic thing going on there, too. So the contractors have been reporting to the Fed, and also it has come up in the Associated General Contractors report, their monthly surveys, the Associated Building Contractors, the National Association of Home Builders, their surveys are showing that labor availability is tight across the construction industry. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Calibur. Dr. Bailey, it's a pleasure to see you as always. This is a report that I often look forward to each year,

[01:48:38] have come to look forward to each year. Thank you so much. And it creates a lot of fodder for commentary. I'll try to avoid that commentary just to the interest of time, but I will make this, I remember last year I was asking, well, how do you predict things? And I was thinking of things like bridge collapses in Baltimore and hurricanes and how that factors into scenario planning, but peppered throughout this report of the changing federal dynamic, and it's not even quarterly, it's monthly and weekly and daily, and it can be triggered by waking up and a certain individual being unhappy with a photo of himself on a cover of a magazine. That could trigger

[01:49:13] economic policy. How do you advise or what advice or how do you guys, I mean, it's tough enough to do the prognosticating and the strategizing and the scenario planning when you have some level of predictability. But it's a little disconcerting, you know, and I think of staff who has to do this day in and day out and think about that. But how, I mean, this goes even beyond that question I asked last year of how do you contend with this? Has there been any advice given, given that you've had eight months of just whiplash at the federal level regarding this stuff? Stay vigilant. So

[01:49:48] that's the first thing. And it is a drill to keep up with everything. It is. And it does make one weary, but we got to stay in the game. We have to stick with it. And also my enduring recommendations for financial resiliency and agility predate this. And when I have been doing trainings on financial resiliency, I have been talking about expecting the unexpected. We're very good at what we know. We're very good at what we don't know, but we are very discomforted by what we don't know

[01:50:25] we don't know, and we don't plan for it. So I've been saying for nearly 10 years, plan for what you don't know and don't know you don't know. So what you do, when you know what you don't know, that's a consultation. But when we don't know what we don't know, that's an area of planning that we are uncomfortable with as humans. But when you're in a VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, which I've been talking about for at least seven years, then we know there's a certain

[01:51:00] element that if it's not, my former sister-in-law, God rest her soul, dearly departed, says if it's not one thing, it's two. It used to be if it's not one thing, it's the other. She said if it's not one thing, it's two. So we expect if it's not one thing, it's two. So one of it is adjusting expectations, but also in our planning, make room for what we don't know we don't know. And so when make room for what we don't know we don't know then when we have this variability this unpredictability

[01:51:34] this uncertainty it has less disruption to our psyche we say oh you fit oh there you go you go in that category you go in that category now we maybe we may be getting more of that than we care for but that also means we don't spend every new revenue we get we don't budget every reserve you know we we don't act as though we know everything we don't know and so with that and And I say that because that's what we said at Chesterfield we did.

[01:52:05] Before the great financial crisis, every new revenue that came in got budgeted. So when that turn came, it was really, really impacted the revenues and the budget and the staffing. And it was a major adjustment that had to be made.

[01:52:22] Chesterfield made it, but it was a major adjustment that had been made because during all that growth period, we had budgeted every new revenue. So when we have made room for what we don't know, we don't know.

[01:52:39] The key issue is we get more of that than we had planned, but we had made some room for that. And so we just have to stay in that. It's vigilant. It's tough. But we have the team and the network and the relationships to, I would say, navigate our way through it.

[01:53:06] But it's not going to be without this challenge. But if it ain't one thing, it's two, as Vaughn used to say. Well, the confidence I have in our team, I mean, that response gives me even more confidence that that's something that they've been adhering to and are planned for and are prepared for.

[01:53:24] I'll just say, and they're scanning all the time. In our conversations, they're scanning all the time. So they have a radar scanning. They're doing a lot of scanning. I'm not going to say they're perfect, but they are very vigilant and they're trying very hard. Which is the skill that you have to have.

[01:53:40] The inventory stock up, do you see as the tariff situation, I mean, we get the threat, we get the April was the deadline, then some got delayed, and some, are they redoing inventory buildups after that initial inventory buildup that will just further delay the actual impact of the tariffs?

[01:53:58] Imports are way down from the first part of this year. So there's no inventory buildup since March? I won't say there's no, it's way down. So I just saw a chart this morning, I can show it to you on my phone. It's way down from the buildup from earlier this year. So it's coming. The impact of the pricing is going to hit. Supply, supply and pricing.

[01:54:15] They also have unpacking of the pricing and that presentation this morning, which I was listening to in Jacob and Andy's office and watching online, also identifies that the, this is the conference board, the conference board briefed that the exporters are not paying the import taxes.

[01:54:35] They're showing up in domestic prices. The exporters are not adjusting their prices. Their prices are pretty much the same, and it's showing up. And they have a conference board today, and it's going to be posted online. They say it's going to post online within the next day or two, have also impacted all the industries that are being significantly impacted.

[01:54:57] So it's their comment at the 11 o'clock briefing is that it's beginning to show up and more is coming. In your recommendation type of section, it seemed like this was a more general for governments, not specific to Albemarle County.

[01:55:16] I mean, I get the lesson, but it talked about making sure you untangle one-ton funding from your reoccurring expenses. I feel like we've always done a good job. I just want to confirm you're talking generally you're advising governments that that wasn't a specific issue that was here all of a sudden.

[01:55:31] I'm going to say it every time I speak because it's like the plastic that I'm trying to get out of my kitchen. It keeps showing up. And then the last question I guess I'll ask, also in the recommendations, this one seems a little bit more like we have our hands around it.

[01:55:48] But you talk about, you know, when it comes to strategy development and scenario planning around grant funding that we receive or dollars we receive from the federal government to really plan out and strategize that. I've always felt confident that we've done that and do that.

[01:56:04] I suspect we do. But I've always been worried about after the first year. Like, if we lost federal funding for something now, a grant or if it's direct funding, whatever the source is, well, I know we have the capacity to deal with it in year one, but it's not like they're going to turn around and give back to us in year two.

[01:56:27] So I trust that the scenario planning and the strategy development just assumes that that funding has gone at least for three years, perhaps longer depending on how things go at the federal level. Your staff shares with me the results of their analysis, so I know they have done it because they've shared with me the analysis.

[01:56:47] And overall, what we're finding at GFOA and ICMA is that the direct impact from federal, and also it's also a lot of national sources, other national sources outside of the governmental profession, is that local government is not as directly impacted in terms of direct federal grants.

[01:57:05] They are, but we are more impacted from the indirect from the state. The state is having significant potential impacts, and so where does the state go for those non-general funds? Everybody goes running to the general fund. Well, the general fund is only about a third to 40 percent of the overall state budget, so there's not room at the end for everybody to go there, and so that's going to start crowding out those things that typically would be a source of funding for local government, So I would not be as concerned about the direct impacts as the indirect impacts.

[01:57:44] And I know VACO is on top of this because I talk with them monthly in our Virginia Finance Network. They are a standing partner in there, and I know they are thinking about it. And so there's a lot of watching of the now, the legislative committees, particularly the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Appropriations, close committee meetings in preparation for the spring, I'm sorry, for January.

[01:58:07] There was potentially rumored a September special session to deal with the impact of changing federal policy. It's now going to be handled all in the upcoming General Assembly session. So the VACO, your legislative representatives, and your local intergovernmental relations director are going to be key there to keep on top of what's going on.

[01:58:30] So I would be more concerned about indirect impact and also dotting the I's and T's on any direct impacts. Well, hopefully I'll bump into you at Vaco this year and I'll share some of the other commentary that I would have made. I look forward to it. Let's get some coffee.

[01:58:46] Let's get some tea. Appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor Curley. Thank you, Dr. Bailey, for being with us. Once again, we always look forward to your reports. In some areas, I'm really kind of worried about where we're going.

[01:59:02] I hear from you that we are, it sounds like we are doing the right things, our county, our county management. are doing the right things here. You know, we have the proactive management. We're being, we have adaptable decision-making, at least I believe that.

[01:59:20] We have a solid economy, but there are a lot of question marks that will be coming up. The construction, for example, housing and construction. That really concerns me because is there something we can do or we're just not able to handle that?

[01:59:39] Should there be a very much of a decline? And there's a need for housing, but there's no one to build the homes. Now, if you listen to the construction, the contractors, and also the Fed is saying this now in terms of housing availability and affordability.

[02:00:01] It really, they talked a lot about the local regulations and requirements. But we can do a whole lot in streamlining processes. So streamlining processes helps a whole lot. But if you hear the contracting community, they say that our requirements add cost.

[02:00:23] And I think I have couched that phrase in terms of its source, right? It's something now the Federal Reserve is also identifying in some of its housing affordability areas. And the land costs plus the cost of supplies, I think a bigger issue right now is going to be the tariff taxes on lumber and cabinets and those supplies. So the costs are going up significantly. Gypsum and a lot of lumber is imported. We don't make enough here in the U.S.

[02:00:59] of that type. And it would take several years for manufacturing to gear up, Five to ten years for manufacturing plants is what I heard this morning. Conference Board was emphasizing more technical, longer. And so I think the supply access is a concern.

[02:01:16] It's also showing up in contracting equipment. That's what I'm seeing. I keep up with the National Association of Home Builders, the ABC, the Associated Building Contractors, and the AGC, the Associated General Contractors, to see what's going on there because housing is so important to local government.

[02:01:33] And they're concerned about costs, metal, aluminum is showing up in their equipment. So their cost factors are going up across the board. But the demand is there because we've underbuilt housing for over 10 years, for over a decade.

[02:01:51] So the demand is there, but in terms of the price point. So a lot of those factors are structural and outside the local government's control, global economy structure. In terms of what I've found for my years in government and local government is having processes that are not opaque and no one can understand.

[02:02:18] If they can have a clear process and help things move through and not have bottlenecks, that means a lot to the business community. And also being in dialogue with them, having someone that they can call and untangle. Because every builder is not an experienced builder to the ones that have been at it for several years as a family business or in this local area.

[02:02:42] So being process-friendly, I'm not saying change in regulations, but process-friendly and streamlined can mean a lot. But a lot of the cost factors that are impacting that community are outside the control of the local government. And I think that's going to inhibit our ability to have the affordable housing that we want to have.

[02:03:04] And so we need to really think about that so that we can have the affordable housing that we want. But with prices going up, I mean, that's something we can't control. So we're going to have to get creative, which I don't mind at all.

[02:03:20] And you mentioned also about planning for what we don't know. That's scary, frankly. because we don't know what's coming. But I think it's important for us to be able to, and this is what I think I hear you saying in your solutions, so to speak, or what you're saying, is that for us to be able to pivot, to be able to pivot and go this way or that way, depending on what happens with the feds, with the state, to be able to deliver our services to our community.

[02:03:58] Absolutely. Could I just have one addendum? In areas that are already developed, I've done this a lot in my local government career, land assembly can be something the government can do. Because working with several parcels and owners is time is money for a developer.

[02:04:19] So if you want to have redevelopment and then also thinking about any provisions, we did this in Chesterfield in terms of any consideration of going from commercial property to mixed use. We had provisions for credits if you did upgrades to existing residential property in the older developed areas, but we didn't have consideration in our regulations for going from

[02:04:53] mixed, from commercial to mixed use or that conversion. So we actually got some of those adjustments done quickly so a developer could actually get their financing from the Virginia Department of Housing, and it turned a Route 1 corridor area around. So we can think about ways their land assembly and just conversion of property from uses is something that we can help prepare the area to be ready for development, similar to what you've done at Rivanna Futures. We can do that in the areas that we want to redevelop as well. And you'll be happy to know that those are

[02:05:30] some of the things that we're we are doing i know yes okay so don't so it's not insignificant it's very significant and many communities don't do it thank you thank you i really appreciate you being here thank you thank you for having me thank you and uh again i think this fact that you're working with staff gives me a lot of comfort uh i've learned a lot a lot of great questions from my colleagues so uh i'll i'll leave it at that because we're already a little bit behind here 40 minutes but um is there any other concerns then again thank you for being here

[02:06:07] and i appreciate all you yes and if you're a vaco we can have tea i'm uh achievement of judge that's great i'm achieving award judge again this year and and i think you have one too okay all right thank you thank you thanks so much board we'll take a 15 minute recess at this time okay welcome back. Next up is a work session. This is a public safety staffing studies report led by Christy

[02:06:43] Shiflett, Chief Operating Officer. Welcome. Hello. Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, members of the board. Thank you. We are really looking forward to providing this information today. And so I'm going to get us started on the agenda. There we go. So we're going to talk a little bit about where we've been, talk about the studies and the assessment, and we're going to spend most of our time today on the data and findings from the consulting company, and then we'll talk about

[02:07:17] next steps and open up to questions and answers. And I have all of my esteemed team here behind me that can answer all the questions that you may have. So I'm going to start out with really what the performance and strategic planning team does in the county and part of our role is managing assessments that we focus on with this culture of improvement that the board has supported we you know started with our strategic plan looking at performance metrics and things

[02:07:52] like that part of that effort is also about continuously doing assessments on our departments looking at how we work making sure we have improved accountability great decision making and we have increased transparency but we also look for improved community outcomes and so we do these assessments and i have this chart here today to show you we've been doing this work not that the county didn't do it before but really intentionally starting in 2017 We take those findings and those informations and we create long-term roadmaps.

[02:08:31] Many recommendations come in with these assessments, but it doesn't mean we implement every single one. It means that it is things for us to consider, to study, and to determine. So why we do this is that we want to take moments in time and say, let's look at the best practices.

[02:08:50] let's look at our federal mandates and state mandates those things are constantly changing in our world and sometimes we go 10 or 15 years and it's like wait a second we need to take a moment we need to look and compare ourselves across other localities in the state but it's also sometimes we might look outside the state we will look at workload measurements of our staff does sometimes you cut corners you make concessions and after a while you realize wow we've made too many of these we need to reassess we need to realign and work differently and then

[02:09:30] also this organizational design so with this study the consultant received you know our org structures they looked at the way our FTEs are aligned they look at reporting structures so this is really a focus on local government departments and how we function not only in that department but across the organization and with each other and so what happened in 2025 and 2024 is that both

[02:10:02] our chief of fire rescue and our chief of police both mentioned that they wanted to do a deep dive into their departments and into their functions, and they had different reasons for that. One was the police department needed to do an assessment because one had not been done, and they really wanted to make sure that we were doing everything as efficiently and effective as possible with changing our changing county and our changing demographics and our changing calls for service. For the fire department, you know, we have a combination system. We're very proud of

[02:10:40] that but we also wanted to make sure that we were looking at how the cause for service had changed our coverage and our ability to respond and so with that we decided to pull these two together and have the study done for public safety and look at those two things not in conflict and so we hired the emergency services consulting international and you'll see that called ESCI through the report, and I have our project manager here with us today, Mr. Rob Graff. He's going to

[02:11:16] go through this data with you and share the findings of the report. We wanted this independent data-driven assessment done. He collected a lot of data, his team collected a lot of data from our cause for service. They looked at our GIS data. They looked at the way the demographics and the physical landscapes of our county are laid out. They looked at how remote or urban we were and they used that information to come up with some of the recommendations. We knew that they would

[02:11:53] be complex and they would be complicated and so we asked them to take those recommendations and put those in tiers and so you'll see in the report that there are short and mid and long-term recommendations. Again, we fully expected this to take five to seven years for the county to accomplish, and it doesn't necessarily mean we will work on every single one of them. That is something that we'll work with our board and have each year a decision about what we can accomplish.

[02:12:25] And so lastly, the reports were written with the purpose of aligning the findings with the county's goal for predictable service and accountability. So with that, I'm going to introduce Mr. Graff and he's going to come up and share the information. Welcome, Mr. Graff. Thank you for being here.

[02:12:47] Thank you so much for having me again. My name is Robert Graff and I'm with ESCI. And we want to first start by saying your team is amazing. The words that you gave for the chief at the beginning of the session today, I hope when I retire, they'll say half of those things about me and the work that i've done in public safety but uh so we started out um as as christy said we were asked to take a voluntary objective look at the processes that you use for both your police and

[02:13:19] fire uh departments and with with a lens that we were looking to achieve a predictable level of service so that when your citizen calls 9-1-1 or you as a as a policymaker or the fire department of the police department that they could predict the level of service that they were going to receive on the other end when they called 911. And so we start with a comprehensive system analysis of KPIs or key performance indicators, industry best practices, a comparative analysis amongst

[02:13:58] whether it be the Center for Public Safety Excellence, which deals with a lot of accreditations and stuff in the fire service, or CALEA, which is the same type of organization through the police department and those give us those uh real benchmarks that we can use to determine what what the agency is doing and how well they're meeting those performance metrics and so we started we came into town and uh we spent a few days here and we met met with both the police chief and the fire chief and our first goal was to you know get their input on what they identified with their priorities and in the police department the chief identified that staffing was

[02:14:36] a priority officer wellness was a priority leadership development was a priority and his organizational culture was a priority and through our processes we validated that yes staffing is one of the top priorities and it's an immediate tier one response and also wellness leadership and culture were addressed throughout the other additional tiers tiers where one two and three to achieve that wellness for his officers from there we met with the fire chief and these these projects happened simultaneously. So we had one team that dealt with the police department and then another team that dealt with the fire department. So as we were meeting with the

[02:15:16] police, we were also meeting with the fire chief. And again, his number one priority was staffing. Second was training and development, financial health, community relations, and technology, and making sure that they could stay abreast with the changes in technology. And again, we validated that staffing was indeed one of the top priorities and was a central tier one issue.

[02:15:37] And again, following up on that, training, finance, community, and technology are integrated into those other tiers that we'll talk about here in just a few minutes. When you look at them both together, both chiefs had staffing listed as a priority. It was one of their most urgent needs.

[02:15:54] Training, wellness, and leadership were key investments to them. And then the financial stability and community trust and organizational culture. And through that, we did indeed validate that those were, number one, a tier one issue for both was the staffing. We identified that there were gaps in quantifiable supervision, workload assignment, and support for the agencies.

[02:16:17] And then we provided a roadmap to give you a phased plan. Sitting over here today, I listened to you guys do a lot of planning. And so this is going to give you a good phased approach because, as we all know, public safety is it takes a while to implement new things because public safety is expensive.

[02:16:36] and so we've provided you a good phased plan and an approach so that you can dial in that predictable level of service through a tiered process. So let's start with some of the headline findings. I'll start with the police department first. Public-generated calls have increased, and a handful of those calls dictate a majority of their work. The police department often manages three to five simultaneous incidents at one time, and that's considered a call concurrency.

[02:17:07] Rural areas experience longer travel times. Cross-zone pulling of deputies and the travel time it takes to get across zones was an issue. Scheduling versus demand, the overlap of peak hours and hot spots and pulling cross zones makes it hard for deputies to cover the entire county with as large of an area as they have to cover.

[02:17:29] Supervisory span of control, consistent middle management presence is needed for when handling multi-scene coordination and risk management. And then civilian capacity is limited in some areas, which pulls sworn officers into administrative roles or non-enforcement tasks.

[02:17:48] And there's some areas for efficiency and effectiveness there. When you look at the headline findings in the fire rescue side of the house, EMS transports drive the workload. Dynamic staffing has been normalized, and that's due to staffing shortages.

[02:18:04] And when you reduce staffing on one apparatus to keep another apparatus in service, ALS coverage sometimes can be inconsistent. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does happen, it takes away from that predictable level of service. Volunteer response capacity continues to decline, and that's not just in your jurisdiction.

[02:18:26] It's across the country. Volunteerism is down, and you guys have a very robust combination fire department, which has a lot of volunteers. And in some areas, they're doing great work. In other areas, there's room for improvement. And I think having a way to monitor that, because it takes so long to convert when necessary, that you need to have those metrics in place so that you can watch those instruments as they change.

[02:18:52] Having only one battalion chief per shift at time limits the span of control across the county. And then again, operational leaders are burdened sometimes with procurement, HR, and logistics, which takes away from their administrative or operational abilities and roles.

[02:19:10] Now, they both share some challenges as well. Service demand for both has grown. It's growing faster than the staffing can keep up in both of those agencies. Reliance on overtime and daily reassignments to maintain coverage for consistency across the jurisdiction.

[02:19:29] Police frequently manage multiple simultaneous calls, straining the patrol. The fire department as well runs a lot of simultaneous calls at the same time. And then volunteer participation is declining, which reduces flexibility. Limited administrative and civilian support.

[02:19:48] again, pulling those sworn staff into non-core tasks. And then attrition and timelines for training new employees creates gaps that are hard to fill. When you have a succession planning that needs to take place for retirements or for turnover, that ability to get somebody in the seat to replace them takes time. So what's the path going forward look like? First, stabilizing operations, and I use the word stabilizing more as it talks about the gaps in the workforce,

[02:20:22] Not that the operation is unstable, but the ability to put new officers and new firefighters into the system takes a significant amount of time. And so having ways to predict those needs and account for those needs ahead of time and be prepared for that will help you in the long run.

[02:20:44] Develop your leadership. Invest in officer development, succession planning, and wellness to prepare your future leaders. As people retire, they take the knowledge that they've gained with them, and so it takes time to pass that on to the next person.

[02:21:01] Enhance your support systems, expand HR, logistics, and administrative capacities to relieve those operational staff where possible, and then promote sustainability through implemented phased, data-driven staffing and resource strategies that keep pace with your growth.

[02:21:20] And so what we did is we created two roadmaps, one for the police department, one for the fire department. The police department has four tiered recommendations. The fire department has five. Tier one for the police department is core stability, which would be enhance your capacity and service equity.

[02:21:38] Tier two is going to be a strategic leadership training and workforce development. Tier three is organizational coordination and internal support systems. And each one of these tiers has a list of recommendations underneath it, and each one has a short, mid, and long-term section to it.

[02:21:53] And so it's a lot. There's a lot of stuff in there that you can capitalize on, but they're broken down by short, medium, and long-term. And then last, number four, tier four, long-term sustainability and strategic planning. All of this is going to be tied up to how do you get from point A to point B in the most cost-effective and efficient manner, all while trying to give your citizen the predictable level of service that they're looking for.

[02:22:22] In the fire department, again, tier one is core stability, delivering predictable county-wide service when they call 911. Tier 2 is a strategic leadership, emergency management, and volunteer integration. Tier 3, workforce development and succession planning. Tier 4, system efficiency and public interface. And then Tier 5, policy modernization and process optimization. So as you start to implement these phases and these approaches, you're going to want to have some measures and ways that you can manage your success.

[02:23:02] And we've listed a ton of ways that you can measure your success, and these are just some of them. In the police department, you can measure your 90th percentile for total response time by priority. And you'll see in the report there's recommendations on assigning priorities and realigning sectors and then managing the time it takes for officers to get from each of those calls and their calls for service.

[02:23:25] You can manage proactive timeshares and set targets. leadership can set targets for what they want their officers focused on, and you can use those as metrics. Concurrency coverage, that's the percentage of time that staff is covering more than one incident or more than three to five incidents at one time, and when you're pulling officers across the zone. And if you track those things, you can see how often it's happening and then implement ways to keep that from happening. The time on task in the top call types, A big one is going to be staffing health, vacancies, attrition, mandatory overtime, training hours, sick leave.

[02:24:03] Using all of those metrics to determine the health of your staffing ability. Investigative flow, assignment of timelines and follow-up cycle times. And then community outcomes, citizen-initiated backlogs, making sure that when the citizen calls, how long does it take to get to them?

[02:24:20] How long does it take to answer? Because not everything is an emergency, but how long does it take to get to the crux of their need? and then how many voluntary contacts they're having throughout the year. In the fire department, again, 90th percentile turnout and travel times by zone.

[02:24:39] One of the things that we talked about in both reports is you have a rural part of the county and you have an urban part of the county, and then you have the area in between. And each of those, just by the nature, sometimes require different resources.

[02:24:56] And so what in the fire department, one of the things that is very common is, is establishing an urban, a suburban, and a rural, and even a remote demand zone based on population. And then each one of those demand zones has its own metrics.

[02:25:12] And so that you're getting a fire department apparatus or fire truck in this amount of time in an urban zone, which may be different than the time that you're going to get in a rural zone because of the resources it requires. Taking that same methodology and applying it to the police department as well will allow you to create a big target that you're trying to hit towards that predictable level of service.

[02:25:35] And so you can say when you live in this area and these resources are allocated, you should get this metric that goes along with it, and it allows you to gauge your performance and dial in where your areas of need are. Percentage of units that are consistently staffed at the ALS level.

[02:25:52] If ALS is the metric that we're going to use, how often does that happen? and if it dips below that, why, and be able to track that and then work towards ensuring that it's a consistent, predictable level of service. Dynamic staffing frequencies, because of daily reassignments and having to move staff around for minimum staffing, sometimes you have trucks that have to go out of service or they have to get moved around, and so tracking that will give you the ability to determine whether your staffing needs are meeting the needs of the community.

[02:26:25] Volunteer contributions, calls that are staffed, the response rates, and establishing those metrics that I'm talking about. They're not for just, they're for the entire organization, not just for a career station. And we looked at this through the lens that a predictable level of service doesn't look at whether you're a career firefighter or a volunteer firefighter.

[02:26:44] It's all the same. When someone's calling 911, they want somebody who shows up, they're trained correctly, they have the right equipment, and they get there in the right amount of time. It doesn't matter whether they're paid or volunteer. And so your metrics that we recommend and that we are talking about all are geared at one system and that system-wide performance based on those metrics.

[02:27:06] Again, in the fire department as well, staffing, health, what do your vacancies look like? What does the attrition rate look like? Mandatory overtime and sick leave, all of that can be measured over periods. In the report, when you read it, we look at all of that. And then from here on, you can continue to measure that and manage your workforce.

[02:27:25] Training benchmarks, how much training per hour per FTE, what's the compliance with ISO and the National Fire Protection Agency, our association, and how are those standards being met? Those are ways that you can measure the training for your agency. And then what is the administrative workload?

[02:27:43] Throughout the report, you're going to see workload analysis and ensuring that the administrative workloads are, for lack of a better term, process mapped to ensure that the right people are doing the right jobs and the right tasks in the right amount of time.

[02:27:58] And so what are some of the risks that are, if you defer, you know, if you don't do anything and everything just stays, there's a chance that you could not keep up with growth and you end up with persistent response variability.

[02:28:15] You can't predict what level of service you're going to get when you call 911. You could have an erosion of proactive time and community engagement in the police department. You could have slower investigations or case cycle times. That's what the data is showing now. And so with zero change, you could see that that continues and perhaps maybe even gets worse.

[02:28:36] And then higher long-term costs to catch up. Your staffing costs aren't going to get any better as the aging workforce. Several times today they talked about aging workforce. That's not just the community. It's the workforce itself also. As deputies retire, as fire department personnel retire, replacing them takes time, and sometimes as much as 18 months.

[02:28:57] And so 18 months of overtime, it can really cost you if you're not ahead of the game. From the fire department side, dynamic staffing reduces service predictability. So that's a risk.

[02:29:13] Inequities in pre-hospital care, volunteer capacity could further decline if not given the proper support and not metrics built to be able to gauge their performance. so that we can see if either career or volunteer, if something's starting to slip and we can see it, we can address it faster.

[02:29:32] And your fire department does a great job. They have a lot of metrics already in place, and they measure on a regular basis. And a lot of the stuff that we found in our report, they're already tracking, and they're doing a really good job with that. Supervisory span remains insufficient. They're in major multi-incident scenes or multi-unit responses.

[02:29:54] Sometimes take more than one officer, and only having one battalion chief on shift, it's a large county for one person to cover. And then rising overtime and attrition elevate your long-term costs. And with that, do I turn it back to you or just answer questions?

[02:30:14] Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so we really wanted to make sure that you had time as you've looked at the reports to ask questions. So really this is just to share with the public that the report is available online.

[02:30:31] It was in the board's packet as well as we have a web page that is posted that will have frequently asked questions on it because it is dense and it is a lot of data. So we want to make sure that it's easy for everyone to stick with.

[02:30:50] Also, I wanted to let you know, it was mentioned about the administrative work. I wanted to share that we have already placed an HR staff person in dedicated to fire and police. And so she's here today actually in our audience.

[02:31:08] But that work has already begun as well as some early findings that were found in the police department about lieutenant position. And so that was already partially addressed with staffing right now. So we're going to continue to work on this.

[02:31:23] we have to do the workload analysis that was discussed to look at internally, how are we working, who's doing what, is there a way that we can improve upon that work and see if anything can be done in order to move staff to hit these most critical needs. And then the last thing I'll just share is, you know, there is no action for the board today. This is really to provide this report information and give you the opportunity to ask questions. And both of our chiefs are here as well.

[02:31:57] But the next steps will be the five-year financial planning and looking at what everything looks like as well as looking at the FY27 budget recommendations. And so there's nothing to do today other than to understand. And then we'll discuss this in the coming months as much as you uh would like as we move forward on the long-range planning so with that it's really i hand it back over to the board thank you and we'll go through our order starting with supervisor thank you i want to begin by just noting so i uh myself and supervisor lipisto currently both dug

[02:32:34] into this in some amount of depth literally yesterday um so i have relatively few questions i think are going to be appropriate now because i frankly i got a lot of them out because i we already had the packet at this point. So I have one question that I forgot to ask yesterday and maybe just two comments. First, I just want to recognize that you have a key recommendation that I think may be more low-hanging fruit because it doesn't necessarily involve new hires that this report makes felt especially timely, which is you discuss the importance of

[02:33:14] recategorizing how we designate priority areas, rather than the stark rural-urban binary having a more layered, if Neil was still here, he would have eaten it up, a more lasagna-style set of categories.

[02:33:30] And I know both Supervisor Malik and I, when we received our SPEER report, expressed concern that there are parts of our districts that are remote enough that it is, we think, probably literally impossible to get to them inside the time frames that are demanded for certain high priority fires. So I think that just reflects a need and a concern that this board was already starting to become attuned to, not being, you know, professional firefighters or volunteer firefighters, but still recognizing that. So I appreciate that. And the other, this is more of a political statement, but I just want to raise, because I know we have folks in the audience,

[02:34:08] right? This report reflects some certain concerns in how our volunteer and professional force mesh and certain inconsistencies in performance standards. And it calls those out, right?

[02:34:24] Because you're identifying known problems in the system. I think a lot of our work on the board as representatives of the community and as kind of interlocutors, people who carry concerns between bodies and between government is to make sure that it is easy to look at the way this is reflected in the report and see that it is calling out our volunteers as being some kind of problem to be solved. I think a lot of our role in county leadership is going to be to make sure that that is not the message that we're carrying out, right? Our role is to make sure that our volunteers are

[02:35:01] seen as assets to be enabled, people who contribute a tremendous amount of energy to this county, a tremendous amount of, you know, a place to store culture, a place to store our history, and also, frankly, an incredible resource that we leverage that I'm sure the taxpayers are very grateful for, and our role is to make sure that they're succeeding. We're not trying to solve volunteers. We're trying to further empower them. The one question I had that I forgot to ask yesterday um we we've heard from both police and fire um this kind almost like a drumbeat we have

[02:35:41] increased call complexity um and we are in urbanizing county we have more calls for service than we used to from urban areas and that's part of that story but i'm curious how much of this is a local story right the changing face of albemarle county and how much of this is like a macro culture story right are just people making more complex are people having weirder problems that they want public safety to solve these days and i i think that's probably maybe a better question directed to you than to our own staff because you're you're evaluating this problem across the country

[02:36:16] and i would say that uh it is across the country and when you look at a jurisdiction that has a large rural area and that is growing fast and pushing from an urban area into a rural area you get a lot of mingling and meshing of problems that you didn't have before and so then you end up with a workforce that's solving those problems that they're just not used to seeing and they happen on a more frequent basis and then they happen at the same time as another eight and by complicated it could be two things you're used to handling all the time but they're happening at the same time now instead of just one at a time and so those are some of the complications i believe

[02:36:55] that they're probably experiencing here just like they are as people move and move into areas that are less populated. It's creating that problem across the country. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate the high level to get us started. And I guess in looking at this, there is a lot to look through and to absorb and i realized we had our packet we got our packet not just today but having said that

[02:37:30] um one quick question i have is are we going to have an opportunity as a board to come back together to ask questions about this and talk about this or will it really and i guess this is a question for it for christy it or will it be really more about budgetary issues i'm just i'm just asking i would say that that is the pleasure of the board if the more you would like to as you do with any report if we need to talk through different things more i think and also i would

[02:38:08] share with um even when we have budget conversations we usually talk and present right the narrative and the story behind uh maybe the request or the challenge um so sometimes that comes through the budget process but also if if we wanted to have a follow-on conversation about this we absolutely can and i'm just curious because in an effort to stay on time we always have questions that we don't have the ability to ask so if we as we want to over the next couple of weeks and we're going through this again after the presentation and thinking it through if we have questions send

[02:38:45] them to you you can send them to me and and i'll i'll manage with my team and my co-workers here how we respond that's great yes okay thank you very much and i just have a quick question or come on maybe it's more a comment um and this is for fire and rescue which uses the word over and over again dynamic staffing and could we have a little bit of an explanation on what dynamic

[02:39:16] staffing is because I think the public in looking at this is going to be confused because I think of dynamic as being a really positive, great, great, great. And when we talk about normalizing, I just would, a definition. Yeah, thank you. Dan Eggleston, Fire Rescue Chief, again. That's a great question.

[02:39:41] And it's a term that I've never been favored of because it perhaps could be slightly misleading. But it really is a result that if we have, on a daily basis, we have seats to fill in fire rescue. If we're challenged in terms of the available staffing for that day, what we do is we reduce the coverage at certain rural stations, which means we go from three to two, which means a fire truck goes out of business.

[02:40:09] And in some cases, and it's in the report, that we may have to not have advanced life support or paramedic-level service at that station for that day because there's not enough to go around. So that is one of the top-tier issues that we need to address because we don't like reducing service in any area at all.

[02:40:27] And some days we have to reduce it across the board. So that is what dynamic staffing is about. It's really making a choice of, you know, instead of, you know, having low service across the board, we choose certain areas which reduce service.

[02:40:45] And thank you, because that's a very different definition than most people would when they read this report. And I don't know how we get at that definition, but I'm agreeing with you. It's not a great term. I don't know how you, I don't know how you.

[02:41:01] Is that a term that you use throughout your industry? Sometimes the term brownout is used. It's not common in the fire service, but some departments that are suffering staffing challenges, which is one of those issues that we see across the country, are choosing to do just that because there's just not enough people to go around to staff everything.

[02:41:25] So that's interesting. When you look at those words sometimes being used interchangeably, they have very different contexts for people. Yes, I agree. Interesting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I just have one question about police.

[02:41:40] And I will say, just a little note, that the fire staffing portion is about three times the size of the police report. Noticing that. It wasn't printed at all.

[02:41:56] Yeah, well, yeah, in our packet, anyway. So let me just ask a quick question. One of the challenges, because I represent a great deal of the older urban neighborhoods in Alamo County that are changing as we have urbanized, those neighborhoods have changed.

[02:42:18] And I'm hoping that, and I think I heard that, in fact, that dynamic is being addressed in this study with possibly the use of not sworn officers but different types of employees that are not sworn officers but civil are hired in a different manner.

[02:42:47] Can you help me with that, one of you all? Because I didn't see it, but I could have overlooked it. Because I must admit I'm going to have to sit down and go through this more thoroughly than I have. Absolutely. But, Sean, it's a critical – I deal with that all the time in these neighborhoods.

[02:43:03] I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, please. Sean Reeves, Chief of Police of the Almar County Police Department. And I believe what you're referring to is something comparable to the city of Charlottesville's CSO traffic officers. Yes, yes. That is one area that we are certainly going to explore as far as the non-sworn officers that can alleviate that burden from sworn staff as they respond to calls for service.

[02:43:26] But that's going to be part of our long-term planning is factoring that in. Okay, so when I didn't see it in here, that doesn't mean anything because you all are going to be dealing with that. Correct. It's about prioritizing. Right now, as the report reflects, it's about staffing. It's about sworn officers on the street to handle those priority tier calls for service where we would rank parking violations towards the lower category of priority responses.

[02:43:50] And I view them as quality of life concerns that are coming to the older neighborhoods in the urban ring as we urbanize or have urbanized. And they take a lot of time. And I get that's a lot of the calls that I get as a supervisor, but they really don't need, they can be addressed in a different way that's much more efficient and effective.

[02:44:13] Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. And that's all I have, Jim. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Mr. Chair. I just want to mention, to add on to you, we're seeing the same thing. Aging in place is a big challenge for us.

[02:44:30] It often strains our EMS resources as well. And social issues in general, any kind of shift in social issues, we'll feel it. That's why I was paying attention to Dr. Bailey's presentation, because when the economy goes down, public safety is going to feel it.

[02:44:45] We're the canary in the coal mine when it comes to that. But I would say that Chief Policia has worked really hard to put together a strategy to try to get at those social issues to prevent someone from calling 911 when they need help to try to get that help to them ahead of time.

[02:45:02] A lot of that's just trying to collectively bring in the resources we have in the area. But I just wanted to mention that. Thank you, Dan, because we've talked about that as a board or individually before with our aging population in folks in homes often by themselves or all the retirement communities that we have in this community. It brings a whole different set of challenges. It does. It does. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. And thank you very much all for the

[02:45:36] report and for the, I really appreciate that this is the beginning or early, early middle or whatever of a process, not the end. So I know there will be lots more discussion throughout the community and tonight at the FEMS board, which will be a great start for the chiefs who were not able to participate earlier. And I'm really glad that that is happening. I want to appreciate also what Supervisor Pruitt mentioned, because our volunteer and our paid staff are truly our assets. And there's, even after 18 years of working with this transition, they are all very

[02:46:13] valuable. And it's not that the volunteers have to be integrated into the rest. It's that everybody needs to be integrated. So it's a language thing that's important, and words make a difference. So I would ask people to sort of be aware about how things are going to be heard and what might be implied. There's certainly the agencies who have people who are lonely and call the MS to get a ride somewhere or that kind of thing. That's been going on certainly for the many, many years, what I did want to follow up on was the ALS coverage question

[02:46:52] because it's been another 18-year discussion. Does every slip and fall need an ALS person? And do the ALS folks who are trained and spent two years getting that medic certificate get burned out because they're sent to slip and balls instead of the triage being done?

[02:47:08] So I don't have the expertise to answer that question, but I do know that that's a discussion that's out there all along. And I appreciate the discussion about having auxiliary or administrative people to take the burden off of the sworn officers and paid staff.

[02:47:31] I think that's a great solution. It is interesting that for years people have described the different approaches. Volunteers had been trained almost on one part of the engine, and they worked with four others who did their part of the engine as opposed to a person who had two years of the luxury of being able to be trained to do all of them.

[02:47:53] So I hope that we will continue to appreciate that more varied approach on scene as well, because I've certainly seen a lot of folks running the pumps that didn't have the ability to run into the building anymore. And I thank you all very much.

[02:48:09] I look forward to studying more in detail. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway? Yeah, thank you for the report, and I'm thrilled to have this in front of us. I want to endorse Supervisor McKeel in saying, well, I understand where this is going to lead to budget conversations.

[02:48:30] I can see the direct line from today to budget and how these are going to be some work sessions specific from this report. I don't want what I would need to do and don't have the time to do today to be in a budget session. So I don't think sending in questions and getting answers is enough for me.

[02:48:48] I've got pages of notes, and I've only gone through the reports one time. Some of it is stuff that it's just I want to understand better. Some of it, frankly, some of the things that are in some tiers, I maybe think they should be in different tiers.

[02:49:07] So some of it is me butting my nose in because I'm getting the opportunity to. Whether I should or shouldn't can be left for others to decide, I suppose. But, you know, I have those kind of remarks and opinions here. And at the end of the day, I feel like I want to go through a more robust interaction with these reports and with the people that have created it and studied it so that by the time budget rolls around, I'm going to have a better ability to make resource allocation decisions.

[02:49:44] If this is what we get now, and then I get a couple of chances to ask electronic questions, I don't think I'm not going to have what I need, I think, to have an effective budget. discussion so i'm asking i don't know what that is i don't know what i don't know if those are two by twos i don't know if those are work sessions or if they're extra i don't know um but in my mind i was like man i need a time just with the police report and i need a time just with the fire report um so i'm throwing that out there i don't know if other supervisors agree or disagree if they disagree then i may be coming to staff and asking for in debt only session

[02:50:20] because i i need some work on that so to that being said that will eliminate a lot of the questions that i could have asked today and just to save us some time but i feel like there's some things that i'd like to call out or ask today just so that i do have it in my mind um and hopefully this will be in somewhat of an order the i appreciate i guess i appreciate the points made about the the tension that exists between volunteer and paid fire but i see this this type

[02:50:55] of tension exists in each of the departments in different ways it seems like in police now this is all in my humble opinion type stuff the first read-through. It seems like you got some subordinate command tensions exist in the police department. It seems like in fire you got some departmental with other departments in the organization and then there's some tension that exists between volunteer and paid. But all of it is not surprising to me that those tensions exist because you're understaffed and you're overburdened. All the data shows that you're on two to three calls

[02:51:31] all the time you know i i think the two or three was specific to police but the fact is is whether you're a police you're in the police department a paid fire person or a volunteer fire department you're always out there dealing with something how in the hell could you communicate better with one another when you're always being always on call so as an organization that's something as a policymaker and as somebody that gets control of budget we're going to have to deal with because that's not going to get better until we reduce the burden and any way to reduce the burden is

[02:52:07] probably staffing which is going to cost us money and i don't mean to minimize it or to put it all the way down to that or maybe i'm wrong i'd love to hear alternative opinions about it but when i hear some follow through and oh my god you guys police fire volunteers the courage and the bravery to be able to let us air this in public i am so grateful to all of you for that not all departments in this county have to go through this and not all not all departments in this county raised to the level of uh of critical nature if you would because of what you all deal with on a regular

[02:52:46] basis so you know dare anybody in this county to to to yeah you can have you can put in your criticisms and you can put in your areas of concern but please be careful how you do it because the burden that these departments are under and what they're delivering right now is pretty freaking phenomenal in my opinion and um you know when i read through this i'm very hopeful because it's fixable you know you're you're okay you know to pick on like a follow-through in the police department well okay yeah if you work somewhere where there's too much stuff to do and

[02:53:23] not enough people to do it yeah things aren't going to get follow-through on you know if you're if you're if you're having a tension between a paid person and a volunteer person well if you're always on the call and you're always out there and you're always on task when do you work on how to communicate better um so i'm i say all that just to say that again it's i'm very hopeful that this is going to be fixable i don't think it's fixable in six months or a year just to the tiers i think it's something that ultimately can be fixed on or can be fixed but it's going to take

[02:53:59] serious commitment from the board i think we've started that commitment in last year's budget We're going to have to continue it in the following budget. But this county's safety organizations have grown to the point, by force, because of the increase in demand on service, that it is now going to force these departments to become, now this is an organizational term, the higher performing organization.

[02:54:26] It needs to be a high performing organization to pull off the ability to be able to deal with the high demand on service, but then also have people that enjoy their job and want to work there, and there isn't high turnover and high stress levels. So say all that to mean that I think y'all shouldn't, yeah, we have to fix the internal departmental frictions that are there and the tensions between upper and lower and chain of command and between paid and volunteer.

[02:54:58] But, you know, we're going to have to probably deal with those tensions for a while until we get the underlying problem, which is reducing the burden on y'all down. And I'm taking a little time to say all that because I want you all to recognize that I understand that.

[02:55:16] And I direct that not just at the folks that are out there doing the jobs. I'm saying that to the county executive and the county executive team and to my fellow supervisors, that that's how I'm approaching the information received in this report and will be leaning into the budget cycle, not just in the coming year.

[02:55:33] Since I re-upped for another term, I get to work on some more budgets in the future because this is going to take some long-term effort. All right. A couple of very specific questions. Don't know who's best to answer it. I am interested in that the peak time in this area for police spikes again, 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

[02:55:54] I make the presumption it's because we're a college town and we have nightlife and restaurants and bars and such. But that's a presumption, and it wasn't necessarily explained in the report. But we've often talked about how we don't catch a break in the nighttime or the weekends around here when everybody goes off to wherever they're from.

[02:56:13] That we stay kind of at, you know, you guys get a break between, what, 3 a.m., I think it said, and 6 a.m. But that 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. spike seemed to be kind of different for us. But maybe it's not different for UNC or other places that are college towns.

[02:56:29] Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as being exclusively related to the student population. That's oftentimes when our officers are making DUI arrests. We get DUI crashes, and several of our shootings that occur within the county occur during those hours as well.

[02:56:45] So I don't know if our partners from ESCI have any different data to share, but that's typically what we're seeing during that time. Oh, yeah, and I didn't think it was necessarily the students. I feel like it's at least somewhat they're contained. I hate to say it that way, but they're on grounds. Yeah, that is accurate, but most of the events that we're seeing is in our urban sector.

[02:57:03] But it's related to the, you know, we've got a pretty robust nightlife around here, so it's connected to that. And the density of the population around the urban ring, and that's drawing in resources that we previously discussed from our rural areas to help support officers in the urban areas. Robert Graff.

[02:57:22] And Chief's absolutely correct. That urban environment at night is when it's active, and you're right. It spikes. It's not just the students, but those urban types of calls in the call data, that's what those critical calls are happening in the area. But that's more indicative of just, like, even metro areas or urban areas.

[02:57:39] So we're kind of experiencing that even though we've got such. Thank you. Yes, sir. The incident analysis maps that were used in this report, is that something that, whether in a work session or available, can be?

[02:57:58] I'd love to be able to just play around with that and drill down to, like, the Rio District and look at Rio Road and things like that. Is that something that's exciting? I didn't know where that came from. Is that something that is available to tweak or play around with, or is that something that's just static because it's in the report?

[02:58:13] They're static, and it's all created from your data, and we just overlay it into a GIS map. I got you. It was just, you know, you couldn't see. Like, I was looking at, you know, Dianth and I Commonwealth Drive, and it was like I wanted to kind of get down in and play around with that.

[02:58:30] All right. Thank you. Just in the fire, it's interesting to me that the newbies that don't complete training are considered in turnover i would i would just i mean i get it i understand like you know from a from a logical standpoint why that's the case but i think it's important to parse that out too and just understand what is turnover because to me that's i'm gonna there's no way for me to say this out loud without it sounding judgmental but i just think that folks

[02:59:08] that don't make it to the street i don't know i get why it's under turnover but i want to understand what truly is once you're on the street then leave that that's an important metric i think i think they're both important but i think it's it muddies it by having them combined your points well taken and they do track the the fire department does track i put them in turnover because i'm illustrating your vacant seats yeah you're paying 2.5 times the salary for a vacant seat and so whether it doesn't honestly it doesn't they left and you're having to fill that spot is

[02:59:43] what i'm trying to illustrate and totally agree i just i guess what i'm saying is i'd like to know that info they do how they do track that how the percentages change when you get rid of those who don't complete training versus what is turnover after they're already in a in a filled position yes sir um i think in this volunteer liaison position seems very focused on internal workings etc etc you know to your point earlier you said volunteerism is down across the country and we have some places that that impacts harder than others in our in our each of our stations we

[03:00:21] got some stations no issues with more but you know it's not unlike the police and the fire paid fire we need more people the problem is in the paid world we can allocate funding and then hire them can't do that in the volunteer world i can't force a volunteer to show up i also don't expect that our volunteers or our volunteer chiefs are the ones that have to figure out why volunteerism is down. I think in our county, we have some land use issues and policies that don't have a population turnover, which we do see in the urban ring, which is a part of the problem with volunteerism.

[03:01:00] But the fact that it's a national problem means that there's volunteer places out there trying to create more volunteers and are probably exemplars on how to make that happen. And that, to me should be under the recommendations for the volunteer liaison because each chief at a volunteer station i mean when are they gonna have time to go figure out well how do i get more volunteers and then solve that conundrum i mean i think all the things you have inside of it make it healthier better will work once a volunteer's in the system but if we're going to embrace and

[03:01:36] say that it's we're going to have a mixture of volunteer and paid then at some level outside of the folks in those positions as an organization we have to start trying to figure out how to reverse the volunteer trend um and i don't i don't know what those answers are but the alternative is to do what we keep doing wait for we lose volunteers we coverage goes down now we have to put paid paid in to go so i think that volunteer liaison position there could be some more recommendations or something in that position that if it came online could be a way to go all right

[03:02:15] Part of your job is to figure out how to help the stations that are lagging in volunteers to get more volunteers, and what are other places around the country doing that's creative to help that issue. Just in a quick look, it looks like we have a community in Virginia that's actually started to do a good job with it.

[03:02:33] There's some out west. So there are places that are trying to buck the trend, if you will, and help their volunteer numbers. So I just throw that out there as a food for thought, and maybe we could consider that as we continue to go. And then my last question, the onboarding, to your point about a significant amount of time to get the new hire to the street for both police and fire and volunteers.

[03:03:00] So the same thing that I just made about volunteerism. Are there, I mean, you say it in a way, but I mean, there's no way to shorten the time, or is there? So the process itself is a significant time investment. it so you know i guess are there exemplars out there that that have found a way to be able to do this without needing to take so much time because otherwise you just got to deal with it i'll let i mean i for when i say hey i mean us we have to deal with that i'll let him speak to i mean this is not something yeah you just run you don't want to rush this through right yeah

[03:03:34] it it's a six-month process and and it's it takes every bit of that six months to train And considering the wide variety of skill set that a modern firefighter has to have, what we can do, and one of the recommendations I think came out of the report, is perhaps go from one recruit school a year to two.

[03:03:55] That's just going to take more resources in order to do that. But that could get people on the street much sooner. And we have already had a conversation about that. That is, to me, one of those tier one kind of situations. Because as pointed out, when there's a vacancy, it costs us money.

[03:04:12] Somebody's got to fill that spot, and you usually pay time and a half to fill it. So it's a significant amount of money. So in my view, having two recruit schools a year is the solution to that. Okay. Thank you. And the last comment, it looks like this was in the police report.

[03:04:28] It looks like you were getting there because at some point it was dealing with 30 minutes, like a patrol officer, and if they have 30 minutes to deal with a call, And this was like page 77 and 8, something like that. By the time you get a couple pages later, it starts to seem to tweak based on our actual, like it seemed like 30 minutes was kind of a guesstimate.

[03:04:48] It wasn't, but it kind of was. But then it started to say, well, here's what we're actually dealing with in Albemarle. And it started, I was going, oh, this is where I'd like to see this going. So that we're actually using the time that's based on our reality and not some standard, so to speak.

[03:05:06] It wasn't a standard. 30 minutes wasn't a standard pulled data. It was just a way to try to figure out your staffing and how many you need to have on and go about that. But it looked like you were starting to get to the point where you're going, well, the types of calls that were predominantly on, you could parse out what the actual time is. So it might be 40 minutes. It might be 35 minutes. And I think that that's the right direction to go to use that actual kind of data. Because until you have enough people and get the two to three simultaneous calls down. I don't know how else you manage. I mean, you got to kind of get at it in some way. Eventually, you know, I hope that we'll, in five

[03:05:45] years or 10 years, we get the simultaneous call data down where you're not on two or three calls at a time. All right. I'll, I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you very much for this report. I do agree that I think we, at least I agree that I think we need either a work session separate police and fire or a two-on-twos either one would would suit me well because i think i think

[03:06:17] as a board we need to more to know more and know all the levels levels of complexity that the police and fire are dealing with and i don't think we fully understand all that and so i think that work session of two-on-twos would be very valuable. I think the two schools that Chief Eggleston mentioned would be a very good first step. I know this is going to be a budget issue. We know that, but we also have to realize this is going to be a five to seven-year project to be able to

[03:06:52] implement, frankly, what we need. I'm not sure regarding the volunteer liaison position, And I say that because my experience has been that each volunteer chief has recruited from within.

[03:07:11] They build on that community. There's a sense of community. You have a fire chief, and they build that community. You get volunteers coming in then. I've seen that happen at Stony Point. That was, frankly, a really good example of how that whole station turned around with new leadership.

[03:07:33] I think we should help that leadership, and I think we should encourage that leadership and be supportive. The career staff should be supportive. But I do believe that it comes from that community, and it's what's happening at the volunteer station.

[03:07:53] It's for the volunteers to build on what they have and to make it so people do want to volunteer. I know that there are concerns regarding with the volunteers and the career staff with continuity of equipment.

[03:08:15] I mean, it's something that we as a board, we're going to have to address because it will save us money to have equipment that is more standardized throughout the entire county, also for people to be able to use that. I do know that we pay for that, and I do know that the volunteers' stations will also add to that.

[03:08:38] But frankly, we put in, what, 90% of the money for the equipment. Communication is an extremely important thing that I think we need to look at to make sure that we do have good communication between, and this is for fire, between the career staff and the volunteer stations.

[03:09:01] That's of paramount interest that we do have that communication. Otherwise, the community, the residents suffer if we don't have that. And I will tell you, I'm very proud of not only our career staff, but I'm extremely proud of our volunteers.

[03:09:18] They are doing things to assist and to help the county. And Supervisor Pruitt mentioned that saves the taxpayers a lot of money. And so we want the volunteers. We would like to grow that, but we also have to work together as a team, frankly.

[03:09:37] I know a lot of the volunteers are aging out, so it's incumbent upon each volunteer station to help grow that. And whatever we can do to help that, I would be in favor of. Once again, I think going through this in more depth would be helpful for both police and fire.

[03:10:00] For police, I don't know, I'm not questioning, but I guess I'm not up between 11 and 2, but I'm not sure where all the robust nightlife is. And I'll mention that because our EDA were saying there's no nightlife in Abelboro, Charlottesville.

[03:10:20] So, I mean, I guess there are a few spots, but I think Chief Reeves was correct when he was saying drunk drivers and, you know, possible shootings and things like that, more so than rowdy crowds.

[03:10:39] I'm not sure if we have a lot of that. But, frankly, both jobs are extremely difficult, both for the police, for the career firefighters, for the volunteer firefighters. These are extremely stressful, difficult jobs.

[03:10:56] And I think as a board, you have support to, that we, I'm speaking for myself, but I have a feeling that we want to make sure that you are successful and we can do what we can do to help make that successful.

[03:11:12] This is an excellent report. I look forward, frankly, because I heard the executive session version, I look forward to going into it in more depth and making our two departments extremely successful. Thank you.

[03:11:29] Thank you. I think I'm hearing that additional time on this is definitely welcome. There's a lot in here. Obviously, it's a long-range plan. I guess I look at it and I haven't quite grasped how much the staff has already been able to, I know, provide a huge amount of data, but actually to digest and look at the recommendations internally and to say, okay, yeah, this is the way we intend to do this.

[03:12:01] I'd like more reaction, I guess, and I expect and look forward to staff giving us some feedback on the report, which I know is originally an external evaluation based on data that was available.

[03:12:19] So, you know, that's something I think that would come into additional discussions for us is to get that staff input. Because there's a lot in here, not clear always what the reaction is internally.

[03:12:37] That said, obviously, this does have ramifications. I noted that I've always been very proud of how successful you've been with safer grants, but it suggests to me that, wow, if there's an evaluative criteria for safer grants, maybe I should think, why are we always getting these?

[03:12:55] because we need them because we're we're in need of that that staff um i i also i'm struck by as we bring in uh to particularly in the fire rescue a lot of new people uh how much of some of the issues that we're seeing are are related not just to staffing but to the inexperience or the the the the mid-level the the sort of gap perhaps and experience as you as you try to bring uh a system as large as ours is now, up from what it was, you know, much smaller several years ago, particularly fire. So those are the kinds of things that I'd be interested in exploring

[03:13:33] further, and I appreciate the report for that purpose. There's additional comments, and go ahead. Thank you. Things I forgot, and I was looking to see if I had missed something, but I, over the past some amount of time there's been discussion regarding benefits for volunteers that could be provided to help recruit them keep them retain them and there was always a great effort to try to pick out the one great thing but people's needs are different and so going back and having a menu

[03:14:06] of opportunities things now i think they have a 30 car sticker you know that's the benefit if they happen to have a car in the county so are there other things that could be on the list one of the ones that was very affirmatively recommended to me years ago was ability to buy into the county health system for people who are self-employed and it's even worse now because there are so many fewer opportunities for people to provide their own health insurance or make a group or something

[03:14:38] like that um so property tax help insurance access the uh those i think are i know that there's files of information in dan's office that could be looked at again to see if there's something that now in this day and age would have better success as we go forward uh and in answer to what other people have said i would much prefer a work session with all of us here because i learned so much from other people's questions and hopefully we can do that and i'll stop there thank you thank you jim i hear you see um jeff leaning in which tells me that he wants to

[03:15:16] say something and then i have one more other comment sure do thank you mr chair i think you hit on a key point that i wanted to take a few minutes and talk about regarding the staff's opportunity to to receive this report and have an opportunity to work through the report and as when i met with the board in two on twos i said specifically to the board i said we're going to need some time to be able to digest this and i really want the board to think about it in three with in three buckets if you would please with 350 pages of of report consultation on how we get

[03:15:53] better ms shiflett talked about early in the conversation that we're a continuous improvement organization we've been doing this for the last eight years in different departments starting out with IT in 2017 and working our way through various departments.

[03:16:09] And so Ms. Shiflett and her team in performance and strategic planning has become quite adept at working with departments on implementing plans on recommendations multi-year on a methodical approach on how we get better.

[03:16:27] The three things I want you to think about related to this report would be, number one, management and operational issues specific to opportunities and problems and that's my responsibility to work on with staff in our operating guidelines it said the board it says the board needs to focus on policy and the staff needs to work on day-to-day operations and so we're going to need some time to do that our staff's going to take this report and ms shiflett and our team we're going to sit down and we're going to work through some stuff already have

[03:17:02] started doing that on how do we get how do we take this really valuable information and get better second is resource consideration so the first is management and operational issues we'll be looking at opportunities we'll be looking at problems the second would be those issues that may need resource consideration the easiest thing for staff to do is to turn around and ask the board for additional positions or additional resources in the budget and that's why i told the board we're not going to have a discussion about a specific department or departments regarding

[03:17:38] budget in october it's much better to do that in the february march time frame when you've got the whole array of county departments and resource consideration in front of you i think this work that we'll do between now and february march will better prepare us to do a really good job in the budget to talk through what are the things that we can address without resource consideration re-engineering, moving people around, doing more with less, training opportunities, collapsing, consolidation, whatever that may be.

[03:18:12] And then what are the things that are going to need resource consideration? And then the final piece is policy consideration. And that's where we want to have some time to think through the consultants' recommendations to be able to work through. I appreciate Chief Eggleston getting up and saying, you know, maybe we could run to recruit schools.

[03:18:33] Well, maybe we could, but I don't know that staff's had an opportunity to really sit down and talk through what are our management and operational issues, what are our resource considerations, and then is there any policy consideration for the board? So I really appreciate the board's interest and you being up on your elbows saying we need another work session.

[03:18:55] I absolutely will meet your request there, but I will ask that we have some time to work through this so that we can hopefully meet and maybe even exceed your expectations, both in police and fire, with what are the things we can do easy, what's hard, What are the unintended consequences?

[03:19:19] What involves other departments that we may need to consider as well? So that's a lot for me to say, but there's a lot that's packed into this study. And so I hope that helps. I hope you'll take that into consideration.

[03:19:37] And Ms. Malik said she does better in the work session. I think we're going to need a little bit of time before we come back to the board in a work session. And we need some time to think through how that might work. The other piece is we're in mid-October, and we've got eight weeks left in this year.

[03:19:53] So from a workload standpoint, we need to be able to go back and say, what is doable between now and January, if that makes sense? Mr. Chair, I'll answer any questions, anything that the board has follow-up on. That's what I'm trying to get at when saying that we really want staff's response to this, also leadership response to it.

[03:20:13] So thank you. And what I wanted to just add to the conversation, because I will not be here in January, but having said that, and I have to be careful how I say this, because this is not intended to criticize groups of people, but we talk a lot about our community, the tourists that come to this community, all the people that drive in every day, what you refer to, Jeff, as heads in beds.

[03:20:44] the people that are not heads in beds they impact both of you all a lot and try and while we want to help them and we do help them and we do what they need i don't know if there is a best practice we're an unusual community because we have students whose parents come here all the time and don't have a clue how to get around this community just talk to the courts right now they are seeing more students in court whose parents can't even figure out where our court is.

[03:21:16] I'm just saying, I digress. But we have students, we have a huge tourism community, and we have lots, I mean, how many people drive into this community every day and leave? I don't know if that was part of the lens through we looked at this study, but getting back to is there anything that we can do, best practice looking at it through that lens to improve the way we we provide our services in this

[03:21:49] community or to to provide the resources whether they're people or financial to help pay for what that's costing us and i'm certainly by no means saying that we shouldn't be i don't want the reporters or anybody to say diantha said we shouldn't be answering calls for tour from tourists and that's not what I'm saying but we are a unique community students tourists and people who live outside of our community and drive in every day and leave and they're using our roads they're having wrecks they're getting sick so how do we wrap our arms around that and is this

[03:22:29] is does this report provide an opportunity to think about that in a different way thank you Thank you. There's nothing further. Nope. Thank you, both, and very interesting discussion.

[03:22:45] A lot to unpack. I just want to thank you so much. I know you need to move on to the next agenda. I just did want to acknowledge both the police and the fire department's leadership and their command staff and their involvement in this work and how much they have received that constructive criticism, that advice, in a very positive way.

[03:23:07] And many of the things did not surprise them, because this is the world they live in every day. But I did want to acknowledge how wonderful they've been to work with. Thank you. Board, this brings us to a presentation on federal advocacy.

[03:23:24] And this is being led by Mr. Trevor Henry, our Deputy County Executive. There we go. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

[03:23:52] What an interesting batting order for today. Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive, here to tee up our work within federal advocacy. I know we're a little bit crunched with time, so I will move quickly through kind of teeing this up.

[03:24:16] We have just really this year been engaged with formally at the federal level for the first time as a community. As we look through kind of the process around Rivanna Futures and backing up a couple years ago, we received advice or counsel that, you know, you guys do a great job working with the state and the state legislative process.

[03:24:42] There was a thought that there may be opportunities at the federal level that if we were more formally engaged, we might be able to draw down federal funding. And so that said, Deputy County Executive Wall and I, along with our CFO and procurement, we did what we're calling kind of a pilot procurement.

[03:25:01] We did this spring, and we basically did a process to get a consultant in to help us this year and next year with federal engagement, really to try it out.

[03:25:18] I think Mr. Richardson has communicated, you know, kind of this at a high level in the past. But good news is we went through this process. We contracted with the Roosevelt Group. Jacob Johnson will get up here in a minute and really give you kind of a situational awareness of D.C. today, you know, kind of a swat of or try to predict kind of what is happening there.

[03:25:41] But then talk about the FY27 budget process and what we would expect to happen. We were able to get the Roosevelt Group under contract, and the Friday, I think this was on a Tuesday, the Friday, we needed to provide input on congressional-directed spending.

[03:26:02] And so we promoted quickly two opportunities. They needed to be really in more of a shovel-ready state. One was some dam repair work that we needed to do at Mint Springs and Ravanna Futures. That's part of our capital project. We'd also put in for some state funding for that work.

[03:26:20] And then the second is Rivanna Futures and our site preparation, which the board is well aware of all the work we've done in that world. We were able to make that submission date. The dam repair project was actually elevated into committee, and that's something that Jacob can talk about in a minute.

[03:26:39] This summer, we were able to, so we sped up, and then we slowed down a little bit. We had two days of engagement with the Roosevelt Group. We did site visits. We met with all the department heads to look through the lens of what are the opportunities for federal funding out there and how does that overlay with the work that we do.

[03:26:57] We had some optional board of supervisor engagement, of which many took advantage of that, just really to meet with the Roosevelt Group and provide your thoughts and your input. This fall, we did an all-call of data with our department heads kind of in that lens around what are some opportunities for funding going into next year.

[03:27:19] And that's really what Jacob will talk about here in a minute. He'll give an update on kind of the 26 process and where that is. Maybe he has good news for us that has come in from even from today.

[03:27:34] I don't know. Maybe not based on the faces at the dais. But he'll give an update on that and then talk about next year's process. And I'll say it's been a pleasure to work with Jacob and then his boss, John Simmons.

[03:27:50] John has been involved at the state level for years as a contract to support Veteran and Defense Affairs Office. And so he's been connected into the county in our work at Ravana Futures that predates even this legislative work. And so Jacob is a former Army and is well-versed in all things D.C., and so don't hold that against him.

[03:28:12] He's a pretty good guy. Jacob? Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon. It's great to see many of you again and some for the first time. And just on the macro level, I just want to say congratulations for the AstraZeneca news.

[03:28:30] Recently, we actually recently advised a different foreign company on a pretty significant U.S. investment, and being on the other side of the table and seeing kind of the work that communities need to do to present themselves as contenders for those projects, I mean, it's a lot.

[03:28:46] So the fact that they chose Albemarle County, that they support and believe in the county and the county's future, I mean, it's a true testament to your work, the work of the county, and the people of the county. So it's really incredible. So the Roosevelt Group, we're a bipartisan government relations firm, Washington, D.C.

[03:29:05] I just want to provide a quick overview as we get into things, especially for those we haven't met. So we're, again, bipartisan. We have folks from both sides of the aisle, House, Senate, and the administration. And while we're a largely defense-focused firm, we work heavily with communities around the country.

[03:29:24] So to Trevor's point, we've worked extensively in the state of Virginia, the state of Michigan, a number in Maryland, Louisiana, Massachusetts, California, and provide guidance for them both engaging with their congressional delegations but also with the executive branch for how to seek opportunities often to support their military assets or military communities or military installations in their areas but also other opportunities or economic growth opportunities in those areas and one of the and i'll show a future slide with some it's a bit

[03:30:00] of a word salad or a bit acronym crazy but one of our differentiators is while we're we're about 16 people internally we also have about 100 subject matter experts to provide great depth of access experience awareness for the pentagon as well and again while defense focused we have a lot of people a lot of experience in other areas and so i'm a former chief of staff to a congressman from kentucky worked heavily on defense for sure but also kind of given the nature of his district in eastern kentucky a lot of economic development a lot of infrastructure water dams i mean you name

[03:30:36] it we did a lot of work in that in that area so these are kind of main firm leadership john simmons as trevor mentioned and chris good uh john like me has kind of a capital hill background chris goods more pentagon matt herman was a democrat chief of staff on the hill and then Kathleen was a career civil servant with the Air Force in the engineering, infrastructure, environment, installation world.

[03:31:03] And actually, Kathleen was recently named the chair of the board of the Air Force Association, so we're very proud of her for that. Here's kind of our other team members, so you can see me there. And then, so it shows just kind of the bipartisan nature of our firm and the breadth of experience.

[03:31:22] So Alana Breutman, senior advisor, former staffer for Senator Gillibrand from New York, and a senior appointee in the Obama administration. Alicia Farrell, a Republican, appropriations committee staff member, Taryn Judds, career civil servant in the Air Force.

[03:31:38] Ben Schultz, extensive service in the Air Force as a civilian. Nathan Pakowitz, career Navy and extensive experience there. Fike Raza was also an appointee in the Biden administration and has time working for several U.S. senators on the left.

[03:31:56] And then, again, all the acronyms, I know it's a bit crazy, but just trust that if there's a Pentagon agency, if there's an intelligence community office that you need access to, I mean, especially given Ravenna Station, I mean, like Bob Sharp, a former director of the NGA, and it was worked extensively with y'all and kind of we have those people available to help so as far as federal update and kind of travel into it i think kind of there's since the beginning of the year forces kind of were put in place that led to the situation we find ourselves in now

[03:32:36] so first i mean the administration's priorities were doge to right-size the federal government in the fashion that they saw fit um and so that was a major focus that then led to the reconciliation as it's called i know there's disagreement or feelings about this title specifically but statutorily the one big beautiful bill act um because the administration and congress wanted to push that before getting into the normal appropriations process it really pushed everything down the road um and it led to kind of the situation that we're in today however

[03:33:12] So that bill itself, I mean, it's far-reaching and a bit wonky, but because of the budget reconciliation process, it allowed Republicans in Congress to pass the legislation with simple majority votes.

[03:33:28] That bill did include about $150 billion, $156 billion for the Department of Defense. It's possible that that funding could be used in the future to continue paying military service members during the shutdown, but that has not yet occurred. Also driving kind of the situation that we're in now was the rescissions act that passed earlier this year.

[03:33:48] Rescissions process is one that allows the administration to request budget cuts to previously appropriated funding. And based on congressional rules, it only requires a majority vote. So there's many Democrats in Congress who have been frustrated by reaching agreements with Republicans in previous Congresses or previous years, that then the administration and Congress could unilaterally cut.

[03:34:15] And so that has led to kind of a delay in the annual appropriations process. So me as a House guy, I mean, I think the House generally get things done more quickly than the Senate, and this slide shows that. However, I mean, by this point in the year, many more of those bills should be passed through the House and at least move through the committee on the Senate side.

[03:34:41] And the fact that there's so many TBDs, it just speaks to the delay and the challenges faced this year. I mean, I think it was reported that Majority Leader Thune is bringing the defense appropriations bill to the floor this week, if it passes, it's a question.

[03:35:00] But it just speaks to the delay and kind of where we are now entering the government shutdown. I mean, I think if you spoke to me the last couple of weeks, just from speaking with a lot of friends who still work on the Hill, a lot of folks thought this would be a relatively short shutdown.

[03:35:19] And obviously, we've already been proven incorrect. However, often during government shutdowns and during previous government shutdowns, kind of a forcing function to ending it has been pictures, media reports of members of the military going without pay.

[03:35:40] And so that is just a politically sensitive topic or issue that members of Congress seek to address as soon as they can, which will often lead to a shorter end of a government shutdown. Because the government has decided to use a type of funding that is in multi-year to pay service members, at least for this pay period, it removes that as a potential pressure point or forcing function to end the shutdown.

[03:36:07] And so, again, while last week I would have told you I thought it would end last week because of that potential image of military members going without pay, now that that's off the table, we'll see. I think that's about as in-depth.

[03:36:25] I mean, it could be weeks. It could go on a decent while longer. As far as FY27, and actually one other note on the 26th, to Trevor's point, Senators Kane and Warner did submit the congressionally-directed spending request for the dam repair project.

[03:36:45] From talking to friends who work for members of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, basically the large reason that that bill has not advanced yet is due to issues between Chairman Senator Britt and Ranking Member Chris Murphy.

[03:37:02] However, I mean, the earmarks or the congressionally directed spending items in this bill are largely not political fights. So if and when full year 26 appropriations are enacted, we expect or we anticipate that that project will be included.

[03:37:17] As far as FY27, these are kind of enduring priorities that we put together kind of working with the team. And I think focus on Ravana Station and Futures, given our experience in the defense space, economic growth in general, and then really supporting federal and local partnerships and ways in which the county receives support, either monetarily or otherwise, from the federal government.

[03:37:46] So in terms of looking at next year, I mean, potentially making a request for the Boulders Road extension to support the Ravana Futures site and the AstraZeneca investment. also supporting on a general sense federal programs that the county benefits from I mean in the last discussion with kind of public safety safer was raised so supporting safer grants and expressing and going to our federal delegation to express how important that grant program is to the county and why it's important to maintain robust support for in the future also I mean

[03:38:26] Again, the $1.1 million for the disaster mitigation funding for dam safety, potentially funding for the Biscuit Run pedestrian bridge. I spoke with a friend from the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee this week. He thinks both that and the Boulders Road project fit perfectly in those arenas.

[03:38:45] We just need to hopefully wrap up FY26 so we can go on to FY27. and as far as kind of our plan for the next 12 months i know there's a lot of boxes um it's a bit crazy but basically um kind of federal actions or federal activities are on top again hopefully the government shutdown will end soon as well as reaching a deal for fy26 appropriations looking towards the next year the president is supposed to submit his budget request to congress in february which really kicks off the FY27 process so after that budget is submitted the appropriations

[03:39:24] committees will have kind of budget request hearings with different federal agencies and then move towards actually producing bills for FY27 to ensure that the county is in place and as strong a position as possible to kind of continue seeking federal support or make its priorities known we recommend I mean potentially a meeting in the next couple months with the delegation just to again re-emphasize kind of who you are where you're coming from and just general priorities and and to emphasize that you'll be coming back in the spring seeking additional

[03:39:59] support for potential earmarks or to express or ask questions about the FY26 project as well but I think over the next several months it's critical to finalize our priorities so that come February we can go meet with the delegation and by we I mean if any of you would like to come and I think that's powerful to have local community leaders coming up and requesting support it always makes it a much more compelling message so you can meet hopefully with the members and/or staff to advocate for your priorities we will formally submit those priorities to

[03:40:39] the members so that it fits within kind of their requirements and then work with you all and the committees to ensure that they have the necessary information to support hopefully I mean getting funding and additional support for next year it's also I mean that you can see the committees of jurisdiction I mean largely the appropriations on both sides of course kind of your delegation and again just emphasize or kind of foot stomp direct engagements absolutely critical um i mean we can go and kind of on your behalf and meet with members of the delegation

[03:41:14] but it's just much more compelling much more critical uh if it's county leadership some of you all if you're able to make it it makes a really big difference i think that's all i have thank you depending on your questions no no very much appreciate it uh i do want to alert the board that we're basically at the time when we were supposed to go into closed session and with a lot to do in closed session. That said, I think we have a few minutes if there are comments about going too much into the federal political picture currently, as complicated as

[03:41:51] it can be. Supervisor Brewer. One just very quick question is kind of about y'all's internal process, right? Like, we are in an interesting moment where it's, when we talk about the budget, it's not even clear what we're accomplishing at the end of the day, right? Because things are getting spent that are not appropriated and things that are being appropriated are not being spent right we have a community partner habitat for humanity that just before the administration turnover pulled down a massive grant from hud really exciting and as far as i know that's still on ice um i don't think it's lawful but i'm curious if there is any part of y'all's advocacy process

[03:42:30] that is basically a trailing function after an appropriation to be like hey can we get the damn money that that's actually allocated absolutely and i think that's um i mean since i mean using fy26 as an example well i guess you're more meaning after the bill is enacted yeah i mean so we have relationships with federal agencies kind of across the board i know the slide earlier was mainly defense heavy but um i mean until kind of you have the money the job's not done so we'll absolutely kind of trail and follow on and i mean for that specific grant um i mean if

[03:43:09] that's a community priority i mean let us know so that we can go to the delegation and say hey this is an important grant for the county uh we want it cleared because it provides xyz benefit for our people and um having the delegation go to the administration to make that pitch can be a compelling um way to kind of loosen up or get the funds across on that specific issue mr richardson i'm going to be looking to you i have not checked in with dan rosentwick recently on the status of that grant but i i know it was delayed um so if that is i it's certainly a

[03:43:46] priority for me and my district i'd be happy to ask miss wall she she and staff have a standing regular meeting with dan and and could you come up and and give the board an update on where we are with that, please. Certainly, Anne Wall, Deputy County Executive. Two responses. We will check in with Mr. Rosenzweig, and we do that on a quarterly basis, so we're always up to date on what's going on, and we'll get the most up-to-date information. I will just point out on Jacob's behalf and the Roosevelt Group, we did have an occasion where there was a little bit of

[03:44:25] additional support we needed for a federal grant, and the Roosevelt Group stepped in, even in the last couple of months to assist us to get some additional answers that we needed from that funding partner. And so that's an important part of the work that they'll do for us is to be somebody else to ask some of those questions. One more wheel squeaking. Excellent.

[03:44:49] Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. No, I don't have any questions. Thank you for the great report. Could we receive a copy of that? I'd like to have that so I can go through it again thank you supervisor malik no questions but this is very exciting stuff so thank you very much forward to coming to dc i would uh yeah thank you i would note that the the naco legislative conference is february 21 24 next year which is in that february march time frame and i know a couple of us are on the naco committees and would likely be in attendance there so just throwing it

[03:45:26] out there as perhaps a coordinating effort, that we'd already be up there around some of that kind of activity, that that could be advantageous to anticipate. Yeah, that'd be a great time, for sure. Supervisor Lupista Curtin. Thank you very much for the presentation. I look forward to working with you. And I appreciate it as well, and I certainly do encourage, whether I'm here or not, the board to participate in these meetings with the legislators and help push this forward. It's a cynical time, but I'm very happy that we have you and that we're pursuing this avenue and not just

[03:46:02] leaving everything to chance. Is there anything further? All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Appreciate it. Board, well, that caught us up a little bit. Yes. And it is time for us to go into closed meeting and supervisor approval would read the motion.

[03:46:20] Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, TAC 3711A of the Code of Virginia. First, under subsection 3, to discuss and consider the acquisition of real property in the Scottsville Magisterial District for a public purpose where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the county and the board.

[03:46:40] Second, under subsection 6, to discuss and consider the investment of public funds relating to an existing performance agreement with Agrospheres Incorporated where bargaining is involved and where, if made public initially, would adversely affect the financial interest of the county. third under subsection eight to consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters including a performance agreement with Agrospheres Incorporated requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel and fourth and finally under subsection 29 to discuss the negotiation or renegotiation of a public contract with Agrospheres Incorporated involving the expenditure of public funds where discussion in an open session would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the county and the board.

[03:47:19] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor McKeel, without objection if the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapiso? Kirtley? Aye. Good evening. Before we begin tonight, we have to come out of closed session if Supervisor Pruitt has a motion. Yes. I would

[03:47:58] like to move the Board of Supervisors certified by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirement of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. We have a second.

[03:48:16] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, a second from Supervisor McKeel without objection if the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista? Kirtley? Aye. Thank you.

[03:48:32] First item then is from the county executive, and I believe we have a report. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Abby Stump will help me pull a report together. And again, as always, Abby and her staff in CAPE are really good at getting us, pulling information together for the report.

[03:48:50] Board, this month I'm really going to do two things. I'm going to recognize internally the staff that have hit milestones for years of service, and that celebration was last week. And accompanying that were an awards ceremony for living our values.

[03:49:07] And I want to take a minute to walk through that. Second part of the report, I want to talk just for a few minutes about another thing that happened last week. And it's regarding the economic development announcement out at Ravana Station. So I'm going to take a couple of minutes just to highlight that, not just for the board, but maybe also for the community.

[03:49:25] And then I really want the board to ask any questions that you've got regarding the information that we have on the economic development announcement. This first slide, and board, I won't take time tonight to go through the 5, the 10, the 15, all the way up to 45 years.

[03:49:44] I think that Matt Davis deserves recognition at 45 years with our organization. As you can see on there, it's an amazing feat to work in local government or to work for any employer for 45 years. He does work in our Parks and Recreation Department, and he was honored with the ceremony last week, as was David Benish in our Community Development Department.

[03:50:08] He is in front of the board with some degree of regularity, so this board is very familiar with David and his work, his leadership. But every person on this slide has made valuable contribution to this organization. We can go through every person and talk about something that they've done of significance in the time they've been in the organization.

[03:50:28] What I'd say in summary on this slide is that we're looking at 86 staff members with a combined 1,140 years of service to Albemarle County, and that represents all of the departments, internal and external, that work on behalf of the community and the citizens in this county.

[03:50:47] I am going to highlight a couple of things for the board and for the community, please. So I want to talk about Kim Harris, the only person in Albemarle County's Department of Social Services to have served every child welfare program in every one of our programs.

[03:51:03] Since beginning her career, she worked in child protective services, foster care, family preservation, and now she leads the family support program. Her 25 years of service reflect exceptional dedication and expertise. They make her a trusted source of guidance and best practices across the department.

[03:51:23] Under her leadership, the family support program expanded from serving a few schools to reaching children and their families across all Almar County public schools, strengthening prevention and early intervention efforts. Child welfare is a field where the national average of tenure is 18 months.

[03:51:41] So in social services, I'll say it again, on a national average in child welfare, The average tenure for a social services professional is 18 months. Kim has 25 years of commitment and compassion.

[03:51:57] It truly stands out. And I'd also like to mention that during the awards ceremony, there was a large representation of social services employees in the years of service recognition. Not just this young lady, but other folks as well.

[03:52:14] I'd also like to highlight Billy Taylor. Billy Taylor has helped shape the organization in not only being a trusted leader who lifts up others, but also as a member of a team of employees who was on the original team in the county to develop the county's core values, core values of integrity, innovation, stewardship, and learning.

[03:52:34] This happened way before I came to the county a number of years ago. And then within the last several years, the staff worked on adding community as an added core value for county government. Billie worked on developing the values to becoming a lasting legacy that continues to guide our organization today.

[03:52:55] Through her work with finance and budget, her leadership, her humility, she really exemplifies the principles that she helped find. These values remain the foundation of how we serve the community and each other every single day.

[03:53:12] And, Board, you see pictures from other folks that day. We had supervisors and management read stories about contributions that these people had made, many of which they do not want to be recognized. And I've learned over the years, there are a number of our staff that they do not want to be publicly recognized for their commitment to serving the county.

[03:53:33] But they will tolerate, at times, us recognizing them in public and appreciating their work because it matters so much. As we were just talking about living our values, During our recent award ceremony, we recognized employees who exemplify the principles that guide how we serve our community and one another with Living Our Values awards.

[03:53:56] These honorees demonstrate integrity, innovation, stewardship, learning, and community through their daily work. Each nomination tells a story of dedication, creativity, and care that strengthens our organization. And then the winners, again, are brought forward in the auditorium and they're honored in front of their colleagues.

[03:54:17] And these nominations come from across all of county government every year. And we have a team that puts some time in trying to determine who stands out. It's very difficult to make those decisions because each story tells something that's happening to help our community, either with opportunity or with problems.

[03:54:40] For an example, the Copy Center team exemplifies stewardship through efficient, high-quality use of time and resources. They were honored for managing diverse projects with precision and professionalism. Their collaborative approach and problem-solving ensure creative, effective solutions for all of our county departments.

[03:55:00] They maximize resources. They deliver timely, high-impact materials. They strengthen how the county communicates with residents. Charlie, Alex, Barbara, and Dave model responsibility, care, and sound judgment in every project. Those folks also have a lot of tenure in this organization, and they do a lot of other things on a regular basis as they work their way through the departments to just try to help us in any way possible.

[03:55:26] I'll give you an example with Charlie. I was on the front desk about two weeks ago with Calvin. Calvin and Josh worked the front desk, and Charlie was down there. And Calvin said that Charlie on a regular basis comes out and provides him with support when he needs to walk the parking lots, when he needs to be out on the property, when he needs to go out to help citizens in the parking lot.

[03:55:50] Charlie will ease over and help him. And that's not in Charlie's job description to do that. But that deserves to be noted because this is the kind of attitude that they exemplify each and every day. Viti Danik also exemplifies the county's values of learning through initiative and adaptability.

[03:56:11] She quickly mastered public procurement, earning her promotion to procurement manager. Her revisions to the purchasing manual and benchmarking work improved county processes. Vita's commitment to continuous learning strengthens both her career and the county's effectiveness.

[03:56:30] Her dedication is representative of the entire procurement office team whose commitment to excellence earned Albemarle County the National Procurement Institute's 2025 Achievement of Excellence in Procurement Award for the second consecutive year. And that's based on innovation, professionalism, and high standards.

[03:56:47] So, Board, you can see some of this work is outward-facing in the community, and other work that we do is more inward-facing, where we'll have internal customers as well as external customers. And we're always excited to recognize the work because it all matters. All right, I'm going to switch gears and talk just for a minute about this piece of property that's out on North 29.

[03:57:10] And Emily Kilroy, who's our Economic Development Director, she's with us this evening, as is her daughter, Nora. And I appreciate them being with us this evening as well. I want to take a couple of minutes, and I want to talk about the AstraZeneca announcement. This is the announcement that occurred last week at Ravana Station site, northern Albemarle County.

[03:57:29] This is a broader footprint of Ravanna Station, and it also includes Ravanna Futures. It's where this board, and I said it last week and I'll continue to say it, I'll thank you for your courage and your vision to step forward and buy 462 acres that surrounds Ravanna Station.

[03:57:47] It's where 3,000 employees currently work, 2,700 are Department of Defense intelligence staff that work in the federal government doing Department of Defense work to keep our country safe, and then we have 300 active military personnel.

[03:58:05] They have become a key partner since this organization purchased that property with our team going out there on a regular basis to be there to talk about what Ravana Futures looks like, what compatibility of partners might look like to where we are building a broader campus with both private sector, continued federal government growth, the potential for an academic type of footprint out there.

[03:58:35] as well. This campus continues to evolve thanks to the good work in the county. So last week was the announcement of AstraZeneca, and I'll just remind the board and our community, really the numbers, that it's on the board up here. It's a biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus, two specialized production facilities and processes. About 75 acres of the Ravana Futures property will be provided to AstraZeneca. They will build, in that footprint, buildings that will house

[03:59:12] 600 direct new jobs. The minimum salary will be $125,000 per year. These are excellent paying jobs for our community, and the average salary, which is not shown on the screen, is $160,000 a year.

[03:59:29] It's a total $4.5 billion capital investment, and we are so excited to invite them to our community. I'll talk just for a minute about the company. AstraZeneca is a global, science-led, patient-focused pharmaceutical business committed to excellence in research and development and focused highly on making medicines that make people well.

[04:00:05] They also have a focus on sustainability. I looked at their core values as a company. They are in, I believe, 28 countries in the world, and I believe they have 47 buildings in the world. They're corporately headquartered in London. And as they looked to invest in Virginia, Emily and her team, Trevor Henry, worked really hard with the state to answer questions and really show that the property at the Ravana station could be a good match for what they're

[04:00:39] looking to do. They have core values that include a commitment to scientific advancement and innovation. They have a commitment to putting patients first, patients' needs first. They practice operational excellence and they strive for success and operational excellence every single day and then finally all of that's underpinned by doing the right thing and that's upholding ethical standards all wrapped around again a commitment on this site for green building

[04:01:13] on-site solar panels off-site renewable energy green design principles and an emphasis on closed loop systems to recapture and reuse energy so we we believe not just with that but also their commitment to their workforce, their commitment to training and development, their commitment to a diversified workforce, a workforce that, just as us, we want to have a workforce that resembles the community that we serve. All of these things mattered to us when we were talking to them, and they absolutely like this community. It's evident to me that they feel like that they have

[04:01:52] found a good place for their next manufacturing investment. As I've said, they're a corporate partner where they talk about patients, society, the planet, and their shareholders. A lot of their websites suggest that they've got significant investment in climate as well as in health equity and access focus. And so again, I believe that we have found a partner that can be a transformational biotech, biopharmaceutical company in that corridor where we bought that property and it is zoned for an industry in the right area in northern Albemarle County and I believe that that

[04:02:28] can be a hinge pin as we begin to work not just to continue to fill in that property but to go across the road help our good partners down at North Fork and then on down the 29 corridor. The opportunity I believe and Miss Kilroy, the board, all of you experienced this last week is the Research partnerships, the research partnership opportunities with UVA, the Manning Institute, that is really, really clear and critical.

[04:02:56] Workforce training and upskilling with PVCC. As you know, Christy Shifflett is on the PVCC board. She's the vice chair. And PVCC has already stepped forward and said we really want to be in the middle and help in an appropriate way with workforce training and upskilling.

[04:03:13] Commercial partnerships with Seville Biohub, the Commonwealth Bioaccelerator, our local companies, and then infrastructure build-out will provide capacity and access for other properties. And we know by talking to our critical partners at the state, at the State Department of Economic Partnership, that there's going to be some additional opportunities to attract good paying jobs to the county again in that area.

[04:03:45] So our strategic plan alignment, as you know, this board was heavily involved, as was our community with the economic development strategic plan work that happened earlier this year. And so we're really talking about the mission, which is to strengthen and diversify the county's tax base.

[04:04:03] I want to talk about that for just a minute, to support business upscale and redevelopment, to bring really good-paying jobs that are career ladder jobs to this community. And then goal number two, grow into the Mid-Atlantic's premier destination for biotechnology and life sciences innovation.

[04:04:21] I believe the partnership with UVA leading back up to Ravana Station, that this is just going to be an unbelievable opportunity for us as we continue to work and plan for the success out at Ravana Station. This is just a picture of the activity that was going on last week at the site.

[04:04:40] It drew, of course, all of our state officials and our state partners. It also drew some national attention with the work that's going on in Washington, D.C. But the bottom line is AstraZeneca chose us.

[04:04:56] They're here because we competed and we convinced them that this was a good match and a good fit for Albemarle County, and I certainly believe that it is. This is our team, and this isn't everyone, but we had staff on the site to help last week with the event, and we tried to grab as many people as we could, and the bad thing about recognizing staff is someone's going to be left out that was doing something we needed them to do at that moment.

[04:05:26] But board, if nothing else, what I really want you to understand with Ms. Kilroy's leadership and really just a handful of small staff members in the Economic Development Department, it takes a lot of support across county government to be able to outrun the competition and to be able to convince the state and AstraZeneca that we can meet their demand for tempo and pace.

[04:05:52] And this is a good example of just good cross-departmental collaboration. Again, Emily's on the front row there with Blake and Jeff and a lot of folks from FEZ. But you see budget, you see finance, you see community development, a lot of IT.

[04:06:10] It's just a heavy lift across the organization, but we all understand how important this is and how we need to respond and compete well. So I said I wanted to talk just for a minute about the tax base.

[04:06:25] The board, I think, has done a good job, as you work through the economic development strategic plan, of challenging our team to build our tax diversification. One strategy is to attract the appropriate kind of commercial and industry capital tax base.

[04:06:43] And I believe this fits into the bullseye of the work that was done with the economic development strategic plan. And we're still working through the numbers, and we'll continue to work through the numbers. But you can see, Board, we talked about during the budget process that we were looking at about just over 11% of tax value in commercial and industry.

[04:07:04] And once we get to 2030 and AstraZeneca is fully built out, that's going to move us to just over 15%. And, Board, you saw that back in 2015 that we were around 17%. Ms. McKeel mentioned that, that she remembers a time, Ms. Malick, that they remember a time about 10 years ago when we were about 17%.

[04:07:23] I've talked to you recently about other communities that are in that 17% to 25%, and that diversification and that balance allows us to take a little bit of the pressure off the residential taxpayer here in Almar County, because it really has to do with cost for service, and it's more expensive to serve residential than it is to serve business and industry.

[04:07:45] And so that revenue that we capture from business and industry allows us to pivot and to work with you on your strategic goals and do other things that we might not otherwise be able to afford. So I think that's my last slide. I just want to say, because Ms. Kilroy is here, that I frankly could not be more proud, not just of her and the economic development team, but of Mr. Henry, Trevor Henry, and the picture that was up there of the cross-departmental representation.

[04:08:18] Jody Filardo and community development and all of her staff, while all of this was going on, we're also working on the comprehensive plan. We're going to have the public hearing in just a few minutes on that. So we're running parallel tracks, just as the board is, on a recurring basis. But we needed to stay focused on this because we thought it was quite an opportunity.

[04:08:39] So I'll be happy to answer any questions. We're going to be working on this for quite a while. But, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to you in case there's specific questions this evening. Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor Proett. Thank you so much. I think what I like most about that presentation is how it paired together, right?

[04:08:57] We began by talking about all the different members of county staff who've had the opportunity to be recognized and given their flowers lately. And then we turned directly into this really generational investment that's been pulled down for Albemarle County. And I say that I think those pair well together because I hope it is not lost on the public.

[04:09:18] It's certainly not lost on me. The incredible way in which staff has helped lead this project and has been, you know, we can sit here and take a lot of credit for vision, but I think it should be not lost on anyone how much vision came from county leadership and how much incredible quality execution on this really complex, multifaceted plan came from our really talented staff across all levels.

[04:09:45] And, you know, this is economic development that we're seeing this delivered, but this is the kind of, you know, outcomes that we have across every single one of our department. And I think it's really extraordinary and wonderful. I don't want to not extend, you know, congratulations to my peers on the board.

[04:10:03] You know, I can probably take the least credit for AstraZeneca just because of my timing on the board, right? I was not part of the decision for this land acquisition, and y'all were, and that was challenging at the time, right, and I think visionary. And on that note, I also want to make sure that someone who is not here presently gets her flowers.

[04:10:24] So my predecessor on the board, Captain Donna Price, was chair when this initial land acquisition went through, and it was controversial in the community. And Chair Price, I thought, did a really remarkable job of being just the loudest, most belligerent flag waver of the importance of this project.

[04:10:51] And I think changed a lot of mine. She was out there in the community banging this drum, and she really shepherded it through. And so I want to make sure that she gets her recognition. I would also just reflect, you know, just a few hours earlier, I talked about how I think one of the most concerning things about how Memorial County's economics to me, the most concerning thing about the economic situation of our county to me, and the biggest goal I think our economic development efforts should focus on is the fact that we actually have lower wages than most Virginians and most Americans, while we have much higher incomes.

[04:11:29] And for those of y'all who weren't here before, that's because, simply, Albemarle County residents are rich because they're rich, not because we pay them well, right? More people get their money from the bank giving them more money in Albemarle County than they get from good wages.

[04:11:47] This helps correct that, right? Afton Scientific helps correct that. This helps correct that. This helps provide further down the line tax relief to people, and it's really exciting. Also, y'all will forgive me, I had so many things I wanted to say about this project. wasn't able to join y'all on the groundbreaking. I remember being really disappointed when I learned this in advance. I had moved my vacation already three times because of campaign-related scheduling things. And it was basically either I make the groundbreaking or I, you know, not continue to

[04:12:21] be married to my husband who had already moved the vacation three times. So I apologize. I wasn't able to join y'all. I think, oh, I think it's also worth mentioning, you know, when we first heard about this opportunity and Emily briefed us on it, she described this as putting us several years ahead of schedule. And I think she gave us a specific number. I'm probably, I don't want to share that number in public, but several years ahead of schedule on what we were picturing with the build out of Rybana Futures. And that's really exciting, right? That's more tax revenue

[04:12:56] sooner that's more economic opportunity sooner i mention this though because i want to emphasize this to my peers on the board and i want to emphasize it for the public that also puts us ahead of schedule on the challenges that are going to come with that that we're going to have to address right this is going to be greater complexity in this county this is going to be greater demand for services in this county this is going to be greater demand for housing in this county that's going to come as Rivanna Futures plows ahead and continues to grow. That's very exciting, but we've got to lock in. All right. Thank you for letting me act so long.

[04:13:33] Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. Thank you. Mike, I agree, and you have phrased some of what I was thinking very nicely, so I'll try not to repeat it, but certainly AstraZeneca is going to create a game-changing situation for our community. I remember 12 years ago when I was campaigning for this seat, one of the things I was saying was how appalling it was that we only had about 18 to 20 percent of

[04:14:06] our revenues coming in from businesses. That was part of my campaigning. And we are now at 13 percent. And I was saying at that point, we need to be 25% or 30%. So this helps us.

[04:14:22] I recognize that probably folks in the community are concerned, but we're going to have to, we are a community, and we're going to be able to work through those concerns as best we can, and the challenges that Mike referenced, certainly housing is going to be a challenge,

[04:14:38] But it really, this is going to provide good jobs for, certainly Jeff talked about the outstanding jobs that they would be bringing, but I'm going to say that this is going to allow some of the children of parents that live in this community to get a job and stay in this community.

[04:15:03] And that is really important because they will have a whole gamut of jobs, a big range of pay that they will be offering and an opportunity for a career ladder for folks, which is really something we don't have now.

[04:15:19] So I really applaud that. And just on a personal note, my last job at UVA, I was a research researcher. And AstraZeneca was one of the companies that I worked with.

[04:15:38] And I can remember having audits from AstraZeneca. I can remember working with the folks that came in. And they really were, at least my experience with the folks that were in the hospitals and the clinics and my office doing their job.

[04:15:53] They were a wonderful group to work with. And I wouldn't say that about all pharmaceutical companies, but AstraZeneca was really wonderful. I just want to switch for a minute, though, Jeff, again, back to your first presentation.

[04:16:10] And I just really think it's wonderful that the Copy Center received an accolade. And I say that, but I'm sorry, I haven't had enough coffee tonight. The copy center is, they are a group of folks that work behind the scenes.

[04:16:30] Most people don't even realize they are there. Don't think about them. And they are so critical to the work we do in this organization. And I compare them a little bit to my late husband's job at the Highway Research Council.

[04:16:46] And all they did, to be honest with you, you all know, was produce reports. And all those reports had to be copied. They had to be bound. And the copy center folks were critical to the work that they did. And I know that our copy center folks are critical to the work we do here.

[04:17:05] And a big shout out because I'm just thrilled that they had public recognition. So with that, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malone. Thank you. That was a great adventure last week and certainly something that I think many people have looked forward to or worried about for a long, long time.

[04:17:24] but in the right place at the right time, the right people, and the right atmosphere and community culture of the company that matches our community culture, which is otherwise they wouldn't have come. I'll talk more about that later on.

[04:17:41] But I agree with others that there will be greater demands because of this project, but it is absolutely worth it to me about the good jobs for our children and grandchildren that will be provided. And I've got two 18- and one 22-year-old grandchildren, and I would like them not to have to make the 10 years in New England first and come back when they're 50 instead.

[04:18:04] So I hope that that works out from my very selfish point of view. But every PhD who works there needs five or ten people who do not have an advanced degree. And that was my role as a basic science person, the only person in my lab in Boston who did not have an advanced degree or multiple ones.

[04:18:21] But we worked as a team. It was a fantastic experience. and I hope that others will have such a positive experience as I have had. So carry on. Thank you. And thank you, Emily and Nora, wherever you are. You're hiding. Okay. Thanks.

[04:18:37] Supervisor Calloway. Thank you, Mr. Richardson, for sharing. It's great to share the celebration you have with staff. It's especially nice to see the longevity that we have with employees in the organization because that's not exactly the norm these days in any organization or any segment.

[04:18:56] So look forward to them reaching even new milestones as they continue down their career path. Of course, I share with you in praising the team and the staff that brought last week to fruition. But I do want to also just call out, you're their leader.

[04:19:12] This board, when I joined it, we just were getting an economic strategic plan in place. It just didn't exist. And here we are, less than 10 years later, executing on that strategic plan in a way that's going to make some meaningful differences in this county and what we're able to do.

[04:19:32] And I'd like to take a moment, and I'm sure the fellow supervisors who've already spoke would join and say that kudos to you as the leader of the team, and I hope you were able to savor and enjoy the experience for yourself as well last week. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley.

[04:19:50] Thank you very much for that presentation. that was an example of how incredible our Albemarle County is and all the staff. I mean, I credit the staff, and I really think it's important the way you recognize the entire staff.

[04:20:07] You continue to do so, along with our two deputy county executives. We're always talking about staff, the hard work that they do. If we look good to anybody, I'm not saying we do, but if we do, It's because of the staff.

[04:20:25] That's who we have to thank, because they are truly there to help us, to help us succeed, to give us answers, to answer our questions, to be innovative. We are now, I think, recognized as a bioscience innovation center with the Manning Institute and the Biohub and AstraZeneca.

[04:20:48] That's just the cherry on top of the pie. I mean, we've been heading toward this, and I remember when I was first on the board and we did approve purchasing, we all approved the purchasing of the land, we were taking a risk. We were taking a gamble.

[04:21:04] But under your leadership, Mr. Richardson, we said, yes, let's do it. This would be a good thing for our county. And certainly, I think you've probably heard there are probably other people on the outside may be taking credit for this but it all comes down to our county our staff your leadership um i couldn't be prouder i've i think we've all worked for other organizations this is a well oiled machine that runs well and that values their people very much i'll say that again they value

[04:21:43] the people that work here at the county and that's much appreciated so thank you again for the report and i will add my uh thank you for the presentation i appreciate the congratulations to the employees both for longevity and for their special recognition um and uh this uh event of bringing astrazeneca to the county bringing ravenna futures to the county is a team effort but required tremendous leadership and i really appreciate that um at this particular event

[04:22:19] We had the opportunity to mingle with a lot of people from AstraZeneca. They sent a good contingent there to represent them. And the person who started the remarks was their executive vice president for global operations, Pam Chang, who's also their chief sustainability officer.

[04:22:38] And I had an opportunity to talk with her about what that meant, and her eyes just lit up. She takes this seriously. And I was very impressed and very pleased to hear her tout the efforts that they will make to make sure that this is a sustainable facility, net zero, and other values that the company brings.

[04:23:01] They're excited to be coming to Albemarle County, and I think we should welcome them. Thank you. Next up is public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings tonight.

[04:23:20] and vice chairman keel will read the rules and introduce the speaker we have two speakers signed up in person and no one online and i'll read the rules during the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board individuals may address the board of supervisors individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting a sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you

[04:23:57] begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, please state your name and if you live in Elmar County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole any written comments statements or supporting material may be given to the clerk if representing a group or organization you may ask others present to raise their hand in recognition speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker back and forth debate is not

[04:24:37] permitted and please do not speak from your seat or out of turn all comments are live streamed recorded and published on the almar county website excuse me and our first speaker is alicia Lenahan. Welcome. Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in the Scottsville District.

[04:25:04] Since April, the Board of Supervisors has heard stark warnings about the fragile state of our democracy. The attacks on the constitutional order have been relentless. Birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law granted by the 14th Amendment still hang in the balance. The sovereignty and authority granted to the states in the 10th Amendment face repeated assaults with deployment of National Guard, and active duty military personnel. We cannot count the number of people who have lost the Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable searches

[04:25:38] and seizures because of widespread surveillance and data collection. That goes hand in hand with the failure to provide due process granted by the Fifth Amendment. The federal government continues to double down on its efforts to execute the largest mass deportation in history. From the beginning, it failed to target individuals with violent criminal backgrounds. ICE and cooperating agencies are sweeping up anybody they can get their hands on. The administration has made it clear that it will not stop with undocumented immigrants, but will use ICE and the DOJ to

[04:26:15] threaten us all. In spite of the onslaught, this body has not considered the anti-ICE resolution presented in July or even offered to make a statement of principle on behalf of our immigrant and refugee neighbors. And now the First Amendment is in the crosshairs. On Saturday, October 18th, thousands of people, many of them your constituents, will line the sidewalks along Route 29 again. We will exercise our right to speak, to gather peacefully, and to articulate our grievances to the government. If the institutions built to protect democracy falter

[04:26:53] or fail, then the burden falls on ordinary citizens, pro-democracy advocates and independent voices willing to speak up. For us, silence is not an option because it normalizes the unacceptable. This is my question to you. Given all the ways the administration has targeted and denigrated its critics, if the National Guard is deployed to the streets of Charlottesville, if Trump supporters tried to disrupt and intimidate the No Kings participants, who will the county choose to

[04:27:28] protect? We will be watching. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker, and I think I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly. Oh, here he comes. Bill Therian. Is that correct? Great. Welcome. Thank you so much. Mr. Chair and members of the board, my name is William Therian. I'm in the Ryle District. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. As you probably remember, on February 17th, 2025, a gunman opened fire in the parking lot of the Harris Teeter and Crozet. Two people

[04:28:02] were killed before an off-duty federal officer, who just happened to be there, intervened and stopped the shooter. The first 911 call came at around 1.35, and the first Albemarle police unit arrived roughly six minutes later. As tragic as this day was, imagine what could have happened in those six minutes if that federal officer wasn't there, if the gunman had gone in the store or kept firing. This is not a criticism of our officers. It's proof that even their best efforts are limited by how thinly they're stretched. The county just had this new report that was talked about today, and it makes one thing unmistakably clear. It describes a department that regularly

[04:28:40] manages three to five calls at once, sometimes more than 10 when there's only nine officers on. It shows how officers are routinely pulled between zones to cover gaps, leaving entire areas of the County without immediate help. These are not abstract statistics. They describe the conditions under which officers in our community are working right now. And it's not just large-scale events like what happened in Crozet. In August 2024, in Smith County, Deputy Hunter Reedy was shot and killed during a traffic stop, even with assistance right by in seconds that occurred. Every officer

[04:29:15] in Albemarle County knows that feeling, making a stop or responding to a call and realizing backup might be 20 minutes away. That happens every day and every shift. That's the risk that this report is warning about. The report frames this as a five-year plan, but a five-year plan is how long it takes to build a park, not how long it takes to stabilize our emergency services. This safety of this community, the officers who protect it, cannot wait that long. What this report outlines is an emergency that demands an immediate plan within the next six to 12 months. Alamara County is one

[04:29:53] of the wealthiest counties in Virginia. The question isn't whether we can afford to fix this, it's whether we choose to. Before today, you might not have realized the full extent of the risk, but now you do. And if something happens to one of our officers or residents because help comes too late, people will look back at this report and rightly ask why action wasn't taken right away.

[04:30:14] You have the chance to prevent this outcome right now, and I hope you'll take it seriously. Thank you. Board, this brings us to our single public hearing this evening, AC44 final adoption proposal pursuant to VA code 15.2-2226 to consider adoption of the new Albemarle County Comprehensive Plan.

[04:30:38] This is led by Tanya Schwartzen-Druber Planning Manager and Michael Barnes, our line director. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us here this evening and being with us along the whole way. So we are here and supported by several staff and colleagues to answer any questions that may come up and to consider adoption of AC44 after several year effort.

[04:31:10] We'll keep this presentation fairly short, go through a couple of the updates that we went through for this round of this final document, discuss a few next steps, and then your general discussion. A few of the notable changes over the last few weeks. We updated the language regarding the potential criteria for assessing the development areas, as well as updated the future land use map per your direction on the sweet spots property. We also updated and

[04:31:46] clarified some of the housing data and added several housing related actions. We did clarify that the big moves are not in a priority order and we did incorporate the PC recommendations as directed by you. Just as a reminder, these are the big moves that are included in AC44 and these will be used to prioritize the actions and in turn incorporate those priority actions into our work plans. And speaking of work plans, these are the items that we, the planning division, anticipate

[04:32:23] working on over the next few years. As mentioned before, we will be back in front of you with a citizen-initiated comprehensive plan amendment. We also anticipate developing development area plans that cover areas of activity centers, affordable housing, urban design, and so on.

[04:32:43] We've heard over the course of the development of AC44 that a rural area plan is needed, so we intend to incorporate it into our work plan over the next several years. As you already know, the zoning modernization project is already underway, and as I understand it, you'll receive an update on that project in the next month or so.

[04:33:05] We're also prepared to be involved in coordinating the big moves with our county strategic plan, budget efforts, and with other agencies. This is really all I have for tonight. It's a big evening, and I appreciate any comments that you have.

[04:33:23] there is a motion on the slide once we get to that point. Thank you. Thank you. And the board what I propose is that you know any sort of questions and smaller items we can go through our order then open the public hearing and then after that if there are any you know major points that need a vote before we take a vote on the whole document or anything like that we do that at that time. Is that acceptable? Okay then starting Ms. Supervisor Pruitt just. Thank you.

[04:33:57] I appreciate the approach, so I'm not going to go through with any kind of snickle fritz because, frankly, I think that's what I spent the last two meetings doing. And so I don't have any particularized edits or anything. I think we're past that point.

[04:34:12] I'm ready to vote up or down. The only thing, because I'm sure this is going to come up more, so I will kind of open this topic in the form of a question because I think we're going to potentially have to grapple with it. I know that the planning commission and several of us also received overnight, over the past two nights, some concerns about the process by which we're talking about kind of returning to how we used to do things before the 2015 comprehensive plan of having the ability to have comprehensive land use amendments that are brought by citizens.

[04:34:49] First off, I'm realizing I could control FED all day long, but I don't know if there is actually language tending to that point in the comprehensive plan or if this is a staff action that we're talking about to kind of ameliorate some of our concerns about that. So if there's specific language in the comprehensive plan that I should be pointed to so we make sure we're looking at the right thing, help me out, because I don't know where I would actually look for for that.

[04:35:14] I know we've talked about it. But the other thing is, can you just, I guess, help us talk through what the current vision of that is? Because I remember we talked about it previously, and it was a process that didn't yet exist. That was very, as we were talking about in the context of sweet spot, right?

[04:35:32] In my mind, I see it as something that comes simultaneously to a ZMA, or even following a ZMA. But I guess I would submit, like, where is staff's thinking on what this process would look like?

[04:35:49] So those were two questions, and I talked for a long time. Eat it up how you want. Tanya is going to find the exact reference in the plan while I'm trying to address this question, which is the plan basically, you know, one of many of the actions is this action of bringing forward, reintroducing, I should say, reintroducing a citizen-initiated comprehensive plan amendment.

[04:36:18] This is something that we'll bring to you after adoption. It's something that's not in the document per se right now. So it'll be vetted through you all, the process. What that exact process, the specifics are, we've been having internal conversations. I think it's best that we have a little bit more deliberations before we sort of unveil what we think.

[04:36:39] But its purpose, broadly speaking, is I think we've recognized through this process that this is a policy document that helps shape what we do as a community. And we'll review applications. We're reviewing them against the comprehensive plan.

[04:36:55] And there may be aspects that we didn't think about now, in a couple of years from now, that market conditions have changed or individual circumstances are such, that we should review the proposal and say, hey, maybe we need to change the game plan. Does this document tweak it a little bit to advance what we see as a good proposal?

[04:37:15] I think that the concern there is that we may do it in a way that is not in compliance with what we've done, but I think it's really the importance is to be flexible. And how it may play out may be for a change to our future land use map, changing a designation or a parcel.

[04:37:35] And I think it's important to think about if somebody comes in with a zoning request that's not sort of in keeping with the comp plan, but we think it's a good idea, it may change other parcels around that. And I'm talking about stuff that's in the development area itself. I think there is some concern that it may be used to expand or contract the development area, and that may be what it is used for.

[04:37:58] But I think, again, it would be an open process where we would come before you, you would have a chance to pass a resolution of intent that that's something you wanted to study, and that we would then take it on as a staff-led process to make a recommendation for you how you might want to change the comprehensive plan, and maybe in light of a particular development proposal for either that property or, you know, for that property and several surrounding properties.

[04:38:26] How that will play out, I think, will be case dependent. But the idea of having this is to allow flexibility that isn't really there now because I think the intent has been to change the land use map when we do master plans. And as staff, you know, we've got so much capacity, and we're not able to be nimbly to come, like, and change those plans on an annual basis.

[04:38:50] And so this allows for certain circumstances, when they arise, to be addressed. And again, in a public manner and in a way that both the Planning Commission and the board would vet. Thank you. I just want to, I appreciate that explanation.

[04:39:07] I just want to reflect kind of a key takeaway that I heard, and I want to make sure that you are able to nod along and say I'm understanding it correctly. The question of whether and how there is a process for re-designating things under the comprehensive plan is not really before the board today.

[04:39:27] That is correct. It is not before the board today. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Supervisor McHugh. Thank you, Mike, because I was going to go to a similar question anyway, so I really appreciate that. And thank you for the great explanation.

[04:39:44] I look at this in parallel, to be honest with you, with the report that we heard today from Dr. Bailey. And she said, making room for what we don't know that we don't know.

[04:40:00] She said that three or four times today in her remarks about a different topic. But we have to recognize that you all are experts. We're not experts. We are sort of the eyes and ears of the community. But we have to be flexible because you and us, we often don't know what we don't know.

[04:40:22] And a citizen, I can't tell you how many times a citizen has come to the podium and suggested something, and I thought, that's a great idea, and I never thought about it. So I am all for implementing this. And I think my understanding was, I think from Jody, that it wasn't going to take too long for you all to bring this back to us.

[04:40:43] Probably after the first of the year, but I mean not too long, not two years. That's our intent, just to bring it back for your consideration on a process for your consideration in the near term. Okay, and that was the only question I had, so Mike took care of it.

[04:40:59] So thank you very much. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Senator Mallick. Okay, well, that's very bizarre because I got a totally different view from reading the objectives that were in here and our discussion last time. So I will come back to more detail on these, I think, after the public hearing.

[04:41:19] But I did want to just put out three things that are of concern to me that I hope we will discuss later. And preface it by saying that regarding the AstraZeneca decision, I had a delightful conversation with Pam Chang after the ceremony.

[04:41:40] And she volunteered to me that they never would have considered coming to the county without our community culture of environmental and natural resource protection. That is their company culture. And they would not go to some place that did not take that very seriously. So that's sort of the preface that I'm giving you, that this is clear evidence to me that these elements in the comp plan are not just a benefit to our current new and long-time residents and a place for our grandchildren's children to grow up, but to the welfare of the county financially for the long term.

[04:42:13] We can have it all, and we have to be standing up for different elements in the comp plan in order to have it all. We should not choose between environmental protection and career ladder jobs. So, there are elements of the comp plan, as I have said before, that are underdeveloped when compared to the rest.

[04:42:34] The year's worth of work to have a coherent and beautifully written document, there are sections that do not reach that standard. And I have proposed before and will propose again that they either be stricken or reduced to a future thing. As eyes and ears of the community, as was mentioned, we all have to, all we have to uphold our decisions in court is our reliance on adopted ordinances, not something we think is a good idea on Tuesday that somebody else will think is a bad idea on Thursday.

[04:43:05] I'm going to focus on three topics later. The last-minute change to the property on Monacan Trail, which two callers since that happened have compared to the 11 p.m. vote in 2010 to change the longstanding board policy for funding the Western Bypass because it was abrupt and out of nowhere with no public process.

[04:43:25] The second is the inclusion of land swaps, which are de facto increases to the development area, believe it or not, without the very, very serious criteria and work that has been done in the rest of the chapter. And thirdly, the change to the process for a citizen-initiated change to the CPA and the flume.

[04:43:48] Because I lived through years of the old process, and this really needs to be part of a future comp plan process or be required as a combination CPA-ZMA when there can be proper process, not an 11 p.m. decision.

[04:44:05] Twenty years ago, when this old process was in place, there was constant chaos and a circular burden on staff. Year after year after year, the same people would come back with the same result. and we don't have time or I don't think it's fair to staff to put them in that circumstance just to be able to say we're being flexible. So when we review the applications toward the existing comp plan, the comp plan needs to be very clear. Otherwise, we're putting staff in the untenable position of making policy, and that's not fair to them either. So I'll stop there and come back

[04:44:42] later. Thank you. Supervisor Calloway. Yeah, I don't have any questions at this point. I'll hear what others have to say and then have comments later supervise a little piece for curtain yes thank you i did have a question i know i sent a few comments into you regarding photos and were those acknowledged yes those changes have already been made oh okay okay thank you good thank you i found duplication so used a different photo and then a better photo regarding things so um i like the document as is i do believe mr barnes talked about flexibility which i think is extremely

[04:45:21] important as we navigate what we don't even know what's going to be coming up in the future i think we have to remain nimble to address all those needs and i think this document for the majority part really does that so i commend you on it thank you thank you and i also think that A tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of public input went into this document.

[04:45:48] And if you had the ability to summarize that, I'd love to hear it, but I want to assure people that I believe that there have been many opportunities for public input, and I really appreciate the public input. I do share Supervisor Malik's concerns about land swaps and the lack of criteria, and I may want to make a comment about, well, I don't know that we'll get to change it.

[04:46:13] I think we need to recognize that there are a lot of criteria that haven't been even discussed yet and would need to be part of a discussion before anything would take place along those lines. With respect to the citizens' initiated changes, what I'm hearing is that this is also not a process that's been figured out yet, that it's going to be proposed at some point, and I trust will be a public process, and that, in fact, if it's obviously involving any kind of zoning directly, would involve a public hearing but i would i would encourage a public hearing in any event and going through the planning commission for any kind of changes along those lines

[04:46:53] and you know what to say that even about the most recent change it really wasn't any public betting before it was done with respect to monica trail property but with that we'll save any further comments for after the public hearing i'd like to hear from the public so with that i'll open the the public hearing and i believe we have several people signed up to speak and vice chair mckeel

[04:47:17] will read the list and introduce the speakers all right we have so everybody knows we have

[04:47:50] six six speakers signed up no one online so with that i will read the um the directions during public hearings the board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed for public hearing. Speakers are limited to one appearance of three minutes per public hearing. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired, and you will be asked to

[04:48:25] end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Almar County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk.

[04:48:44] If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted and please do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Elmore County website. And our first speaker tonight is Rob McGinnis. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Rob McGinnis. I'm here speaking

[04:49:22] on behalf of Piedmont Environmental Council. I want to start off first by saying thank you to all of you, to the Planning Commission, to AC44 staff, county management, for completing what is largely a successful comprehensive plan update. The growth management policy remains largely intact, and there is a clear, compelling focus on the value of the rural area and on smart growth in the development areas. And as you've probably heard from me in the past, I'm going to continue to share our concerns about where we are, land swapping between the development areas and the

[04:50:02] rural area. We've been advocating for that to be a separate process. We appreciate the text changes to recognize that it's not as developed as it should be, but it needs to be developed further. The last minute change to the future land use map, I'll just simply say PEC strongly agreed with the Planning Commission's recommendations to the board that a change in land use we better address through a future zoning map amendment. Also, I want to address impacts of economic development, but I first want to say, and I've said this in the past, PEC does not oppose economic

[04:50:37] development. Saying that, the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development made it clear just yesterday that assessing impacts of the proposed innovation corridor running from Fauquier County to Almar would have to be undertaken by localities. That was in response to questions that they received yesterday, mostly from EDA folks from the city. The county should start the process of identifying potential impacts, and that should be beneficial and adverse if they are, from growth driven by the county's economic development strategic plan. So that

[04:51:14] hopefully will start sooner than later. Our focus now is shifting to the implementation of the comprehensive plan. What we're looking at is maintaining and improving the county's conservation programs, implementing the stream health initiative, updating the biodiversity action plan, the rural area land use plan, looking at biosolids ZTA. I also want to just finish by saying you're doing and modernization of your zoning ordinance, it needs to be well aligned with your AC44 goals and objectives and actions. That's really, really critical, and we're hoping that you'll undertake a state-of-the-art innovative process for updating the zoning ordinance. Thank you.

[04:51:53] Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Neil Williamson's our next speaker. Welcome. Good evening. My name's Neil Williamson, and I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on Central Virginia's local governments.

[04:52:20] I should thank the public safety report presented earlier today for endorsing the Free Enterprise Forum lasagna model. Yes, as Supervisor Pruitt says, I'm eating it up. Tonight, you will likely enact a new comprehensive plan, this time monikered AC44.

[04:52:42] To be clear, this plan doesn't have any lasagna in it. Staff has worked diligently on the plan, but work should never be confused with accomplishment. fails to address the planning challenges Albemarle County will face in the next 20 weeks, let alone the next 20 years. You, my friends, own this failure. Due to a lack of vision and the reality of an evenly split board of supervisors, AC44 ended up much the way it started over four

[04:53:18] years ago, confused, conflicted, and perpetuating the status quo. I should not be surprised, Having been through Albemarle's comprehensive plan process now five times, I find the end of the AC-44 process has all the pretend drama of a Hallmark Christmas movie without the happy ending.

[04:53:44] Today, I'm asking for a surprise ending. I recognize this comprehensive plan is late and you have pressure to improve it. I fully expect that you will do so. That makes AC-44 a lost cause. What you do next is the question.

[04:54:04] I'm asking you to do something different. My grandmother used to say, lasagna is a dish that takes a long time to make well. We're asking you to take the future land use map and the development boundaries discussion out of the comprehensive plan process, update them separately, and start that update today.

[04:54:27] Perhaps by focusing only on these elements, the housing benefits to the community to change the development area boundaries that are older than some of the members of the board will become clearer. what i said to you in 2021 in february is still true we need more housing everywhere for everybody now is the time to get everybody into the kitchen to make a great batch of lasagna thanks for the opportunity to speak thank you neil the next speaker is stewart overby

[04:55:00] welcome hi hi everyone i'm stewart overby i live in the samuel miller district and i'm with Don't Spread on Me, a grassroots group, working to stop toxic sewage sludge, also known as biosolids, from being spread on farms and forests as fertilizer around the county.

[04:55:26] First and foremost, I wanted to thank you, supervisors, county staff, for hearing our concerns and recognizing them as valid and including the sentence in the environmental stewardship chapter of the AC44 that says you will investigate adopting biosolids testing and monitoring ordinance.

[04:55:45] it's a great first step and now that the end of the comp plan process is nigh i hope that you can find an opening to move forward on actually adopting such an ordinance perhaps as part of the zoning modernization plan you all may or may not remember back in january i came and talked about this the apa finally acknowledged that pfas also known as forget forever chemicals were a problem in biosolids it issued a draft risk assessment and some fact sheets warning farmers and the public about it. Since then, however, people who used to lobby for the biggest

[04:56:23] chemical companies have taken leadership roles at EPA. They have declared that this risk assessment will not proceed beyond its draft phase. In fact, there is a rider in the budget bill that will completely defund the EPA sub-agency known as IRIS, which is where these risk assessments come from. So no more of that, no more risk assessments of toxic chemicals from the EPA. And at the state level, despite repeated entreaties, DEQ still maintains that it will do nothing about PFAS and biosolids unless that risk assessment moves along from draft to final, which as we just established

[04:57:00] will not happen, or it is directed to do something directly by the General Assembly. Now, lawmakers have become increasingly aware of the problem, and some are wanting to do something about it legislatively, but they're going to face stiff headwinds in the form of an alliance of lobbyists for the Manufacturers Association, wastewater treatment plants, and the industrial ag sector.

[04:57:25] So there is some hope that something will get done, but it's far from certain that anything meaningful will be passed into law. So all that to say, it just gets more and more important and urgent for you, our local government, to claim the power you do have by adopting a thoughtfully written biosolids testing and monitoring ordinance.

[04:57:44] We have so much information that we are itching to share with you. I hope we'll get to talk in detail about the idea soon. And don't forget, if you haven't already done so, please take the time to check out our website, don'tspreadonmead.org. Thank you.

[04:58:01] Tom Olivier? Welcome. Good evening. I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller District. The proposed plan now includes a rural areas chapter, calls for standalone rural areas plan, and includes constructive proposals for biodiversity, protection, and climate action.

[04:58:27] All good. But the plan proposes land swaps between difficult-to-develop parts of the development areas and rural areas. Please don't do it. And please don't support a TDR program with receiving areas in the rural areas.

[04:58:44] Of greatest concern, the plan avoids recognizing the severity and breadth of current ecological crises. It assumes rapid growth and industriously spells out how we can best accommodate it. But the plan ignores the damaging consequences of projected growth and development on our greenhouse gas emissions and open space ecosystems.

[04:59:07] Ignoring the environmental impacts of growth and development is normal here now. Recall Rivanna Futures, the 8-mile DOD corridor, and the abandoned data center ordinance. In 2014, President Obama said, We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it. Today, the World Meteorological Association reported that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2024. Humanity as a whole must do more now

[04:59:46] to contain worsening ecological crises, and we must do more now as well. As an initial step, I propose creating two independent planning departments, one devoted to development areas, the other to open space planning, natural resource conservation, and the evaluation of environmental impacts of development proposals.

[05:00:12] The restructuring should provide a more robust basis for our next comp plan update and the climatically challenging times that lie ahead. In January, after the new board members are seated, I'll submit a sketch for a restructured planning process and structure to the board.

[05:00:30] Thank you. Thank you. Tom Loach. Welcome. Good evening. Tom Loach, resident Crozet.

[05:00:46] In 1975, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors had a difficult decision to make. The conclusion they would eventually reach would lead Albemarle County to choose to preserve our rural land and character. After reviewing AC44 and the minutes from the Board to supervise these meetings, it is clear that Albemarle County has once again reached a point where a decision on its future character is being made.

[05:01:12] Unfortunately, after reading the data, and it's clear to me that the original decision to remain a rural county has shifted to a model that will eventually lead Albemarle County to become another Northern Virginia clone. The vast majority of the Board's discussion has not been about how to preserve our rural land, but how to destroy it.

[05:01:32] Even though your data shows Albemarle County has 20 years of development, its discussions constantly focus on the expansion of our growth areas. This includes swapping rural areas and using the same sleazy method of exploiting the master planning update process to force unwanted expansion of our growth areas.

[05:01:51] If implemented, this plan will be death by a thousand cuts that will destroy both our rural and development areas. The county has long used the land-use tax subsidy for rural preservation, which relies on imposing an extra tax burden primarily affecting our growth area of residence.

[05:02:09] Your own data shows that rural development on average accounts for 17% of all development in the county each year, yet there is not one word in AC44 regarding the land-use program. I know of no one who would continue to invest millions of dollars in a program with a 17% annual loss rate.

[05:02:28] In his report on land use, Mr. Robert Tucker County Executive stated the following. It is implicit in the concept of land use that the tax burden is shifted to other taxpayers. As one of those other taxpayers, and given this situation, I would like to shift my pro-rata share of tax dollars that I now pay for land use and move it to the ACE program.

[05:02:48] If residents are going to be asked to pay additional taxes for rural protection, they should have the option to direct where their money goes. Thank you. you too thank you and our last speaker is i think this is carol courtney courtney there we go carol is correct yeah welcome the double first last name situation going on oh good evening my name is carol courtney from the southern environmental law center as i shared with the planning commission we appreciate the substantial amount of work you and county staff have taken over the last few

[05:03:24] years to get to this point this process has resulted in significant improvements to the plan including a fundamental one I want to speak in support of tonight, a standalone chapter on the county's growth management policy. The county has long been looked to as a statewide model for adopting a strong and deliberate growth management policy. This policy supports more livable and equitable communities, promotes economic development, encourages rural enterprise, and protects the environment. A strong growth management policy also delivers significant fiscal benefits to the county and its residents. It helps make it easier and less expensive to

[05:04:02] provide public infrastructure and effective public services like transit, emergency services, and schools. And it protects the county's invaluable natural areas that, among other things, safeguard the quality of our drinking water, drive economic growth and tourism, and help the county meet its climate goals. Ultimately, the principles of responsible growth underpin almost every issue in the comprehensive plan.

[05:04:27] We share concerns that have been expressed about the sections regarding swapping and potential boundary changes to the development areas. However, we strongly support the county's decision to have a standalone growth management chapter to emphasize the foundational nature of this policy in the county's long-term planning and to help protect and promote Albemarle's uniquely valuable qualities for many years to come.

[05:04:49] Once again, I commend you all on the immense amount of work that has gone into this plan, and I'm glad to have this document to help chart a course for the county's continued evolution over the next 20 years. Thank you. Okay. I think with that, we can close the public hearing.

[05:05:08] The matter is back before the board, and we'll go around again. And at this point, also, I think it's appropriate if there are anything that specifically someone wants to suggest to make that a very specific suggestion and something that we may need to vote on before we vote on the whole package if that's the case.

[05:05:30] Supervisor Prood? Yeah. I will begin by just saying I'm really, really pleased with our comprehensive plan. I've only been involved with it in a legislative capacity for the past two years. But as I'm sure staff can attest, I was involved with it before that.

[05:05:47] I was showing up to all the different community roundtables. I was putting my sticky notes on the boards. I have been following this process since it started because that was basically the moment I was talking with my predecessor on the board about potentially running for this office.

[05:06:03] I was like, well, got to get in there, got to get in there. And I'm really pleased with the overall product. I think it really does really adequately incorporate a lot of the community concerns I knew I was hearing sitting around me at those roundtables in the earlier parts of the comprehensive plan.

[05:06:20] I feel a lot of the particular concerns I've come to this board with, I've seen the plan evolve based on my own feedback in ways that I find really exciting, right? I know something I came that I really wanted to see reflected in the plan was treating the rural areas not, staff might know, there is a minor feedback I had right when I joined the board, which is that maps of the county showed the rural area as whited out and the development area is filled in color with zoning uses under them.

[05:06:55] And the implicit understanding that creates is that the rural area is not a place where things happen. It's not a place, right? It's like what you would label Canada and Mexico on a map of the United States. In addition to that kind of symbolic change being corrected, right, The rural area is normally a light green now on all our maps, which I appreciate.

[05:07:17] I appreciate that our rural area chapters, and when we talk about them, it engages with the rural area as a place where life happens, as a place that has people living in it who need economic opportunity, who need opportunities for community, and who still benefit from the other things that we've emphasized throughout our growth management policy in this area.

[05:07:40] So that's just one example of one way I'm excited about this. I've, you know, I've given a lot of particularized feedback on our housing chapter, and I'm really pleased with how that's come. There are things that I would still magic pin away, but I also understand the limitations of working in a team. I'm really thrilled with this.

[05:07:57] I would also reflect, right, the concerns we've heard from the public and from some of my peers, I think I share, right? I would agree that the land area swap concept, which I've been, I think, in favor of the concept pretty early on when it was first floated as an intriguing concept that I want to explore more.

[05:08:21] And I was also very aggressively in favor of it being in the comprehensive plan in some capacity because it feels like a big enough picture thing that we need to talk about it there. I would also agree that in its current form, it is not fully considered. it we could even ungenerously called it half-baked i think that's fine because we are going to develop out that policy because it is not actually before the board yet similar to the questions i was having earlier right this is a policy that we want to envision having but what that's actually going to look like how we're going to do it uh whether or not we might throw the whole thing out uh because it turns out to be untenable or not popular with the community

[05:08:59] those are those are next steps our comprehensive plan is us saying this is something we want to pursue and this is something we want to pursue so yeah I am in favor of adopting the comprehensive plan as written I'm excited about it and that's all I got thank you Supervisor McKeel sure I agree with Mike I am very pleased with the document while I could probably go through and find some things that I would like to be written differently as a document that six people have agreed to. I am very comfortable with this document right now. I mean, we've been working

[05:09:37] on this, I believe, three years? At least. Three years. So, the public has had lots of input and opportunities for input over those three years, and I really believe this positions us for the next 20 years. While I'm sure we'll have changes in Albemarle County to come, I think this document and it allows enough flexibility that I feel comfortable with approving it.

[05:10:08] So I won't belabor it other than to say thank you, everybody, for your hard work on this. And thanks to the public as well for showing up. Thank you. Supervisor Mellor. Thank you. And I will agree with others that this is a monumental effort and certainly had much, much engagement from many, many people.

[05:10:30] The first comp plan work I went to was in 1985 at Broaduswood School. and Elaine Eccles was there meeting with the Rural Area Plan, and it was hundreds of people who showed up because there wasn't the Internet and other things to keep people away, and you showed up in person if you wanted to participate.

[05:10:46] So while life is different now, and it's taken me and my old age a while to adjust to the different process, and don't you smile like that, I see you. There is a lot that is different, but we have so much to regard and protect and not get rid of.

[05:11:04] That's why I've been poking so hard to try to make this better. And so I will go over a few things and make some motions about things, actually, that I hope we can consider making them better. You all have received a copy of a heartfelt, thoroughly discussed, respectfully written list of comments from the CCAC.

[05:11:26] They worked on this for weeks. And they undertook this resolution in pursuit of their committee's charge to provide, quote, assistance, feedback, and input to county staff and the Board of Supervisors on community and county efforts related to implementation and support of the adopted master plan. And I appreciate their work. As I said earlier, and actually we're going to go over that now and make a few comments about this because before I go back to my three topics. The removal of underperforming areas, they say, presents separate criteria for removing underperforming areas and for adding new land to

[05:12:06] their development areas. Failure to define how these two sets of criteria work together risks making removal indistinguishable from expansion, contrary to our stated intent of limiting growth to existing boundaries at this interval. Whereas the policy lacks measurable conservation benefits, such as natural resource value or ecological significance that would ensure tangible environmental gains when land is reclassified from growth area to rural area.

[05:12:36] There need to be many more details about this. Whereas community members have expressed concern that swapping land between development area and rural area may divert investment from established communities in all six magisterial districts with pressing infrastructure needs, whereas the CCAC believes that the growth management decisions must also support communities designed for walking, biking, transit, and accessibility, rather than focusing primarily on motor vehicles. Whereas we cannot effectively pursue population growth and meet housing demand

[05:13:12] without properly investing in existing development areas, infrastructure, affordability, and redevelopment. Whereas the growth management policy's broad language lacks clear, measurable standards that would help the board deal with these newly added issues.

[05:13:29] And so they ask that the board reconsider the future growth management development needs and have a few criteria that they hope we will consider. Potential criteria for assessing the removal or underperforming areas from the development areas.

[05:13:48] Clarify the difference between removal and expansion within this policy. Include tangible conservation outcomes and measurable environmental benefits for any development area land reclassified as rural area. Specify that land removed from the development to rural status must maintain natural topography, not have it destroyed already, and adhere to existing standards for the rural area, including tree canopy coverage, watershed permeability, and contiguous connection to current rural area land.

[05:14:20] Offer developers conservation for density swaps within the development area, so the developers who set aside land that meets the criteria for conservation gain, the right to increase zoning density on an equal acreage somewhere else in the development area.

[05:14:37] Invest first in meeting infrastructure priorities within the development area before considering boundary adjustments. Establish clear, strict standards for walkability and accessibility in redevelopment and growth assessments. And last, consider the long-term balance between housing supply, affordability, and infrastructure capacity, ensuring that growth management strategies reflect both community design and economic feasibility.

[05:15:05] And this group is widely distributed, each representing a different neighborhood or residential area in the community. Very different backgrounds and perspectives, and I've been really admired the work that they've done coming up with this in conversations over the last several weeks' meetings.

[05:15:24] So the three things I would like to consider. I would make a motion that the board reconsider the last-minute change to property on Monocon Trail because of the lack of funding process, the lack of process undergone before including it as a map change and a zoning change in the comp plan.

[05:15:51] So I make that as a motion. I'll second that motion. I think one of the things that we have learned through the last three and a half years is how important having really substantial process is for the decisions which are made.

[05:16:08] And people may complain that it takes a long time, but mistakes make an even longer time, and it's almost impossible to go ahead. Well, we have no discussion. We're now open. The motion has been open for no discussion. The motion in a second is now open for discussion. That's the reason I'm bringing it up.

[05:16:24] Go ahead. And if there isn't discussion, we can proceed to a vote. But if anyone wants to make any additional comments, hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? No. Mr. Pruitt? No.

[05:16:40] Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? No. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Nay. Thank you. All right. Second item was inclusion of land swaps as in their undeveloped state as elements in the comprehensive plan, and would prefer that that be listed as a consider-in-the-future topic as opposed to one which has a half page of very unclear criteria, which gives the idea that it's supposed to be well-developed when it really does not seem to be.

[05:17:18] So that is a motion. I will second. And then open for any discussion. I would just, I guess, briefly respond to this. Again, I look at our previous meeting where I think we took great pains to make it very clear that these are preliminary criteria.

[05:17:38] I see that as meeting the ask here. I also want to just say very clearly, I agree this is actually a really well-thought-out letter from the Crozet CAC. I think they've got some really great people on that team.

[05:17:54] I know a lot of them. And I think these are actually all very thoughtful. And even if I might not agree with them individually, I would say they're good recommendations. I think going through them, I would want this board to spend probably half an hour on every single thing that's brought up here.

[05:18:15] which I think we will, and I will probably be pulling this back up when one day we're actually talking about a substantive policy on this topic. I see the comprehensive plan as a plan to make a plan, as a plan to make like 30 different plans.

[05:18:32] And I see the criteria that we create here as being, and I can see Mr. Barnes is maybe contemplating whether or not he would agree with that. but um i see the criteria here is kind of setting up what i think is a a good first step for informing the community about some of the things that we're considering in this potential plan and i think that helps us um frankly solicit good feedback like this from the community um so i

[05:19:06] appreciate and value this feedback i will be using it um and i think we got it because of the language we have in the comprehensive plan um so this is all just to say i'm not going to support this motion but i i appreciate what it's doing and i do want to consider this topic more more thoughtfully um i just don't know that this is the appropriate juncture in our process for it thank you um and i will just uh add to that that you know i think the motion was to sort of uh eliminate the criteria because their criteria aren't fleshed out.

[05:19:42] The CAC has proposed many criteria. I also point to the Planning Commission meeting at which they adopted the comprehensive plan. Lonnie Murray also brought up a number of criteria which were interesting but didn't have time to be discussed and therefore appropriately are not. County staff or board of supervisors, and this is the applicable sentence, to offer options to property owners, the county may look at revising the process to include a property owner-initiated amendments to AC44.

[05:20:16] And, again, as far as the exact process that we might want to do, I think we're aware of some of the downsides. Certainly we're worried at the staff level about the workload that it may put upon us, especially if there's pent-up demand for some changes.

[05:20:37] I think partly it was sort of hearing from members of the community, Some of the things we talked about, the board and sort of recognition of our own inability to sort of, on a very regular basis, come back and revisit each master plan. But when we get into the process, we will try to make it one that is equitable and fair as well as one that has some backstops to make it hopefully usable and not overwhelming the staff resources or the URLs consideration for those.

[05:21:14] And we can find the faults of that process and hopefully correct them through the public process that we'll have to discuss them. Well, the point you just made about how we haven't been getting back to the master plans in a timely fashion will only be made worse by this last sentence.

[05:21:31] There's no question about that. So my motion then will be to please remove the last sentence on page 16, which is really the crux of the matter. I'm going to second for the purposes of allowing any discussion on the motion.

[05:21:53] I, again, have some thoughts to kick us off here. And I might even offer a substitute motion that I hope might kind of cut at the concern that we have here. So, again, I say this as someone who is not a county resident, previous when we used to do a practice like this, right?

[05:22:15] I did not live here prior to 2015, so I don't know how this used to look. I don't have experience with this. I think I've imagined, as it's been explained, it being almost a process that walks hand in glove with the ZMA process, although I understand it could be leading or it could be lagging, as a property owner might desire.

[05:22:34] I can see some very limited value of that. I might imagine it protects us from liability, potentially. If we modify the comprehensive plan to conform with approvals that we move forward, with, that's just something I might entertain, right? For example, if Mr. Schimp's property had been approved, but we had not modified the comprehensive plan, it would not surprise me

[05:23:07] if someone might want to bring an action against us because of that. Well, it's always best when the legislative actions are consistent with the comprehensive plan. So there are edge cases where it has a value. So I can see why it might be a valuable thing. I can also see maybe we have a process where a landowner might want to have a comprehensive plan change that facilitates a ZMA although I don't see the huge value of that as I talked about during our previous meeting because it seems like the lift is just the same for each of them so why not just do it all at once

[05:23:42] this is all just to say I see us having some really edge value and something we can probably discussing greater weight. I don't see any value for using it to add something to the rural area, or rather to the development area from the rural area. I don't see why a developer would want to do that. For one thing, because they still don't get ACSA service, right?

[05:24:05] That doesn't magically put water underneath them, which is the main concern a lot of times. It's the actual tractor that is pulling the growth management policy, right? That's the actual thing that matters everything else is just fictional lines we're drawing on maps um and recognizing that it there's not a practical value for it but also like it's a point of community alarm i might offer as a substitute motion that we instead of eliminating that sentence add a sentence following it that says uh property owners would uh property owner

[05:24:44] initiated comprehensive plan changes uh would not be able to add land to the development area from the rural area or something to that effect uh and i guess i would offer that to the people who have supported this motion to see if that kind of cuts to your key concern or if that would not be sufficient because i would be willing to support that i think that in the years when the old plan process was before this was changed in 2014 15 12 whenever it was uh That was exactly what the requests were for, was to bring things into the growth area.

[05:25:23] Right. So what if we say we can't do that? The history has been always that the comp plan change had to happen first because then the zoning change could be considered legitimately and not end us up in court with a whole lot of wasted time and expense. So that would be interesting.

[05:25:41] If we can get four votes to add your sentence, then that would certainly ameliorate my concern because of my previous experience of watching this from the audience for 20 years. I take that to be an amendment to your motion, and I will second that.

[05:25:59] Okay. So we now vote on the amendment. Should I provide a second to the amendment, or is it amended already with the second? He just provided your second. This is a procedural question. I accepted your amendment, and he seconded it, so I think we're all right.

[05:26:14] Can you repeat your amendment? To add a sentence, and I think I saw Mr. Herrick potentially writing a draft of what I riffed in real time. My apologies. I'd normally try and have something actually written down. So the proposed amendment was to, rather than delete the final sentence of the comprehensive plan before the appendix, right?

[05:26:35] So implementation page 16. rather than delete the final sentence to instead add another sentence that says property owner initiated amendments to AC44 may not include additions to the development area. To the development area. As in, you can ask for changes to the comprehensive plan on your property as part of a request, but it is not a individual property owner's power to request that the development area be expanded. So we have a motion and a second on the table. That's what we're doing.

[05:27:12] right yeah i'm oh i'll wait my turn well we're we're open to discussion okay thank you um what the the way the sentence is written the last sentence it said to offer options to property owners the county may look at revising the process to include property owner initiated amendments to ac 44 i don't see a problem with that because it said that we may look at that you're saying that it would and doesn't this just apply to individual property owners so

[05:27:48] if if someone else has land some i don't know how it goes into the development area if it's not your personal property sure so that's what i'm questioning the uh we received a letter earlier today from uh from the wood families llc right um commending us on astra zeneca and also asking us to consider expanding the development area. By the way, public, we received this letter.

[05:28:16] They have land in my district that is immediately adjacent to the development area. They're very interested in adding it to the development area. They make it very clear. That is a complicated question for the public and for the community. I don't think it would be appropriate for that family to request it unilaterally and initiate that process. This makes it clear that an owner-initiated process like that wouldn't be able to be initiated. It would have to be initiated if we were ever going to expand the development area, which the rest of the comprehensive plan makes it pretty clear we're

[05:28:53] not. But if we were going to do, we have to be the first movers. The Board of Supervisors? Yes. Or the supervisor from that district would have to be the first mover. So you would have to tell the Wood family. Keep my name out your mouth, but go ahead. Pardon? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Wait, what did I do?

[05:29:12] I don't like a hypothetical where I'm proposing an expansion of the development area, but go ahead. No, I understand what I'm saying is the supervisor would have to initiate it, not the personal property owner. It would have to, I mean, we take the idea of expanding the development area incredibly seriously.

[05:29:34] It is historically a third rail. I think this treats that seriously and says a citizen who happens to own land does not get to override this very, very serious line that we've drawn in the sand and propose an expansion of the development area by themselves.

[05:29:54] And it really is just cabining what our future policy under this could look like. I'm thinking about how it operated beforehand. Before. Go ahead. So what I'm understanding is that the way it's written now, we may, the county, may look at revising the process to include property owner-initiated amendments.

[05:30:19] What you're saying is it would be the property owner would come to the supervisor, and then the supervisor could initiate the amendment. No, I don't think that's what he's saying. I think the main thing I want to say is that we are having the possible, we have ZMAs all the time, right, zoning map amendments.

[05:30:38] I think this entertains the possibility that in the future, maybe ZMAs also come with, if they're not in accordance with the comprehensive plan, then they might also request that change. We have had ZMAs, even since I've been on the board, that have been not in perfect accordance with the comprehensive plan.

[05:30:56] But we've decided it's okay, right? This creates a process by which the citizen can request that be aligned, right? That is the main goal this is serving. We are clarifying that it is not also serving the goal of nibbling around the edges for individual owners who might want to develop because there's concern in the community that could be used for that.

[05:31:21] And read literally, I think it could be used for that. It doesn't have to because we haven't created the policy yet. And I don't think we would have the votes to create a policy that does that. This is just creating that boundary now rather than in six months when we create this policy because people want to hear it now.

[05:31:39] So I'm comfortable with the way it's written currently, and so I'm not supportive of Mike's amendment to the amendment. I trust you all to work further on the policy and bring it back to the board in a form, but I'm not supportive of that change, just to say.

[05:32:01] Mr. Herrick, if that, as is in there, may look at, understood, it doesn't commit us that we will. If that line's gone, we still could. Sure. That's correct. It's not a constraint.

[05:32:17] It's just a statement of intent regarding the board's current intent, but it does not bind. I mean, the board could choose to look at comp plan amendments without this statement. Or, conversely, it could choose to, even with this statement, choose to look at it and decide not to go forward.

[05:32:37] I've got to tell you, I've never taken a vote on a May sentence before. So, I mean, I'm not interested. It can be in there. It cannot be in there. This is not one that I'm getting real hung up on because it doesn't dictate anything.

[05:32:53] If we want to relook at the process, we can. If we don't, we don't, whether it's stated there or not stated there. That's why I'm just, I get baffled sometimes. The motion is currently not to take it out, but to add a clarifying sentence. I understand, but I mean, to add clarification to that is making something that's a little confounding more confounding.

[05:33:15] Exactly, it complicates it. So, I mean, I get it. I understand. It makes people comfortable. There's been plenty of times that I have spoke to what folks feel are fears, regardless of what those fears are, and to the point I've made where we feel like redundancy helps alleviate a fear.

[05:33:32] Okay, and this seems like one of those language things that if this makes people more comfortable or it alleviates a fear, okay, I can be okay with that. But it doesn't mean that we, it doesn't dictate that we will or won't do something that is currently stated.

[05:33:51] If we take it out, we could still do it. But Mr. Herrick just said this is a statement of intent. Sure. The words are written there that this would happen. okay, that we may do something. I have to tell you, there's a lot of things that I could go back through, especially in the housing chapter, that are mays that I didn't get in this document. I'm not planning to make everybody take motions on them because all of those mays can still happen in other ways. They don't have to be delineated in here. So, I mean, I'm just a little, this,

[05:34:30] of all the things that we could be spending time on in this comp plan and revisiting and conversing, we're talking about a statement that says we may do something. So I'm just, I'm baffled a little bit. And maybe I'll catch hell for that, but that's where I'm at. I agree, Ned. I'm happy to go back and start picking out some of the things that I didn't get that I wanted, right? And start putting motions on the table. I'm sorry. But I mean, but that's the point. We went through a process we discussed it the last in fact i even felt i was a little self-conscious the last meeting because i missed a meeting to be able to go through things and i was going through a lot

[05:35:09] of detailed things and felt a little guilty about that because i felt like everybody else had moved along and already did all this type of iteration stuff so it's fine that it's that it's here and in front of us but i mean i mean you want to i i don't like it i don't like it not being in there and then us doing it or not ever doing it because it's like what we said we would to your point but then if we take it out and then do it we'll catch heck well we did something that wasn't stated in there and you all had an argument i mean they were really no win situation that's i'm going to call the question so i'm i'm just i'm ready to i'm really not feeling strongly

[05:35:47] because it's not dictating the action of this board if we want to do this staff will bring us a work plan we will state it as a priority relative to other priorities if it rises to the level of something that we look at revising then it'll go through the process and we'll come back to this board just like any other process revision and we will deal with it in that manner and i don't feel like me voting for this or against this is going to change any of that and on that note i'm going to call the question the question is uh not to remove this language

[05:36:21] but to add the sentence that the provisor Pruitt read and without objection for the clerk will call the rule. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Ms. McKeel? No. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes.

[05:36:37] Ms. Lopiso-Kirtley? No. Okay. Thank you. Do we have a sentence? Excellent. Thank you. Now, to be clear, I understand. Just because we added that in doesn't mean that what it speaks that it may avoid doing, avoids doing that. It could still happen. I appreciate that.

[05:36:57] question with staff so that when you bring it back please be prepared to explain how a request such as this would work with a clock because there's response clocks and things like that that happened and what happened decades ago was that everything else that the work program had was shoved down because this had to have the clock so please be thinking about that and let us know what you come up with when you come back thank you very much thank you we're on to

[05:37:25] supervisor galloway okay just fried my brain no hold on this is my chance to make comments this is my last chance of time that was going to be your final comment on the comprehensive plan fried my brain so when we're done we're going to take a vote on the whole plan right right so i should probably make some remarks then. Okay. I appreciate how long this takes. I remember sitting through as an observer on the previous iteration, and now this is my first time

[05:38:01] participating and going through this. So I do look to those who worked on staff and all the work and the diligence you put in. You know, based on comments that I've been hearing, I feel like this is realistic. The board has at least been brave enough to broach some subjects that have frankly not been even allowed to be uttered from this dais in the past and that's all we've done is maybe agreed as neil likes to say have a discussion about having a discussion um so and i think that's important i think that's prudent and i think that's good planning it just like the may statement it doesn't commit us to anything it means that but it does notice that we have to do

[05:38:39] the proper thing and prepare and plan um i to my point earlier i did want to say that i um because I didn't get some things in here and disagreed with some things being prioritized in a way. But that's the nature of this. That's why there's six of us up here.

[05:38:55] That's why we have a lot of different folks out there who come and give us comments. And as Ann has said in the past, if not everybody's happy, everybody's a little disappointed, and then you probably threaded the needle in a certain particular way. But I feel like for the things that I prioritize as a board, And in terms of the things I would like to see us do over the next several years, I feel like this doesn't prevent those things from happening and has moved us along to consider some things that is not just status quo, to contend with the fact that we do have some growth in this county and how we're going to properly deal with it.

[05:39:35] And I do appreciate and hope maybe other CACs will give us our thoughts in similar fashion, Because I know my CAC may think of it differently because of where they're located. So I appreciate that. And thank you to all the folks in the community who have sent in especially action items and objectives.

[05:39:52] And I do want to call out and commend my planning commissioner, Mr. Moore, Nathan Moore, who was really the reason the seventh big move around community connection and community belonging is in there. I really think that was a strong catch on him, his part, and appreciate his advocacy, and I'm thrilled that it made it in.

[05:40:12] And I thought you all were supportive of adding that to the comp plan. So thank you. Thank you. Supervisor LePizzo-Kirtler. I'm very grateful to staff for the really outstanding work they did. This is my first comprehensive plan, hopefully my last comprehensive plan.

[05:40:31] But this is a really, really excellent document. I think it's very well laid out. It's very understandable. What you have done and even color coding things has helped tremendously. And it's easy to understand.

[05:40:49] I got the things I wanted in there. So I'm very happy. Maybe not everything, but mostly everything. I have to say I truly respect this board because I've listened to you all. And you've come up with great ideas, great arguments, great discussions, and that's really, really helpful because some of you have a longer past than I do.

[05:41:15] Some of you don't, but, you know, that's okay, too. You have really, really good ideas. So I've really appreciated working with this board on this entire document. But once again, kudos have to go out to the staff. You all did the hard, hard work and brought us something that I think we can work with, I think has enough flexibility in there.

[05:41:37] You know I love that word, but has enough flexibility in there that we can really move toward a future where we don't know what that future is going to be, but yet we can be nimble enough to pivot where we need to.

[05:41:52] So I'm very supportive. Thank you. Thank you. I am supportive and very appreciative of the staff. I don't think anyone will excuse me tonight of trying to run a short meeting. It's intended to make sure that all voices that want to be heard about this on the board will get their opportunity to be heard if there are any others.

[05:42:13] Please don't let me dissuade you from bringing them, but again, I agree that there are things that I might have wanted to change, but not enough to be bringing them up at this point. And I'm very happy with the document at this stage as well. So unless there are additional comments, we're looking for a motion.

[05:42:34] So the board, I understand, had made an amendment. And so I am in the process of writing and sending that to you all along with a suggestive motion. So if the board could hold tight for just a moment, I'll be sending that to you. May I take this one moment, please?

[05:42:49] Please, please, please, please. Go right ahead. Well, first of all, because we have a little space, I want to thank you all. It's been, you know, I've worked for the county back in 2000, 2003, and worked in the private sector. I've been to a lot of places. The discussion that you all have had on the board has been brave, to Ned's point, Mr. Galloway's point, of tackling some tough issues.

[05:43:13] I think this is a good document. I think it's going to be serviced well in the next 20 years. So I want to thank you all. Of course, I want to thank the Planning Commission, who likewise gave us a lot of very good feedback. I want to thank the citizens, both those who are on NGOs or advocacy groups, as well as lots of average citizens.

[05:43:31] I think it's really been a much stronger document. And finally, I really want to thank my staff. Tanya Schwartz-Druber has been here about a year and a half with me and picked up a document and really has run with it and kept it extremely well organized.

[05:43:49] I think part of the reason we've been successful is her leadership and organizational skills, and I really want to commend her for that. I also want to thank the other staff who really backed us up, Ben Holt, James Wilkinson, our new editor-in-chief, David Benish, our wise historian who's always kept us on the straight and narrow.

[05:44:10] I'd like to thank Tori Kapanopoulos, who really was an engine to a lot of the things we did, and we've lost her to the city. But I think it's best for her. I think she's going to, you know, grow with that. And finally, to Jody Filardo and Bart Salota, who provide a lot of leadership and pushed us to do a much better document.

[05:44:31] So I want to thank you all. Thank the community. Hopefully you're going to vote in favor it now. I just put that out there. I'll vote none. May I make the motion since it looks like the motion? We have the motion in front of us. I would like to be called on to make it.

[05:44:47] That's all. She's just asking if she can make the motion, and I have no problem with that. No, that's fine. Please. Ready? I move to adopt the resolution to approve CPA 2021-02, 22, I guess, and to adopt a comprehensive plan as revised.

[05:45:05] No, no, CPA 2021-02. Start over again. So, Supervisor Malik, there's a suggested motion language that I just sent. That's not the year. Let me start again. Not from the screen, in your e-mail. Oh, it popped up the same time the e-mail came, and so i thought it was the same thing so sorry i have it right here on the screen like two words of difference hold on coming up put back on the screen what was there i think all right i got it now because of the change okay i move that the board adopt the resolution to amend and approve cpa 2021-02 and to adopt a comprehensive plan as revised october 15th 2025 second we have a motion

[05:45:44] from supervisor malik second from supervisor mckeel without objection if the clerk will call the roll Ms. Mallick? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lupisto-Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. And thank you to everyone here for putting up with that process. Appreciate it.

[05:46:09] Board, this brings us to, from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda. Supervisor Pruitt? Yes, these are honestly matters I would normally have brought up earlier in the meeting at the beginning, but I was first in the order, and I didn't think to add them then.

[05:46:26] So first, I would like to say, you know, I often talk about things I visited and did in the community in my own district, But I would actually, I had a fantastic time this weekend in your district, visiting the Batesville Apple Butter Weekend.

[05:46:42] An absolute thrill, connecting with folks, learning about the history of this event, getting to stir the big old cauldron for a bit, getting to buy a comical amount of apple butter, and connecting with the Ruritans over in that community. Just a real excellent time.

[05:46:58] And also, I would like to mention this. So a real figurehead of this region, figurehead, a real rock and majorly influential figure in this region, tragically passed at the end of September.

[05:47:14] So Moselle Booker, the first black woman to serve on the Board of Supervisors in Flubana County, representing Fork Union for over a decade, incredibly accomplished woman, I learned earlier this week had passed at the end of September. And I know that community is really reeling from this because she continued really right up until her last to be a deeply influential figure throughout Central Virginia, but particularly for the black community in Fluvanna.

[05:47:43] So my heart is with that community. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel. I don't have anything, but I do thank Mike for recognizing the loss of Mazzell because she was feisty, she was wonderful, She had some great ideas, and she will be missed.

[05:48:01] Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Very determined. Great success. She was wonderful. So I just wanted to say I have shared with each of you, for future consideration, a draft proclamation for the Operation Greenlight that the county could consider at a future meeting and then forward on to NACO.

[05:48:24] And also, we heard today Sophie Massey this morning talking about the impacts of sewage sludge on rural area drinking water and this evening from Stewart-Overby that it's really up to the county to maintain the authority we have for a testing and monitoring ordinance to protect our citizens.

[05:48:44] Each of you, I think, has also received a draft paper copy that a group of citizens in the Samuel Miller and Whitehall and Scottsville districts have been working on since January at the latest, and I think it was before that.

[05:49:01] So I don't know. This will be coming up for consideration in the future. I don't know how it works with the work program for CDD. And Attorney Herrick has any comments he wants to add.

[05:49:17] He is welcome to do that, to talk about the process a little bit. I would assume that it's mostly a legal operation that happens when one has a starter draft like this. So I would love to propose that now that the comp plan is adopted, I'm certainly eager to reduce the gaps in public information which exist for Albemarle County residents since the county does not require currently any testing or reporting, although we do have the authority to do it.

[05:49:47] Future buyers of land need this information, as do their neighbors with wells and the community at large with the drinking water. Most acres affected are thousands in the Whitehall and many more thousands in the Scottsville District and some in the Sammy Miller District as well.

[05:50:04] Many Whitehall District lands are on steep slopes, which drain into the South Fork Reservoir, which is important to everyone in the urban ring via Buck Mountain Creek. The land in the Scottsville district may be flatter, but the constituents of the sludge remain in the soil and are carried by rain into Totodier Creek and the James, which is other people's drinking water.

[05:50:25] I'm pleased to see that EPA is retaining the PFAS framework for drinking water, but I was discouraged to hear that it's no longer going to be carried forward for the sludge, at least during this administration. So it's really up to us to do what we can.

[05:50:43] And I will look to you. Do you have anything to add? Well, I'd be happy to address what the legal requirements are for adoption of an ordinance if that's something that the board wishes to pursue. I don't know whether Mr. Richardson, Ms. Wall, or Ms. Vallarta might have something to address from sort of the operational lead time that would be necessary for that sort of an ordinance.

[05:51:01] I'm also happy to leave it on the table, and when people have a chance to have a brief presentation, then we can do that in the future at an upcoming meeting. That would be great. So you tell me what's possible. Well, in order to adopt an ordinance, there would need to be advertisement, and the board typically has held a public hearing on that.

[05:51:19] That could be done, again, if the board is interested in that, that could be done as soon as, well, the legal lead time required for that is about a month. But that doesn't, again, address the operational lead time that staff would need to look at that. And, again, that's contingent on whether that's something that the board as a whole is interested in having staff pursue.

[05:51:39] So at an upcoming meeting, we could have more discussion about whether the board is interested in having the staff continue to work on this, I guess, would be the best. I don't expect people to do it right now, but I don't want to let it go another nine months either.

[05:51:57] So I think we'll just need to keep bringing it up. Of course. I just want to speak to this very briefly. I'm pretty excited on being able to potentially move forward with this also. I'm going to be sitting down with the sludge people on Saturday, and I know they have a proposed ordinance.

[05:52:16] I also just know from experience that a proposed ordinance as a starting point sometimes doesn't save as much time as I might expect or hope. I'm remembering our terror hoax threat ordinance, and it still took a bit, even with what I expect would have been a more straightforward ordinance.

[05:52:34] But I would be eager to get a sense of how quickly we can move on this with time freed up more and how much time is saved by having a draft prepared by the community. Well, it's basically copied from the fog year one that's been in place for 20 years.

[05:52:49] So that's a start anyway. Thank you. Supervisor Gallo? At the beginning of the month, the TJPDC commission meeting, we received a report from the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board. It's the annual fiscal year 25 report. I've started to share some quick information on that.

[05:53:07] Just as a quick reminder, the original members were Albemarle, Augusta, Flavana, Green, Madison, and Orange, and the city of Charlottesville. The town of Madison was added in December of 21. Rockingham County was added in July of 24. We now have Mount Crawford that joined January of 25.

[05:53:25] And Rappahannock County just joined the October 1st. So for fiscal year 25, the gross revenue, so this is all jurisdictions collected, was $3.3 million. 8.7 million packs of cigarettes were sold in fiscal year 25.

[05:53:43] That is up, but that also means that there were additional jurisdictions that's in that number as well. For Albemarle County, we almost lead the way for packs sold by jurisdiction at just under 2 million.

[05:54:01] We are outsold by Augusta County. They are at 23, 2,300,000. However, we do collect the most revenue from it because Augusta, I believe, doesn't tax at the full rate that we do and most of the other jurisdictions do.

[05:54:18] But we do collect just under $746,000 was our allocation. And that's after the PDC does take some admin costs to cover it and stuff before that is put out there. But I just thought I would add that.

[05:54:33] I think they are expecting that some other jurisdictions may be interested in joining the collaborative or the collective, if you would. But that is the update on the cigarette tax. I wish there was a way that it changed behavior.

[05:54:52] Supervisor Petro-Curvin. Yes, thank you very much for that information, Ned. I'm just wondering, is there any kind of consensus or feeling? I mean, can you raise the tax rate even more than that, as it's set? The rates that we're at and the city of Charlottesville are at the max that we're allowed.

[05:55:10] For us, okay, we're at the max that we can allow by state law, so we'd have to get state law to change that to allow us to increase the state tax, or that tax, cigarette tax. Okay. Thank you. I have nothing else to state. I have nothing to otherwise report, but I will say that I also support going through the proposed ordinance for Supervisor Malek and supervision approved, both supported.

[05:55:39] Thank you. With that, Board, we will adjourn to November 5th, 2025, 1 p.m. here in Lane Auditorium. Thank you and good night. We will. We will.

[05:55:55] Absolutely.

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