Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting, Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 3h 20m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1408
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1408

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 am pleased to call to order this Albuquerque County Board of Supervisors meeting on the 5th of November at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Ann Malick of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Ryo District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack DeWitt District, Supervisor B. Lupisto-Curtley of the Ravenna District, and Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

[00:00:28] A quorum is present. And we are also joined by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, county attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgerson. Also, let me please welcome and introduce Albemarle County police officers present, Sergeant Jason Freistad and Master Police Officer Dana.

[00:00:50] Oh, no, not Dana. It's so many. I'm not sure. Dana's not here. Anyway, we thank you both for your service today and every day on behalf of the constituents of Albemarle County and for our safety and security.

[00:01:08] If all present could now stand as you are able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:01:32] Thank you. If you please join us for a moment of silence.

[00:02:02] Board, our first business course is to adopt the final agenda. I have not heard of any suggested changes. If there is a motion to approve the final agenda. So moved. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, call the roll.

[00:02:18] Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPiesto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Thank you. Aboard, of course, first of the brief announcements, and we'll go through the order for today's meeting, starting with Supervisor McKeel.

[00:02:37] Sure. Thank you, Jim. The first item that I just want to mention is that on October the 18th, Greg and I attended the No Kings protest, which was at Stonefield, which I will remind everyone is in the Jack Jewett Magisterial District.

[00:02:57] But what I want to say about it is just to thank our community. There were just thousands of people at that protest, and the community was peaceful and even joyous. And it was just lovely to see folks come together in a peaceful protest.

[00:03:18] But most especially, I just want to thank Almar County Police Department and Almar County Fire and Rescue for the presence that they had, which made everyone, they were very calm, made everyone feel very safe. And there were a couple of health incidences that they were able to respond to very quickly, the rescue department.

[00:03:40] So just thank you for all of the work from our Elmoro County officers, safety officers. Thank you very much. The second thing that I wanted to mention was that we are on a high alert today for fire.

[00:03:57] Everyone, I think, as you came into the building, realized how blustery it is outside. And I'm going to take this opportunity because I see Trevor sitting there. So, Trevor, could you come up and just address, we received a really informative e-mail from you about the situation and what Elmoro County Fire and Rescue were doing to address the concern.

[00:04:18] So I'd like you to just speak to it for a minute. Thank you, Supervisor McKeel, members of the board, Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive. I communicated to the board early this morning just work that fire rescue had done overnight to make sure that we are fully staffed, including we have holdovers in case there's any response needed today.

[00:04:41] National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning. What that means is a condition, and it runs from 11:00 this morning until this evening around 6:00 p.m., that means the weather conditions are such that low humidity and strong winds could cause fires that would advance rapidly so we have our station staffed fully staffed we have holders and we've asked our volunteer partners if they could also staff up just in the event that you know there are issues out there so we're pushing this out through public our public engagement process as well but just wanted to let the board know we you know we anticipated this and

[00:05:19] have staffed up accordingly thank you and i think you did notify the the individuals that had burn permits yes yes ma'am that's a great catch there were there's only actually one burn permit that was active we reached out to that it's a commercial burn reached out yesterday no they will not be doing any burning today nor will there be any additional permits issued great thank you you can explain what staff is doing so much better than i can so i appreciate sharing that information and that's all I had Jim. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. This really is truly

[00:05:54] Ann Malek despite the voice. Sorry about that. I'm very grateful for the red flag day being already mentioned and I heard it a little bit on the radio coming in so it is trickling out but there's so many people who might not know unless they hear it in the media that they're actually using so I think all the effort that's been made is going to be helpful and hopefully will save resources and lives potentially this afternoon.

[00:06:20] My news is that last Wednesday I attended the Rural Center of Virginia's conference. It was in Hanover, and there were quite a few excellent presentations and the notes and materials I will share with board and staff.

[00:06:37] But Jason Alcuda, Juan Pablo Segura from the Virginia Economic Development Department talked about how to protect rural lands and the rural businesses which live there and to spread some of the benefits of our economic growth to long-established rural businesses and also new ones who might come. But people mentioned about how important it is that the environmental protection that many counties have actually is a benefit and telling the story of the culture that

[00:07:14] your county has is a way to make sure that the companies who work there and or want to come there actually see their the culture of the receiving community as a fit and to see how they will fit in the rural urban interface is also while it's a problem it's also an asset because in the urban areas you have lots of customers and in the rural area you have lots of producing land So that can be made to be a benefit, but we all have to work diligently and carefully to facilitate those kinds of exchanges.

[00:07:51] And back in 2010, the program to get farm-to-table or farmers directly to consumers was very much a regional effort, and we're living in the benefits of many of those things now. talked about economic development and the wide variety of different county levels.

[00:08:13] Some have zero staff. I thought about the fact that until about 2013, Admiral County's philosophy was the University of Virginia will take care of all of our economic development and we don't have to. And it was through the efforts organizing of the board, actually from 2010 to 2014, that began to put more of a focus on that.

[00:08:36] One of the leaders' comments that stayed with me forever was a good job or a better job is a wonderful way to solve the housing affordability problem. So it's one of the many assets that we have, and it certainly helped me to figure out how I fit in.

[00:08:56] They talked about the AFID program, the agricultural investments that our county also has used. So I was very proud to be thinking that Albemarle has been using these resources and these state programs to great benefit for our local citizens, and I hope that we will continue.

[00:09:13] And I'm zooming down here. The last program was about historic preservation tax credits and how many communities have used them to tremendous benefit to restore or repurpose old buildings. There's a river block in Danville, and the owner was there with his designer and also a funding advisor person talking about the assets that they have created in eight properties all along one street and the tremendous return to the citizens and the community from that.

[00:09:44] So anyway, that's my report. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. Yes, thank you. I'd like to just, I mean, we had an election yesterday. I would like to first say thank you to the voters of the Rio District for allowing me the opportunity to serve a third term, which I'm looking forward to coming at the start of the year. I also want to thank there was a competitive race for school board in the Rio District. Leslie Pryor, who was appointed this past few months ago, the start of the year, and Jim Dillenbeck were the candidates. So I thank both of them for running for school board

[00:10:21] and stepping up to run, as we all know, has its challenges. So I appreciate that they did so. And congratulate Mr. Dillenbeck on a successful candidacy as he was voted in to represent RIO come the start of the next year. I had a chance to visit and go inside and see the operations at three of the five in the RIO district.

[00:10:43] As always, we have got one hell of a volunteer team that run elections in this county. They know what they're doing. They know the rules. They're pleasant. So everything was going smoothly. They all had the data. They understood how early voting impacted it. So it was just really nice to see and visit with those folks and see kind of behind the scenes what was happening in those three particular precincts, but thank them for volunteer efforts to make sure we had safe and successful elections.

[00:11:10] The other part that I'd like to note is that we have two political parties often set up at all of our precincts around the county. And with all the ones I visited yesterday, as has been the case in the past, you've got Republicans and Democrats there all being cordial and respectful and having lovely dialogue with one another.

[00:11:25] I sometimes wish our federal and state politicians would come down and see what that means and what that looks like. Because, you know, a gust of wind would come, and it didn't matter whose sample ballots went flying over the parking lot. Everybody scurried from their tent to help pick them up. So they all understand what it takes to be out there.

[00:11:42] So I'm grateful to the citizens who volunteered being out there advocating for their political opinions, but doing so in a way that was both courteous and respectful of the voters that are coming through but to one another and not allowing any sort of partisan divide. They were out there volunteering and doing it in a lovely way.

[00:11:59] I suspect that is the case around the whole county because I've heard that and I've even seen it years ago when I had to run countywide. That was what I witnessed as well. So just very appreciative to all those involved and who put the time out there. It was a lovely day. And, you know, the results, I'm sure some people are happy with the results.

[00:12:15] Some people aren't. But at the end of the day, that's how it works. But the process to get there was well done at Albemarle, and I'm very grateful for that. So thank you. Thank you. Supervisor LePistro-Krutman. Well, and piggybacking on that, we also have newly elected two new supervisors, although we are going to be very sad to see Diantha and Jim leave.

[00:12:37] We want to congratulate Sally Duncan and Fred Missel on their win. So they'll be, yes. So thank you. And this morning I was at the topping out ceremony at Center 2 at Abelmoral High School.

[00:12:54] That's going to enable us to have about 400 students there all day. So that's really, it's going to be a beautiful building. So I was out there, like I said, this morning, and it was a really nice event for the topping out.

[00:13:10] And lastly, I know I'm going to step on Mike's toes, but we have Veterans Day coming up November the 11th. And at 11 o'clock, we will have a ceremony here in the county office building. and you you all are invited this is something very special where all veterans get honored and uh this is something dear near and dear to all of our hearts and so we encourage you to come that's all thank you thank you uh supervisor pruitt thank you you know everyone has to have a little bit of a ball uh hand on the ball with uh election day congratulations so i would um

[00:13:47] additionally like to extend a congratulations to molly angbein who won a seat on scottsville Town Council in a surprise election, right? And in doing so, unseated Eddie Payne. And so I'd really like to extend my thanks to Councillor Payne for his years of selfless service to the town of Scottsville. And I look forward to working with the new Councillor. I'd also like to recognize Councillor Gritzko in the audience. Thank you for joining us today. Additionally, as we've already heard, Commissioner Fred Missel has won a seat and is now Supervisor-elect Fred Missal that means we need a new Scottsville Planning Commissioner and I am

[00:14:25] already thinking about it and if anyone knows anyone who would be interested in this I would love to chat with people because this is probably the most consequential appointment that any supervisor gets to make and I get the privilege of making one twice because of the incredible success of Fred Missal now I should also bear mention we haven't really talked about the top of the ticket I do think it matters because it's something we talk about in this board very frequently, right? Governor Youngkin has been an ally of this county at times on economic development issues. He has helped us significantly, and we've worked well with him.

[00:14:59] But there are other ways in which Governor Youngkin has provided roadblocks for really important county priorities. He has vetoed funding initiatives that were specifically earmarked for our county, and he has blocked things that we've identified as our highest priority pieces of legislation. I am really optimistic for what the new administration might spell for some of our specific high-priority issues, and I hope that we have a continued and even stronger working relationship with the new administration, because I think there's a lot of new movement that we can make. Getting off the election, I should mention the Scottsville School and Hickory Hope in

[00:15:38] Southwood, both in the Scottsville district, right? These both, they are complicated to get seats in, to be a resident of, because you have to apply for a government lottery that is administered locally, and those wait lists aren't normally open. They are about to open. So on the 7th of November until the 14th of November, the wait list for the Scottsville school and for Hickory Hope in the Scottsville district will be open. If you are a low-income qualifying resident, I would encourage people to apply.

[00:16:08] This is really one of the best deals you can get. It is really reliable, low-income housing and two of the best communities that we have in all of Albemarle County. And feel free to reach out to anyone in the county about how that – if you want to reach out to me, I will put you in contact with the right people, please.

[00:16:26] Additionally, I should mention that there are some significant consequences that face our community with the federal shutdown. The most immediate that I know people are concerned about is SNAP. There are 3,000 people in the county, roughly, who rely on SNAP. The state is stepping in to provide stopgap funding, but it is going to be on a different basis than normal.

[00:16:48] This is a state-administered program, not local, and they are going to be doing it in one-week-at-a-time increments. So please be aware, members of the community, that that is how your SNAP benefits are going to be being rolled out presently. But there should be a relative non-interruption in services. You just might have to buy your groceries on a weekly basis rather than a monthly basis.

[00:17:07] Additionally, people who are on vouchers, if you receive a housing choice voucher either in a project-based context, such as the Scottsville School, or if you're in some other private marketplace where you're using a Section 8 housing choice voucher, the government is not going to be paying their portion of it anymore.

[00:17:26] You still have to continue to pay your portion, but the government will not pay their portion. This is also very important because your landlord is not allowed to evict you for the government not paying their portion. And so I would encourage anyone who is facing issues with their landlord during the government funding freeze to make sure you both notify your voucher administrator here in the county and also reach out to legal aid.

[00:17:53] Legal Aid Justice Center and Central Virginia Legal Aid will both be able to help people who are facing illegal evictions for the government's nonpayment of their rent portion. And finally, I should just mention there was an incident at UVA over the last few days.

[00:18:11] Blanking on it, I want to say it was on Sunday. No, I'm thinking the active shooter incident, right? There was not an actual active shooter, but there was a warning of it. and it was something that I realized I felt so much closer than I have in the past, right?

[00:18:28] I was actually, you know, a UVA student during one of the last really significant incidents, but it didn't touch me in a personal way. But this time there was a threat at Shannon Library. I have a person who works for me who is a current UVA student, and I reached out to her immediately, and I learned that she was at Shannon Library.

[00:18:44] She had to be evacuated. She had to sprint across the lawn under guard of police officers to get to a new shelter-in-place location. She was cool as a cucumber about it, took it in stride, but I don't know.

[00:19:00] I'm not a father. But it hit me in a very different way than these incidents have in the past, and it reminded me just what a chilling situation this is. Yet another false report of the type I had hoped to figure out how we can legislate solutions to combat here in the commonwealth and and just such a it brings home the kind of personal impacts that parents in this community feel every single day i know when we have these kinds of incidents in our schools and it to me really highlighted the importance of figuring out what the hell we're doing well

[00:19:38] that's all i have thank you and all i will add is that i also appreciate how well the elections were run yesterday and observed locally went off without a minor hitches but nothing that couldn't be readily overcome and you know and with professionalism and grace by everybody i very appreciative of the candidates and congratulate fred missal who'll be taking my place on the board and i will promise to try to make that transition as smooth as possible for for the benefit of all. Thank you.

[00:20:18] I do want to add something, but are you through? I didn't want to interrupt you. I thought maybe you were through. Mike made a really good point that I want to stress to folks that are here and anyone that might be listening. The magisterial districts that have new supervisors coming on will be advertising new positions and needing some folks to step up to the plate to apply for those positions.

[00:20:43] The Planning Commission is one, but there are other commissions as well, boards and commissions, the service authorities. So if you're interested in serving, especially in the Samuel Miller and the Jack Jewett, I think Ryo, you're in good shape as far as you're going to handle your own.

[00:21:05] But those that are turning over, many of those boards and commissions will be advertised. So if people are interested, they should take a look at the county website and see what's open and available and consider applying to serve your community.

[00:21:21] Thank you, Mike, for mentioning it. I appreciate it. May I add one thing? Sure. At the election yesterday, I was surprised to hear both at Earliesville Precincts and Free Union that quite a few in the dozens of long-time frequent voter individuals, long-time residents had been purged and that they were able to work this out it was a sort of that oh my god sort of initial shock was surprising but the staff in both places was able to smooth this over with

[00:21:57] the provisional ballot and go through all that stuff again but it does remind me that all of us need to before the election go and check and make sure that we have not been erased in some way so I was very surprised to hear that. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:22:14] Board, next up is proclamations and recognitions, and I believe that Professor Pruitt will read a proclamation as a motion. Thank you, Chair. Whereas, throughout our nation's history, the United States of America has called on its citizens in uniform to serve and protect our national security, and whereas, at home and abroad, generations of American patriots have defended the freedom and American values of equality, democracy, and justice for all.

[00:22:43] And whereas November 11th, 2025 marks the 87th anniversary of Veterans Day being recognized as a national holiday. On this day and every day, we remember the millions of patriots who have served and sacrificed for the betterment of our nation. And whereas many veterans continue to serve their country in public schools and government as public officials, teachers, police officer, fire and rescue, and other professions providing service to all community members.

[00:23:13] And whereas, with a profound debt of gratitude, we especially recognize the local veterans in Albemarle County for their continued service. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize November 11th as Veterans Day and celebrate all who have served our country around the world and continue to serve as veterans in Albemarle County signed this day, the 5th of November, 2025.

[00:23:38] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, a clerk will call the roll. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes.

[00:23:54] Thank you. And I believe Mr. Henry is going to introduce Trevor Henry, our deputy county executive, will introduce our recipient, Mr. Kai Mowry. Welcome. Chair Andrews, members of the board, thank you for the proclamation in its honor. Supervisor Pruitt, thank you for your service.

[00:24:10] Thank you for all of the support that you provide to county staff and especially veterans that work in the staff, but also veterans in our community. With me is Captain, retired Captain, Constantine Kai Mowry.

[00:24:28] I'd like to introduce Kai. As a fellow veteran, he was commissioned through Officer Candidate School in February of 1995, completed Nuclear Power School in March of 1996. He reported to the USS John C. Stennis, CVN-74, as Reactor's Control Division officer.

[00:24:51] The Stennis is a Nimitz-class carrier, or as us submariners call it, a very big target. He earned his propulsion watch officer and surface warfare designations while at the Stennis. He left active duty in 2000.

[00:25:09] Captain Maori transitioned to the Naval Reserve, where he served in a variety of operational and leadership roles. His assignment included mobilization to the Joint Task Force Guantanamo and Airy Support Group Kuwait, as well as key billets with U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Second Fleet, Sixth Fleet, Carrier Strike Group 4, concluded his career serving as a commanding officer of the Reserve Board of Inspection and Survey Unit.

[00:25:35] Captain Mowry retired in 2022 after 28 years of distinguished service, and he joined us shortly thereafter. It's been an honor to work with Kai and see his leadership and his great experience have a positive impact in public works and for our community.

[00:25:56] And so with that, I'll introduce Kai. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome, Captain Mowry. Thank you for being here. I promise, it's short. Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, Vice Chair McKeel, members of the board, fellow citizens.

[00:26:14] It is an honor to accept this proclamation on behalf of the proud veterans of Albemarle County. As you know, my name is Kai Mowry, and I currently serve as the Deputy Chief of Operations for Facilities and Environmental Services. I retired after 28 years of service as a captain in the United States Navy.

[00:26:33] I know firsthand the deep sense of duty, sacrifice, and pride that comes with serving our nation. This proclamation is more than just words on paper. It is a meaningful recognition of the generations of men and women who have defended our freedoms, both at home and abroad.

[00:26:51] It reminds us that Veterans Day is not just a date on the calendar, but a moment to reflect on the values of equality, democracy, and justice that so many have fought to protect. I accept this on behalf of all local veterans, those who continue to serve our community as teachers, first responders, public servants, and neighbors.

[00:27:11] We are proud to call Albemarle County home, and we are grateful for your continued support and recognition. Thank you for honoring our service and for standing with us, not just on Veterans Day, but every day. Thank you very much. If you will remain for a moment, I'm sure that supervisors will want to express their appreciation for veterans in the form of different comments.

[00:27:34] Supervisor McKeel? Sure. Thank you for being here today, for working for the county, and for your service. I'm always amazed in my life in Albemarle County how many veterans we have in Albemarle County.

[00:27:52] There are a huge number, whether it's at the University of Virginia or Albemarle County or the city, and certainly veterans that have just retired to our area, and they really are so beneficial and just make a really important contribution to our community.

[00:28:12] I will remind folks, and I think Bea mentioned it, that on Tuesday we have a veterans ceremony in recognition in this building, in the auditorium. It starts at 11 o'clock, and I also am aware that there are other veterans celebrations around the county.

[00:28:32] I think there's one at the center, and there are some others located in different places. But it's really important for people to show up and say their thanks to our veterans. So thank you, and we appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Supervisor Melo. Thank you.

[00:28:48] And echoing what was already said, but also thank you to FES for the green lights at night on the front of the building because it does help to remind our residents and to watch out and help their neighbors who are veterans or friends who are veterans to make new connections with the VA and sign up for the benefits that they earn there.

[00:29:08] Thank you very much. Yes, thank you for being here. What was the nuclear science piece again? What was that, the school? It's Naval Nuclear Power School. It's where they send all the trainees that are going to operate the Navy's nuclear reactors. So there was a comedian sometime that was like equated that, nuclear science or brain surgery.

[00:29:29] Now you make the quip, it's like, well, it's not brain surgery. So I always find it thrilling to find somebody where you're like, well, it's not nuclear science. Well, this guy, it can be. He can do it. So I'm sorry that that just popped into my head. I appreciate your remarks. I have the utmost respect for everyone who has served, especially with family members who are veterans and what that means.

[00:29:50] So I really appreciate your remarks today, and thank you again for your service. Supervisor LaPistro-Kirk? Once again, I also, we all do appreciate your service, not only for the county, but also with the military. I did hear you described by a four-letter word, and I'm going to say it, and I would like you to explain it to everybody.

[00:30:15] Nuke. It's actually pretty simple. It's pretty much the Navy's, I won't say it's a comical way, but of referring to those who have completed the nuclear power program and actually made it to the fleet. they're referred to as a nuke because you spend all your time down in the in the reactor spaces yeah you spend all your time down in the reactor base that's when you when you're on board ship yeah and you're operating the reactor you spend a lot of time we call it the reactor space you don't actually sit next to the reactor you don't want to do that but you sit outside of it

[00:30:50] behind all the shielding and operate the reactor well that's why i was asking because i was hoping You weren't sitting next to the reactor, but you're not glowing, so that's good. That's good. But really want to say thank you for all your service.

[00:31:08] And being from a military family, as I think a lot of us are, that really means a lot. Your service means a lot. Thank you. Supervisor Broek. So two quick, slightly comical notes. I want to first note for the audience, because I'm not sure that they are aware, because you're facing us and not them.

[00:31:27] But Captain Mowry has come, and he's really stunting on us right now. He has his humongous rack on. I can spot two legions of merit from here. It's actually miniature. It is a miniature. It is a huge miniature rack of ribbons.

[00:31:45] Several more rows than I could ever hope for. And second, we talked about the nuke as a noun. As I'm sure you can attest, transitioning out of the service, one of the biggest things you have to learn is getting rid of all the idiosyncratic language that you use in the Navy, right?

[00:32:06] The slang and stuff. And one that I still can't get out and I use all the time is nuke as a verb because the reputation of the nuclear force is that they're giant nerds and not just any kind of giant nerd.

[00:32:22] They're very persnickety nerds, right? They're very detail-oriented nerds. So nuke as a verb means to be far, far, far, far, far too concerned with inconsequential details. As in, you're really nuking it out, Supervisor Pruitt.

[00:32:37] No one actually cares about that setback. So I would just share that with my peers and with the audience. That is an additional part of the reputation for their corner of the veterans community. And finally, you know, I would always be remiss if I didn't say a slightly bummer note on Veterans Day.

[00:32:58] I've done it before, and I'll do it again. Sorry to bum everyone out, right? Over the last year, I'm sure my peers are pretty familiar. I've had the opportunity to think more deeply about federal policy. And something that comes up a lot and that I've had to grapple with is that there's a lot of voices.

[00:33:17] There's a lot of voices lobbying for the military. And there's not nearly as many voices lobbying for the warfighter, right, the individual, the person. And that also goes through is there's not many voices that matter, at least, that have power, who are lobbying for the individual, the veteran.

[00:33:37] We see this in realized policy across this country. We see this in a significant, I think, drawdown over the last year in critical federal services for veterans. We've seen this in the real gutting of the VA over the last year and the loss of thousands of staff, the inability to fill new veterans' hospitals that we bought here.

[00:33:57] And we see it in our active service, right? We see it in the kind of op tempos, in the kind of stretching of the manpower that we have for our military amidst the simultaneous gold plating of the contracts for the actual goods they use every day.

[00:34:16] I think that is a crying shame and something that we should do something about. And I am proud to represent a community that I do think is concerned with the actual individual, with the actual veteran, with the actual warfighter, and where we also are a community that can attract such incredible talent, right?

[00:34:34] I am so proud that we have someone who is working for us who has such a thick rack, right? That speaks to the quality of an organization that we have here. Thank you so much for all you do for us every day. Thank you. Now, in my household, to nuke is to put it in the microwave.

[00:34:55] But I was a physics professor for many years, and I know the difference. And we'll say that one of my best students was from the Nuclear Power School and appreciated his intelligence and fortitude and all veterans.

[00:35:11] But I think this proclamation highlights the fact that so many veterans come back and serve. And I think that service to community is a highlight of coming back from service to the country and the character of people who go into military service.

[00:35:27] So thank you. And with that, Supervisor Pruitt, I believe, has the proclamation.

[00:35:45] Thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Board, this brings us to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings.

[00:36:05] And I believe Vice Chairman Keel will read the rules and introduce the speakers and have the list coming up. Thank you.

[00:36:23] We have five speakers today and no one online, so I will call the names in just a minute. First, I need to read the rules. And since we have no one online, let me read these instead.

[00:36:40] During the time set up 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.

[00:36:56] A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. 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.

[00:37:15] In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk.

[00:37:33] 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 do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live-streamed, recorded, and published on the Elmar County website.

[00:37:54] And with that, our first speaker today is Dan Gritzko. Please feel free to adjust the mic. Is that okay there? That's good.

[00:38:12] Supervisors, when the tornado hit the cheese factory and the reporters went there, can you guess what the report was? The reporter said debris was everywhere.

[00:38:29] You can be thankful that as a bad dad joke teller, that'll be my only joke. What I have to share with you, though, is much more important. There's a really amazing moment in history that we can remember.

[00:38:46] Very soon, in fact, imminently, there'll be a new statue in the United States Capitol honoring Barbara Johns. This young woman who did this courageous act, she gave an incredible speech on April the 23rd, 1951.

[00:39:03] In fact, our governor-elect last night, this is what she said about it as she was recounting Virginia history. She said, where Washington and Jefferson established a government by and for the people, it was also where Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old girl from Farmville, led a walkout of students that would be part of Brown v. Board of Education.

[00:39:29] Barbara Johns never gave up, and she showed us that no matter what age, you can be part of the change and the progress here in Virginia and across the nation. Supervisors, in my job, I work in the tour industry, and I've had the honor of doing a lot of presentations about Virginia history.

[00:39:49] And I start out with what I call Virginia smack talk, which basically is four of the first five presidents were from Virginia. Sorry, California, you only had two, or Oregon, you only had none. But later on, I talk about the bad things about Virginia history, that we were where slavery started, where we were the colony that had the most enslaved people, and also that we were where the capital of the Confederacy was.

[00:40:21] That said, one of the beautiful things that's happening now with this new statue is we have a new story to tell. And our honor as a county is to step into this time to embrace this moment so that we can encourage students to learn about it.

[00:40:38] The last year, if you've heard me talk, I did not know this story until 2025. And I've had a number of opportunities to go to Farmville, take students there, take my own family there. And I'd encourage all of you, you may be like me, maybe you've never heard of Barbara Johns, maybe you didn't know the story, or maybe you weren't aware of the statue.

[00:40:57] But I would suggest, as we as a county think of ways, I'm also going to talk to the school board, talk about it also, and I'm honored just to have a moment to, it's not my story, it's her story. What a cool story. Y'all have a great day.

[00:41:13] Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sarah Bleach. Okay.

[00:41:36] That's good. Just introduce yourselves as you get ready to speak. That's great. Okay. If you can reach them to the microphone. Adjust the mic so everybody can hear you. My name is Thea Bleach-Calter.

[00:41:53] I'm from the Breyer District. I've asked my Sarah Bleach to speak for me today. My name is Sarah Bleach, Whitehall, and I'm speaking for Thea. I moved to branch lands from Earliesville in 2021 specifically to improve my access to public transportation so I could maintain my independence.

[00:42:16] When MicroCat launched in 2023, it was a meaningful improvement. I used it to get to and from work, to buy groceries, attend appointments, and stay engaged in community life. MicroCat played a crucial role in supporting my independence.

[00:42:32] However, since changes to the MicroCat fleet, I have encountered major accessibility barriers. I have a mobility impairment and use a cane. I do not use a wheelchair, but I also cannot step up into a high-profile vehicle. The earlier MicroCat wheelchair vans had a ramp and included a third seat that allowed me to walk in safely.

[00:42:54] The newer vans do not have that seating configuration, and because of their height, I cannot enter the vehicle from the side either. These vans are described as wheelchair accessible, but accessibility is not a one-size-fits-all. In this case, the newer vans are not accessible for riders with mobility impairments who walk with a cane.

[00:43:16] the exact category recognized in MicroCAD's own accessibility request form. This is not just a vehicle design issue, it's a system reliability issue. If the system is described as accessible, but riders with documented mobility impairments cannot board, then the system is not meeting the accessibility standards it claims to provide.

[00:43:39] In April, an advocate from the Independent Resource Center, who also has a mobility impairment, evaluated a van with MicroCat staff and confirmed the issue. During that meeting, staff acknowledged that lower-profile vans do exist in the fleet and they are significantly easier for people like me to use.

[00:44:01] Later, IRC was told that an option to request low-profile vans could be addressed to add it to the app, but months have passed with no progress. IRC followed up in September and received no response. As of today, there is no option in the app to request a low-profile vehicle.

[00:44:19] There is no reliable process through dispatch, nor is dispatch aware of this option. And there is no guarantee that a rider with a documented mobility need will be assigned a vehicle they can actually board. This means I cannot rely on microcat, and when transportation is unreliable, independence is lost.

[00:44:40] Therefore, I'm asking for two commitments. A clear and reliable way, either in the app or through dispatch, for riders with mobility impairments to request a low-profile van. Thank you. Thank you. Please, comments can be provided to the clerk so that we have them in case you didn't finish.

[00:45:00] Thank you. Thank you. Sarah, the clerk is right behind, right over there. Thank you. Our next speaker is Susan McCauley. Good afternoon.

[00:45:23] I'm Susan McCulley, and I'm a resident at the Samuel Miller District. Since April, you have been reminded that stripping constitutional rights from our immigrant and refugee neighbors threatens all of our rights. Since April, you've been reminded that far from targeting violent criminals, the administration will sweep up anyone it wants to, including American citizens.

[00:45:49] Since April, the community has raised alarms about data collection and surveillance. The federal government has access to personal information for all Medicaid recipients. ICE has a data-sharing agreement with the IRS. The links between Palantir and the federal government are well documented.

[00:46:11] The administration is actively seeking voter rolls from every state. Most recently, it sanctioned the use of Pegasus, software developed by an Israeli-owned company that secretly infiltrates cell phones. With the acquisition of Zignal licenses, ICE intends to further expand its social media surveillance capabilities and has plans to develop a round-the-clock social media monitoring team to identify leads for immigration enforcers.

[00:46:42] The partnership between Flock and Ring Cameras is yet another insidious example of surveillance and data collection. Recently, DHS issued a procurement for bounty hunters with the intent of arming them with this arsenal of surveillance data.

[00:47:00] In July, we asked you to pass or at least consider a resolution that requires ICE agents to be unmasked, identify themselves, present warrants, and drive marked vehicles. Given all that is happening, our request seems quaint by comparison.

[00:47:18] Yesterday, voters around the Commonwealth and across the country resoundingly made their voices heard. Yesterday, Virginia elected a platform of Democratic leaders who are committed to affordability, health and well-being, rule of law, and the Constitution.

[00:47:36] Yesterday, people spoke and the message could not be clearer. We vote for principled leaders who will stand up for us, for all of us. Today, we are asking you to take courage from your constituents. Today, we are asking you to take a principled stand.

[00:47:54] Today, we are asking you again to pass a resolution to unmask ICE. Today, we are asking you again to say that here, in this community, we believe in the rights of everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:48:10] Next speaker is Stuart Overby. Good afternoon. You might want to, yeah, there you go, adjust your mic.

[00:48:28] Thank you. Hi, everyone. i'm steward overby with don't spread on me and i live in the samuel miller district i'm here to talk about the need for a biosolids ordinance in the county spreading of sewage sludge as fertilizer on farms and forests in albemarle so apparently around october 1st some sewage sludge was spread on fleetwood farm in the rivana district right next to the north point housing development and i received a message about it on october 23rd through our website and i just

[00:49:02] want to share it with you. This person says, hello, I recently had the farmer next to me spread the biosolids on his land near my house. I called DEQ because it was spread uphill and my well is about 150 feet down below. They assured me it would be fine. The smell alone is horrible. I had to turn off our HVAC unit for a week because I could smell it in the house. It's been over three weeks now since it was dumped and I can smell it still when it's damp outside. I can't even warm my vehicle up in the mornings because it will suck the smell up into the truck. I have noticed birds are attracted

[00:49:40] to it and I don't think it's good for the wildlife to be near it. This time of year when you can open the windows and let fresh air in, I can't due to the smell. I did speak to a gentleman with DEQ that was extremely nice and he told me the farmer can't dump for three years now. So that was the only thing that made me feel better is that I have a break from it for three years. So this is a typical experience for someone living near an area that's been spread. And the thing to keep in mind is that smell's not just a nuisance, it's quite toxic. People often report that they get sick,

[00:50:15] their children get sick, even their pets get sick. PFAS, and God knows what other toxins happen to be in that load, will easily migrate into the air just as they migrate through soil into the groundwater and into nearby streams when it rains. And this person, along with many others, is right there forced to live in this toxic cloud. We're having an event to talk about this, and we've got this wonderful researcher, Brian Berger from UVA, who's going to do a presentation and a Q&A at November 20th from 6 to 7 at Grace Church Red Hill, and I brought you all personalized

[00:50:55] invitations except for the county attorney's office too. His research, he has his own lab there, and they focus on man-made problems, looking for solutions with nature-based approaches.

[00:51:11] It's really fascinating stuff. You all should come. He's going to update us on his current research, which is funded by the EPA, and he's looking at remediation up in Maine at known PFAS-contaminated soils up there. Look forward to you all being there.

[00:51:30] It's open to the public. Everyone else should come. Thank you. Thank you. That's all. All the speakers. board this brings us to item eight the consent or consent agenda i have not heard any items to be pulled minutes or otherwise there's more i'm looking for a motion to approve the consent second motion from supervisor lapista curtley second from supervisor mcqueen without objection if the clerk will call the law ms mckeel yes mr pruitt aye mr andrews yes mr galloway yes Ms. LaPista-Kirtley.

[00:52:01] Aye. Ms. Mallet. Yes. Thank you. The board, our first action item is Miller School Extension, the private central sewer system and central water supply, presented by Mr. Frank Pohl, our county engineer. Welcome. Thank you.

[00:52:22] Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, Vice Chair McKeel, and members of the board.

[00:52:40] My name is Frank Pohl. I'm the county engineer, and I'm here to present to you a request from the Miller School of Albemarle for extending or expanding their central sewage and central water supply systems. This picture is from their website, by the way. The location of the Miller School is over in the Samuel Miller District, and it's a rural area zone property parcel.

[00:53:13] There is no water or sewer service. It's outside the jurisdictional area, and it is within the upper Meachams River, which is a water supply protection area. To the north is Crozet. There's Dickwoods Road, which comes in from the right on your screen. And the school, excuse me, the road named after the school, Miller School Road, comes in from the north and continues to the south.

[00:53:40] Just some general information about the school. It opened in 1878 and has 225 students. I counted 21 addressable or structures with addresses on them. The sewer permit was first issued in 77 and the water permit was first issued in 1970. Our ordinance had some sections of it that were first adopted from what I can tell in 1976. Prior approvals for this school include a special use

[00:54:18] permit. These are more recent approvals, by the way. I didn't go back and dig through and try to find all approvals, but the most recent, I think, approval that affects this particular request is an SP that was approved in 23 to allow the school to continue and to expand. It included four buildings and up to 500 students. A special exceptions that was related to that special use permit was approved to disturb critical slopes. An initial site plan, which is administrative

[00:54:54] approval was recently approved. A brief description of the systems. The existing sewer system is a conventional system. It experiences some inflow to rainwater, so it's overwhelming, the system that's there, and the capacity of the drain fields, considering its age, has diminished.

[00:55:24] They are proposing with this request to investigate the system to find leaks and repair leaks is to minimize, not to eliminate. I think they're allowing up to 10,000 gallons per day to enter the system and to account for that, but they're also proposing new primary drain fields.

[00:55:46] They're showing some reserve drain fields. They're not installing those right now, though, in a new secondary multi-step biological treatment system. There are 10 existing connections, and the request is to add four connections for a total of 14 for the sewage system.

[00:56:06] For the water supply, there are three wells. There were four. I think one of them is no longer producing. But the total capacity is 22,480 gallons per day. Currently, they're using about 10,000 average, 10,000 to 11,000 gallons per day average, and a peak demand of around 16,000.

[00:56:30] So they do have capacity to absorb or connect the additional four structures without increasing the capacity of the water system. There are two storage tanks, a disinfection system and a distribution system.

[00:56:46] The distribution system, they are extending and installing new water lines for even some of the existing buildings to get it up to, or just to make it more modern and hopefully last longer.

[00:57:05] And they are adding some fire protection hydrants as well. And there are 18 existing water connections, and they propose to add four for 22.

[00:57:24] So that tells you that not all structures are connected to the sewer, but they do have water supply, some additional ones. Here's the definition of a central system, just to recap or visit this.

[00:57:40] Three or more connections is our definition for a central system, and we count that as being structures or buildings served. This one really fits under 102, as I underlined, the extend, the central system, because there's already an existing system there, and they're extending it.

[00:58:02] So the request is really to extend and expand that system. And as required under the ordinance, a hearing on the proposal is required. Here's a plan, campus plan.

[00:58:19] North is to the left. It's turned sideways to fit on the page. And you see the stream buffer on the top there is in green. The floodplain is kind of in the middle of that green blob. It's more of a darker green, I guess.

[00:58:36] Existing sewers in pink and proposed sewer is hard to see, but there's only a couple of what point to this. Where the text says proposed sewer, there's a line coming out there, And there are two lines coming out between the yellow buildings there.

[00:59:04] That's the additional sewer lines that they're adding. Existing water line is the cyan that's kind of in the top right. You see that in top right there. And it goes through the existing buildings. And then the proposed water line, you can see they're putting in a lot of proposed water line.

[00:59:23] That's the blue. Down to the bottom right of the picture, I didn't include this, but it's in your packet is where the water tank is located. I forgot to mention that critical slopes is in the hatch, the gray hatched area. Existing buildings are all of those gray boxed-looking hatches.

[00:59:47] And the proposed structures are the yellow hatched areas, which shows the four structures. They do not plan to construct all four structures immediately.

[01:00:03] They're going to phase it. Phase one will include a dormitory. Phase two will include two dormitories and the gymnasium, which is to the left. The three structures in the middle are the dormitories. This is showing where the new drain field will be located.

[01:00:26] On the left there is the pumping station. It's a primary screening and sedimentation and flow equalization system. This will pump up and over to this system. There is a stream buffer here I didn't show, but I will go back here to show you where that's located.

[01:00:42] That is located in the top. That pink square is the same as this green square down here in the bottom left. And that will pump over through to the field that's along Dickwoods Road currently.

[01:01:00] The grade flows down from the right down to the left. There are proposed reserve drain fields within these drain fields that are shown. Frank, do you have a pointer? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't want you to go back over all of this.

[01:01:16] i was just wondering i thought maybe a pointer might help some of us to follow it a little bit i just figured that out thank you yeah sure thanks so um yeah so dick woods road over here this is the these are the drain new drain field areas and this will be a new two inch high density polyethylene pipe that will be used to pump up to this location and there will be a dosing system that that doses

[01:01:44] the uh drain fields so the factors favorable and unfavorable they have existing capacity for the water to serve the additional buildings is a favorable factor. It's already approved at 22,000 and I think was 840 or 480 gallons per day. Installation of new water lines for fire suppression and fire hydrants that are not necessarily required for the new buildings. They're doing

[01:02:22] those for also some existing buildings. The existing sewer system would be prepared and upgraded with new drain fields and a secondary treatment system. There currently isn't the secondary treatment system out there right now.

[01:02:38] VDH would continue to regulate the operation of the systems. The one unfavorable is that they would be privately owned and maintained, but it will be one owner, which is a good thing, I think, in my opinion, so we know who's responsible for it.

[01:02:56] And then I did include some conditions for approval. You've seen some of these before, all of them, I think. We've modified number five to require them to document compliance, not at the request of the county, but on a yearly basis.

[01:03:18] And we will set up in our new system a way to keep track of that. But if you'd like, I'd go through these real quickly. It has to be constructed in accordance with the design plans. In the future, I may change this to a general accord so that it's, I need to talk to our county attorney about potential revisions or changes, but for right now it says in accord.

[01:03:43] There is, as you'll see in the appendix, a pretty well laid out set of plans from their engineer, so they're pretty far along in the design. So I don't see any issues with that for this project. Number two, they would have to submit those plans with their final site plan and prior to final site plan approval.

[01:04:05] And then, number three, prior to the CO, they must demonstrate that the system upgrades and expansion were construction in accord with the plans and specs, and then that the Miller School must assume full responsibility of the operation and maintenance.

[01:04:25] And number five, I went over previously. With that, do you have any questions or comments? Thank you. We'll go through our order, starting with Prov. McHugh. Thank you, Frank. Would you go back to the previous slide? I appreciate the good presentation.

[01:04:43] And I really appreciate your addition of the proposed conditions of approval. Help me with number five. So I'm interested in that because that sounds like to me that is a better place for us to be in than we've been in the past where we can follow with our new system.

[01:05:02] Am I misreading this a little bit? But just help me with that a little bit. Number five has been a carryover since I began approving these or reviewing and presenting these system requests. So those have been in since, again, as I said from previous county engineer presentations and conditions for other systems, and we've carried that over.

[01:05:27] The difference is that we used to say at the request of the county engineer to provide those documents, and there were comments about making that automatic as opposed to being a request that triggers the requirement. And what I liked, I thought I heard you say, was that our new system allows for that to happen.

[01:05:48] Yeah, the one way to do it is put it in your Outlook a year out, right? And then you do that every year. But the new system allows us to set up an inspection that is, you can put the end date as blank and it will go indefinitely every year.

[01:06:04] That's wonderful news. And that was what I was getting to because when staff changes and not everybody is aware to put a reminder in their household calendar, things fall between the cracks. So our system now will accommodate this, which is really great to hear. Yeah, and we use the, it's not necessarily an inspection, but it's a reminder that's in the system.

[01:06:24] But that's great. Yeah, so that's an improvement. I really appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure I was thinking about this through the right lens. Thank you very much. That's all I had. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. No questions at this time. Supervisor Galloway. Yeah, thank you, Frank. No questions. Supervisor Lupita.

[01:06:39] No questions. I appreciate your presentation. Supervisor Pruitt. I don't believe I have any questions. Thank you. I will just double-check on a couple of things. You mentioned on slide nine that the word accord, that you were going to suggest that it have a modifier to, you said some general accord or something, and I didn't know what you were referring to, whether that was something that.

[01:07:06] I don't want to nuke this to death, but. Uh-oh, here we go. Learned a new word. It's just a wording nuance that I have as someone who has to enforce a condition that I might propose to the county attorney in the future.

[01:07:26] But for now, I think that the accord is fine because of the level of detail that we have. These kind of tie folks into the applicant, into what they've submitted. And I'm just concerned if there's tweaks in the future, how we would be able to accommodate that without coming back to the board.

[01:07:45] If it's a technical thing versus something that's more substantial. I'd be interested when that's ready for prime time, but if it's not ready today, then we'll proceed. I think that the language that the board has before it right now is legally sufficient. Okay, thank you. My only other just clarification is that back in slide three, it talked about the number of, you know, the capacity of the system, but what's being added.

[01:08:10] And I guess I do look at this, or actually, I guess it's the next slide there. where 23,480 other two slide threes that's from uh that uh the actual additions are now three dormitories and a gymnasium um i assume that when the uh capacity of the system is looked at it's not based on buildings but based on usage in buildings because i certainly would expect a lot of showers in all four of those uses so correct yeah it's based on the number of students and um If they're permanently there, you know, the resident or not.

[01:08:50] So they look at all of that. Okay. And it's not just the structures, but our ordinance is focused on the connections, number of connections, which is the number of buildings, not number of students. Thank you. You're welcome. I don't have any other questions.

[01:09:06] If there aren't further questions, as this is in the Samuel Miller District, I would move to adopt the attached resolution attachment B, approving the upgrades and extension of the central sewer system and central water supply subject to conditions therein.

[01:09:22] Second. And if I may add one thing before we vote. Sure. To me, accord is really important here because it does give them notice that this is what we expect and don't come in and say, oh, we're off by 10 feet later.

[01:09:38] So we've had significant trouble over the last 18 years with significant accord, which is too much wiggle wiggle for a lot of things. Thank you. Thank you. So I've made a motion. Supervisor Malik seconded it. Without objection, clerk, call the roll.

[01:09:54] Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. Lopista-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malik. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Board, this brings us to SE 2025-00033, which is Ravana Futures building height and special exception 2025-34, Ravana Futures step back. And this will be presented by Mr. Bill Fritz,

[01:10:19] Development Process Manager. Welcome, Mr. Fritz. Thank you. Trouble getting it started. Bill Fritz with the community development office or department excuse me this is a two special

[01:10:58] exceptions for rivana futures one special exception is for building height and that is to allow structures of up to 140 feet and the other is for a step back special exception to reduce it from 15 feet to zero feet and i'm going to go through and and give you some more details about what that is in just a second. So the ordinance allows for a special exception to height and step back.

[01:11:30] The ordinance does not include any specific criteria for either of these exceptions. The first exception is this phrase here, which was just recently added to the ordinance. Previously, you couldn't get any, the only way to get an increase in the height was either by a variance or through a rezoning process both of both are difficult so this was a recent amendment to the ordinance the minimum step back requirements have always been eligible for a special exception the ordinance includes this does it does not include specific criteria for the review of either of these exceptions the

[01:12:09] ordinance simply states the board is not required to make specific findings in support of its decision but the board may impose reasonable conditions to address any possible impacts of the special exception i would like to point out that we typically don't do presentations on special exceptions you see them as consent agenda items part of the reason we're bringing it forward to you is because this is a first impression of the height of special exception so we thought we would bring it to you because it's the first time you're seeing that so let's talk about the step back the ordinance

[01:12:47] requires a 15-foot step back when a building exceeds 40 feet or three stories. The step back is only on the front of the building. The ordinance does include a figure showing how the step back is implemented, which is very helpful, I think. The requirement of step back can make building construction difficult because you need to either have a bearing wall located to support that everything above the third story, which may compromise the usability of the lower floors, or you can use alternative construction techniques, but these can be extremely costly.

[01:13:28] This slide shows the potential location of a proposed building and road extension. This information was taken from a site plan recently submitted for grading and utility work in the area. That plan is actually included as attachment A3, and I believe it's sheet 9 that shows the detail.

[01:13:46] The building location and size are approximate only at this time. site plan showing the details of the building is required in order for a building permit to be issued. This outline shows the boundary between the rural area zoning and urban zoning. The urban zoning is a mix of zoning types. This just shows the boundary between the urban and rural area zoning. As you can see, the proposed building is located at the edge of the urban zoning in this case, which in this case is light industry. However, these properties have split zoning.

[01:14:25] I've highlighted the portions of the property owned by Albemarle County that are zoned are a rural areas. As you can see, the building is set back considerably from the property line. The step back exemption is only in the area adjacent to the extended road, not anywhere else. The increased building height is mitigated by the fact that the proposed building is approximately a third of a mile from Route 29 and approximately 600 feet from buildings on the adjacent rural property. Some existing trees are located on county property and there is approximately 100 feet available on county property for the planting of screening trees.

[01:15:04] Plantings will be reviewed as part of the site plan for any buildings proposed. Given the distance from adjacent development and the designation of this area for intensive development, staff is able to recommend approval of the two special exceptions. I've included this slide just to put some of the other information in perspective.

[01:15:24] This side shows the various zonings in the area. I mentioned before that it's a mix. The light blue is light industry zoning. White is the rural areas. This particular map was taken from the application for the special exceptions. You may notice that the original request includes parcel 33-14.

[01:15:45] That's this parcel here. I just highlight it for you. That parcel has been removed from the request. It is not covered by either of the proposed resolutions. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Move of order.

[01:16:01] Supervisor McKeel. Bill, thank you. I don't think I have any questions right now. Thank you. Appreciate it. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. I did not anticipate when the height changes for the SE were proposed that we would go doubling.

[01:16:19] So I'm a bit, that was my original shock when I read the staff report for this. The distances, is there any kind of formula that will be able to be used so that when the next person comes along and wants this, which is highly likely, it seems to me, that we will be able to say, yes, but this one was granted because it had 600 feet of sitback or something like that.

[01:16:44] Otherwise, I think we're basically doing away with all of our existing rules here. The ordinance has, as I said, the ordinance has no specific regulations, no guidance as to how to review these kinds of special exceptions. So that's why we're bringing it here to try to get an idea of what the board is looking for when they're considering a special exception so that we can factor that into our decision-making process or our recommendations in the future.

[01:17:12] I guess picking, and I'm not picking on the one on Hydraulic Road, but that is a very effective use of a six-story building. But if that were 12 stories right there, that would be overpowering. So I just, I hope that others will think about how we can do a better job on flushing out this process in order for this to be done fairly.

[01:17:34] And we're not making it up for one person and not doing something for another, which I know our county attorney will be very unhappy if we start doing things like that. So that is my concern. The step back would also trouble me if it were on the back of the building, but since it's not, it protects those neighbors on the other side.

[01:17:54] Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Galway? Yeah, because the special exceptions, I mean, each thing is considered for the special exception. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. But if we grant one special exception for one area, what am I missing on the connection to other places that ask for a special exception?

[01:18:12] So the special exception for step backs, for example, does not have any review criteria. However, the board has reviewed multiple special exceptions for step backs, and we have a formula now for reviewing that. We have a concept for what we're reviewing.

[01:18:29] We've been providing that to you. So if this had only been a step back special exception, we would have put that on the consent agenda because we have guidance from prior applications. We don't have that for the height special exception.

[01:18:45] Okay, I think I understand that. I'm just saying that if we grant one special exception in one place, it doesn't mean we have to grant it in another place. The location of each place, do we take that into consideration? Yes, correct. And the stepbacks in the height sometimes, like I know we've granted the stepback waivers in other places because it's more for residential because it allows for more units to be built.

[01:19:06] And it calls for it in the Rio 29 small area plan where I believe we've said no, we've got rid of the step-back notion, if I'm remembering right, or maybe that's coming. But in any case, our consideration of, like, a Rio 29 step-back would be different than a hydraulic road step-back or a 29 north step-back.

[01:19:25] Yes, absolutely. And I would trust that, okay, I understood a criteria, so staff has something to work with regarding the height, but it would still be the same thing. We're going to consider, I certainly consider height at Rio 29 differently than I do at Hillsdale or Greenbrier in 29 because you take into account where it's sitting and what the project is.

[01:19:47] So, all right. I don't think I have any other questions. Thank you. Supervisor LePiesto-Curley? The only question I have in reading the report, it's the first page on attachment A, says, under character of the property and area, the first paragraph, the last sentence, or second-to-last sentence, a stream with floodplain runs parallel to Route 29.

[01:20:15] Is there any way you can show me where that is? But I couldn't figure it out. Sure. If you look at this particular slide. Do you have a pointer, maybe? I believe that I do. If you do not, I can get one.

[01:20:33] Or not. Go by color. He really doesn't want to cooperate today. There we go.

[01:20:49] There you go. So, in this map here, you can see this highlighted area here. This purplish area is both stream buffer and floodplain. It's one color. It picks up both. I got it.

[01:21:05] So, it's right along Route 29, parallels Route 29. And that was just something I was wondering about. Otherwise, I don't have any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pritt. Yes, so I realize that the kind of novel issue here is the height special exception, but you'll also forgive me because I have not had as much of an opportunity to nuke the step-back requirements, because as we've talked, right, they previously have been appearing in consent agenda since I've been here.

[01:21:32] So I hope you'll forgive me if most of my questions are on the step-back. Help me out here. Does the step-back requirement, is that applying to all buildings regardless of use based on the area designation, or does it shift by use?

[01:21:47] It's different zoning districts have this requirement, and the idea is that you're stepping back the upper floors to prevent a canyon effect, and in this particular case, generally what is looked at in the special exception request is what sort of activity do we expect at the street level, and how would people, pedestrians, be impacted by that.

[01:22:15] In this particular case, we're expecting very limited, if any, pedestrian activity because there's really nothing to attract pedestrians. This is a manufacturing district. This is an employment generator. So we didn't see the step back as being a concern.

[01:22:31] Beyond aesthetic, is there a key consideration that we implement step backs for? Is there like a wind shear consideration? Is there some kind of, it's purely aesthetic?

[01:22:47] Yes. And it is something, hmm, I am intrigued, right? So, because my peer, Supervisor Lipset-O-Kirtley, right, frequently talks about, well, we just need to be building higher. And I will sometimes reply to her, we're not stopping them from building higher. It's just a factor of economics that prevents people from building higher.

[01:23:04] Except here, where we're influencing the factor of economics on preventing people from building higher. Okay. Noted. That's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Which goes to my point, we can build higher.

[01:23:22] Yeah, and maybe we should revisit this when we're doing a zoning refresh. Yeah, thank you. So in the spirit that we're looking at this as a first time for the height and we need to understand what criteria would be involved, I want to just explore a few questions.

[01:23:41] I'm very supportive of this, but I just don't want to understand. So there's industrial, there's light industrial. Would that make a difference in terms of how this is reviewed for the expectations for that area it did and we included some of that consideration in our analysis without having any guidance we thought that one of the mitigating factors we thought to allow height is the county stated intent that this before pretty intense developments and developments of a certain type and if a user then comes along and says okay i'm an industry that

[01:24:20] you're trying to attract, but the nature of my industry requires me to have this height in order to do my business, we would take that in consideration versus if it were an industrial district that were adjacent to residential.

[01:24:37] I'm going to pick on an area, say Broadway, for example, where you had residential nearby may not be appropriate, not designated for the same type of things. we may not be able to support that particular, if this same application were there, I don't know that we'd be able to support it. We do occasionally review heights in the context of towers, for example. And in those cases, we have like balloon tests and other things that tell us what this height would look like from different perspectives. And that's something that I think, you know,

[01:25:15] might be considered in this case, or renderings of some sort. And I would point out that the board has also allowed height exceptions during rezonings to plan developments. For example, the hotel at Stonefield is 120 or 130 feet tall, and that was done through the rezoning process.

[01:25:38] So the county has a history of increasing height. We've just not done it through the special exception process. We've done it through a rezoning process. And I don't recall what evidence of what the height would look like being presented in that case, so I don't know.

[01:25:55] There was some discussion there about that particular building. There was some discussion whether or not fire suppression could be provided, and it was determined that, yes, it could. But that property also has some topographic variations there where it's 120 feet tall from one side, but it's only 30 or 40 feet tall from the other side, which is adjacent to the residential development.

[01:26:22] So it doesn't really look like it got an increase in height from the adjacent residential development. So we kind of looked at that one as giving us some guidance. And the last minor point was in the material somewhere I saw reference to utility infrastructure heights, but I didn't see the actual numbers.

[01:26:45] I just saw that there are towers nearby? There's power lines nearby. You can just see on here, on this particular map, there's a high-voltage power line that runs along the northern part of the property owned by the county through it.

[01:27:03] It actually defines the boundary between industrial zoning and rural zoning in the areas that I've highlighted here. Okay. By reference, do you know what the height of those typically mean? I don't recall what they are, to tell you the truth.

[01:27:22] Boy, I don't want to guess. Sorry. Okay. That's fine. Just as examples of things that I'd be interested in in future reviews on things like this. Thank you, Chair. You actually caused me to think of kind of an additional thought I had because you were asking about where is staff finding the criterion that they're looking for in making their own determination on recommendations, right?

[01:27:50] And there was the comparison of Ravana Futures with Broadway. And because it's fresh on the mind, right, I'm thinking, well, I think Ravana Futures and Broadway are actually identically designated in the comprehensive plan. they're both employment centers um i suppose you have the broadway small area plan to to look to but yeah i i guess my concern here is always that we're relying on on heavily kind of qualitative uh standards for staff which which does it shifts that recommendation out of the sphere of public

[01:28:26] accountability it shifts that uh recommendation further away from people who are democratically accountable um and there is some concern for that uh and it also makes me wonder if we made a mistake in how we're defining our types of nodes in our activity centers.

[01:28:44] And we should have been more thoughtfully designing those over the specific and, like, quantitative things that we were going to be deciding based on them, right? Anyway, that's my thought that made me think of. I'd be interested to know if you all have any thoughts.

[01:29:00] Oh, sorry. I'd be interested to know if you have any thoughts about what Mike's comment. I noticed you were kind of, your head was moving and I was interested. No, I thought it was a good comment, and I was thinking through all the different things that are in the comprehensive plan.

[01:29:16] I'm trying to remember the exact language for the Broadway area in this area. I know they are both designated as employment areas. They are both designated as industrial. I do believe that the Rivanna Futures area has some additional language about promoting it for defense industry, pharmaceutical, and other specific types of activity that the Broadway and other industrial areas don't have the same designation.

[01:29:45] So that could be a distinction between the two areas. Bart, I saw you nodding your head as well. Do you want to add anything? Bart's a vote, a deputy director of community development. To me, Supervisor Pruitt's ask is similar to how we handled homestays.

[01:30:05] We need to get a few of these under our belt, develop the criteria, and then we're able to parse that out as we go. And so from Woolen Mills to this site, it's so specific to Supervisor Galloway's point is that we're really going to look at it heavily on where it's located, what's next to it.

[01:30:26] So although the designation in the comp plan is part of that, it may not be the deciding factor. So if we use woolen mills, we might approve something or we might recommend something at maybe a 20-foot plus, but maybe not double the height. So it's really going to be specific.

[01:30:43] These work kind of more like special permits. How special is it to fit into that area? Is it too special or is it special where it needs some guidance? Thank you. I appreciate you all addressing that. Thank you. If there aren't further questions, there are two motions that need to be made.

[01:31:02] This is in the Ravana District. Okay. And I have motions for you available. Okay. I move to adopt the resolution of approval included as attachment A, which this would be part of the SC 2025, what?

[01:31:19] A4. A4, I'm sorry. Thank you for that correction. 00033, Rivanna Futures, Building High. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Lupisto-Curtley. Second, Supervisor McKeel, without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Prewitt? Aye.

[01:31:34] Mr. Andrew? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Thank you. And now the second. The next one, I recommend a motion for SC-2025-00034 of our man of future setback.

[01:31:51] I move to adopt the resolution of approval included as attachment A-5. Second. Motion from Supervisor Lapista-Kirtley, second from Supervisor McKeel, without objection for calling. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews?

[01:32:07] Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Apista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Board, this brings us to the first presentation. Let's see. Pretty close to time here. Transportation Planning Quarterly Report.

[01:32:25] Albera, Karina Plum, Planner 1, Transportation. Welcome. Oh, and Tanya Swarsten-Durber. Welcome. Yes. Yes, good afternoon.

[01:32:44] I'm Tanya Schwarzenegger, Planning Manager for the Community Development Department. I'm here with Albert Karinaplund to review a few highlights from the Transportation Quarterly Report. The complete details of all the work Transportation Planning Team is doing is provided in your packet.

[01:33:02] I'd like to start with VDOT funding opportunities. There's the revenue sharing funding, which we apply for in odd years. In smart scale, we apply for in even years. We're entering that period where we're considering the projects that we will apply for.

[01:33:22] Pre-application materials are due April 1st, 2026, and final materials are due August 1st. The Commonwealth Transportation Board will consider all applications and release a recommended funding scenario in January and will adopt the final six-year improvement plan in June of 2027.

[01:33:44] So you can see this is a process that takes several years to get through. Staff has been discussing with VDOT those projects that are eligible and would like to go over those projects.

[01:33:59] We'll continue to work with VDOT and the MPO to develop a recommendation for the board's approval at a future meeting. This is a list of projects that are eligible. Both the MPO and the county are eligible to submit up to four applications.

[01:34:25] the slide lists the projects for consideration and i'll identify those the mpo may apply for and then the counties with more detail in the following slides and i'll just note that the numbers and letters are animated on this slide so you can very quickly pick out where these projects are i won't read through these but you can see as we go through the animations where the projects are located. So the numbered projects are those the MPO is eligible to apply for, and the lettered

[01:34:58] projects are those that the county is eligible for to apply for. So we'll go through the individual projects the county is eligible for. The first one, one of the projects that the county is eligible to submit comes from the pipeline study of Barracks Road. This project would add a dedicated right turn lane circled in red on the slide. In addition to the right turn lane, Barracks Road

[01:35:34] would also have a median built so that there are no more left turn movements from vehicles. Lastly, a sidewalk or shared use path is included in the project to go from the bypass bridge up to Surrey Road. Another potential submittal is a roundabout adorable trail and 250 in front of Western Albemarle High School. This project has been submitted two previous times in 2022 and 2024.

[01:36:05] Scoring well, but not quite well enough to be funded, staff believes that this is a good project and another good candidate for smart scale application submittal. Roughly a year ago, we presented to you the results of the old Ivy Pipeline Study. There are two roundabout projects from the Ivy Road corridor pipeline study that the county is considering. The first one is the proposed roundabout at Ivy Road, Old Garth Road, and Canterbury Road, as shown on the slide. This

[01:36:42] roundabout would improve the operations at this critical intersection, helping to alleviate backups for drivers coming off of the 29 bypass to get to Ivy Road. The study also recommended a roundabout west of the previous one at the entrance to Boar's Head. This could be in addition to dual right turns from Old Garth Road onto Ivy Road with left turn movements for drivers happening at this roundabout. Drivers would have to go slightly out of their way to turn left, similar

[01:37:16] to what is happening now on Hydraulic Road with the roundabout in front of Whole Foods. We are still evaluating in collaboration with VDOT whether we would apply for one of these roundabouts or over the other, or if we apply for both as a single project. And with that, I'll turn it over to Albert Karinaplund. Good afternoon, board. Albert Karinaplund, Planner Community Development.

[01:37:47] I want to talk about some other VDOT studies. So right now, we have two star studies being conducted by VDOT. One is from the U.S. 29 corridor up to Hydraulic Road, and one is a study of the Emmett Hydraulic 250 barracks interchange bow tie system. That's what's pictured here on the slide.

[01:38:07] The purpose of the 29 corridor study is to address safety concerns for both drivers and bicyclists slash pedestrians, identify good crossing locations for U.S. 29, and to improve the operations of the corridor for side streets. The Emmett Street study is looking at improving OPERATIONS OF THE INTERCHANGE, PROVIDING MORE AND BETTER PEDESTRIAN ACCESS IN THIS AREA.

[01:38:28] STAFF HAS PROVIDED INITIAL COMMENTS TO CONSULTANTS. FURTHER MEETINGS ARE PLANNED FOR NOVEMBER. AND THEN PROJECT RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THIS STUDY ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE READY FOR SMART SCALE APPLICATION FOR NEXT YEAR. OTHER EFFORTS WE HAVE BEEN DOING, THE NOTICE TO PROCEED FOR THREE NOTCH TRAIL WAS ISSUED IN FEBRUARY. THERE HAVE BEEN MULTIPLE MEETINGS WITH THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE, THE STAKEHOLDER GROUPS, AND THE PUBLIC. STAFF AND CONSULTANTS HAVE CONDUCTED SITE visits to the potential alignment sites. Three potential alignments will be released to the public in December. The board decided to move forward with a permanent closure and discontinuance

[01:39:08] of Freebridge Lane on August 15th of this year. A petition was signed by Jeff Richardson and was sent to the Charlottesville Residency. Staff is working with VDOT and Albemarle County Parks and Rec on determining the exact limits of the discontinuance. Staff will return later this winter with a formal resolution to discontinue Freebridge Lane and lastly lastly the secondary six-year plan was adopted last spring with the board making some changes to the rural rustic process now when residents request a road be paved staff will provide the list of people that need to give feedback but the responsibility of collecting signatures is on the resident after

[01:39:47] signatures provided VDOT will then review the road for rural rustic after Sutherland Road Burton Road, Burton Lane, Starlight Road, and Blair Park Road were approved for paving. Bleak House Road and Peeridge Road didn't receive more than one-third votes opposing paving, and Sharon Road and Foster's Branch Road did not receive enough votes either way. There are multiple roads right now that are going through the signature process. Staff will return to the board in April to present the draft's secondary six-year plan. And lastly, county staff continues to receive calls and emails from the public about transportation issues from around the county. Most notably, staff has been

[01:40:26] working on finding funding for a speed study for Park Bridge Road and Crozet. VDOT studies showed that there has been excessive speeding on this road segment, and per the VDOT traffic calming guidelines, the locality is responsible for managing a traffic calming study that will provide engineering solutions. And staff continues to receive concerns from residents about the speed of Penn Park Road and the lack of pedestrian and bike facilities on the road from Raya Road to Penn park. Staff will continue to monitor concerns and evaluate potential for bike facilities along the road. Thank you, and any questions? Thank you.

[01:41:03] We'll go through our order. Supervisor McKeel. Sure. Thanks to both of you. Would you go back to the very first slide that you all talked about? I'm talking about Barracks Road. Oh, Barracks Road. Yeah. There you go. So just one more time, go through this for me, please. Sure. This area is critical.

[01:41:27] We have crashes in this section, and you know that, weekly. And I'm not talking fender benders. I'm talking real crashes where cars are upside down, and I saw just two a week before last.

[01:41:46] So, anyway, would you go through this, really, for me? I can, sure. So here, just to orient you, this is Barracks Road running through the middle of this slide. And, oh, they can't.

[01:42:02] You have a pointer probably somewhere. There you go. So there we go. This is a better day. Yeah, we're all learning. Barracks Road and then, of course, U.S. 29 and the interchange there. So what this project is proposing is to add a dedicated right turn lane onto the entrance ramp, as well as eliminate the median down the road.

[01:42:34] Or, I'm sorry, install a median down the road. So, correct, continuously. So, it would prevent those left turns onto roads like Bennington. And we did previously study the possibility of a roundabout at Commonwealth, right?

[01:42:52] And determined that it was an expensive solution, and so we thought we would start here. Not at Commonwealth. Not at Commonwealth? Georgetown. I was going to say Commonwealth is not the right place. Georgetown. I'm sorry, Georgetown. Okay, so you decided against that.

[01:43:09] It was an expensive project. For now. For now. It's not taken completely off the table. As far as I know, it's not been off the table. Just for now. Okay. Correct. Kevin's nodding his head. That's my memory as well. Okay, so this is really great. So this is an outcome of the pipeline project that was proposed, and it was so expensive that we're taking bites out of it now and trying to do segments at a time would be my takeaway.

[01:43:39] Yes, ma'am. Right. And I will say that this continuous median is critical because one of the dangers on Barracks Road right now are all the U-turns that are happening. And people that live along Barracks Road on the side of Canterbury Hills can't even safely pull out of their driveways because people are U-turning and coming down and causing conflict.

[01:44:07] That's a great word. So that continuous barrier along Barracks is really critical. And I will add, just for people in the know, is that the neighborhoods here have agreed to this. This is what they want, especially the people that live right in this section on Barracks Road.

[01:44:24] So I'm thrilled to see that this is being proposed. So tell me the status of this. I'm sorry to be repeating things, but just in my head, because I have people asking me about this all the time, and I just want to make sure I'm clear. Sure.

[01:44:40] So we're working with VDOT to refine this project and get a concept plan from them as well as an initial cost estimate so we can apply for funding through SmartScale. Right. And I knew that once it was denied, that whole project, that taking it in different ways, it was going to take a while.

[01:44:59] so we're talking realistically before we have any action on this what four years six years roughly i'll be i'll be pushing up daisies i hope not but four to five years okay all right thank you for going back to that i really appreciate it my pleasure thank you supervisor mallet thank you um staying in the same neighborhood just so i clear the sidewalk would be added on the south side of barracks all the way between surrey and the bypass because there's one now we are looking at a sidewalk or preferably a shared use path we believe there is some room to have an

[01:45:37] entire shared use path so it would be bike and bed yeah that would be our preference part of the original study was they were going to shift by taking away the median and stuff they'd be able to shift it north and make some room that way okay um there's still only going to be one car turning it one lane turning south onto the bypass at barracks right right when i first must have misunderstood that there was going to be a double lane there and i thought pedestrians would never be able to get safely across that even though there's a crosswalk there there's almost never a chance when somebody can get across so that at least is a little bit more possible thank you

[01:46:14] that is um the only question though the boar's head roundabout is at the birdwood entrance not the boar's head inn because it shows right opposite white gables so i just want to clarify that I'm looking at the right back.

[01:46:31] That is a bird? You want to jump to slide? Yeah, thank you. Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director Planning. I just wanted to clarify. It is confusing because the road, Boar's Head, is actually not at Boar's Head, the hotel.

[01:46:50] So the roundabout is going to be at the road, Boar's Head, which is at the entrance of Birdwood, I believe. Which is curious because when that was improved, by a special permit when they had applied to renovate the mansion, it was described very carefully that this was only for the golf team to be using.

[01:47:10] And now it has become the major road entrance into everything else down there. So this seems to make this permanent, that all of a sudden all the traffic is now shifted onto the residences down near the sports club who were told originally that that was never going to happen.

[01:47:30] So I just wanted to remind you of that. And their traffic impacts are severe. Anyway, thanks. Thank you. Professor Galloway. Well, I think you all, I don't have to repeat myself in terms of how you all know I feel about funding.

[01:47:47] But when we received our last SmartScale update from VDOT at NPO a few weeks ago, they said the next round of SmartScale would be even more competitive than the last round. And we didn't get anything but a curse word to say there. So I appreciate your optimism when you tell Supervisor McKeel four to six years, but it's not going to be four to six years.

[01:48:10] You've got four or five projects that we'll submit, four or five projects that the MPO will submit, and we're being told by VDOT that it's going to be a more competitive process compared to the last round where we only received a small package on Pantoms. So we didn't get any of our big projects done.

[01:48:26] Then they turn around, they re-engineer, they put it down to these smaller Band-Aid approaches, which is what these are. This is. That's what that is. And then I brought it up at the MPO meeting to go, well, you're basically having us do this as a way to then say, well, now we don't want to do that.

[01:48:42] We want the bigger project again. It's almost a purposeful delayed process to put a big project in to see if it will get done. It won't get done. You've also submitted the small projects, so now you can't get other applications in. You go your next round. You try to do the small projects.

[01:48:58] Well, they're not really great projects because they're smaller and piecemeal to what the real fix is going to be. Then you have to go another round to maybe finally get a project that could potentially actually be a fix. So, I mean, I've been a fan of smart scale, so in concept, but the way it's been working the last few rounds, it's not necessarily even the projects.

[01:49:19] It's back to the funding issue. You know, it dawned on me. I've made my, you know, I've complained that in the state, $30 billion in projects got submitted. And then $8 billion got approved, with an additional billion in localities having to do matches.

[01:49:36] But then what occurred to me over the last few weeks since the NPO meeting, think about this for a second. How many projects are on our transportation priorities list from 24 to 23? Isn't it like 100? I think it's over 150, I believe. And if you had to ballpark it, what, 50 of them would probably be smart scale level type projects?

[01:49:56] Sounds about right. Okay, so now take all the localities, because we're limited in what we could submit to the state. This got me hot in the last few weeks even more because I kept saying that the $30 billion request as if that was everybody's transportation projects, that was just what they were allowed to submit for.

[01:50:12] So it's even a bigger multiplier of what's needed in the state beyond maintenance for improving transportation projects. So, I mean, really, I don't have questions about the projects or a lot of feedback, even the order. I'll be happy to get one freaking funded, whether it's ours or an NPO submitted one.

[01:50:31] Ann and I have been asked to give opinions at the NPO and will be on the 17th of December. So we have to start making decisions what the NPO will submit. So it's a virtual meeting. So if some of you want to listen in or, you know, be part of that so you can hear it, that day we've requested a complete explanation from VDOT on how transportation is funded in this state for everything.

[01:50:55] So we're going to get – I don't know what it's going to look like yet or not, but we've asked for that, and VDOT said they're going to bring it to us and have a presentation on it. So everybody at the MPO and for those, we can understand how the dollars flow down from the General Assembly into VDOT and then ultimately to the locality. So that's just an FYI.

[01:51:11] I am on the Barracks Road project because there was an iteration we saw, and it must have been an outdated design, or maybe it was, I think it was a VDOT slide when they gave the update a few weeks ago. But they had a crosswalk going across where the two, the on and off ramps are.

[01:51:32] Well, that's what I was talking about, is the crosswalk. between the last building? No, but it went across. Oh, across barracks, not across the entrance. And that would basically be lining people up to be targeted. That's crazy world.

[01:51:48] So, I mean, I'm glad I don't see it in this iteration, but this is the iteration then, because we would be submitting this as a county project, not the MPO. There is a second project that the MPO is looking at, which would be the northbound ramp, exit ramp, here.

[01:52:09] And I'm just trying to clarify that there were dual lefts there and a crosswalk, of course. And right now, these are all still preliminary concepts. So I want to emphasize that. I'm glad there's not a crosswalk wing or cross barracks.

[01:52:26] We will continue to discuss that. I would obviously defer to, but I mean, that's ridiculous. We know that we can only fit pedestrian facilities under this bridge on one side of the barracks road. So one way or the other, we have to make sure that all pedestrians can get to the side that has it.

[01:52:47] We're still trying to determine where any crosswalks would go, but that's probably what you saw. And I just want to emphasize, these are concepts we're still working with, beat out with, and we'll bring the concern of a crosswalk at barracks to them. So some of the MPO projects will be the 5th Street again, some different variation of the DDI at 5th Street and 64.

[01:53:10] And then another new treatment, and this is my point from earlier on Exit 118, we did these smaller approaches. Well, if they would have done the project the right way, what, 30 years ago, we wouldn't have the issues now. Then we had another chance to do it right in a different project.

[01:53:26] We didn't do that because it couldn't get funded, so we did a smaller piece, and now we've got to fix the smaller piece again. So we're in this continual cycle of doing these Band-Aid fixes, and it's costing us millions of dollars to do fixes that effectively don't fix anything that have to be fixed yet again. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, and I'm hoping that I'll have an opportunity to say that maybe a little more succinctly with our state legislators when we meet with them in December.

[01:53:49] And will you let us know when that virtual meeting is going to be? I'd love to join that. December 17th at 4 p.m., I believe. December 17th. I would say that's when the MPO, because it's December, of course, everything pushes forward. But it's December 17, 4 p.m. And somebody will send us a link.

[01:54:05] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. And it'll be on the PDC's website, but we'll make sure that we send the... We can send an invite to that. That would be great, Kevin. Thank you. I'd like to join that as well. There's a couple of other things that would be helpful, and this is not... I wasn't expecting this today.

[01:54:21] I'm not expecting it by the end of the year. But we as a board, and I had asked Kevin this related to the MPO, and I appreciate the response you gave back, about our own transportation priorities list. Sometimes these projects come up at MPO, and Ann and I don't really have the feedback or the input of all the folks.

[01:54:39] We've got staff, of course, and what they're working on. We all trust that they're focused on the right things. But we really haven't contended with that transportation priorities list for a couple of years. And we have to, because when you're at the MPO trying to decide with how the state dictates what can be submitted and who can submit it, it's hard without that input.

[01:55:03] We're working on old priorities or old opinions of our fellow board members. So I think we have to get at that. Now, I know you're looking maybe at a different process. There's so many. I mean, I don't know how to wrestle with it. It's up to 150 now, for God's sake. But between the public's interest, between the needs of that, between maybe advocacy or things that we want to talk to the General Assembly about, we have to get our own head wrapped around, you know, I've got opinions.

[01:55:26] I don't know if other people would agree, but there's certain projects that, you know, of course I'd advocate that I'd want higher on the list or lower on the list. But at the end of the day, knowing everybody else's priorities helps us when certain projects pop up at MPO. Because that 5th Street Intersection DDI, frankly, I think is the number one project we'd like to see done in terms of significance.

[01:55:47] But, I mean, all of the ones that the MPO are going to submit are important. All of the ones we're going to submit are probably not as important as others, but we're playing the game. We might be able to get these through. So then we're kind of putting off some other higher significant or some more significant projects.

[01:56:06] The only other comments I want to throw out there, because I don't think it's for smart scale or for anything immediate, but now that we've acquired the right-of-way or the easement behind Home Depot for the possible Hillsdale realignment, I'd love for us to start thinking about getting ready for that.

[01:56:25] There's still a small chunk that we have to acquire to have the full realignment done, but eventually that realignment would likely be a smart scale project, But it would be nice to get a couple of the other pieces in to start thinking about that. That's the type of conversation that happens with the transportation priorities list conversation.

[01:56:45] Thanks. I'll just mention that the study on 29 North that Alberic mentioned that VDOT's doing, we have actually asked them to consider how that Hillsdale extension could fit into those alternatives.

[01:57:00] So we are starting that discussion now with them and hope to start moving that project forward. Yeah, because obviously then that gets rid of how bad of a problem the Old Brook, Northfield, and Hillsdale intersections are in the two lights. Because that project could maybe even solve some of that particular issue.

[01:57:18] In the meantime, if there are smaller light or programming things, like there's not really a lot of Rio Road stuff in here. But if there's ways to get at it with light configuration or analysis, obviously I'd be supportive of trying to work that in.

[01:57:39] because I know with the funding constraints that these other projects are taking priority over that Old Brook-Northfield intersection. But we're still having, I mean, we have so many intersections that have got bad accidents there, and they're continuing there, and if there's anything we could do to kind of help with it, I want to advocate for that.

[01:58:00] In the Penn Park Road, there was something on here about a speed study. This was a question I asked Carrie the last time she was in front of us. I mean, she's not sent the update yet, but I've been asking her and VDOT for this. I don't need a speed study. If you follow the rules of the signs right now, there's only about 30 yards that allow you to do the 35.

[01:58:20] So they just need to change the speed limit. Now, I've made that opinion known to VDOT, but is this on us that we have to do something with this? I've been waiting for them to come back and tell me what they have discovered. I mean, it's their signs with the curve and, you know, with the school entrance and everything like that.

[01:58:38] You really can't legally do 35 but for a very small section of that street. So just from a – I don't need a speed study to tell me that it's kind of ridiculous that it's 35 just based on the signage that's there. You won't get any disagreement from us on that, Supervisor.

[01:58:56] I don't think so. And we are pushing VDOT. They are difficult to get to agree to lowering speed limits, but, you know, we can take this – your feelings to them, make sure that they're aware. I mean, like I said, this was one that I asked Carrie just a month ago to give me an update on.

[01:59:13] So we haven't got that update yet, so I can follow up with her on it. But I just wanted to make sure you all weren't, that this somehow didn't fall back on you all to have to deal with, because this is a VVOT issue. Correct, yes. And nobody here disagreed with that. And I made the point that the sidewalk now on Penn Park Road with Rio Point coming on in 300-plus units, There are going to be a hell of a lot more people walking down where we have already put some infrastructure in place to get to Penn Park.

[01:59:39] They're going to have infrastructure along Rio East, and then they're not going to be able to walk into the park because, well, there's no sidewalks, and there'll be a lot of people driving really fast. I appreciate you saying this because it is what we're looking at. We feel exactly the same as you do, and we'll continue to try and push those projects.

[01:59:57] When would be reasonable? I don't know. I don't know if it would be next year. and I don't expect that you all know or have the answer, but that transportation priorities list conversation, when might that be something that we would be, that might make its way in front of the board? I've mighted you to death on that one.

[02:00:14] I think that we are working with our county executive's office and Jody Filardo and trying to work out a process for moving forward with that. Essentially, we felt we needed to get through AC44 before we could jump into doing that.

[02:00:31] Because it would give us feedback to include into the prioritization. So I think we've got something on the schedule actually next week for internal discussions and we'll get back to you with some sort of schedule after that. Because I know ACB 44 is wrapped up.

[02:00:47] You'd also mentioned this multimodal study, and I don't know the timing on that. Is that something that's been completed or we're going to wait? That is something that we're looking at, and those two items may be tied together, the multimodal study and the prioritization process. So those are things that we have to discuss internally, but we will give that information to you.

[02:01:06] Well, maybe after you all discuss it, I'm looking to end as well. I'd love to be able to have some discussion before the SmartScale applications, but it's sounding like that's probably not going to be the case. So when you all kind of figure that out, if you could maybe just drop a note to the board so we knew when to expect it.

[02:01:23] Because I think it's something that everybody needs to weigh in on, especially to inform how MPO's got to submit some applications. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lupita, sir. Oh, okay. So the MPO-eligible projects, the county-eligible projects, if I understand Supervisor Galloway correctly, our chances of getting all of them are slim to, okay, zero.

[02:01:51] Okay, I like honesty. Our chances of getting one out of eight, maybe. I would say we've gotten one project every SmartScale round at least, except for the very first round of SmartScale.

[02:02:12] So I would assume that we can get one out of this just based on history. Okay, and is that usually based on money? Absolutely. This is about how much money goes into the state budget for SmartScale, how much money all the projects that are out there in the state cost, and how much money ours cost versus the benefits of them.

[02:02:40] So knowing that that could be very problematic, I can hopefully safely say that these are probably based on the price tag. I guess what I'm asking is, as a board, and I'm asking, I think, Supervisor Galloway and Supervisor McKeel, is it better that we focus on one or two?

[02:03:04] I mean, none of these are in my district, but that's okay because, you know, these are all good projects. But would it be more helpful if we culled it down to a couple? Would that give us a better chance or not? I'll try and answer it.

[02:03:22] It may, if you have two projects that are competing against each other and they both end up with a very similar score, one of our projects may knock another one out. But we are also competing against all the other projects in Culpeper and all the other projects in the state.

[02:03:40] So without us knowing for sure how well each one of these is going to score because we don't have access to the full scoring method or how other projects might score. We tend to think that it is good to keep a fairly good number in there to increase our chances.

[02:04:02] But we're working with VDOT, and they do help us try and determine if something is worthwhile in any sense to move forward with. So we do look at that, but there's a lot of factors that have to be considered, And I think it is beneficial for us to at least have, you know, a good number of projects to choose from.

[02:04:25] Hoping to get one. So it sounds like a real crapshoot. Okay. Whoa. That's not very, that's depressing. Well, piggybacking on what Supervisor Galloway said, if we can do nothing else, either at the county level, I know I've been advocating for 250 and 20 red light cameras.

[02:04:52] I've been squawking in the squawk box for that. I mean, maybe there are little things that we can do at different intersections that may help. That would be one that I would like to see. That's certainly not a smart scale. Yeah, but recall that we do have a smart scale project that we'd be going to construction in the next year to completely rebuild that intersection.

[02:05:16] Right. it's coming up next year and it was moved up so i'm happy about that but um would that be a county thing if we get a red light camera installed there i i i support red light cameras yes it's always a good idea i don't know um i think that's something we need to work with our legislature on still but but i thought they were approved are they i thought they were approved because we had one at rio and hydraulic but i mean i thought those were approved the one at Route 20 was the second approved site that we've never implemented during the same time that the Rio 29 one was approved.

[02:05:56] We'll follow up and try and get some more information. That I would appreciate. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so on page one of the transportation planning quarterly report, at the bottom, item four, I don't know how this looks.

[02:06:12] Implement a through cut at U.S. 250 Peter Jefferson Parkway intersection. i didn't i mean without a a through a through cut prevents vehicles from going all the way across the intersection so you will no longer be able to go from peter jefferson parkway across to the glen orkey glen orkey yes or or opposite and the reason that they're doing that is that uh they they did traffic counts they determined that very few vehicles do that movement and you can make that movement by other means,

[02:06:51] and by removing it, we can add additional signal time back to the more prevalent movement. So that's what the through cut is. I know Glenn Orkey. I support that. I think that's fine. But from Peter Jefferson Parkway, you will be able to turn right or left.

[02:07:07] Correct. Okay, got it. Okay, that answers that question. And I'm just putting a bug in your ear for maybe the future, you know, like 10, 20 years down the road, to look at Gordonsville Road, a roundabout there at Sysmont Market to help.

[02:07:36] Yep. We have it on our list. We're aware of the desire, and that will be something that would be considered in any prioritization that we do. Got it. Those are all my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt.

[02:07:52] I'm not sure I have any questions per se, just to reflect that before, you know, Supervisor Galloway's very thorough comments that I would like to broadly support, I was thinking something similar, right, because I was looking, oh, we've kicked off a pipeline study at one of my most complained about parts of my district, right, Fifth Street intersection over there by the new Wawa, which has only exacerbated what was already a problematic intersection, a fairly new intersection.

[02:08:21] It's going to be studying solutions for a future smart scale project for that smart scale project to then fail for then us to, I suppose, probably implement some kind of minor stopgap in a place where we're already actually doing a VDOT-level construction project that's just not going to address these issues.

[02:08:38] And it is exhausting thinking the amount of resources that are being thrown at a project without any of them going to fix the project. And I don't have a normative solution that I'm throwing out, but only to express that it's frustrating, right?

[02:09:01] And this is something that I think rests primarily with the state level and how they implement these. But we've talked previously on this board about during our comprehensive planning process how, hey, it would be nice if we could reduce significantly on certain projects that planning level.

[02:09:19] if we could start to have more just off-the-shelf implementable schemes to really cut that out and actually deploy solutions without a two-year engagement and planning process. And it would certainly be exciting to see that level of agility in state-level transportation planning.

[02:09:43] And I guess we're not going to get there anytime soon, but we live in hope. That's all I got. Thank you. I don't have any additional comments. I do look forward to discussing this with the delegates and Senator at our meeting on legislative priorities.

[02:10:00] I'll make a quick comment on the materials. I know that they say November 2025, but there are a couple of references to a public hearing is scheduled for summer of 2025, and I don't know whether that happened or didn't happen because it wasn't updated on pages 7 and 8. So at some point, it would be nice to know what's...

[02:10:19] We'll look into that. Is that just on... It's in your report. it has those dates? Yeah. Okay. We'll check that. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Malo. Thank you. Question about, you mentioned about Park Ridge Road, and I may have misheard you, and that's fine on me. I heard you say a speed study, but we've done numerous speed studies here. I was thinking about this street when Jodi's retirement announcement came out, because I think the very first week she was on the job here, which is now six and a half years ago, there was a meeting in

[02:10:54] during COVID at the end of this road. And there were hundreds of residents all standing as far apart as possible to try to come to this, to find a solution for this. So what I took away from reading this thing was we're looking for money to do this study. And we are way beyond that. I mean, we've almost had a child killed. We've had a cat killed. We've had people totally disregarding everything about this road. And so if there's a contingency pot that can pay the consultant to do the design for the traffic calming that's that's right but i will be very upset if we're looking

[02:11:33] for funding to do another speed study when the last one qualified i'll address to those two things so we have identified funding to do a um to look at the actual solution for traffic calming on this road we'll be working with a consultant just this week to get that scope finalized and move forward with the project. It will include a speed study per VDOT's request. And I didn't have it

[02:12:09] written down, but what about the adoption of Eastern Avenue into the state system? That has been also lurking for four and a half years. And I keep asking about that and never get an answer. So I assume that means there's nothing to be reported. Otherwise, I think there is something to report there. I'll let Michael Barnes step up. Because the police can't do enforcement because it's not in the state system and yet everybody's been saying next month next month next month so michael barnes director of planning we needed a fourth person to stand up here i guess for you all um yeah i know that frank pole is working with them apparently they're paving the frank

[02:12:43] pole the county engineer and working with the developer who still owns eastern avenue they're actually apparently going paving coming up if not this week in the next couple weeks and that's probably one of the final steps they need to do to go through the punch list to bring that road into the state system so this was the repair that they did the wrong elevation three or four years ago and they did some half-assed pardon me repair and didn't make a make and fix it right then so they're now finally going to fix it that's what it sounds like to me okay well thank you for that i appreciate that i won't go jump off a bridge on that one and just um in reflection on what ned

[02:13:22] was saying earlier brought me back to the situation for the hydraulic road grade separated interchange the state was ready to pay 100 percent of the hydraulic road grade separated interchange our jurisdictional neighbor threw a roadblock in there and instead of fighting to the death over it we walked away so i mean the company was ready to mobilize down the road phil she kept said over and over and over again we are ready to move down there can you please do this i'm meeting with people in their kitchens trying to get them to agree to do this and they wouldn't so i guess my

[02:14:01] encouragement is we need to fight harder for things because it's never going to get any easier than it is right then. Thank you. I'm not sure who to address this to, but it popped up at the NPO meeting. They're concerned about folks traveling into, you know, after you pass the river traveling south down 29, that there's the issue once you pass Woodbrook of cars in the right two lanes. Oh crap, I got to get over to the left two lanes to be able to go under the interchange and then the other direction coming off the rio road where you enter on to

[02:14:38] 29 north there's people that then try to cross over to get to the kroger i don't have any comments about the north one i know that that's a battle but people could just drive west over the interchange and take burkmar to kroger that's what i do um it it works like the interchange works great for the rio road crossing but driving in i drove it the other day coming back from a meeting and there's no signage until you pass Hilton Heights Road that suggests that you have to be in the left two lanes as you're traveling south and the sign that is there is in the median so if you're in the two lanes that it would actually be helpful to see that sign you can't

[02:15:18] see the sign then the sign that's on the right side of the road isn't there until you pass Woodbrook Drive and it's too damn late at that point before VDOT starts thinking about wild corrections of how to fix this problem perhaps we could try some signage probably before you even get to the river as you're traveling north it starts to tell people get in these you know start getting in your lane and if you have from the river to woodbrook drive to start doing that it could probably be easily fixed without a lot of money and effort i mean i i we probably don't

[02:15:56] like over 29 signs but we have them in places but that's going to be a heck of a lot cheaper solution to do than if they started trying to do lanes i don't know what they were thinking but i mean it just sniffs of a project that may not be necessary if they really just do better signage that tells people coming into town like the people that need to get the bw3 or like to do a u-turn in the carsbrook they know coming down past uh hollymead that they got to be over in those left lanes before they cross the river they just know that well all the people traveling into town that want to go to uva and jpj and all that well they don't know that they have to do that and they

[02:16:33] don't find out until they pass woodbrook and it's way too late so i would love for us to maybe brainstorm that because i think we can fix it with proper signage and and then like chuck they were i mean they're i mean i think they're starting to sniff at some sort of big project well this is just to have something to do it was infuriating so if you all could just put that on your radar because i think that at least should be attempted before we start thinking of other major dollars to try to have to fix that problem we're meeting with the consultants for the stars study in that area and vdot next week so we'd be happy to take that suggestion to them and that was

[02:17:10] on my list also because going north the signage needs to be at um seminal seminal interchange change because then you've got three or four stoplights to get over i know people use it as a drag strip and they fly up the right lane and then cut people off on purpose but the notice we had think of 29 solutions when that construction project was going on we had wonderfully informative sites where the businesses were get in this lane for this exit blah blah blah why can't we do that and this whole issue would go away so thank you for reminding me about that well we had a leader with that VDOT with Philip Chouquet that was willing to say

[02:17:48] we're taking this project away from the city and we're going to do it so we get it done. We had a leader that was willing to do things and there were other examples not of that similar but I'm just saying to get things done and that's been lacking at the VDOT level to some degree.

[02:18:09] Yeah, I just have a couple things to say and I'm going to say them because I have probably, what, six weeks left to save? But the state has underfunded transportation and education now for decades.

[02:18:25] And that's what we're seeing right now. And unless the state makes a commitment to fund education and transportation at the level it needs to be funded, we're going to be talking about this for the next 10 years.

[02:18:41] It's true. We have a new administration now, and I think many of us are hoping that some changes will come about. But people cannot expect to have low taxes and have all of the transportation projects and all the schools and education that they want.

[02:18:59] It doesn't work that way. At some points, people, somebody has to pay for it. I'm just saying. And I will move on to one of the issues that we have in this community is we have the city and the county.

[02:19:15] and we've got to start working better together in the urban area, at least around transportation. The gridlock that we're seeing in the urban areas now is outrageous. And if we could work together better, for example, the city has promised us 10 years ago that they would synchronize their stoplights to match ours. Has that happened yet? One of the reasons why we have the gridlock is because of the lack of signals and stoplights not talking to each other. That is ridiculous.

[02:19:47] it's wackadoodle so if the city and the county can can agree to work together and that's not staff's problem that's the leadership in the two communities working together we it was predicted 20 years ago that if we didn't the city and the county didn't do something about their their intersections where we meet we would be gridlocked in 2024 well let's look around at where we are right now. My voice is going up because I'm very frustrated. We are causing some of this ourselves, not just Albemarle, but we need to figure this out as a community and work

[02:20:25] together on it. And that means sometimes somebody is going to have to pay for something. Having said that, we also need to get people out of cars and onto transit. Now, I don't believe that that's fair. It would be fair to us to expect that transit is going to take care of all of our problems. But in the urban area, it would take care of some of our gridlock. And we don't have a robust transit system. We have a transit authority. And I'm already hearing concerns about, oh, well, we can't raise taxes to pay for that. We can't do this. I wouldn't want the money

[02:21:03] to come from this or that. At some point, we're going to have to figure out how to pay for a robust transit system if we want to get people out of cars. Because not everybody can ride a bicycle. I'm appreciative of bicycles, but most people are able to ride a transit system in the urban areas.

[02:21:25] So we need to be providing that for folks. I am really on my high horse here. And I guess I will stop to just say that we really need to be advocating at the state level, but our constituents need to understand that their taxes actually are pretty low if, in fact, we're going to do what they want us to do, which is to create better, stronger infrastructure.

[02:21:55] We can't do it with the money we have. And we can reprioritize for decades and do one project a year. Smart scale is what, Kevin, every two years. So we're talking about one project being approved every two years.

[02:22:13] Now, you talk about wackadoodle. That ain't going to work, folks. So with that, I'm going to lower my temperature. and thank you for the for listening to me anything further thank you very much thank you guys and we

[02:22:35] will take a 15 minute research and you know i wasn't fussing oh sorry i started too soon it's okay okay good all right thank you uh kevin mcdermott i'm deputy director of planning and i'm here today to give a the board an update on the microcat program um the the purpose of this

[02:23:06] is really if you'll recall in October of 2023 we started this two-year demonstration grant so the two-year demonstration grant would have just come to an end and so what I'm doing here is trying to give you all a recap of how those two years went so that we can start to think about what the future may hold so with that I will jump in with a to start with a background we go so this all began back in 2022 with the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Study. It was not focused on

[02:23:45] microtransit. It was really just looking at how we could bring improved transit services to a number of areas around the county, including the 29 North area, Pantops, and some areas south of town. The result of that study, though, was a recommendation to look at microtransit for the Pantop's area and 29 North is two separate zones. You can see what those zones they were looking at are up on those maps. At that time, they estimated a total between the two of that microtransit could probably generate about 100 total rides a day. That's what was in the study.

[02:24:24] In 2023, we made a successful grant application for a demonstration grant from DRPT. The total amount of that was for $1.94 million, and that was a two-year grant period. So in 2023, we did do a competitive procurement process, and that resulted in hiring the company VIA as a turnkey operator for the microtransit. The service launched on October 30th, 2023. So like I said, we're exactly

[02:24:59] two years from that the service hours were from are from 6 30 a.m till 9 p.m monday through saturday this is free transit and it includes eight hybrid minivans that are in operation i will also point out this is the current service area that you see in the map there it has expanded quite a bit from what was initially proposed in the in the transit expansion study and includes all that area where it says Berkeley there that was not previously in

[02:25:36] it so we extended it south and also on Raya Road East you can see that area was added to it and the other improvement was that with the service starting we allowed people to travel from one zone to the other which was not in the original one so they were they were going to be relegated to one zone or the other, then we were able to combine those into one zone all as one.

[02:26:04] A little bit about the service performance. So we've been working with VIA. We think that it does provide a really high-quality service with high engagement and retention. You can see we've got 92% five-star ride ratings.

[02:26:20] I know that we did hear from a resident earlier today that had some issues. I think we're going to be able to address that. We've already reached out to our representatives at VIA and are looking into it. They're very responsive, so I think we'll be able to deal with that.

[02:26:35] And you can see that we have a high rider engagement. This is people that keep coming back. The average rider is 10 rides per rider per month. 79% of those return for another ride later on and less than 0.3% complaints per ride.

[02:26:56] some of the things, and I do want to give credit to our VIA representatives. A lot of these slides are from that. I know some of these may be things that some people have seen, but I don't think everyone on the board has seen before. Every week when we meet with them, they give us some of the quotes that they've gotten, either from their regular writer surveys or from the app comments.

[02:27:18] And so you can see some of those there and some of the supportive notes that people leave about this, about how they're using this for their work. The valuable service it provides, you know, volunteering for their community gives them an opportunity to do that despite the fact that they may be a senior citizen and don't drive anymore. So those are some of the benefits that this is offering. The service performance, this came out of one of their rider surveys. 71% of the people

[02:27:53] that use the service don't have a car. It's a limited number of respondents to this, but they do, these are the numbers they have. I think it was like 100 people responded to their survey, and this is what they got. 73% earn less than 50K per month, and 40% reported having a disability.

[02:28:12] And you see some additional great comments there from some of the users. So the service data, As of the two-year period, we have 120,060 rides that have been completed. As I mentioned, when we first started this, we thought we could get 100 a day.

[02:28:30] This works out to be closer to about 190 rides a day on average over that period. So it's really impressive. And when you're looking at these two graphs here, what this shows is how the increase in this ridership has gone.

[02:28:47] we crossed the 100,000 mile mark back in July and it took us 15 months to get to 50,000 rides but then in only another seven months to get up to 100,000 so the the interest really generated and you see that in the chart below that the green lines show the number of completed rides so what you're seeing there is you can see the number of completed rides go up and up and then they kind of get to this point in late 2024 where they sort of plane off and are kind of

[02:29:22] running steady. The gray lines you see there, if you can't read the legend, the gray are seats unavailable. So those are people that are reaching out to request rides but are not able to get them because the vehicles are all being used and it would take too long for them to get to it.

[02:29:42] So I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a minute. Some of the top origins and destinations, you can see them on this map. Walmart, our contractor has told us, is really the most popular destination in every market they work in.

[02:30:03] That seems to be by far the highest. You see a lot of people coming from mall side, forest courts, apartments. You can see going down the list. So people are going from their homes to get to grocery shopping or jobs, anything like that. That's how this is being used.

[02:30:21] I just wanted to highlight this because I think this really tells a story as we think about the future of transit. This is with those points removed from the map. What you're seeing here are the direct lines of the call of the completed ride.

[02:30:38] So someone calls from a place and gets a ride to another place, and that's what you see. And I think it's important for us to recognize that where these rides are all going, it's going up and down 29. And I think that really speaks to what we should be looking at when it comes to fixed route service.

[02:30:55] So these people are really trying to get right up and down that 29 corridor. It seems to be very obvious. And the highest density right here is around the Stonefield area right in the southern, just north of the city.

[02:31:12] So it really sorts, when we first started this, I think we talked a little bit about how this could show us places where maybe fixed route would be feasible. Well, this map kind of starts to get to that. There are some limitations on the service, and I just want to make sure that you all understand that.

[02:31:31] So the budget that we have allows for 380 driver hours per week. This top chart shows the blue line at 380 and the blue lines going up and down, the darker blue lines.

[02:31:46] That's how many hours those drivers are working every week. So it fluctuates, but the average for our contract allows them to work an average of 380 hours per week. And this kind of gets back to what I pointed out earlier with the unfulfilled rides or when we cannot meet demand.

[02:32:05] We really topped out at the amount of demand back in early 2025, late 2024, and that's why you started to see that playing off and started to see these higher levels of unmet demand.

[02:32:21] That's because we just don't have enough drivers on the road that we're allowed to fund by a budget, and that's how you end up with unmet demand. we sort of started we stopped advertising for this service because realistically we couldn't fit any more people on this we were doing what we could with what we had so there really wasn't any any necessity to to continue advertising the service it's doing a great on its own but that's just one of the limitations we have we do work with them to address that what you're seeing here

[02:32:55] is uh just some samples of time of day so similar to the last chart the green is the uh or the completed rides and the gray shows you uh the unmet demand that happens at all times during the service day so um the peaks are here in the uh in the early afternoon and then what um working with via what they try and do is they try and match their drivers driver hours to the uh to the peak demand. So this light blue line here shows you where the drivers hourly are going and

[02:33:33] then you can see this is by time as well starting at six in the morning and going up to eight in the evening. The blue lines are the requests that come in. So you can see the high number of requests are coming in around the two to four range or two to five range and that's when we have the most drivers out there. So at this point, we're really maximizing what we can do with the amount of drivers we have on the road. Looking into the future, I just want to make sure that you are aware the grant did end at the, well, some of the money may have been expended, but the two-year

[02:34:13] grant period ended at the end of October. We have worked to extend that contract through to the end of FY26. There is still one additional contract extension available with VIA if that's something we're interested in the future. And some of the things we're looking at, once again, to kind of get at the idea of maximizing the amount of rides we can provide with the number of drivers we have or within our budget, is that we're working with Garland right now on incorporating the GTFS feed,

[02:34:50] which is the real-time fixed-route transit routes. So what we're doing with that is we can use VIA's app to include the transit lines and when they're going to be at different bus stops, and we can start offering to give rides to people that will connect them to the transit directly.

[02:35:14] So they'll be able to see how they can put their whole ride together that would include something like a ride on microcat to get to a bus stop and then be able to transfer to the bus more seamlessly than they can right now. So that's what the GTFS feed is.

[02:35:30] What we really want to see with that is that gives us the ability to alter the service so that instead of being this premier service, which is really what we're providing, door-to-door service for free, this could be something that we could move into more of a first-mile, last-mile opportunity. so that what it's really doing is just giving people to connect a fixed route service and that reduces the the load on our on our micro cap budget by doing that so some of the things that we're going to continue to look for of course they did even say via does have the ability to push people to a transit route so they can say within the app they can say we're not going to give you

[02:36:10] a ride all the way to your destination, we will give you a ride to the bus stop because you're going to be able to get there faster that way. So that is one of the options we're going to be looking at. I think we're going to be able to incorporate that right at the beginning of the new year. And then, of course, there will be a discussion on the future of the service in the upcoming budget discussions. We didn't want to get into that today. I think that's something that has to be thought about in the complete picture of what you guys are looking at. But just wanted and make sure that you had this context going into that.

[02:36:41] With that, that's the end of my presentation. I do have Ryan Davidson and Garland here. If you have questions about this, the three of us have been working together with this team to really keep this program on track. So we're all here and available to answer any questions.

[02:36:58] Thank you. And we'll go through our order, starting with Supervisor McHugh. Yes, thank you, Kevin, and I appreciate the information. So the takeaway for me right now is that we're providing, of course, this service for free.

[02:37:16] Between now and the end of the year, 26, the board will be discussing how microCAP might move forward or how it informs our transit system going forward.

[02:37:33] Yeah, that's the intent here. Just give you some of the information as you enter in. And I remember that you said to us very early that we would be able to see at the end of the day where people lived and where the need was that MicroCat would inform a lot of our work for fixed route, which is what I think I'm seeing here.

[02:37:58] So help me understand the one question that I do have. Help me understand a little bit. And I know we don't want to get into the monies, and that's fine today. I don't have a problem with that. But I know the usage at Albemarle High School is really big from the Albemarle High School students.

[02:38:18] And I'm always interested in schools and students and what's going on with our schools and trying to figure that out. As a matter of fact, Ned and I met, I don't know, Ned, back last winter or early spring with students from Albemarle High School who were very concerned about transit, right?

[02:38:37] So I'm just trying to figure out what my takeaway from that meeting was, that the students were using microCAD, at least some of them in that meeting, and it was just a few kids, so it was not exactly a good sampling. But microCAD they were using to go to jobs after school when they needed to get somewhere and they didn't have access to a bus line.

[02:39:02] My sense is that they're also using it in the mornings, and I don't know that. And, Garland, can you just come up and help me a little bit with, because I think it really is important. I'd just like to understand the school use a little bit better, if you can help us with that. And I will say, as you all are standing there, loaves and fishes, they are just delighted.

[02:39:23] This service for loaves and fishes has been a game changer. But go ahead, Garland. Garland Williams, Director of Charlottesville Area Transit. I kind of want to make sure that everybody understands that when we first looked at how the original outline, it did not include the high school.

[02:39:41] Right. So when we expanded that, we gave it an opportunity for students to take advantage of the rise and getting them to the high school. We didn't know how well that was going to be received. It turns out to be really well received, and they're using it as a means to get to school early in the morning.

[02:40:00] There are ways that we potentially could look at modifying the route itself if you wanted to do that, but it's more on the lines of you can actually geocode out the high school if you wanted to at a particular time of the morning and then allow it in the afternoon.

[02:40:18] So there are all kinds of things that we can do if you consider that to be an issue where we want to kind of modify the amount of services that are going to that so we can use it for more of a general population. But those are more of the policy concerns that we would have to work through with this board and your senior staff.

[02:40:39] And I guess my question overall is, are the students using microCAT in the morning to go to school before school? Are they going really early and they're trying to get to something before the school buses run?

[02:40:54] I'm just trying to sort it out. One of the great things about working with VIA is they have these great software options that we can dig into. And so because I've heard this, and this has been a concern that we've talked about a lot, because as you saw on that or i think it was on that list that the um the school is one of the top origin destinations in the county so i went and looked into this and i can separate out by time of day by everything by time by day of week when people are doing this what i did notice was that if i were to uh just pull out the hour before school starts and the hour after school

[02:41:31] hour before school starts an hour after school starts there's very few rides going in at that time out of the whole makeup of the rides that are going in there so what you are seeing is that there are people coming in at off hours or leaving it off hours not when school starts there's a lot of there's a lot of ways we could look at this uh and i was i would say i was only looking at the first month of school this year. But what I did see was that I don't think that there's a significant number of students that could ride a yellow bus and are choosing to ride

[02:42:11] this. It looks like what you're seeing is a lot of people that are using it for things like slightly off hours. So maybe they get to school late or can leave school early. It could be a lot of employees out there as well but uh from digging into it and i'm happy to share this with share some of the information that i pulled out of there because i did see numbers uh i don't think that the that using it to replace a yellow bus is a significant issue that's really helpful on knowing how it's being used and why right um and i will say just garland did you want to add anything else you i think kevin's right but i think anecdotally you would probably look at it

[02:42:50] is, and I think he hit on this, because of the timing, you can actually pull down and see geocodes. They probably use it sometimes when they miss the bus to get to school. So I don't know if we want to necessarily do away with that because we want the kids to get to school.

[02:43:07] But I would say we looked at that time frame, too, and I didn't see a significant rush before. But I do see more numbers after school, which is what you talked about. And I think maybe that is because of activities after school and they're trying to get homes or maybe they're going to jobs or maybe they have activities at the school and they need a way to get home after those activities.

[02:43:30] But those are all things that, you know, on a policy level, we just need to discuss. That's really helpful because I've been trying to figure out the Almar High School piece because it has been such a big portion of the usage. Great. And I just have to say, because, again, I'm a short timer and I'm going to take advantage of every minute that I have at some of these last meetings.

[02:43:53] But the Lambs Lane campus, which I have always called my LLC, the Lambs Lane campus traffic right now, for those people that don't drive over there and never go over there, it is appalling.

[02:44:16] The schools right now are having to schedule meetings around the traffic. The principals can't do certain things at certain times because the traffic is so bad that they can't get people in or out of the meetings. That's not acceptable.

[02:44:33] And the people that live down Lambs Road can't leave their houses now between 7.30 in the morning and 9.15 in the morning because of the bus traffic and the traffic from the people dropping their kids off.

[02:44:51] So we, I mean, it is a nightmare over there. We have got to figure it out, and that gets to, I don't know, working with school buses, working with transit, I don't know what, but I do know, Garland, that when you go down Georgetown Road, the bus makes a right onto hydraulic, but it doesn't make a left onto hydraulic.

[02:45:13] And so we have transit desert along hydraulic and look at all the apartment buildings that Ned and I have along there, and they don't have any access to transit. I'm taking this opportunity to just remind people of some of this.

[02:45:33] It is worth going out there at 830 or 845. Ned experiences it a lot at the traffic. Now I know that we have some traffic proposal that we are going to be improving some of the but that's not going to help with the 200 school buses that are accessing that campus every so often. I'm not going to say daily but certainly a lot and the lines that are being created by that use because there's one entrance entering one entrance out right now. I don't know if Kevin

[02:46:10] you can speak to that, or if I'm just up here rambling out of frustration, but it is a nightmare over there in the mornings. I'll just remind the board that we did work with schools on that evaluation to look at their master plan proposals for the loop road. Those are still things that we're considering for some future transportation funding opportunities to look at how that loop road which could reduce it removes the single point in and single point out uh question from this so uh it's something that we're going to continue to evaluate the the project we have

[02:46:47] right now is uh focused it yeah it's on hydraulic it does make some intersection improvements but it is also focused on some bike ped improvements out there and that's needed as well and i'm saying this because i'm not going to be around but that master plan that includes that loop road has to be implemented. And I just don't want it to be a book on a shelf because it's only going to get worse out there as time goes by. Anyway, with that, I don't have any more questions. I appreciate it.

[02:47:17] Thank you. I'm really gratified at the success of the ridership and I look forward to learning more details about how it could successfully take people to transit because I think that was how we got started to begin with. It wasn't necessarily funded to be a free ride for anybody anywhere they want to go but i'm glad it's raised the awareness of everybody that it's available so i look forward to your next round of reports on what you've learned and how you can master it and i guess gone are the days where the students would ride the bus period and not because now that we

[02:47:56] have fully staffed bus drivers it seems like we need to get kids back on the bus and i know that during the recession, there was no legal authority to require parents to either pay or to sign up one way or the other. But now I think somehow that's evolved. So if they don't register to use the bus, then they can't get on the bus halfway through the year. But somehow there has to be a better way to be able to plan, because it's not a good use of resources or staff or anything else, to be able to be having buses with only half the seats filled when there are plenty

[02:48:33] of kids getting a ride to school with mom along the way but this is exciting stuff and hopefully someday more than we'll be taking the real transit bus in the urban area to school that'd be good thank you thank you supervisor galloway yeah i'm i mean i'm not shocked by the success and the numbers and the positive feedback i hear it every month because i've got several cac members who use it and they used it from the get-go and they're also excited in thinking to the future of what it connects them to a working, functioning, fixed route. So it's already, based on how it's being

[02:49:10] used with its current limitations, I mean, you know, the geographic boundaries we put on it, you can already tell that they're like, yeah, we could see how this could work with a fixed route. It's just gone are the days of people going from the mall to the downtown or the downtown of the mall. So we had, Michael and those folks spent a lot of time with the CAC there a month ago, we were talking about uh well what what the heck was the topic i'm not even i'm sorry i went up on it but we were talking about the rio 29 area we were talking about what was it oh that's right foreign-based code but it also started to talk about how 29 from stonefield out i mean you could

[02:49:49] really say all the way out to target is really kind of becoming like a main street and all the people that live off of 29 micro count if you had a bus route that was fixed that just went from stonefield to target similar to you all downtown to fifth street because i know going to wegman's is your popular is a popular route and not thinking necessarily that it has to go into downtown and then you have to think of commuter routes differently than the daily use type stuff so i'm excited about the when it when we get to the point to think about how the fixed routes

[02:50:24] could work because it i always knew it could inform it but if you had a 29 route and then you had a figure eight route with berkmar and hydraulic it could really kind of be exciting and the figure eight and the the fixed route is what the students at the high school were talking about because high school is very different than your middle school and your elementary school i think we all know that based on there's just other things kids are involved with at the high school level that if your your bus you have to take the bus home at the end of the school day well most kids aren't done at the end of the school day most kids have got things that they're going to do at

[02:51:00] least part of the school year so they need to stay till five o'clock or six o'clock so how else are they going to get home if they don't have a car or they're not getting picked up i frankly do not care who's using microcat if it's being used and it's successful that was the point and that means that we got six people in a car versus one person per car and that was part of this piece so i don't care if they're students or senior citizens or anybody in between right it's just about making people be able to move around without having to drive themselves. And I think it gives a freedom and an independence. And it's fascinating how to think about how it gives independence to a 15-year-old

[02:51:39] versus giving independence to somebody, like one of your comments that said, I can't drive a car anymore. And this gives me a freedom to be able to exist and move around. It's a similar problem, can't drive my own car, and then different ways to move around the system. So I'm thrilled about that and thrilled about that success i know this is going to cost us something but you know i've become fond of stealing supervisor pruitt's point when he talks about housing sometimes where he says look this is a fixable problem who's gonna pay for it so transit because we you know the city

[02:52:15] and the county do talk a good game about wanting to get rid of cars off the road and we want to have functional systems and all we we talk a hell of a game about it but when it comes time to put our money where our mouth is we're going to have to step up and i know that garland you know i see garland kind of you know smiling at that but i mean you know it can't be 30 30 minute stops along 29 it's got to be 15 minute stops because otherwise if you take the microcat which is working well and then they go to a fixed route that's not then well they're going to stay on microcat and want to go dust curb to curb so i get all that the other thing that i'll add in here that'll be interesting to see when we can start maybe expanding the geographic areas is a lot of

[02:52:53] the economic development data is showing that our area is not just a people come into the center of town to work and then go home at night. You have people coming into the center of town to work, but you have people from the center of town going out of town to work. So your morning commute is both ways in the morning and both ways in the evening. So, you know, like the Afton Express works great around the hospital piece, but we're going to start having people from Culpeper, I'm sure we already do that commute in and thinking about well wow they could commute in and do a commuter route to target and then had a fixed route that could get them or micro cap moving

[02:53:29] them around in the employment centers between pantops and all of that it really could help with some of the congestion of it but man this is not going to be cheap is it garyl but i mean i hope that carta and all of the different people working on the university system the school system buses i mean i've sat here and theorized how much is a school bus these days like 300 grand or something i forgot what the number is electric or double that so and if i remember the diesel ones were still like 180 or 200 well these toyota siennas they probably cost 40 50 60 grand now i

[02:54:03] guess because they're outfitted with the with the the ada stuff but if i could get six so 60 that's 120 so you could maybe get three or four toyota siennas outfitted for ada could replace one school bus and it's probably more effective and it is attuned to people's day modern living these days than a fixed-route school bus is going.

[02:54:22] So it could be a way to get rid of school buses, and that's a big expense in our CIP. So, I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm out there. At the end of the day, I can tell you that one of, you know, it's nice because we, you know, when you hear residents come up, that it's just not been my experience prior to MicroCat to have regular, were you just gabbling me up?

[02:54:49] We have a bug over here. It's like, holy crap, I'm about to say something good, he's gabbling me now i got it i just got it is it that wasp that's been fired sorry but prior to microcat i didn't just i mean you get nice compliments here and there we certainly get our our issues that get brought to us by our constituents but this is the thing that i consistently and regularly hear excitement gratitude uh from constituents about being used in my row 29 area and with the onset of the both the uh vista 29 coming online where the old red

[02:55:28] roof end and the the residents that we're going to be assisting there to move to permanent housing and their need to be able to move around to the different parts of rio with the city's purchase of where they've purchased an area that is going to help with with permanent supportive housing for homeless stuff just down the road because i know microcat doesn't serve that area yet but there's going to need to be functional transit to help support all of that, or we're just going to invite new issues in a different place. And if we can give people viable ways to move around and go to Walmart to work, to go to Walmart to shop, et cetera, then that's going to help the bigger issues that I know sometimes can concern folks. I did have one question. The food line that you

[02:56:07] mentioned, was it Hillsdale, Pantops, both? The Pantops one didn't show up as a high usage one. The one on Hillsdale, Hillsdale and Branchlands, I think it is.

[02:56:25] That one did, but also the one up in the northern district, in Hollymead. Those both showed up as high. I don't know which one it was that was listed as one of the top destinations, but they both are pretty heavily used. I mean, you know, I know that you mentioned Mallside in there, but I'd also think about folks along Commonwealth as places, even the students back there.

[02:56:46] Happy probably to walk, but if it's a rainy day or a cold day or exceptionally hot day, then maybe they jump on microcat to be able to take it as well. But I see so many people walking from Food Lion back across Ryo Road with bags. And we're so far away, I know, from ever having a fixed route that makes that a functional piece where the walk has to happen, and microcat's the solution.

[02:57:11] And I know they're grateful for that. Thank you, guys. Supervisor Lupista Kirk. My understanding is that we don't have, along 29, a 15-minute bus is coming every 15 minutes.

[02:57:27] Is it every half hour? Is it more than that? Currently, CAT doesn't have any service that functions beyond Walmart on 29.

[02:57:44] But there are plans. We've been looking at a number of potential enhancements, and we're talking through those. Those will be part of the budget discussions, I assume, in the future. So we'll be able to report back as to where we intend to go.

[02:58:01] Okay, so you'll be coming back to us with a report saying what you're proposing along 29 for a fixed bus route, and then also if you're including any other additional microcat buses, trucks. On my side of the house, we were going to be talking about the fixed route, and I will be having discussions with Kevin and the team about your microCAD.

[02:58:24] Because I think you're hearing that microCAD is very popular. So let's see what we can do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Those previous comments kind of lead in pretty well to what I was thinking. And I must confess, I feel like this snuck up on me, and I'm wondering if anyone else feels like this.

[02:58:42] But I might have assumed that as we're getting toward the end of our pilot period of microCAD, we would be at the point I have talked several times I know other members of the board have talked about what are the ways that we can shape this program for the future as we start to have to think more seriously about cost what are the cost containment measures or the ways that it can be structured to be more sympathetic and integrated into fixed route systems what are the ways that we might do means testing or what are the ways that we might do even a fair system or a

[02:59:21] a way of containing what types of rides all these things right um and i might have expected a decision point or like a selection of alternatives um before we would end the pilot period and i'm realizing i'm not sure there's going to be a strong element of path dependence because we are already in the process of getting ready to budget for for the future right like uh mr richardson your team is if they're not already in the weeds looking at the 2027 budget right like we we are months out

[02:59:58] and don't have time for a decision point before then and now i i see that you've stood so please go ahead ryan davidson deputy chief of budget i just wanted to clarify one thing with the the grant program the grant program was set up as a two-year demonstration grant with one year being fully funded with a county match portion and then the second year being fully being a full county obligation. Fortunately, we were able to go out for an RFP that had a lower cost than what the initial assumption was in the grant. And plus, based on the timing and conversations with DRPT,

[03:00:34] we were able to stretch that grant to kind of two years, almost two years worth of grant funding. And then the current budget in FY2026 that we have in our current budget is set up to be that final year of that this is 100% on the county's dollar.

[03:00:49] So we haven't technically fully gotten out of the demonstration grant period that you're talking about. So all these things you're talking about could be part of that larger transit discussion when we look at it as a holistic nature as we get into the budget conversations. One of the things we did do was do a minor extension of the contract through the end of calendar year, excuse me, through the end of fiscal year 2026 so that when we're having these conversations and we're talking about but these things that would have budget implications the contract lines up with um the the timing of those budget conversations so we're not having to have off cycle budget conversations related to micro cat

[03:01:28] and then another conversation about cat and jaunt during the budget cycle so we've tried to align all those things so that we can have those those holistic conversations during the budget um period budget development period okay yeah my concern was just i did not want to be in a position where we've kind of already the budget is a big exquisite document and it comes with itself a lot of assumptions frankly the assumption that how many things are going to change significantly i don't think that's unfair to say and i didn't want to be considering how we're going to structure a you know a million dollar a year program uh in a way where we can't actually move a single jenga block

[03:02:07] uh without toppling the thing or we have to do zero based budgeting with how we're we're moving it around. So that was why I was assuming there might be an iterated phase, but I appreciate your point. Thank you. And for me, you know, I sit on the RTP, I sit on CARTA, I sit on the TJPDC, and I sit here. I get a lot of presentations about microCAT. I've asked many questions. Garland knows what some of my specific concerns are, and so I don't want to get into that. I do just want to say, you know, I think reflecting back to Supervisor Galloway, the point that he made I think it will be we can talk in abstraction all day long there's going to be a

[03:02:46] rubber hits the road when we actually have to start making policy decisions on this and I don't say that as someone who is opposed to micro cad I say that as someone who wants the highest number of deliverables as far as vehicle rides to places people need to go and whatever the right mix that gets there I will say something that I've been consistently pleased and surprised with as we've started to get the data, is that, you know, I mentioned means testing. We're not means testing.

[03:03:13] But the results almost feel like we are. The number of people who are using this service who, you know, to speak in broad generalizations, quote, truly need it, is actually a significant percentage, right? It's a significant percentage of the elderly. It's a significant percentage of people without means. It's significant to include students who are people without means. And so So I've been impressed and surprised and pleased by that.

[03:03:40] I would also just, this is something that's tickling in the back of my brain, right? When I think of big picture transit projects in the future, and as we're thinking about Carta, my secret kind of Pollyanna hope has always been, you know, I think one of the things that we can partner best with on the university side is around transit.

[03:04:03] My secret Pollyanna hope is always a transit system that looks like Blacksburg. Where we have a unified transit system and the state pays for it through the university. That is such an optimistic thing, but it's something I want to lean into. I've been a little nervous with the change in leadership and how that might shape those futures.

[03:04:22] But I am curious if you have been in conversations with university leadership about whether or not there's kind of comparable or sympathetic programs to microCAT. I'm thinking a lot of universities have the, are you a woman who is afraid of interactions on public transit and it's late at night, here's how to get home?

[03:04:44] Are you drunk and outside of our traditional transit catchment areas and you need to ride home services that are free of charge? The university, as my understanding, has reached out to VIA. But they actually have a, I think they call it a safe ride program that uses similar style vehicles at night.

[03:05:05] but because they sit on the RTP and they come to the Carter meetings, they're aware of the success of the microCAT product. And we're having conversations because a lot of the students want to take advantage of the microCAT product.

[03:05:22] They can't do it right now because it does not go to the university or go to grounds. So we're trying to work through that, But I think the real push is that the students, going back to you earlier, if we can get as many people as we can onto the fixed route, then we're not having this.

[03:05:47] It's like we've got a bubble that we knew there was pitting up demand. There's further pitting up demand. The more we expand your micro-cap product, the more people are going to be interested in using it. That's not a bad thing. It's just an expensive thing.

[03:06:03] so my goal has always been to make sure that we have the most robust public transportation system fixed route that we can. And as soon as we can get that accomplished, I think we can potentially pull back on some of the ancillary products that we have, or even shift them to areas that don't have any transit services today. But that's more of a policy decision, and it's going to take some time to work through that. I'm not sure we're in a position to have that conversation right now.

[03:06:34] but it's something that we probably need to start thank you thank you this is congratulations on the success of this I feel like this question must have been answered and I missed it or it was in other presentations but it seems the obvious one you've got seats unavailable on the charts well Supervisor Galloway says I love it everybody's riding I don't care who's riding I'd like to know that they're riding but there are seats unavailable how do you decide who what happens to those people how do they end up being unavailable uh there i think there's a limit to how long they will uh

[03:07:14] schedule a ride out in time so if if they uh if all their vehicles are busy on rides and they don't have anybody that they could double that up with and they can't get to that person within i think it's like 25 or 30 minutes somewhere around there uh they say it's 30 minutes okay so 30 minutes they say we can't give you a ride you're going to have to call back later or find another way so sometimes they may wait and they may wait 10 minutes 15 minutes and try again but that's what that seat unavailable means but that's still basically it's a queue and if you didn't get

[03:07:48] in the queue soon enough you're out of luck because it's not a prioritized by need in any way correct i want to make sure i understand that because i think obviously we have a situation where there's demand that exceeds supply and there's no current method that prioritizes who gets the rides other than who got the call first and happens to fit in the schedule. And that's something that I hope can be addressed. It makes the system more sensible. Any other

[03:08:21] comments? I do. I just want to remind folks, in my world, and I was the chair of the Virginia Transit Association for and on that board for years. There is not a transit system that really pays for itself. We have to remember that and I'm talking about across the country. They do not pay for themselves but there are other reasons why you provide transit for your community because it reaps benefits in many other ways and I won't go through that but I would also say that think about

[03:08:56] what a perfect world it would be if we could have built a pedestrian bridge that went from Stonefield to the other side of 29, from the county to the city, and had actually a transit stop provided on the other side of that bridge. We're building a petty bridge, and there's no transit stop provided on the city side of that bridge. That is a loss. Now, maybe we go back and figure it out, But when we're building something like that and planning for it, we ought to be thinking about that, because it's a lot easier to go for it at the beginning than to be adding it later.

[03:09:38] And that transit stop would be and could be very, very beneficial for the people that are trying to move across that highway. The other thing I would remind people about is we have five transit systems in this community.

[03:09:56] To get to Mike's point, five transit systems, and I count them as jaunt, CAT, UTS, and then we have two school systems, and the school system buses in the urban ring are passing each other and following each other down the road.

[03:10:17] Surely we can do better than this, folks, and I've been talking about that for 12 years, and we used to have meetings with the city about how to get that urban school bus situation straightened out because they're passing each other in the neighborhoods. And I guess those comments will just have to, hopefully you all will start thinking about in the future, taking some of those comments to heart and thinking about how we can end up in this community with, as Mike says, one transit system like other communities have.

[03:10:54] And I'm even including the school systems in that because there are communities that do that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also going to add, just because the question, An issue comes up about subsidies, and I agree that this has to be subsidized.

[03:11:12] But at the same time, I haven't seen from the get-go really a discussion of cost per mile and alternatives. I know that VIA is doing a great job, but ultimately that's got to be part of the equation is to see what we're paying and what the alternatives would be to subsidize other methods.

[03:11:31] So thank you. Thank you. Thanks, guys. This brings us to, from the county executive, is there anything to report today? Mr. Chair, I do not have a formal presentation.

[03:11:48] I will have that at the November 19th meeting. I did want to bring two things to the attention of the board, and the board is super responsive with your email invites, but both of these have a quick turnaround. Now, one is in your inbox from Ms. Kilroy earlier today, an invitation to attend an INSA conference that will be at Boar's Head, and that will be on the morning of November 18th.

[03:12:18] And that is tied to our partnership with the University of Virginia, our Department of Defense Intelligence Community, and the National Security Institute that is at UVA. There will be a nice reception and gathering on the morning of the 18th, and I would ask for the board to pay attention to that.

[03:12:42] and then also miss kilroy sent earlier today an email and it is a chamber event that will be on the evening of the 19th and ordinarily there would be a standing conflict with the board because that is your board meeting but ironically we just have a short evening on the 19th and that's where miss kilroy is just asking for the board's attention and i believe she's got a really quick turnaround on that it may be friday of this week so i just like for the board if you i just don't want you miss an opportunity if it's something that works with your schedule i believe it's a business it's

[03:13:17] a business awards uh ceremony through the chamber uh that evening on the 19th miss kilroy also said she'll be very good in the future about trying to work with the chamber as they try to do i'm sure with the city standing board meetings and the county's board meetings and i know they have a lot to consider um that was front of mind this afternoon mr chair i also had an opportunity last week to go with Bart Savota, our assistant director of community development, to my national conference at Tampa, ICMA. First time it's ever been held in Tampa. I know they've had

[03:13:55] NACO in Tampa. I found it to be an excellent host city site. 5,000 city county managers from across the United States, Canada, and Europe with the council manager, former government. Mr. Spota and I divided up the itinerary, and we both had nice continuing education.

[03:14:16] I would like to publicly thank Trevor Henry and Ann Wall for doing such a wonderful job in my absence last week. They worked really hard. And, of course, we tried to take opportunities for continuing education, and BART had a wonderful time.

[03:14:32] And it was great being down there and learning from practitioners and also really good speakers from across the nation. I'd also like several board members mentioned in your opening remarks the work that you've seen with our police department and the work going on, Mr. McKeel mentioned October 18th.

[03:14:56] Our police and fire did a really good job on October the 18th, and I'll also point out that that day was also a university football game. So there was a lot going on in the community. Mr. Henry, I know, was tied in really hard that Saturday to both work with police, fire, coordination with the city, coordination with the university, and knock on wood, everything went really well.

[03:15:23] And then finally, I also want to thank all of the supporting departments who worked really hard to make sure that our elections went well yesterday. I'm really proud of the supporting departments that went in, our information technology department, which they get overlooked sometimes, certainly our public safety departments.

[03:15:45] Mr. Henry, again, was involved with police and standing up a plan and monitoring to make sure that we had safe and secure sites. But across all the departments, they know we need to do whatever we need to do cross-departmentally to help our election folks and make sure that our community and our citizens come in and get a good experience.

[03:16:10] And then I think one of the board members mentioned our volunteers, that they're amazing. and so that that's it Mr. Chair I just had a couple of things for the board that I thought was timely thank you thank you board we'll go to the from the board committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda but of course that can also include comment on the report we just heard thank you so Supervisor McHugh I think I've said a lot today okay Supervisor Malik I'm all set thank you Supervisor Galloway I'll just say thank you to I know the staff that worked on the all CAC meeting. I found the information presented there helpful, and I think the CAC members did as well. So, just kudos to them that

[03:16:48] pulling that together. So, thank you. Supervisor McEaston-Pruitt? Nothing, thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? Nothing bad. I'm going to jump in here just because of the follow-up on that is that I noticed in this week's news that there's a Ravana Futures brief newsletter, and I'd like to highlight that, and I'm not sure what the link is directly, except that there's a long one.

[03:17:13] I'm not sure if there's a short way to get there. But it's something that I think people would love to subscribe to it. It's periodic. I don't know how periodic, but I still was excited to see it. And then, of course, there was also news about additional funding for and activities surrounding Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Education Institute and any information on that would be greatly appreciated as well.

[03:17:40] Thank you. Now, with that, we need to go into closed meeting. Supervisor Burke? Yes, I would like to move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, TAC 3711A of the Code of Virginia, first under Subsection 1, to discuss and consider appointments to various boards and commissions, including, without limitation, the 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee, the Pantops Community Advisory Committee, the Places 29 North Community Advisory Committee,

[03:18:08] And the place is 29 RIO Community Advising Committee, second under subsection 8, to consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters, including the June 2025 cybersecurity incident requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel, and third under subsection 19 to discuss plans to protect public safety as it relates to specific cybersecurity threats or vulnerabilities, including the June 2025 cybersecurity incident and briefings by staff members, legal counsel, law enforcement, or emergency service officials, concerning actions taken to respond to such matters.

[03:18:41] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, a second from Supervisor Malek without objection. We'll call the roll. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Thank you.

[03:19:06] Number? Okay. Welcome back. Supervisor Pruitt, you bring us on a closed meeting. Yes, I'd like to move the Board of Supervisors to certify by our recorded vote that to the best of each supervisor of knowledge on only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Bureau of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second.

[03:19:33] We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt. Second from Supervisor Malek without the action of the court call. Ms. Malek? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPesa-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Great. And now we have a motion coming out of closed session from all right i move that the board appoint to do you say no i beg your pardon i thought i heard you say no no i said yes and then i said did i vote twice and maybe i don't know i i don't think my name was called i don't think i've voted yes i'm sorry i used to vote and i thought well maybe we're

[03:20:12] confused but anyway all right i move that we appoint to the pantops community advisory committee reginald woods and to the places 29 ryo community advisory committee michael geyser second we have motion supervisor mikhiel second from supervisor malik without objection if the clerk will call the roll miss mikhiel yes mr pruitt i mr andrews yes mr galloway yes miss lopista kirtley i miss malik yes and turning to my right and left unless there's something further we will we are adjourned to November 19th, 2025, 1 p.m. here in Lane Auditorium.

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