Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting, Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 23m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1494
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1494

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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[00:00:01] Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors for our May 6, 2026, 1 p.m. meeting here in Lane Auditorium. With us at the dais, we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Ann Malick of the White Hall District, Supervisor B. Lepisto Kirtley of the Ravana District, Supervisor Sally Duncan of the uh jack jewett district uh supervisor missal is uh traveling so he will not be joining with us today we also have our county executive mr jeff richardson and our county attorney uh

[00:00:40] mr andy herrick our board clerk miss claudette borgeson and our senior deputy clerk mr travis morris are also with us um with us in addition to the folks that are joining us for some some things we're doing today with our normal folks here at, for meeting purposes, Officer Jawan Woodson and Officer Tavon Richardson. Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us this afternoon.

[00:01:04] And with that, if everyone will please rise as you are able for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the leader of the Republic, which stands on nation and the God, and indivisible, with liberty and justice.

[00:01:24] thank you and if everyone would please join together in a moment of silence thank you very much all right board uh next we have the adoption of the final agenda we're not aware of any changes

[00:01:59] or edits are there any changes or edits additions to the agenda is there a motion to adopt the final agenda so moved second all right the motion has been made and seconded without ejection if the clerk would please call the roll mr pruitt hi miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapista kirtley hi miss mallet yes thank you and that will take us to brief announcements by board members supervisor pruitt um not much to add other than to uh point out that there is currently a call

[00:02:35] for artists out from scam the scoutsville center for arts and nature they have a gallery space on valley street um the current theme of the or the theme of the upcoming uh exhibit is going to be called create fabricate construct um and they're accepting submissions through the 17th of may all right thank you supervisor duncan no comments uh supervisor malik yes just to uh thank you crochet arts and crafts festival is this weekend may 9th and 10th 10 to 5 over 100 juried artisans from around the country music food entertainment and lots of wonderful crafts for taking home

[00:03:13] especially for mother's day and also the afton express has recorded a 38 increase in ridership in February compared to February 2025. This is a really big improvement in helping a lot of people who live in the valley work in this area or the reverse commute as well. So they've added another bus in the reverse commute direction to help to bring more people off of the road and get them there on time. I also was fortunate to attend the High Growth Coalition meeting in James City County last week, and I will present some of my notes to everybody at the end of the meeting. Thank you

[00:03:49] very much. Right. Supervisor Lapista currently? Yes, I attended the EDA meeting and there was a lot going on there. The big thing is to make sure that we have a Charlottesville to Boston connection. That's what they're working on now. They've received input and we're really trying to make that happen. That will help connect all of our biotech, bioscience industries that we're planning for along with some other areas. And I will say we're connecting with PBCC, Afton, AstraZeneca,

[00:04:26] the Manning Institute. All those connected are really, really going to make a big impact. And AstraZeneca is going to have the most advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing in the world. Lots of robotics. So any young people there that are interested in robotics, that's going to be the place so they will be building a state-of-the-art facility also our region wine coalition update that's going very well Wegmans has lots of Virginia wine because you can't always find it

[00:05:01] in every place but Wegmans has a lot of it but I will tell you with the freeze that's happened not recently but about a few weeks ago there's about a 20 to 10 to 20 percent loss of crops with the freeze. So that's something that there'll be wine, but just not as much, which some people will be very happy about. Others will be very sad. Just FYI. We've also,

[00:05:32] we approved a $15,000, the board, EDA board approved a $15,000 grant match for, to support life sciences through the biohub. So things are happening there. On April the 24th, myself and Supervisor Malik attended the pinning of Fire Chief Puckett. That was very nice. And we had a Pantop CAC meeting, but I'll let Supervisor Pruitt talk about that if he wants to. I think

[00:06:10] he already did. Well, that would be for board reports at the end of the meeting. That would be for board reports at the end of the meeting. We'll do that later, thank you. All right, I have no announcements today. That will move, we'll move to item number six, which would proclamations and recognitions.

[00:06:28] And we do have three proclamations this afternoon. The first, a proclamation recognizing May as bike men and Peter Krebs with the Piedmont Environmental Council and some well-helmeted folks are here to join to support him. How this will work is we will, Mr. Supervisor Duncan will read the proclamation in the form of the motion. The board will take a vote and then we'll invite Mr. Krebs to come up to make some remarks and accept the proclamation. Proclamation recognizing May is bike month.

[00:06:58] Whereas bicycling is a healthy, clean, and affordable mode of transportation and recreation used by thousands of community members and residents of all ages throughout our great commonwealth and county, and traveling by bicycle has been proven to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce pollution associated with vehicular travel and offer significant mental and physical health benefits to bicyclists themselves. And whereas the County of Albemarle set an ambitious, appropriate, and necessary goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050,

[00:07:34] and reaching that goal requires providing more accessible, safe, and affordable multimodal transportation options for all residents. And whereas a rich sense of a bicycling community is essential in shifting our transportation systems away from automobiles and building community support for new and different infrastructure and broader mobility options.

[00:07:59] And whereas throughout the month of May, Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia, alongside a cohort of businesses, agencies, and community groups, are hosting many bicycling events that promote awareness, safety, new travel options, as well as building community, and whereas these groups and many others are also promoting the use of the bicycle as both a means of transportation and recreation year-round to improve community health, economic vitality, environmental stewardship, and the simple joy of being active outdoors. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize the

[00:08:38] month of may 2026 is national bike month encourage all who support bicycling to participate in the events planned and urge all road users to share the road safely second all right the motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt i miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapista kirtley i miss malik yes very good the motion carries and do we have mr krebs or others that are going to come join us for some remarks good afternoon

[00:09:17] Board of Supervisors and members of the public. I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council. And I'm Jip from Cambic, the Charlottesville area mountain bike club. Pull that microphone down there. I'm short, yep. And my name is Jip, and I'm from the Charlottesville area mountain bike club.

[00:09:34] So on behalf of the entire bicycling community, we would like to thank you for this recognition. Before we say anything else, it is important to recognize that Bike Month is not the product of just one person or one group. The proclamation mentions that Bike Month is actually the work of a coalition of groups, businesses, and organizations that are committed to healthy streets for everyone and promoting public health and connectivity. The proclamation doesn't name names, but I'll name

[00:10:10] some. Of course, there's Albemarle County, the Planning District, and several UBA offices. Charlottesville City Council issued a similar proclamation just a few days ago. Staff from all four groups have contributed mightily to this effort.

[00:10:28] Four different bike shops and dozens of local businesses have made significant contributions. Most of them are locally owned, and all of them are working year-round to feed, clothe, and equip area residents to live their best lives.

[00:10:46] Groups like CAMBIC, BPAC, the Climate Collaborative, the Mobility Alliance, PEC, and many others are working on the ground to pull people together and to actually build stuff. Both hospitals, the health district, and many doctors have pitched in, and the reason is obvious.

[00:11:10] They know that movement is effective preventative health care for both your mind and body. Besides improving the health of cyclists, though, cycling also reduces congestion, air pollution, and water pollution for everyone, and reduces the need for parking and expensive road infrastructure.

[00:11:32] I love how cycling removes barriers between people. How often do you exchange pleasantries with people in other cars? I'm not saying it never happens, but I expect that cycling is a more supportive situation. People often say that they would ride more if it were safe to do so on area roads.

[00:11:52] That's actually ironic because the growth area of the county is actually not that big. It's just eight miles to the northern tip of the development area and four to the east, west, and south boundaries. So if we had good infrastructure, but for the hills as well, one could get around easily without a bike.

[00:12:15] but it isn't actually about getting people to give up their cars it's about getting people to try new things just the other night a farmer came up to me and told me that he uses an e-bike to herd sheep I'm hoping to parlay that into an invitation to do some wrangling of my own on a bike but it was exciting to hear that and just an example of how bikes can be used in creative ways You'll find a whole wealth of information about Bike Month and cycling at the website BikesEvil.com.

[00:12:51] There's a full schedule of events, activities, groups of people to ride with. County staff is leading some e-bike demonstrations. All the local bike shops are having repair clinics. So there's a lot that can be done and new adventures to try.

[00:13:09] So that's BikesEvil.com. Thank you so much for this proclamation and thank you for the good work you're doing in the community. Any remarks as well? Before you go away, I'm going to invite the board and supervisors to see if they have any remarks and then we'll bring the proclamation down to you.

[00:13:28] Supervisor Pruitt? Thank you so much for both of y'all and all the advocacy that you individually and your organizations do. I was just sharing before the meeting started the work just in my own backyard that CAMVIC's been doing. I live at the intersection of, I have Biscuit Run in my backyard and I have the Avon Street Corridor in my front yard, which I think really illustrates the role that biking can play in our community. It is an easy enough matter for me to just distance-wise commute here from my home.

[00:14:01] And it's also should be an easy enough matter for me to bike around recreationally in Biscuit Run. But both of those require intentional public investment and intentional public partnerships to actually make them feasible and safe. I can't just get into Biscuit Run without crossing certain easements and land ownership issues.

[00:14:21] And I can't get here on a bicycle without having to hazard some pretty fast roadways that don't have protected shoulders or anything. So I bring that up just as an illustration for the incredible possibility we have, the incredible work that's going into this right now, and the necessity of this being something we continue to prioritize as a government.

[00:14:41] Thank you so much for being here. Supervisor Duncan? I just want to say, you know, I know how hard it is to change people's minds on things and the work that you guys have done over the years for a really long time to advocate for bike use.

[00:14:57] It has really changed my mind and has made me, you know, more pro biking. It's made me a better driver. So I really appreciate just sort of the slow drip of bike advocacy and also a plug for the e-bike lending library. And if anybody has never ridden any bike, they are so much fun to do.

[00:15:15] I wish, you know, I wish we had paved shoulders throughout the county that, you know, more people could ride their bike safely. It would be, I would love to ride a bike more. So, yeah, the need for infrastructure is really there, you know. But I just, I really want to thank you guys for the continuous work.

[00:15:31] I know it can be very annoying to kind of get people to, you know, appreciate bikes more. And so, it really has, you know, changed my views on that. So, I appreciate that. Supervisor Malik. Thank you very much, everyone. This is reminiscent of my beginning bicycling commuting in 1971 in Boston, where I rode my bike to Harvard Medical Area in 10 minutes, whereas it would have been a 30-minute walk from my assigned parking space at the convent.

[00:16:00] So that was an easy choice. But even in rain and snow, it was safer and much more enjoyable than sitting in a car. And I found that the manners of the Boston drivers, even that long ago, were far better than what I found when we moved back to the farm in 1982.

[00:16:18] We put the bikes away except to ride on the farm or drive to some place where you can go on a trail because when the people are speeding by in a 16-foot wide roadway with three-foot deep ditches and no place to go, that is just not a place.

[00:16:34] And it scares me all the time to see cohorts of bicyclers riding through Earliesville on the very popular, you know, wayday 10. But we have a long way to go to get our drivers to go back to the banners of the 1960s, really and truly. That scares me a lot. I will remember also that Officer Utz and his bicycle patrol during the time that he was working in the Croce Growth Area is still very fondly remembered. So maybe someday that will come back as one of the assignments for you all.

[00:17:05] Thank you very much. Supervisor Lapista Kirtley? I just want to say, I know Camping has done a lot and with biscuit run just to let everyone know they're they are building trails so I just heard from supervisor Pruitt that evidently the mountain bike trail was supposed to be fifth on the list of getting done it looks like it's going to be first on the list because the camp again all the volunteers so kudos to you you saved us time and money so and we really really appreciate that and then peter um he is with the parks foundation and char and he's overseeing the fee bridge

[00:17:45] project along with uh mills the mills creek old mills old mills trip i knew i would get it wrong the old mills trail so that's going to be hopefully completed uh soon and so i commend you on that also so we really are doing you all are doing a lot and to make sure that we we have plenty of opportunity uh to walk bike ride electric bikes are great except if you want to make a u-turn i have personal experience on that and you've got to be careful yeah i guess bikes don't do 80 on a

[00:18:24] turning radius um well thank you get off and walk thank you both for being here uh and making uh comments you know i just had to walk up the hill the other day while i was having a phone conversation to go to bodo's and i almost didn't make it for bagel time um so the bike may not be in my future especially unless i'm going downhill i suppose but these e-bikes are interesting to me because that does open it up that if you do perhaps have uh issues that would prevent you from being able to ride a regular bike that you could ride the e-bike so i i'm fascinated by the folks that live in my district that i know who are using them really just for for recreation and

[00:19:03] pleasure more so than commuting and things like that so all the efforts that are behind that to help educate folks and give them a chance or an opportunity to try it out I think they'll be surprised once they do experience it so we'll have the the proclamation brought down to you couldn't read your mind

[00:19:36] all right with the next proclamation today is a proclamation recognizing May 3rd through the 9th 2026 is public service recognition week will follow the same order and supervisor malik will read this proclamation thank you very much it's an honor to read this as a motion whereas admiral

[00:20:11] i'm sorry whereas americans are served daily by public servants at the federal state county and city levels these unsung heroes do the work that keeps our nation working and whereas public service is among the most demanding and noble of professions whereas public service week is observed annually to celebrate and recognize the valuable service that public servants provide to the nation. Whereas over 900 Albemarle County local government employees work tirelessly to serve our residents, businesses, and visitors, providing them with outstanding customer service while maintaining careful stewardship of the resources with which they have been entrusted.

[00:20:51] And whereas we appreciate the many accomplishments and contributions made daily by these public servants. Now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, to hereby recognize May 3rd through May 9th, 2026, as Public Service Recognition Week, and call upon the Amaral County community to recognize the significant and important contribution that public employees make to our community. Signed this sixth day of May, 2026, Ned Galloway Chair.

[00:21:19] Is there a second? Second. Second. All right, the motion has been made and seconded. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malik. Yes.

[00:21:35] And motion carries. With us today, we have Mark Wilson, Ashley Perry, and Joe Clark to make some remarks. Did I get all the... I'm sorry. Ashley Perry Hernan-Dorena. Missed the last name. Holy mackerel. That's a lot of words there.

[00:21:51] Good afternoon. Sorry about that, that I missed the last truck. Sir, good afternoon. Yeah, good evening. My name is Mark Wilson. I'm the Recreation Supervisor for the Amar County Parks and Rec Department. We'd like to thank you for this approximation.

[00:22:08] In addition to that, we'd like to thank you for your service as public service and the time and effort you give this community. On behalf of the committee and employees, we appreciate very much and, indeed, the support of the board for the work that you do every day.

[00:22:25] It is, indeed, an honor and means a lot to us to be a part of it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hey, I'm Joe Clark, Recreation Manager at Parks and Rec. We're excited about this week's activities, which started with our annual employee picnic last Friday, which is absolutely amazing.

[00:22:45] Hope you're able to make it. There's no rain, lots of sun, and some epic games of kickball, bingo, and trivia. This week, we had employee snack breaks on Tuesday and today, Wednesday, and an opportunity to tour the stream restoration work on our newest park biscuit run on Monday and also tomorrow on Thursday.

[00:23:05] Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for having us here today. I'm Ashley Perry-Hernando Reina, Economic Development Office. I'm Business Development Manager. So there are a lot of employees who have joined us here today to hear this proclamation read aloud.

[00:23:25] So with anyone that's here representing the county as an employee, please stand. A lot of people.

[00:23:41] On behalf of everyone who's here today and everyone who's out there grinding and serving our community, We want to thank you so much for this proclamation and for the hard work that you all do. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I'm going to, before you go away, I'll ask the supervisors if they'd like to make remarks.

[00:23:57] Supervisor Pruitt. Thank you so much for being here. I say every day that we have truly, there are a lot of things, and we have to, as politicians, sometimes run on things that are going wrong in Albemarle County, because we're going to fix them, right?

[00:24:13] One thing, though, that I don't think anyone is leveraging criticism is on the quality of our county's staff and professionalism. It is something I bring up every opportunity I can get. I think the number one thing I would say about county government is that we have profoundly high levels of customer service, of professionalism, of organizational quality.

[00:24:35] And that is because of every person in this room. I would also say, you know, this was something that was talked about on a podcast I was listening to recently. You know, back in the 80s, 90s, you graduate from a fancy school and, like, the cool thing to do is to go work in municipal government because that's where a lot of innovation is happening.

[00:24:55] That's where a lot of exciting work is happening. It seems very prestigious. And now, increasingly, we're in a role where that is being sucked up by, like, your big three consultants, right? That's where everyone wants to go work. But the reasons that made local government exciting then are all still true.

[00:25:12] This is still where the exciting work is happening. This is still where people can make the most difference at every stage of their career. And I am so grateful that we have the quality of talent that still sees the incredible value of the work that we do in local government here, working here in Albemarle County.

[00:25:31] Thank you all so much. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan? Yeah, I got into this mostly because of my family's experience with local government and understanding how important local government is and how hard staff works. And now that I am on this side, I have even more appreciation for how hard public servants work and how everything that you guys do.

[00:25:56] And so, yeah, I think kind of agreeing with everything Supervisor Pruitt said, that local government is really, really important. It literally is what makes people's daily lives work. And so I just am even more appreciative and grateful of all the work that you guys do.

[00:26:14] Supervisor Malik. Thank you all very much. I began my experience home again in the audience in the 80s, and I've had the good fortune of watching and listening to the contributions of generations of county staff people in this room.

[00:26:31] And it has been amazing. The values of the board evolve and devolve over that time, but the contributions of the staff continue on, and I'm very grateful for all you do for us every day. And I know I send you lots and lots of questions, and I appreciate your work. Thank you. Supervisor Lapista, currently?

[00:26:48] I've said it before. I'll say it again. We, and I specifically mean me, but I think all of us, we could not do this job without the staff that we have. You guys are absolutely incredible. You have the knowledge, the experience, you help us, you make us sound smart, and you make us sound like we know what we're doing, which actually I think we do for the most part. But I'm so appreciative. And like supervisor per said i hear from my constituents and even if there's a complaint i hear the person

[00:27:24] was really nice the person that i called from the county staff county office was very very nice even if they didn't get their way they they complement the professionalism and how nice and kind everybody is here and i think that says a lot for our county because you're displaying to all the people out there, what local government should be doing to help everyone. I think there's a real sense that they feel that, I'm hoping. But I thank you 100,000 times over because you all make this job,

[00:28:02] frankly, easy. Thank you. I join in the remarks of my colleagues and I would add that, you know, two things. One of the big tasks we have to do as a board of supervisors is to put in place a strategic plan, and then everything really threads out from that. And you can only aim as high as you are able to with the folks that are going to be able to execute that plan. And we have what I think is a phenomenal strategic plan that is reaching high and aiming high, and that's because of the work we know you all are going to be able to do. So I'm very thankful for that. The other

[00:28:39] thing that I would say is that, you know, last year we did a tax rate increase. This year I was one of a handful to support doing another tax increase and often find myself explaining to constituents what those resources will be used for. And in like fashion, what my point about the strategic plan is true about a tax rate increase. When you can stand in front of a community and say, here's what these funds are going to go for, and then know that you've got an all-star team behind you to be able to pull the plan off, that's a level of credibility that not every jurisdiction can claim that they have. So I want to speak to all of you that are doing

[00:29:18] that work day in and day out, and hope you will share that, the remarks of the board with your colleagues as you return to your offices and your different departments throughout the day. So thank you again for being here with us and everybody else who came to join with this moment today. And I'll ask Supervisor Malik, she'll bring the proclamation down for you all.

[00:30:03] Thank you again. And I did hear about the kickball. I was unable to attend this Friday, but Even if somebody's not there is like kickball, this is what's going to write. Oh, we slaughtered them. I hope there's some video out there. Yeah, it was really, it was a great game.

[00:30:21] I heard something about the game that Supervisor Lapisto currently participated in. Okay, somebody missed second base. It wasn't clear enough. You know, when you're as high as the grass, you don't see second base.

[00:30:37] It was in the grass. otherwise i could have had a run anyways stealing on a diagonal our next uh our third and uh the final proclamation for today is a proclamation recognizing may 10th through the 16th 2026 as national police week and supervisor lapisto currently will read this proclamation this is a great honor for me to be able to read this proclamation whereas in 1962 president john f kennedy signed the first proclamation recognizing

[00:31:15] may 15th as peace officers memorial day and the week in which it falls as national police week to pay tribute to the law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and to voice our appreciation for all those who currently serve on the front lines of the battle against crime. And whereas the safety and well-being of Albemarle County citizens being of the utmost importance to the prosperity and livelihood of Virginia's families and communities and police

[00:31:51] officers throughout Albemarle County are dedicated to protecting and serving Albemarle County communities, our neighborhoods, schools, families, and whereas police officers risk their lives each and every day in order to ensure public safety and enforce the laws of the land.

[00:32:13] And whereas Abomaral County values the courage and devotion of our police officers, as our collective prosperity depends on the integrity with which our law enforcement officers maintain peace and security.

[00:32:30] And whereas Police Week and Police and Peace Officers Memorial Day are opportunities to honor the officers who have fallen in line in the line of duty and recognize the sacrifices made by the families of those officers and the families of those who continue to protect and serve our communities.

[00:32:55] Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize May 10th through 16th, 2026 as Police Week and May 15th, 2026 as Peace Officers Memorial Day in Albemarle County and call these observances to the attention of all our citizens.

[00:33:20] signed the sixth day of may 2026 ned l galloway chair second all right motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt i miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapisa kirtley i miss mallet yes and very good motion carries and with us today we have our deputy chief mr randy jamerson and we also have our 2025 acpd officer of the Year, Master Police Officer Ryan Sheridan, and ACPD Detective of the Year, Senior Police

[00:33:54] Officer Scott Godfrey. I invite all three to make remarks. Mr. James. Deputy Chief Jamerson, I should say. Good afternoon, Chair Galloway, members of the board. As you mentioned, I'm Randy Jamerson, the Deputy Chief of Police for Albemarle County Police Department. National Police Week 2026 is upon us and runs from Sunday, May 10th through Saturday, May 16th. National Police Week originated in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy designated May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week of May 15th as Police Week. On behalf of the men and women of the Albemarle County Police Department, I thank you for your continued support. With your support, along with the support of our

[00:34:32] community and our county executive's office, our department has overcome numerous significant challenges over the past year. From workforce stabilization and strengthening ACPD staffing levels to ensure our services keep pace with the demand to committing resources to the joint public safety and department of social services mental health and crisis response initiative these are just a few examples of the board's commitment to supporting acpd's mission of safeguard in our community while this week is a time of recognition and appreciation for law enforcement professionals across the country it is also time of remembrance for those in this profession who have lost their

[00:35:08] lives. According to the Officer Down Memorial page, 115 law enforcement officers gave their lives in 2025. Tragically included in those numbers are four law enforcement officers from Virginia who lost their lives last year in the line of duty. Today, I ask that we remember Corrections Officer Jeremy Hall, who was attacked and killed by an inmate at the River North Correctional Center. Master Police Officer Don Gotthard, who died as a result of cancer he developed following his response to the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th of 2001 and during his subsequent assignment to the search and recovery efforts after the 9-11 terrorist attacks

[00:35:46] and Virginia Beach Police Officer Chris Reese and Virginia Beach Police Officer Cameron Girvin who was shot multiple times while conducting a traffic stop for an expired registration. These submarine losses serve as a grim reminder of the real dangers associated with our profession yet our community is fortunate to have the dedicated women and men of ACPD who continue to answer the call to serve and protect thank you any other remarks you choose you're welcome nothing just thank y'all for having us absolutely appreciate the support of the board and thank you

[00:36:23] thank you so much thank you I'm going to invite the supervisors to make remarks then we'll bring the uh the proclamation down supervisor Pruitt thank you again so much for being here uh you know I'm thinking maybe next year we could have a bicycle patrol officer uh and just have the same person except all three proclamations in order. You know, kind of in a similar theme to what I was just talking about with public service recognition, there are probably two offices, departments that your average citizen is likely to interact with, and that's tax assessments,

[00:37:01] and that's police. Those are in so many ways the face of government for people, and they're often interacting with them for reasons they'd rather not, in both cases. That is the place where I think the exceptional quality of service is most important. You are in so many ways the face of this government and your ability to help our citizens get the help they need, get the protection they need, and meet their just daily needs in a way that is professional and accommodating, I think is one of the incredible strengths of this organization.

[00:37:40] Thank you all so much for your continued work. Supervisor Duncan? Yes, thank you for what you guys do. And also, I'm especially grateful. I don't know how it gets designated, but whoever is in charge of Albemarle High School traffic lights every morning, I really appreciate the work you do.

[00:37:57] And it's very clear when you're not there how much of a difference it meets. And so I really appreciate that level of service. Supervisor Malik? Thank you all very, very much. and that over the last decade as policing and law enforcement around the country has been so tumultuous i have been so proud of the department you represent and of your and the department you have become all of you in my childhood there was one sheriff george bailey he told me once that he parked near barracks road to wait for a call because there was no other way to be knowing where the next action was going to be and how different it is today with those 90 000 plus

[00:38:36] calls that you reported on in 2025. Shocking. Also, in the last 20 years, I've really appreciated the high standards, the careful training, the strong accountability that your processes have developed and your leadership maintains for good performance, and how responsive you are to citizen concerns, and providing that kindness on their worst day, whether it's some holiday or an accident or any number of catastrophes that you have to deal with.

[00:39:08] So I'm very fortunate that I've had only limited need over the last, since we've been back in 82, but always know that we're very glad to see our neighbors with the police patrol cars in their yards because that's always a great deterrent and very glad to have them as neighbors as well.

[00:39:26] So thank you all very much. Supervisor Lephistophirly? Well, unlike Supervisor Malik, I've had plenty of interaction with the police, both here and in california so uh many tickets huh now i well we won't go into that because you know anyway um i'm so appreciative i will tell you when we voted to raise the taxes last year four cents and 3.2 to public safety when i had constituents calling me saying why are you doing

[00:40:02] this, and I told them that 3.2 cents was going for public safety, ended the conversation. Nobody said, nobody said anything after that. They're all supportive. They're supportive of police, fire, EMTs, ECC, everything that protects them. That's what's important to them. And that's what you all do. You all protect our community. And they're very aware of that. And we're all extremely appreciative of having such a professional, well-trained force. Thank you for that.

[00:40:37] Well, I join again in the positive remarks and just want to add that it's interesting. A few weeks ago, I had shared a year or two ago that my grandfather, when he returned from World War II, was a police officer. He became a police officer in Wheeling, West Virginia, where I'm from.

[00:40:53] And a few weeks ago, there's a news podcast kind of, you know, social media thing that tells stories of Wheeling history and all of that. And just a few weeks ago, the gentleman that runs that had resurfaced a story that was about how the mob was infiltrating Wheeling. But they were talking about one particular story where Officer Reinbold had responded to a call that was part of that story. And that was my grandfather. And it was just kind of fun that that popped up. And then I saw the proclamation come up that, you know, it's a nice memory. Because often when I think about my grandfather, I don't think necessarily of him as a police officer. I think of him as

[00:41:29] as my grandfather. But I guess I would make two comments relative to building on some remarks that were made. You know, I think we're incredibly grateful for everything that y'all do day in and day out, but not just the service you provide, but the quality of individual you all are.

[00:41:49] Because when you combine the quality of individual that you all are, and then how well and how you do your work and how you do your service, it really makes it easy for us to be able to stand with confidence and stand behind and say, we have a top notch first rate police department. So thank you for all of that. And then I would, the second point is, and you're doing all of that in the face of being tremendously understaffed. And this board has been working and trying to work. We still have

[00:42:25] a lot of work to do to continue to get the resources for you all that are already hired but to do all the things that we need to do to support getting you up to full staff because we i do think it would be uh or i think it's important for you all to know that we do recognize the strain that being understaffed puts on you all given the nature of the job that you do in the size of county that we have um so we're going to continue working on that and uh appreciate your patience as we continue to try to find that success for you all um to get you up to up to up to full staff and then beyond because we once you're there we got to keep going right in my opinion but thank you all for being here today i'm going to ask supervisor lapisto curtley

[00:43:04] uh to bring the proclamation down

[00:43:06] all right as supervisor lapista currently rejoins the next item we again appreciate everyone that's

[00:44:07] uh that they joined with us today so we hope you continue to enjoy public service recognition week as well the next item on our agenda uh number seven public comment on matters uh previously considered or currently pending before the board other than what's scheduled for public hearing.

[00:44:25] We do have two folks signed up for in-person comment today. During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than those scheduled for public hearing, individuals may address the board of supervisors concerning those matters. The individuals are allowed one opportunity of up three minutes to speak at each board meeting. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office and up to 10 persons may speak during each matters from the public session. 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

[00:45:03] allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted and do not speak

[00:45:42] from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website, and we do ask when you're called and you come down to please adjust the microphone and or the podium, which can be controlled with the controls on the left to your height so that we can hear you appropriately. With that, Mr. Tom Olivier is our first speaker, and Philip Reese will be our second speaker. Good afternoon. I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller District. All of us should know that the planet is suffering from a host of

[00:46:21] ecological crises. The crises are interacting and sometimes worsening rapidly. Scientists warn that our current state is unsustainable and we must change the way we live to avoid triggering more and worse ecological catastrophes. By mid-century, our planet will be a dangerously different place, but our new 20-year comprehensive plan failed to acknowledge and address the severity of current and emerging ecological crises. To put us on a better path, I have several

[00:46:56] recommendations. First, complete the hiring of the previously planned second staff member in the Climate Action Program, one who helps develop programs and policies that move us to a more sustainable state. Second, hire a rural areas planner. The county has committed to developing a rural areas protection plan, but we now have no rural areas planners. In the recent past, we had one to three on the county staff. Third, create a department that develops integrated thinking on climate change, biodiversity protection, and rural areas protection. We need this to navigate

[00:47:35] the environmental challenges that lie ahead. In February, I sent you a proposal for such a department. Between now and the fall, when work on the next county budget begins, you have a window in which you can consider the best form for a natural resources planning department and its staffing and funding needs. Given the press of environmental crises, I hope you will seize this opportunity. Thanks for your consideration. Thank you. Philip Reese? Thank you, Chairman,

[00:48:15] members of the board. I'm Phil Reese from Ravana. I can't be at tonight's public hearing on the proposal to change the county code. So I'm using this afternoon's public comment to share my thoughts on the sign-on incentive ordinance and a related problem behind it. The proposal being considered tonight removes the $5,000 cap on sign-on bonuses and lets the county executive approve any amount. It could be $10,000, but it could also be $50,000 or more. Paying competitively to recruit good people makes sense, but removing the cap entirely does not. So I encourage you to

[00:48:50] keep a cap. Whatever cap you think is reasonable, make it $10,000, make it $15,000, make it whatever you want, but don't remove the cap entirely. I'd also recommend adding language to the ordinance requiring an annual report. County staff would provide it to the board each year. It should clearly show the amount of sign-on incentives paid. I trust Mr. Richardson to make the right decisions when it comes to sign-on incentives, but in 10 or 20 years, we might not have as good leadership making these decisions. That's why it's so important to carefully consider the changes to the county code being considered. Now I want to talk about the problem that this ordinance is

[00:49:27] trying to solve, and that's recruitment and hard-to-fill positions. Last I heard, there were 20 to 30 vacant police officer positions that the county has been unable to fill. Increasing the amount of sign-on incentives can help, but it can also encourage officers to jump around to different jurisdictions every few years chasing large sign-on incentives. I believe all of you have in your email inbox a proposal to create a housing allowance for our police officers who live in Albemarle. 70% of our police officers do not live in our county, largely because it's more

[00:50:02] affordable in our neighboring counties. But we want and need our police officers to live in the county that they serve. If there's a major crime at two in the morning, I don't want a detective who lives in Greene County having to travel an hour or more to get to the scene of the crime. I want him or her to live in Albemarle. And I think a police officer housing allowance kills two birds with one stone.

[00:50:25] It makes housing more affordable and it improves recruitment and retention. This would be a win for the board, a win for police, and a win for our community. And I hope this board seriously considers it. So I have three asks. Keep a cap on sign-on bonuses, add an annual reporting requirement for these bonuses, and have staff bring back an analysis to the board on implementing a housing allowance for county police officers thank you thank you that was our last speaker today so we will close matters from the public thank you both for joining with us and we will move to the next

[00:51:02] item on our agenda for eight the consent agenda comments here we've added agenda item 8.4a that resolution is changing the start time of the may 20 26 meeting of the board of supervisors the new start time that day is 2 30 um and are there any other items that need to be pulled or changes to the consent agenda all right is there a motion to uh approve the consent agenda no move second all right the motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call

[00:51:35] the roll mr pruitt hi miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapiso kirtley hi miss mallet yes very good thank you board and we will move to item number nine um a presentation we are in the comprehensive plan amendment request review process and we have david bennish and michael barnes joining us at the dais good afternoon gentlemen good afternoon and just make sure you

[00:52:01] pull that mic in close as i get the mouse to work we'll get started here we go thank you mr chairman david bennish development process manager and this is a presentation on the comprehensive

[00:52:33] plan amendment request review process. An action item in the updated comprehensive plan, AC44 directed staff to consider establishing an application process with public-initiated comprehensive plan amendments CPAs. Since the adoption of AC44, staff has been evaluating the need for a CPA application process, including benchmarking other localities. A little bit of

[00:53:05] background here for you in consideration of the public initiated application process this was based on interest from property owners and developers and their representatives and having a clear efficient and predictable method for presenting proposed changes to the comprehensive plan to the board of supervisors and two to have the ability to address warranted modifications in a timelier manner than waiting for the next comprehensive plan or master plan update.

[00:53:41] I briefly wanted to touch on some of the legal parameters of comprehensive plan amendments and then a little bit of the history on dealing with prior CPA application processes. The Code of Virginia does not require a locality to have an application process for public initiated CPAs.

[00:54:00] Further, the code authorizes only the Board of Supervisors to initiate amendments to the CPA, to the comp plan. Citizens cannot directly initiate such amendments.

[00:54:19] Therefore, any application process from a citizen is simply a method to bring a proposal to the board for the board to act on that proposal. I'm sorry, this mouse, I think, is dying.

[00:54:44] That's not helping. There you go.

[00:54:52] Regarding the, okay, here we go.

[00:55:26] Thank you. The county had an application process for CPAs until 2018. Most applications received during that process were not deemed to be valid.

[00:55:43] We had a number of them that were submitted and were not approved. So in 2018, the board agreed to discontinue that process and put into place the current process that we have now, where applicants need to approach the board of supervisors directly to initiate a comprehensive plan amendment.

[00:56:19] So after performing an evaluation of the possible approaches, again, and benchmarking other localities staff does not recommend establishing a separate application process for cpas staff has concluded that such requests should instead be through one or two existing pathways the continued use of the current direct contact process by the board of supervisors whereby individuals again bring their requests directly to the planning commission and the board and the board then

[00:56:55] determines whether to further study that CPA. If a formal application process is preferred by the applicant, then they can submit a zoning map or SP application with the proposed CPA embedded as part of the submitted materials. I would point out that the direct contact approach is still the preferred approach. The SP process is primarily for the purpose of reviewing amendments to the

[00:57:28] land use map, the future land use map in the comprehensive plan. The basis for this recommendation, as I mentioned already, the previous experience with the CPA application process did not result in viable proposals by the board and diverted resources from other work priorities we believe the same would occur again if that were reinstituted requiring also requiring individuals to

[00:58:05] seek direct board support through the existing direct contact approach helps prevent frivolous and non-viable proposals and ensures there's a demonstrated board interest before significant staff resources are committed for those again seeking a application process for a cpa proposal the zma zma and sp applications approach provides the following advantages it's a familiar process

[00:58:38] both for developers and at least relatively familiar for residents and citizens the applications an SP ZMA application provides more specific information in detail on development proposals, and so the potential impact of the CPA can be better evaluated.

[00:59:01] CPA and ZMA and SP applications already consider consistency with the comp plan as part of the evaluation criteria, though it's already a process that's embedded, that evaluation of the comp plan.

[00:59:18] it may allow for quicker reviews of some viable cpa requests but i would caution on that statement as it obviously depends on the scope and scale of the cpa that's embedded in that review some may not be recommended for approval or some may be recommended for further study neither would expedite the process review process and i think most importantly and kind of burying the lead a little bit on this is that um the zma and sp application process is already in use by applicants

[00:59:55] we already receive applications that are inconsistent with the flum or aspects of the conference of plan and they are essentially a de facto cpa request recent ones that you reviewed are chestnut grove zma and sp you have a beaver hill mobile home park zma coming before you and another one that's recently submitted and over my time here this is not an unusual occurrence and the county must accept and review any complete ZMA and SB application that is submitted staff

[01:00:33] cannot reject an application solely based on its consistency with the comp plan so these are reviews that we must undertake and manage and in many ways this process is really about how to better manage that process and and deal with those requests that we get the impacts to the sp and zma process if cpas are embedded embedded or there's really there'd be no significant changes to the existing review process that's guided by state code provisions and that really would not

[01:01:12] change there would be some modifications to internal review practices including development review criteria and factors to consider to better help staff review these types of proposals. It is likely PC Planning Commission work sessions would be used as needed in the early stages of the review to provide additional input and guidance on the proposal in the CPA component.

[01:01:44] What we envision is that staff comments on the CPA component would be provided within the first round of comments and staff would identify most likely three scenarios for the this proposal one that the conference the sp and zma with the cpa component is acceptable and that application would continue to move forward for review and action by the commission and board the second

[01:02:16] option would be that the cpa warrants additional study before action on the cma and sp is taken and a separate cpa study should be conducted would be the recommendation there the third option is the cpa is unacceptable and there'd be a recommendation for denial that request would probably move forward quickly to the commission and the board for action and guidance

[01:02:48] so in summary staff has concluded that utilizing either the existing board direct contact approach again which is the preferred method or utilizing the special use permit application process for those who want to submit a specific plan provide the most effective means for evaluating the public requests for comprehensive plan amendments this two option framework addresses the key reasons

[01:03:24] that were identified originally for considering a cip application so again in closing this approach really is essentially just recognizing what we do right now the preferred approach that we have and the process that we have to accept when an applicant makes an application for a zma or sp that may not be consistent with the plan we're compelled to review it so this approach really is our hope is to improve that process so that we can get a better handle on those processes when they

[01:03:56] do those applications when they do become before us no action is required by the board here because there essentially is no change in our process but staff does request that the board indicate whether it supports this approach or if it has um any other recommendations or requests of us and that's that's it for me or michael i don't know if you want to add anything i'll wait for the board to discuss yeah thank you david all right we'll go through with questions comments supervisor pruitt um sure so to begin and this is a comment but if you take it as a question

[01:04:36] an answer could be helpful i i had been under the impression that we had kind of disposed of this as an issue and a question kind of on the last day of comprehensive plan talks because we we had had some community feedback on an interpretation of like a paragraph at the last page of the comp plan. And we had some back and forth saying, no, we, this is what we currently do. And I think this is what we're envisioning in the comprehensive plan. I'd been under the impression it had been settled at that time, but it is helpful to revisit it and reconfirm that it's settled. So I see you grabbing the mic. Yeah. First of all, I would say that, thank you

[01:05:11] for the question uh as far as comprehensive plan amendment changes i think you all discussed about them as they relate to the rural area and expansion of the growth area and i guess um david identified two rezonings that we're getting right now that are in the rural area for mobile home parks those are now this to me what you're talking about i mean we're getting those applications we're required to take them and i think this would enable us to come to you early on in these be on that situation to get your guidance and really help us so that what we don't end up doing

[01:05:46] is staff recommending denial on an application based on the comprehensive plan and but there are all the other issues that might be surrounded with an individual project if we can get a clearer guidance from the board earlier on then when we come to you for the actual your action on that rezoning we can deal with all the other issues the minutiae that often goes with one of these projects you'd still be making the decision on both the land use comprehensive plan decision but also the minutiae so i think we were worried on a couple of applications we've seen before that we were recommending denial and we weren't really getting into that level of detail we

[01:06:21] probably should if you all elected to approve that little home park so that's one advantage but the other real big advantage is in the development areas we have numerous applications that have come in that somebody wants to have a different land use designation in their future land use map or whatever and so this may be something to say they want to change something for example from industrial uses to a residential uses is that okay is that something we should even be processing from a county standpoint and if that the board's willing to entertain that then it may be something that either we have to do a conference plan amendment to let that move

[01:06:59] forward if it's a significant change. Or there's been several ones that we've had along Berkmar over the past several years that I've been here where they were designated in the land use plan as commercial, but we went ahead and approved rezonings for residential uses there. So there are nuances that happen in the development area where sometimes a developer wants to do something with their property that the future land use map hasn't changed in the development area. Maybe other market conditions have changed and other things have happened. So this allows an avenue for

[01:07:32] dealing with that future land use map inside the development area as well. And I think that the real thing that we're trying to, those ones that we sort of had along Berkmar Drive, staff sort of recognized that the change seemed like it was, you know, it could be handled. It wasn't a significant deviation potentially from the comp plan. There may be other ones in the development area where the proposal is a significant deviation and in those that latter case specifically we'd really like the opportunity to come talk to you all about the proposed change

[01:08:11] early on so again as we work through the minutia of the application with the applicants we've sort of gotten some guidance from the board and we can deal with the details the what you call the direct contact process i want to make sure i'm articulating what's imagined here and the follow-on question is going to be has it ever happened um so i'm imagining you're saying a land owner and prospective land user is going to reach out and do direct person-to-person lobbying to the board and then we bring it sua sponte put it on the agenda for consideration staff reviews that um

[01:08:50] it gives us a recommendation on its feasibility for comprehensive plan changing then we change it on the comprehensive plan the zoning hasn't changed so there's there's i guess i'm now going going to have two questions. The first is going to be, has that ever happened? Because I can't think of an example of that in my time of county government watching. And the second is, why would that, which creates two processes, be the preferred method as opposed to a unified process like we currently do, where we don't really talk about the comprehensive plan other than saying it's out of

[01:09:24] a court? Well, first of all, I think you identified how it would work. They would approach you, You'd work with the rest of the board to bring the item forward. Part of the reason why that is, is we sort of identify that, is because that's just a dynamic that exists regardless outside of what staff's purview is.

[01:09:49] You know, that is your all's purview if a constituent wants to talk about changing it. So we're just acknowledging that. And secondly, that was kind of the process where we sort of left it in 2018 when we took away the application. I think what we're trying to do here in this particular one is that would remain, and that, again, is your all's purview.

[01:10:11] If they come through this a little bit more formal route of staff review, we want to try and create a process, again, where we can really deal with some fundamental questions with the comprehensive plan and primarily with the land use map to meet some of the concerns that have been identified either by the developers or sometimes even things we've noticed ourselves.

[01:10:32] Over time, it's been used that way a number of times. I think the information in the executive summary that went to the board in 2018, there were actually 12 requests that were generated by the board of supervisors. Some of them were actually generated through that type of process where there was more informal information that led to a board conclusion.

[01:10:54] I know, Ms. Duncan, you weren't here, but if you recall the sweet spot discussion. It kind of was like that, but it was also in the process of flume adoption. Exactly. As CPA, it was already open, but the way that process worked pretty much mimicked it.

[01:11:11] The applicant discussed it with a board member who then discussed it with the full board at a discussion. There was an opportunity to make a decision in that CPA, so there didn't need to be a directive for us to do that and hold public hearings on.

[01:11:28] The public hearings were being held, but that's pretty much how that process looks, and it's been used a fair number of times over my time here. Maybe it's a shift in board culture over years and just, you know, institutional memory dying, but I will also reflect to you that with The Sweet Spot, there was one of the big critiques of what was happening with that discussion was that it felt uh inconsistent with board process like it felt like an end run which i as someone who ultimately supported the compromise

[01:12:02] thought it felt like an end run round process um which i feel like would be a comparable critique of if the direct contact approach were to surface even today it would still i think with the current just knowing that our own policies and practices change from year to year just as people change it would feel almost like an end run if that started happening it would feel like oh we're we're reauthoring the comprehensive plan every year um i don't know i say this just i agree that these should be the two processes i mean one is always effectively available because we are the

[01:12:40] absolute authority and at the end of the day we can always change our own culture and our own processes at the drop of a hat um i'm i'm telling y'all as senior planners i would personally and i've told applicants that i would expect that two is what this board is currently comfortable with and that would be if i were an applicant what i would think to do and frankly as a supervisor i think it's what i would prefer seeing because i i hear what y'all are saying about it helps y'all dig into the other parts of the application but i've also seen that y'all still dig into the other parts of the application what it's going to do is it's going to affect what your recommendation

[01:13:17] is um right like chestnut grove is going to be a staff recommends denial no matter how well they handle fire and water management because at the end of the day it's in the rural area um i think if we're going to adopt policy and i say this is someone who voted in favor of chestnut grove right if we're going to adopt policy that says the rural area is the rural area i i do value the reminder you're violating your own policy even as i lean forward and do it for xyz reasons um if that makes sense right like i think it's it's helpful to and we can always ask

[01:13:55] as we did on that day is this a but for but for it being in the rural area would uh the recommendation have differed um and i think staff knows that that question is i mean correct me if i'm wrong i would expect most uh senior planners would know that that request would be coming and would be able to anticipate something like that and that seems the only saving ourselves that question feels like the only benefit of doing one over two um so i don't know that that's me extemporizing for probably too long on this i appreciate y'all's time if there's anything you

[01:14:30] want to respond to in that i'll wait for other comments to see if supervisor duncan no comments the way you guys have it laid out makes sense to me supervisor malik thank you um how i wish that i had had this staff report reminder when we were finishing the conflict because this very eloquently puts forward all the reasons I tried in my rambling shambles to say we should not be including that paragraph of reconsidering.

[01:14:59] And this is, you know, 20 years in the audience and 19 years on the board seeing these things happen over and over again. So let me call out some particular things here, such as the 11 CPAs that were generated by people and applicants without fee, lots of staff time spent on them, and none of them were approved or advanced, as opposed to ones that came through the process that has been in action. And this does not mean backroom, let's go, you know, win somebody over. People raised it with

[01:15:38] their supervisor, the supervisor raised it with the board, and then there was a general, well, maybe, in which case then staff might look at it. So this is not a, number one, is not a weird process. It's something that has worked really, really well over many years and has kept, I think, the responsibility where it belongs. I was fascinated to the paragraph about the Code of Virginia authorizes only the board to initiate. I mean, that would have been nice to know because it would have saved you all a whole lot of time. But anyway, I didn't have sense enough to ask that

[01:16:14] question at the time, and that's too bad. So I am, I guess, very concerned about collapsing the process because I've seen a couple that have come through all together, but they were not in the rural area. They were in the growth area. There were, but many that have had the good, good approach to do the CPA first before investing the time in doing a whole code of development, et cetera, et cetera, like in the old days, when you had more requirements at the beginning,

[01:16:49] they would nail down the CPA first and then proceed with the ZMA or whatever was appropriate. And that was, to me, the right way to do it because otherwise you are saying at some person's request, we're now going to say we're just going to forget all the public input that we had on all those years of the comprehensive plan development and, oh, no, we're going to change and do this instead.

[01:17:13] So that troubles me a lot that we would do that. I don't see how it would be fair to put staff in a position of making policy, which is not fair to them.

[01:17:30] And so I think that whatever debates need to happen, need to happen at the board level in order for the people who are elected to make the decisions are made responsible to make the decisions. And if people don't like it, they can throw us out. It's not fair to put staff in that position. I'm very concerned back in the early teens, there was a huge, I mean, with after the recession, the 75 staff people diverted to other things, it was very difficult to have staff diverted, and they still have a huge workload in CDD now. So I think it's really important to

[01:18:07] remember that we cannot be sending routinely staff down a rabbit hole for something that has no chance. And I don't think it's, they shouldn't have to decide it has no chance. So that's why I'm very much in favor of the number one, continuing that. The other problem with number two, with a combined, well, there are many, but anyway, I'll focus on one other one right now.

[01:18:35] requiring a separated process is far better because of the timeline issue. That's on page four. Hold on. Let me go find that. So it turns out if it's combined with the ZMA, then there's the timeline, the shot clock, you have to respond in a certain amount of time. And so therefore, the CPA analysis is not going to have, I don't think, the sufficient time that it could if it needed it in a very highly contentious situation. But even worse than that, with legislative applications the applicant not the county controls the timing and must agree to any deferral or

[01:19:12] withdrawal so the applicant would have to agree to a recommended deferral to allow timing for the more detailed cpa review that's not a good idea in my opinion the board the the that's why the separation is important i'm also aggravated frankly that there's no fee for any of this because of the hours and hours and hours that staff is going to be putting into these things and then to say, well, never mind, you know, the preschools have to spend $2,500 to get a special permit to add 10 kids. And yet we're saying to a developer or an applicant, you know, never mind,

[01:19:51] you don't have to pay a fee for all the staff work that's going to be done. I mean, I will remember five years of Elaine Eccles' time was charged a $1,250 application for North Point. And that was her job for five years was to deal with that. That's turned out fine in the end, but it was a lot of evolution and one of the elements of it was the change in the cpa that was needed and you know somebody walking out of the planning commission slamming the door and say i'm going straight to the board of supervisors unfortunately the board at the time i was not there sent it back to the planning commission and said do it over that was how it turned out to be so much better

[01:20:26] so i want to avoid the trap of having to accept an application that's willy-nilly and you then have to deal with it and it puts off other things that we've been working on for years like all these ordinance amendments that we have to keep saying to people, oh, it's coming, it's coming, but it's been coming, coming for 10 years. So there is a long, long list of chores that we have already assigned to you. And I want to keep, if I were, I would really like to keep the responsibility of this where it belongs. And I have rambled on enough right now, but it may come back later.

[01:21:02] Thank you very much. Supervisor Lephisto Kirtley. Could we go back to the other slide where I was? last one for the awards no no keep going yes right here okay so i appreciate what you've done and i concur with with number one i have no problem with that i think it should come to us as opposed to using staff time when perhaps there'd be no chance whatsoever that something

[01:21:39] going through so it comes to us we can always ask the questions to staff we can say you know received this what do you think that type of thing but i i do uh very strongly support the current approach the the direct contact with the board that's number one number two um a formal application of cpa proposal to flume is desired if it goes to the cma rsp the application would then would that then go back if the zma rsp if that's approved would it then go to the planning commission and then to the board

[01:22:17] yes uh zmas sps and comprehensive plan amendments are required to have public hearings with the planning commission and the board so one that's embedded with all those would as well and just real quickly this this concept is really intended to take that first part of that zma review and as part of that give some attention to the comprehensive plan component so that advice can go to the applicant early in the process. If the applicant, for example, does not want to defer for a more

[01:22:53] in-depth study that we recommend, then more than likely the staff would just make a recommendation of denial and it would come to the board for commissioning the board for discussion. So the idea is to get the comprehensive plan issue resolved within that submittal process as soon is reasonable i just thought that was worth clarifying okay thank you that's what i gathered from the other one i just wanted to make it clear for myself so i concur with supervisor duncan i approve what is here um yeah i mean i don't have any disagreement this is not i was working to in

[01:23:33] my memory to try to figure out why we had this on the agenda um i don't mean to be it wasn't meant to be rude but i couldn't remember what the initiating thing was that led led for it to be here i figured it was requested or it must have come up and i couldn't remember when that was my first board meeting in 2018 was when this was the presentation was made on this in january like 3rd of 2018 and and i have to admit my brain hasn't changed a whole lot since then on this it made sense to me i i really approach it from a cost savings standpoint you know i don't want

[01:24:13] staff burning their time on things that the board could if the board has no interest in even exploring the review, then let's not spend the time. And that's just basically where I'm at. I guess, Mike, I can see there would be more concerns for folks when it's a development area, rural area part. But I mean, I don't recall when we changed the rezonings on Berkmar, there being a lot. I mean, we talked about it moving from commercial to residential.

[01:24:39] I don't remember any CPA or any of that process being involved. So why would there even need to be an extra step we made the change and then i'm assuming those things got updated when we did the comp plan amendment or the comp plan update and i think the point here is it's that nuance of course it's hard to capture all the different options that might happen there's lots of different applications to come in as a wide array of circumstances i think this is for those ones that are a little bit in the development area especially they're a little more complicated that we want to touch base with you all early.

[01:25:17] And I think it's a way to save, the applicant has to pay a rezoning fee to begin with. So they're paying for some staff time. And it gives us an opportunity to all these really central questions of the conference and plan to bring it to the planning commission and if need be to the board quickly and be like, you know, staff thinks this is a really bad idea.

[01:25:35] Our recommendation is deny this. And so hopefully while the applicant, David's being, you know, maybe not as direct, If the staff is recommending denial and the board and planning commission are agreeing this is a bad idea, it's a way to sort of just tell the applicant this is probably not going to go forward.

[01:25:55] They have the option under the state law to keep moving forward, but they're probably going to end up with denial. No, I get it. But, you know, I'm just saying that there wouldn't have been a bunch of extra work done on those Berkmar print. What would have been extra? Those were so much easier. Exactly. There's one that was fairly simple.

[01:26:10] We were analyzing that with the rezoning at that time in a smaller, you know, relatively minor change that staff could see something. We may come straight to you with the rezoning. I think an example might be a change in comprehensive plan and land use designation, let's say from residential to industrial.

[01:26:29] And those happen to be sites that are felt to be important industrial sites. So a larger discussion of are there replacement areas? are we getting a high level of affordable housing is the proposal meeting other comprehensive plan or county policies and how and so when there are those complexities and it's not i think the berkmar drives were clearer answers because those uses approved were secondary i get it and i mean that's what that's the option that's available even when there aren't cpas we have people approaching us when in our districts about what would you think about and tell and we have those

[01:27:06] conversations and that's exactly what the what you're saying is for the cpa so i don't see any reason i just don't recall one ever happening since 2018 that was initiated by through that process i've had plenty of what if conversations with people but none that got me to the point where i brought it to the board for my district and said hey let's do this so it was has there been any since 2018 i don't think since 2018 i think stonefield actually was generated through that process um and then the board member kind of brought that forward and and subsequently an

[01:27:44] application was made but it was because of board interest in seeing a change in that so that's that's the biggest one i recall i would just my only concern being that there haven't been any is do people really know that that's what they're supposed to do like if they knock on your door and they say hey michael how do i go well you need to go contact supervisor galloway and start the conversation. But if they don't get to you and they're just, there are people that will look online and if they don't see that defined, don't know to call or who to call or to make a call.

[01:28:15] So is it a defined process out there? Well, that's why I believe that's one of the other reasons we're coming back to you because what you're essentially doing or what we hope you do is sort of reinforce what the board did in 2018. And you understand the process that we would apply in pre-application meetings or when we get a call and this could be something that once we articulate can can be put out our information i guess the only other thing to be concerned about is if a supervisor or a person knocks on my door and i'm like hell no we're not doing that in the rio district but five other supervisors would be a heck yeah we're doing that in the rio district

[01:28:52] then i guess they'd have to go knock on other supervisor doors if they're not satisfied with the district specific supervisor. So, I mean, all of that has, I mean, that gets into some politics, which we're fine. We play in that a lot, but you have to, you have to be ready to tell people that it wouldn't be like, well, sorry, supervisor Galloway said no, because supervisor Galloway can't say yes or no to anything that means anything without three or four others coming along with them. So that part just has to be defined to people as well. And that happens now too with rezonings and special use permits so the the frequent flyers know that know this bit

[01:29:31] it's the ones that don't necessarily apply to us on an annual or regular basis that need to know that if they're going to do it how how that process is so i just want to make sure we're clear with potential applicants of how it should work and we've worked to create a clear system you know in preparation for this um that with ideas we're thinking about how to make it clear the applicants especially come through the second track right is there i think you got direction is there any additional questions that we have i think i think i am hearing a general consensus

[01:30:06] certainly with one and some concerns but agreement on two but concerns about how that's processed to make sure that it's done efficiently and effectively and at staff time is is managed carefully. I'm hearing consensus. Supervisor Malek, different question. The transfer from industrial to residential. We're always being told we don't have enough industrial land because we gave away a thousand acres in 10 years to that same process. And so we don't need to repeat that

[01:30:40] mistake now that the acreage is even smaller than it was in 2010. So that is not blaming this on any other process. It's just that I'm not in favor of making this easier. This is a public process, a huge investment of time and resources in the comp plan. There is a separate process that can be done for applicants who are determined to try something. And I'm very concerned about this timing trap that number two establishes where you cannot say, and I don't know quite what you just described about doing an initial look and coming to the board. How are you going

[01:31:16] to fit that in with the, in the 90 days with all the other demands you have and not shortcut all the elements that have to be done. It's just, I don't see it possible. It's making the comments within the context of the process that we have now, which is first round of comments are due generally to an applicant within 30 to 45 days. And then if there was a major concern about a proposal, the recommendation might be a negative recommendation, which we would then advise to

[01:31:50] move forward to the Planning Commission and the board for guidance. So I understand your concern, but I think the process would allow for that. We can make accommodations for that to go to the Planning Commission for a recommendation or for the Board of Supervisors, for ultimately Board of Supervisors for action. Without the complete review being done, because people will complain and say, well, you didn't finish the analysis, and then you went to the board and said, this is our early look so that i mean i just i'm seeing traps everywhere and i just don't understand how we would avoid them well it is complicated it's difficult to explain because there's nuances in

[01:32:29] every zoning application but i think the intent would be if we see that there's a project that is kind of we can't recommend approval for it uh i think the applicant would also want a definitive answer about what the board's decision was and they would accommodate scheduling it for action if i may i just want to make sure i'm thinking about this correctly like we could have six out of six up here saying i don't like to it's fraught with errors and we can't really get rid of it

[01:33:05] because at the end of the day a zma is someone's right and a zma can be in conflict with the comprehensive plan and this is basically just the process of a zma that's in conflict can't not process, right. Two is just how land use decisions proceed, and it's just how we entertain, how we think about the fact that it's non-compliant with the comprehensive plan.

[01:33:29] Either way, we have to hear it. We are legally required to hear it. But what this is saying is that now the CAPA can be combined and slide through at the same time as the ZMA, which was not the case for 30 years. So that's what I'm worried about, is the compressing these things into one already very short process and when they should have to because of all the time that's i mean i take the comp plan very seriously and i've got it's just um because the community thousands of abmal county residents have worked on it over the last 50 years and it's important to remember that um i mean i think the case point i brought it up already because i think

[01:34:07] it's it's indicative of the of the really explosive tension that this contains i think for both of us right is like chestnut grove and i don't think you could say we shortchanged the comprehensive plan element in the chestnut grove conversation i think it was very much centered on the comprehensive plan element because it was a it was a high density development in the rural area um and and also the the practical implications of that philosophical change so i i think i hear your concern i i we can't make it go away and i i also don't think we shortchange it it it's just

[01:34:45] we talk about it at the decision day and we don't have two separate decision days. I guess the last thing I will say is that nuance is a term that gives me the heebie-jeebies because what it does is establish a public perception that different people have different rules. And it took 20 years to get rid of that for a while. And I'm really reluctant to see it come back in any way. So that's why we need to have really clear obligations and benchmarks, et cetera, et cetera, and not have the 2004 thing come back where, oh, don't worry about those conditions because they can go away. And you as a citizen, just don't get your knickers in

[01:35:24] a bind. So my knickers are continually in a bind with nothing like that. And that will not stop either for at least 20 more years. Thank you very much. I didn't see a look of shock on anybody's face. But not to undermine or even counterpoint the point you just made, there are times where it's not about nuance or rules or different for different people. Context means that don't add the extra time you don't want the extra time because of the cost and that's what we got on burkmar when we flipped those to residential that passed unanimously nobody was voting against that

[01:36:00] stuff to not change the land use function of the comp plan uh and all the housing that's going along burkmar all of that was not residential so in that case i would not want to be adding extra time and don't think it's changed the rules so it's it's just a matter of where it's at and And I mean, I don't like when politics has to be interpreted by staff.

[01:36:23] That can get problematic. But I think that anybody that lives in this area knows that if it's a development area, a rural area conversation, that it's going to be a political element. Whereas if it's something inside of the development area that's moving from one to the other, the context is going to be important as to whether or not it really flares up as a political item or not.

[01:36:45] But I don't want things being added time or cost to things, especially if it's a matter of going from LI to residential or vice versa in some ways, or changing it to multi-use if it's one or the other to get both. Because that seems to fly through the board a lot of times, and we're focused more on impacts than land use changes.

[01:37:09] I mean, steep slopes can be adapted to residential, whereas they can't for factories, for example. So I do agree that that was an important part for some of those things along Burkmar, where you could put in separate buildings, but they would absolutely not work for what it was originally intended.

[01:37:25] I understand. The conversation was more about the impact. Yeah, I mean, those would have had to come in for rezonings, even if they weren't, to get the density. So all of those other things would fall into play. Let's just not add in extra time or process. All right, I think you guys got what you need from us.

[01:37:42] I think we have our consensus that there is general agreement with this approach. And thank you very much. I apologize for not being able to manage a mouse earlier. I know we keep track of things like that. I know, we do. It won't get my raise. Thank you, David.

[01:37:57] Thank you, David. All right, board, we'll go to the next item, which is item number 10, the Affordable Rental Housing Incentive Program, R-A-R-A-R. All right. And this is on Premier Circle Apartments.

[01:38:14] And Dr. Pethia is joining us. I see Kaki moving up. Is Stacey here? I thought I saw her. Oh, she was hiding back there. I couldn't see her. Jacob moving forward as well. I also am about the same height as grass, so I understand.

[01:38:34] Supervisor, to stick directly. Good afternoon.

[01:38:58] I'm Stacey Pethia, Director of Housing. And we are here today to speak with you about the Affordable Rental Housing Incentive Program or RHIP for Premier Circle Apartments. I am joined with Jacob Sumner, Chief Finance Officer, as well as Kaki Dimmick, Chief of Human Services.

[01:39:23] And they are both here to answer any questions you may have. So as many, several members of the board may remember, back in February 2024, the board approved an incentive program for affordable rental housing. The ARHIP program was created to implement Appendix 8.2 in the County Code of Ordinances, which allows the county to provide grants or loans for the

[01:40:01] construction of affordable rental housing. Under the ARHIP program, projects can be eligible for a grant which is equal to 15 percent of the total taxes paid on the property each year and that incentive lasts for a total of 30 years and to be eligible for an RHIP incentive the project must construct new affordable rental homes or preserve them in this form of site acquisition. Projects

[01:40:36] must contain at least 11 residential units, must be located within Albemarle County. The applicant must own or control the project site. The applicant must also have an approved rezoning of the site, if that is applicable. And at least 20% of the total rental units in the project should be affordable to households earning incomes at or below 60% of AMI. To apply for an RHIP incentive, the application process is non-competitive, so applications are taken any time. The applications

[01:41:13] are then reviewed by housing staff and Department of Finance and Budget for program compliance and to determine what the amount of the incentive would be if approved. The applicant's project budget must demonstrate that the affordable unit construction would not be feasible without the incentive. And again, the board has the final approval on whether or not the incentive is granted. So staff has been in contact with Piedmont Housing Alliance about an R-HIP incentive for their premier apartments. Those are the apartments located at Premier Circle. It's the second phase

[01:41:52] of the project there. So once the Vista 29 or 80 units of permanent supportive housing is completed, PHA, which is going to happen really soon, PHA will then start phase two and construct 60 units of low-income housing tax credit financed apartments they will be a mixture of one and one two and three bedroom units with the rents ranging from 733 a month for a one-bedroom unit which is affordable to households at with incomes at or below 30 percent of area median income up to a monthly rent of 1 962 units for a three-bedroom apartment and that's affordable

[01:42:32] to households up to 60 percent ami and there is a range of rents in between there for each bedroom size each unit and the building in general will be designed to high energy efficiency to save money on not just the utilities for individual tenants but for the property as well and universal design which is makes units accessible for persons with disabilities those universal design is applied to all units in the building itself staff is recommending that the board approve an incentive for this project the total rebate would be approximately four

[01:43:10] hundred thousand dollars over the entire year incentive 30-year incentive period and if the board approves the incentive then staff will work with the county attorney's office department of finance and budget and uh piemont housing alliance to enter into a performance agreement that a performance agreement would outline the term of the grant, the annual grant amount, timeline for payments, and the affordability period. So we'll now open up to the board for any questions. All right, Supervisor Pruitt. Thank you. I have a few questions about the instant project

[01:43:50] and then because as far as I can remember this is the first we've had for RHIP, I have a few questions uh and maybe comments also about the program um for for the first can you remind us um this board has already um allocated monies for for premier circle can you um kind of give us a quick project history on that certainly um the the board did award uh 2.025 million dollars several years ago to the project approximately 1.1 million of that has been used for site acquisition

[01:44:25] The remaining funds will be put towards construction once that starts. I obviously am a huge supporter of the SupportWorks mission and this project. I also, I have to be thinking about, you know, for solvency and funding use.

[01:44:45] Were we always expecting to pay more at this stage in the project? Or is this kind of a, this is a funding source that is available now, and they are always trying to figure out how to lower costs, and so why not apply for it? Like, which of those buckets is it in? Or is it a third secret option?

[01:45:00] This would be the second option. This helps to give them a stronger application for the low-income housing tax credit financing. So the null hypothesis of us denying this is that the project moves forward, but its pro forma is weaker and it struggles more at the LIHTC application stage, which could delay opening, shift costs to a different government level.

[01:45:30] What is the harm that is realized for the prospective tenant? So with this project, it could potentially harm their low-income housing tax credit application, which would mean they could potentially not get funding, and therefore the units would not be built.

[01:45:49] So either the project as a whole or the total unit amount would be jeopardized by not having the LIHTC component, and this in turn benefits the LIHTC component? Correct.

[01:46:05] Okay. Heard, I have some minor frustrations. There's always cost creep in these. I don't think it's going to stand in the way of my support of it. But I mean, this is a thing that is, I think, a perennial thing. We're like, ah, we have a big discussion and debate over whether or not the value for the first decision makes sense. We decide for it and then in for a penny and for a pound, we feel like we have to obligate future requests.

[01:46:35] anyway um so you mentioned that this is the the first rhip application that we've had that that is correct or the first that's come to the board the first that has come to the board um i can think of one other developer who i think is looking at rhip and has made an rhip application i'm thinking of bonaventure um are there others in the hopper that we are expecting not at the moment we've had

[01:47:05] two or three developers that have come through since we adopted the new inclusionary zoning standards that this also is kind of partnered with. Am I correctly understanding that none of them have applied to also? Correct. Not at this stage. It looks like the application is literally like two pages and pretty plug and play, like something I could do in five minutes. Is there additional developer staff work that is going on the back end that might be invisible to me?

[01:47:45] They are required to provide a copy of their 30-year pro forma. We do not share that. We don't want that to be public information since it is finance related. And so that is where a lot of that back-end work goes into. Have developers expressed TBGBs on giving their pro forma to you?

[01:48:04] Not, not, I mean, they don't, they're fine giving it to us. They're not fine having it. Right. We have that information to extemporize now where I'm thinking with this. I remember in the like three years almost of discussion on developer incentives that happened before I was on the board. I think we adopted developer incentives like on my second meeting. And it felt like a thing where if I said no, I would be thumbing everyone's eye. But I remember in the years prior to that, it was mentioned several times that like the main thing that developers wanted to see was

[01:48:36] predictability um and it does feel like we then settled on something that gives the least or at least the developer perception is that it gives non-predictability because when i've had conversations with developers they've said oh well i don't know anything about that project or that um funding opportunity and it is explicitly discretionary um to a board vote um which does not scream predictability to people um i had to like with with bonaventure i had to

[01:49:15] very forcefully say to the ceo several times like i think we look at that as being like fait accompli if you're otherwise submitting something like we are down to clown with this this should not be where you're looking at uncertainty um for him to believe it and and so i i guess this is me just editorializing a bit i this is a applicant it's the first one we've received it is also someone who knows they're going to get approved because they're a non-profit uh partner that we are

[01:49:48] already in two million dollars and in the uh in the tent with and we talk about and work together and have ribbon cuttings uh with the organization all the time they know they're going to get money um and they're the only ones who have come forward so far which i think gestures to how this program needs to be restructured or reimagined if it's going to be able to be useful for anyone other than support works or that kind of person um because i just don't think that expectation

[01:50:24] for it to succeed it needs to have an expectation that it will be approved if anyone's going to go through the effort of applying to it i think and i don't think there's that expectation um yeah and it also i will just remind this board that i think there was an understanding that the inclusionary zoning standard is untenable but for this developer incentive which i i don't think that's unfair to say we know it's very challenging developers have said even if they get the full amount it's still challenging it's just less challenging

[01:51:02] um which i think i combine that to understand a but for the developer incentive the inclusionary zoning is impossible um i will say the occam's razor in me almost says do we just reduce the inclusionary zoning standard and get rid of this because that becomes instantly predictable and gets us to the same place as far as their pro formas and if if that's out of whack with staff's analysis or they think there's a dimension or an objective of this that's being missed i i i would

[01:51:41] love to hear it. I see this as being kind of like the pay for inclusionary zoning model, but we're not fully offsetting the cost, so it's doing its own thing. So if there's an objective that I'm missing, help me out here. You lean forward, so I assumed you wanted to say something. That's what I was making. Tacky Demick, Chief Human Services Officer. I wanted to just offer that on August 5th, we'll be having this opportunity to have a fulsome discussion with the board about housing album world including other components around developer incentives okay sorry i didn't i kicked

[01:52:17] us off too early then we'll revisit it then thank you just seeding that in the air for for some of the thoughts i have on this so far um yeah appreciate you letting me go down that um that tangent all right supervisor duncan well i was gonna go down the same road as well um i this feels like a dumb question um but i don't understand why we're not just doing this

[01:52:50] by right for all affordable housing projects like why are we not just basically funding the incentives with the future property tax and if a developer whether they're non-profit or for-profit says we're going to build x amount of affordable housing then great here is you know the incentive grant just automatically and then you know that you're gonna your affordable housing units are going to be offset by some of this which helps make it more affordable they don't have to raise as much prices on the market rate to sort of you know subsidize the affordable housing why

[01:53:29] are we not just sort of buy right subsidizing affordable housing miss dimmick or um well i mean it's a funding decision so that's rest solely with us so we have to if we just carte blanche did that i mean you could but i don't know how that would uh you know when you set up these type of agreements there are a lot of legal documents that get put in there so it's going to add process and time even if the approval might be a slam dunk um no different than

[01:54:08] when we give something to the why and if they don't do what they say they're going to do they need to get there needs to be the recourse and have that come back so um just like spending x amount of dollars on a department we need to know well what is it who's it going where is it going what is it going to be used for and then otherwise we would just be relinquishing over our authority over the funding responsibility we are charged with right i mean because yeah this has a performance agreement but you could have a performance agreement for every development that has affordable housing. Well, you could, but we tried to make a process where to some of the stuff Supervisor

[01:54:46] Pruitt was talking about was that they would know if they had the incentive before they put their application in. So that was the answer to the predictability piece. And I've yet to have a developer explain it back to me the correct way. So I know there's some out there that just go, I don't know what it is, so I don't ask for it. And it's like, well, you know, I've said that in public multiple times, so I'm not going to get in trouble by saying it again. I mean, you could,

[01:55:18] You can do that. I mean, but it's no different than economic development projects. It's tax dollars. We're going to have to answer for it. So if you're saying that you're okay with just doing it without any sort of oversight and just allowing it to happen as a matter of automation, well, then that would have to be a different discussion that the board would have.

[01:55:39] We had that discussion when we adopted it. I think I'd said the same thing that Supervisor Duncan had been, and this counterpoint was raised. I even went through the stages of loss. I bargained and said, what if it was on the consent agenda? And I think where we came with is we would need to see a few of these first before we started moving them together. Now, it was also specific to filling the gap between the parameters we were changing. So we had a project that we just, the only one that we've done under the new one or one of the few if you remember on woodbrook road we had the small project where we allowed the residential up top over the dental dental offices

[01:56:17] and i think there's only going to be like 10 or 11 units well they could do the 20 because it was one unit and they didn't need developer incentives to do it so part of the reason we collect the pro forma is that they have to prove that it's what is needed to close the gap so if it's just done by right we they might it just might be the extra cash versus the the proofs in the pudding of going we actually need it to get to 60 percent ami or get it to the units so there's at least that check on it but i mean i don't know haven't thought about it other than these last few minutes

[01:56:49] it was that all yet supervisor malik thank you very much um many of my questions are already answered the so going back to the original award which supervisor pru had asked about uh so the 1.1 has been delivered to them already and that's been spent that's correct and the rest will what are the benchmarks for the rest of the distribution on that that's already come and what information will you have about the origin of tenants etc to make sure that the county residents get a shake

[01:57:26] to live that is all collected annually from non-profits uh we do the same thing for the performance agreements with um brookdale and and um there was another rental housing or with a southwood performance agreement so annually we collect the information on the households the renters and the home buyers what their incomes are how large they are so all of that will be provided to us and the other question is how how what information do we have that these are alberto county residents who are going to be benefiting from the two million dollars in tax money as

[01:58:03] opposed to someone who comes from something we cannot limit who applies to live in the building that would be a violation of fair housing regulations so it is generally we have a lot of outmore county residents that apply they call us all the time one waiting list open so we will have their information as much as we can get about where they came from but we generally do not ask for their originating address okay i mean somehow i was just listening to the radio on the way in

[01:58:36] and counselor snook was talking about how they had identified sex x percent of the in the homeless in charlotte and the city were from amol county and the city and i'm thinking well how did they find that out so that was prompted me to ask you how you find out um because somebody obviously has the information but that would not be part of our original award i mean it's been a concern for a long time because the county's put in the grand majority of the money for this and diverted from other things to do this and it's a good idea and i mean the crossings over here is a spectacular

[01:59:13] success from all the people with whom i've spoken from its opening day when we toured over there to recently and so i get that how important it is um i just really would like to make sure that somebody's keeping track um the i am sensitive to the concerns about this is just the sort of light tech game and we're just one of the uh one of the players in there so i hope that there will be some other applications that come forward and i get it if it's mostly non-profits who are

[01:59:49] actually delivering the housing that we actually need instead of more 80 stuff that we probably don't then um i'm i'm happy with that the uh 20 so yeah somewhere i wrote down right before khaki spoke reduce inclusionary zoning standard and get rid of the process uh gets us to the same place i don't know what that means was that something you said um 20 in 30 years is that the standard that we were talking you were talking about particularly yes oh okay that was my guess but i wanted to

[02:00:27] verify that um all right well thank you uh that's all my questions thank you supervisor lapisto currently um this is the 60 proposed units that's part of a phase two correct that's correct and is Is that, but the 144 that is phase one, those are completely separate, correct?

[02:00:48] Right. So phase one is 80 units, which are under construction now, and they should be beginning to lease up by the end of this year. And then phase two is the 60 units that Piedmont Housing Alliance will purchase. Okay. So this is all part of the 140 total units.

[02:01:06] Okay. Just going by there. Because I'm fascinated by what Supervisor Duncan said regarding why can't we do it for profit and non-profit agencies. Is the thinking, and please let me know, is the thinking that if we go with non-profit, it's going to be less expensive, that they can build affordable housing that's less expensive than a for-profit?

[02:01:33] the incentive is is available to for-profit developers as well and we are under discussion with one at the moment part of the reason going back to supervisor duncan's question as to why don't we just do this automatically there is some flexibility baked into this program which is part of what we're doing now with with the the current applicant is walking through the exact mix of units so it allows there to be some flexibility in what they provide and how they provide it so instead of just providing 20 of the units at 60 of area median income it could be

[02:02:13] you know five percent of the units at 30 of area median income so there were the the program has some flexibility to to alter um to meet that 20 benchmark and it's the process of going back and forth and working through that with the developer and their pro forma and our department of finance to find that nice sweet spot that lets everything work um and so that's that's why these can sometimes take a long time to to come to the board because there's a lot of back and forth and discussion between county staff and the developer well i do commend you because i have

[02:02:48] i know i've spoken with developers who would like to have that kind of flexibility they can't meet the strict 60% or 80%, but a combination of both, you know, certain percentages that they can meet that. Are they going more, do you see that the developers are going more for rentals rather than home ownership? Well, this program is only available for rental units. Okay. And do we have a list of ready list of renters once these, all these become available? We do have some, yes.

[02:03:24] But so we share the information with the people that we have on our list, but they still need to qualify for that property. Each rental property has tenant standards, for lack of a better word.

[02:03:40] So they have to meet their income qualifications. You need generally two and a half to three times the monthly income than what your rent is. They generally have credit score, minimum credit scores to rent. So everyone will still need to meet the rental requirements for that property.

[02:03:59] But we don't have the same requirements for Premier Circle that we do for other affordable rentals, other developments that are being built, or do we? No, so the only requirement that the county really focuses on is household income.

[02:04:19] So to qualify for a rental unit that is subsidized with county funds, whether it's through our hip or or the housing fund, then rental properties, the household would need to make at this point 60 percent of area median income or less for their family size.

[02:04:37] And if it was for homeownership, then they would have their income would need to be 80 percent of area median income or less. that's the only requirement that we set. Rental requirements, tenancy requirements for each individual property differ by property. And if it's a nonprofit by the funding mechanism that they use. Okay. So now that we are having a number of affordable units, both for homeownership and rental being built, I know I've asked you this probably at least 10,000 times, but do we have

[02:05:08] a list uh for for the people that qualify enough for what we what is coming online correct so we have a list of people that are interested in renting or purchasing an affordable unit that the county has supported in some way or developers have proffered um but all we do is say that they meet the income guidelines for the county program then they have to go and qualify for a mortgage or they have to go and qualify to rent that unit.

[02:05:39] So we have names that we can send the information to, and then those people, individuals, need to go to that rental property and apply. Okay, do we have the data as to how successful that's been or is in the process of being?

[02:05:56] It's an ongoing process. The proffer units are very slow to come online, particularly the ones to purchase, and so we have not had many come through. since we've had people since we've started that list so we have so we have a list but we don't have a lot of people applying for we don't have a lot of units coming online coming online to purchase or right okay do we know how many units are coming online for affordable units coming online either rental or there were not off the top of my head no i would have to go find that

[02:06:31] okay thank you very much um i don't have any questions most of my commentary is why we haven't seen more of this for developers but i don't need to weigh this conversation down with that um the uh the remember is the tax rate as we're thinking about how we can help support that that the cash that we put in is one thing but this is deferred revenue this isn't actual cash coming out of the coffers so this doesn't come out of ahif this this doesn't need a line item budget other

[02:07:10] than adjustments when we do our revenue projections based on what's in our inventory um i was a little surprised because it's just this this is the front property the one that's right on 29 uh this this there's like three lots there right correct so this is the site where the um motel used to be uh the red carpet in one they're building now the ones they're building now they this this these 60 units will be located behind that so it's the back lot because there's three plots so this would be for the third one that's all the way in and i was trying to when looking at the land value trying to

[02:07:49] when i saw 400 000 over 30 years it didn't seem like a lot is that the full 15 just for that plot of not it's not all three it's just that one it is it's just off the the back lot and it's based off of the estimate of what we think the assessed value will be after it's built after it's full build-out price but for the whole property i mean it's 100 affordable anyway um yes for the for this back uh parcel i mean i understand how it makes them more competitive for light tech it's just the the frustrations not with this or that they've even asked it's the fact that it was designed to

[02:08:24] get for-profit projects going further and the fact that um you know the fact that that hasn't been happening with some more frequency or for us to be able to figure these things out at the board level has been frustrating um i'll just make the one point about serving whether i think i see this a little differently about whether they're albemarle or where they live because once they live there they're albemarle so we're turning them into albemarle residents now there's a lot of people that call themselves buckingham and green county and and rockingham county

[02:09:02] residents right now that used to call themselves albemarle so this these are the mechanisms by which we're trying to get them back to be able to be called an albemarle county resident so i'm fine with supporting the affordable place to live and this is uh for 60 units and what that whole project's going to do and with the supports the virginia supportive housing is going to have on site for the folks living there to make them be successful because the idea is that they move on to the next unit from that success and then this unit gets turned over to the next person to help them transition so um i'm all in on on the investment on this one uh did you have additional

[02:09:39] comment uh very quick question practical about this application and also i guess about eligibility generally on the slide where you talked about eligibility criteria one of them was um uh universally accessible design um i know that's a term that gets used a lot in local government and government like design elements but i'm thinking about it in the housing context is it any additional criteria on top of what's already implemented in the fair housing amendments i i don't have

[02:10:14] an answer for that I'd have to go and read the fair I don't have the fair housing amendments I also know that accessibility is a place where people's language gets the frequency with which I encounter the phrase ADA unit in my work which is not a thing that exists um for the public their ADA units don't exist um it is extreme and so I I know that the language around here can be messy so i would if there is a additional criteria on disability accessibility that we are requesting

[02:10:48] that differs from fha i'd just be curious yeah i i don't believe so so um these would be not fully 100 accessible but they do what they these units will have sort of the wider doorways and larger bathrooms and kitchens um they do not go the full sort of um ufas which is the uniform forgot what ufas stands for sorry that would be the the the federal standard for accessible units so universal design doesn't go quite that far but it makes it easier for those units to be

[02:11:26] converted into full accessible units in the future i was just thinking like the disability accessibility standards of fha would automatically apply to any unit that this applies to because they would be built since 91 and so i i think with um i could be i know most federal funding programs require a certain percentage minimum to be built to accessibility standards um and so this surpasses that uh that requirement thank you that's all i had any others just

[02:12:03] Could you talk a little more, maybe, or Stacey, I always assume that the wider doors, you know, the wheelchair accessible drawers, lower counter lowers. I mean, is that what we're talking about? Are we talking about something else? So universal design standards are really geared towards making sure that anyone can access the unit and visit it.

[02:12:25] And so the full accessibility standards, which is where you have countertops that can lower or built lower to begin with, the roll-in showers, there's sort of the, there's minimum standards, and then universal design is a higher standard, and then you go to the full accessibility.

[02:12:46] So this is sort of in the middle, and it surpasses what federal regulation funding programs require at the percentage of units. Okay. Thank you. All right. If there are no other questions, this is an action item.

[02:13:05] I'd be looking for a motion to approve the resolution as in attachment B. I do have a motion if you would like to. I would suggest that the board simply adopt the resolution attached as attachment B. Yes, sir. motion um sure i i would like to move that the board adopt the resolution attached as attachment b second all right without further or without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt hi miss duncan yes mr galloway yes mr peter currently i miss mallet yes all right very

[02:13:43] good thank you very much board we're at our recess point uh we're running a little behind schedule so if we could do a 10 minute recess we'll come back for the next item yes thank you and we'll move to the next item on our agenda, which is number 10. Nope. Number 11, climate action program updates and proposed projects presentation. And Mr. Dumars from our director of facilities

[02:14:18] and environmental services is joining us. Good afternoon. Thank you, board members. Happy to be here today. So again, I'm Jeff Dumars, director of facilities and environmental services. We also have Greg Harper, the chief of environmental services here, and Jamie Powers, the climate program manager. And Jeff, I'm just going to ask you to either point those mics up or raise that podium a little bit. And use your teacher voice. Thank you. Excited to be here today to talk about

[02:14:53] the climate program. We're going to, on the agenda, is to give you an update on the overall program and then talk about our FY26 successes of projects and then also outline the proposed use of the FY27 funding. Agenda for the presentation, give you a climate action program updates regarding staffing and the overall program objectives, and then go over the emissions

[02:15:24] inventory status as well as FY26 and 27 projects. So the program updates. Albemarle County's commitment to sustainability is deep, and Albemarle County uses a whole budget or whole organization commitment to sustainability. This includes greenhouse gas emissions reductions and long-term climate adaptation goals. Rather than isolating climate action into a single budget line item or program, we integrate sustainability and climate action priorities

[02:16:01] throughout the organization, including our annual budget process and most all of the services provided to the county to achieve sustainability goals and serve our residents. The key investments that were in the FY27 budget approved in April for next year include a litany of key investments, including substantial investments in public safety, transit, affordable housing, water resources,

[02:16:35] community services, and the like. These are multi-million dollar investments in critical funding and actions, and these all are needed to achieve our sustainability, climate action, and climate adaptation goals and targets. Again, this is a whole budget, whole organization approach, ensuring that climate readiness is not an add-on, but a core operating principle aligned with fiscal responsibility and our community expectations. Today, we're going to talk about specifically the Climate Action Program, and this program is led by dedicated staff within the

[02:17:11] Facilities and Environmental Services Department, which I'll refer to as FES. We coordinate planning, implementation, and reporting on climate action goals and initiatives across the organization and broader community, and we partner with community stakeholders to advance very broad climate goals. Our group provides technical expertise, strategic guidance, and project management support to ensure county initiatives are efficient, effective, and aligned with priorities of the organization. We are committed to excellent stewardship of public

[02:17:47] resources to advance county-wide greenhouse gas emissions reductions as well as county operational emissions reductions. This works includes clarifying the strategies needed to achieve the board emissions reduction targets and squarely focused on reducing emissions 45% below 2008 levels by 2030. This is coming up. We developed focused, measurable approaches for achieving both community-wide reductions as well as our operational reductions. Last year in

[02:18:23] FY26, we shifted our focus from planning and outreach efforts towards implementation of efforts and projects that directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and prioritize our efforts to deliver measurable on-the-ground emissions reductions. To best implement this focus, FEZ recently executed a strategic organizational update to provide additional project management capacity, expertise, and technical support to the Climate Action Program.

[02:18:59] FEZ recently did a FEZ organizational assessment, and you'll probably hear more about that later, but lots of recommendations came out of that, including additional staffing for the Climate Action Program. This recommendation was the first thing we attacked and actually tried to provide and look to satisfy the staffing needs of the Climate Action Program first out of this assessment.

[02:19:28] We did this through a reorg to accelerate the delivery of initiatives and produce measurable return on investment based on emission reduction, resiliency or adaptation targets, or other appropriate metric so we've dedicated two new project manager positions focused on sustainability and climate action efforts one within our project management group and one within public works both new positions are dedicated to climate action and sustainability

[02:19:59] the first position is a senior project manager energy sustainability and resilience fundamentally this position is an energy management professional and focused on facility upgrades and operational initiatives to drive efficiencies in county building operations, as well as similar county-wide initiatives. The other position is a project manager for sustainability environmental projects, and this position will add project management and implementation expertise to the program. We're

[02:20:37] looking to develop expertise in advanced green building rating systems, such as USGBC LEED or Virginia Energy Conservation Environmental Standards or other building standards, green globes or others, and also apply the expertise throughout the department. This position would report to our Deputy Chief of Project Management, and this is the group that is implementing our $200 million capital project program. So we're really looking to fully utilize the department

[02:21:14] in supporting the climate action objectives. So in FY27, there is climate action funding from the board for $300,000 in one-time special board appropriation. In addition, the department will invest $150,000 in operational funding to support projects.

[02:21:34] We will focus this funding on addressing the two largest sectors of emissions producers, one, transportation, and two, buildings emissions. Transportation emissions fundamentally are reduced by developing projects that decrease vehicle miles traveled.

[02:21:53] We've got to get folks out of single occupancy vehicles into other modes of travel or improve vehicle efficiency, i.e. electric cars. The building emissions sector are reduced by developing projects that decrease energy usage, improve energy efficiency, or transition energy sources.

[02:22:21] So to implement these projects, we've updated our objectives of the program, and they're listed here on the screen. There's six updated objectives to guide the implementation of projects with this funding. The first bullet, we're staying results-oriented.

[02:22:37] Similar to last year, we intend to implement projects that directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower energy consumption. We want to prioritize efforts that deliver measurable on-the-ground emissions reductions. The second bullet, we want to lead by example.

[02:22:55] We're looking to advance reductions in our county operational GHG emissions by implementing projects that directly support achieving the county's 2030 operational emissions reduction targets. we can achieve this target and we can be a leader in doing that. We want to do that.

[02:23:11] As part of that, we want to capture the savings as a part of those projects to support additional work. As we implement projects with the board funding and use it for operational improvements on ourselves, so to speak, we want to calculate the cost savings and track that and seek to reinvest those savings as a long-term funding source for future climate action initiatives.

[02:23:38] The fourth bullet, we want to build momentum through strategic pilots. Again, this funding is not the entire climate program. We have a much broader whole organization, whole budget process. But with these funds, we want to use the board funding to implement well-designed pilot projects that prove concepts, accelerate broader implementation, and strengthen the county's ability to secure future funding.

[02:24:08] And then the last two bullets are really good housekeeping. We're going to improve our program reporting by strengthening the evaluation and the reporting in general by developing clear metrics, documenting measurable emissions reduction outcomes, and assessing the return on investment ROI.

[02:24:27] And you'll see that today when the projects are presented. And then lastly, with the reorganization and other efforts, we look to improve program performance and capacity, really leverage the full capabilities of the entire organization, the community as well.

[02:24:44] but especially the FEZ project management and operational expertise to build capacity and enhance the overall performance of the program. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Greg, and he'll talk about the emissions inventory and the FY26 and FY27 projects.

[02:25:08] Hello. Thank you, Jeff. I think I've maxed out the height of this table. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm going to give you a little bit of context, as I usually do when I talk about climate action at the county, by talking about the emissions from the community.

[02:25:31] This board in 2017 set targets, based on 2008 emission levels, of a 45% reduction by 2030, which is only four years away at this point, and a net zero emissions by 2050.

[02:25:49] And the last inventory we've been able to do is from 2022. That's not unusual because there is a delay in getting the data necessary to do the inventories. In fact, I was just at the EPA website today, and their last inventory was from 2022 as well.

[02:26:08] I know the city of Charlottesville has done one more year, 2023, recently. But as of 2022, this is how the emissions from community-wide sources look. Most of them are in transportation. We have a big county, lots of miles of roads in this county.

[02:26:27] The next biggest source is from buildings, 31%. The next biggest source is from the landscape, including agricultural activities and forest reduction. When you lose forest, you lose sequestration.

[02:26:43] We've factored that into our inventory. And then there's a small amount of emissions associated with organic waste that produces methane when it's landfilled. So that's the general proportions. And you can see here that over time, our emissions community-wide has dropped fairly significantly.

[02:27:02] The target line is actually the target or the numbers necessary to reach the 2030 target. So you could see in 2020, the year of COVID, we actually were below our target, and we've unfortunately been coming up since then, I think just coming out of that period of less activity during COVID.

[02:27:25] So you get a sense of where we're at. So we're kind of near, I would say, the target level in order to reach our 2030 emission goals. And you could also see on the y-axis there, the greenhouse gas emissions totals.

[02:27:42] So we started above 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. And we need to, from today or from 2022, we still need to drop about 400,000 metric tons of carbon per year in order to meet that 2030 target.

[02:28:03] So I'll review our fiscal year 26 projects now, and you probably remember this, but there was a special appropriation of $300,000 in fiscal year 26 from this board. That was combined with $200,000 that was carried over from previous years to equal $500,000, and that's that first column.

[02:28:25] In addition to that, and Jeff mentioned this a minute ago, there have been additional sources of climate funds. The bottom two rows are essentially the $100,000 in operating funds that we typically get per year. And there was actually a $150,000 contribution from housing to one of the programs that we'll talk about next. So there was actually a $750,000 investment just from FEZ programs last year towards climate action. So the first item on the list was this

[02:29:01] $387,000 total committed towards some energy improvements in low-income housing. This is kind of piggybacked on some AHIP work that is typically done. So it just kind of builds on that work. If they're there to do some work on a roof or structural work, and they see a need for some energy efficiency improvements, they'll use some of this money to make those improvements happened. So to date, they got started a little late this fiscal year, but to date, they've did

[02:29:36] 26 retrofits in homes. And there isn't a funding, however, to do probably a total of closer to 74 home retrofits. So they haven't nearly completed the work this fiscal year with that funding. With the completion of 74 homes, there will be a 75 metric tons of CO2 equivalent reduction.

[02:30:00] So that's about one metric ton per home. And we're talking about weatherization work. We're talking about replacing an old heat pump with a new one, things like that. So that's the kind of work that we're doing. And this is a kind of a combined effort between AHIP and LEAP for this work.

[02:30:18] We've also invested $100,000 into some upgraded lighting fixtures at four fire stations and an outbuilding at the NC Community Center. I was just looking at a New York Times article earlier in this week, and believe it or not, 25 years ago, lighting was the biggest energy consumer in homes and businesses.

[02:30:42] But since compact fluorescents have come around, LED lights, it's dropped to the lowest user. But still, when we're talking about old lighting and old buildings, if you replace that lighting, you could see a seven-year return on investment.

[02:30:58] So in seven years, we'll have paid for that work. And in another seven years, we'll have saved $100,000 roughly or more. We're also supporting the second year of the Energy Resource Hub. I know you've heard about this before. We're co-supporting this with the city of Charlottesville at a level of $63,000 per entity.

[02:31:20] That is a website, but it's also a staff person called a navigator who can help people connect to funding from federal, state, local levels because it's really hard if you're a homeowner to know where the money is, to know where the incentives are.

[02:31:37] So this is a way to kind of like leverage that external outside funding in order to do improvements here in the county. So, so far in the first year of its existence, there have been 31 homes and 15 businesses that have actually followed through with energy upgrades using funding from external sources.

[02:31:56] And that has resulted in about 33 metric tons of CO2 reductions. We're also using about $50,000 to support various community and county initiatives to kind of change people's behavior, including our own.

[02:32:18] For instance, you'll see that little UTV there that we're helping Parks and Rec purchase. It's an electric UTV. It's going to replace one of those dirty, smelly, you know, whatever, just regular gasoline-powered UTVs. So just little things like that.

[02:32:35] We're trying to get Parks and Rec staff hooked on the idea of electrifying their fleet of vehicles like this, their chainsaws and whatever else they use. We're also working with organizations locally to do some tree planting and native vegetation planting at Western Park in order to sequester carbon in the soil and the trees. And we're working with a community bikes organization locally to promote biking through education, helmets, things like that, especially geared towards kids. So I know you have heard of

[02:33:14] Resilient Together. That's a cooperative thing between the city, county, and UVA to develop a climate resilience plan. We are using some of the money to replace a terminated EPA grant that we had at one time and lost to support organizations to serve as liaisons for us to outreach to their constituents in the community so that we have a more robust community engagement process that is going to inform this climate resilience plan. So they've conducted three events. There were a

[02:33:48] total of about 60 attendees. And from that, we have about 160 resilience recommendations to consider as we put together our resilience plan those three events did not cost fifty thousand dollars by the way that is what's available um that costs much much less than just the single thousands but their work is not done um leap uh as you know we annually support leap through operating funds to do home energy audits those home energy audits often result in homeowners deciding well

[02:34:22] I now know have enough information in order to make a decision about what I should do to make my home more efficient, whether it's a weatherization again, or whether it's replacing equipment like a heat pump or something like that. So again, like the 39 home energy audits have resulted in 11 retrofits. And that's basically probably six months of this fiscal year's work. There is more to be Don has not, again, used the total $86,000 yet, but after all the work is done with that $86,000, we anticipate 96 metric tons of CO2 emissions reductions.

[02:35:00] We're also using a little bit of money of operating funds to just do annual outreach and education, oftentimes towards students. So we support C3's work to put together climate action kits for fourth graders, and that's been very popular, and it's probably in year four now. There was also, for the first time, a climate summit for AP Environmental Science students. Some of you may have participated in that. That was really successful. There were like 1,000 students or 1,100 students that participated in that event,

[02:35:35] and we also used some of the money just to support local community climate events. So, yeah, so some of the work we do, some of the most important work we do doesn't require funding because it's just like, it's things like this. It's county code review. So Jamie's been working with folks in our CDD department who, as they review, as they do their zoning modernization work, he's going to apply a climate lens to the zoning code to see if there are opportunities to change zoning in order to change the way we build um in this community to to be more climate

[02:36:14] positive so that's some that's some long-term work that will pay off in the long run more than this fiscal year say um we're also working uh the next bullet is internal climate action support um the intent of that is to kind of connect with people as they come in to do business at the county office offices so whether it's cdd or or any other group as somebody comes in for a building permit as somebody comes in for any other thing maybe it's real estate we want to offer them

[02:36:49] some opportunities to change the way they think about how they're planning to build and improve and develop and things like that so it's it's a it's a it's long work it's it's like trying to figure out what levers to pull to make our community a little bit more climate friendly and climate resilient by, you know, working with people at the very beginning of their intended projects.

[02:37:15] We've also developed sustainable operations policies or not policies, but yeah, recommendations that we're going to continue to try to incorporate into the way we do business here at the county. So that includes fleet, includes the way we build our own buildings and maintain them.

[02:37:34] And it also includes the way we manage landscapes. You probably also heard about the Cobb Fifth Street solar installation that is kind of still in design. It's good. Last I heard, the schedule was going to be like construction begins late this calendar year or early next calendar year.

[02:37:54] And that's through a PPA, a power purchase agreement where we're not paying for it, but a company is going to install it. own it. And we're going to get reduced rates on electricity. And they're going to make a little bit of money too, obviously, to pay off their investment. But it'll save us money. It'll certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operations. The charging smart, solar smart certifications kind of build on that second bullet where we're trying to basically reduce barriers to people trying to either put solar on their home or businesses or to install charging infrastructure. We want to make it as easy as possible to lower those hidden costs

[02:38:32] to doing that kind of work, make it easy for people. And we can get certification at different levels for the amount of work we do in that realm. And then, of course, we're still working on the development of a climate resilience plan, and that will probably play out all through fiscal year 27 as well. Okay, last slide, and then we can open it up for questions.

[02:38:58] But as Jeff mentioned earlier, the main buckets, we're focusing on our transportation and building energy use. Those are the big sectors of community emissions. And so the transportation bucket is $125,000 roughly.

[02:39:14] we envision incentivizing uh or building ev charging infrastructure either at our county properties or we can assist uh commercial properties within the county urban area to build public available charging infrastructure uh i think you already mentioned commuting incentives or maybe i was just talking with somebody in the audience about this but um we're thinking we're imagining an incentive program here at the county office building where, you know, if we can get

[02:39:46] people to ride their bike to, you know, to work, lower emissions, maybe we can offer some sort of incentive for people to do that. And then the Infrastructure Connect neighborhoods, this kind of like builds on the bike week thing we saw earlier, where sometimes people would be happy to walk or get on their bike to go from point A to point B, but maybe there's something that blocks them from doing that, like it's a creek or something like that.

[02:40:17] So this project would support the construction of a bridge, for instance, over a creek to allow folks who live in a neighborhood to access businesses and other types of things like on the other side of that creek, lowering vehicles and miles of travel, lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

[02:40:39] in the building energies category, the city has been offering these residential and commercial micro grants. So grants up to $2,000, I think is what they cap it at. So the idea is to model on the city's program, something for county residents, because we heard through the energy resource hub that there were a lot of people very interested who just like lived right outside the city and they thought they lived in the city, but they were told, I'm sorry, you don't have access to this grant program because you live in the county um so folks don't even know that so we're trying to you know reduce that big jump of services and incentives when you cross that that

[02:41:18] city county line um we want to put a little bit more money into uh some building energy efficiencies as um as was already discussed um maybe not lighting this time but maybe something else and then we want to continue to support the energy resource hub because it's been very successful in getting people to change the way to do things. And then other things, the last category is really our operating funding for this year. And again, we're going to continue to support LEAP's Energy Smart program, which we already talked about, continue education and outreach. And for the

[02:41:54] first time, really look at what we could do to reduce the amount of organic waste that is going to a landfill, whether it's curbside pickup or some other programs, so that we're not creating that gas, that methane gas, it's going to add to the carbon emissions. I think that's the last slide. I'd be happy to take any questions from anybody. Yeah, thank you. Supervisor Pruitt?

[02:42:21] Sure. So I've got a few. I hope you'll forgive me. I want to start with the transportation infrastructure piece that y'all are investing in. And let me kind of- 27 yes um let me kind of back into this by saying i've had a had conversations with josh carp e-bike library operator and biking advocate um he once lobbied me for a comparable program to what the city has and has since changed his tune i don't want to misrepresent his position but he has said basically i now think that every dollar you could invest in knee bike program would be better spent

[02:42:57] on building better bike transit infrastructure because the latter doesn't help without the former. And so I'm excited to see the level of investment, but I'm also thinking, you know, you're setting aside 70K. And I know we spent, what, 2 million just doing the ADA upgrades to the bridge at Woolen Mills. And a bridge is what's mentioned in the summary that's sent to us.

[02:43:25] So I guess I would ask, can you give me a picture of what you can accomplish in a year um with that amount because i i feel pessimistic so i do not think we can build a bridge for seventy thousand dollars um this is more envisioned um and we don't have the details now so um the the intent of this presentation is to uh present the buckets of money and so that we're ready on july 1st of being in the fiscal year to um work on projects um the seventy thousand again could not fund a full bridge this is really it might have been contemplating like a bridge like

[02:44:04] we have on the ravina trail those are bridges that have been built too yes so either a smaller project or leveraging some other funding in combination with transportation funding or cdd funding or other funding or private funding but generally looking for that type of project to support with this funding sure okay i this is one of these things of i'm almost wondering if the amount we're setting aside almost becomes more symbolic than productive um i'm like trying to think of the greenhouse cutting transit or transportation investments that we could make

[02:44:42] that would actually be impactful at this level right like if i put a curb cut at every at every corner of an intersection one intersection i've probably blown my budget right because that a curb cut and a bump out costs about it a honda civic is what i tell people all the time um and Correct me if you think I'm wrong.

[02:45:01] Y'all are the professionals, but that's about right, like 20K. Well, I guess civics are more expensive than that, though. So I guess I don't need an answer on this. I would be interested to know if we're trying to shave it so thin that it's no longer accomplishing anything and should either be repurposed somewhere else or we should cut other projects in order to actually contribute more to transportation infrastructure so that it can be meaningful.

[02:45:31] um and maybe that's like a post-year evaluation question um of what were we able to accomplish with this bucket um i just am curious and this is also a uh get back to me on it um in the proposal that's in the packet right uh leap is has three different buckets that it's benefiting from and i'm also thinking leap is a beneficiary of um home and cdbg funds which i'm not actually sure this is more of an Andy question if that even shows up on our books because we're not the entitlement community I don't know if we show up as the pass-through for that or not but it could

[02:46:09] be helpful at some point to have a um a fuller picture um they also don't currently receive agency funding request funds but I think they have in the past a fuller picture of all the directions funding is coming from the county and local government uh toward LEAP because I I'm not sure if this is all of the funding we're giving to lead but there's other directions other like i just happen to know about the cdbg funds and it wouldn't be discussed in here otherwise so that that could be helpful at some point um is uh is availing yourself of the energy hub is that a a

[02:46:48] means or income restricted thing the energy resource hub no but the um the energy smart programming is got it that's um the um this could be a question or it could be a comment depending on if you have already thought about this i know um our our friends over at the university have a commuter program it's um it's software enabled there's like we received presentations on it at the rtp and now carta somewhat regularly um they have internal tracking it's used to like quantify

[02:47:27] amounts of rebates i think um if if you have not touched base with opposite numbers at the university it could be valuable um especially if if this is a commercial off-the-shelf product that could be uh acquired at low cost or is open source for free that would be even better but if that's something we could just drag and drop i'm i just want to point that out for for your utilization um um now just a few kind of bigger picture things first kind of directly on this because we talked about resilient together can you give us an update on the the nature right

[02:48:06] together is in the word for it um what is the nature and status of the collaborative and combined planning component of that because i know the project has changed both because the federal floor dropped out from under it also there's been some scoping changes can you and i've also heard some community concern about this. Can you kind of ground truth us on this? So Resilient Together is proceeding. It was always envisioned from the start that the three agencies would produce separate Resilient Together plans or climate resiliency and adaptation plans, and that plan

[02:48:41] is moving forward. So each entity will develop a separate plan, but we will continue to re-engage and coordinate priorities implementation hopefully into the long term absolutely when is the is there a specific step in the parts to come of like noggin touching with the other government stakeholders or is the understanding that we we touch noggins at the beginning and now we stay in our respective silos nope so we will definitely uh coordinate and are

[02:49:20] coordinating with leadership um at the from the city and county level and we'll re-institute the monthly coordination meetings at the project staff level as well and that will go throughout the plan drafting stage as well as implementation and approval stages and we uh coordinating with the city we're on the same timeline similar timeline as they are for drafting for reviewing a draft plan uh and uh planning for some sort of uh adopt type of adoption of a plan um in the end of this candle calendar year um and the last thing i'm not sure i would have talked about it but it

[02:50:00] was talked about at the beginning and so i do think it's worth also addressing because it's something i hear from the community a lot with i normally try and stay in my lane and leave staffing decisions exclusively to staff and policy decisions exclusively to us, but there's intersections in there that are inevitable. And I also recognize that the role and scope of offices can change, right? Like our Office of Equity and Inclusion has changed significantly and is being refigured around accessibility. Mission is changing, scope is changing, org charts are changing, and it's doing good work. And I understand and appreciate the work it's doing there. And I also

[02:50:37] recognize that our climate office and the work that's done in climate has had some re-scoping and some changing of job descriptions and how those are moved in the department. I have heard some community concern about this, and frankly, the way it has been framed to me, I am inclined to agree with on specifically the newly advertised positions I've recently been filled, focusing being heavily interior looking, interiors and looking at the county's own organization in what was, I think, and correct me if I'm misapprehending this, originally envisioned as

[02:51:15] a more programmatic and external policy focused role. I do see some, that seems like a finite work list that these roles will have in the future. It is a solvable problem of our own facilities and emissions concerns, whereas I think the community planning role is going to continue to exist. We are going to continue to want climate input on things like comprehensive plan questions, ZMAs, grant opportunities that we may not be seeking after, and just in general

[02:51:55] community collaboration. And so I just would take this opportunity to kind of voice some support of what I've heard community concerns with how the office is being structured. And I'm trying to be mindful of my lane here. I've shared this previously, this level of concern with the county executive. And so while we're discussing this, I think it's, I think it is appropriate for me to bring up that level of concern and kind of a transition away from a planning and policy vision of how we address climate and more of a facilities and emissions focus on how we address

[02:52:34] climate i see that as being um limiting our own scope and impact um and if i can leave it there if there's uh feedback or disagreement you want to offer on that i i also invite it to you otherwise i i'm done with my time i will offer back that there has not been a uh a change from community wide emissions to uh operational and building level uh missions the reorg is squarely focused I'm providing the expertise to do the things that you're talking about and develop the best team that can do the most with the resources that we have.

[02:53:14] And I think there were some inaccurate characterizations in the community about the reorganization. And it really is about adding expertise to solve the actual issues in front of us. And there's not been a change towards operational or building level.

[02:53:32] We want to add expertise in energy management, sustainable building practices, and those absolutely will be advantageous to reducing operational emissions.

[02:53:48] But we are squarely focused on the bigger, broader picture. I'm not trying to argue with you, and I recognize you know so much more about your own department than I can hope to. I feel like the description of the role of the project manager role that was recently created, that the way it was described to me sounded very much focused on county facilities and less focused on externally facing policy considerations.

[02:54:18] The positions are focused on energy management, absolutely, and that will be a benefit to our facilities on the public work side. On the project management side, we do want to develop expertise in sustainable building practices, certifications, and the like.

[02:54:36] But all of these skills and expertise will directly support the community-wide emissions and these other aspects as well. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Duncan. I just have a question on the microgrants program. Is that up and running yet? And how can people apply? And do you have an idea of what sort of projects you envision people using the grants for?

[02:55:05] So none of these projects are up and running. So we would not be able to even initiate funding and these projects until July 1st. And we would mirror the similar projects for the microgrants that the city, what is currently envisioned is that we would mirror the program at the city.

[02:55:27] And fundamentally, a maximum of a $2,000 investment to support home improvements, such as a heat pump or other energy efficiency upgrade. They do not currently have a commercial program, so we will be working with them to possibly coordinate a program, developing a similar program for commercial grants.

[02:55:52] Do you know, like, how long it'll take to get it going once you get the funding in July? It will probably take through this summer. So would be my estimate. Okay, that's all I have. Supervisor Malik. About moving from talking to action.

[02:56:15] Sorry, I was coughing and I moved my mic. Thank you. I'm very glad to see, hear the movement from talking to action because that will really get us somewhere. just big big changes from when lcap was adopted and greg will remember when we were focused totally on survival and adaptation and now we're starting to figure out how we can do it and i'm really excited about that so let me start with the bottom and work my way up you mentioned mirroring the

[02:56:49] city program for the micro grants and heat pumps was an example so you would use a funding and a grant and i would assume hand it off to do the people to the people the agency who does that in other words funding leap for the amount to the project if somebody applies to the micro grant then that could be added to their task to get it carried out we could do it that way or we could stand up our own program where we do it ourselves but um it's to be to be coordinated okay so you'll give us some feedback on that when you get it sorted out but the program is already getting requests from county residents and being turned around um that that there's no funding for county

[02:57:28] residents so it would be a really hopefully yeah an easy way to add on to that program and support county residents great because they're if they're hiring up then that they will keep on working which is good um the i i'm looking at the chart with the funding for some reason i i had remembered probably wrong that there was over 300 000 going into the weatherization program at LEAP now maybe that was 126 125 from 2026 and more from next year but what looks like that i've seen here today

[02:58:06] is like 75 and 75 so can you help me up update me on where the money is are you referring to previous years well i thought going forward and i was trying to scramble back and look at the budget to see um so the slide on the screen outlines the funding um and so line one residential energy improvements. There's $387,000 currently contracted to LEAP for an AHIP for energy

[02:58:38] improvements. In addition to that, we have line item six, which is the energy smart program. So there is 470, actually. So that's the current fiscal year. We, as you said, got a slow start, but now they're up and running full blast and catching up quickly.

[02:58:59] So then going forward to 27, can you help me remember where we were? Because that's wonderful momentum to be creating all these agencies who have been doing this for years and have lots of expertise and all the connections and contracting. So in our proposed funding, we have the $75,000.

[02:59:20] It's in the table in your attachment A. right is the 75,000 uh excuse me so that's a really big drop it's in the current that is incorrect that's for the energy resource hub so it is in table um two project eight it's the 75,000 for the energy smart program in addition and this is um relevant to uh supervisor Pruitt's comment uh there is funding in the the housing um bucket as well for the leap that they applied for the

[02:59:58] the housing grant as well. Right. From when we had that discussion a couple of months ago, I remember that. So, but as far as a budgetary allocation to LEAP for operations, as has been done in the past, that's not happening. It is, that's 75,000 for the Energy Smart Program and 75,000 for the Energy Resource Hub. Okay. And my understanding in regard to another question, the CDBG funds do not come through Alomar, so they would not show up in those numbers at all.

[03:00:27] This is strictly county dollars, and I will say that to me it's way more than symbolic because the benefits for these individual families, whether there are 100 of them or 50 of them or whatever every year, is significant, and especially in the improvements which have been made in Southwood, helping people to survive in a few more years until their place is ready has been unbelievable.

[03:00:55] so I'm grateful for that I'm grateful for your work as well the I was excited to hear about the front desk training so people who come in from for other things would have some extra information and I think there are a lot of people as fuel costs go up I remember in 2010 whenever it was that we had four dollar a gallon gas last time and there was a huge outcry from people in my district about when can we get a bus so that I don't have to drive all the way to town you know 40 miles a day to go to work and it was the beginning of the crochet connect and all those

[03:01:33] and the afternoon express that you know took a number of years to get them pulled off but those things are doing fantastically well now and i would expect that people who are on the margin about trying to figure out if they should jump and get their weatherization done after they're that they're sitting on an audit that the cost of energy which we've already seen over 15 percent in dominion in the last year which was what they promised us over 10 years a couple of years ago and now it's already happened, that's, I think, going to make this a really crucial thing for people, for affordability, especially for lower income people who are spending such a huge percentage of their meager income to keep themselves from broiling in the summertime

[03:02:12] or freezing in the wintertime. So that'll be great to see. And thank you very much. - Supervisor Lapisto-Carvin. - Yes, you had mentioned that lighting really helped out regarding energy saving and such.

[03:02:31] What's the next big thing you see that would work? - It really is focusing on the two big sectors. - On the what? - The two emissions sectors, so transportation and buildings.

[03:02:47] And the notion of changing the transportation system is is the big um big thing but it's hard to do because it's it's expensive um and it's challenging to coordinate with vdot to do um different types of projects um but i think uh developing pilot projects and and uh developing examples of that is is a strong candidate for for showing the way and are you referring to for buses uh electric vehicles yeah yeah those are very very expensive I know so okay well good to know that I see that organic waste feasibility study you're allocating

[03:03:26] about fifty thousand dollars to for a study assessing the analyzing the feasibility of doing this so I commend you on that I'm wondering what about just recycling in general so I think in the urban area we have added talked about adding that scope of work to this study so include including organic waste um which which is a spectrum right it can be uh true um organic waste pickup food pickup all the way down to leaf pickup in the fall right a spectrum of of of uh so we'll have

[03:04:04] to evaluate that but recycling service in the urbanized area um could be added to this scope if we can i would love personally i would love to see uh recycling in the urban area added to that because we don't really have anything that's um that works yeah so that would be something i'd really be interested in seeing as part of this thank you right um i don't really have that many questions i i think i i mean i don't think i agree with supervisor pruitt he started to surface as others likely did highest and best use of any funds that go to something

[03:04:43] and how you make that comparison like i could pick any one of those items out and go okay you know if it's if it's from an ongoing funding source that could be a position does that position yield us the emissions reduction doing the work of the position or does breaking up 125 000 into four different mini grant programs yield us a bigger break so i'm just i have to operate under the assumption you've all done that um work because i don't i don't i can't i don't have the expertise to look at this and make that that judgment call um and when we first passed the

[03:05:21] climate action plan in terms of funding i mean climate action is one of those things that there is lived experience and behavior that we can do under what's under our control and then then there are there are certainly outward facing education behavior influencing i suppose that could be done but beyond that it gets real tricky to be able to say well okay if you expend the resource what is it actually doing for you? And then with finite resources, regardless of what the numbers are, are we picking the things that actually yield us the most movement to the goal that we set for the

[03:06:00] emissions reduction? And it's hard for me to, you know, to, I'm happy to have this forward. I trust that the programs we're doing, especially the ones that say, if this use continues, then this, how it changes it. But is there something that yields us a bigger change over that? Because I'd be happy to consider that that's always i mean i don't i think we all operate that way however far we can stretch a dollar to get the biggest impact is the thing that we're going to want to do um and this is no different in in this area so um i'm not really looking for any response or anything but i mean

[03:06:39] if you would like you can respond to that but uh you know i feel like we've made progress in the the school buildings are all separate i mean they were doing low flow and lighting fixture changes and purchase power agreements with solar 10 years ago 12 years ago so um those type of things are moving forward um but has that level of scrutiny been done in a kind of a comparative way i think it's something we're continually doing um and struggling with because there is not a silver bullet that we can provide to say, hey, by 2050, we will be net neutral. We are looking at this as a

[03:07:17] small bucket of money to do pilot projects, to do research, and to test things out. And we are now clearly saying, one, it's got to have emissions reductions, and two, we've got to look for the future. How does this snowball? How does this create bigger and better opportunities? And look at it um this funding in that way rather than we're just going to continually um you know hand out uh bike grants you know we want to use this money in a strategic way and that's why we're framing the the objectives and the program in this way is so that it can be research and development

[03:07:54] more funding rather than just handouts and i have a bridge for you so when this gets up and running I'll knock on your door for a bridge in the Rio district that'll work, that the community's been trying to get for a while. And I think it's one that would immediately connect them to the downtown area without having to take an extra two miles to get to the same point, walking.

[03:08:18] So I'll be excited. I'll be knocking on your door in July 1 with that one. Are there any other questions or comments? I forgot to say, in the energy crisis in the early 70s, Travelers Insurance, which has a giant 40, 50 story building in Hartford, Connecticut, right on the main drag, blue shaped in a big crescent on both sides. They got all sorts of criticism because everybody was told, you know, don't leave your lights. There were no Christmas lights on trees. And it was just awful in New England. And they said, look, we heat our building with our lights because of

[03:08:54] how much heat was thrown off those old fluorescents in the old days. So that was the first inkling that I was given. Oh, it's not just yes or no. It's all sorts of different ways to go in. So that was just what came to mind when you talked about how lighting used to be the big deal and now we've gotten away from that thankfully thank you great all right thank you very much thank you all right board that should bring us yep to our closed meeting do we have a motion to go into closed meeting i move that the board of supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant

[03:09:32] to section 2.2-3711a of the code of virginia under subsection one to discuss and consider appointments to various boards and commissions, including without limitation, the Blue Ridge Committee for Shenandoah Park Relations, the Crozet Community Advisory Committee, the Equalization Board, the Jant Board, the Police Department Citizens Advisory Committee, the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee, and the Village of Urbana Community Advisory Committee.

[03:10:00] Second. Sorry, sleeping. Three seconds. All right. Motion has been made and seconded. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Matley? Yes. All right. We'll meet in 241. We're coming out of our closed session for our evening portion. Do we have a motion to certify the closed session?

[03:10:30] I move that the Board of Supervisors certify by a recorded vote that to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered in the closed meeting second all right without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt i miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapiso kirtley i miss malik yes great thank you and i will go ahead and

[03:11:05] we have a motion coming out of closed meeting to appoint the following individuals to the specific boards and commissions to the jaunt board heather marcel to the police department citizens advisory committee jody filardo to the solid waste alternatives advisory committee peggy gilgus and to the village of ravana community advisory committee uh sue bell friedman second all right uh motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt i miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapisto kirtley hi miss malik

[03:11:43] yes very good thank you for those who applied and we will then move to our evening portion so number 15 on the agenda from the county executive report on matters not listed on the agenda mr county executive any items this evening no sir not this evening thank you all right thank you and then we will go to item number 16 public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than those scheduled for public hearing we do have

[03:12:19] one member of the public signed up during the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled for public hearings individuals may address the board of supervisors concerning matters other than those listed on the agenda for public hearing individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking,

[03:12:55] which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

[03:13:18] Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. And just as a reminder, when you come down to speak, make sure that you adjust the microphones so that you can be heard clearly. And with that, then our speaker this evening is Mr. Claude Convisser. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is

[03:13:57] Claude Convisser. I reside as a homeless man in the Whitehall District of Albemarle County. I'm also a lawyer, and I spoke to you about, I don't know, two or three weeks ago on the Affordable housing income fund and my insight from having lived in the homeless community and knowing about the resources available to the homeless and not available over the last two years in this area is that I strongly urge you to not spend any money from that fund on a low barrier homeless shelter

[03:14:32] which the city of Charlottesville has conceived of and I believe has purchased a building for. I will be addressing myself to the city council separately, and my belief is that there's no way that they will end up opening that facility as a low-barrier shelter in the end.

[03:14:50] But I know that initially there was some proposal to have funds designated from AHIF towards support of the homeless. And I ask you, and I want to thank Kaki Dimock, who is very forthcoming with me since my last remarks on these subjects, that you make it clear to staff that there should not be any money spent on the low barrier shelter.

[03:15:17] The reason, and I'll tell you that the reason why I can share this insight with you is my business, which I've been running for 18 years, is sort of where the rubber hits the road on certain issues. The reason I'm homeless is because I'm bringing a major lawsuit in the federal district court here, $500 billion against ExxonMobil and other defendants.

[03:15:41] And we've proposed to add GFL Environmental Inc. on behalf of the biodiesel industry. My company is called Plant Oil Powered Diesel. We support the use of straight vegetable oil, like cooking oil in your kitchen. And the biodiesel industry takes the cooking oil and they process it heavily.

[03:16:01] The third interest that opposes what we're doing is the high-tech industry. And I remarked last time that John Frazee, on behalf of S&P Global Intelligence, has basically manipulated impact into supporting this idea of a low barrier shelter.

[03:16:19] They didn't raise it directly with you, but all the meetings with the city council members were done in private on the housing issue. And that's why I say he's manipulating that issue, because the ordinary citizens who came to the Nehemiah action back in March were unaware that, in fact, the impact leadership is subtly supporting the idea of a low barrier shelter.

[03:16:41] The danger is that agents of the organized crime mafia that runs the biodiesel industry and fossil fuel interests like the petroleum industry and high tech, which is relying on fossil fuel, they will infiltrate any low barrier shelter with their agents.

[03:16:58] And there's a lot of them, believe me, in the homeless community. So if you hear of 300 homeless people in this area, that number is inflated by agents of these. The time is inspired. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members. Thank you. That is our only speaker. We don't have any online, correct?

[03:17:16] All right, so we will move on to item number 17, the first of our public hearings this evening. It's fiscal year 2026, Budget Amendment and Appropriation. And Mr. Bowman is stepping up. Good evening to the board. My name is Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer.

[03:17:37] This item is a public hearing and an action item for the board to amend the fiscal year 26 budget. Under the Virginia Code, whenever the total appropriation is greater than 1% of the budget, a public hearing is required, and that is the case this evening. The total amendment is $15.9 million.

[03:17:55] The bulk of that is for the board's approval tonight. The total is $13.6 million of that portion. The primary reason for this is the reappropriation of school special revenue fund appropriations. So just as the case is for county government, public schools have the classifications of fund with restrictions put on them by state, federal government, or others.

[03:18:16] where those are accounted for separately from the schools and those items are reappropriated from one year to the next so that amount totals 13.3 million this is a typical uh you know action that the board takes annually after the school board has requested that and then there are other items that are listed in summary on the slide and are detailed in attachment a if the board has any questions so i would recommend that the board of supervisors hold a public hearing and after that approve attachment b i'll be happy to answer any questions before the public hearing all right uh supervisor any questions i have nothing supervisor duncan no questions supervisor

[03:18:55] malik no questions thank you supervisor lupista currently questions all right i do not have any questions we will open the public hearing is there anyone signed up no one signed up so we will close the public hearing and the matter is back before the board any additional questions or comments additional any all right then we are uh looking for a motion uh to adopt the attached resolution attachments attachment b mr chair different ones in front of me so go ahead with if somebody would like to read the recommendation on the screen i move that the board adopt the resolution and

[03:19:34] attachment b second all right the motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt i miss duncan yes mr galloway yes miss lapiso currently i miss mallet yes all right very good thank you mr bowman thank you all right we will move to number 18 a public hearing for an ordinance to amend county code chapter 2 compensation and sign-on incentives

[03:20:01] and we have with us our director of human resources jessica rice good evening good evening members of the board and the public i'm jessica rice the director of human resources um this public hearing

[03:20:37] is for a proposed ordinance amendment to county code section 2-910 related to compensation and sign-on incentives. The purpose of this public hearing tonight is to consider amendments to the existing ordinance language that governs the county's authority to offer sign-on incentives as part of employee compensation. Specifically, the proposed amendment would remove the current $5,000 cap and allow the county executive with a proposal from the Director of Human Resources

[03:21:14] to authorize sign-on incentive amounts based on operational need and prevailing market conditions. By way of background, prior to 2023, the county did not have any codified authority to offer sign-on incentives as a recruitment strategy. At that time, the organization, like many public sector employees across the country, was facing significant recruitment and retention challenges, particularly in positions that are essential to life safety,

[03:21:55] continuity of operations, and services that are legally required for vulnerable populations. The board responded to those workforce challenges in May of 2023 by adopting the current ordinance, which authorized sign-on incentives of up to $5,000 when necessary to recruit qualified employees.

[03:22:19] I want to take a moment to provide you with some data regarding how this initiative has been leveraged and the impact to our organization. In FY23, following the adoption of this strategy, we were able to fully staff our parks and recreation summer programs in lakes for the first time since before the pandemic.

[03:22:45] That same year, we filled 17 firefighter vacancies and we filled 10 police department vacancies. So moving to FY24, we fully staffed Parks and Rec again and 41 other hard-to-fill competitive positions, including 28 from ACPD and six caseworkers in DSS to help them recover from a devastating 50% vacancy rate in CPS.

[03:23:15] In the past three years, we have filled 139 key positions, not counting our Parks and Rec folks from the summer programming. Of those 139, 48% were in our police department and 42% were in ACFR.

[03:23:36] And I believe this was 100% attributed to the sign-on incentive that you all approved. Since FY23, the labor market conditions have continued to evolve and become increasingly competitive, particularly in public safety, emergency communications, social services, skilled trades, and other hard-to-fill positions.

[03:24:04] In some cases, peer jurisdiction employers are offering incentives well above the current cap that we have of $5,000. The current initiative and established framework has been extremely successful for the county.

[03:24:20] However, we've entered a new landscape and new challenges with sourcing and hiring highly competitive positions, including within our own police department. We are now competing with state and federal agencies as well as other local government jurisdictions when that was not the case three years ago.

[03:24:41] The proposed amendment before you tonight is intended to provide additional flexibility so the county can respond in real time to changing conditions and operational demands when recruitment challenges threaten service delivery.

[03:24:58] Importantly, this amendment does not create an automatic or unrestricted incentive program. The proposed language still requires documented justification, eligibility parameters established, and market review from human resources, approval from the county executive, consistency with current county policy, and uniform application of an established initiative and compliance with all federal and state wage and hour and anti-discrimination laws.

[03:25:35] Additionally, there is no amended budget appropriation associated with this request. Any sign-on incentives would continue to be funded through salary lapse, savings created by the vacant positions.

[03:25:53] Ultimately, this amendment is intended to strengthen the county's ability to recruit qualified candidates into critical positions and sustain essential public services in a highly competitive labor market. At this time, I would be happy to answer any questions preceding the public hearing.

[03:26:16] Supervisor Pruitt? Sure. So I will share, I forget if you were here for it, but during the first round of public comment today, a member of the public mentioned that there was concern over the lack of a cap and that it might be prudent for us to have a cap, even if the cap is quite large.

[03:26:37] And I do kind of, I see the wisdom in that argument. I'm reminded of a conversation we had recently about contractual language in a benefit agreement that was specifically there, even though we all knew how much was going to be paid to formally constrain the county executive from spending more than we all agreed with.

[03:26:57] If we were to implement such a cap, what would be necessary for the current programs and how much wiggle room would you be comfortable with allowing for the future growth, if that makes sense? It does make sense. That's a great question. So one of the things we're trying to achieve here tonight is to avoid us having or me having to come forward to you every six months when our market changes, right? And so that we can respond when something drastic happens in the market.

[03:27:33] And what I'll share is that tonight was sort of initiated about two or three months ago when we took a look at the market and realized what was happening around us, specifically with law enforcement.

[03:27:52] We were seeing things that, honestly, we couldn't compete with, and nor should we be, but we needed a way to respond. In addition, I think you all heard earlier or there was some discussion with our police officers week.

[03:28:10] We do have 24 vacancies in our police department and those are actual field personnel. And so my worry, of course, is not only the services that we are struggling to sustain, but also the impact it's having on our staff.

[03:28:27] Having said all of that, my recommendation would be if we did have to put a cap on it, I would probably go all the way to $20,000 because we're not just talking about public safety, we're talking about professionals, we're talking about highly skilled folks that we want to make sure we can still recruit for in this particular market that we have.

[03:28:56] I hope that answers your question. That answers my question. thank you at all yes supervisor duncan um no i don't have any questions uh supervisor malik thank you very much and most of mine were answered already but um is there any requirement when you're offering one of these that someone stay for two years i mean when you get college tuition for the military they make you sign up for four right so i just wonder what what the um if there's any arrangement like that yeah so there are parameters that are built out and it can vary

[03:29:34] depending on what the initiative is. And so specifically with this one that we're looking at right now with the police department, there is a, there's a caveat that they need to actually go through and pass satisfactorily their training, their field training. They need to get through their probation. If they don't, there are options that we can consider for even recovering some of those funds and so all of that gets built out depending on the amount of the bonus and what

[03:30:09] we're able to figure out is in the best interest of the organization each time we look at it and that's work that I do and with the assistance in review of our executive office so yeah I guess I would be not being an HR person I would just say do the work and then you get paid so having an On a depletion of these things, that's when your bonus would be delivered.

[03:30:33] I don't need you all spending time chasing after people who have vacated the area. So that's just something where I don't know enough. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Speaking of salary lapse, I thought we had already attributed salary lapse to something in the upcoming budget. That's a great question.

[03:30:50] I do know that there was consideration for salary lapse in the upcoming budget. I believe that there is a wedge in the budget that utilizes some of that funding. However, our current vacancy rate, and especially if it continues, will allow us to be able to do both, to cover this and also whatever was accounted for in the budget.

[03:31:14] I've worked very closely with our budget team. Mr. Bowman is sitting right there. Great. And so I think by all accounts that we're financially in a good place to be able to do this. Okay. Well, thank you. I would also support the CAP suggestion that you made as opposed to wide open.

[03:31:32] I'm just nudging. So thank you. Supervisor LaPistola currently? Thank you. And forgive me, I missed the part where, do we have something in here that says you received this bonus, but you need to stay X number of years?

[03:31:49] Yeah. So that's actually a programmatic piece that will come after this. This is the ordinance. Okay. And then what will happen is sort of program and policy work that gets signed off on. And also what's interesting, and I think you guys would benefit to hear from this, is it's not open-ended forever.

[03:32:10] It is either time-bound or until we hit targets, like a certain percentage filled or whatever that is. So it's not from now until the next time you see me, and hopefully that's helpful. That is helpful.

[03:32:27] Thank you. Thank you. And you think that $20,000 would be? I think so. Okay. Yeah, that is something that I would agree with also. I'd also agree. I know it was mentioned about being able to have a housing rental assistance for those who are not living, you know, to encourage officers, fire and police to live in the county and everything.

[03:32:55] But that's a different subject, different time. I understand that. I was just taking a point of privilege, which is probably going to be taken away from me by supervisor Galloway. Only if I could. Y'all done? Yes, I'm done. Thank you very much. The other comment from this afternoon was about reporting. I kind of knew where it would come from in terms of lapse factor. And lapse factor is something that we can open up our budget book and see how we budget it and look at it. So I don't need a new report telling me how lapse factor works. That's

[03:33:31] laid out. But remind me, in past HR reports, when we get some overviews, it seems to me that if you were doing, like, if you weren't in front of us tonight and you had the ability to do sign-on bonuses, you'd probably cover that in your HR report. Just because it's a compensation thing, here's what we've been dealing with, here's how many we had to do, you know, some general just kind of descriptive data. Yep, that's correct. What I can share with you tonight is I did pull the data, you can see over the course of three years, a total of 139, not counting our parks and

[03:34:08] rec friends. The total amount of money that that equated to was $355,500. And that is money that was already programmed for salaries. And this money came from the positions being vacant. So over the course of three years, again, I would support that this was extremely successful. It got us to where we need to be, and now we're revisiting it. But that's the dollar amount associated with the amount of times we've used it, essentially. But if you weren't doing this

[03:34:48] or asking for the amount, it's part of a report that we're already receiving, is what I'm saying. It would be part of descriptive data. So I'm just saying that sometimes you ask for a report because you don't know where it's at, but it just has to be in where we would normally get a report.

[03:35:04] And then the way that we scrutinize our financials, we can always bring it up when we get those quarterly financial reports as well. So I'm just illuminating that more to provide an education element for why we wouldn't necessarily add in a whole nother report specific for this item.

[03:35:22] All right. Okay. Yes. I just wanted to say, I was impressed by how thoroughly you covered everything. I mean, everything I could have thought of, you already have it in here. So any other questions I would have had, you covered that. So my kudos to you. Thank you. One follow-up too, when you're ready.

[03:35:47] Yes. Another question? Yes. Thank you. So 139 hires up to 355,000 or so over several years. so that would likely well it all depends whether they're five thousand dollar bonuses or money so exactly that we don't know because we don't know what positions but i know the i guess the life guards were 500 so we got a lot of life cards for a fairly small we yeah we did and that was a big deal for kids i'll tell you that it was a big deal for our parks and rec department my first summer here we shut down lakes multiple times um we were coming out of the pandemic and i remember

[03:36:26] having a discussion with um with mr krickenberger and others in the department and they asked what can we do and so that was one of the things that brought it forward the first time also that plus having a county operated certification program because that the years second third years for my grandchildren they couldn't get the certification anywhere which was hard thanks all right uh we will open the public hearing is there anyone signed up there is no one signed up so we will close the public hearing the matter is back before the board i'll just do a quick round to

[03:37:02] see if there's any comments before the motion supervisor pruitt um i'll just add i alluded to this i would be in favor of having a cap that's just higher i will also just say i'm i don't want to put staff in a position of coming back before us i might even recommend you know jessica said 20k and she said it under duress from me we could probably bump that up to 25 and still be fine

[03:37:28] I just don't want us to be in the position that Phil, I think, thoughtfully anticipated of us hearing, like, in a 29 news report that, oh, the board didn't even know about a $60,000 or something or other.

[03:37:44] Right. That'd be a heck of a sign-on bonus. Yeah, it would be. All right. Supervisor Duncan? No comments. Supervisor Malik? I'm all set. Thank you. Supervisor Lapisto-Kirtland? I'd go with the 25. I mean, I'm fine with 20, 25.

[03:38:01] I mean, 5% to 10% is typically of whatever the salary is would be kind of a target ballpark for a sign-on, I think. So, you know, the high end of that allows you to get into the higher end of our spectrum and then certainly gives you the flexibility to go.

[03:38:18] So I'm comfortable with 25 just because that then you guys are all talking on a couple months. I don't, no offense, but don't want you coming back a year from now either. It's like let this play out and give you guys the ability to do your jobs. Mr. Richardson, any thoughts?

[03:38:34] Because you'd be the final sign-off on anything up to the cap. Do you have anything you'd wish to add? First of all, I fully agree with Mr. Pruitt's comments that he made coming out of the gate. It makes sense to me to have a cap. I really also appreciate Ms. Rice having the data together tonight to show that we are tracking this, being metrics-driven, out of HR, trying to get the hard-to-fill positions filled.

[03:39:00] I would be very comfortable with either 20 or 25 based on the discussions that I've had with HR, the team, and the hard-to-fill positions we've got. If the board's willing to do 25, that just gives us an extra five. If we need it, it would be for hard-to-fill positions and probably would be higher-level positions, and they would be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

[03:39:21] Shiflet's moving into a position of approaching the board. Feel free to step forward because I think the board wants our thoughts on this. Thank you. I just wanted to add one more piece, which is that the HR department benchmarks with other localities in our market and the economic market that we have, each position type.

[03:39:46] And so, like you already called out, lifeguards is 500, others are higher. But when they make these decisions about the cost, it is about what others are doing. And so it isn't just about what's maybe normal. We have seen the, especially the law enforcement market, be very dynamic.

[03:40:06] And so as we look across those, I just wanted to make sure it was understood that we don't compare across the board. We compare position by position in our market. Great. Thank you. Well, then we would look for a motion to, where is the motion, to adopt the proposed ordinance amendment um with setting a cap of 25 000 um effective beginning may 7th 2026 does that meet meet the requirement mr attorney well would you be wanting that to be in the text of the

[03:40:43] ordinance itself i'm assuming that i'm assuming that the board would well yeah and and so i can type up some language but what but just looking at the ordinances proposed what i would suggest is that it read you can see that there's a sentence that begins with incentives and there's some strike through language and the language that's currently stricken through is incentives will not exceed five thousand dollars per officer or employee my suggestion is that that be reinstated to read incentives will not exceed twenty five thousand per officer or employee comma and and then pick up with the with the amended language and may be offered upon a finding that such

[03:41:19] incentives are necessary and go from there so i can put that in writing for for i think i can probably accurately do that aloud and save us the trouble um mr chair i would like to move the board adopt uh the attachment attachment a amended to read incentives will not exceed 5 000 per officer or employee comma and then continuing from maybe offered upon finding oh sorry 25 000 uh not to exceed 25 000 per officer employee comma and then continuing from the insertion may be offered upon

[03:41:57] finding second with and may be offered right and may be offered that's second all right the motion has been made and seconded any further discussion all right if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt hi miss duncan no mr galloway yes miss lapista kirtley i miss mallet yes all right the motion carries forward one board we have to make a correction on the prior motion that we took it was attachment c not b we had b on the screen i had c on my script but it looks like it's been clarified i believe it was b on the on the presentation but in fact it was c in the agenda

[03:42:35] my apologies for not catching that so if the board would just make a motion to reconsider the prior item the appropriations item and then once the board makes a motion to reconsider that the board can entertain a motion to adopt attachment C instead of adopt attachment B. I move we reconsider the appropriations item. Second. All right the motion has been made and seconded. Please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Ms. Duncan. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malik.

[03:43:05] Yes. All right the motion has been made and well our motion has been approved so now we need the new motion. That's correct so now we're in a position of reconsidering it and and preferably if the original movement would move adoption of attachment C rather than attachment B we can go from there. I move that the board adopt the attached resolution attachment C to approve the appropriations for county government projects and programs. Second. All right the motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye.

[03:43:44] Ms. Duncan. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Mallett. Yes. All right and thank you for that catch. clerk um that will take us to item number 19 acsa 2026 one jurisdiction jurisdictional area amendment request and se 2026-1 critical slopes waiver for inglesia del deos pentecostal fuente

[03:44:12] de salvacion i better work on my salvation um this board does have two items the uh first item the jurisdictional area amendment request requires a public hearing the second item does not so we're going to do one presentation uh and then we'll open the public hearing for the jurisdictional item vote on that then we'll vote on the second is that your understanding mr newberry um mr chair we we've actually uh provided i intend to provide a combined presentation yeah all at one

[03:44:50] time all at one time and um and then uh we'll break it out after questions at the end yes sir Perfect. You're all set there, Mr. Newberry.

[03:45:05] Great. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is J.T. Newberry. I'm a senior planner with the Department of Community Development. I'll be providing staff's presentations on these two applications tonight. We're joined by several colleagues of mine from community development as well as the applicants, engineer, and members of the church.

[03:45:28] The subject parcel for these proposals is located on the east side of Prophet Road across the street from Baker Butler Elementary School. Before I talk about the property specifics, I did want to give just an overview of each proposal.

[03:45:44] It very much aligns with what Chair Galloway just shared. The first application we'll consider is an ACSA jurisdictional area amendment. This is an application to amend the jurisdictional area maps that control the level of water and sewer service provided by the Albemarle County Service Authority.

[03:46:06] This mapping is guided by policy from the comp plan and is determined at the discretion of the Board of Supervisors. This application requires a public hearing. But the next one is a critical slopes waiver, which is needed when a development seeks to disturb slopes in the rural areas of 25% or greater.

[03:46:27] These areas have the potential for greater environmental impact and therefore require additional review and action by the board prior to any disturbance, but this does not require a public hearing. So we'll go through each and I'll take questions at the end. Looking at the subject parcel, it's approximately 7.4 acres and located outside of the development area.

[03:46:49] The development area boundary is Profit Road, which is, if you're following along the screen, is highlighted by the laser pointer here. The subject parcel is in the rural area zoning district and the rural area section of the comp plan.

[03:47:06] It has an existing residence that's served by an entrance across the street from Chesterfield subdivision. and the existing residence has a few associated accessory structures. This property was purchased in late 2024 by the church, and since then they've been working with their engineer to propose a by-right religious assembly use with a 9,000 square foot church and approximately 65 parking spaces. Because this proposal would be for less than 200 attendees, this proposal is exempt from

[03:47:44] the site plan requirement. So looking first at the jurisdictional area amendment, the map on the screen shows the subject property outlined in yellow in relation to the current jurisdictional area map. The subject property is designated for no level of water and sewer service from ACSA.

[03:48:06] It's currently served by a private well and septic. It's directly across the street from, however, this pink color that shows all the parcels that are within the jurisdictional area for both public water and sewer. The applicant is requesting limited water and sewer service only to the proposed church. The existing residents would remain on private well and septic service. Here's the applicant's layout for the proposed church and associated parking.

[03:48:40] The existing residence on this layout is up here near the top, and you can see the existing entrance would be closed and relocated more central to the site. This version of the applicant's layout highlights in red, where water and sewer service would be extended from the Chesterfield subdivision across Profit Road, if approved by the board.

[03:49:07] Our comprehensive plan, AC44, evaluates requests to amend the jurisdictional area based on the three criteria shown on the screen. Staff has provided analysis for each of these findings in attachment C of the staff report.

[03:49:25] Based on this analysis, staff is recommending approval for limited water and sewer service to serve only the proposed development. So I'll move on to the critical slopes waiver and then take questions. This exhibit shows the critical slopes on the property based on field run topography provided by the applicant's engineer. This shows more critical slopes than what we had in the county's GIS system. Their analysis showed that approximately 17% of the total parcel contains critical slopes

[03:50:02] and the proposed development would impact approximately a quarter of those. Those are hatched in this orange color on the slide. So this slide overlays the proposed development with the critical slopes. Although this proposal is exempt from a site plan, a VESMP plan is still required, and the applicant has provided this conceptual layout showing the anticipated storm water treatment methods. The applicant included with their application were several different

[03:50:39] designs looking at how they could minimize their impact to critical slopes and so this particular design provides not only the least amount of overall disturbance but it also complied with the supplemental regs in our zoning ordinance for religious assembly uses in the rural areas and so one of those is a 125 foot parking setback and that's shown by this outlined area in red you can see all the parking is is included in within that 125 feet and so this

[03:51:18] this highlights how the the preferred design not only minimizes critical slope impacts but also complies with other regulations in the county code county code section 4.2.5 a allows for critical slopes if it wouldn't be detrimental to public health, safety, or welfare, and at least one of the findings of the criteria on the slide are made. And so in conjunction with the county engineer, staff provided analysis for each of these findings in attachment C, and together staff determined we

[03:51:56] could recommend approval of the request to disturb critical slopes with a few conditions. Here are those conditions intended to mitigate impacts from the proposed development in summary it's general accord with the concept plan that we've that we've looked at on the previous slides providing erosion and sediment control measures that exceed state standards by 50 percent and approval of a landscape plan in summary staff recommends approval of both applications subject

[03:52:32] to certain limitations the jurisdictional areas recommended for limited water and sewer service and that's reflected on the map shown on the left here this is how the map would be amended if approved and the critical slopes waiver has three recommended conditions and with that i can take any questions that the board has all right thank you supervisor pruitt i don't believe i have any questions yet i will um see if anyone else's comments spark my juice is flying all right

[03:53:05] supervisor malik thank you um so i am i don't quite see how it matches our criteria which was pre-existing use and failure of water system so that houses cannot be lived in because their well is poisoned or something like that and was never before extended for some new use in the last 19 years so how do i wrap my brain around what you're proposing here yeah um this this slide slide six

[03:53:37] shows the the three criteria that were adopted for jurisdictional area amendments in ac 44 and the primary driver was really public safety and fire suppression. In looking at the site, fire rescue indicated that they would have to close Prophet Road if they were to respond to the church, which is exempt from a site plan that they anticipated running hoses from Chesterfield subdivision over to this property. And so their preference to avoid closing Prophet Road in the

[03:54:16] event of responding to a fire was that a hydrant be placed by the driveway. And then in talking with ACSA, they recommended that sewer service be provided so that there wouldn't be a dead-end loop at the end of the line, which would require regular maintenance of flushing. Because if you create a dead-end water line and the water becomes stagnant, there's opportunity for bacteria and other things, and it's a much bigger lift. So the combination of feedback from fire rescue and ACSA

[03:54:49] I think led us to feel that public safety was a priority for this particular site. And by providing limited service, we felt like we were capturing the unique circumstances of this particular proposal. But limited service is not going to end if the church goes away. There'll be a townhouse application in there in five minutes so i mean this is my concern is that we're stepping over a really big line that's been on the ground for a long long time and i don't um this so the hydrant is what's creating the dead end loop is what you're saying yes and i mean there are plenty

[03:55:29] of times when roads are closed for hours because trees fall down i just i'm not feeling particularly persuaded about that as a reason to change what we've done for 30 years on the zoning so that is a concern. We've said no to plenty of other things because they were in very similar circumstances of a new use and just this is not what we do. So that is a problem. And with fewer than 200, there are lots of churches of that size in the rural area that have well and septic very carefully or very well handled. So I guess I'm not feeling persuaded at the moment, but may learn

[03:56:07] something else later thank you supervisor lapisto currently um yeah this is in my in my district and i i mean i i appreciate very much appreciate mr newberry your explanation because there are nuances that of course we don't know that you all know that you all figured out for example the the fire hydrant uh why it's on that side and then being able to have limited service to a structure is going to be 9,000 square feet, 200 people.

[03:56:43] Do I, I understand what Supervisor Malik is saying, but I think this is one of those areas that I really do believe it would be beneficial to the safety, frankly, of the parishioners in that church and to that area.

[03:57:03] So this is something I'll be supporting. All right. I don't, the, JT, was it, and I didn't think to hone in on it before, is the, until Supervisor Malik's questions, was it requested from the get-go to be attached to the water, meaning that they had explored sewer or septic and all that for the church?

[03:57:29] Part of our analysis requires that the applicant demonstrate some exploration of private well and septic and there's um the third criteria here uh that looks at the the cost and the technical viability that's the the criteria that requires applicants to provide that um the i think the the applicant's engineer may be able to speak to everything they did to explore that uh better than

[03:57:59] i could but that that is one of the one of the criteria under our comp plan great mike any other questions or go to the uh all right we'll open the public hearing do we have anyone signed up for this item all right so we have an applicant um applicants are limited to a 10-minute presentation of their proposal and are allowed a five-minute rebuttal at the close of the public hearing timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium the green light

[03:58:35] will go on when you begin speaking uh which begins your allotted time the yellow light indicates You have one minute to finish speaking, and the red light indicates your time has expired. Nobody asked to end your comments. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Elmer County website.

[03:58:52] Good evening. Have you introduced yourself, and then we'll go ahead with your presentation. Hello, my name is Alan Franklin. I'm a professional engineer, civil engineer with Water Street Studio here in town, and we have support from the pastor and his support staff and interpreter and other friends and that had helped us along the way.

[03:59:15] We really don't have a presentation. I wouldn't want to take that time, but I'm happy to try to answer questions. It's a difficult situation to understand. So we'd like to open up to questions and see if we can help get through this.

[03:59:36] All right, so the presentation's done. Supervisor Pruitt, any questions for the applicant? I don't actually have any questions. Supervisor Malik. I was looking back through my packet trying to find the map that was shown with the septic field areas which had already been identified.

[03:59:56] Oh, there we go, right there, okay, in the packet, way down at the bottom. So you have identified suitable septic areas. I don't know if there's a well site on here or not, but those will certainly be things to do before one purchases a property in order to make sure you can do it for the use you need.

[04:00:16] The house is served by a septic system, which is identified up near the house, and a well in the upper right. The well at the time of installation was a 60-gallon-a-minute well. There are no known issues with the septic system.

[04:00:35] The church would install a new additional septic system, so they would be separate. The well would serve both uses, but it would have to be converted to a public water system.

[04:00:51] There's some regulation and testing associated with that because of the population of the church. The new septic system, we've done soil testing along the frontage of Prophet Road would be the proposed septic field for the church if needed.

[04:01:15] And that would be a similar size to the residential septic system. It would have a dosing system that went with the tank at the top that would store on a busy day of Sunday and then release the rest of the week and empty by the next Sunday.

[04:01:32] That's how that would work. It's viable. It would disturb a little more land, obviously. It would come with subject to, you know, degradation over time and the well public system is always there and it has a cost associated with it as well because you have fees and which you wouldn't have if you had well water and septic.

[04:02:04] But I think outweighs, I think the security of having public water and sewer is something the church is interested in. And I guess probably better for the environment overall for septic leaching into the soils.

[04:02:21] But any other question maybe about the public, the need for a fire hydrant across the street, the service authority, that was a fire to rescue want or need.

[04:02:39] And the service authority said, well, if we're going to have a fire hydrant, we would like to have a water meter as well to keep the water moving in that pipeline and the sewer as well. And this is right across the street, so it was worth an ask.

[04:02:58] And we've already had meetings with the neighbor where the sewer and water is located, and they're happy to work with us. They're just, when you go around the periphery of the whole jurisdictional area, every single lot is next to, just like this.

[04:03:19] So this is why the rules have been so important for decades. I'm glad to see that there are so many opportunities to not have to add to the jurisdictional area and still allow the church to have its uses. I'm quite familiar with this stretch of road. There is no forest up there at the road.

[04:03:35] So where your leach fields would be, only one of those would be developed and the other there would be a backup. And that's all gardens and lovely gardens and things that I admire when I'm driving by. But it is not coming down a forest to do that. So I'm still very interested in keeping the jurisdictional area where it is. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Lapisto-Curtley?

[04:04:04] I'm interested in the fact that the fire wanted and ACSA wanted really proposed this because it would be beneficial. And I understand regarding the jurisdictional areas.

[04:04:22] But if we could, in my opinion, if we could add water and sewer limited to something this large, I think would be beneficial. Thank you. No questions, really. So the limited, because that's being stressed, the limited water and sewer to the comment about, well, there'd be a townhome development in here in a heartbeat if there wasn't a church.

[04:04:46] So it would still, the zoning doesn't change, the underlying use. So I guess the fear would be that if it's got that, that they could make that as a stronger claim to get a rezoning from RA to development area. It gives it all the urban attributes. So, I mean. I understand.

[04:05:02] But I mean, it's not as if it's by right all of a sudden allowed to develop in some other way. It's still whatever the underlying, the rural area zoning in terms of the residents. If the church was in, if they weren't asking for the water sewer hookup, I guess they'd still be asking for the critical slopes piece.

[04:05:19] but that would be coming in just as that item um you have the water the the the on-site private piece would be allowed to be we wouldn't have any saying that that would just be regulated do i have all that right correct and that would be subject to health department approval the private well accepted right um and then i did see that the cost is pretty pretty similar from doing the system you maybe scoped out versus connecting to the yes definitely the initial cost because of impact fees

[04:05:50] whether they're called for connection to water and sewer are pretty substantial um so and you have to jack and bore under the road because you can't open cut a state road so the initial costs are pretty high for connecting and then you have ongoing bills but i think the security of being connected to public water and sewer is is what's the desire one compromise would be water only

[04:06:24] because they have ample septic area and that would provide water only to this use, which could easily be controlled and not have a big sewer extension over there.

[04:06:41] So that's certainly one compromise that might be more reasonable to the existing rules. I would imagine that would double costs for the applicant, right? Well, it's not an issue that the board is supposed to address in zoning. This is supposed to be ordinance-based. really, just because something is more expensive doesn't mean that we have to get out of our way to make a less expensive property, which they were fortunate enough to buy, all of a sudden have the same attributes as an area that costs four times as much to buy. So that there are reasons why there are different values in properties. And one of those is services that are available.

[04:07:15] These are our residents. I would think that reducing the financial burden on our residents and trying to realize a use is part of the public good, which is a considered element in zoning decisions so before we get into further discussion are there any more questions for the applicant and or staff well we can still ask staff questions after we um if there aren't then um do you have any need for rebuttal or any additional comments no sir all right so we will go ahead and close the public hearing the matter is back before the board um so supervisor Pruitt do you want to i'll

[04:07:51] just go through the order again um yeah i i hear and i'm sympathetic to the point that supervisor malik's making right sometimes we will sometimes hear from to our conversation earlier this afternoon we'll sometimes hear from landowners who have property that's adjacent to the development area lobbying for inclusion saying well it's just completely arbitrary and yes all rules are arbitrary and all rules therefore have to have lines um i'm trying to be conscious here the fact that in a lot of ways it sounds like the first mover on this part of the recommendation that

[04:08:26] we're getting hung up on was not the applicant, right? This was being brought up to them by ACSA and county staff. And otherwise, they were facing a pretty comparable decision. I'm not sure the idea of a compromise that is, you know, public water, private sewer makes sense. And I say that as someone who grew up on public water, private sewer, right? Again, because I do think, I think cost is something that is prudent for us to consider, because I do see that as an element

[04:09:04] of serving the public good. So I understand the tension. I am, though, here wanting to yield to the staff recommendation, which for various reasons has leaned toward the expansion of the jurisdictional area. Supervisor Malik? I don't have any additional questions. Thank you.

[04:09:26] Do you have any discussion or comments? We're in the discussion portion. No, I guess in the port, and I would love to have seen something more than one sentence in the packet from the fire department, but that's not in there. So I just don't think that the compelling need is there.

[04:09:46] That's my basis. Thank you. Supervisor Lepisto, currently, you've stated a few things, but yeah. Yeah, I know. I'll just restate that this is coming. I made a suggestion by ACSA and the fire department. I place a lot of faith and trust in them.

[04:10:03] This isn't some mega-mansion, single-person house. This is a church. I certainly don't want anything to go wrong. I want people to be safe. It's across the street. I think we make rules and everything, but those rules can be, in my opinion, amended to fit the situation, not in all cases, In very few cases, but I mean, this is kind of a humanity type thing.

[04:10:33] I just don't see what is wrong with going with the staff recommendation to approve this. Especially everything is limited. Limited water and sewer service. Those are my comments. Yep. I mean, of the eight years I've been on the board, when we've had similar jurisdictional type of things, I've voted pretty consistently.

[04:10:58] I don't believe I've ever voted to deny any of them. It's a little different situation. However, I just don't share the same fear that this could turn into some other type of development beyond the use that would already be allowed by Wright and the impact would be there.

[04:11:13] So the pragmatist in me goes, well, what are the other impacts that we look at? We look at, you know, the folks coming on Sunday, the increase in traffic, et cetera. It's not going to be during the school days when the school traffic's hitting. So this is a portion of the road that is already used to that traffic during the school days for the other time of the week.

[04:11:32] But we wouldn't be able to necessarily do anything about that but for what VDOT would require for the entrance if it were the buy-write application. So, you know, the cost up front is probably there. If they do it as a private piece, then I think of the other places that I have voted on in the past that have come to us. And I'm thinking, you know, however many years down the road when now they say that the system that they put in is failing and no longer there, and then we're making this decision then anyway.

[04:11:59] So I do appreciate it. I'm not trying to suggest that the concern shouldn't be there for the jurisdictional area. But I just have not, I don't share the same fear of what it could turn into if this is allowed. So that's where I'm at on it. Is there any additional comments? Now, should we have the discussion on the other or go ahead and vote on this one and move?

[04:12:20] I would suggest that there be a motion on this, and then the board can have a separate discussion regarding the critical slopes waiver is the other item. Great. So there is the motion on the screen. Okay. I move to adopt the resolution attachment E attached to the staff report to approve ACSA 2026-00001.

[04:12:42] Seconded. All right. The motion has been made and seconded. Any further discussion? All right. If you'll please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lepisto-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? No. All right. The motion carries three to one. Then that will bring us to the critical slopes conversation. I'll just go through. Is there any additional, because you already did the presentation. Yes, we covered the presentation.

[04:13:08] Supervisor Pruitt, any additional questions, comments on this one? Supervisor Malik? I guess not. Thank you. Supervisor Lepisto-Curtley? All right. Then looking for a motion, uh is this yeah critical slopes on the screen okay i move to adopt the resolution attachment d attached to the staff report to approve se 2026 0001 with conditions seconded all right the motion has been made and seconded any further discussion all right if you'll please call the roll mr

[04:13:44] pruitt i mr galloway yes miss lapista kirtley i miss malik no all right motion carries three to Thank you, Mr. Newberry, and thank you to the applicant. Congratulations. All right, board, we will move to item number 20, ZMA 2025-1600 Ryo Road West.

[04:14:11] And Mr. Langeal is joining us. Good evening, sir. Good evening, everyone. Give me one minute here to get this PowerPoint set up.

[04:14:32] Okay, good evening, everyone. My name is Cameron Langeal. I'm a principal planner with the Community Development Department, and I'll be giving you the staff presentation and recommendation on ZMA 2025-01, which is known as 600 Ryo Road West.

[04:14:50] So this request is looking to rezone four parcels from the CO Commercial Office Zoning District to the Neighborhood Model District. It's 3.2 acres total, and if it were to be approved, it would be subject to the application plan and code of development, which those are attachments A2 and A3 in the staff report.

[04:15:11] There's two special exception requests associated with this. One of them is a request to waive the mixture of uses requirement, which is a zoning ordinance standard for neighborhood model districts. The other one is a request to reduce the minimum amount of amenities that would be required with the neighborhood model district.

[04:15:26] I'll speak more about both of those later in the presentation. So just to get everyone oriented with where these properties are located, they're highlighted in light blue in the center of your screen. Two of them touch Raya Road West, which I'll use my laser pointer, but I have everything labeled.

[04:15:45] um rio road west is this road here uh it's located just west of the intersection with berkmar drive there's a private street that goes into our properties right off of rio road and that's station lane and there's another uh public street known as greenfield terrace that has a driveway apron back here at the rear a variety of uses surround our properties um there are single family detached residences on the west side sort of southwest which this area these properties are known as Oakley. This is the Blake Assisted Living Facility. Over here, all these structures

[04:16:22] you see, that's the Berkmar Crossing Shopping Center, and there's a wide variety of commercial and service uses located there. Due east of our properties, there's some retail buildings as well as doctor's offices and office spaces. Within our subject properties themselves, right now there exists five single-family townhomes. They're attached dwelling units, and then there's two standalone detached units. One of them is an unoccupied dwelling. The other one is a dwelling that has received approval in the past to operate as a professional office building. So this is the

[04:17:00] zoning map. You can see again, our parcels are highlighted in blue. They're that salmon color, which represents commercial office. There's a very diverse zoning district environment here. You know, there's single family detached zoning to the west. That's that yellow color, which is R4.

[04:17:18] South of Ryo Road, there's other neighborhood model districts, which that would be, sorry, let me get my major pointer. This is Oakley. It's been rezoned. It's neighborhood model himself. And then we have planned district shopping center at Berkmar Crossing. The other uses to the east, most of them are zoned C1 commercials.

[04:17:37] Some are zoned C office. So this is getting into, this is sheet four of attachment A2, which again would be the application plan. So what we are looking at tonight is a proposal to do a minimum of 28 dwelling units.

[04:17:53] or a maximum of 153. That density comes out to a minimum of 8.7 or a maximum of 47.8 units per acre. The applicant is also proposing to do 20% of their total units at 60% AMI to be consistent with housing Albemarle. That would result in 31 total affordable dwelling units.

[04:18:13] There's no minimum requirement for retail or commercial uses proposed with this, But the Code of Development would allow up to 20,000 square feet of commercial uses. Building heights, just one more thing I want to talk about. These new buildings would be between one and five stories, maximum 60 feet tall.

[04:18:32] Basically, the layout shows the new structures, which would be multifamily buildings with a ground level of parking that you could pull into. That would be over here, over here, and then this building wouldn't have parking beneath it, but it would be a multifamily housing type.

[04:18:47] Station lane would remain. There'd be some new parking. and then a variety of new sidewalks internally that would be built one thing to note is that the sidewalk proposed along rio road west would be eight feet wide which is consistent with the transportation improvement recommendations from the rio 29 small area plan which is the long-range plan that applies to this property another thing i'll talk about on this image before i move on is the applicant has put forth a proffer statement that proposes to resume reserve an area measures about 7,150 square feet that could be dedicated to the county in the future

[04:19:25] to establish a trailhead. We own a parcel that's located just to the north that Parks and Rec has looked at as a potential site for a new public park. Nothing is set in stone. There's no immediate plans to do that, but it has been identified as the location of a future park potentially. So our Parks and Rec staff worked with this applicant to identify an appropriate location where we could get a connection into the park. The reason for this is that if you tried to access that park from Berkmar Drive, it would require new VDOT commercial grade entrances,

[04:20:00] which would result in right-of-way being needed, new turn lanes. It'd be pretty costly. So just as a backup measure, this might be something that's pretty beneficial to have in the future if we ever do end up turning that property into a park just some minor other details this shows you know primary vehicular access as well as the parking you can see the parking at the ground level here here and here sidewalks so on and so forth the green areas that you see would be different amenity spaces where they would have certain things going on dog parks potentially tot lots patios gathering spaces the way that the code of development is written is they could have

[04:20:40] amenity spaces within these buildings as well. In total, they would have 22,303 square feet of amenities, which that comes out to 16% of the site acreage. And then green space, you'll notice there's this lighter green color up here that doesn't really have anything. That is where you make up the additional 5,500 square feet. But ultimately, they would have a total percent of the 20 site or 20% of the total site acreage is green space. So the two special exceptions, Well, neighborhood model districts are required to have two general use classifications.

[04:21:13] I've listed them directly from the ordinance as they're written. The code of development as it is would allow commercial uses, but since there's no minimum requirement, we felt that it would be most prudent for the applicant to get this special exception request in case they do end up developing strictly as residential uses.

[04:21:32] Some of the criteria that the ordinance calls out is it says that this could be approved by the board if there are a variety of different uses within a quarter mile radius of the properties. And there are, I mean, there's a lot of uses, professional offices, commercial, so on and so forth. The other special exception request is to reduce the minimum amount of required amenities.

[04:21:55] These properties are in a unique position because they're in the small area plan. What the zoning ordinance says is that the amount of amenities you're required to have is established based on the future land use classification that applies to your property.

[04:22:11] So if you're in the Pantops master plan or the Places 29 master plan, there's consistent future land use classifications. And some of those need 15% amenities. Some of them need 20% amenities. Since this is in the small area plan, they don't have those same future land use classifications from any of the other master plans. And what the small area plan says is that If you're going to develop, you should have a range somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

[04:22:40] Our application is proposing 16 percent, but this special exception was put forth just to sort of, you know, verify that everyone is OK with them having 16 instead of 20 or 19, for example. So the staff recommendation was we recommended approval.

[04:22:57] I'm not going to read these out word for word, but it's consistent, you know, with our growth management policy, many different aspects of the small area plan. it's providing some new improvements that would be beneficial that have been identified by our long-range plans and not to mention that the area that we could call be dedicated to public use one concern we identified is that agner hurt in or excuse me agner elementary in future years is projected to have some capacity conflicts and so this new use would result in some elementary school students being added to the school so it was just that capacity conflict was a slight

[04:23:34] concerned. We went to a public hearing on February 24th of this year with the Planning Commission. They voted 5-0 to recommend approval. At that point, I would be glad to take any questions the board may have. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Proe? Can you explain to me one more again about the amenity area exception? I heard you say it complies with the required amenity exception, but they're asking for an amenity or it requires it complies with the request or with the required

[04:24:10] amenity size but they're requesting a special exception for not complying with it anyway is that again so what the the zoning ordinance says you know if your property is not designated for urban density residential i'm sure you all recall us saying that when we have different properties that are proposed to be re-zoned if you're urban density residential you need to have 20 percent of your site as amenities this small area plan what it calls the future land use classification is the fringe area and so in the zoning ordinance there's a catch-all bullet point

[04:24:45] that says if your future land use classification is not one of the those standard future land uses that are within all of our other master plans then it doesn't specify a percentage in the ordinance It just says whatever the master plan or long-range plan recommends, that's what you need to do.

[04:25:05] And so when you go to the small area plan, its recommendation for amenities is a range. It's not one set fixed number, 15% to 20%. And I think the applicant can get up and explain some of the rationale too, but it was just sort of, you know, if they do 15% or 16%, is that going to be a problem since the small area plan calls out a range that goes up to 20?

[04:25:28] All right. We'll have questions for the applicant, but no more at this time. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. So I've somehow lost the train of thought when describing the size of the green space.

[04:25:46] And somewhere on one of the maps, I saw something about indoor amenity space. Does that count in the square footage for a green space? Because somebody told me, it may have been this application or maybe a different one, that someone was claiming that that was part of their square footage.

[04:26:01] So can you clarify that for me? So indoor amenity spaces does count toward, yeah, it does count toward your amenity requirements. But not green space, outdoor green space. I don't believe. And that's a different percentage, right? Yes, that's right. So second question then.

[04:26:18] So there's a different figure for amenities, which is 16, 15 to 20. And what is the green space requirement on here? The green space requirement from the ordinance is 20%. Is 20. Okay. and they're so for that figure does that include the area which they would dedicate to the county for the trailhead yes because currently it's sewn on the map as amenity space yes but that's going to be turned into parking lot and places for people to put their cars to get access to the county park it could be so it's not green space for the residents anymore i mean it it might not necessarily have vehicular parking it could be oh i think there will be it's you know there's no

[04:26:56] definite improvement that Parks and Rec has looked at there as like a design that we've gone and hired a consultant to show, oh, it's all going to be paved surface parking, like a standard parking lot. But I think going off of that train of thought, the idea would be if it was transitioned to some sort of trailhead or a parking lot, it's immediately abutting a new park that would be developed as an amenity feature. Right. And I was not suggesting a paved parking lot at all but there will be in order in order for people not to just park their cars on the loop and drive all the neighbors crazy there needs to be a place for people to pull off otherwise we

[04:27:36] will have similar uproar to what we have in lots of other places so i love the idea that connecting to the future county park it's a wonderful place for people with lots of high density all around here to be able to walk to the woods certainly the home first park up the road is fantastically well received as well and it's very similar so that's pretty cool i find the 47 units per acre pretty mind-blowing but uh anyway i'll just leave that alone you've clarified my questions thank you

[04:28:09] supervisor lapista currently so quick clarification the the area the trailhead is part of the green space but that only becomes not part of the green space when it connects to the adjacent park is correct yeah so i mean this sort of shows a better overlay you know if this were to be approved and these dwelling units get built right now it's going to be green space amenity space but if the county called that proffer at some point in the future and it did transition to something

[04:28:45] like a parking lot there are other green spaces within the property that make up getting to that 20 percent like everything you see over here of course these are amenity spaces but they do double count for green space okay okay but i mean it would be adjacent to a county park yes so it's not like i mean you you you lose a small space right there in your community but right next door

[04:29:12] a few feet over is a park okay thank you um well i don't really have any questions but we have to remember what's on the other side of this theorized park agner elementary school so So parking at a trailhead here would probably be accommodated already with the current parking, just like some of the trails over by Jewett are accommodated.

[04:29:42] It's not like there's added park parking for the trails at Jewett. They use the school parking lots on the weekends and such when people tend to be out enjoying that stuff. that back lot where the soccer field is you could park walk through the field and i would imagine we it one one day when this piece is realized as a park the primary entrance will probably be from that side not through the community at least i'd be recommending that just because of the parking and the other facilities that are over there but how phenomenal to have a the idea of having the trailhead there that would go in because then it actually becomes like charlotte humphreys it

[04:30:20] becomes your your your amenity for where you're for where you're at let alone you know to have a space like that that's wooded and interesting we don't have too many of those in the development area that we could actually call a park so um also a great place to walk to school well that my question that i'll ask that question so the trailhead and all of that and i'll ask the applicant the same thing probably but just like on the other side over there at woodbrook when the dentist office got a couple of things and wanted to build the stairs and the school division got weird about the stairs and i still don't know where the heck we're we're i'd love to still know

[04:30:55] the answer to that i've asked that question of them in public before um but if there was a trail to connect this to the school through our property i mean has was that thought about brainstormed at all during this application process i'm talking not developed as a park i'm talking about oh could we do a little safe route to schools bit through this property and connect it right up to agner i mean it knows a fine answer i'm not gonna i did not have any personal conversations with the school system about darn it cameron why the hell no i'm just kidding um but i mean this is where

[04:31:33] this stuff can lead it's it's not very often that we get to discuss this but we discussed it with the other two developments that were on the north side of agner relative to walkability um and avoiding the car traffic so that that's of uh um that's of interest to me i i know that it's topographically it's kind of i'm sure kevin you've probably mapped a trail through there i didn't see kevin sitting over there blame kevin if it didn't happen um i don't have any other questions right now i may have some after i we hear from the applicant is there anyone signed up for public

[04:32:06] hearing tonight all right so we just will hear from the applicant and drew and kelsey good evening kelsey you know the rules you'll have 10 minutes the green light will go uh on when you begin and then the yellow light will give me and you have a minute to finish you're well rehearsed in those roles thank you all so much while i'm bringing this up i'll uh say good evening chair galloway

[04:32:45] members of the board my name is kelsey schlein i'm a planner with uh tataline development and planning and i'm here tonight uh representing piedmont uh realty three or piedmont realty Holdings 3. Drew Holzworth with Piedmont Realty Holdings 3 is here with me tonight for this application. So before I hop into our request summary, I want to talk a little bit about the timeline of this project and really commend this applicant for trying to make the form-based code

[04:33:25] work on this particular property. I'm going to spend a good amount of my presentation tonight just focusing on why we couldn't exactly make the form-based code work on this particular property, but how we really tried to, you know, embody the spirit of what that code is trying to achieve in this area with the neighborhood model district application that we brought before you. So I think Drew started playing around with concepts on this site back in 2022. And then in 2024, he basically spent the whole year trying to make the form-based code work. So plenty of meetings

[04:34:05] with the county, meetings with VDOT, trying to see how, and I'll get to this a little later, how we could really make the street section work through this particular property. We faced some challenges there on this particular site, and I'll get into that, but after spending about a year really focused on trying to make the FPC come to fruition on this site, we ultimately pivoted to a neighborhood model rezoning proposal, and so that's why we're here before you tonight. Cameron, thank you for the excellent presentation, so kind of already went over all this, but this is a request

[04:34:41] to zone a little over three acres from commercial office to neighborhood model. We have a request for a maximum of 153 residential units, and this project will adhere to the Housing Albemarle policy. We'll also probably be back at some point applying for grant and loan funds available as well to make this work. There's a proffered land reservation for a future park connection, and as Cameron discussed, we are applying for special exceptions from a mixture of uses and

[04:35:18] a reduction of amenity space to 16%. So this is where we are within the form-based code overlay. So the orange-red outline shows the entirety of the FBC district. Our three acres are located within what is called the flex designation and so between the core flex and edge we're kind of in that middle tier of intensity of development and when we were evaluating whether the form-based

[04:35:52] code could work on this particular site the the major the major hurdle that we were up against was designing an internal street to public street standards in the form-based code all streets are required to be dedicated or required to be public streets. And there is a pretty wide street section that's nearly 50 feet in width required for a right-of-way for a local street that consists of travel lanes, landscape buffer, sidewalks on each side, and optional on-street parking as well.

[04:36:28] To design a street to VDOT standards, we would have to incorporate a 200-foot centerline radius to extend Greenfield Terrace through to Rio Road. If we incorporate that centerline radius to this road, we would effectively lose this entire portion of our property to a streetscape.

[04:36:52] So that was one issue where we had multiple meetings with VDOT and staff, but couldn't quite make that work, and so ultimately pivoted to the NMD. A few other hurdles that we were up against here was just the dedication of the civic space to public use. That was a little tricky to make work on this property.

[04:37:11] And there's a few building requirements as well, such as a 14-foot minimum first floor that isn't super conducive to residential development. And so, and kind of going back to what I was saying about how we really tried to achieve the spirit of the form-based code on this site, I just put together this comparison table, which I think is helpful.

[04:37:39] So we have the form-based code requirements for density, where there's no maximum density specified. And so our density proposal is aligned with that requirement. The building heights are two to four stories, with five stories permitted with an affordability bonus.

[04:37:58] We have a maximum five-story building proposed. The amenity areas, the requirement in the form-based code is a 15% civic space requirement, And we're proposing 16 percent. So consistent with that. And then we are meeting the affordable housing requirements.

[04:38:16] So this is our development concept, which Cameron showed to you all as well. And so this just, you know, establishes, you know, our building envelopes, parking relegated to the rear of the building. We have buildings, you know, we're establishing a streetscape along Ryo Road and incorporating, as Cameron noted, the eight foot sidewalk and streetscape section.

[04:38:38] that's imagined for Rio Road in the form-based code. Going into our special exceptions for, we'll start with the mixture of uses. So we are requesting a waiver since we are permitting the possibility of commercial uses, but not requiring commercial uses to be, or I should say commercial or institutional or parks dedicated to public use as part of our application.

[04:39:09] And so, but I think if you look at this site on the whole, you know, if this were a 50-acre development or something along those lines, we pick up quite a mixture of uses with Rio Hill Shopping Center, with the assisted living facility at the Blake across the street.

[04:39:26] And so, you know, if you look at this on a broader scale, although we can't check every single box on a three-acre site to meet every single NMD requirement, looking at this site on the whole, we are well integrated with a very mixed use and diverse area of Albemarle County.

[04:39:48] And our special exception for amenity space, so kind of speaking to Supervisor Pruitt's question, so the master plan identifies a range of amenity space.

[04:40:05] And so really just to make it crystal clear that we don't have to meet the 20% requirement, we have pursued the exception as well. But I think just because we're pursuing the exception, I don't think that this development will be shy of amenities whatsoever.

[04:40:25] There are still amenity requirements that we have to meet. And I think that this, you know, a reduction in amenity space also is just a recognition of the fact that this is a little more of an urban site and an urban type development.

[04:40:41] and a lot of the tools that we have in the neighborhood model district are geared a little more towards historically suburban development. And so I think that, you know, we'll have plenty of amenities, especially with if there's a future park connection that takes place, that would be a wonderful asset, not only to the community, but also for this development being right next door. So that answers some of your questions that you had about our special exceptions. That is all that I have for you this evening. I'm available for any questions. Thank

[04:41:16] you so much. Thank you, Supervisor Pruitt. I want to begin by making an observation that's going to lead into a question. You complied with our affordability standards. There have been very few applicants since we adopted the current affordability standards who have not been grandfathered into previous standards, and I think you are the only applicant that has proposed complying with them and i'm open to being corrective i'm remembering rst who did not comply with them um and another one who is similarly postured who also did not comply with them um

[04:41:55] i think there've only been two and everyone else has failed to comply um we had a previous discussion and here's where it leads into the question now that i've done finishing that praise i think i might have assumed zmas and um developer incentives the tax abatement program that we have um walking hand in glove together um because i as you alluded to i assumed that you would not know whether or not it would pencil out and therefore be worth the zma without the um the

[04:42:31] tax incentive and so i i guess because we were asking earlier today about like are developers aware of this what does it look like have you already applied for this have you started the process it looks like it's a really short sheet uh to fill out so so what is your experience with that been? Because I assume, because you said you're going to be exploring the tax incentives.

[04:42:54] Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we've talked about it. That is definitely something that we want to pursue. We have not started that process just yet on this particular application. And I can appreciate the comment about them, about the affordable housing incentive application and ZMA kind of moving forward at the same time. I think with that program, you know, being relatively new, I think standing here now, that's a great idea. And if I could go back two years, that's

[04:43:31] where we'd probably be. But, you know, this is kind of how the project progressed and the phasing of those two items moving forward independently. Awesome. A resident of mine, not a resident, who lives near where this is but a resident in my district um had a few concerns i thought were thoughtfully well observed and one of them i do want to actually reflect to you which is the um the positioning of the amenity spaces and their characteristic out their outdoor amenity spaces are are ill-suited toward families with children and i think um if i could maybe put some particular

[04:44:09] flavor on that they are not protected from an active roadway um i can imagine there might be some concerns about geometry, but can you kind of talk me through the engineering perspective of how you got to the location and shape of the amenity spaces and obstacles to things that would be more appropriate to unsupervised children and what kind of alternatives or plans you would say are currently in place for that situation? I mean, I think, you know, that point and that concern

[04:44:45] is incredibly well taken. And I think in thoughtful, I think maybe an initial response to that would be, you know, that in a very diverse community with that, where a lot of people have a very different definition of family and what that looks like that we need to be providing housing for all types of people. And so, you know, maybe when this project comes online, it might not be a slam dunk community for families, but it might be a slam dunk community for a single firefighter or teacher or, you know, a couple just starting out or maybe an older couple

[04:45:23] who wants to downsize and not have, you know, as much responsibility out in the yard. I would also say, though, for, you know, once this project eventually kind of comes online, if we have some units you know that are larger and more conducive to family like this property is so well suited to have access to agner hurt and the amenities there um and you know a playground and soccer field that are far away from the road and and very much in a in a safe location for kids to play um i have

[04:45:57] one more thing oh the um the currently existing townhouses yeah um are those owner occupied or are those for rentals currently are they owned by the applicant uh yeah i'm seeing nodding it's complicated but yes it's complicated but yes sure heard yeah for the kind of complicated ownership structure got it uh i i am thinking i am surprised i'm not hearing from the people who live in there um because i might imagine i can see why this would be a i think this is a very cool application

[04:46:36] but i could see how far i can think of exactly eight people who i would expect to be opposed to it and um if it is not owner occupied that partly explains that that's all i have great supervisor malik thank you and thank you for all the good work on it and right off the bat i am completely thrilled with the access to this future park and hopefully future is not very far away because there's certainly lots of people already on site who could benefit from this so that is great and And I'm also glad that there wasn't some kind of quid pro quo negotiation for a grant versus the affordable housing.

[04:47:13] The fact that you're proposing to meet the guidelines immediately is also a huge benefit. So I think that my questions have been answered. And, oh, no, there was one. The private roads is what I assume you're proposing since the difficulty to meet VDOT standards, even for tiny streets.

[04:47:36] And we're having a lot of places in where the private roads are creating or private anything, septic or sewer or stormwater or something is creating disaster for fairly small projects like this.

[04:47:51] yours is not 12 units it's 100 and something probably so in a far better circumstance but is there already a structure set up to do annual tithing or assessments or something to a fund that could then come back in x number of years and repave the parking for example so it doesn't turn into pothole city yeah and i believe there's already a structure kind of set up with the existing um owners uh for that and so that's how you know it'll continue in the future i mean this kind of road functions given that it's proposed between like multi-family units it

[04:48:26] functions much more as a as an access way like an internal um you know just as you would drive through a parking lot at a at a apartment complex that's kind of how this functions effectively um rather than you know a a of a strictly private road um which you know i'm sure you've yes hear a lot about in the county so this is not the uh okay i got it then that's it's like the parking lot at the view where it's just the parking lot really it's not that's what it street right that's a totally different deal yeah it does i mean it does connect and so people can drive through but

[04:49:05] i just kind of want to say like of its like function i think of you know when we you know are when you all are made aware we know when uh you know there's talk in the community about issue with private roads it's typically more so in a subdivision yes single family or townhome subdivision rather than in like an apartment style basically the owner will be responsible for all that stuff as they normally would all right well thank you that was my one question appreciate it uh supervisor lapisto currently thank you well i i just see 153 units 60 percent

[04:49:38] ami i commend you on that well not all of them i know 20 but um thank you very much i i love your proposal i mean i i think you you add a lot i do have and i'm not an engineer so forgive me okay but when they talk about the green spaces and amenity areas why don't why aren't things maybe clustered in like half of it and then the other whole half is all amenity or green space area as opposed to little bits and pieces yeah that's a question i'm asking sure i mean i think on this

[04:50:17] site that's just kind of how the building footprints and envelopes laid out was to create smaller amenity spaces but i'll also say i think like in apartment communities that's kind of nice um to where you know you can kind of have smaller gatherings and groups of people like move around the site rather than just like one designated space for everyone like you know i think it's nice to kind of create little pockets um for yeah for folks and i mention that i mean because it was mentioned about how spaces for you know little children and everything like that i'm also hearing spaces well what about a basketball court for the older

[04:50:54] kids but with the park being there that's going to be well hopefully soon uh that's going to be really good but even so you've got the the school playground also so thank you no other question thank you um can you go to your something that shows the concept plan i mean anything will work where are you thinking or do you have it figured out yet about the 20 000 square the minimum or wait the maximum what do we say the 20 000 square foot like it's for green space no there was a i

[04:51:29] thought uh commercial commercial do you have an idea of where did what and remind me because is it it can go up to 20 yeah but there's no minimum there's no minimum so if you were going to do something up to 20 where were you thinking that was going to go or have you got there yeah i mean we haven't i think i do like if if someone came online that wanted to you know open they wanted a small office or their you know small bakery whatever i imagine they'd want a street presence so it would probably be in the front portion of this building envelope on rio but you're thinking

[04:52:04] mainly like a retail right yeah exactly um and and we we put it in there to create flexibility in the zoning but realistically it's likely going to build out as entirely residential and so that's you know why we applied for so you're thinking like uh if something like you just theorized what would that be like 5 000 less than that yep something like that um the that we talked about

[04:52:35] so that yeah i'm glad i'm actually glad at one point thinking that this was going to turn into some sort of street because then it just comes a wiggle around the light at burkmar and raya so however that circle that's there could maybe be augmented to say hey this is not a cut through or a way to drive through or it looks more problematic than sitting in the light to turn right on raya road west would be just encouraging that as part of the build or the design um so you know if this

[04:53:15] project meets the 60% AMI with the 20% of units at 60% AMI, one of the elements, I mean, we built the incentives to help close the gap when we changed the goalposts a little bit, but it also can be used that if you could achieve that and the incentive could maybe help take it further, either more units at 60 or perhaps take the AMI even further down, that that, I just want to make sure that's on the table that everybody's thinking about and considering. Because, you know, while it could be used to close a gap to get to the 20 percent the initial benchmark we'd love to go

[04:53:50] further than that um and i at least this supervisor would so that's something that i would encourage as you start as you have those conversations you're like wow this is what we can do and if we have that in place man we might even actually be able to do 30 units and i'm not going to hold you to a number of course or maybe you start going some of these could be at a lower ami etc um so I'm just wanting to sit on top of the for the same reasons Supervisor Pruitt brought the question up, is getting that information out of what the board is interested in maybe discussing and having some flexibility on.

[04:54:24] No through street. Yeah, I think everything else I have is commentary, so I don't need to do it here. Great. Thank you. Any need for rebuttal? No rebuttal. Just thank you all so much. Appreciate your questions.

[04:54:40] Thank you very much. I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for additional questions or comments and all. I do have some comments, but I'll go through the order just to see where folks are at this point. Supervisor Pruitt. I have nothing further. Thank you. Supervisor Malik. No concerns. I'm supportive. Thank you. Supervisor Lepisto Kirkland. No other questions. Thank you. All right. I like to with these, whether they're contentious or not to address things and since we did receive typically when we receive a communication from a constituent if they're not in my district i might speak to some of it but this one's from a sitting economic

[04:55:20] development authority member and member of the long-range planning advisory committee so i feel like it's fair game for me to be able to make some public comments and commentary on the email that we received so i'm going to do that as well as make some other commentary um how cool is it to have a place that's being developed with affordable housing in it where across the road is a library that they can walk to they've got a they've got a sprint track because to get there they'll have to race across rio road to get their exercise into the library they can walk without having to cross any streets to an elementary school so if you go back down the existing roadway and cut in there's

[04:55:57] sidewalk there already they can go up now they well you're right there's no sidewalk on the west side of the driveway going up to agner so they would have to cross at the agner to catch the sidewalk that takes them up into the school site but that they could do that woodburn road there's no sidewalk but you could even walk down woodburn road to get to the back side where the soccer field and all of that is and then as you continue down past agner you catch the light and the new pedestrian facilities that will be there and cut over and be able to walk into kroger i mean we just don't have to most of the time those are the things being touted as to why we should be

[04:56:34] approving these type of things so i get a little baffled when i'm being told that there's no amenity space for this. All right, is there no amenity space being provided by the developer? Well, we've all acknowledged in the past that in our development areas that we're supposed to take on the load of having housing units, that they're getting more niche and compact to be able to do things. And you know what? In this country, providing required amenity space, that's a policy decision, right, that can limit housing units. So if you require the amenity space, you'll lose what you can potentially get in the housing units. What's the higher priority? The housing need

[04:57:14] or the amenity space need? So, you know, sometimes when folks start saying there's not enough amenities here, need to maybe reread the small area plan where the amenities that were planned for in that development, one, the county said we would, we committed to taking over small little public areas in the small area plan. This proffers the area for it. Trailhead, great, right? So it achieves that um but man to have a place where i can say yeah you're gonna yeah you could have a future park right next door um i mean i know here's where i lived and grew up my grandmother

[04:57:50] raised me on the ohio river in wheeling west virginia i ran out the front door and i was in the street i ran out the back door and then i could cross the street if i got across the street then i hit a railroad where trains were still going and if i got past the trains then i went down a 40 foot drop into the ohio river so that was my fun right but when you live in those urban or urbanizing kind of areas, the street didn't, I had to go four or five blocks to get to a playground at the local elementary school where I went to school, not right there on my city block.

[04:58:21] So this is actually starting to function in the way that I feel like between getting people out of cars, they can, and if they work in the area, they could legitimately not necessarily have to get into a car if they live in this particular area of Berkmar. Now, that being said, the school was the only piece of concern that was going up.

[04:58:44] And I appreciated Mr. Storm's email to us because it got me thinking about that. So I went and did a little looking on that. Back in 2015, the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee projected that in 2025, the 10-year enrollment, so 10 years ago, the 10-year enrollment for today would be 495.

[04:59:06] The capacity at the school right now, the 30-day enrollment is 449. So 10 years ago, they actually did a pretty good job of showing some capacity in the building. Now, that doesn't include their pre-K numbers. The interesting part is in 2015, this is already after Agner Hertz' expansion that was done, the capacity in the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee's report in 2015 was for 566 students.

[04:59:34] In the 2025 Long Range Planning report, the capacity for the school was 509. So I'm curious, like, oh, but how we do capacity sometimes is based on changing class sizes. So in this year's, if you take 25, in the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee report of 25, it says you have 25 classrooms at 18 students per, that's the 450 seats, and then you have four preschool to get you 59.

[05:00:01] But then when you look at their enrollment report from this past October, the average class size at Agner Hurt is 18.7. If you take 18.7 by 25, your capacity is now 467 classes. So capacity of a school building can change depending on the math you use to get there.

[05:00:20] So I agree with Mr. Storm that data is squishy. And some of his complaints about the update in data is exactly why coming out of December, we called for more updated data so that we can get at this sort of thing. Because a project like this could, and I hope does, get a lot of families in it.

[05:00:36] Because they'll have access to what they have access to. and can connect to the school um and frankly there's some and there's some choice of words and choice of phrases in the email that i didn't exactly appreciate it being directed at staff so i'm just going to state that publicly as well but i'm glad that he helped prove the point of what we've come to what we've already arrived at which is that we're going to start getting more nuanced and better data so when applications come forward like this that we won't be using maybe data that was incorrect or gave a bad projection 10 years ago although it looked like it was okay for that, and that we'll use actual school data and where the families are coming from

[05:01:12] in that area and what it could produce based on the affordability standards, and I think we start making not only smarter decisions in the land use decisions, but we'll also be able to start planning for future capital improvement project needs and how to fund them in a way that will make us more confident in those choices, so I'll get off my high horse on that email. I do encourage that uh um that that developer incentive piece that i brought up i was i'll be kind of following up on that uh just to make sure how that goes because we haven't had many so the board i think is also just interested in what comes of it or how it went and feedback on that so ask for your

[05:01:51] um for your all's a piece on that so i'm thrilled i'm happy i know that the the folks that are living there now um are probably not going to be thrilled with the increased piece because of what they're used to, but it's also come forward. I mean, this was theorized before your application in the small area plant, so this is not something that should be surprising. It's got a lot of public scrutiny. I know that the CAC was supportive of the idea, and I'll be happy to see this one come online, and we'll be excited to see it do so. So with that, I would love to make the motion.

[05:02:25] Before you do, man. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry. So in answer to your question, I want it all. I would love to have as many units as are reasonable, but I also want what this applicant can provide, which is a really great quality of life for the people who live there. So I'm not willing to give up outdoor recreation spaces and pave everything to have another 50 units because that would be like the Bronx and I don't want that. But anyway, I'm very optimistic that this will be the perfect blend. So thank you. Well, and I think that they're maximizing and that we have this local developer who appreciates and knows what folks want um but this is the kind of thing

[05:03:04] that we're hoping to see like i think when we all talk about the applications to come forward increased density that we could slam dunk on some of these check marks um and i'm not poo-pooing that there could be 20 more kids at agner hurt but based on the history and the math of the numbers that i'm looking at i think agner hurt can absorb it um and albemarle was the other point of contention. Oh, you got me going again. In 2015, the projected enrollment for Albemarle High School, the 10-year enrollment projection was 2,306 students. The current long-range planning

[05:03:43] advisory committee's projection 10 years out from now is 2,091. They've downed their projection for the 10 years for 300. There's currently 1,875 students there. I think we know Albemarle has capacity issues but it's at one of the lower enrollment points that it's been over the years and ace academy is coming online uh and for urban area folks um i do like understand and can appreciate that the folks that live further out in the county um sometimes maybe feel like what's it calmed down and what will exist in front of albemarle is a little bit more limiting for them because of the distance but when you're looking at the folks that live in on the urban ring that

[05:04:22] attend Albemarle High School, those things become a little bit more appetizing to some of the dual enrollment pieces that goes to Monticello and what they can do in ACE. So, you know, this is the, and, you know, if you're going to ask for a high school, that data is going to help us figure out if that, if the capacity needs are really there for it. So yeah, but I do appreciate being able to go back and look at that. I hadn't looked at that in 2015 was my last year on the school board so i was kind of remembering some of the agner hurt numbers from that because we did an expansion there and just kind of remember way back before there were two other high schools in 1967

[05:05:01] my graduating year at ahs there were 1600 of us before any additions so there you go and you know having a tightened up data will only inform because it's our data that the long-range planning advisory committee works off of we give them the housing data so if that's tighter then that's all their projections are going to get better and i know that's welcomed by the school division as well they want to prioritize things so they can start knocking things off their capital improvement list and better data better decisions will only help us do that several classrooms that haven't even opened yet when we visited oh the the new wing up top yeah that'll i mean that yeah well

[05:05:38] that you're right that would change their i mean this was done off of last year so i don't know that that's in their current projections or not the uh and sorry to the applicant that i had to do my i had to get up on my stump there um so i moved to adopt the ordinance attachment d attach to the staff report to approve zma 2025 1 600 rio road west second all right and without objection if the clerk will please call the roll mr pruitt hi mr galloway yes miss lapista currently i miss malik yes all right very good motion carries for oh thank you all good luck with your project two

[05:06:16] additional special exceptions for the board oh that's right yep uh i move to adopt the resolution attachment E attached to the staff report to approve SE 2025 7. Second. All right without objection if the clerk will please call the roll. Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. LaPista Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malik. Yes. And I move to adopt a resolution attachment F attached to the staff report to approve SE 2025 8. Second. All right without objection if the clerk will call the roll.

[05:06:50] Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapisto-Curtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Very good. Those motions carry. Thank you, board. Thank you. All right. We will move to item number 21. That's from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda. Supervisor Pruitt? Yes. So as Supervisor Lapisto-Curtley alluded to, a short seven hour, six and a half hours earlier, We attended the Pantops Community Advisory Committee.

[05:07:27] It was the first time I had convened in a while because we had had just a gap in the budget town halls. And the main thing that we reviewed was the improvements that are planned on Stony Point Road.

[05:07:45] This is the intersection near the Grit Coffee, near the Thai restaurant in that mixed-use community right there where there was also a little over a year ago a prominent traffic fatality that helped us frankly pull down the money for these kinds of improvements there was some lively community discussion people talking about a lot of lived experience about how to where exactly people just where the existing desire paths are how people like to cross that intersection and how it's being planned to accommodate that um it was also uh and as i'm sure supervisor lapisto currently will add um

[05:08:24] in more detail it was a particularly um fun uh meeting because we had a an unusually large amount of members of the public both generally at uh for this um for this proposal but also there was a um a scout troop who were all showing up um in order to this somehow is involved for one of their badges um and so that just made it fun we uh we picked on them until like two people asked questions hopefully the adults were well behaved the well well one of the scout leaders

[05:08:59] is um mr tj fadley who has you know a polite i think it's fair to say rivalry you were literally rivals um with one of the elected members of that um cac so um mostly well behaved well behaved had some concerns about taxes, but that is, I think, the only community report I have since our last meeting. All right. Supervisor Malik. Thank you very much. I will be sending, once I finish cleaning up my notes from the High Growth Coalition, I will send the notes to everyone so you can properly

[05:09:34] read them and for the folks who aren't here today. The takeaway from the meeting was fascinating because yours truly, of course, could not resist asking rather pointed questions. There was a panel in the morning of general assembly members who had never been any part of local government and they were asked so what do you think of when you when local government people come to the to the legislature what what are your responses well we think they're a bunch of whiners who just say no to everything that was a bit off-putting um and that very clearly they had their own ideas

[05:10:14] about what was reasonable for the state to decide and how little capacity local governments had to make any contribution whatsoever so it was really great we had some good exchanges um the and then after lunch we had a panel of of also general assembly members who had had lots of or even limited experience as local government officials or in staff positions or managers or something like that and they had a totally different take which was you are our partners you are advocates

[05:10:51] You are dealing with the things every single day, and you are not obstructionist, but you have to have a seat at the table. So the takeaway from both groups was all local governments can do a much better job much earlier in the season to meet with our legislators, but not necessarily at a big powwow, but individual, which takes more time for us to meet with them individually, but it's really only three meetings now that we have so few people.

[05:11:21] to be able to explain in a quiet gathering what is most important to our residents and the concerns that we have and the challenges that we have somehow they all imagined that we would be able to follow 3 000 bills much earlier in the season especially and i was i didn't ask about this but the bills change all the time and so you get yourself all riled up to go repent when you get down to richmond it's all changed anyway so that's very frustrating but we're just out in the hinterlands. And so that's just a fact we're going to have to learn to deal with. But it was, you know, start the process in the summer because they're anticipating that their filing work is

[05:12:00] going to be happening much earlier than December as far as getting bills filed. So many of them described how their, many of their 15 slots or whatever the slot number will be are already taken up by the end of summer. So this is just a way for us to be thinking about the fact that in the old days when I started, Larry Davis would not even begin to worry about it until crossover. He'd say, but there's just too much going on up there, and we just can't be bothered until after crossover, and I realized that there were a lot of things that passed that we really should have tried to kill or things that we lost out on because we weren't there earlier, so I'm really grateful

[05:12:37] for what we're doing now, but I think we can always learn to do things a little more. Amy had some wonderful successes this year, and I'm really proud of the work that she did on the sludge rules and the ability to test, which is going to help to protect our residents tremendously.

[05:12:57] And I know staff has that on one of their to-do lists as far as figuring out what that might entail. We'll be learning more about that soon. All the various speakers said that expect all the bills that failed this year to come back again next year, even if they're ones that are awful, because these proponents have decided that they know better.

[05:13:17] And there was no pushback on me at all when I said it really, what I hear from residents whom I represent, is that the people in the General Assembly think that they know better than all of us. So it was a great learning experience, I'll tell you. There were over 100 people there, all different walks of life, and so it was really fun. But thank you all, and I will send you more stuff when I have it. Supervisor Lepisto-Caroline? Yeah, I just wanted to go back with my EDA

[05:13:51] meeting is that we, the EDA, did approve a $15,000 grant match for the flight to Boston, from CHO to Boston, for a grant, if that is awarded. So if it's not awarded, they don't get the $15,000. If it is, they get the $15,000 from the EDA. They bring in, with one daily round trip, the show brings in 21 million dollars in economic development um so that that is something that i thought was very important there was and what supervisor prewitt said regarding our

[05:14:30] cac meeting it was a good meeting the it was interesting because the scouts we invited them you know go ahead and speak speak up so they can get their badges and everything i think there was only one one little one girl that spoke up asked a question so uh they're hard they're real hard to pull questions out of because i get i get a number of them calling me to to get their government badge they have to speak with me and uh it's really like sometimes pulling teeth but um they're they're really they're very nice very nice kids and it's really i'm really proud to be part of

[05:15:10] that Stoney Point area, the Scouts and the Veritan. Question for you. The EDA, to whom would the $15,000 be paid? Oh, that is a grant that they applied for. They who, the airport?

[05:15:25] The economic, we're supporting it. It's the application of the Small Community Air Service Development Program. So it's federal, which is why I didn't read it all. Mr. Chair.

[05:15:42] Yeah, I'd like to say just a little bit more about that grant that board member Papisto currently is talking about. Ms. Malik may remember, I don't think anybody else was on the board, probably 10 years ago plus, there was a similar grant that was pursued for the Chicago Direct Connection, and they were successful.

[05:16:06] And the airport is going into the private sector and asking for dollars to match the grant to put us in a more favorable position with the carrier who would be in line to consider this direct flight. This was a partnership with the city, EDA, the county, and the University of Virginia. All three entities provided a $15,000 match for $45,000 in total. And in my meeting earlier this week with the airport director, they did submit the grant on time before the deadline.

[05:16:43] And I don't know the total amount of private match dollars that were provided by companies to make the grant more favorable at the federal level, but it was a significant amount of private commitment to try to make this connector go well.

[05:17:01] And the way it works, real quick, is if we're successful in getting this, we would land this connection, I believe, for two years, and there would be certain performance metrics on a weekly basis that would be tracked. And the only time that the local grant dollars would kick in is if we're falling below what we see would be the break-even point for the carrier. And of course, they've got lots of data to suggest that this would be a very successful direct connection.

[05:17:30] it's been the number one request for the time that i've been in charlottesville uh and so and and i believe that we've sent several reports to the board on that but it's been it's been some time but i just wanted to elaborate on on the fifteen thousand dollars from our eda and i'm excited that the city and the university also jumped in with us and partnered just to help out thank you and i'd correct my statement from earlier the the sidewalk was where i thought it was so they can walk all the way to agner it'd be on a sidewalk all the way up into the building

[05:18:04] look at that because i remember i remembered the old development the old development you had to go into the and cross over to get to the sidewalk so they don't have to do that they can get to the school without ever having to leave the sidewalk um the the only i sent you all a written update on the mpo so that was uh the one meeting that i've had since the last board meeting and the RHP. As you all know, I'm the chair of the Regional Housing Partnership. Mr. Pruitt is now the CARTA rep to the Regional Housing Partnership, the full partnership. But I've told them at the

[05:18:40] executive committee that I would be stepping away from that body to open up a spot, as we had discussed a few months ago during our boards and commissions. But what I hope that we can do, and I haven't thought to note this to the clerk yet, so I'll note it now, is that if we could figure out who our appointed rep would be to that body in june it would allow the regionalizing partnership to take the action necessary to accept and do the appointment for the executive committee so um i'm just throwing that out there as uh we handled leadership there's been a who

[05:19:18] you know in terms of who they'll nominate i don't want need to get ahead of the full partnership on that um but just want this board to have the heads up that we could if we could deal with that in our first meeting in june it'll kind of make it all nice and smooth and clean so that there's not a sorry so that there would not be a gapped period where there was not a albemarle representative sitting on the rhp right so that's uh preemptively all right um and we we had discussed some other things but that was more procedural in the operations of the uh of the um of the

[05:19:55] meeting i hope you all did i don't know if you all did see but uh keith smith you all know keith He had shared a, I shared this with Mr. Richardson this morning, but let me, I'm forgetting the source that I said, but Keith had posted the other day as part of his, you know, he does the show with Real Talk and Realty, but he pulled a top 10 luxury housing markets nationwide. And the source is the Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com Spring 2026 Housing Market Ranking. So this isn't like

[05:20:30] some whatever and uh four of the top five luxury metros have populations under 350 000 the common threat isn't price or inventory it's quality of daily life we are number three on this list number one now i'm sure there's other parameters versus just then the cost amount but number one is santa fe new mexico number two is pittsfield massachusetts uh number three is charlottesville virginia the the housing number they put here is about a million and a half dollars and elsewhere

[05:21:06] on the list so that that puts us ahead in this ranking of boulder salt lake city santa maria santa jose san jose san diego and hilton head that charlottesville albemarle area is a top 10 luxury housing market in the country santa maria california yeah that's surprising the others i understand yeah wow and i mean there's i'd have to get in a dig into the data because it's not just because you look at the average numbers there the the rank isn't based on those average numbers so the the quality of life factor and what they're using the metric behind it but still you know

[05:21:43] just back in the fall i had mentioned in mansion magazine that we were talked called one of the hottest luxury home markets in the country um so it's just something that we have to keep in mind when we're thinking about perhaps not considering rezonings in the development area to get housing units in place in favor of things that could take away from those units. So I won't get spun up on that again. All right. With that, if there's, yes. Is anyone going to the PDC conference on Tuesday in STEM? The first, the reason I remembered to finally say something about it, the first panel

[05:22:19] is about aviation funding. And I don't know if anybody from the airport commission or something or Jason's office is going. David Blunt has forwarded this thing several times to all of us. And the afternoon is, or the second one, is about funding for housing.

[05:22:37] And Dan Rosenzweig is one of the five or six or ten speakers. But that's over at some hotel in Stanton. Oh, this is that finding funding for the future. So I just wanted to remind people, I don't know if I can go, but I just wanted to. When was that again?

[05:22:53] It's Tuesday the 13th. I think it's the 13th. It says Wednesday the 13th. Okay, there you go. Wednesday the 13th. All the better. All the better, yeah. Okay. All right. Good to have the right day. If there is no objection, thank you for a good meeting.

[05:23:09] We will adjourn to May 20th, 26th, 2.30 p.m. in Lane Auditorium.

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