All right, good afternoon. I call the Admiral County Board of Supervisors to order for our March 4th, 2026, one PM meeting here in Lane Auditorium. With us today, we have supervisor Sally Duncan of the Jack Duitt District, supervisor V. Lapisto, currently of the Ravana District, supervisor Fred Missle of the Samuel Miller District, supervisor Anne Malik of the White Hall District, supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District and myself, supervisor Ned Galloway of the Riod District.
Our county attorney is with us, Andy Hurick, our county executive, Mr. Jefferson, our board clerk.
It's Claudette Borgerson, and our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, is manning cameras today.
So he is with us as well.
I want to thank the Almaro County Police Department officers who are present.
We have Sergeant Jason Freystein with us, and Master Police Officer, Eric Ketchum.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us here this afternoon.
And with that, if everyone could please rise as you are able for the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic of which it stands on nation, under God, and in the business of liberty and justice.
Thank you. And if everyone would please now join in a brief moment of silence.
Thank you very much.
Board, before we move to adopt the agenda, we do have two minor modifications here.
At Supervisor Malix request, we are going to add to the agenda of item number 17, which is
from the Board Committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda, a discussion regarding
a letter from the Board requesting the Governor's veto of Senate Bill 443.
And also for item number 10, which is the Smart Scale Transportation Project Funding Applications,
There was an update to attachment A. In the smart scale transportation funding apps, the updated attachment was posted to the website on March 3rd, which was yesterday, but just calling that to everyone's attention as that was a change in information.
So with that, are there any other changes to today's agenda?
Is there a motion to adopt the final agenda as amended?
question. Yes.
We do have two items just FYI. We will have two items pulled from consent
today. We'll deal with that when we get to the consent agenda motions.
So, we have a motion made and seconded. Without objection, the clerk will please call
the role. Missile P. Sto currently? Aye. Miss Malat? Yes. Mr. Missile? Yes. Mr.
Pruitt? Aye. Miss Duncan? Yes. Mr. Gallaway? Yes. All right. Thank you, Board. And with that, we will move to
brief announcements by board members. Supervisor Pruitt. I have nothing today. Thank you.
Supervisor LePista, currently? Yes. I attended the Boston show to Boston.
event that they had last Friday, I think some other supervisors were there, I know that
supervisor Malik and Missile were both there and it was very interesting because and if
you have a chance to look at their website and give your opinion on whether or not you
would like a plane that goes from show to Boston, that's what they're looking for so there
is a survey out there and maybe we could put that on our newsletter or something I'm not
But there is a, they are asking for people who's interested, who would be interested in that flight of direct flight.
So, and they're looking at enlarging the airport, enlarging the parking, having a double-bicker,
and then larger facility, because right now when the planes back up, they actually back up onto the runway.
we don't have one runway. So that's not good. But I mean, we get over 300 flights a day.
I think 300 did something like that. So it's very important to support our airport. Now,
this is going to take a long time. It's not going to be done overnight. It will take years and
years and years because they'll have to get the funding and everything. But that's what's in the
And the star is of a spake for the cell airport.
Thank you.
Supervisor Missle.
Nothing to add.
Thank you.
Supervisor Duncan.
Just one thing.
I just wanted to point out that PC is hosting the active mobility summit tomorrow night.
And Friday at the full factory.
And this is kind of about the focus of the shares on the economic and social benefits
that communities have when we have kind of active lifestyles and outdoor activities and sort
of working towards how can we work on that more and promote that. So that looks like it'll
be a really great event.
Right. Thank you, Supervisor Malik.
Thank you all very much. I do want to say I feel as if my equilibrium is returning after
a month of total disaster during all the snow and ice and all the stress involved with that.
And hopefully others who were similarly affected are going to be back to normal here now that
we can see the earth and it's not six degrees anymore.
That was bad.
But I do have some starting opposite bad news and then good news later.
The new March 2026 drought outlook from the NOAA drought.gov website shows that we are in a severe
drought now and it is expected to continue for three to six months.
So I went to a presentation at the NACO Conference from someone from NOAA talking about drought.gov and all the information that one can get there.
I went and played on it and encouraged all of you to have a look because there's a whole lot of detail about your particular very granular detail about precipitation and a whole lot of other information which is helpful.
But it made me feel as if I was back in 2002.
In 2002, we were 36 inches below normal after three years of lower rainfall today.
We are 26 inches below over the last three years, and these kinds of things can change
very quickly, so I do want to bring people up to that.
In the good news category, on Friday, April 17, that 11 AM is the 60-3 dedication of the
And one will be able to drive in through the skate park and around to the hill just above the location to participate in that and I hope everybody will come.
Secondly, it is time to sign up for your Virginia Tech sponsored and the tremendously reduced cost well water testing clinic.
So you can contact the Cooperative Extension Office and I will also have the clerk will have this information here in case anybody would like to do it, but now's the time to sign up and get one of those spaces for $70 you get over $300 worth of water testing all sorts of different components in your well water really really important for those of us who have well water that we know what we're drinking and cooking with. And that is all I have, thank you very much.
Great. Thank you. I do not have any announcements today. We do not have any proclamations or
recognitions this afternoon. So that will take us to item number seven. Public comment on matters
previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled for public hearings and vice
chair missile will read our rules for public comment.
Thank you, Chair. During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently
depending before the board. Other than public schedule public hearing, as individuals may
address the board of supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the board
or matters that are pending before the board, other than items listed on the agenda for
public hearing. Individuals are offered one opportunity for up to three minutes to speak at each
board meeting. The sign-up sheet is managed by the Clark's office and up to ten persons may
speak during each matters from the public session. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and
system at the podium, the green light will go on when you begin speaking which begins
here a lot of time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking in
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, stage a name and if you live in
Almar al-Khani or a magistral district, address comments directly to the board as a whole, any
written comments or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group
organization you may ask others present to raise their hands and 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.
All comments are live streamed recorded and published
on the Almar al-Khani website.
And as a reminder, please be sure to introduce yourself
and speak directly into the mics.
It's a three of two up there.
Let's look, we have five folks signed up, and we'll begin with Gary Grant.
Good afternoon.
I don't always have to be first.
I'm doing grant while I'm discreet.
I don't think I've ever made a clear that I don't dislike any of you or your county executive
or his staff.
However, from time to time, I don't like some of the fears that the board does or your
executive does, or your staff does, or don't do. So again today, I have another list.
It's not personal, it's business. The county executive, to my knowledge, still has
never apologize for the negative impact on people who have their personal information
jeopardized by the county's lack of adequate online protections last year. How about this
bullied, apologizing for him.
Your county assessor incorrectly reassessed my property by over $33,000 for $12,26.
That's been corrected now because I challenged my reassessment and won.
However, I wouldn't be aware why I didn't challenge my reassessments every year for the
40 years of owned my property in order.
How much does the country owe property owners like me for real estate that has been assessed every market value for years?
The millions of tax dollars, your current executive record may have been spent on the affordable housing expenditure fund, is not taxpayers responsibility.
Don't be taking money from those of us who pay our own rents and mortgages, only to be
first by the county executive and actions by this board to also pay for other people's
rents and mortgages.
A question about change in the county's snow car and expenditures for FY27 has been
you are in an answer, whether it comes from a budget department, or comes finally from Supervisor
Galloway himself.
Lastly, page 20 of your county executive's F-27 record of the budget states, and I quote,
we will provide every customer with an experience that is professional, empathetic, and responsive.
with professional, yes, responsive at times, and pathetic, never.
Thank you.
Thank you, next speaker is Rob Probs.
Good afternoon, Chair Gellaway, board members.
I do live in Albuquerque County in the Revanna district.
Mr. Probs, your voice is a little light, so I'm going to ask you to just lean in there and
just go with that.
How's that?
Okay.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share some comments with you this afternoon.
I'm with a company called CEP solar, we're a Richmond-based solar development company.
I live and work here in Album Royal County as well as a couple of my other colleagues.
And I'm here to just provide a couple of comments as relates to the Turkey Nom solar project.
that you guys will be taking up in the agenda later on under a couple of special exceptions.
Firstly, I just want to commend the board for its vision and pragmatism to create a
buy-right provision for small solar projects.
That's, as you know, groundbreaking for the Commonwealth, and we hope to be among the first
projects to take advantage of the buy rate provision in your solar
ordinance.
And it's our mission and goal to develop a project that
not only on a work proud of, but the sport in this
business, the community can be proud of.
Even though it provides a streamlined process, I think
it's even established something that certainly has a lot of
elements to it to make sure that you have high quality projects and of course, that's what we intend to deliver a high quality project without cutting any kind of corners.
And again, there's something that's protective of the environment and also help stabilize energy prices.
Thank you so much. That's all. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, next is Tom Loach.
Good afternoon. Tom Loach with a high hold district. Several months ago, I appeared before the board.
Bring to your attention, attention concerning deficiency found in the current land use subsidy program.
The documentation I provided for four of you came from the 1991 report by then County Administrator Mr. Robert Tucker.
In this report, Mr. Tucker stated that, in implementing the land use program, would entail
additional taxis and, by necessity, this would mean shifting the cost to those who do
not benefit from the program.
At the time, I request a several changes to the current policy, which for years is hidden
in the program's close from Alabama County tax payers.
However, just like my request for a greater openness to the county government when I reviewed
the current proposed budget for the county, I found no reference in the documentation
to the course of land use to taxpayers. You have 40 pages of documentation describing programs
you fund from all blessings flow to the women's initiative, but not one sentence dedicated
to the land use program, which course taxpayers over 14 million dollars. While it is more
responsibility as a resident of Al-Marm County, the pay tax that is responsibility to
counter to give me a fair and accurate accounting of what taxes I'm paying. It is not
But the right of every citizen of the county was required to pay an additional tax to
clearly understand just how much that cost them and what it pays.
And Mr. Secretary-Pforty states, the critics of land use are correct in their assertion
that land use program costs the county millions of dollars per year.
As a resident of Alabama, I have no problem in supporting rural preservation.
However, I found myself once again reminding the board of the current situation, which we
out that the imposition of additional taxes to only a select segment of a resident without
disclosure, this should not continue.
Therefore, I am once again calling for the inclusion of the county budget, the total
cost-borne tax-pays to support the land use program.
Two, that those who pay the additional tax must clearly see a line on on their tax, which
to show the total cost of the tax pay and also the recent tax is levied and three, since
The program clearly existed deserve a real character of the county, and since the county
is second program ended the same cold, cold, that being the ACE program, then those who pay
the additional tax to be given the choice to which program they want their tax money to
go to.
Did you any less would be a demonstrative violation of the county administration and board of
their obligation to ensure a complete visibility of the system of taxation they administer?
Thank you.
Deal Williamson?
Good afternoon.
I'm Neil Williams and I serve as the President of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded
public policy organization focused on central Virginia's local governments.
Later today, you'll be conducting a work session on the lengthy zoning modernization project.
Designs the implementation of your recently adopted AC44 comprehensive plan.
I'm told all the cool kids are calling this process Z-mod.
This means folks working on this consequential three-plus year zoning rewrite might be best described as Adamars Z-Mod Squad.
In the late 1960s, the Mod Squad series, which aired just a few years before the current development area lines were drawn,
Squad mentor, Captain Adam Rhea, famously stated,
the Times are a change in.
The same is true for odd-mile county zoning ordinance.
It's beyond time for the ordinance language and intent
to catch up with reality.
Many changes are needed.
In addition to language changes,
the Z-mod squad is seeking to implement
up to 378 individual actions contained within the comprehensive plan.
Well, the 300-byes form is particularly interested in the boat of supervisors finally taking
action on a long advocated position of allowing residential and commercial and industrial
properties.
We also ask that you answer three questions.
One evaluating the zoning changes suggested by the 378 proposed complex action items.
One, does this make housing easier or harder in the development areas?
put another way, does it make housing more or less affordable?
Two, where the proposed change help or hinder economic development.
And finally, number three, this is the proposed change matter.
By focusing your energy on these four questions, you may have the community move forward or back.
In the last 10 years, Album All County has taken huge, substantive changes to become
more business friendly.
Unfortunately at the same time, Album All has become less receptive to new housing within
your occur era development areas.
The Z-mod squad is not considering development area expansion, though they should, but the
Next they can do is we can easier to develop properties as the AC44 company has to plan dictates
to do anything less would be creating an ordinance as stated as the BOD Squad series is today.
Thank you.
Next is Peter Krebs.
Good afternoon.
Supervisors and members of the public as well as county staff.
I'm from my name is Peter Krebs, I'm from the Piedmont Environmental Council.
We protect and preserve the lands and waters of the Virginia Piedmont while advocating
for strong, healthy and resilient communities.
I'm here to announce the Act of Mobility Summit, however, Supervisor Duncan beat me
to it and actually probably said it better than I could.
I'll just go out a few program notes about the summit just to give a little more detail
color. So the mobility summit is Thursday night and Friday morning at the Wolf Actory. Thursday night
will be a celebration of the many winds that the community has had in the last year and we're
forward to more community winds next year. We'll have a keynote speaker named P-Deschelman,
who's on the economic development team and Rona and also founder of an organization that
that provides outdoor access.
There will also be a great indication
of my local poet, a vacation at Tolbergd.
Then, Friday morning, we're going to have
a special guest who I can announce,
that's Adam Spenberger, first gentleman of Virginia.
So he'll be there right at Monarch Log
giving welcoming remarks.
We're going to have two panels,
one of the long-played local leaders
will be moderated by our own Kevin McDermott, and also our own Enroll will be on the panel
plus Jim Fries from the city, Jolio Monty from UBA and also one of my favorite local business owners
at Crawbirds from Great Up, Doris Prevision Company. There will be lots of fellowship and inspiration
throughout the both days, it's free, that'll be fit in drink, and also a bike bus to
part of, and the downtown malls, so if you don't want to drive, you can ride your bike
there.
If you do choose to drive as, in all cases, with the wall factory, please arrive, I have
Broadway Street, which I noticed was recently re-striped.
I don't know if that'll be on our list of community wins, but there is that.
So, yeah, we're forward to seeing you all.
A couple of you are already signed up.
There's still room, but we do expect to sell out.
We're looking forward to seeing you.
Thank you.
And last on our list is Sival Flynn.
Good afternoon, Board.
Sival Flynn, climate justice policy manager
with the Community Climate Collaborative.
Last Monday, February 23rd, Shads for City Council
sent a letter to Fuban County Planning Commission
and the Board of Supervisors in advance of Fulvana Planning Commission meeting.
The meeting was to decide on some elements of the massive gas plant expansion that's being proposed for Fulvana County out by Scottsville, that I know you're all aware of.
The Planning Commissioners ultimately decided to recommend that the Board reject the specialise permit.
Monday, March 2nd, shall it's for the past resolution on the consent agenda ratifying the letter as an official city action.
As you know, other residents will be impacted if this proposal goes ahead. There will be a significant increase of early death and the development and exacerbation of respiratory illnesses and cancers not to mention the environment and kind harms the real cause.
Superviolet is aromatic, you warned us that we may need to expect up to six months more of severe drought.
We know from the county's climate risk assessments that drought is one of the primary impacts from climate change we can expect to enjoy in the region for the foreseeable future.
Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel.
Projects like these are directly responsible for outgrowth climate change impacts like drought.
C3 had previously drafted a proposed joint resolution between the county and city, and later
the action taken by the city, we are now asking for you to sign on to joint letter from
local leaders in local governments across the jurisdictions that we impact by the proposal
if it goes ahead.
The sign on deadline is end of this month's Monday March 16th, the letter will be sent
on March 17th, the day before the March 18th, July 9th, July 9th, July 9th, July 9th,
Our more residents are increasingly aware of the proposal and its risks, and while we know
it's not in the board's power to reject the proposal, supervisors, constituents will be
happy to see a public stance from individual board members asking to vanilatorship to reject
the proposal. As you'll see on the packet that I'll submit, supervisor privilege has already signed on.
We hopefully anticipate adding five more names to reject this extremely damaging fund. Thank you.
Thank you.
Who's all this?
All right.
Thank you to all those who came to participate in public comment today.
Public comment is now closed and we will move to our next item on the agenda which is our consent agenda.
Today we have two items that have been requested to be pulled from consent.
Item 8.4, which are proposed projects for affordable housing investment fund support.
That first request came from supervisor Duncan, and I know a few others have joined in that request.
The second item is 8.8 SC-2025-39 Turkey-Nob Solar Farm.
How we're going to handle these today?
That was requested.
That pool request was made by supervisor Malik, and I know others had some questions about that as well.
We will address item 8.4, or I recommend we address that right after we vote on the remaining consent agenda.
We will address item 8.8, the solar farm, at the end of the afternoon's work session in prior to our closed meeting so that we can keep our other scheduled items on schedule.
And then if action is going to be taken, we'll take them at that time.
Are there any other, let me look, I got another note here.
I do not.
Are there any other items that need to be pulled from consent that we're not previously requested?
Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended?
Is there a second?
Second. All right. Without objection if a clerk would please call the roll.
Missile P. Stoker, Lee. I. Ms. Mallick. Yes, Mr. Missile.
All right. Mr. Prouit. I. Ms. Duncan. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Thank you, Board.
So that will bring us to then item 8.4 proposed projects for affordable housing investment fund.
As this is an item that all of us have had some interest in, I think it's just more
So it's easier managed to just go through our normal speaking order.
I'm going to, so that's supervisor Pro, it will start.
So I'm just going to turn to supervisor Pro to get us going.
And thank you Stacey for joining us.
And I know Pat, he's here as well.
If we have questions, et cetera.
Thank you so much.
Before I just jump in, I realized this has kind of been added
to the docket.
That's the thing we're going to discuss in the last 48 hours.
Was there any component that you would want to present before?
we just jump into questions.
I'm gathering from the fact that there's not one on the screen that the answer is no, but I just want to confirm.
What spacey path the director of housing and I did throw together a real quick presentation through four slides.
If you would like me to do that real quick, which might answer some of your questions, I'm not sure.
And spacey, you're going to definitely have to use the louder voice and into the microphone please.
Maybe I need both microphones so that make it better.
The mouse, sorry, the mouse is disappeared on me.
Again, my name is Stacey Pefea.
I am director of housing.
And this is in response to the...
The agenda item proposed projects for affordable housing investment fund support. And since there are some
new members of the board, I thought I do a real quick history of the affordable housing fund. It was created in fiscal year 2019.
Initially, to support the southward redevelopment in phase one, it has expanded over time. It's really designed to support affordable housing projects that are one time cost.
So no ongoing support throughout this fund.
And those projects should also support county strategic
and housing goals.
And historically, the funds have been distributed really
on our first come-first serve basis.
So at non-profit would come and say, I have a project.
This is how much money we need to fill a gap board
or to make the project work.
And then through discussions, it would be decided whether or not
staff would make recommendations to the board for funding.
And some of you may remember, May of last year, staff came to the board with a change in
how the Housing Fund was operated, and that came in response to discussions and comments
with the Board and previous work sessions as well as with other community partners.
And to look forward, particularly from the Board's perspective, on how they know the recommendations
and staff brings forward all the best use of counting funds for those projects.
And so what came out of the work session last year with the Board of Pre, which was a change in how the fund is administered.
So it is now a competitive application process that will be opened once or twice a year, depending on balance of the fund.
The affordable housing fund balance is now split in three ways.
So 40% of the fund balance would be used for grants primarily for this person alone.
Funds would be primarily for loans for which projects.
And 20% of the balance would be set aside for staff identified emerging needs.
The applications are reviewed by non-office of housing staff.
we thought that was very important to bring some different perspective from outside of the
housing world and applications that are submitted in my school at least 75% of the maximum
possible school per each category in order to be considered for funding.
And so as you saw in your gender packet four projects for applications rose to that minimum
score of 75%. Those four projects were a rental housing project with Habitat for Humanity.
They requested a grant in the amount of $1.35 million and a loan of $450,000.
Support works housing. We requested an additional almost $378,000 and that is to replace a federal grant
that was for energy efficiency work on the premier circle site at the Vista 29 that the government has discontinued
continued at the beginning of last year or this year.
Peedmont Housing Alliance requested 1.4 million dollars for capital improvement work
on all of the evental properties that they have in the county.
That work will be really instrumental in keeping those properties moving long for another
15 to 30 years.
And the local energy alliance partnership will lead requested $776,000 for energy efficiency
updates with low and moderate income homeowners in the county.
There is an additional request from staff to provide $110,000 of that 20%
set aside for staff identify projects to support the Salvation Army's family shelters.
There's a lack of family shelter beds for homeless families within the county so it's
really important to get those up and running.
Based on, I do have some numbers.
Based on that, 80% of the fund that was available for loans or grants,
the total available was just over $3.9 million.
And there's four applications that scored,
reached the scoring threshold,
really came into $4.4 million total little over that.
So three discussions with the review team,
And the Chief of Human Services and Housing staff, the reviewed team really recommended providing funding or recommending to fund these four projects at a level based on the score that they scored.
That was a bad sentence, sorry.
So, as you can see, if habitat scored 76% of the maximum total scores, then the reviewed team recommended providing 76% of the total funding ask.
If the board approves, funding for all of those projects, there would be, I did have that
written down somewhere, about $485,000 left for loans and grants for future projects,
that money could be rolled over into the next fiscal year and use for projects with the
next funding round.
The additional money that is set aside for staff projects would equal if approved for the
Salvation Army shelter.
There would be an additional $882,000 remaining to be used for staff identified projects
and staff has a few on the radar that will be coming forward later this summer and into
the fall.
There is include a potential landlord risk mitigation fund, a potential family preservation
in housing assistance pilot program, and assistance with the emergency shelter being considered
by the city.
That's all of my presentation at the moment.
Any questions you have on HEPIDASK answer?
Thank you, and thank you, Supervisor Prue, for requesting she do the presentation.
Thank you.
I think, as you probably anticipated, you bit one of the questions, but I just want to make
sure I'm clarifying a question I came in with that I thank you answered, but...
both eye looking at the spreadsheet that's contained in the consent agenda and members of the public, including applicants,
express the concern of, oh, this does not add up to equal the total amount in the AFUnd,
whereas the remaining 1.5 million, it's the 20% set aside for staff identified emergency.
Some of which we've already identified, but it's not in this request in front of us.
that. This does, I just, this is more of a conversation, kind of question. It is a 20%
earmark per funding cycle. We're now actually at the end of a budget cycle and we're
considering another budget and we have not already dispersed the emergency fund, as we get
into a round where we might be re-infusing new money into the housing trust fund before we've
down the emergency fund. Is this a context that y'all have already considered? Do you expect
to fully spend down the emergency reserve? What's it going to be 20 percent of in the future
if we don't, right? Because you're going to be carrying over a previous 20 percent of our
guy, the new 20, you take my point. I understand. That's a great question. At the moment,
we are looking at using a good majority that get $182,000 for the three projects that are sitting
in front of you, we just wanted to wait until after the budget has been adopted so we don't
get in the way of that discussion and then bring this forward to consideration.
So basically, the amount that we're carrying over is going to remain here, Mark, for emergency
staff considerations, there will be a new 20% of the currently 5 million, so 1 million that
will be, I don't know, what easy map, 1 million that will be identified for future emergencies.
Thanks. Thank you on that. Now, this is going to be the trickier part because it's going to
start to become some normative policy considerations. And I want to apologize in advance because
this is something I think we all could have hypothetically caught when we were talking about
and approving the current formula that we use. But I hadn't occurred to me, and sometimes we need
to see the rubber hit the road for it to occur. And so I realize I'm in the position now of kind of
what staff was already directed to do, but a concern that has left out to me is that these
are actually two distinct concerns that the criteria for scoring grants and loans are
the same, and separately that grants and loans, as I understand that are considered in
a single funding application, so a blended application is considered together. I see having
to watch the process play out, both of those separately seem like problems, one that it would
make sense for the scoring criteria to be different because the kind of projects that
would benefit from them are different, right? A LI Tech project serving 70% AMI at 100% 70%
AMI would very strongly be benefited by alone because it fully counts the equity for their
running stack and it is a much more achievable gap for them to close whereas a deeply
affordable development targeting 30 to 50 would not as much benefit from alone and would
more benefit from grants and it seems like we would want to we would want to encourage the
former to apply for loans and encourage the latter to apply for grants. And the other
problem is that they are coming in the same application which hypothetically if an applicant
is going to be behaving as a rational actor, that combined with the previous point means that no
applicant should ever ask for loans.
And so I would reflect that to you. I would first kind
of get your reaction to that and see if you think that's an accurate kind of evaluation of what
we've seen play out here. Well I will say stuff to not really consider the potential
of an applicant asking for both a grant and alone in the same application.
That had not been something I have seen in the past.
So that's certainly slightly by surprise.
The way the requirements for both loans and grants is structured is that
for profit entities are not eligible for a grant.
They are only eligible for the loans.
And so that's where it takes out that pool.
The point is that is that a disability on our authority, or is that a decision we have made?
That's a decision we have made.
I don't believe there's any restrictions on the county's authority to do that.
Non-profits can request both.
Other jurisdictions throughout, particularly in Northern Virginia,
that staff will make the decision once those applications come in.
if those projects should be provided a grant to our loan.
At the moment, we have decided to allow the applicant to decide
which is more appropriate for the project.
Some of that is staff capacity, some of that is because this is a new
process for the county and we'd like to see how it works first.
But that's definitely something we can examine.
It strikes me as a prudent that this be updated and moving forward.
I might ask this as an open-ended question because I know it's challenging.
Do you see this is something that could be re-evaluated for this current funding cycle?
They're applicants who are frustrated because they feel like they end up on their own application.
I don't think we don't have enough time for that this time.
But there is a plan to open, do a second cycle of funding with FY27 funding after the budget has been adopted.
So we could certainly look at doing it that way then.
the twenty twenty seven money hit sooner than the twenty twenty six money did because we had
to adopt the policy to say differently um thank you i think that makes sense and that's kind
of what i'd come in expecting right this is uh a policy problem rather than an application problem
that i'm talking about and so i don't think it makes sense to address a policy problem in the
instant case in front of us um but i do think there's an application problem here or rather sorry
policy problem here, that we should and could address in the upcoming funding cycle, because
I've concerned about it. I've concerns that, I mean, very regionalist, right? I have
concerns that projects in my district have accidentally undermined their own ability
to secure strong amount of funding.
The other thing I wanted to ask,
you talk a few times
about the review team that contains non-housing staff.
Could you give us, without naming names,
I'm not gonna ask you to do that?
Could you give us all the sense of what that group looks like?
Yes.
Ultimately, the plan will be to have in the community members
doing this wasn't a lot of time to get that set up.
It takes some time to do that,
figure out qualifications.
During the work session last May,
the board indicated that they would like to be able to
So that's going to come probably next year, not next fiscal year, but next calendar year so we can get everything together and do it properly.
So it shows representatives from different county departments.
So department of finance and budget, the office of grants and agreements as well as facilities and environmental services.
And this committee most of the reviews are that because there's a quantitative part that determines
the final output score, which is eligible and not eligible, and there's also a narrative
components that are introduced.
Can you help me understand how that quantitative part, the review committee, and the final
percent on the dollar, ask what that parsing out looks like, where does one influence the other?
Certainly, so there is a scoring matrix that goes along.
There was separate scoring criteria.
There are much the same for both rental housing.
And for sale housing, a few differences,
like rental housing does require submission of a property management plan
that is not required for homeownership.
So each component has different scores associated with it.
all of the applications that we view to exactly what is
All of you received yesterday. So that is all three of you team sees. They see them online. They score sheet as they go along. That score sheet, howly is automatically in the system and determines what the number score is.
And then staff takes that and says, right, there's a total of 275 points that this application could score because it's rental housing. This is the score that they received and this is the percentage of points that they earned.
the final kind of thing and in my mind I would just say I'm mentally comparing this a lot
to the process we have for our nonprofit partners for social services dispersal.
Where we have a very procedural process with a non-elected committee that reviews these or historically
that was I was done.
And frankly, we've gotten to a point where there is, not only is there not much second guessing from the board, but it's kind of almost politically verboten.
We've deliberately insulated it from elected decision-making because we would all do things like high-represent southwood and want to fight for more southwood dollars.
I want to reflect that as the goal of where we get there, but I think in the short term there might be an expectation of a higher level of transparency to make sure it's working under the hood before we develop that trust in the process.
So I would begin by saying this.
So with that on the table, I don't mean this to sound unkind.
The document that we received in here looks rushed.
It is a single slide.
There looks to be some working calculations numbers at the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet
that I don't understand.
And I say this is someone who I would probably myself having a decent level of understanding
with what we're talking about here.
And I would also reflect that there are members,
there are applicants who have questioned in kind of the 11th hour,
whether or not some math was done correctly.
I'm not sure if this has been raised to you.
I only just heard about it this morning.
There was a concern that was reflected to me before that.
There was a concern more recently that actual math had been done wrong.
I had not expected to say this 48 hours ago,
but I am now wondering if it might be prudent
Because also these applications that you mentioned sending out to board has had less than 24 hours to sit with some of them might not even seen it
Yeah, because it was at the end of the work day, which I recognize that means you're working through and pass the end of the work day
I'm wondering I think at this point it might be my desire to have a moment to review this to have staff to be able to investigate the
the suggestion that there was improperly conducted math on studies before we review it possibly at the
either on consent or as a quick thing on next two weeks in soon I don't want it to delay the
dispersion of funding I don't want to delay any of these nonprofits but I do think there might be an additional level of scrutiny
that members of board would like to take and I would just close by saying that and I'm curious
if you have any immediate reaction to that otherwise I will go along in the order.
Now I did go back I will say it was I just missed that calculation so it's just setting
up spreadsheets it's yeah you put the calculate that what is that thing called the equation
of the top cell and then you just brought it down I had intended to go back and fix that
and I forgot to do so. So it is my fault. I did go back through and review the applications
and see what the change of score would be and it would not have had an impact on the scores
that were received. So the the four that stood out and reached that 75 percent threshold,
we're still the four that reached that 75 percent threshold.
I don't doubt that. I might want to
see the updated spreadsheet to review the scores myself before proving it. That's all I have to.
Thank you, Supervisor LePista, currently?
Yes. Point of clarification. I want to make sure I heard you correctly that the people who are
getting grants that is separate from the people who are, that doesn't score as high as
or the people who are not prophets. The scores are based solely on the type of project, whether it
rental housing or home ownership or rehabilitation.
The percentage of the score at the max.
There's a maximum number of score you can get for rental housing
project, applications, home ownership applications, and
therefore, excuse me, the scores are based on they are modified
for each application, so you're only going to read rental housing
application against the rental housing score sheet.
There are different maximum scores that you can get for the different types of projects based
on what is required in the application.
So, rental housing applications would require a 30-year performance to show that that project
would be viable and financially healthy for 30 years, whereas you don't have that for
home ownership projects.
So the 10 points or 5 points,
since you get for the profile of what the rental housing application,
you don't get that.
And it's not included in the home ownership application.
So there would be a difference in maximum scores
between the two types of projects of 10 points, say.
So if you did a 110 points for rental housing,
you would get a 100 points on the home ownership application.
You were addressing people or organizations
that are eligible for loans or for grants now.
It's for both, for both, okay, because people applying for grants, if there are, for
profit, you're not allowing that, you're just allowing grants for non-profit.
Did I hear that correctly or what it's taken?
So grants are primarily for non-profit organizations building housing or rehabilitating housing.
If a four-profit organization is going to build a 100% affordable property, then they would be able to apply for a grant.
Now, profits are able to apply for loans or grants.
Okay, that's what I was.
Okay, that's what I was thinking back.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
No other questions.
Thank you.
Supervisor Missle.
Yes, thanks.
Hey, Dr. Bradley.
Thanks for the information for the presentation.
It was really helpful.
clarify a lot of things, and I won't repeat questions that have already been raised.
I did have similar questions, I have a few additional ones.
One is maybe just, I don't fully understand why we do not have visibility into the
specific applications that we're requesting these funds.
There are a reason for that.
I'm sorry.
So when the applicant's applied for this funding, are we able to seize the public
able to see the applications or is that kept confidential?
It was decided, because this is going on consent agenda to keep them out of the agenda packet,
but they can certainly be provided in the future.
That would be helpful.
We will have to look at how to present them in your packet because they do require a large number
of supporting documents, some of which can be handed to the pages long, so I don't want to overwhelm everything.
So we'll just need to look into how to do that.
Right, and I didn't know if any of that was proprietary or if there were any confidentiality issues
that the applicants would wish to remain confidential, but just a thought.
So some of that would probably need to remain confidential and many of it doesn't.
It's really a file size matter.
I think it's summary of each of those would be helpful.
The other thing I know I saw this in an email and you responded today, I haven't had a chance
to review it, but general comment it would be helpful to see
comment, arts to see an accounting of sources and uses for housing investment funds in general,
just to get a general sort of big picture, but that's sort of out of the realm of this discussion.
We touched on some calculation discrepancies. I do think that's an issue that we'd like to
I'd like to look into further, and as I refer to my email, it just does that impact any of the awards.
I know that you mentioned, let's see,
you mentioned that those that you confirmed that
the four that received the 75 or reached the 75 percent threshold were still the four
that reached that 75 percent threshold.
I would be interested to know if, are there others, however, beyond those that would have otherwise
reached that threshold if there had been.
So you're saying no?
Correct. That mistake. That mistake was strictly in housing world. That was not shared with the review team.
I see.
That was just for our purposes.
And I made a last minute decision to include it in your agenda packet to provide more information.
And I just forgot to double check my work.
So it would not have had.
That did not influence their reviews.
Got it.
Okay.
It was very helpful to hear about that 20% and supervisor Purvitz clarification of that, so thank you.
I do have a question about how we plan to distribute that, so that 20% you mentioned that there were some uses right here.
These three uses, how do we identify what those uses are for those?
So that 20% comes out of staff identified needs.
So they can be emergency needs that we see coming up, such as the Salvation Army family shelter beds.
We know there's a lack in the county and the area in general, so this was a good way to support that project.
These projects that are listed here are related to issues that staff has identified over several years.
Um, a landlord risk reduction fund, risk mitigation fund, whatever we're going to end up calling it.
Um, really helps to move, um, helps lower income families that may not have a security deposit to move into housing.
Um, it provides service security blanket for landlords.
Um, we're looking at our family preservation housing assistance pilot, um, that would provide, um,
It would help families that are struggling to either keep the child at home due to lack of housing stability
or have their child return from care due to lack of housing stability.
So this would be a pilot program to help overcome that.
We're still putting details together, but that's a huge issue.
The county does provide her tell space for many families in that situation.
And so this is a way to potentially save money in that regard.
And then there's always the homeless shelter project that the city is working on in
holiday drive that the county will probably come back with a recommendation for that as
well.
Got it.
And I don't have any issues with any of those.
They're important for the community, et cetera.
I, my only question is, you mentioned that they're all over funds.
We're talking about the potential for that.
that just surprises me, this is kind of an editorial
I comment, I guess surprises me in this community,
where there is so much need that we have
any funds that are rolling over.
And I would, I think, encourage us to try to find
every resource we can to distribute those funds as needed.
And then the last thing I'll just say is to echo again
what Supervisor Prood mentioned, which is,
I think it would be prudent to hold these materials
and do a little bit more of a deep dive.
I also think it's helpful to potentially
to provide some airtime for applicants.
if they want to touch base with staff to get any clarifications beyond today.
That's all.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
Supervisor Gunga.
Yeah, thanks for this presentation and the future recommendations.
I also had concerns with the money left over because I think we need to be spending
down to zero every year.
My one little comment on this and I know these are just potential.
But the landlord risk it sounds like it's actually helping tenants by providing them security
I would love to see tenant reflected in the title and not just landlord.
I initially asked for this item to be pulled more because I think it's important for the public and for us to acknowledge when we're spending affordable housing money and to see what can happen when we invest in affordable housing.
And so I just wanted to highlight that some of these projects are providing housing for people
making mostly less than 60% AMI. One of them is for almost 200 units for people making less
than 30% AMI. So these are housing projects for people who would not be able to about not
be able to afford housing otherwise. I think it's important to recognize, especially, I know
later tonight we're going to get public comment about funding for affordable housing initiatives
that when we fund affordable housing, we're having literal, tangible effects on people's lives.
And, you know, investing in housing is a public health initiative, it's a public safety, it's good climate policy, it's economic development.
And so investing in housing, we're able to basically invest in almost everything that we say our priorities as a county are.
So, you know, spending this 3.5 million on housing is a good decision that I think should be publicly recognized.
And obviously we need to spend much, much, much more on it.
But I also agree with Supervisor Mr. Linn,
and I'm making sure that we're taking a second look at
the funding and the scoring for this particular one.
Thank you. Supervisor Malik.
Thank you. And thank you to my three colleagues who have asked many of the questions.
I had written down and for raising this to begin with.
I'll go back up here, I had some things highlighted.
The, I guess my original confusion, which is not yet been clarified.
The original matrix that was sent showed a per unit cost.
And yet now we're being told that if the, and they were combined grants and loans,
which I have personal concern about, it seems like you shouldn't be punished
for asking for a loan that the county is going to be paid back.
You should be considered the cost to public dollars that is granted.
And that would probably, although I didn't do any of the math, change the per unit costs significantly.
Which then would change the 76% or the 84% which then would change the percentage.
So I don't think it's immaterial. And maybe I just don't understand, but I'm going along with all of the others. There is still so much that it's not clear and not explained well enough for me to explain it to a constituent who calls me. That's always been my bottom line. I have to be able to understand it well enough to turn around and say something to somebody else that sounds coherent. And doesn't just destroy the trust of the county in somebody else's eyes and ears.
So, that connection seems pretty clear to me, and I haven't heard anything yet that would change that.
So, those are things that I need to learn more about before I'm willing to support this.
While the concept is very important, and I know that the connection of housing to school,
student success, and health, and all those other things is incredibly important.
And for someone who lives in a three generation household, I know how important it is to have
family around so I get all that but the details matter and we know that there are always
more needs than we have funds for and therefore we have to do it right and not just say
oh we gotta spend this down real quick and let's just do it.
That sends me running in the other direction really fast because we need to have the details
to make sure that we're making the very best investment that we can make in every one of
categories. So I am all for doing the homework. I could not do it. When I finally got
stuff late yesterday or at 11 o'clock this morning. So I have catching up to do and
I get it. I think the comments by others about the transparency is really important. There
is I would disagree. There is significant pushback on the community grant process. Because I
think there are people who are not really informed about the topic, arts for example. Making decisions
that impact the board, and the board has more recently become reluctant to argue about it
on maybe the only one this year too, but it makes the difference when we're spending
tens of thousands for national things and we're giving nothing to our local people.
In the same way, I think it's really important that we analyze everything, well, I have
no criticism for the having county staff in vise, none of those people in the positions
that were listed have particular expertise in housing, other than being people.
And maybe that was the basis on which you wanted advice was just as human beings, what
do you think about this?
I would find it very difficult with my limited expertise in housing to score anything.
I mean, the zero to ten is a terrifying thing for me to have to do whether it's evaluations
for staff or anything else.
So these are my concerns.
I may be the only one who has them, but I think that it's, I will benefit tremendously
from postponement of decision and a lot more discussion when I did write somewhere, things
that will come back to the board. I guess when choices are made for each level of these,
they would come back to the board for processing. That is what I remember from the adoption
of the process last spring. It may be a consent agenda if the information is sufficient for the board
I, that's my understanding if it's different and staff is asking for the ability to spend
a million dollars all by themselves, I'm not ready for that.
So that transparency is important for me.
The,
I don't know how many county residents are having accessibility to any family shelter in
the city and taxpayers in Elamaroll pay a considerable amount to the city every year in revenue
sharing and therefore are already creating a very big pot of money for a lot of these services.
So I'm wondering what other county benefits more directly can be provided to county residents
through some of the other categories on your list and why I would like to know more about all of those things as well.
Thank you.
As it relates to this specific item, what I'm hearing as we would all like you to show the math.
So, I think the deferral for this to come back at the next board meeting, whether it's on.
This has got enough every time that it will, we may have to work with the clerk to put it on the actual agenda.
Just to satisfy some of the concerns that I've heard the surface here that I also agree with.
A couple of the questions that I have built on others, and I think if we do defer till then it'll give me a chance to ask those questions just in the interest of time.
I will put in one comment, they kind of climbs an elevation on this when we passed
how housing album are and the specific nature of the trust fund that we were shooting
for in that document.
We also talked about coming with a standing housing advisory committee that if that committee
is set up properly does this work, which is why I want that committee and I kind of brought
What that ups in several times in the past, because then it's a combination of the staff
work and the committee work, that stand-up of that committee is more on us, is on us
to give that specific direction, which has been a little, as I've said before, foggy after
the passing of the policy document versus what housing advisory committee means,
and then
Forgo probably four or five years of other comments that I've made to say this is something
that shows that maybe goes a little differently if we had that committee stand stood up
in the way that I think folks would like to see happen.
And the parallel committee or advisory group would be our economic development authority,
how they process applications, make judgments on them, make decisions on them,
and then bring that to the board for final consideration.
Could happen in a very parallel way.
And I think a lot of other places that do this sort of thing
on large scales do it that way.
So that's my commentary for it.
But if there's no objection, what I would hope for,
and I could probably work with Mr. Richardson,
STEMA can use Dr. Pethia to figure out
what exactly should be in the coming packet for the next one.
But I think all of us want a hit pause
just so that we can understand it, see the math that's behind all the numbers, and then make
a good solid decision at the next meeting, but I think it's appropriate to lay the, I
noticed that lays the dollars going back out the door, but I don't think we can in good
faith let those dollars go out the door without a better level of understanding.
And then we'll go from there.
Are there any questions from staff about what we're asking for or what we're, what we're
directing?
I'm sorry, what?
I want to add to the list.
So in regards to the committee,
someone is going to have to make a recommendation,
or are we going to figure out the KQP,
the qualifications of the various sectors,
and stuff that's going to be on there.
I was to thought that's what we were waiting for
and so I didn't do it.
I think we'll have an opportunity to probably get into that
a little bit with the next agenda item.
I got it.
Thank you.
because we're going to be talking about priorities and housing Albumaro as on the list of priorities for the AC-44 implementation.
Yes, please.
I think staff has everything we need from you.
I just want to say that if there is any additional information as you're reading through what was sent to me yesterday and early this morning,
please let us know and we can send additional information.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
I'm sorry.
Did I understand you to ask about the previous awards and the detail or somebody asked about?
They sort of history of we've given this much familiar circle and that followed up to that.
Because that dollar amount has been reported, but where they are on the process,
how many years it's been going on, what are the delays, what is the delivery,
so that we have a performance report as well.
Because there's been a lot of money that's gone at the door without any perceived thing happening.
So that would be nice to have information to be able to share that with the
constituents who call.
We can certainly provide that the spreadsheet that was sent this morning
does include all of the funding, through the housing fund that is gone to the
project since 2019.
It does not have the details of status project but we can certainly get that for you.
Thank you very much.
And with the exception of the 300 and some thousand that you've that surfaced today,
all those other dollars were voted on by this board to go to that project.
Correct.
Yeah, the board will always vote on recommendations for the staff never makes that there's not a pre-funding without staff board approval.
We just bring the recommendations to you.
Thank you.
Now if there are follow-up questions, I'm going to ask that you send those to Stacey and Kackie and then copy Mr. Richardson on them as well.
And then I would recommend just because of all the folks interested in it to copy your fellow board members with those questions too from the get go.
So we're all in the same page and this won't get delayed further when it comes before the board in two weeks.
All right. Thank you very much.
All right. We are behind. So I'm just going to just call that to everybody's attention so that as we move through the next item.
We don't need to rush, but we also just need to not
Think we have a lot of extra
Cushion time either. So that will take us to item number nine zoning modernization AC44 implementation priorities. I know Leia is joining us
And we have others who are
moving about that will be ready
Come on Bart, you know, you're gonna to step up at some point see better get down here close
Good afternoon.
Over to the board.
Chargalloway.
You're not yet.
I pulled the mic down towards you too, because you're very quiet.
Thank you.
Is this my phone?
I think I, along with everyone else, is getting over a cold.
Yeah, the mouse was working.
There we go.
Yes.
So with that in mind to keep this moving quickly.
Good afternoon, Chair Galloway, and members of the board.
My name is Leia Brumfield, Senior Planner 2 in the Zoning Division of Community Development.
And today, I will be presenting the staff recommended list of prioritized AC44 implementation actions,
essentially how we are combining the two projects, the way that I have combined the two logos here.
These implementation priority actions are based on the goals and vision of the
comp plan, particularly looking at the big moves, strategic plan, and also
stated board directives.
So the recommended list of prioritized actions will make up this regulatory
modernization stage of the project phase three, and will be a not insignificant
to get part of the implementation of the comp plan for the immediate couple of years.
So quick rundown in this presentation we'll be touching on the project background, we'll
do a quick review of phase two of the project.
We did discuss that at length at the last sorting modernization presentation in November
of last year and since this work session is on prioritization of phase three we won't be
going too deeply into it at that point but I will go into the work that has brought
us to this point today, how the implementation actions in the
complaint relate to the staff recommended priorities of Phase 3, which
is shown in attachment C of the board's packet.
And I will be summarizing the actions we've recommended to be
prioritized, and then finally we'll go into next steps for Phase 3.
The end of the presentation will be asking for the boards to feedback
on a recommended priorities and our Phase 3 plan in general,
but we don't have any specific approval requests at this time.
So, for background, phase one, we established the tone,
modern language, style, and ordinance format of the new project.
We worked with the birth of group, drafting four foundational articles of the new ordinance.
Article one was general provisions.
Two, administration, three is permits and applications.
and 10 was done on conformities and in August of 2024 we presented these four articles to the board at which point they were reviewed and
given a general approval.
However, we did not adopt the articles at that time since the new form out of the ordinance will require a wholesale
reorganization of all the new articles and we're not able to piecemeal, she'll learn those into place at this time.
However, that work has already been very useful to this point.
We've been putting the new layout and language into, in, ready to work.
Using it to rewrite our repair and buffer regulations and also our rewritten
form-based code overlay district regulations.
So this is actively working and we are moving forward with it already.
Phase two, which is currently underway, expands those foundational principles of the
the language style, the format of the of those four forced articles and expands it to the rest of the ordinance.
We're currently rewriting the sections that will become article six, the use matrix, and article seven, the use standards.
And we're drafting those and other sections. It would be continuing that.
And then we'll bring any questions or any issues to the planning commission in the board in work sessions over the next year or so.
We'll also be doing reviews of those draft-drafted language with internal and external stakeholders.
But we're keeping in mind that the goal of this particular phase is to adopt the rewritten reorganized ordinance quickly without substantive regulatory changes.
So we are trying to move that along quickly. That new layout will provide us a foundation that is easier to work with, and that will make the regulatory changes in phase 3 much faster and simpler.
So phase 3 is also running concurrently. We are in that right now at this meeting, and it is encompassing the larger substantive work of enacting the comprehensive plan.
This is just a couple of key dates, not every single thing that's going to happen over the next year.
But this kind of illustrates how we're looking at the concurrency of both phase two and phase three at the same time.
And just keeping in mind as with every zoning text amendment as we are aware projected dates are approximate.
So, how do we translate that, which was on October 15, 2025, we adopted our updated AC44
COPLAN, and that provides us with the framework for the shape of regulatory modernization.
This document that we adopted in Visions Accounting that is green and resilient, welcoming
an equitable, connected and accessible and thriving in prosperous, and it has four documents,
the plan policy, growth management policy, implementation, and the appendix. So within
that implementation document, different aspects of the county are addressed from the development
land use, developmentary land use, the rural area land use, environmental stewardship,
thriving economy, all those different things in their own chapters. And then at the end
of each of these topic area chapters is a list of actions, which address the chapters,
stated objectives, in ways that staff the board and the community have recommended for
this next phase of the county's growth cycles. Here we have just on the left a very small
snippet of the rural area land use actions that are recommended just to show you what that looks
on that page. All these actions are grouped by objective and they touch on things from grants
the county should pursue to new public-private partnerships to zoning ordinance recommended
actions recommended changes. There are almost 400 implementation actions of the comprehensive
plan. Fortunately, not all of them directly relate to zoning ordinance changes, as noted some
them are about policies, some of them are about grant funding, some of them are about internal
policies or board initiatives that could be addressed at a later date or are currently
underway as well.
Forty of them, however, are directly related to zoning ordinances, ordinance changes that
we're looking at near the short term, so it's around 40 actions.
So, in the addition to the implementation actions, in the end of each topic chapter, we also
look through staff at zoning staff and planning staff together, look through the comp plan
to find the embedded AC44 assumptions, goals, and visions for the county that are not explicitly
listed as actions.
So, for example, looking at this particular page, we have the neighborhood residential complement map designation description.
This is the language that describes what a place that we are calling neighborhood residential should look like.
And if in this description, we talk about primarily residential use with some neighborhood-scale commercial retail and institutional uses.
However, the zoning ordinance currently has extremely limited lists of non-residential uses that are permitted either by right or by special use permit or at all achievable in residential districts that would correlate with this neighborhood residential designation in the compound.
So in order to close that gap, in phase three of this project, we're looking at an amendment to the ordinance that would allow some kind of additional non-residential uses in a neighborhood of scale appropriate use.
So that would be something that is possibly
my special use permit, most likely with a number
of self-mentor regulations.
But these are the kinds of things that we're pulling
from the text that are not explicitly listed
as ordinance actions that are in the end of the implementation
chapter.
So where we've seen these gaps in that action list
at the end of the implementation chapter, zoning and planning staff together, wrote, what would
we need to close that gap, and where those sections are something that is repeated multiple
times in the ordinance, something where it is a high priority for the county. We added those
to the actions list, which, again, is attachment C in the staff's packet in the boards packet.
Those ones are listed as UL or unlisted actions because they're not in that first list in the comprehensive plan.
So in reviewing both the listed and also the unlisted or implied actions in the comprehensive plan,
we worked very closely with our recently retired community development director Jodie Fullardos,
special guest this afternoon, prioritizing the actions with this criteria.
First, we're looking at aligning those actions with the highest AC44 priorities,
described either in the topic chapter objectives, or describe as a big move at the end of that chapter.
Additionally, the prioritized actions should have an impact on multiple community goals,
something that could enrich activity centers, as well as availability of portable housing.
For example, we prioritized actions that are ready for implementation, something that will
not require a, you know, five, ten-year study,
and also regulatory changes that address
issues that we see a lot, things like step-back waivers on forced-story residential multi-family
structures.
We get that with almost every single application that comes in for those.
And then finally, staff prioritize actions that are
duct-tailing with existing ongoing work, things that are
already happening, and then any actions that would
immediately address staff or board identified
directives, which I'll go into a little bit a couple
of slides down.
So this is what our attachment see looks like, and this
shows how all of these actions are coming from maybe
different chapters within the implementation chapter of the Comprehensive Plan.
This is Development Area Land Use and also Housing chapters, but they are all moving
towards affordable housing initiatives.
And the recommended prioritization ended up with three tiers of actions.
Tier one is the actions that are crucial for immediate pressing of the implementation.
They will be addressed in phase three of the Zoning Modernization Project.
We'll be trying to bring all of those to life and there are 30 such actions both the listed in the
complaint and unlisted in attachment C.
Tier 2 is actions that require additional technical research beyond the immediate capacity of this project.
These actions could be rolled into phase 3 if time and staff resources allow, but they also may be
address through individuals owning text amendments at a later date due to their nature
of being something that is not as widespread or something as embedded in different sections
of the text.
And then finally, tier three contains actions that require a larger scale, additional planning
effort.
For example, the biggest one is things that will require more intensive engagement and community
research to create our rural area land uses plan, which is a little bit ways out, but it's
something that would touch almost all the aspects of rural area life and rural area land
use planning. So these can, these things cannot be taken under zoning modernization because
we just don't have the data, we don't have the information yet, and we don't have the prioritization
and guardrails for these topics at this time.
So these tier 1 recommended priorities, we've organized
into seven often overlapping topics.
They loosely correlate with topics covered in the comprehensive plan,
but there are some that are just pulled out a little bit,
and are not necessarily mentioned in the big moves.
The seven topics are not necessarily organized in any particular order,
but they are affordable housing initiatives,
activity center initiatives, economic development initiatives,
Modernizing and streamlining development review processes, increasing density across the development areas,
increasing mixed use accessibility across the development areas, and the real area special topics.
We won't go over all 30 of the recommended actions, but I will review two of the priority topics,
and there are associated actions to walk the board through our prioritization process.
So starting with the Affordable Housing Initiatives,
the actions related to affordable housing,
we found in two chapters of the implementation document
of the Comprehensive Plan.
The first was the Development Area Land use chapter.
And that one had action 1.2,
which allowed, sorry,
recommends allowing residential uses in commercial districts
and just as a brief note,
the actions that I have on the screen are very truncated and they're summarized, this is not the entire action.
But that allowance of residential uses in commercial districts would have an increase in availability,
and availability of units, increasing hopefully the affordability of residential units throughout the county and in different places.
When we're looking at the housing chapter of the Comprehensive Plan, the actions are committed
for prioritization, range from incorporating the housing out moral affordable dwelling
unit program into the zoning ordinance to reducing minimum lot sizes and parking requirements.
So there's a whole laundry list there.
Overall these actions are large and impactful, and they will require pretty intensive review
drafting and a lot of work with community and development partners, but they are listed
recommended priorities because of their outsized impacts on affordable housing, which is one
of the highest priorities in the Comprehensive Plan, and one that both the board and the public
have repeatedly strongly supported. With the drafting of the Comprehensive Plan, the community
endorsed this recommended priority as affordable housing, which is a fundamental community
value that we are aiming for. So bringing these actions from the if from that approved
community recommended comprehensive plan into the zoning
ordinance is a direct and powerful step of bringing that value
to life in the actual community that we live in.
So skipping around a bit, we're looking at another topic
area, which is the real area of special topics.
And these ones are majority of, sorry, the majority of the
real area of recommended actions are intended to be addressed
a later stage, but these particular actions are something that can be addressed sooner because
they are a single identified high priority issue, or there's something that doesn't
necessarily require a large-scale land use research plan associated with it.
So looking at the really rare land use actions, action 4.5 on page 4 of the attachments
agency in the staff report, recommends revising the regulations for special events.
The ordinance language that we currently have is very out of sync with the way we approve
and administer special use permits in the Royal area.
Sorry, special events, special use permits, and since there is a perennially high amount
of interest in special events, special use permits, this is something that is prioritized.
Looking at the narrative of the Royal Air Land uses chapter, one of the, again, unlisted
actions is a repeated mention of protecting historic resources. On page 8 of the Royal
Area chapter and of the implementation document, they mention adaptive reuse of existing
historic structures. But again, there's currently a very limited opportunity for adaptive
reuse of those structures unless the structure was historically a restaurant taverner in.
So under this special topic, prioritization, we are looking at investigating feasibility
for additional permitted uses for registered historic properties, hopefully encouraging
property owners to be able to protect that historic resource.
And then that would also meet the chapter objective of protecting natural systems, water supplies,
and historic and cultural resources, then looking at the thriving economy chapter actions,
the two that are listed here, 7.2 and 7.3, enabling agriculture-related agricultural
support services, and then also allowing additional revenue streams for agribusinesses,
like restaurants, lodging, or other kinds of recreation.
So these two actions impact both the
really are at goals of preservation of
unfragmented parcels and supporting
local agriculture and also support
the throttling economy chapters
objective of encouraging a thriving
and modern agricultural economy,
which is why these particular ones
are prioritized here.
So with that in mind, staff
strongly recommends the prioritized
list of actions in attachment
to see the staff report for
and as we are moving forward with Phase 3,
Next steps will be to receive the board's feedback on our prioritization.
Begin our general broad engagement for the topic for the project on all of these kinds of topics.
And the project in general building community awareness and also building community learning about the zoning
text amendment process and zoning in general.
We will be building our focus topic groups with people with relevant experience in the topics.
We'll be addressing in phase 3 and working with those groups to get input on details of how we'll be enacting these recommended actions from the comp plan into the zoning modernization project.
And then we'll be drafting that new ordinance with the feedback in mind.
And finally, reviewing it both internally and externally.
So with that, thank you for your time today.
And at this point, I would request the board
provide any feedback they have on our recommended
priorities, topics lists, and our general phase 3 plans.
Thank you very much.
Supervisor Prue, it's just the first little AI me I've ever seen.
I think that's supposed to be me in the bottom left
Suncanny, slightly unsettling,
briefly stunned.
I want to begin by just asking a quick question.
We reviewed today the tier one with, I don't want to borrow the language that I know
we had in the implementation plan of the comp plan, and I'm blanking on it, but something
like the big blocks or something, these are kind of comparable.
big moves, thank you, big moves. Is there a meta-prioritization within these tier 1 elements
or is this kind of representing peak staff capacity for things that can be handled simultaneously?
When you say prioritization, you mean within the tier 1, we don't really have a prioritization
that we're looking at those. The goal for all of those is to be within this project.
So when you do public community feedback sessions, they would be providing feedback on all the
different things that have been identified in the tier one section. We would be handling each
topic separately. Okay. Okay. But they would still be roughly a pace with one another. Is
I don't think we're going to be having seven top of meetings within a week. I think we will probably be handling them sequentially, but we don't have any particular sequence in mind at this point.
Understood. Not to poke words in your mouth. It sounds like there will be a meta prioritization, but it is not clear what that prioritization schedule is going to look like.
I think I wouldn't really say prioritization.
It's really more what comes up first, that'll really be a,
which groups can we build,
which topics do we have time for at, you know, as we're handling phase two topics, that
kind of thing.
That's actually all I have in the interest of getting us back at a schedule.
Supervisor Lippie so currently.
Thank you very much.
For the presentation, I really like what you're doing and it sounds to me and correct me
if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like you're taking things that can be easily or more
easily, completed in a short-term amount of time because some of the other areas are going
to take a lot longer, and so this way it shows that we're getting things done because we
are getting, you know, we're moving a little faster on the simpler things, I think he used
that word, the simpler things. Yes. So that is definitely what we're doing with Phase 2. Phase
2 is bringing those changes that we can do as staff because they're really more administrative.
Those things are moving quickly and we're trying to bring those two fruition at the end
phase two at a much more rapid phase.
The phase three things, those ones,
there are some larger topics, which is why we have a longer
time span, a lot of it for them.
Things like increasing mixed use in residential districts,
I know, is not a small topic.
So that's the kind of thing that we'll be addressing
on a larger time span.
But then some of the things that we have not,
We have not allocated staff in time resources for finishing within that definite period, like the earlier at land uses plan, those are things that we're not encompassing within phase three.
Okay, where are you encompassing that?
That is a long range planning topic that is on the work program, which I will not speak about that work program.
But I do know that it is on the docket.
It's just not on the necessarily like this next couple of years.
OK, thank you.
Those are all the questions I have.
Supervisor Missle.
Thanks.
Thanks for the presentation, too.
And I just have a few kind of broad questions
that I'll keep the specifics until later.
One is, I really appreciate you walking us through the process
every time and building, showing us the building blocks
That I've gotten us to this point because it's a good reminder. I think it's really important
When you should one of the slides I didn't catch the number, but it was early when you had the little timeline that zigzagged back and forth
Can you remind us where there are opportunities so between now and I think it was July is the next meeting if I remember correctly
Where the opportunities are for public input throughout this time March and July
So, the public input was primarily in the comprehensive plan.
We do not intend to have town hall meetings for this.
We will be hearing from the public on things that they need clarification on, I know
that we are working closely with the CAPE team to get more information from the public on
what information they need, but it's really more of an enactment of the comprehensive plan
that we have already approved.
So individual details on things that are very technical,
things like soil volumes for tree health,
or the heights of buildings for safety,
those kinds of things are not necessarily things
that we really need the public to weigh in on.
Things that should we have more affordable housing,
we have already weighed in on as a community
and that answer is yes so I don't want to we don't want to go and ask the same question
over and over again yeah I understand that I guess I'll I'll go I'll riff a little bit off
of that a little bit further just seems that maybe maybe just a bit about it's going to answer
this seems like as you to your point yes there are definitely things that were in the AC44
process that were well voiced by the community I think there are certain things in a zoning
And it's though that there could be some input on, for example,
how well are we doing in terms of efficiency, right?
Or turning projects around more quickly, or sustainability being
interact and involved and intertwined in the in the zoning
ordinance, like you used affordable housing as an example, where
affordable housing, you know, adding residue to commercial is one way
to help with those types of things.
So I think there are ways to support other initiatives, right, like sustainability or rural areas or whatever those are that will need to be baked into this zoning ordinance and could benefit from public feedback.
Just something to think about.
parts about a deputy director community development. I'd just like to add that and give you a little preview of the AC-44 will be
Another update from that team will be coming in April, so that'll help tie some of this together and as far as feedback goes, we'll be
He focusing a lot with the stakeholders. So on specific things like lighting or
or signage or housing will have specific groups to do that rather than a mass public
work
session or public input session on the individual things because we feel like those took
place during the comprehensive plan and that's reflected in the goals.
Hope that helps.
So you will be getting information you'll get in but you'll have reviews of some of the
initiatives that you're from.
Yes sir.
That's great.
Let's see.
I think in terms of the priorities, just a couple of questions, one is, has the planning commission
await in on the priorities?
No, we came to the board to ask about the board's priorities for this project.
So no information from the planning commission on it.
Okay, and I think I heard this, maybe I didn't.
Maybe I heard this incorrectly.
You mentioned the tiers.
You went through tier one, two, three.
That was really helpful.
So, to your three, do you mention that an example of that is the rural areas plan?
So, some of the actions in the Comprehensive Plan talk about things like allowing non-residential
non-regional uses to be allowed in existing structures in what could theoretically be a crossroads community,
although we don't really have a designation for that at this point, looking into things like
the Crossroads communities and how that land use would be impacted, whether we have a designation
for those, whether we're looking at village residential properties, a lot of different questions
like that. That's the kind of thing that we would look at in the rural areas land use plan.
Yeah, and that's a tier 3 initiative. Yes. So when you're talking about the near-term
special topics like revising regs for special events, additional historic property, all good
things, I think at some point I guess there'll be a part of a larger plan and I would just
want to make sure that we ensure that we have an action plan associated with the rural areas
plan, so that these tier three items don't just get sort of swept under the rug and kind of
forgotten about for a couple of years and then you know meanwhile we're making a lot of smaller
initiatives that are really part of a broader potential plan?
Yeah, I do, as Mr. Svota brought up, I do think that you will be hearing a lot more about
the really-is-plan and the intentions for the timing of that project, and those particular
initiatives that they're bringing forward when the long-range team brings their presentation
to you.
Excellent.
And then the last thing I'll say and I think hopefully this is in the scope of your question is just to, you know,
I remind you, I know you'll do this. Just keep your eyes on affordable housing, keep your eyes on sustainability.
How those are all interwoven since the intent was that AC44 would focus on climate action, resilience, et cetera.
As we're going through this, those landings are really important as we think about priorities and we think about more specific zoning categories.
categories. That's all. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan.
Um, yeah, this is great. Um, I really love everything that you guys have in
a touch and see the priorities. If all of these were in the zoning
ordinance and match the compound, I would be absolutely overjoyed. So, um, yeah,
I like what you guys have picked out. I also really like, um, the kind of community
outreach in sort of the creativity with, you know, the online resource, the podcast, all that kind of stuff, this looks really, really great.
So, I know this is, was a lot of work and will be a lot of work, but this is just looks really fantastic.
Thank you.
Supervisor Malik.
Thank you.
And in concurrence with what others have said as well, but I do have a couple things I want to clarify.
So if I heard correctly from Bart, focusing on the stakeholders, is what you think?
And we're getting a sign, if you could.
Oh, not, okay. There we go. I guess I'm ready here.
So the stakeholder groups will be your primary source of input on this next element.
Stateholder groups and internal and external partners like things like VDOT,
Parks and Rec, all of our departments that we work with.
So these are considered customers, you know, but we always need to remember that our citizens
are customers.
So I'm glad to know from the second page about the podcasts and the other ways for people to
say.
It was very difficult with the earlier stakeholder groups for the AC44 for anybody not in the
group to even find out what was going on, or what was, I mean, there were no minutes, there
was nothing available. I wasn't allowed to listen in, I mean, it was very bizarre. So
anyway, I think there was some negativity from that from the public. So I'm glad to know
that you're going to have more information available as you go along, because as I would
say to my new late teenage children, I will find out. And when I find out from somebody else
Center for you, I will be even more angry than I am right now.
So I think it's always important to share that information appropriately at the beginning.
You mentioned four categories of growth management, policy implementation, blah, blah, blah.
Environmental protection, sustainability was not there on that list that you mentioned.
Where is it?
I mean, it's in the framework, but it wasn't mentioned today, so I just want to make sure
it is in this next. So the categories of the topics that are prioritized are based
on the primary actions that are from the Comprehensive Plan.
So the...
Accountability topics that we have in the Comprehensive Plan right now are much more policy-based and less regulation-based.
A lot of the actions in the Comprehensive Plan, as I read them, are things like expanding credits or reaching out to create partnerships or having initiatives.
Those are things that are not regulatory, those are policies, or they are board-level initiatives that are not necessarily written into the zoning ordinance.
But things like water protection buffers, those are regulatory, absolutely.
And so that's what I'm looking for is to make sure that those environmental sides,
where we've sort of fallen down in the last 20 years or since 2014 for sure in our enforcement of because of the way the laws were changed.
I mean, this is clean water, which is why the Whitehall District was down zone, basically
in 1980, and so we want to make sure not to lose that advantage that we have now for
water protection.
And yes, it's a policy, but it also has to be regulated otherwise, it will fail.
I'm sorry, are you referring to the Reparian Buffer ordinance?
Well, that's just one example of the many ways that this has to be done in the largest
Notting is so time to be reassured that everything's under control.
Yeah, because that one is coming.
Okay, very good.
Secondly,
I've glad to hear you used the example of a neighborhood residential in the rural area and a list of other uses,
which will certainly help some of my constituents who have been sitting in the residential property on a,
on a crossroads that have not been able to basically do anything even have a garden center for the last 20 years.
So I assume that the sort of expansive approach may help people in that circumstance to be able to move forward,
which is wonderful under your surface.
It's been a lot of time with one of my constituents for that very thing, so hopefully this is coming from that.
Also very glad to hear about the A to use for zoning smaller lot sizes, incredibly important,
because having smaller houses requires a smaller lot otherwise it's not financial.
No bank is going to loan money if the land is costing more than 15 or 20% of the whole thing.
So that's important.
Modular homes.
I'm really glad to see that because they actually allow people to build equity.
Whereas manufacturers do not.
So any place where in my opinion we could foster modular home use instead of
manufactured that would be a benefit for the people who live there and buy them.
And someone mentioned a while ago that modular homes are forbidden in our county zoning and
barters shaking his head and I keep trying to say, no, I have them all around me. Why in the
world, but you think that? But they've been told that maybe 20 years ago, but anyway, I'm glad to
know I will put a big no by that so I have the rest of the information and I'll be interested to
see how the changes are proposed for the special events in real area.
I think we haven't seen many of those because so many of the people doing them are doing
a run around through a, you know, I'm going to plant a hot plant and a raspberry bush
and call myself a brewery in the States as fine.
And so that's how they're getting all of these special events.
But there have been plenty historically over the years who have done the proper process, very
successfully.
And so hopefully we'll still have that available.
And I think, and the public input, I will just say that last night in my report to the
Crosse Community Association, which is 46 years old this year.
I said, remember the zoning modernization is starting, and please share your ideas.
So people will be watching, I think.
Thank you.
I like the approach of track and react, given the public fat ability versus having to do a whole
and we just did years of engagement on this.
And it's going time.
And this board is the one that has to determine what the actions are and prioritize those actions and go.
And anything else, frankly, process wise,
it's not about bouncing or blocking or boxing anybody out.
It's about saving the time.
I mean, we get enough criticism about how long things take.
Well, you know, we just, at the MPO, had to reconsider a citizen advisory committee that's
been long-standing and that was created 30 years ago because citizen engagement was very
different 30 years ago than how we all do things now.
And a track and react kind of method is pretty good.
Here's where I can find it.
I can see what's going on.
If I have an opinion, I can weigh it in.
But, and it moves with the speed of the actions that are happening.
So I appreciate that.
And when the board feels we need advisory reaction from regardless of which committees
kind of live under our umbrella, then we can specifically ask for that.
Let's send that out to X, Y, or Z.
But it doesn't slow us down in the meantime.
because I mean look, I think all of this, I've heard at different points, I know in my
CAC meeting, in trying to get to the final vote on the comp plan, where our citizen advisory
committee members are a little more engaged because they're paying what I mean, just because
it'd be a nature of that committee member, and they're kind of looking back at you with eyes
with like, get on with it already.
So they're happy to track and react, but I don't know that they would say, oh, you got to
bring that back here on everything that you do and let me take a look at.
Move along.
I think I misspoke earlier made a confusing statement myself, so I appreciate,
alright, we're just looking at the zoning modernization.
We're not looking at all the policy pieces related to that,
but that is coming in April then, because my comment earlier was about housing
albumer and we committed during the comp plan that that would be in the immediate supposed
to get a regular five year review but it would need to be immediate upon the closure
of this last comp plan. So I'm assuming in April we're going to learn about those prioritizations
is that what I was catching on. Yeah the April. Other work lists. The April meeting is the
and the long range planning team work.
But the overall housing overall is outside of the team.
As well as other policy.
Yes, it's the other policy.
Just have to get my head on that says, all right,
you know, put the zoning stuff in one silo and then the policies
and another.
Because when I see AC44, I'm still like it all, it's all there.
But the action plan you have to coordinate out.
So I appreciate that.
In terms of getting this little down to these 40 items,
I think it's well done.
Like, I don't go through this and look at the other list
and go, I mean, to march through it and go,
well, you didn't include this one.
We need to add a 41 or we need to do,
because it's not as if we're saying we're not going
to do any past the top ones.
It's just the prioritization of their here.
The meta prioritization conversation was interesting.
And I don't know that that has to be developed yet
because you can see how you go in what's working.
Sometimes that change is right in front of you like oh man, we could knock this one out right now
First and you might I know that you know in May or you know what I mean
So I appreciate that as a approach, but for the for the most part happy with all of the
Action items that are we're wittled down in the 40 are there any additional questions or comments for staff?
Is there anything that we haven't reacted to that you wish we had I?
think you've pretty much covered it.
I do hear that we have some support and
some trepidation about our alternative digital selves, but other than that.
Yeah, we're going to weigh in on that by the next time too.
I like it. I'm just glad there's no bald spots visible.
Where are all these graves come from?
All right, well, thank you very much for the presentation.
Board, we would have had a recess.
So I think we should take a quick.
I would call it a five minute recess if we can,
just a biobric, and we'll come back and return as soon as possible
to move to the next item.
All right, Board, we are coming back from recess,
and we will move now to item number 10, smart scale,
transportation, project funding applications,
And we welcome Jessica to the, is this your first time here?
This is.
All right, I'll let you do your introductions
because we got Anna and I got a little sneak peek
at the MPO meeting, I know.
Great.
Thank you, Chair Galloway, and good afternoon members of the board.
I'm Jessica Dimmick.
I'm the new principal transportation planner
in the community development department.
If you remember Jessica Hirsch Ballering,
I am filling the position that she,
as Schwarzenegger and Mr. Kevin McDermott.
Today, I'm sharing information on eight transportation projects
in Albumeral County that are being considered
for smart scale funding applications.
We're sharing this information today
because the April 1st deadline for submitting
pre-applications is coming up.
Today, I'll share a brief overview
of the smart scale funding program
and review the eight projects that are being considered
for this round.
These projects were previously shared with the board in November of last year as part of
the Transportation Quarterly Report.
SmartScale is the primary method for funding large-scale transportation projects here in Virginia.
It is administered by the State Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment under direction
of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.
And it can fund up to 100% of transportation project costs, including engineering, design,
right-of-way, and construction.
No local match is required.
Localities and MPOs can each apply for up to four applications every two years.
Pre-applications are required, and they are due on April 1st, full applications are due on August 1st.
And we will be coming back to you all in June to request a formal resolution of support to accompany those full applications.
The Commonwealth Transportation Board selects projects through a competitive scoring process that reflects their transportation priorities and projects that have been identified in state funding studies are generally most competitive.
These are the eight projects that we'll talk about today.
I'll walk through each one of these in a more in a little bit.
Note that as staff, we are continuing to work with FeedOut to refine
these project descriptions and sketches.
And so what you see today will change will be tweaked in some form
between now and the full application deadline.
In fact, because these are moving so quickly,
the project descriptions that we submitted at the time of the meeting packet deadlines have changed,
and so I believe you have a special handout in your packet that shows the updated project descriptions.
So let's look first at Barrick's Road and the 29250 bypass.
There are two projects that are being considered for applications here, one from the county and one from the MPO.
Both of these projects were identified in the barracks road project pipeline study to address
safety and pedestrian and bicycle access needs.
On the west side of the interchange, this is a project that Alamro County would submit
for.
This project will add a right turn lane on eastbound barracks road going on to the southbound
bypass.
It would close the median opening at Ricky Road.
relocate the bus stop that is currently at Ciri Road over to the southeast corner of Barracks and Bennington Road
and it would construct a pedestrian connection from that relocated bus stop across Barracks Road to tie into the existing sidewalk
that would include a crosswalk across the ramp across the crosswalk across Barracks Road and new sidewalk on the south side of Barracks Road
Immediately to the east of that is a project that the MPO would submit for this project would make modifications to the Northbound Off-Ramp, including extending the length of the deceleration lane, widening and re-aligning the Northbound Off-Ramp to provide two left-turn lanes and one right-turn lane, adding sidewalk on both sides of barracks road from the existing sidewalk in the city.
to the intersection with the southbound ramps and adding a crosswalk across
barracks road. That crosswalk is the same crosswalk that's in the previous
project such that if only one of these projects is funded that crosswalk would
get constructed.
Moving west to Croze, this project was identified in the
Croze master plan and it has been submitted in the past two rounds of smart
It is a project to convert the signalized intersection at U.S. 250 an old trail road from a signalized intersection to around about as well as add crosswalks and pedestrian connections.
Moving on to Ivy Road near the 29-250 bypass, there are four projects being considered here.
All of them have been identified in the Ivy Road project pipeline study, and these are to address safety, congestion, mitigation, and bicycle access needs.
The first two are projects the MPO would submit for, and these make modifications to the mainline bypass.
The first is to extend the length of the deceleration lane on southbound 250 to the off ramp to give motorists a longer distance to change lanes and slow down in advance of the off ramp.
And then the other project is to extend the length of the acceleration length to give a longer
distance to merge onto U.S. 29 and the northbound direction.
Both of these projects are intended to reduce congestion and reduce congestion-related crashes.
This project projects C and the next project project D are related to each other.
This project, Project C, we're calling full recommendations, it has a variety of recommendations from the Ivy Road Project Pipeline study, including around about Ivy Road and Canobary Road Old Garth Road, around about at Ivy Road and Bores Head Drive, Cold Ridge Drive, a median in between the two for access management and to reduce conflict points and a shared use path along Ivy Road.
between the two. This project has a lot of benefits. It's also expected to be very high cost.
And so the next project is a variation of the former project that focuses on the round about
at Canobary Road and the Shared Use Path along IV Road. While this project has lesser benefits,
It will also have a lower cost.
We are planning to apply for both projects separately to increase the chances that at least
one of these projects would be funded at this location.
And finally, the last project is at 5th Street and I-64, I-1120.
This is a project that has been many years in the making.
It was, it has been identified over 12 or more years.
This project was identified to be a diverging diamond interchange with a shared use path.
That was identified as a preferred alternative and was submitted in the prior round of smart scale.
We ought to determine that the existing bridge over I-64 could not accommodate the width of the shared use path.
In order to accommodate a shared use path they would need a bridge replacement, which would make the project cost almost $80 million.
Because that project was so high cost, it did not score very well and was not selected for funding.
So Vidaot has conducted this most recent study to value engineer the concept to be more competitive for funding.
This is the current concept, which we are continuing to work with Vidaot to refine.
You can see it includes the diverging diamond interchange.
It retains the existing bridge over I-64 and the existing sidewalk.
It would add a new shared use path from the northern part of the bridge deck to connect to the future fifth street trails hub project at the Starbucks.
And it would also add a set new sidewalk connecting from the south point of the bridge deck
further south along fifth street to connect and tie into the existing sidewalk.
So that's an overview of the eight projects that are being considered for submission.
Pre-applications are required.
They're due April 1st after which point we cannot submit any new projects.
And I would be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Supervisor Perut.
Thank you.
Can we go back one slide to slide 15?
Can you help me understand?
There's only one thing I'm a little unclear what I'm looking at.
In the ramp on to 64 going west or sorry going east.
Is that the shared use path going under the ramp?
So, open to the right of you.
Further, further, keep going.
Is that the shared use path going underneath the traffic ramp?
I'm unclear what I'm looking at there.
I see what you, I see your question.
This is a shared use path tying into the existing sidewalk on the bridge.
So, the path with narrow and tie into the existing sidewalk, it's not going under, and it's using the fact that there's, I'm just, I also want to clarify because I'm seeing crosswalk striping and other locations, but not there.
Here, it's missing the crosswalk striping.
That is a comment that we've identified to submit to Vida.
Okay, and I want to make sure I'm correctly understanding also this the revaluation survey has been fully conducted this is the product of that and so there's no more additional
There's not additional stuff that we're still conducting between now and submission of a of a product for actual
Deployment funding
or am I misunderstanding that I think you're correct. They're supposed to prove it
they are still doing some minor refinements to this such as we're asking them to reevaluate
the full extent of the shared use path and see if we can maybe bring it all the way to the actual
bridge. At the bridge as we said they can't they can't add a shared use path on and retain the bridge.
So I think what we're probably going to end up having is a sign that says Biker's must dismount
to cross the bridge, but other than that, you know, it's going to be minor tweaks in cost estimating that they're making between now and the final submission.
I don't think there's going to be any major changes.
Thank you.
And can this is Kevin just for the record if you would?
Yeah.
Of course Kevin McDermott on the Deputy Director of Planning.
Can you for both my own reminder?
I'm almost asked this question before.
but also for the board and the public from under, is there an anticipated gap in a continual
shared use path between the project outside Cobb Vist Street and if both of these projects
proceed forward? There is still a gap that we are working to address. So if there is the
around about that's going in in front of Cobb fifth
that that should be under construction within this year.
So likely this summer, and that will add a shared use path
along with the ABC development down to heading north
to the next intersection.
And then we are working with developers on the attain project
to possibly extend that shared use path across their property.
And then you end up with a section of sidewalk
that we currently don't have funding for,
that we'd have to continue to look for a way to complete
and that brings you to this project.
So there's a gap of what we would call a shared use path,
but it is still sidewalk.
It's just a less robust path with current.
Great.
I think that will be all.
I will leave my question there for now.
Supervisor Luffy Stoker. Yes, I don't I didn't pay attention to the slide number
but if you go back the very think it's slide two or three where Barrett's road was and you
talked about the yes, okay. So there will or will not be a left turn lane going east from Barrett's road.
This left-turn lane eastbound to go southbound on the bypass, no, no, no, what am I getting my dirt westbound?
It's under the left-turn is down and pass the bridge.
Here?
I don't know, this one.
Are you asking about the eastbound left-turn to go north on the bypass?
So that would be going under the bridge.
You couldn't, okay, that movement will be retained.
There is a left turn name, all right, yes.
Thank you, because you mentioned the median
and as a little confused, sorry, thank you.
Good presentation.
Supervisor Missile.
Great, thanks, nice to meet you.
Welcome to the team.
And just a couple of quick questions on this slide
while you've got it up.
And the next slide, I think,
If you look to the left and this slide, so further I guess that's south, there's an additional turn lane.
Sorry, good to put next slide, slide seven and then go to slide eight and nine.
Gosh, well, there was a slide. I thought there was some improvements. It's the one at Ivy.
So, does that lane connect to right sort of to the right there? Does that lane actually
is there an additional lane that goes all the way down to barracks right on the north
south, north-bound side? On the north-bound side. So, this is extending the acceleration
lane, but it does. Right. That's the acceleration tie into a deceleration lane.
Yeah, it's not shown on here, or you can't see it clearly, but the intent of that acceleration
lane is actually going to allow people to get off at the other side of the lander
Sandrich exit.
Yeah, so you would be able to, because we see so many vehicles that are actually just trying
to get from IV or old IV up to Leonard Sandrich, this would be a continuous lane to connect
to that.
It does not connect to the barracks road, though.
Doesn't go all the way down that floor.
No, just to Leonard's sandwich.
There's no additional right term.
I got it.
Off of Leonard's sandwich, right?
Got it.
Thank you.
Now, I can't help it.
But I know you had in here you addressed exit 118.
Can you give us a little bit of an update there?
Is it just where still study?
He got his still studying it.
They presented three, they identified three potential
solutions and they were negatively received, all three were negatively received and they need
more time to figure out a solution that works. So it's going to continue to be studied but we
will not have a solution ready in time for the smart scale funding headlines. Thank you. And is that
if I remember correctly, that does not include the improvements of Fontaine, or does that
That's it. Okay, that's all I had. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan.
I'm happy to see the barracks road stuff on here. I'm the roundabout of Cannerbury.
I hate that intersection. The smart skill funding comes through six years after it's approved.
Correct?
It's programmed four years out. So we're filling the last two years of the six year program.
So unless there's some sort of change by the administration
to move a project forward, typically,
those projects are four years after the decision
has made to award the funding.
And that's then you get the money that you start designing
and constructing.
And so from application to if a project was picked,
how long is it before you can start?
But people are finished.
Well, that depends on the project, obviously, in timelines, but we typically see up to eight
years between when a project's picked and when it actually gets completed for construction.
So is there any way, like say the bear's road with the crosswalks in the sidewalk got picked?
Would there be any way to like speed up the crosswalks so that we're not waiting eight years
for a crosswalk.
We can try and work with our Vietnam partners and partners at the state to see if there's
a possibility.
It's difficult, they would have to probably move project money from another project to put
it on there.
So, it's something we can always try, but we have not done that really frequently.
And historically, how many projects are selected out of the applications is it like one?
We have, in our Mark County, we've been up and down.
I think some of the other board members saw a presentation on this a few months back, but
the past couple rounds, our Mark County has received a single project in the past few prior to that.
I mean, we've had up to nine projects actually funded through SmartScale in a single year.
So we've had a lot of success in the past.
These past couple rounds not so much, but still getting at least one
every year yeah and then just one other comment it's also my understanding that not all
we dot districts work with municipalities in kind of the pre-application and so I just
think that's we're fortunate to be in a district that does work with us so that we have
a good idea of what projects are feasible and have a chance of being more successful so
I do really appreciate that so Supervisor Malik Thank you yes this is actually really
news that I'm hearing. I see lots of dramatic improvements to what was talked about a couple
years ago in almost all of the projects, which is great and hopefully the powers that be in
Richmond will agree on the Shetty's path from Com5 North, the one on the county side.
We'll go to stage coach, basically. And then there's a gap on the east side. Do I have that right
that, from the roundabout on the county property, it's easy to put one.
We do not have a shared use path on the east side of the east side. There is, is part of that roundabout project. They
are making a sidewalk connection that goes to the bus stop in front of Cobb 5th, but that's where it ends,
and then we don't have any other facilities. So people who wanted to go, the distance would hop over
over to the other side and go along on the ABC project and on the west side.
And that right away is already set because of the approval
so both of those projects.
So there's no gap there.
There is a gap apparently way at the end on the south north end
to the yards or something by the houses there.
So as I was maybe not clear enough to explain there,
there is no gap in the network but it does go from a shared use path.
to a side walk, and that side walk would connect all the way to our project.
So that wasn't the area where there was a gap in funding, we were just scrounging around.
Yes, so there is, you can see right here in front of that single family home, it's out there.
There is a sidewalk that goes from here down to the entrance to the apartments, the first set of apartments there.
And then from that point on we would have the shared use path all the way to the round about.
Okay.
Makes very good sense.
I know over many years other communities have talked about mostly with railroad bridges.
Hanging the pedestrian side off the side of the bridge and it's been very successful.
I mean that has said oh hell no double hell no on things like that.
But it's a really good idea and expands the use without having to put all those expensive peers in.
So I'm sorry we are able to make progress here
when they do another districts.
And you mentioned the high cost of C for the IV.
Is that from the right of way?
Two roundabouts, it's just the right way
at Bergwood basically is all your need.
It's the magnitude of the improvements.
So two roundabout projects,
plus the shared use path, plus median, is going to be a high cost.
We don't yet have cost estimates from the feet out there working on those, but we know that
anything in the 30 to 40 million dollars range is kind of the upper range for being actually
competitive.
So we don't have cost figures yet, but we're trying to hedge our bets, so to speak, and
get at least something funded there.
Well, the one at the threshold on 242-55680 is $5 million, so hopefully the roundabouts you're
proposing, which are incredibly helpful, will not be triple that. That would be sad. Very good.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to have these move forward. I think for some of the newer folks,
it's like this 115X, this is a value engineered down project on recent mission. What you're
with 1-18 is really that they were going down and they hit the ground and now they know
that the bounce to hell back up because none of those, I mean that's what Sean was saying,
they're all half-ficked, at best, that's a direct quote from Mr. Nelson. So the idea is just making
costs less and money doesn't necessarily, well I guess they might score better, which isn't
of Oregon conclusion, does it mean it's the best project
for the improvement for the area?
So sometimes you have to stick to it,
I think, and keep pushing on the project that you want.
Because I think that impacts your multi-modal usage here.
But then the state change, who knows what happens now,
if we've got new members of the CTV, a new governor,
if the scoring, I mean, it's set for this round,
but in two years, who knows?
The scoring could get re-weighted and change
around again. And just don't know where you're going to go with that. Kevin, I'm going to pick
on you. I did not give you a heads up about this, but you love feeling on questions like
that. Back in the fall, I'd inquired about our transportation priorities list. And I know that
at that time, you had mentioned about the last time that report of the whole list of priorities
was done, but it could be about three, two, three years ago, and that we were kind of on old
with some AC-44 work and things like that. Happy 8 doesn't impact what I think about these
smart-scale applications, but thinking ahead to not just two years from now, anytime we put
a list of smart-scale applications together, it means other projects weren't selected, and I'm
starting to lose sight because I'm working on an old transportation priorities list of what we need to be thinking about that's two four six years ahead of us.
So all I'm asking for is update on when whether it's a new process, new considered process, what have you might be coming back before the board.
We have picked that effort back up.
to make is actually going to leave that what we're doing right now is we are taking the
similar process to what we've used before priorization and we're going to update that
and do minor refinements and bring that back to the board. We expect in late spring of this year
so that we have a list to work off of and then we'll move from that point on we're going to look at
potential multimodal transportation plan that could make broader updates to that process
that would come back in the future. And this will all be part of the discussion when our
long range team comes back in about a month from now on.
I hope it is the next month. So you'll hear a little bit more about that, but it is on its way.
But the actual transportation list would be at a different point. It won't be next month.
Yeah, that's correct. And that next month is just letting you know what these different projects that we're working on on
R and then one of those is the initial prioritization and that will become in back a few months after
That because that really drives beyond smart scale then they could drive sidewalk projects that could drive I would just
And because I have the opportunity to, as you're thinking about the new prioritization process,
thinking too about framing it in ways in terms of where they fall on a priority list
of is this a project that really impacts where affordable housing is going up, where it could
further economic development, not just initiatives, but benefits.
So I think of how, when we did the incentive for Home Depot, we were able to acquire almost
all the right away needed for the Hillsdale realignment, and that changes the likelihood
because we just significantly reduced the project or the cost of that project.
So that should, I think, alter where and sometimes it falls in a priority list versus just
going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 because the weighting might even be different.
And I don't know that we missed, maybe we did that in the past, I never thought, thought about that.
But I'm just saying, when that time comes and that comes forward, have that in mind because I know that's been something that I've been thinking about.
Thank you. We'll do it. We'll appreciate the feedback.
Awesome. Thank you. Well done, Jessica. Thank you. Are there any other questions here?
That's it. All right. We will then move to, where we at?
We're at number 8-8, which we pulled from the consent agenda.
So this is now SE-2025-39, the turkey knob, solar farm.
This was pulled from by supervisor Malik.
And it's going to look to step.
Do we want to start with the presentation on this one?
Or should I let supervisor Malik tee up or con concerns?
parts of our deputy director, I'm here with the correct mail, our manager of our review unit in planning.
Part just point those up. Sorry, you're pretty good. And the podium does adjust too.
So you can hit the little arrows and raise the podium up. How can I need it?
I guess the board's pleasure on whether we have a few slides that we have that we can do.
I know we were running a little bit behind we can address questions.
Do the presentation I'm going to go to Supervisor Malik because she pulled the item for
some framing and then we'll go from there.
Thank you.
Good afternoon Rebecca Ragsdale.
Mr. Subovoto mentioned planning manager for the current development review team and representing
the review staff that have provided input for this item that included Mr. Low Packer, Mr.
Fritz, Mr. Clark. So I will try and be brief, give you a quick refresher on the solar
regulations that were adopted in July of 2025 and then narrow in and highlight some things
that we included in the staff report packet and wanted to clarify for you as you consider
this item. So this is a buy-right, this request is related to a buy-right solar facility, and
what we allow now buy-right in the real areas is a facility with a fenced area of 21 acres or less.
That fenced area must include the solar panels and any stormwater facilities.
The even by right projects that disturb more than 10 acres would need a special exception
if they are in an area that has been identified as a forest block or has been identified
as a prime act soil area.
No solar energy facilities are allowed in forest blocks of a conservation value of 4.1 or greater
and we'll pull up that map in a second.
So this request is for two modifications,
for a facility that would be up to 21 acres,
but more than 10 acres,
unless the 21 acres,
and that is within an area that has been identified
as a forest block generally,
and then also by the USDA soil smaps,
Even with updated information and a very detailed field analysis and change in existing
conditions, there's no administrative provision.
So these are through the special exception process and again it allows us to look at existing
site conditions and additional information like soils testing, for example.
So orienting you to the site, as we mentioned in the packet, is a 200 acre site that
in blue on the screen, and it is also Buck Island Road, which is about a mile south of its intersection
with Thomas Jefferson Parkway. This application was received in December of 2025 after the regulations
were adopted in July. The total partial acreage is 200 acres, and that's what's shown in blue.
Some features of the site will go over in a little bit more detail, but it is south of Buck Island Creek.
This is the concept plan for the request that was in your packet, and I know it has a lot of information on it.
So I will walk you through that. Let me get my laser pointer here.
So, the focus of the 21 acres is the Fensteria.
So, that is limited to 21 acres and is shown in the black outline that I'm sneaking around.
So, you can see just a illustrative representative representation of panels and stormwater areas.
This is a concept plan, so the solar facility would require a site plan level of detailed plan review which would follow.
So it is illustrating around outside of the Fensteria where required buffers would be located and then the rest of the 200-acre site remaining.
So it's a 21-acre request and then the project area is about 50 acres, so about 155 acres of the site, not impacted by solar facilities at all.
There are a number of regulations we codified in Section 5166 that were standard conditions
you were seeing, especially use permits related to these facilities.
So, those other standards are what we included those regulations in your packet, but they include
things like height limitations, the buffer requirements that I mentioned, pollinator certification,
Fencing that is wildlife corridor friendly and it prohibits these facilities and streambuffers
for example and the forest blocks.
So we set, unfortunately, just this morning, calling your attention to some of the information
I'm going to show you on the slides.
The regulation is the standard in the regulation, as I mentioned, is referencing maps in
our comprehensive plan.
This particular site is highlighted in red on the map.
The one on the left is the ranks of the conservation value of forests in the compliance plan.
So this is one that did not score even two points of greater.
I don't believe it had a score in terms of forest blocks.
But it was identified more generally as a forest block.
A small forest block in our mapping that's applicable based on the regulation.
There's information in the packet that the applicant provided that we can go into where the site had been cleared and trees removed for a by-right agricultural uses and they've identified what is remaining on the property.
So the special exception process is to consider allowing a portion of the facility.
Excuse me, a portion of the site adjacent to the power line, which runs through about the middle of the property for soil.
The laws analysis, again, we have what was, I think, characterized in the applicant's analysis packet as a desktop, sort of, look at the soils and potential for prime eggs, soils, and they have done the fieldwork and the testing of the soils.
And that information was included and did not find that all of the soils within that project
area met the definition of prime agricultural soils.
So we looked at the criteria and the factors per consideration and looked at the analysis
that the applicant did which we didn't have any concerns with as far as their methodology.
and we had recommended approval of this item.
So I will pause now for any questions.
Thank you.
And before we do questions,
Supervisor Malik, this was pulled at your request
if you want to set up any framing or piece.
I'll give you first go and then we'll leave you.
Thank you very much.
The yesterday was the first time that I received a packet
that I could open because the one that came originally
was 14 megabytes into the country that's not possible.
So last night at this morning, I've been trying to catch up on some of this information that was in the giant packet.
But what I did not see in anything that was provided by staff was an analysis of what the ordinance says were supposed to consider.
Just here's the information from the applicant, do what you're going to do.
That was my first takeaway over the weekend when I was trying to do my homework.
Secondly, there were no maps that showed topos and anything like that until late last night when I was able to get the big packet.
called that was able to re-squish it so that I was able to open it later, but it took
some time to get it squished enough for country broadband. So that was my original concern
was without enough information provided to be able to give a waiver. I was rebelling against that
and wanted to have some more information provided. So one of them is the, well, several things,
The prime soils, I went through diligently all the packet and there are two, but they were
something or 51 and 91 or 95 and 55 or whatever the numbers are, there are two that
are not prime, that are down in the edges generally down in the soils, but a lot of the
area where the panels are planned is prime soil, according to the individually or the private
So I'll test it was done by NRCS, I'll 25 pages of it.
So it's not seems like something that we should just be
casting aside because there may be a little bit that
doesn't qualify, but that wasn't under the panels anyway.
So there seems to be some non-connection going on there.
Secondly, the forest element is of concern.
Because what are the concerns when we talked about the ordinance
originally was that people would be cutting down forest and creating a moon scape and therefore
making it easier to get something by right. Because it was very clear from public discussion
and board discussion during the adoption of the ordinance that we were not going to be interested
in harvesting and for purposes of a short term 20 years solar project for us that could be providing
all sorts of carbon and ecological benefits.
So thus, I am wondering since no information was provided
about the whole sequence of the 2021 harvest,
it was unclear whether it was hardwood or pine.
And so that's another interesting gap in the information.
And so that is what I'd like to have more information about.
Do you have that information?
I mean, either a forest is a forest, in which case, even if it's cut, it's still a forest.
So that doesn't, it shouldn't mean that it gets a waiver right away just because somebody cut it.
So, the fact that it was already cut is not the primary reason for the recommendation of approval.
it was the context, it's heavily mentioned in the materials and leads to the fact that the
forest cover is no longer there, but it was also the overall context and the conservation
value of the forest blocks that was identified to begin with was part of it and part may
want to chime in, but in terms of the timeline of the property, I think that the packet does
mentioned that the trees were removed in most recently in 2021, beginning in 2021.
And then, you know, forestry is a bi-right activity.
These regulations weren't adopted until July of 2025.
This special exception process is to review these types of requests on a case-by-case basis.
Other properties with different characteristics, or a set of circumstances with higher conservation value.
we may not lead to the same conclusions that we did with this one that we would find it at an acceptable
location for that limited solar facility.
But 914,000 square feet is in my mind not limited, but anyway that's just a different interpretation
of the size of things when you're talking about 21 acres of panel area.
Okay, we're the steps removed from the land when it was timbered.
So I think included some photos in the packet.
I was not clear about, I didn't see any steps, but that doesn't.
I studied the pictures, but that's another reason that it's not enforced to any more
and I'd just like to get that information.
So I guess I will stop there and see what information is provided.
Why do I have one more?
actually, sorry, it's Hatboro, 95, and Buggly, 51, where the only ones who were not prime
soils, everything else on the map was. So I just wanted to clarify that. I had done that
amount of homework. And so this is why it matters that when we write down that we're not
putting stuff on prime soils, then we should be living up to the ordinances as we adopted.
And secondly,
the infiltration studies that were done, the site where compaction is tested,
really depends on where you're doing it, and some of the sites were on there were actually
where the landings were, and where the 80,000 pound lumber trucks are driving back and forth
every day.
So it seems very logical that that land would be totally
compacted and therefore not infiltrate,
but it also doesn't mean that the other 100 acres
are impacted similarly.
So these are my concerns.
And as I said, half in the dark because I didn't have
all the packet, but that's the way it goes.
Thank you very much.
Supervisor Prude.
Can we go back to this slide?
You had one up there that had in red,
the areas that were identified as prime.
And I correct that this analysis of the prime soils is pre or post the applicants analysis
with the boreholes.
This is pre.
And the applicant suggests that their borehole analysis would indicate that the soils identified
here is prime, are not in fact prime and they're only being listed prime due to alluvial
estimations of the soil quality in and topo.
They provided that analysis of the, there is some remaining prime soils, but not the extent
that's shown on you.
And the, the applicants total footprint is less than 21 acres, and it would only trigger
if this exceptional and becomes relevant if there's more than 10 acres that are overlapping
as prone.
This is already an incomplete overlap, right, because they're, well, there's no map to
So where the overlaps are, yes.
There's no map showing them both on the same thing at once.
We do have a map of the notional footprint of it.
And we have a map of the challenged agricultural soil.
The one other thing, I guess I would raise,
is that applicants kind of argument, we are in a special exception,
posture with this.
The applicants argument seems to be that neither
criteria for special exception, actually applies to them, that the soil is not a
vagracultural quality, despite what our estimates show, but they're like we have more
up-to-date information on soil quality, and additionally we have more up-to-date information
on non-disturb forest block.
This is almost going to be more of a comment, and I'm also looking
over to County Attorney on this.
This is almost what a comment that a question.
But it seems like they are presenting to us this actually does not apply to us, but the
only way to adjudicate this is through a special exception because that's going to be cheaper
for everyone that's adjudicating it in the circuit court.
This is a supervisor for that's a great question.
This is a discussion that we had at the staff levels to what the applicable standard was.
And the ordinance does refer to the county's maps rather than to any additional information
that is provided by the applicant.
I know there's been some concerns expressed about the ability of an applicant to clear
cut a forest and then sort of move the goal post so that the standard no longer applies.
The standard in this case is the county's maps, which date to 2016.
So that does provide sort of a standard and fixes the goal post so that subsequent clear
cutting doesn't affect the county's analysis of what constitutes a forest block and what
constitutes prime form like farmland.
understood, and it also makes it pretty clear that we are definitely in a
abnormal special exception posture and the applicants arguments are just at there, I would say.
Persuasive arguments in favor of approval, but they're not saying that it does not apply to them.
That's correct, and the only way for those standards to change would be if the board by
an ordinance amendment wanted to identify a different standard as to what constitutes a
worst block or probably in foreign land.
I appreciate that point.
I think our previous policy-based discussions on why
to kind of fix a line in the sand are prudent,
but similarly, I actually do find the argument
that is presented by the haplicum through their engineering
from also quite persuasive.
And I think there's a principle of equity at play.
Again, there was clear cutting before we actually adopted
the policy.
We adopted that policy with that clear goal line
to avoid, well, I think the board would consider bad faith applications of their buy right
use of forestry. I don't think that's what we see with this applicant. Unless we're saying
they were prognosticating on our likelihood of passing this ordinance and preemptive,
that gets into a meta-analysis of what the applicant is thinking that I don't think is helpful.
So, I hear the concerns. I think it is an interesting kind of test case of our
our new ordinance, but I also find that applicants or arguments for why this should be approved,
to be, to be about as persuasive as they could be, get them the context.
Thank you. Supervisor LePista, currently?
Thank you. I don't have any questions at this time.
Supervisor Missle. Thanks just a couple of quick questions. One is
the sort of echo I think moving forward as we see more of these applications having an overlay
would be helpful to see because it gives you that connection.
Second thing, and I hope I didn't miss this in this conversation,
and it's tied to my third question.
So I'll just combine this.
You've made a modification or a recommendation to the
resolution.
It's struck language that relates to the additional property
beyond this current application, the larger piece.
Can you explain why you made that change?
And if there are any regulations or plans for that larger property outside of the fence or outside of this project.
Well, that was that change was in part based on some concerns from the applicant and also when we discussed it.
We focused on the general accord condition.
we felt like that covered the concerns about limiting the facility to the project
area. So we refined it so that the condition was more closely aligned with the
project area instead of the entire 200 acre parcel. There is a great deal of
stream buffer and existing vegetation in that eastern part of the property, which
is to the right there. So we didn't feel like it was necessary the way it was written
And it just said it would be allowed to go back to Forestry, which is the ordinance allows
that already.
So, that's the reason for that change.
That's helpful.
Thanks.
So, essentially, you just can revert back to Forestry.
Okay.
That's all.
Thank you.
Supervisor Duncan?
I have no questions.
That comes to me.
I don't have any questions.
Supervisor Malik.
I'll hit you on the order.
Thank you.
I do have one follow up.
There is some harvested buffer area within the fence line.
That's what I was understanding was just going to be left ignored.
And if that is, it's bear dirt now, and if it's not remediated, it's just going to grow up
in Atlantis and other invasives.
So is the staff intention to have the area within the fence that's already been clearcut,
mediated in some way, mediated in some way so that it just
not created a disaster. Yes. What will be required?
So it will be required. There are several sections of the ordinance that are applicable
WPO and the site plan section of the ordinance.
And we have, it won't be, it will
have to be replanted and restored and stabilized. It can't be left
the start. There's different planting standards. I'm not sure the exact era you're pointing to, but the applicable planting
standard would apply. So then the visible buffer is one thing, but the...
The basic takeover protection is another thing. Bart has something to do.
Bart's were about a deputy director of committee development. Within that 21 acres, there will be,
and there are supplemental rights to apply. So we have things in the regulation already done
at the site plans days that will stabilize that, that, that, that, those poor, that portion
and that's disturbed and also part of the planting plan for what happens within the boundaries
of the solar facility. Along with that, there's another 22 acres of buffer around the Fensteria
that basically is forestry, but it's buffer. So that is also a protection. So the 21 acre solar
So, 22 acres of buffer, and then 155 acres of, we'll call it, regular agricultural property
beyond that, which equals about the 200.
Well, all of that is very helpful, and as, I may be the only one who would find it helpful,
but when these come up next time, if there were a link that could say, these will take you
to the regulations that staff will be using, that would be a wonderful thing to put people's
minds it is when the public is finding out something and none of us can find anything on the
way.
Having that link would be really, really helpful.
Yes, ma'am.
There's some lessons learned for us here and we'll just appropriate.
Super.
Appreciate you.
I'm seeing additional questions.
Supervisor.
Proved.
Then, Missalol, I'll just follow the order.
Just one quick, saved round.
Am I, this is actually a two point.
So two quick, saved rounds.
Am I correct to remember that we have clustering provisions in our, um,
in our solar ordinance.
I'm a fairly remember discussion about this, right?
Like if you have within one mile multiple different,
but I don't remember how that exactly works.
Sure.
We do.
There's a table based on size of Fensteria
and then a corresponding separation.
So this is beyond any of those separation requirements.
And kind of where you might guess on leading into this, I know that Buck Island Road has a recently approved larger community scale.
I think it was community scale, not utility scale. It was near the cost of solar project.
And before that, one of our first solar projects in the county is right across the street from that.
Can you help locate us in proximity to those?
I don't have Ravanna Solar on the map and this is the measurement is from Fensteria to Fensteria.
So going from Emily, Buck Island Solar is over here.
This was approved by Special Use Permit and then Ravanna Solar is off the map but there's a little bit of it.
I don't understand.
On the other side.
on the same side as this side, the same side of the road as this side.
Thank you.
And those are past the Fensteria markers that would trigger any of our...
Yes, there's 2000 feet.
Okay. They're web, y'all not.
Supervisor Missle.
Thanks. Just briefly, could you go back to the site plan?
I think my question is answered.
I'm good. All right.
No further questions or discussion?
This is in Scottsville. There would need to be a motion to...
And if I might suggest, I would point out to the supervisors that we provided the revised
resolution in the yellow, so to the extent that there's a consensus to adopt this,
the motion will be a motion to adopt the resolution to approve Turkey and Obsteller as
revised March 2.
Would it still be attachment F?
It would not be attachment F, this supersedes attachment F.
I moved to adopt the resolution to approve SC2025, tack 0039 as amended
in the staff report on the L.A. sheet.
Does there a second?
Second.
All right, the motion has been made in second
at any further discussion.
All right, if you would please call the roll.
Missile piece to occur at least.
Does mallet?
Mr. Missile?
Aye.
Mr. Prouit?
Aye.
Ms. Duncan?
Yes.
Mr. Galway.
Yes.
All right, motion carries five to one.
Thank you.
And that we're at four o'clock.
Mr. County Executive, did you have reports from the county executive this evening?
No, sir.
I do not because of the fact that we'll be presenting the budget at six.
All right.
I just was going to pull that ahead if you did.
All right, Board, we're ready for our closed meeting motion.
I move that the Board of Supervisors can be in a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia.
Under Subsection 1 to discuss and consider appointments to various boards and commissions,
including without limitation, the Fifth and Aivan Community Advisory Committee, the Community
Policy and Management Team, the Crozay Community Advisory Committee, the Equalization Board,
the Fire Prevention Code Appeals Board, the Local Board of Building Code Appeals, the Peemot
Virginia Community College Board, the Police Department, the Citizens Advisory Committee,
and the Village of Ravanna Community Advisory Committee. Second.
All right, motion has been made and seconded out of the Jackson of the Clerk,
please call the law. Missile piece, do I currently? Aye. Miss Malik? Yes. Mr. Missile? Aye. Mr.
Groot? Aye. Mr. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galik? Yes. All right, board. We will meet in room.
All right, could
evening. I'm going to call the board back to order. We are coming out of closed meeting. Is there a motion
to certify the closed meeting? I move that the Board of Supervisors certified by a recorded vote
that to the best of each supervisor's knowledge. Only public business matters lawfully exempted
the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion
authorizing the closed meeting, we're heard discussed or considered in the closed meeting.
All right.
The motion has been made and seconded if without objection at the clerk will please call the
roll.
Missile T. Sirker.
Aye.
Ms. Malick?
Yes.
Mr. Missile?
Aye.
Mr. Duncan?
Yes.
Mr. Galway.
Yes.
And thank you board and motions coming out of closed meeting.
Yes, sir.
I am pleased to make a motion to appoint the following to various boards and commissions.
5th in Avon Street, Erin Leebac, Crozais CAC, Nathan Alderman, Ewa Har, and Erin
Hullahan, Equalization Board, David Mitchell, and James Notton, PBCC Board, Diantha McKeel,
Police Department Citizen's Advisory Committee, Bonnie Brewer, Denny King, and Donna
Vice, Village of RIVANI Community Advisory Committee, Edward Doug Earl.
Second.
All right.
The motion has been made and seconded without objection if the clerk will please
call the roll.
Miss, look, he's so currently.
Miss Mallett?
Mr. Missle?
Aye.
I do have one edition, one correction to that.
I left off three names.
Go ahead with the boat.
And then we'll do a new motion.
Mr. Proy?
Miss Duncan?
Yes.
Mr. Galway.
Yes.
and go ahead with the other three.
Thank you. I'd like to amend my motion
at the Village of Ravana Community Advisory Committee
in addition to Edward Doug Earl.
I'd like to add Howard Hottinger, Renee King,
and Richard Randolph.
All right, there is second.
Second?
All right, if that objection of the clerk will please
call the roll.
Ms. Lupy, so currently, I, Ms. Mallick?
Yes, Mr. Missile?
I, Mr. Pruitt?
I, Mr. Duncan?
Yes, Mr. Gallaway.
Yes.
All right, thank you, board.
And earlier today, we moved item number 14 from the county executive, which did not include a report earlier to the agenda, but that will take us right to item 15.
This is public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board.
And we do have signups this evening. The Vice Chair will go through our rules.
Thank you, Chair.
During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently
pending before the board, other than scheduled public hearings, individuals may address
the board of supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the board or matters
that are pending before the board, other than items on the listed on the agenda for public
hearing.
Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting.
The sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office up to ten persons may speak during
matters in the public session. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium.
The green light will go on when you're speaking. When you begin speaking, it begins
your a lot of time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light
indicates your time is 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 boards, state your name and if you live in Albuquerque County or
I just serial 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 and 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.
All comments are live streamed, recorded and published on the Outmobile County website and
just as a reminder, please introduce yourself and please speak into the microphone.
Thank you very much.
So, I'll begin with Susan McColley.
I'm Susan McColley, and I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller District.
When I was a kid, and our family went anywhere crowded or unfamiliar, we always made a plan.
This was before cell phones.
The only tool we had was that my dad was tall and easy to spot in the crowd.
So, whenever we approached a concert or a subway station or a country fair,
We decided, if anyone gets lost or we get separated, we need back here at the venue entrance or the next subway station or at the fried dough stand, you get the idea.
I don't think we ever had to use the plan, but it helped us to have one.
We knew we'd be okay if something frightening happened. The plan let us relax and trust each other and we knew what we would do.
Now, if my parents had had a plan but they didn't share it with all of us, it wouldn't have
helped us at all.
The only way this works is when the plan is made and then clearly communicated.
You see, where I'm going, don't you?
I'm here again to urge you to make a clear statement and establish policies regarding how
the county will respond when federal immigration agents arrive in this community.
Just like preparing for last month's snowstorm or making plans for the lid-combs concert in April,
getting clear on how the county will handle what could happen in an ice action simply makes sense.
It's not hypothetical, it's practical.
And communicating about those plans allows the community to understand what the county can and cannot do for them.
The resolution that the city passed regarding immigration enforcement actions and their
letter to the Virginia Congressional delegation and statewide leaders is a good model.
Like them, we ask you to make commitments to civil rights, do process and community trust
and to make clear how you will respond in the case of a frightening incident with federal agents.
What we ask isn't radical.
What we ask is common sense.
What we ask is for you to make your position clear and to communicate that position to reassure our community facing rampant fear.
Thank you.
Alicia, may I have?
Good evening.
My name is Alicia Lennahan.
I live in the Scottsville district.
I've been read all the remarks we've delivered over the last 10 months.
If we talk about Kamar, a breakout Garcia, and the other egregious mistakes made by ICE early on,
now we watch them abducting detained infants and toddlers and little boys in blue bunny hats.
We've learned that the cruelty is the point.
We've talked about how ICE, bolstered by the National Guard, escalated their tactics in LA, Chicago, and Portland.
And Minneapolis taught us that this administration is willing to kill people.
All along, we've asked you to take a principal stand, one that reflects our commitment
to the constitution, to the rule of law, and common decency, you remain silent.
We submitted a thoughtful, measured resolution articulating our values as a community and
intended to restrain the lawless actions routinely used by ICE, you remain silent.
The City Pastor Resolution articulating community values that also reflects legislation
working its way through the general assembly that will restrain nice, you remain silent.
When asked by Ceeber Weekly how or if the county government is preparing to protect us from
ice, you remain the silent, except for this tertus statement that county cannot disclose
public safety tactics to which I call rubbish.
We have a 10-day meetings for 10 months.
We know that the county executive works tirelessly to ensure every department has the resources
it needs to provide an effective community response.
The winter storm was a case in point.
You received a report about preparations before the storm and after action report when it was
over the Rose Retreated Schools and other activities were canceled, we knew who to call in an
emergency. All the relevant information was available to the public. The threat posed
by this administration continues to be a moving target. Actual responses will depend
non-facts on the ground. Nothing prevents
Thank you from passing a resolution. Nothing prevents you from reassuring the public with formal statement, as well as direct messages to those who are most likely to be affected by a federal action, whether it's immigration, protests, or election interference.
You must be. We must all be prepared. Thank you. Thank you.
Bruce Eads?
Good evening. My name is Jim Carpenter. I'm
didn't a Jack Jewel District and I'm here with the dog with the Vietnam Memorial and
I have three minutes and Bruce will follow up with his three minutes if that's
okay. The dog with the Vietnam Memorial will hold a 60th
pre-dedication ceremony on Friday, April 17th, 11 a.m. on the 56th ball on
We appreciate many of y'all will be saving the date wars and show them up.
The past year, a foundation completed a $250,000 more brick plaza in the UVA Wall face
to addition to the memorial.
Now, our focus is to turn the ADA access to their beloved field that heals in the spring
In the 2019 Airfare City Council approved setting up a working group of veterans, organizations
along with city staff to meet six times.
That spring and summer determined the best solution to where the gaining ADA access to
the memorial and the park.
For our citizens, we all agree that best solution was to construct a pedestrian bridge or
also John Warner Parkway with a Jason, a sensible parking lot on the low on the east side.
We presented a finance to a 2.5 million dollar budget and the city managers in November
of that year, there was well received by the, what the idea is, and it looked like
on 2020, it was going to be a group session, and they would have go ahead and prove that
I have a COVID hit.
Fast forward to December 2022, the City Council revisited our proposal and passed a resolution
in Dorsan Disult Solution that we could receive.
The Virginia DHR grant for $600,000 to be used on the project only.
we received this one, the May 2023, and immediately engaged race in engineering, the little
way Virginia to design the project, one year later, race in engineering, complete the
required testing and design for changing two bids on the project, and that means it even
up was at $2.5 million.
I do see some from the White House district, I'm living in Venezuela, so I grew up on
chair cabinet, but anyway, I still have Charleston, obviously.
Last, we went to work, and then in November of 2025, submitted to City Engineer Glennon
Duncan, for Sight Review, where they are at this time.
Of course, we not must approve the peer-based design since it is of all bridges in the area registered, and there is a sign to apply of the other privileges in the area, so we don't think that's going to be a problem.
We need to make sure that we need to make sure the city said that you're telling that you're right away so far
and we get to extend the bridge 10 feet to address that problem.
So it's now 110 feet long to give us all that right away.
Then maybe other questions from city staff but we let Tau Austin replace the engineering on it.
our design contractor. Of course, the good news is the Council has approved the resolution
that they will accept the ADA access project into their parks and trail system. If it is
constructed according to the city engineers plant pool, and they already had the project
in their CDIP at $100,000, $144, actually. We want to thank the Admiral County for putting it
there at 127, a county budget, with an inclusive donation of 250,000. Our first charge
here, of course, was Jam Blossom Jr. from Murliesville, and he was first of many, but
that we lost in Vietnam.
To a final long road since the City Council, first passed the
James D. Schursh, where you may remember, he worked for the city for many years, and I,
where I'm the Bible fastwood gather, and we began working with the city on the post-mediclicalkway
interchange, and how would it affect the historic bulk within our memorial, young and sister that not
being moved as it is the oldest and first public civic, Vietnam memorial in the nation.
So, for the last access through the McIntyre Golf Course parking lot, due to the
young change construction, we acquired that a new ADA access be found.
We all know we found a solution, the city of Green Street Found a solution, and we just need
to, and it was a full-baceted council on January, the resolution of this year.
We now, now we've got, for instance, need to find it and build it.
Thank you.
We have one more name on this list, although there were several who signed up for an item related
to a later public hearing, so they've been moved to the public hearing.
So if you don't hear your name called, it has been moved to the public hearing list.
Our next speaker is Tom Alivea.
I'm trying to live here from the Samuel Millidistrict.
Today, many of the earth's natural systems are unraveling
these disruptions stem from fast, recent,
increase in human numbers in the rise of industrial societies.
Now, climate change, biodiversity, diversity losses,
and other crises are worsening and reinforcing each other.
If we do not begin commensurate, corrective actions quickly,
Today's young people and our future generations will live on a damaged and far less supportive planet.
Given its environmentalist history, you might think albumol County may be a leader in containing environmental crises.
Not now, albumol County has dropped its former cautious approach to growth and is busy playing developer,
amount of futures in the 29 North innovation corridor with seemingly skewed
examination of sure the extensive environmental costs. The planning division in community
development appears to have lost much of its previous commitment to environmental protection.
For example, Plano staff proposed cutting the rural areas chopped off from the recent
comprehensive plan. They also proposed capping open space easements outside of comprehensive
The plan of staff proposed a data-central ordinance, without evaluating likely large effects
on local greenhouse gas emissions.
I recently sent you a proposal for significant restructuring of county planning processes.
The restructuring is designed to enable the more complete response to worsening environmental
crises.
A key provision calls for the reestablishment of the new department focused on rural areas
planning.
natural resource conservation and climate action, it would exist outside of community development,
this new department would offer expert policy recommendations directly to the plan commission
Board of Supervisors and work on a path for our community toward a more sustainable state.
He called us, Milton Friedman, once wrote,
only a crisis actually received produces real change.
When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken
depend on the ideas that are lying around.
With more and bigger ecological crises hit it our way,
you might feel that useful to keep this proposal somewhere lying around.
Thanks for your consideration.
Thank you.
That concludes our list.
All right.
We will close matters from the public.
Thank you for all those who came out to speak this evening.
And we will move to the next item on the evening's agenda.
Number 15, which is our public hearing on the county executives fiscal year 2027 recommended budget.
Mr. Richardson, good evening.
Good evening Mr. Chair. Members of the Board. Thank you so much for the opportunity to
be here this evening. And I will point out to the members of the public and the community
that may be listening tonight. This will be the second presentation that we have done
to the Board of Supervisors on the fiscal year 27 recommended budget. The full presentation
from last Wednesday afternoon is posted on the county's website and can be found if someone
listening this evening would like to go back and look at the full presentation.
This evening's focus is on, of course, the FY27 investments in our five year CIP, and I
will start with some comments that lead in to that, but this will be a bit of an abbreviated
version from what we went through last evening, and this chair, I do have members of the executive
team from the Finance Department, our budget team, many of those members are here tonight,
And our goal, of course, is that after we turn over to you, you conduct a public hearing
if there are any questions to not, from board members or anything that you would like to
clarify before we move into the budget.
Work sessions next week, we certainly want to do that this evening for the board.
So, board again.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening.
My name is Jeff Richardson.
I'm the county executive and I would always start by thanking our staff for helping to get
to this point in the process. We have a lot of work left ahead of us, but this evening I'm
going to go through and hit the framework of what's included in the fiscal year 27 budget.
I'm going to talk with just a couple of slides starting out before we get into the details,
and I want to talk about the board commitment, the staff commitment to maintaining a set of financial
policies, and that we adhere to these policies every year as we work through the budget process,
which really starts in earnest in the fall, takes us through December, and then we get into the nuts
and bolts of the budget when we present it, followed by a number of work sessions, adhering
to the policies allows us to maintain a triple triple-layed bond rating, and that allows us
to be good stewards of taxpayer funds. Ultimately, this means that we save money and that we can
do more with the money that we have over time. Being a county that has a triple triple-layed
We're one of 54 counties out of 3,000 counties in the United States and that that is of October 25.
13 of the 54 counties are in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
So Virginia is known from a fiscal standpoint as a good government state and we're proud to be a part of that group.
In our community, the University of Virginia is also triple triple way.
one of four public universities in the United States, as well as our partner city, the city of Charlotte'sville, they also carry this rate.
So, board, I've just started by talking about that framework, and this is something that's been alive and willing
out more county for decades, and I'm certainly proud to be a part of an organization that is built on sound financial policies.
So, we would also our commitment to performance improvement and cost savings is we talk a little bit about what our
organizational values include another principle of our county as a culture of continuous improvement and placing
structure in change with our project management work that we do to advance programs within the county to ensure
return on investment of our people, process and systems. Process and systems modernization, this
has been very supportive over the last few years in our county's investing in technology
to enhance government efficiency, to enhance customer service, modernizing many of our processes,
our systems. This would include, let me give you a couple of examples, our human resources information
system, which now we are much more apt as streamlining integrating HR processes for our employees
into technology and software while removing the use of outdated technology.
It also includes our financial systems, which is known as the PNL.
I'm sorry, which is known as FMS, financial management systems,
which is improved in improving financial systems integration.
And this helps us with our vendors on procurement, accounting, and budgeting.
And finally, EPNL, our enterprise performance and learning,
which is in our community development department.
This is another example of significant technology investment.
We're reading the process of working through
screen-learning processes and modernizing platforms
not just for our staff but for our customers.
We're just also involved staffing and efficiency studies.
We continue to conduct staffing studies to review current operations
and administration, the interrelationship between departments,
internal and external.
In our county, as well, as providing insights, as to how it compares to industry standards, similar
localities, and thus practices. So born you might ask when we do this work. What's the
result of the work? The result is in the fall right box, where we are able to reduce positions
year over year for the last two years. We've reduced positions, and this is outside of public
safety, we have less positions than we had two years ago, and that's with a mounting increase
for calls for service across county government, and so this investment and efficiency,
this investment and performance improvement, us measuring what we do, and then reporting
back to the board in our annual report. This all is meant to be able really to do more with
All right, so let's talk a little bit more about the recommended budget.
One of those common questions that we get from the community and the board gets this and certainly the staff does.
Where does the money go?
This is a graph that was put together by our community relations staff trying to show on a dollar,
brought into the county where does the money go and this doesn't trace every single penny but we're looking for
Where that the big the big box go over half the money 52% of all the money that comes into album mark county for public services is
Your mark for education this includes the local transfer for for the school's operating budget as well as the plan projects and our
IP and also the service on our existing debt.
The next largest category is Public Safety.
Public Safety receives 14 cents of every dollar.
This includes funding for our police department, our fire, and the EMS services as well as
the support for our volunteer fire departments.
In fiscal year 27, community development will include CIP investments from the build-out of
11 cents. With in-county operations we're holding at 10 cents and you find you will find
counting operations that are covered but it also includes investments such as the climate
action fund and finally health and welfare and the growth of affordable housing fund is at 8 cents
respectfully.
So board, uh, to cut,
excuse me,
I got choked, I'm sorry,
but then low
appropriate for me to get choked last year when I was recommending a first-hand
tax rate increase.
Board, I apologize. This budget is balanced on the real estate tax rate
of $89, but it forced it to pull $100 in the sense value. That is our current tax rate for
more county. And if you look at the slide, there are no recommended changes to the tax rates
for what was adopted in fiscal year 26.
I will take a minute and I will look at fiscal year 27
obligations. You're going to hear us talk a lot about obligations in this budget.
Obligations really mean what we look at over year over year that the commitment we make to do
certain things in our budget and for our community and it has a multi-year effect on us paying
for what these obligations are.
Examples of what I'm talking about are operating costs and next year's budget for
ten-and-schools.
We also have a commitment as we have pulled down federal dollars from FEMA to pay four or five
with in our firing rescue department, those federal dollars have three year life cycles, and after three years it's expected that federal funding as it goes away, that local government must pick that up.
We also have key partner agency agreements and those agreements are growing.
We have a commitment to market base compensation.
We also have a changing federal funding landscape revenue sharing your brain with the city and increasing that service all of that
Our examples of obligations
Excuse me one more second. Jeff, do you want to take a few minutes so we can we can re-configure?
I don't want you to struggle through this we can stop for a few minutes. Yeah, I just apologize to the board until the year will pull it
I've not been coughing today
And I just got, I just started coughing, I apologize.
I say what, why don't we take five minutes and we'll just pick right back up and it'll
give you a second because the under stress, I don't know how anybody regains there.
So we'll take, if it's, I don't think anybody on board would object.
All right, board, I'm going to call us back to Order, Mr. Richardson.
You are welcome to continue when you are ready to do so.
Mr. Chair, thank you very much and members of the board up, I'm very sorry.
did not mean to get choked up.
I'm sorry, I kind of stumbled through those last three slides, getting to where we are from
the rumors of the public that are going to be receiving our apologize for the delay and
for folks at home as well.
So, let's talk just a minute about multi-year tactics, the funding bridge,
the county executive
proposed budget for fiscal year 27, it includes revenue from the county's budget stabilization
reserve.
We have a 2% budget stabilization reserve that we have had in effect now for about 4 years and the budget this year's budget recommends using one quarter of the 2% reserve half of a percent both in fiscal year 27 and again in fiscal year 28.
This will leave us with an additional 1% that will remain in the reserve to provide flexibility should we encounter unexpected financial needs over the next 12 to 24 months.
In addition, in this budget, I am recommending that we transfer to the CIP, 6.4 million dollars that would be in the CIP for a determined project in the future.
I would recommend to this board that we put this out in your five, and that over the course of the next couple of years,
let's continue to keep an eye on our economy.
As Dr. Bailey pointed out last fall, that we've got a partly cloudy, partly sunny economy,
And at a regional and state level, we're continuing to watch things with watchful eye on anything that could affect county funding.
In addition to that, this also includes a school transfer, a school operating transfer that we'll talk about in just a minute.
But over the next couple of years, we've noticed a couple of things within the schools both at the state level that is volatile.
And that 6.4 million held in the CIP, it could go to a future school project that's yet to be determined or if we hit volatility in the next 12 to 24 months,
this board may need to consider a recommendation that would reprioritize that CIP placeholder to replace lost revenue.
So that's something that is embedded in this year's manager's recommended budget.
So, we tend to focus on the general fund during budget season because that's where the tax revenue is received.
There's a primary funding source for schools, capital, and debt, and it's where this board has the maximum amount of policy discretion.
The general fund expenditures, as you can see, is balanced at $512 million dollars, and I'd
like to point out to the maroon area in the bottom left corner of the donate that, let's say,
43% transfer to schools that is from the general fund, and as we get into the school's budget
work session, our budget finance team will be able to talk the board through the funding that
recommended for schools. The guideline with the funding split and answer any of the board's
questions that you may have.
Okay, as our promise we're going to move into some of the key
investments recommended in this year's budget. The services and initiatives prioritize our
community safety and well-being and education and of course always ensuring a high level of quality
service and maintaining a strong quality of life.
In police, we're providing funding for three new police officer positions, starting
mid-year next year to support public safety.
We've added 19 police officer positions since 2021.
These officers, along with previous additions and investments,
will help ensure coverage
meets demand across our community.
I would point out that over the last three years our calls for service and police have done
at 19 percent.
We have recently undertook a comprehensive public safety staffing study that assessed our
police and file rescue departments to help ensure that we are most effectively providing
those public safety resources and response to our community.
This study reviewed industry standard and best practices and it made multi-year recommendations
that will serve us well over the next five to seven years.
It studied infrastructure, deployment, staffing, staffing strategy.
It addressed our changing risk profile as a county.
And as we continue to grow and change year after year,
the budget continues to multi-year implementation of those recommendations.
In addition, this budget contains $2.3 million to keep salaries
and our police department competitive for purposes of recruitment and retention.
turnover in public safety is extremely expensive and based on this assessment, the pay
scale for the police department will be revised to maintain competitive positioning
within our respective labor market.
Albumark County's committed to ensuring fire rescue has the resources needed to serve our
community effectively. Just as our benchmarked police calls for service going up 19% in the
last three years, fire rescue and EMS related call request have done up 13% in the last three years.
In recent years, this board knows that the county has successfully leveraged federal grant funding
for FEMA's safer grants to help us to be able to bring on paid professional firefighters
with federal money.
we've been successful in obtaining four grants today, and we have hired positions in fire
rescue, and that's to offset shortages without our professional volunteer firefighter programs
that stations that are all across the county. As I said, we've successfully competed
for four grants since fiscal year 21, terming $12.7 million, and we have hired 57 firefighters
with that money. In this coming budget, we have local funding for 30 positions in FI-27.
That federal funding is going away and as you can see on the slide that amounts to $1.7 million.
This is not a strategy board that is paid off very well for us because when you pull down three years of federal funding,
it gives you three years to begin to stay the ring the cost locally for these firefighters.
Otherwise, we had to pick up the cost right out of the gate or deal with the gap in service delivery.
This budget also contains $900,000 for fire rescue to continue to keep salaries competitive
for recruitment and retention, as I've said, turnover is expensive, and we've also
positioned ourselves to pursue a fifth FEMA grant to implement staffing study recommendations.
And as I said earlier, when we were talking about police, this deferred apartment also
underwent the study for the public safety staffing study within the department.
There are recommendations that we will begin to put into play over the next several
budgets.
Also included in next year's budget is a recommendation for three additional sheriff
deputy positions.
With the opening of new courts over the past year,
more facilities coming online in future years, these positions are being added to assist
with the day-to-day operations of the office, including
courthouse and courtroom security,
inmate transportation, and civil processing.
Emergency management, this is an important area for
Almer County Government, and we're recommending that,
and this is a budget neutral reorganization.
We're pulling the office of emergency management
from the Fire Rescue Department to a stand-alone office
within the public safety function of Almer County.
This function will report directly into the county executive's office, the Office of Emergency Management is responsible for strategic planning, coordinating and execution of emergency management activities across all phases of emergency management.
This includes preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation.
OEM, so it's at the center as the central point of contact for emergency management activities, including coordination with state and federal agencies as necessary, as well as state and federal regulations, and maintaining alignment with the national incident management system, NEMs, and the incident command system, ICS standards.
So, a mercy management has been a key priority for outmark County for several years.
Most often times, it's going to be weather-related events, multi-day weather-related
events, and it takes a lot of coordination with City, with the University.
The state and our regional partners. We think this next step is a printed next step as we continue to strengthen this function.
Also included in this budget is $2.7 million of new funding for the Amark County School Division.
This is a 7.3% increase year over year from this year to next year.
It also embedded in that $2.7 million dollars is $9 million of additional local funding that
I'm recommending go to schools at this funding level.
We believe that there's funding operations included in this for two new schools that will
next year and we believe that have full funding necessary to open and operate those
two new schools. This also, we believe, fully meets the obligations of public
schools with their collective bargaining agreement, including salary increases
for staff, teachers, additional positions that are included in their recommended
budget for that's necessary to do the planning time, lunch breaks and so forth. They
also have a commitment to market base pay and keeping the positions that they survey every
year, market competitive and then finally I would point out for the schools that they continue
to rank very high across the state for poor people funding and low class sizes.
So we're excited to continue to partner with schools.
This slide shows increased revenue for public schools operating budget over the last 10 years
and this includes the FYR-27 recommended budget.
On average, the total public schools fund
on willing operating revenues have grown 5.8% every year.
This period incorporates a wide range of changing circumstances
as you can see by this graph, such as text rate increases,
that have been your mark for public education,
the opening of school editions, changes in state funding,
and the pandemic's initial revenue decline,
followed by the historically strong women who growth that followed it.
Board of Clean Out, this chart shows ongoing sources, for example.
This chart does not include that in the FY26 budget, that the Board approved a 7.7 million
dollar one-time allocation that went from local government to schools to take that money
and put into the joint local government schools health care fund, a 7.7 million dollars
is not anywhere on the screen.
Based on how their budget is designed,
they're not allowed to keep reserves above 2%.
That's why we've got to keep an eye on our reserves.
To be able to help the schools, if they have a drop in state funding,
or they have something unexpected happen,
and we're trying to help them to stabilize operations.
For fiscal year 27, for the second year in red,
we have a total of $5 million for the affordable housing investment fund
that we recommended. Investment in our warehousing, the county continues to invest in
developer incentives and other initiatives to expand affordable housing options.
The efforts focus on increasing the supply of affordable homes and rental units,
supporting workforce housing and assisting residents in securing stable housing.
Since the affordable housing investment fund was created in fiscal year 19,
Our more has invested over $22 million into affordable housing projects and programs, funding
for these sources and for these projects and programs came from a variety of sources, including
the affordable housing investment fund, American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA and human services
funding programs.
These funds have supported the construction or preservation of over 1,700 units of the
affordable housing, both rental and owner occupied.
It's also served to support shelter and supportive services for over 280 victims of domestic
violence, and 539 individuals experiencing homelessness, and then also housing counseling
and navigation support for over 788 individuals and families.
I also wrote to talk at the bottom of this slide, a 20% increase to the elderly and disabled
tax relief program.
The FY27 budget includes a 20% increase, this provides real estate and mobile home tax exemption
for taxpayers who qualify under age, finance, financial or medical guidelines, total funding
available for the program for the coming year will be $2.8 million dollars.
That's almost one cent on the tax rate.
The increase is due to expenditure trends of the program and changes in income thresholds
financial, worth criteria all approved by the Board of Supervisors in January.
Next year's budget has a recommended continuation of dedicated water resources funding to cover
water resources operating and debt service payment, cost and reserve for CIP projects.
Climate action funding is also included with $300,000 of one-time funding that would go in fiscal
year 27 and it will match the one-time funding that was put into the program in fiscal 26.
There is a carryover projected going into next year of reappropriated money from this year for programs yet to be completed.
Those would include raise additional energy improvements, county building energy efficiency programs.
The energy resource hub, the Climate Action Collaborative Initiative, the Climate Residence Cohort Support.
Also, board, I'll point real quick to $140,000 that is earmarked from the plastic bag
tax for a continuation of our roadside litter program.
As you know, we have a vibrant volunteer program in the county that does quite a good job,
but we've collected $440,000 since the implementation of the disposable plastic bag tax
was created in fiscal year 23.
from December of 24 to December of 25, the plastic bag funded roadside little cleanup program
has cleaned and out more county over 1,000 miles of road and has collected over 3,900 bags
of trash from out roads and out more county. So this is an example of the board diversifying
the tax revenue, creating a consumer tax and that is five cents on plastic bags is devoted to
clean up programs in the county and we've got good data to show how that's working for our community.
We'll take a minute and talk about economic development.
The fiscal year 27 recommended budget includes $4.15 million of additional one-time funding for economic development.
This fund was designed to provide ready, flexible funding to support economic development opportunities.
I'll give you an example that we learned during the AstraZeneca attraction effort over the last year that our ability to quickly respond to the needs of the state, the questions they have on infrastructure improvements and commitment to being site ready.
It was critical in landing the company here in Almar County, economic development opportunities don't come on a predictable schedule, this board knows that.
So we always need balance cash on hand against unknown future opportunities, having a sufficient
fund available allows us to have stronger comfort, approving funding for good opportunities,
aligned with our strategic plan, our economic developments for strategic plan, knowing
that we have got a focus of really razor focus on the type of industry that fits best
and out more county.
More
the county recently undertook a study on how to understand the different classes of property that drive the services that we deliver
You've got that assembly of that in this slide in front of you, but I want to point your attention to is the orange yellow color at the bottom
That's commercial in the industry and I'll point your attention to in 2015 and 2015 ten years ago
We had a 15% tax base that covered commercial in the industry
10 years later, we have slipped to 11.3% in the fall right bottom box.
You can see that the cost for service on business and industry, commercial investment.
For every dollar we receive, we pay 32 cents in service delivery.
So there is a ribbon and margin of 68 cents that we plow back into our budget for services,
operations, and investment all aimed at quality of life in service delivery.
an album, Mark County.
I want you to look at the residential and multi-family over the
same period of time. It's gone from just over 65% to almost 74%. And that really is not
so much new homes. It's a combination of new homes and assess value growth. And we've not
significantly lost commercial in the industry. It's just that residential has significantly
outpaced it. And when you look at the top right hand box for service delivery and the cost
for every dollar received on residential and multifamily, it cost $1.31 to serve.
These are statistics that match up nationally. This is not just album Mark County. This
matches up across the United States. And so when we talk about revenue diversification strategy
to keep album Mark County affordable, we've got to pay attention to the amount of commercial
and industry investment in our county because it is a affordability strategy and it is a tax
based diversification strategy.
It's in my work plan over the next five years
to get that 15 at 11.3% number back to 15%.
With the investment that we've seen over the last couple of years,
we predict that in five years,
we will be back hovering around 15%.
And I believe that in order for us to begin to see the relief
that we need, we need to be into the 17 to 18% range
out of minimum.
I'll
switch and talk in for a few minutes about our workforce.
It's one of our six strategic goals, as you can see it supports go number six, which is a strong workforce and good customer service within our county.
Consistent with county budgets, our county's compensation philosophy.
The 27 budget includes a review of classified scale positions on it to your cycle
and to make appropriate market adjustments so that we maintain market competitiveness
in this and keep our turnover rates low. It also includes a 2%
core and a one-time bonus for classified staff. It also includes $1.4 million in our budget
devoted to staff training and development, as well as recognizing that our health
care fund was stabilized, is still dealing with health care inflation, and we're
going to need to invest an additional 8% in that over the next year.
We're
just a busy slide, and we talked about it last week, it's intentionally busy because
this slide represents 68 partner agencies in which we devote $40.7 million of funding on a yearly
basis.
We recognize that our local government cannot meet every need on one, by funding non-profit
and community organizations, we strengthen the regional safety net and improve residents access
about our services. Let's look just for a minute at what some of this looks like.
Public safety, 14.5 million dollars next year. That's a 20% increase in F-27 from
26 and it's really across five partner agencies, including the Album Mart Charlottesville
Regional Jail, the Emergency Communications Center, the 911 Center, which is a partnership
between the city, the county and UVA.
And then also, Charlottesville, Albuquerque, SPCA.
This is funding increases to support operating costs
and service demands in our animal sheltering
through our third-party contract.
It also includes transit agencies at $8.2 million
that includes Charlottesville area transit, cat, micro-cat,
which is the on-demand public rideshare service
that operates in the Charlotte spill area transit and pay for by the county, as well as
jumped.
John is a regional public transportation system, providing paratransit services and outmars
rural demand, response, and commuter services.
It also includes libraries and tourism, and includes our Jefferson Madison Regional Library,
which is a partnership, and we're investing no money there, as well as the Charlottesville,
more conditions in Bizarre's Bureau, and it's trying to, for us, to continue to strengthen
our regional tourism and economic impact. It also includes health and welfare, non-human
service priority funding. For region 10, the Blue Ridge Health Department, A-Hip and the Jefferson
Board on Aging, and then finally public quarks at three and a half million dollars. That's
where Banta Solid Waste Authority, taking almost all of that, which provides for our county
recycling, solid waste, household hazardous waste disposal services across the county.
Human Services funding, 29 programs, $1.6 million, this prioritizes programs that serve
the most vulnerable members of our community, including elderly residents, households with
kids under the age of six, medically vulnerable individuals, enhanced compliance to ensure that
funded programs are both effective and accountable.
Take a second and look at our CIP.
Well, this has gotten a lot of attention
and it will continue to and our budget talking
about our CIP and our five year CIP
and what we're able to afford to do.
So I'll talk just for a minute
that the counties in the process of executing
the five largest CIP projects
in the history of the county.
That's the court's complex, the Ravanna Futures property purchase, and the construction of three new schools.
These five projects have budgets that total together, $296 million.
And as they are complete, they create a funding obligation over the next 20 years following issuing the bonds to pay for them.
And board, I'll remind you with respect that the county's debt services are mortgage payment, and it continues to grow.
because you and the staff through our strategic plan were trying to address the strategic needs,
not just the operational but the capital investment in order for us to address problems and opportunities
and maintain the strong quality of life here and album more accounting.
This is a snapshot of the schools that the CIP plan that is right now earmarked for school projects over the next five years,
and that total's $196.8 million and you have an upcoming budget work session where we will dig into the details of what that means.
Also, in the CIP, you've got about $160.3 million that's dedicated to a variety of local government projects.
in your most board that in years three, three, five, and that's year 29, 30, and 31, that we
look like in new projects because we're having to focus on maintaining ongoing programs, paying
our debt service and keeping an eye on out your obligations.
So board, that wraps me up. The staff
was supposed to time me to see how long it took. I respectfully asked at the time that I was
that we had to take a break, that that'd be taken away from the time, please.
And that not that not the undue of counted against me.
But the key takeaways from the FY27 recommended budget,
no proposed changes to the tax rates, obligations continue to rise
and we are planning with a multi-year eye on paying for those obligations.
Service demands are evolving and we need to continue to evolve
to meet the changing community needs.
We have an evolving tax base, we need to plan ahead for significant investment
and folks, what you're seeing is just doing print up
multi-year planning that will continue to shape the future.
This budget prioritizes education, public safety
and a strong workforce. It includes funding the schools,
transitioning our FEMA funding to local government funding
for our firefighters, adding new police, adding new sheriff positions,
keeping our pay competitive, and we need to continue to recruit
and retain high quality public servants.
Most of our investment is tied directly to the Board's multi-year strategic plan, and I'm
excited about that.
This plan that we hear about from our community, includes affordable housing, environmental
stewardship, economic development, by following our own financial policies and preparing
for significant future capital needs.
Finally, this budget is a two-year bridge budget that maintains stability now and positions
out more county for long term success as we strengthen in diverse fire tax base.
Mr. Chair, thank you for the time this evening. I'll turn it over to you for the public
caring and again the staff will be available to take questions as they come up.
Thank you very much.
Great. I'll do it just a quick pass to see if there are any questions before we hear
from those who signed up to speak. Supervisor Pervett.
Yes. So I will just note that this is a summary of what I said during previous
previous budget hearing, having thought about it a little bit more and also just for the
public's benefit. I had a constituent talk to me recently in the grocery store and asked
me very tithily like, so that's in the budget. What are we looking at? And for my own kind
of thinking through it, I've started to think every year having done this no twice. There's
kind of the key budget stories and from our legislative perspective, there's the things that
recognize that we can change between now and then in a really compressed time one, and so
I've started trying to think of the budget in terms of what are the asks and what are the places
that might have give to get there. From my reckoning, and this is also going to be speaking
a little subjectively, I'm thinking it looks like the big asks that I'm expecting us to be talking
about, a lot this year, and other supervisors might have differing things. The thing, the three that
I'm tracking on as big asks, I'm expecting possible movement on school capital to huge
story.
It's all over the news.
The housing trust fund, we're halfway to the target, but we're not there.
And school operating funds.
That's always going to be a attention point.
And here is the first time in a long time that we've changed our percent-wise contribution
to schools.
the places that might have a give to help get toward any of those things.
There is $6.2 million that we're putting into capital reserves on behalf of the schools.
There is an economic development fund that is refunded up to 4 million,
sorry, not up to, that is refunded at 4 million, 4 million new and fused when 4 million is previously
what took several years to fill the economic development fund up.
And there is always the possibility of a tax rate being considered.
Those are the things I see as possibly having given.
And those are the things that I know from public comment from the emails that I get
and the angry phone calls I get are our places of community concern.
And those are, I'm not saying I'm specifically going to use any of those tools.
And I'm not committing to getting toward those three goals.
But those are the things I'm hearing as the goals from the community.
And those are the places at this point in time, very, very early in the budget cycle.
I see it's potentially being targets of where to find that money.
And with that, I will turn over.
All right, Supervisor Lappista, currently?
I like your proposed budget.
I think it's fair.
I think it's balanced.
I think it meets a lot of our needs.
We don't have unlimited amounts of money to do everything that we want.
Otherwise we would do it.
It just doesn't work that way.
People do want us to be very cognizant of the tax rate,
the real estate property, the real estate tax rate,
because it's costing them a lot of money also
to fund a lot of these other programs.
So we have to be cognizant of that.
I like which been proposed any time you change something,
then you're going to have to take from someplace
else and I think you're going to have a lot of pushback because I do believe we've I think you've
done a great job as far as narrowing it down what the community wants what we can do and how we
can pay for it. Thank you. Supervisor Missle. Thank you, Chair. I want to commend staff for the
great work to get us to this balance budget to this point. Also echo something that you've said
in the past, which is we have more problems and opportunities when we have money.
And so keeping that in mind as we move into the budget season is going to be so boring,
I think.
But also in some cases, hopefully rewarding as we look to some of those trade-offs that
supervisor Prue had mentioned, which I agree with, and I'll just say that I look forward
to working on with schools, on the two on Tuesdays and with all of us, on the work sessions
coming up in the next few weeks to better understand.
Some of the details that you've gone through, I do have specific questions, but I know they'll likely be answered next week and through the work session, so I will pause there.
Great, Supervisor Duncan.
Yeah, I'm sure during the work sessions will get into a lot.
I would just say kind of off the top of my main concerns are funding for housing.
I'm also pretty uncomfortable with the 6.4 to CIP instead of to the schools and then I also would like to see more funding for climate initiatives.
But again, recognizing that there are always lots more requests than there's 24.
Supervisor Malik.
Thank you and thank you for the homework.
We all have a lot to study and come up with good questions to ask in the upcoming meetings.
I see this as the beginning of the process, not the end, so we all have a lot to learn.
We also have to figure out what we can control and what we can't, and the local government
being the bottom of the governmental hierarchy has to pick up the pieces when other levels
of government fail to do their job.
So we know they're increasing state of federal mandates.
We all have to decide how to manage to protect our citizenry.
And also in our minds, I think, is the large number of Al-Wau County residents who are
strapped to the end to meet their tax obligations, and so we have to be keeping them
in mind as we go forward with all of this work, but I appreciate you all being here.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
Thank you, supervisors.
This will be the first of a couple of public hearings, and then obviously we'll be doing
work sessions in public for folks that give your comments today, but we hope that you'll
come back and give us additional comments as we work through the process.
But with that, we will move to those who have signed up to speak this evening on the recommended
budget.
And Vice Chair Missile will take us through our speaking rules.
Great.
Thank you, Chair.
During public hearings, the Board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed
for public hearing.
speakers are limited to one appearance, three minutes per public hearing item.
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 lot of time.
The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking.
The red light indicates your time is 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 boards, date your name, and if you live in Al-Marl County,
or of 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, do not speak from your seat or out of term.
All comments are live streamed recorded and published on the Al-Marl County website and again
this reminder to please introduce yourself and to speak directly into the microphone so we can hear you.
All right, with that, I will start with Denise Zito.
Miss Zito, you're left. You're going to see little arrows. You can move that podium down if you look to your.
So we can see you.
Because we can't see you.
Oh, there you are.
And I would just as a general note to everyone, you can adjust that podium up or down if you are.
If you're too tall or too tall, if you're tall.
I think I'm supposed to speak into both.
Please do.
All right.
Impact.
Great for hand.
Good evening.
My name is Denise Zito.
I live in the U.S.
No White Hall, Match Stereo District.
But in addition to being here with impact,
I'm a member of the Society of St. Vincent DePaul.
This is a 200-year-old worldwide Catholic organization
that gives direct assistance to those in need.
Our group in Charlottesville was founded six years ago.
Those in need call us, we send two volunteers to visit within.
We hear their situation and then we pay up to $1,000 of their rent
to keep them from being evicted.
We only have a family or individual once every 12 months.
Last year alone, we collected and distributed over $200,000 in direct aid.
We receive over 100 calls a week, and of course we can't help everyone who calls, but the stories are heartbreaking.
People are who are disabled and they can't pay their rent.
We heard about a trailer with a hole in it, no lighting, no heat.
Mothers with their children sleeping in their cars because they can't afford to deposit in a first month's rent.
But others are working two or three jobs to try to afford their rent.
They're corner breaks down, they're injured, they lose a week of work.
The university lays them off when school's not in session.
We are not talking irresponsibility.
We are talking about people living on the edge through no fault of their own.
The local department complexes make it difficult for the renters and us to pay.
There's the rent and then their separate fees for trash and for utilities.
Some of the local apartment complexes of a winter is late require that winter to take cash from the bank account and pay at the Walmart or 711 where the payment is then wired to the apartment owner.
I myself have paid a thousand dollars in cash to the 711 to pay someone's rent and of course there is a $3.99 privilege fee for the privilege of doing so.
In fact, I've been talking to this board for nine years.
The problem is overwhelming for the churches trying to help these people.
We've provided a viable solution in the form of $10 million, not $5 million,
$10 million, commitment to affordable housing.
While you wait, these people are drowning, and the churches alone cannot help everyone.
All the impact conversations poor money into this community
and direct aid to those in need. And we will always do so. But this is clearly a public policy
issue. We'll rest skyrocket and wages don't keep up. It's a supply problem. The Society of
Safe and Zipoll joins the impact in urging you to finally fully fund the Affordable Trust Fund,
Affordable Housing Trust Fund, with a recurring $10 million annually. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Vicki Bravo.
I'd invite folks if you're in support of the speaker that you can raise your hand, but show that support.
It's actually visually easier to see how many are supported.
Good evening. My name is Vicky Bravo and I'm a member of the impact. We are so pleased that the Affordable Housing Investment Fund is up and running. It represents years of work and thoughtful consideration by Dr. Petthia and the Board of Supervisors.
It won't help reduce the affordable housing crisis unless it has a meaningful amount of funding.
We know that every year the county receives more proposals than you can fund.
The proposed budget calls for 5 million in the fund and we need at least 10 million.
When we first recommended 10 million a year, it was estimated that it would fund about 330 units per year,
So, 3300 units in 10 years, they all won't find that much, but it will be able to make a dent in the need.
UVA has a goal of 1,000 to 1,500 affordable units in 10 years.
The city also plans to build several thousand over the next 10 years.
If all this happens, we won't solve the problem,
But we also won't continue to fall behind in the way we have in recent years.
We commend Dr. Peffia and the Board of Supervisors for the many hours of work that have
gone into this.
We need the funds to make it worthwhile.
As Al-Bamal County grows business, we must have the housing to support it for all the necessary
levels of workforce.
We're already behind.
Thank you.
Heidi Gilman Bennett.
Hi there.
Heidi Gilman Bennett.
I'm a volunteer leader of Family Council.
With members representing all public schools in Alabama County.
And here's tonight's speaking personally on funding for schools.
First, operating budget.
High-quality public schools are expensive to run, as you know.
Sending about $20,000 per student is not actually unreasonable, especially given the high cost of living in Albuquerque County.
And the critical need to keep competitive with child-free city schools and others, for teacher salaries, compensation, working conditions,
like getting teachers short lunch and bathroom breaks that are negotiated in collective bargaining.
This is the shirt that I will recently enrichment to advocate for state funding.
It says, fund our schools.
Many of us elects the involuntary as well as students have worked really hard to ensure that
Album Oil County receives its fair share from the state.
But although the state CIP formula shifted for the daughter, you are proposing to withhold
6.4 million dollars and not a fan.
The county executives, the payables, to place that money, both this year and next in your hands,
the board of supervisors to stand as you see fit, which could be on schools, or maybe not.
Seems to me you're playing the game to four school leaders to reduce budgets, I got it.
But what you need to understand is that under the direction of the new chair and vice chair of the school board,
elected school leaders and members of the public, including myself, already asking an insane number of questions and getting answers.
it's different than past years. I urge you to let them do their jobs to come to you with a
need-based budget for so many kids and educators and to not withhold money that belongs to
the schools. Second, capital budget, I'm a mom, with an MBA, I see the financial situation
in the county of facing, I see many other vests behind me asking for important things, and here
my own, and I'm personally grateful to everyone of you for visiting schools in person this winter
with family counsel. What you saw are schools that have not been renovated in too many decades,
kids in temporary trailers, and schools that are bursting at the seams. The physical buildings
are homing, or kids ability to learn. These are not school buildings, but convince the future
us to re-locate here. I am worried. I ask all these school buildings that reflects the
community's commitment to children and families and teachers. I think not. So yes, I will
continue to advocate to the school board for efforts of use of operating budgets and a well-planned
capital imprisonment. But I also urge you as you go to your constituents in town halls to stop
the auspurses them of the two boards of adults and focus on the kids. We need you to build confidence
in our public school system, please, especially as we look towards a potential ballot in our
Thank you.
Carama Clark.
My name is Carama Clark, and I'm the Executive Director of the Women's Fellows.
We're building a multi-generational, although it is place-based at Penn Park.
The Women's Fellows is one of the community's third places,
public and welcome spaces that serve as essential, accessible community gathering spots for social
interaction, belonging, and physical and mental wellbeing.
I stand up for you tonight as though Bennett's mom and as the executive director to advocate for the recommended money in the CIP budget to help us build the next phase of Bennett's village, the central place space.
I grew up in a Mark County and my parents still living the same house that I grew up in.
Over the years we've had four or five generations of our family gathered together in
county and city parks for playday for the celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and holidays.
For five years, my son Bennett joined those celebrations as well as to describe parenting
great great parents who used walkers and other mobility devices. But he remembers final
muscular atrophy and used a parallel wheelchair to navigate the world. Unfortunately,
our community parks are not designed for kids or adults in real-chairs. They're not designed
For many community members,
there's with cochlear implants,
then three bigger changing tables require calm spaces.
They're not designed for those feedbacks
that's to electrical outlets
for medical communication purposes.
Those who are difficulty regulating body temperatures
can need additional bunches
in order to take free-grade breaks.
Many playgrounds use a butcher,
scrabbler, stand, making it difficult for a wheelchair,
strollers, and those who balance issues
to safely navigate.
We used to take that as part of a way to enrich
to an all-bodied playground where you can play independently with a Sponsor family, but the
amount for a place within his own community where the barriers for play could be lowered for
him and many others. But it died unexpectedly in 2018, but his dream of a place to play in our
community was all in the independent village. Many of you tonight have probably already experienced
the first phase of that dream, the treehouse of the independent village. I wonder how many
the audience have visited since we opened that project in January of last year, or have already
been part of Bennett's Village Programme, feel free to raise your hand.
The treehouse we are working on, now that the treehouse is complete, we're working on the central
place-based, which will feature the rest of the sense of design elements.
A ground level miracle bound slows up all abilities, choreo equipment for parents and caregivers
to get exercises well, a track that we could say to see for those of the rest
employing mobility or other medical needs, a free-style track to support safe-thrail seeking
movement, a climbing play tower with a concrete slide, concrete does not interfere with
popular elements, and an open area for a wet, wax station or group play.
Successful models of inclusive place spaces have significant financial investment from local
government resources in global private partnership.
Many of our potential funders, individuals, foundations and other government agencies, want
member about local support, please support us.
Reverend Susan Carlson.
My name is Susan Carlson.
I'm a member of the Unitarian Universal's Convigation
of Charlottesville.
I live in the White Hall District in Croze,
and I am one of the co-presidents of impact.
This year, impact will hold its namelay action on March 24th.
We're 1,400 people together together because we have all heard the need for $10 million a year for affordable housing in Album Marl County.
We're glad to have the majority of supervisors committed to attending the Nehemiah Action on March 24th and we're grateful that the current budget proposal allocates five
excuse me, 5 million this year to go towards the affordable housing investment fund.
Unfortunately, the housing crisis in our community is a huge problem that you well know
because you've heard about it every single year. It's a huge problem that's getting worse
every year. And how do we know that? We know that because we hold meetings in our congregations,
in our community, we hear the stories from people, as you've heard some today,
and so we
know that this is a huge problem that people cannot afford to live in Albuquerque, they
have to live far away from their jobs, from their healthcare, from their children's schools,
From there places where they have to take cars that may be can afford either that cost so much in gas these days.
We cannot abide by this moral travesty.
For we believe that a budget is a moral document, and this is getting worse and worse every single year.
It's hurting our people and we've heard it for the last eight years during testimonies at the Nehemiah action.
You've heard it too.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to fully support the investment fund so that the housing crisis doesn't blossom and blame me even more.
This crisis requires bold leadership, commitment, and action.
And we believe that you, our supervisors have the moral authority and the will to change
this through the budget, and we'll support you as you do it.
Thank you.
Jane Colony Mills.
Good evening.
I'm Jane Colony Mills, I'm a resident of the Whitehall District and Executive Director of
officials in the Jack Jout district, here to say thank you but also to help raise awareness
of the affordability crisis in our community. With Admiral Kennedy's first ever funding
for loaves and fishes in the FY26 budget, we've provided a week's worth of free, healthy
groceries, customized for dietary restrictions, cooking and storage capacity and cultural
preferences to nearly 97,000 people since July 1, 2025.
50% of those people are Al-Mau County children, adults, and seniors, more than 6,000
at Mau County residents each month.
The meeting is growing 13% over the previous year.
Al-Mau County's F-Li-26, $40,000 CIP grant allowed loads and fishes to replace a 13-year-old
walk in freezer with a safer, more efficient unit,
expanding our capacity to store healthy frozen foods
and feed more people.
The freezer replacement project is actually
a testament to the power of community partnerships
with funding from Al-Molk County,
the Bill of J.A. Friedbank, the Paris Foundation
and four individual family donors
and the construction management by the building goodness foundation.
Those businesses was able to demolish
and remove the original freezer,
excavate the concrete floor, insulate the footprint beneath the new freezer, pour and cure
a new concrete pad, install a new freezer and cooling equipment, upgrade electricity and drainage
systems to eliminate condensation issues and bring the new freezer fully online while only
missing six-fig distributions. But we were quickly back to providing the critical safety-made
that fetuses because insecure food,
a thinned, secure, out-of-mouth county residents
rely on us for their monthly food.
And very grateful for our mock- County support
for what we do, and that Mr. Richardson
in the County Finance budget have proposed
a 7.3% increase in funding for words and dishes.
The largest direct to the public free food
distributor in our community.
I hope the Board of Superfoges will improve,
improve this increase.
And I want to thank you for partnering with us to increase access to healthy culturally appropriate food for our neighbors.
Thank you.
Michael Monaco.
My name is Michael Monaco.
I live in the White Hole District in Croze.
And personally I want to pay a little more in taxes.
Like many of my neighbors, I'm here to speak about the affordable housing investment fund.
I think what to fund is, bit by bit, struggling to live or staggering to life.
Notwithstanding today's decision to bounce a approval of 3.6 million in grants and loans to the next board of supervisors meeting we are finally seeing the fruits of having an actual fund with an actual governing policy.
But the investment fund will always be weaker without strong dedicated funding.
I have several supervisors earlier today expressed a desire to see the fund spend down entirely every year to make a list of our budgeted dollars.
I will support that choice and need an Oriolea in the evidence and it's just a matter of connecting that
We need two dollars with a coherent application process. But I only see one point three million dollars in dedicated funding for the foreseeable future. Without reliable year after year funding, I worry that we won't discourage the long range and long range and large-scale investments in affordable housing that we really desperately need.
I recognize, too, that our obligations do continue to grow.
I do not envy the set of choices ahead of you.
I know, too, the pressure that you receive to keep assessments in real estate taxes
low.
But I see what my neighbors in the City of Charlottesville pay as their tax rate, it's more
than me.
I see what my city neighbors pay into affordable housing, more than me.
And I think about how few people I know who can accurately tell you exactly where the
and the county begins around our boundaries.
I think about how the tents,
at the free and branch encampment,
might sit in the city,
but look right over 200 feet to the county.
We are one community.
This is why I'm asking you to consider
a one-cent real estate tax,
dedicated entirely to affordable housing.
I believe that a one set increase this year
would come out to a little over 3.3 million
revenue, which will bring the overall total when you include the projected cable over from FY26
to about 9.78 and FY27. That one set increase for the median homeowner in Al-Mala County
would cost them four dollars a month. Personally speaking for myself, I would rather pay an extra
four dollars a month to contribute to a $10 million affordable housing investment fund.
I believe that this budget, a moral document, should reflect the needs and priorities of the people of service.
I know there are thousands of families who are living on the thin line, burdened by the cost of rent,
thousands of my neighbors who are not sure where they will lay their head next month or even tomorrow.
I know what I am asking for tonight. I am asking for permission to pay about $4 more in taxes or a month
in order that my government might serve, my neighbors. Thank you.
Thank you. Francis, leave and delve.
Also, live in Whitehall. I'm Francis, leave and delve.
And I often speak for more low income housing in Alabama,
probably since the Maddie's.
Charlottesville carries the bulk of the housing that we have,
And they're doing well with it. I visit these
the crossings, the cross, the crossings.
And the people are very grateful for being able to live there and they take good care of their facilities.
I'd also like to say that Apple Mall puts 10% of its development of its land into development.
50% of that is in the private market and the people who own the 50% do not want to develop it.
So we're left with 5% off and there's a need possibly, I think, you should consider it
of broadening the development area, because I don't know how we're going to find housing.
Thank you.
Theresa Willis.
Good evening.
My name is Teresa Willis and I'm from the Rio District.
I serve as a Board of Directors Member of Footheels Children's Advocacy Center.
I'm here to express both appreciation and concern regarding the proposed FY27 allocation of 97,000
$527 for foothills.
It's a 5% increase over last year, which we appreciate, but it does not adequately reflect
the scope of the work of foothills staff in a essential role of Alvin Mall's child abuse
response system.
The children's advocacy centers in Virginia are codified in the code of Virginia as part
the commonwealth's response to child abuse and neglect.
We are embedded in the crimes against children in investigative process.
Foothills serves as a neutral child-focused location where forensic interviews are conducted
on-site medical examinations for conducted, family advocacy takes place and multi-disciplinary
18 case reviews occur when a child discloses abuse, law enforcement, the Department of Social
Services, and the Commonwealth's attorney rely on Alfred Hill's team to coordinate the
investigative process.
Yet, for hills is the only investigative partner in that system that is not fully publicly funded.
law enforcement is funded, DSS is funded, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office is funded, but
although we're embedded, we're not.
For FY27, the Projected Costs to serve album-owned children and facilitate this work for
is $35,137.
We are requesting just a portion of that,
which is $130,000.
And this will help to ensure children continue to receive timely,
forensic interviews, coordinated medical care,
strong family advocacy, and effective multi-disciplinarian team reviews.
We thank you for your continued commitment to protecting
children in Albumo County, and we welcome to meet with you
individually to provide, to provide additional data to answer questions about this.
Thank you.
Richard Fox,
Richard Fox, Jack, you a district.
This may come as a surprise to some of you all, but we actually have a long
common and we can agree on a lot.
That I commend you for your approach to community development and your business sense.
We first met, but I was working a table for Dave Moore's election day.
That also may surprise some of you guys up there.
There's a good friend.
But what you've done and I've listened to that approach for community,
really doesn't mean a lot to them and it's gone a long way
and going some trust there between local farmers and the board.
Sally, I look forward to working with you as my representative in June.
I really think we can work together and I'm excited for our first start in that district.
Be, we can other way of having a thing to work on until now, but I look forward to working with you.
Mr. Missile, let us speak highly of you. I like your background and I like what you've had to say about working on some community development projects,
moving some possible way of tape, if it means getting the white projects put forward.
I think that's going to open up a lot of great projects, even from some people who find the nature they can't afford to bring stuff
through the general process of getting those involved in the sub-cut.
And, you know, I land a campaign against you, but I commend you and I respect the daylights
and I would appreciate everything you brought to this book, a really last 12, 16-plus years.
And you've been a staple on here, and I commend you for that.
And I think we can work together on other things too.
I think one thing I want to start working on and have an open mind and open conversation
about. There's a writing issue in the agreement and how we can bring some of those funds back
into the county and how we can help specific county clauses. We could help the housing budget.
We could help the health of the wife, one fair budget. We could avoid tax increases in the
future. I'm not saying a new thing. I mean, I would love it if we did personally, but I understand
we made a commitment. We have an agreement. We have to follow up with a certain extent,
but we should at least be willing to have a conversation and an open mind about what we could
to renegotiate, get out of it, whatever, but something on board and just collectively have
positive thought.
And I think we can achieve that.
I look forward to working with you all on that in the coming weeks and meeting with
y'all.
And emailing all about that topic.
Thank you.
Karen, man.
Hi.
My name is Kim, man.
I am a new resident of Admiral County in the Scottsville District.
I'm also the pastor of Surgeoner's United Church of Christ.
My congregation is one of the many congregations that participate in impact.
We've also been active in touching for many years and had the privilege of hosting the men for two weeks at the beginning of this winter shelter season in November.
We're honored to make this commitment every year because we believe that caring for our poor and on how his neighbors is central to our faith.
But as much as we are honored to host our neighbors, experiencing homelessness every year,
We also believe that everyone should have access to affordable housing, not simply temporary shelter.
We believe that justice requires not only to meet our neighbors and meet it needs, but to change the systems that perpetuate those needs in the first place.
So I'm here with other folks from impact this evening to ask you to commit to that $10 million for the county's housing fund.
I mentioned that I am a new resident of Amol, we just moved, we bought a new house in January.
It took a lot of fancy financial footwork to make that happen and we are definitely feeling the pinch now.
But I recognize that we carry an immense amount of privilege to make that move happen even with the high cost of housing here.
But not all of my neighbors.
Not even all of my parishioners are able to afford to live here.
Just this evening, I met with a couple that I am marrying next month.
They would love to stay in this area to be close to their jobs and their community.
But even after they combine their two incomes, they are having to look further
and further out to find something they can even remotely afford.
We need affordable housing, you know this.
And not affordable a name only, we need deeply affordable housing that is safe and accessible
for all residents of our community, with the living cuts to basic social safety nets,
more and more of our neighbors will be at risk of losing their homes, or we'll be unable
to continue to live in this area, and many of our wealthy neighbors will not be able to find
affordable housing in our community, our well-being is found up with the well-being of all
our neighbors regardless of their economic status. We cannot enjoy the beauty and peace of our
community. I cannot enjoy the beauty and peace of mind you home. Until all of our residents and neighbors
are able to live in beauty and peace in a home that they can afford. And we have to do it in a way
that centers the voices, needs and dignity of those who are most directly impacted by the lack of affordable
Thank you. Thank you. Tom Eckman.
I'm Tom Eckman. I'm from New York. I've been working
on affordable housing for a long time, and I really believe that the real need for housing
is for people at lower income. That's where the biggest shortage is,
and that's where the biggest
time to be working. I'm a little glad that we're finally getting it started.
But during
our 80 years, I'd last about six numbers in my church that needed affordable housing,
but they couldn't get it. We've got too many luxury apartments. We are my lower rent incomes.
And the best way to do is with a housing trust fund, because if you can take it 10 million dollars
and leverage it up to eight times, and what is a good investment for you all because now
all of it is all of a sudden we put 10 million dollars in the level to do it by eight times,
and what gives you a return on investment because now you're going to do it from taxation,
from that, in addition, and it's going to create homes for the people who need it the most.
I think our budget is like 5.1 million dollars or whatever it is, but 10 million dollars is 2% of that budget.
You got 15% grant for the schools.
Most of the income coming into our budget is coming from real estate.
And we can't afford to million dollars to help the people that need it the most.
I think we need to find that $10,000 and we're currently using some people at the end of the company.
I think we've got a great place here and we've got a lot of reals in our community, so I encourage you to put 10 million dollars in the housing trust fund. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Tannis for?
We'll look at this fancy. Nothing down, this is your ace.
Good evening, Members of the Board.
My name is Tana Sveller.
I live in the Scott Stold District, and I'm here as a resident and the Director of Administration
for Phil's Children's Advocacy Center.
I'd like to thank you for the support that you have given to the CAC over the years, and as
the Board begins the budget review process now, I asked that you reconsider the proposed grant
award to Phil's, and I look at it in the FY27 budget and increase it to our requested
amount.
One young person, a child or a teen, has or is suspected to have been a victim or survivor of a crime, physical or sexual abuse,
there are four key players in the investigative process.
Law enforcement, the Department of Social Services, the Commonwealth's Attorney and Children's Advocacy Centers.
For two decades, law enforcement, DSS and the CA have relied on foothills to provide a neutral child-focused location
or children and teens receive an age-appropriate trauma-informed forensic interview conducted
by specialized trained interviewers.
We also provide forensic medical exams, perform medical experts, and conjunction with UVA.
Care Day was benefit from family advocacy and referrals to community resources that happened
concurrently with the forensic interview in the medical exam, and I worked directly
strengthens criminal investigations, protects evidence integrity, and supports successful
prosecutions outcomes.
I'll be a little bit of what my colleague Theresa noted, Virginia Code requires that each
jurisdiction in the Commonwealth establish a multi-disciplinary team to conduct regular
reviews of new and ongoing reports of sexual assault involving a child, including child
abuse or neglect.
The code additionally requires that participation of four agencies, that have also attorney,
law enforcement, Department of Social Services, and Children's Advocacy Centers.
Unfortunately, only three of those agencies are fully publicly funded.
Photos Children's Advocacy Center is not.
Physically or 27, the projected cost to serve the approximately 85 children we anticipate seeing
From Albumal County is an excess of $350,000.
We have requested $130,000 from the county,
and hope that the Board of Supervisors understand the critical role
that we play in ensuring that young people continue to receive the support
and the services that we offer.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Hey, be a Peggy.
Gilgis. Gilgis.
You got that right, Fred.
You got that right.
You got that right, Fred.
at district. I'm here the city to ask that you give more attention and more support to sustainability
in your planning and budgeting. Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. I agree with Tom Olivier
that sustainability deserves a higher profile within county government operations and should be
own department, similar to the Office of Sustainability in the City of Charlottesville.
Listening to the initial budget meeting from February, I heard much more emphasis on economic
development than on conservation or climate action. I don't think I'm alone in bullying
that the population grows that economic development brings affects our sustainability.
environmental impacts and big infrastructure expenditures come with growth and you know as
example there's some eye-popping expenditures in the fiscal year 27 budget including I think
10 million of the 42 million that's required to build boaters road extension and in next few years
$250 million investment in a new high school.
The budget also proposes more regular investment.
I'm not making judgments about these investments.
I'm just saying $5 million toward affordable housing
and 4 million toward economic development.
By contrast, the climate protection department
is budgeted to receive a relatively puny $300,000 and the ACE conservation program has not been funded for several years now.
Meanwhile, humanity has crossed seven of nine crucial planetary boundaries, causing dramatic changes to our climate,
putting to our biodiversity levels of pollution, land use, fresh water and oceans, putting the
ecosystems that support us at risk globally.
So, at the end of that year in Album Oil, we really need to do our part to prevent compromising
the ability of future generations to have a good quality of life and a habitable planet.
We have a climate action plan, a biodiversity action plan, a street health initiative, a plan to create a real area plan.
And I just think that a standalone sustainability department could advance these interrelated plans together.
So please consider this as you discussed the county's future planning and budgeting.
Thank you.
Phil Rees?
Who was with the world?
My name is Phil Rees, and I live in the right handed district.
My chief concern about this budget is that it is 13.5% more than last year's budget.
I've now heard this presentation twice, and I still have not heard that this budget is an increase of 13.5% year than year.
With inflation at 2.7%, do you think it is reasonable to have a budget that is rising
five times faster than the rate of inflation?
I appreciate the current executives I have not too increased the real property tax rate.
There's a lot to talk about this budget being balanced.
But in order to do that, it requires adding 49 million in debt and taking 7 million
from the use of fund balance.
We can detect spares, take on this much debt, it puts out stress on future budgets.
For next year's budget loan, we've debt service will cost $40 million for both school
and county government debt service, and the county executives sort of are here tonight that
this figure of mine is going to continue to increase.
If I recall correctly from the last week's presentation, debt service will double in five
years.
Every dollar spent on debt service is a dollar that can't go to new classrooms, public safety, or tax relief.
We need a clear plan to slow borrowing. You have building financial obligations that will long outlast this board.
Rising debt service is diminishing future flexibility and increasing the productivity that future boards will face a choice between cutting core services
we're raising real estate taxes, and this is not a sustainable path.
I wanted to give you awesome credit where I think it is due.
Your financial policies and the other outlets who continue holding
is triple triple A bond rating.
Thank you for having that part of your financial policy.
That indeed doesn't surely get low interest rates.
But at the same time, you have not been seeking to get the lowest interest rates possible.
And you really need to do what is through general obligation loans.
I'd ask the agency to consider using general organization loans going for it so that our county can get the lowest interest rates possible.
Why would the board not want to save money in this way?
Lastly, I think the county needs to seriously consider options to change the revenue sharing agreement with the city of Schroesville.
I understand that both parties need to grade to a change, but this is causing outlaw to expose to $20 million a year in rising.
I consider putting the money in an escrow account, let the city take us to court, force the city to come to the negotiating table.
To me, I doubt that any law for sponsor legislation, that will not only revolution the agreements, we know that the annexing of land is under a more internal.
These are just a few ideas I keep up with in the last couple hours.
By creating,
I should hope, but accounting is not under the sea,
Well, we're showing agreement 40 years from now.
Thank you.
And last on our list is Rebecca Brown.
Doesn't that appear as Rebecca Brown here?
All right.
Thank you.
That concludes our list.
And there was no online, correct?
No, no.
Awesome.
All right.
Thank you for everyone who came out to give the speaking.
We will close the public hearing, but we're going to come back to the board for comments, questions.
So you're welcome to stay and listen to us chat if you'd like, but you also, not that we
can see the yellow getting up to, to, to, to, to, to, to. I'm just going to go through our order.
Uh, for additional, this would be everything, guys. This is, uh, comments, questions, reactions,
anything you heard tonight to kind of set up our work sessions. Supervisor Pro.
Um, I'm not sure I have much, substantively to add. Although I will just mention, we had more than one person mentioned revenue sharing.
I think it goes without saying that as someone who represents the county about moral, I would love it if we were not
beholden to a revenue sharing agreement. That would significantly expand our taxing authority.
As an amateur lawyer, not the county attorney, but as a lawyer, I can't think a way to
riggle out of it unilaterally. And that includes legislation. Any legislation would almost certainly not be able to
for sure actively effect a contract that's already been agreed to.
The only way to get out of it is going to be political.
It's going to be by playing nice and it will be challenging.
Folks, if you could take your conversations out into the hallway, please.
We are still conducting our meeting.
Thank you.
Is that-
That's always-
Supervisor Lopee Soaker.
Yeah, I'm satisfied.
Thank you very much.
No question.
Supervisor Missile.
I'll just briefly thank the public who's come to speak tonight and a lot of the comments that were raised,
Resonate with me and I'm looking forward to being able to work through these challenging budget decisions and being advocate for you all, and that's all related to that.
Supervisor Duncan.
On the revenue sharing, that was one of the first things I asked the county executive when we had one of our first meetings.
So yes, I also, you know, obviously would be in favor of changing, and I think it is fair to recognize too that our counterparts in the city are reasonable people, some of us are friends with them that I don't think it necessarily has to be a contentious discussion, but I do think it maybe eventually is worth raising.
The other thing that I'll just say for the purpose of preparing our budget work sessions is that I also would be in favor of a one-cent taxories for housing, and that's kind of all heavy now.
Thank you, Supervisor Malik.
Thank you very much.
No questions right now, but I'm very grateful for all the people who came and spoke and shared their concerns because we always learned a lot from our residents and need to.
keep struggling along here. Thank you.
Supervisor proof. One quick note and I apologize. I'm
meant to catch this before everyone left. So if the other folks
from impact could share it, I'd like to mention this every year.
The practical deadline for a lot of your advocacy is sooner than you
think it is. So either if you're Mr. Reese and want us to reduce our
tax rate or if you're Mr. Monaco and want us to raise it by a
That decision needs to be made by this Board are willingness to make that decision needs to be made in two weeks from now.
At the next regular full board meetings when we advertise the maximum tax rate,
that caps and hymns and a lot of the future possibility for a budget discussion.
It doesn't mean budget can't change, but that is kind of, I would say, an important advocacy deadline.
Can't go up.
Great.
All right.
So I would just put out there that we haven't heard the revenue sharing come up in
the last couple of years.
It's come up before in the past.
But we do have to remember that the future county or the past county residents did
both for it, which sometimes when you have your own referendums that they vote for makes
interesting when you go try to advocate to go to the other direction, at least that's what
because there are creative ways that you can, which we have lobbied the state for,
or it's not necessarily been to get rid of the revenue sharing agreement, but it's ways to
tweak where that funding counts when they do things like local composite index. So we all have to
remember that at $22, $20 million in revenue sharing when they calculate that out, the state
it's in our coffers.
And if we could get them to adjust it and say that 20 million is not in
our coffers, that would be helpful to us. In our past advocacy of that effort at the state,
the state said, your voters passed this, go fix it through your voters. So there wasn't a lot of
Now, we haven't attempted that in 10 or 12 years, that sort of effort. But even those type of things
have ran into what you have to basically accept your past if you would, and what voters have
agreed to do. I don't think there'd be a supervisor here that would, like to have that 22 million
on our side of the fence. I mean, 6.4 for the schools, we're getting asked for 5 million more
affordable housing, we've had people in the past, whether it was tonight or in things
asked us to equalize the tax rate, which would be at least probably $678 million dollars
to get down. And I haven't even done that, Matthew, as we get into the work session. I don't
know the exact dollar that the Bennett's Village request was. Another $40,000 dollars for the
Foothills Act, because he's center that was being asked for tonight. But right away, we're already
up to $12, $13,14 million in requests, just in the last 90 minutes, and we could cover that
with $22 million, but every, you know, that bit of, what did we, what did we, it was $22 million?
That's probably what?
Seven cents on the tax rate, so that, so we are paying for city services, this is the reality
of the situation, but I bring all this up as a long way to say board, of course if there's
talk or discussion about increasing revenue, which would be a tax rate increase, then that
will equate to about $3.3 million per penny, just to play around with some of the requests
that we're receiving.
If you want to stay within the recommended budget, but you want to see things go to
different obligations, then you have to be ready to say where it's going to come from in order
to do that, which is what Supervisor Crout was also alluding to.
So as we're working through the work sessions, that's going to be an important part of the work that we'll have to do since this is in our lives now to work through.
But do appreciate all the input tonight from the members of the public and we'll be working through the work sessions.
So please I hope I hope all the folks paying attention tonight just don't pay attention to tonight but pay attention to all those work sessions as well.
and we'll come back out and give us feedback at our town halls and in the additional public hearings that we have, so thank you all very much.
Tonight we still do have a number 17 from the board committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda.
And there is a specific item about Senate Bill 443. We'll handle that with Ms. Malibu when we get to her in the order,
But I'll just go through the general comments of where you're at with committee reports or other matters.
Supervisor Prue and any items here this evening?
Mr. Chair, I've had no committee meeting since last time. Last board meeting.
All right. Supervisor Lapinto currently?
No, we important thank you.
Supervisor Missle?
No sir, no reports.
Supervisor Duncan?
I don't have any committee reports but I did sit in on the town hall on Sunday afternoon that Amy Waffer and
Katrina and Credits had, and that was super helpful to hear kind of an update on where things
are, but the one thing that I found really interesting is that Amy said that they have put
money in the budget to study sort of the school funding and the LCI in general. She said
it's been, like they wanted to do it before, but there's never been funding in this time
there is funding. So hopefully, you know, the outcome of that will be interesting to see
at least I'm gonna study it.
Like a jail arch study, or what kind of study?
Like to study whether or not they should fund schools
based on need, instead of just general, per people,
and just sort of look at making school funding more fair,
or I'm not sure about that.
Great.
Is that all?
I'm sorry.
Yes, that's it.
Supervisor Malik.
Thank you very much.
The meeting caused a community association.
I mentioned earlier that large collection of people from many different neighborhoods talking
about reporting into each other about what they were learning about what was going on in the
Crocic community. It's a wonderful other opportunity in addition to the Crocic community advisory
council, which is chartered to work on the master plan areas, but this is community-wide and very
similar to what many neighborhood associations across the jurisdictions across the county do.
The thing I will bring up now is, I sent you all an email about the passage of Senate Bill
443 and I will just shoot across.
This is a draft that you can consider rather than digging around in your emails, this is one
of those for everybody.
And while you're looking at this as part of what came in the email as well, I just took it
from the template that was sent for discussion purposes.
In addition to taking away local decision-making, the legislation which has passed exempts
installations from requirements that applicants have already given to localities.
So we have, I think in the letter I said, 1,666 acres, already approved for utility scale
in this scale, mid-scale solar development.
Where the impact will be from this bill, is that every one of those applications will be able to buy writing with no regulation, no site, payment, no agreement with the county to offset costs, they'll be able to plunk down these battery locations, anywhere even adjacent to where their approved parcel is, and there's there.
So I think this is an incredible overreach and another unfundant mandate in addition to taking away the local decision making.
Other communities have talked about the impact of their foreign rescue.
There's no provision for communication as we have for our ordinance.
You basically undermine the ordinance of which we work years to adopt.
To require the county to basically minimize what work we have already done.
So it punishes the localities who have done work already,
and there's no impact at all for committees who have not
approved any solar installations.
I refuse to use the word solar farms
because there's no production of food or anything going on there.
So anyway, I will lead this for your consideration
and hopes that you might agree to send with the chair
a version of something from these facts in the draft
to the governor, and also I have the contact information for the Commerce and Labor Secretary
as well as the local government liaison in the cabinet.
So I will try to answer any questions you have or get any feedback in half.
Any questions now for Supervisor Malik, Mr. Prude?
I actually have a question stemming from this for Council for already approved projects.
I could kind of see two different arguments for how this would affect them.
One argument would be, oh, the state supersedes us.
The state therefore says this shall be allowed as an accessory use.
The other argument is we have an understanding at contract with the party and therefore
can't be interfered retroactively with the state.
I don't know which one it is.
And that's a good question.
And the implication is an entirely clear there is an enactment clause with this particular
bill that stipulates that any connection request that's been filed prior to July 1, 2030 will
be subject to the local ordinance as it existed on July 1, 2026.
So there is a bit of grandfathering through an enactment clause, but again, the question
you raise is a valid one in terms of, this just creates one of the downsides of this bill
as it creates uncertainty for previously approved projects.
Okay.
In addition to that, I will use the machinery and tools tax as an example in previous solar
installations.
There have been contracts part of our approval for this special permit.
The legislature has wiped those out by changing the rules and the percentages up to 500
megawatts.
You don't have to pay anything.
It is basically taken away revenue that the county was counting on to offset the expenses
of these things.
So that has been the legislatures behavior already,
and I do not expect this change.
Supervisualities, for currently any questions here,
for Supervisor Malik, Supervisor Missle.
No questions.
Supervisor Duncan?
No.
I guess my thing would be you're asking us to take this
consider it, and then if we would like to do it as a board,
we can get back together and figure that out.
Do we have an idea of timing?
Is this on the shot clock?
It is gone to the governor, so it's seven days.
It's my understanding.
I don't just, I'm sorry, I didn't figure this out before
five o'clock I'm on day.
I would.
Six thirty.
I think if the, if the, if the, if the, if the super,
or the supervisors prepared to say that they would,
where they stand on this or do they need some time to consider it,
if they support or disagree or agree with.
I just have one quick question.
I mean, I generally am discriminated and reading the other
counties and the other communities,
motions or, or, or,
I guess I wondered, something like this, do we usually or have we in the past run this past staff just to get a quick
Over some thoughts and
Our little staff is the only one who would be. Okay, in the past anyway, you know
Okay, I mean, I don't see any issues with it personally, but I would like some time
Well, and there's two layers because we can individually we can write and send any letter to wish
So the reason it's being discussed here is if we want to agree as a board to send it with a stance on it.
So you all can leave here and you agree a Sunday letter.
So that's not really the question.
The question is, do we want to do this as a board to send to the governor?
I don't think so.
On behalf of the board.
Type of thanks.
Supervisor Prude.
I would say I hear and I understand the argument that supervisor Malik is
is raising. I find it sympathetic. I don't know that I find it sympathetic to overcome what
I think the delegation in the general assembly is trying to accomplish. I find their
cause similarly sympathetic because not every locality that houses solar in this commonwealth
is as thoughtful. On the issue is as this locality is and I understand there are real
and use concerns that the general assembly is trying to overcome.
I would raise just right next to our dust in Fluevanna, right?
You can only house solar in light and industrial and industrial zoning.
And there are therefore a lot of land use hurdles that need to be overcome
to make solar even remotely viable.
So, I hear the concern you're raising.
And I also hear like the muddiness that this creates because our friends in the general assembly aren't the best drafts but all the time.
I hear the muddiness it creates. I don't know that I personally would support this if it goes to a vote for the board.
All right, Supervisor LePies took her.
I just don't know enough about it.
Haven't had time to study it or anything.
So if everyone wants to do it on their own,
I think that's great, but I just,
I don't have no enough to really commit.
So I don't feel good about that.
Supervisor, Ms. Up, sorry.
Where you done?
Supervisor, Ms. Yeah, no, I appreciate this.
Generally sympathetic, just like a little bit more time
to look at it and support individuals sending it.
As a board, I guess that's a determination
we have to make as a board.
Supervisor Duncan?
I still, to be quite honest, don't know, a lot about the solar stuff, so I don't have an opinion on this, I would just say, as a principle, if we're going to start sending letters from the board about bills, I could come up, I'm sure, with a whole list of things that I would love the board to sign on, that I just don't know if in practice, it's a good idea.
So, with what I'm hearing, we do not have the support to send a letter on behalf of the board.
I would say for those of you who are still saying I would like a little time to consider it,
that you can send an individual letter directly to and you have the template here that we can consider.
And if you have your own bills that you track, you remember, you don't always have to
you can slip away and sense stuff to delegate senators in the governor as well.
Just be mindful that you can't say you're speaking on behalf of the board.
You're just speaking on your behalf as a one person in Virginia.
All right, did you have other committee reports or items?
Okay,
and that's up to me.
So, Naco, we did go to Naco, and did, I think I saw Anson out like a summary from one of the committees
that come out.
So as the Naco folks, some things, it's kind of easy to forward things over there, we got
a lot of information on federal legislation, if you're tracking that, there is movement
on things that could be helpful to us relative to housing coming from the federal level.
It does seem to be one thing that has been getting some bipartisan support because it seems
like very little is moving through, but housing is one spot where there's some legislation
that is moving and we'll see what else can potentially come from it.
It was interesting.
And I had the opportunity to hear the Japanese ambassador to the United States talk.
And it was in the economic development type of conversation.
And now I think with the type of thing that he was representing Japanese investors and the
type of places they're investing in, communities like a Charlottesville albumaro isn't necessarily
their target.
I mean I'm talking big metro areas where they're going.
But it was interesting when he was asked what did investors tend to look for regardless of
size and the two things he mentioned was regulation and infrastructure. So, it's regulation
is easy to get projects up and running as fast as possible. And then,
Is the infrastructure in place to allow us to operate effectively and efficiently?
So it was interesting to hear that as the response.
But as other things come up, I'm sure you and I will be sharing that.
At the Metropolitan Planning Organization, we did finalize what would be going through
MPO, which is earlier today through the Smart Scale applications.
We did put a pause on our citizen transportation advisory committee, which whose purpose
had become I guess unfounded or unclear over the years. It was originally doing a lot of work
with a long-range transportation plan but we had a lot of good people in that committee
and it just seemed like in terms of advisory and what its point was was not being met and the
committee decided to take a pause on it since the purpose is not clear. It will give us about a
before the work on the next long-range transportation plan,
us begins, that we're going to look
bin at more of a ad hoc activity type style of how we could stand up a citizen
transportation advisory committee to be useful to the MPO on projects that they
also then be of interest to folks there. So if you hear any thing about that
for many of our own appointees, that's what's going on there. A lot of them live in
So, out of the December meeting, you've all heard Ann and I talk about the funding, health,
transportation, funding works in the Commonwealth.
If you haven't had a chance to watch that meeting, you can still go back to December 17th
and watch the presentation.
From that meeting, Sean Nelson, who's the Chief Judge of the Call of Effort District, had
made a recommendation that it would be a good idea for the City and the County via
the MPO, the representatives on there.
to come together and start to strategize more on how to get projects done.
Not even necessarily just smart scale.
So we will be having a special meeting that's going to start having that kind of conversation.
And it built out of the funding conversation discussion with staff from both the city and the county.
It's the first time that that type of suggestion has come from V dot or from anyone, frankly.
So I'm looking forward to that kind of conversation because, you know, the folks at V dot are saying,
yeah, well, let's see what else we can try to get done and get creative and be more strategic in making and getting some of these projects through.
So looking forward to that conversation in April.
I will add on to that that it's really important as the, as agreements are made covering improvements.
I'm thinking of Fontaine Research Park and the for the rezoning for extra buildings there
in the University of the Foundation, whichever it was back then, made the commitment to cover
the Fontaine improvements and yet all of a sudden it landed on the county's dime when I reached
out to staff about clarifying that they said well it's been transferred to the Foundation or academics
which other way it was and so we can't hold them to it anymore. And that's just one of the reasons
is why it's so important when something is granted agreed upon, get it close up right away.
Whether it's a donation of an easement, get it close up right away. Don't let it linger
for 20 years because all of us on new owners will say, oh, I don't want you to do that.
And then you're going through round around in circles.
I remember that 20 years it took to open the road between, what, I mean, honeymeat.
That's how it's worth life. Because it sets along that the neighbor said, oh, I don't want that there.
And it literally took 10 years of constant work to get it done.
And now of course everybody counts on it, but it was one of those difficulties to carry forward.
But Sean Nelson is a great blessing in the Culpever v. So I'm looking forward to that.
And I just remembered too that he had mentioned that during the last snow event,
how we had some roads that had been put into the public system that they hadn't updated on the plowing.
So I know v. working on that to get that rectified.
So I was pleased to hear that report as well.
So I'll just share that with the other supervisors.
All right, great.
Thank you all for those reports.
All right, well then without objection, we're there.
We will adjourn to March 9th, 2026 at 5 p.m.
and room 241 for our budget work session.
And just as reminder, you can send questions to Andy
Bowman and team ahead of time.
And those will be tracked and sent to us,
but also listed on the website for our review.
Thank you everyone. Have a good evening.