Planning Commission Meeting   11/16/2021

Welcome this evening to the November 16th Planning Commission meeting at 6pm or at 603.

This is an electronic meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A-16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting will be posted on the Albemarle.org community county-calendar when available.

Yes, I will.

Mr. Bailey?

Present.

Ms.

Firehock is absent.

Ms.

Moore?

OK.

Thank you.

I'll keep an eye out for Ms.

Moore.

OK.

Thank you.

This evening, I don't see we don't have anything on our consent agenda, so we'll move on from that.

Yes, we do.

We have two people.

First, I have Neal Williamson.

Thank you.

Very good.

My name is Neal Williamson, and I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on central Virginia's local governments.

This evening, I start with a question.

How long should it take to get a building permit?

In Albemarle County, it is currently taking over four months to have a building permit issued.

The Community Development Department and the Free Enterprise Forum agree that is not acceptable.

On Friday morning, our sources indicated there were over 300 residential and commercial permits sitting in the plans review queue alone.

This person did not have updates to share on them.

However, they aren't lost just waiting.

These applications were properly filed with thousands of dollars of fees, which increased on July 1st, and they are not actively being reviewed.

They are waiting in Albemarle's permit pending purgatory between received and filed.

We recognize these lowly building permits do not have the clever Economic Development Authority project code names like Knight Rider, Packet, or Daffodil, nor do they represent brand new residential developments with hundreds of units.

Instead, these new construction projects large and small across Albemarle County include new homes fulfilling the comprehensive plan, additions to help grandma age in place with her family, an extra bathroom to make mornings a little easier for growing families.

These not so sexy projects represent not only millions of dollars in fees and related activity for Albemarle County, these delays impact project cost and these families' quality of life.

We have been engaged since the summer with the Community Development Department staff and the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association to identify and address these concerns.

We appreciate CDD's efforts and transparency with the issues they face.

We know CDD staff is working across the county organization to tackle these challenges.

But it's not getting better.

It's getting worse.

We find it is critical that

elected and appointed officials to understand the vast scope of the problem and help find and fund a solution now.

As an advisory body, the Free Enterprise Forum understands the planning commission has a legal responsibility to review the capital improvement plan on tonight's agenda where new CDD software could potentially be funded.

In addition, this body regularly weighs in on the community development work plan.

Considering this close coordination with community development,

We believe it is within the Planning Commission's purview to advocate for, one, dedication of significant additional resources and personnel to permit intake and review for community development.

Two, invest now in a new software platform, perhaps via the CIP, to allow efficient processing of all applications.

And three, in the spirit of the Land Use Reform Committee, LERC, the Development Initiative Steering Committees, Discs 1 and 2,

establish a broad-based committee charged with reviewing and streamlining the development procedures to get permits and projects approved and completed in Albemarle County.

While this may seem kind of a larger scope than the Planning Commission's normal procedures, nothing could be more impactful.

Let's get Albemarle County community development moving again.

Next, I have Peter Krebs.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Tonight, you'll be hearing and speaking about the comprehensive plan and the CIP.

Those two topics are actually closely related, and it's not bad to consider them both at the same time.

Last night, the city of Charlottesville, Charlottesville City Council approved its comprehensive plan.

The two localities are definitely not the same, but they're likely to be some key common themes, such as climate action, housing, historic preservation, green infrastructure, transportation and mobility, and everything it takes to be a highly livable community.

That includes parks, greenways, and well-connected neighborhoods.

TUC has worked with Albemarle County for the last 50 years on issues of this kind, and we're excited to be part of this operation as well.

As I said to city council last night, the CIP is where the values enumerated in the comp plan are made manifest.

As you think about the CIP and the next five years, I hope you'll build upon a couple of things Albemarle has been doing extremely well lately.

You've made a commitment to improving resident quality of life through the creation of sidewalks, greenways, and other forms of connectivity.

You've taken an approach to economic growth that rewards local enterprises and fosters prosperity by helping local residents live healthy lives and unleashing their productivity.

You've taken important first steps to open Biscuit Run with an initial mini phase slated for this coming fall 2022.

Between ACE and a handful of other programs, more than 100,000 acres of land have been protected for agriculture, forestry, and natural habitat.

County staff have done a fabulous job of leveraging

State transportation dollars yielding a phenomenal return on your investment in them.

As you think about this upcoming budget, build on your recent wins.

Albemarle County has the vision of how to be a terrific, great place to live.

The comp plan is the what and the why.

The budget is the how.

Thank you very much and thank you for those comments from us that come up, observations and comments this evening.

Then on that note, we will move into our first of our two work sessions this evening, and that's the CIP fiscal year 2020 to 2027.

Yes.

Good evening to the Chair and the Planning Commission.

My name is Andy Bowman.

I'm the Chief of Budget in the Finance and Budget Department.

And unfortunately, Ms.

Kumazawa was not able to join us this evening.

I'll be joined by Rosalind Schmidt, who's the Chief Operating Officer with the School Division.

Rosalind and school staff and county government staff and I regularly partner on a number of joint local government and school budget issues, and the CIP is certainly no exception to that.

I'll say that I'm also joined this evening by Tia Mitchell.

She's a senior budget analyst in her office, and she primarily works in the areas of the capital budget and the planning for that.

And she's here with me too.

And we do have a presentation.

I'll ask Tia if you can go ahead and pull that up.

And while Tia is pulling that up, I'll say that this presentation is a somewhat streamlined version of one that staff provided last month to the Board of Supervisors and School Board in October on the 20th.

And I want to provide as much of that same information for a discussion heading into the 23 budget development process.

so that the Planning Commission and their representatives can receive the same information as we start that process next week.

And if Ms.

Firehock is not here this evening, we'll be sure to get this materials to her in advance.

So with that introduction, though, I've streamlined it some.

This presentation will likely have, first, more of a financial orientation than a usual Planning Commission meeting.

I haven't modified this drastically because I want to make sure that I'm providing the same to all the bodies involved in the CIP process.

But anyway, with that, I'll also say that some of the planning commissioners I've met before, some I have not.

And part of the reason is that last year when we were putting together the fiscal year 20s budget, there was no CIP.

The county was in the middle of the pandemic.

There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

And really at that time was kind of decided to, instead of focusing on a long range picture, to focus on the impacts of the pandemic and what might be able to be unpaused from a number of projects that were paused at the start of the pandemic.

So this will be the first time we've had an discussion with Planning Commission about the CIP in a while.

As we get back into more routine, long range planning track, that will continue in the future.

So if someone who's wondering why they haven't heard from the Office of Management and Budget a while, kind of that experience of the pandemic is the reason for that.

So we can go ahead to the next slide.

And just for the items we'll cover today, I'm going to begin by providing an overview of the county's financial position as it's fared since the start of the pandemic.

I'll then speak to where we currently are as an organization with the CAPR program and how that informs our thinking into the future.

And beyond those broader concepts, I'll then discuss that 23 to 27 process in a little more detail, looking at the calendar, the role of the CIP advisory committee, and some initial assumptions and staff's approach to prepare for that committee's work.

Rosalyn and I will briefly provide some preliminary summary information on some of the proposed capital projects that have been identified by the board and school board.

And our information is to cover this information concisely to allow as much time for the planning commission to discuss this as possible.

I believe it was about maybe it was 25 minutes or so when we covered this last month with joint boards.

So speaking of that discussion, we can go ahead to the next slide.

At the end of the presentation, we have some questions to prompt that discussion for the Planning Commission.

I want to share these in advance as your reference.

Hopefully this will resonate with you as we go through the presentation.

Those two questions are first, how does your awareness of the county's past, present and future inform your thinking about the overall CAFRA program, both in terms of our process and our projects?

and secondarily, if there's, or I shouldn't say secondarily, but the second question is what additional information would the planning commission look for as we head into the CIP advisory committee and as the board heads into the spring to adopt a capital plan for the first time in two years?

And I'll say certainly as we follow up with Ms.

Firehock and get her prepared for the advisory committee, we can include that feedback as well.

So what I would ask as we run through this presentation, just to make sure that we can get through the material to allow as much time for you all to have that discussion and for staff to listen, that we'll, I'll plan to address any questions at the end of the presentation.

So moving on right into content.

This is just a transition slide to focus first on financial planning.

And don't worry, I'm not going to read everything on this slide and talk about it in depth, but I'm going to say at a very high summary level, 19 months ago, as the pandemic was beginning, the county was nearing the end of the fiscal year 21 budget development process.

And as the pandemic began, we really went through a process for that entire budget year to be scrapped and redone in a matter of weeks.

And to navigate that unprecedented uncertainty, and not only what the county's revenues would be,

But what the delivery of basic services would look like in a pandemic, the county adopted what we called a 366 approach to financial management.

And what 366 stands for, it's kind of shorthand for just managing the last three months of fiscal year 20.

We would then look at the first six months of fiscal year 21 and the last six months of fiscal year 21.

And as things improved or worsened along the way, we would adjust our planning as needed.

You know, unfortunately, over the past year, every time I've been able to go to the Board of Supervisors and provide a form of report, that outlook has improved as each as the economy has recovered through the pandemic.

High level results are on the slide.

I'm not going to read through them in the interest of time, but in summary, the takeaway I would share is that the pandemic is still ongoing and the economy is stabilizing and recovering.

The actions that were taken by the board and school board during the pandemic, they have ensured the county's financial foundations intact.

We are meeting and compliant with our financial policies.

This summer, we reaffirmed three triple AAA bond ratings with our rating agencies, and we were able to move initiatives forward as the revenue picture improved and became more certain.

That included un-policy projects and the capital budget in January, based on the work of last year's CIP Advisory Committee.

and moving forward a more ambitious budget at Dist.

So moving to the next slide, I'm going to talk about next kind of the present and the future together, because I want to draw clearly connections about how our current circumstances are informing staff's thinking about how we shape the 23 to 27 CIP process.

I'll say it first, it's common that we all read the news and we see stories about the impacts of the global supply chain disruptions and increased raw material cost.

And the county is certainly not immune to that.

And some current projects have received higher bids than when they were first budgeted or projects have experienced schedule delays.

So this influences where we're going.

Kind of the next point is that we're working to go through our current project budgets for items that have not yet gone out to bid and under contract.

where we expect there's a likely budget impact in revisiting those project costs to make sure that we're starting off for the fiscal year 2023-27 with the wordistic figures.

There's also information we need to update as the state has approved in the last year some additional requirements related to energy efficiency.

Those are aligned with the county's climate action plan goals, but they will require ensuring that we're developing our projects to the state standards.

I'll say that update too will be factored in the 23 to 27 CIP.

Now I should mention while we're in the interim, we still do have some flexibility.

The Board of Supervisors set a reserve in place in 22 as we've been able to navigate some of this uncertainty while we update our project costs and head into the next five year plan.

And that's the kind of that reference to $4 million in the screening.

So the second point I would make about kind of how the present is influencing the future.

is that we have a capital program currently underway before we even start anything from 23 to 27 of around $147 million for 65 projects.

Without any additional context, 147 is not a very meaningful number by itself, so I'll provide a couple of data points to provide more context.

First is that of that 147 million, 91 has been appropriated in the last really 11 months now from what was unpaused in January, which included major projects, such as the expansion at Crose Elementary School, as well as projects that were then included in the adopted budget and that took effect on July 1st, which included major projects such as the next phase of the downtown courts renovation project.

And so I would say that of that funding being relatively new, I'll also note that a lot of 147 is very much underway in different phases, whether the pre-design, design, or construction.

And so even some of those projects are in the construction phase right now, those will be continuing beyond fiscal year 22, as by nature, capital does have multi-year projects.

And so in terms of how this affects our thinking for the future, the next point is that we have to consider as we start the start dates for fiscal year 20 through 27 the work that we need to do to implement the current volume that's at hand.

We went back with our staff to do some analysis and say that over the last eight years or so, even though capital projects vary year to year, current rate of execution is around $35 million.

So this has really set off a lot of process that we're in analysis, we're going in the current to say, let's look at our business processes end to end.

Let's look at the systems we use, look at the resources we need to implement these projects and make sure that that has been aligned as we head into CIP in the upcoming budget process.

So heading on to the next slide, kind of the third of four points I'll make about where we are now to where we're going.

And I'll say this one is very relevant to the Planning Commission.

As you all are aware that during the next five-year period, we will have an updated comprehensive plan as well as a strategic plan.

I should note the school board is in a different place as they completed an update to their strategic plan in the summer of 2021.

And I would say that on October 13th, the Board of Supervisors agreed to extend the current fiscal year, I'm sorry, the current strategic plan into fiscal year 23 so that the staff and the community and the board would be able to finish what we started to complete those projects before we embark on another strategic plan following that.

So this transitionary period, knowing that we're going to be in one strategic plan now in a different strategic plan and also a comprehensive plan update later influences staff's thinking in two ways.

And the first is that our intent will not be to develop the CIP when the county's financial and operational capacity is fully committed prior to an updated strategic plan and a comp plan.

There are certainly some community needs that can be planned for in the five-year period.

We also need to balance that in the out years with the unknown future.

so that if additional priorities or areas of focus are identified, we'll have that flexibility for future boards and future planning commissions and future staffs to be able to pivot to address those.

For example, we may have a portion of the out years just with an undesignated reserve amount for priority strategic community projects, knowing that while we had a lot more certainty than we did a year ago in the pandemic, there's still as much unknown, particularly in the years three through five.

I'll say this approach is also to recognize that there are community conversations that are taking place.

Our board of supervisors heard from a regional jail facility assessment in October that they have implications in the future, but part of this approach to be a little more flexible in the out leaders is not to get ahead of those community conversations in the county's regional partners.

So I expect there's a question that may be on the Planning Commission's mind now is to say, well, if we're going to be less defined in the out leaders, when would we be updating that?

And those who have been with the county for a while may recall that prior to the pandemic, the county would often be in a pattern of and sort of an every year CIP review, where one year would there be a full look at the five years of the CIP.

And then the following year, there may be more refined minor adjustments.

Given the approach we're describing, just kind of the different times we're in in the pandemic, we feel that it would be appropriate to provide a five year update as best we can, maintain that flexibility.

And then a year from now, when we're looking at fiscal year 24 to 28, to take a fresh look at those five years.

So I have presented a lot of concepts in these last two slides.

Just to summarize them with kind of the present and how this leads into the future is that we're updating our current project costs for the reality of current market conditions and supply chain issues.

Oh, I'm sorry, Tia, just props to me.

I forgot the fourth one.

Thank you, Tia.

The other thing we're considering right now is that both with the board and the school board is that long term priorities exist in the operating budget as well.

And so as we're developing a

A capital process with the CIP advisory committee.

We're also going to be working with the board of supervisors around long range policy discussions to kind of position ourselves in our operating budget, make sure those two plans are talking to each other so that we have one coherent long range financial plan.

So now let's summarize those four points.

First is we've got the reality of project costs and being updated for current market conditions.

Second, in this five-year period, we're going to consider the start dates for future projects reflecting the current efforts underway of the $147 million capital budget.

Third, we're going to emphasize flexibility in the out-years, knowing that we're in the middle of comprehensive and strategic plan updates.

Again, now that we would have funding out there, it would be a little less defined than we would see in a typical year.

And then finally, we would be considering the capital decisions in the context of our operating budget and our total financial picture with the board.

So moving on to the next slide from some very high level concepts to a little more of a nuts and bolts approach about the work that will be ahead in coming weeks and into the budget process.

We'll go ahead next to the schedule that's ahead.

Though we're talking to the planning commission here on November 16th, there's been a lot of work already underway.

The school division has a long-range space planning committee.

It starts well ahead of this process.

They received a report from that committee in September and works through a proposal that is going to be considered as part of this long-term capital planning process.

And Ms.

Schmidt from the school division will be speaking to that in just a little bit.

I mentioned before, we had a discussion with the joint boards in October to get some of their buy-in and input into the process and some of the concepts that were being worked there.

In November and December will be the CIP advisory committee and also the work sessions with four supervisors on operating five-year planning and how those plans will inform each other.

From there, we'll pick up in February with the release of the school's draft funding request, the county executive's recommended budget, and then all of the public process and work sessions that take place through the spring, ultimately leading to a adoption of the budget and also the CIP in May.

So to focus next on the role of the CIP Advisory Committee, that is a committee that is made up of two board members, two school board members, one planning commissioner, and one community representative.

They're charged to do a few things.

First, they will review and evaluate a proposal that is recommended by staff as a starting point.

Then the CIP committee will sort of make a recommendation and modify that starting point.

They are to ensure that that proposal is aligned with the county's financial policies,

and the established priorities and guiding principles that are out there.

They will next make a recommendation to the county executive for his consideration and preparation of the recommended 23 capital budget and a 23 to 27 CIP.

And also that will be a report out to the board, the school board, staff and planning commission as well, just to kind of have a memo that will accompany that recommendation.

It will be more than just kind of the dollars and cents and times and projects.

So getting into the actual work of the CIP Advisory Committee on the next slide.

It will begin with a similar framework to what we had in last year's process.

Well, so last year's process was very focused on a short time frame of fiscal year 21 and 22.

This will be a longer time frame.

The prioritization of our projects, as it does in most years, will begin with funding the county's obligations, its maintenance and replacement programs, before we consider additional projects.

I should note that that is not automatic funding for maintenance and replacement requests.

Staff performance is due diligence to scrub those numbers to make sure that they are aligned with standards, the ability to execute, and all those other concepts we've talked about this evening.

But before that, we'll get into four criteria.

First of which is the alignment with the county's strategic plan priority ratings.

Also the new reality due to the pandemic.

The example I think of last year is there were projects where the county has had a strategic focus on broadband, but really the importance of that priority became even more evident in the pandemic, and that was an elevated priority as we went through last year's budget process.

Second, we'll be looking at the ability to execute of a project.

This is a lens that considers that existing $147 million capital budget.

The other barriers we have to implement in proposed projects and how and when they may be able to proceed.

Third, we'll look at the ongoing operating impacts of projects.

Again, this connects to having a kind of single coherent financial picture where our capital plan is talking to our operating plan and the other way around.

As there will be some capital investments that will be in a pretty wide range of day-to-day costs, and we want to make sure that as we're either constructing or opening new facilities that we're able to operate them.

And finally, we will have an equity statement full of projects.

And I should note that this is not a mathematical score or high, medium, low.

Maybe some of the other criteria that you look at, and we'll maybe look at a similar kind of matrix in terms of ranking programs and projects.

But the Department of Finance and Budget has been partnering with the county's Office of Equity Inclusion to assist county departments, just be able to better incorporate a kind of perspective equity lens when we're considering service changes at the start of the budget process, whether that be a capital project or an operating program.

And so a lot of this is part of growing out of the county's adoption of its new value community.

I should say new, but it's been a while since that's been adopted in recent history.

But really just focusing on some fundamental questions, being able to articulate answers to questions such as how do services reduce or changes to services or projects or programs?

How does that reduce existing disparities and or enhance the quality of life and wellbeing or access to services and engagement?

Are there particular groups, whether that be seniors, youth, low income, women, men, just for example, who are more impacted by those programs?

And of course, those impacts could be positive or negative.

And also, are there, even when there are impacts, are there things the county could do to offset the impacts of that project?

I think this is a discussion that the board has had through working through a cigarette tax and how that would be implemented and considering that sort of the equity impacts in terms of

Who benefits or carries the burden of that program?

What are some of the things the county can do to mitigate that?

This would be kind of taking some of that process and discussion and just making it a more regular part of the county's business as we evaluate future proposals.

So moving to next on the kind of assumptions the CIP Advisory Committee will be working with is that we will have some revenue sources that will be explored in the context of our total five-year financial plan.

And so this will go into the discussions we have with the Board of Supervisors also in November and December.

There is recent mailing authority that is provided by the state.

I mentioned the cigarette tax was one that the board is pursuing.

The Board of Supervisors also expressed interest in October about pursuing a plastic bag tax, which would have funding related to other environmental programs that would be still in the very early stages of bringing back information to the board at another time.

Certainly,

That is revenue that could factor into future planning.

We had the impact of the summer 2021 non-refinancing.

I mentioned before the county's AAA ratings were upheld.

Given the current market, we were able to issue a large amount of borrowed proceeds at very low interest rates, and that will create some capacity that did not exist in the prior plan, prior to the pandemic.

We're also looking at the American Rescue Plan Act funding and how we may be able to leverage other opportunities to support the county's priorities.

A good example of that would be really another example of broadband, where the Board of Supervisors has set aside the county's American Rescue Plan Act funding received around $4.5 million to hopefully leverage additional funding from the state to meet additional kind of broadband needs in our community.

That'll be an area we'll be watching from as we get more information from the state in the coming months.

and also continuing to monitor the capital bond market environment and the county's authority to issue bonds.

Just again, these are just all kind of new revenue options out there that can create capacity.

The third thing, as we discussed with the boards, is that in our initial scenario, we're not going to assume a change in the real estate tax rate for operating capital from 23 to 27.

This is a starting point, recognizing that much has changed from

We're in prior years and there are other options available that could be pursued just even with our current resources to make some things happen.

I'll share as we have placed an increased emphasis in the Office of Management and Budget as well about really looking at capital projects and assessing what might be possible as projects come, whether it be over budget or under budget to see how we can from a management perspective, create additional capacity for the CIP Advisor Committee and the boards to work with.

So in summary, I've been talking a while, I'll be talking about projects in just a moment and wrapping up.

Just where we were, we were in the last two years, or year and a half really, in kind of this 3-6 budget management approach.

We're now in a place where we've sort of been able to establish, we've maintained our strong financial foundation, we've been able to adjust our plans as we went along, and we are implementing a capital program of $147 million.

We're gonna head into a capital process for 23-27 that will recommend a plan for the county.

I'll say the CIP Advisory Committee will recommend a plan for the county executive's consideration.

The board will adopt a plan for the first time since fiscal year 20 due to pandemic.

That plan will reflect the current efforts of projects underway.

It would emphasize flexibility and recognizing of our guided documents for priorities are in the middle of process updates.

We are also going to be considering not just the capital program, but how the operating program operates as well.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and touch on some projects that have been identified by the Board of Supervisors on the next slide for consideration.

And that we had in March at the tail end of the fiscal year 2022 budget process when the America Rescue Plan Act was announced.

Before we knew all the details, we invited some info from the Board of Supervisors to understand that within the strategic plan, those other priorities they've identified,

What are those things that would be kind of rising to the top of their mind back in March?

And we shared this again with the board last month.

And I won't talk through all these projects in details.

One, because they're not necessarily all capital projects.

In the spring, the board was able to provide funding for phase two of the Rio Road corridor plan study.

That's the third bullet on the slide.

And the fourth one on broadband infrastructure I spoke to a moment ago, where ARPA funding is being provided, hopefully in combination with state funding,

to leverage that where there's not going to be an impact on the capital budget.

How can we leverage other resources to deliver on things?

But certainly other items on this list would be likely from there to the planning commission and before we be

neighborhood infrastructure, whether it be sidewalks and multimodal capacity, looking at the transportation leveraging program, the smart scale projects, an example provided at the time was Eastern Avenue Bridge, continuing to look at parks and recreation infrastructure amenities.

One example is the current phase of Biscuit Run.

It's funded in the capital budget.

There's a long-term master plan to build out that park to provide community needs.

And I'll say these are just examples of projects.

There will be other staff-identified projects that are working through as well.

Thank you, Andy.

So, as he mentioned earlier, the school board recently

updated their strategic plans.

Before I present the list of recommended projects for the school division, I want to provide an overview of how it fits within our strategic vision.

After a rigorous community and stakeholder engagement process, the school board recently adopted a strategic plan which has helped us guide our process and priorities when thinking about the CIP.

The strategic plan titled Learning for All includes a vision that our learners are engaged in authentic, challenging, and relevant learning experiences, becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic

and Diverse Society.

The specific goal and objective related to capital priorities are listed on this slide.

And so getting the right resources to educators and students for their teaching and learning is key to our success.

We believe that the project criteria as developed by the Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee, which is on the right, are in close alignment with our vision and mission.

So using our defined project criteria, next slide to you.

The following projects are recommended.

So this is a needs based request addresses key themes of equity, investment in existing facilities, as well as new investments needed to support the long term capacity needs of our growing county.

The price tag may seem large, however, it is built upon the accumulating capital needs of the school division over many years.

Adequate capacity continues to be a need for the school division.

This is supported by the 10-year enrollment projections and reinforced by both the recently completed development and student yield analysis and a 30-year population forecast.

For over 15 years, the school division has been in the practice of expanding existing facilities and, when necessary, deploying mobile classroom units in the interim.

As these schools all reach a saturation point where expansion is no longer practical, we recommend a strategy for land acquisition and the construction of new facilities.

So I think for the first time in a long time, you'll see several new schools in this list.

So we also recommend investments into school renovations at all levels to bring incremental updates division-wide and in alignment with a strategic plan ensuring that each student has access to high quality learning environments.

Means there should be a reliable elevator service to ensure safety and access at all times.

In addition, the importance of a healthy environment and having reliable technology infrastructure have risen as urgent and necessary investments as highlighted

by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So thus we recommend a new investment into indoor air quality systems, and again, recommend the construction of a data center.

A detailed justifications for each of these projects is included in the 2021 Long Range Planning Advisory Committee report.

Thank you, Rosalind.

At this point, I would kind of open this to Planning Commission discussion.

Go ahead to the next slide for those two questions that we hit on in the beginning.

First, just kind of, you know, we've been talking to staff for a while and I don't want to take as much time now as it's me to to answer any questions and just kind of listen to feedback from the planning commission in terms of how does your awareness of the county's past, present, and future inform your thinking about the overall plan in terms of processes and projects.

There's additional information that would be looked for as we head into future capital planning.

And I would turn it over to, I guess, Chair Bivins.

If you'd like to facilitate that discussion, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

If you can, if I may ask you to.

That's OK.

So we have those up there.

Commissioners, you are rarely silent on these kind of issues.

So I don't see any hands up.

You've given us a good deal of information.

You've given us a good deal of information.

One of the things that I would want to hear is, if possible, of a funding that became unpaused this year.

How much or what types of projects we might see have an impact on our own community development?

So we have a sense of Charles and his colleagues will be have the resources to kind of do things that don't line up with the ongoing strategic plan and some of the items that have come out thus far.

Then we'll go to Rick and I'm looking for other hands.

Sure, I'll start with that as time goes, I think our staff and Charles have probably met several times over the last few weeks just around the transportation and future plans.

Really looking at what we call the transportation leveraging program, which includes a combination of state matching funds.

these other multimodal projects and trying to figure out you know what is the timeline for those future priorities that have been identified through the planning commission and the board to make sure that we're positioning ourselves to draw down those state matches as we can and to support the interconnectivity in those other areas we would and I'll say that if Charles and Tia also in this call if you were to add anything to what I've said but that is one of the

Certainly it's one of the areas of strategic priorities in the Board of Supervisors and we kind of call those non-strategic priorities.

Thank you.

And so I also noticed this going before I sort of turned to Rick.

We've been told at some point that there were lots of system updates that were going to take place around just in general around the county's business.

And I was wondering whether or not those were going to be funded from here or they're going to be funded in other ways.

Sure, I can speak to that.

Currently, this is a community development issue, but it's also a financial budget and HR and IT and really a county-wide issue.

Those things touch every county department, and they really touch every citizen who tries to interact with county in a virtual way.

So we've really been on a process, I'd probably say for three or four years, about looking at our processes end-to-end, looking at our systems and how they are integrated or how they're not and how they, you know,

and all those disjointed.

And so we've been working with our IT department, our certainly community developments, our human resources, our finance budget staff to figure out a plan for what is the kind of end to end process look like and the timing of all those phases to be implemented over the next few years to really modernize our county's core systems so that we can improve citizen access, we can improve data and how it talks between systems or where it doesn't talk right now.

How can we take time where we can take processes that may be manual and have those employees do more

and a local work where you just kind of, again, some major process you can do that as well.

How do we create systems that are faster for staff to train and learn on, which can then have kind of corresponding effects on recruitment and retention?

So that will be also a core part of the CIP that the CIP Advisory Committee will be looking at.

I'll say that will also tie into our theme of the operating budget as well, because as technology these days, there's the infrastructure side, there's also the kind of the people and ongoing maintenance side to implement that.

And so we're looking at this from kind of all angles to ensure that both of our plans are talking to position ourselves for that.

Yeah, I would say the groundwork is happening right now.

This is a credit to the Board of Supervisors over the last couple years.

We've had funding managed through what we call our project management office, which has actually been renamed recently to our performance and strategic planning office, where they have had project managers to work and kind of go almost major project implementation by major project implementation.

to handle those in ways the county has not done historically.

Andy, I believe it was slide number six.

that you cited that the county had appropriated 91 million since January of 21.

I would say of that 91 million, currently, none of that is related to the American Rescue Plan Act.

And the reason for that is because the county adopted its budget in early May and though ARPA was announced in kind of late March or so, the details of when the county would receive its funding and all of that was not until mid-May when we received kind of our first tranche of funding, which was around approximately $10 million or so.

So I think part of this plan was to set the stage with the Board of Supervisors.

I'll say one of the differences in ARPA funding is we've just gone through an exhaustive process with the CARES, the Coronavirus Aid, Recovery, Economic Security Act.

I may have that acronym slightly off, go by memory.

But we had a very tight timeline to spend that funding when it was provided, I believe it was last

Spring of 2020 to be expended by the end of 2021.

And the framework that we discussed with the Board of Supervisors, as we knew from the ARPA timeline, we would have multiple years to spend that funding.

So we could have a moment to kind of take a time out and pause and be strategic and not rush out to certainly get that into the community in support of his head.

But we don't need to rush and go as fast.

And we have some time to be deliberate so we don't miss the opportunity to have matching funds with the state to leverage that funding even more.

And so that's some of the rationale in terms of why we are where we are.

But the county is, I'll say what is not in that 91 million is the county has about 21 million in ARPA funding, a portion of which the board has said, has allocated that in the current fiscal year to support programs around some more human services functions.

And then the bulk of that funding is intended to be looked at through the 23 to 27 budget process.

Certainly when looking at the fiscal year 21 budget, I recall that the board had an active discussion about the potential need to phase in a property tax increase over the course of the next, at that point, the next four or five fiscal years in 21.

This was in

the year 19 in preparation, the year 19, but we were in the fiscal year 20 budget at that point.

And looking at the fiscal year 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 budgets, I recall that there was active discussion about a need to augment resources to address

the yawning needs within the CIP, not only from the school division side of the ledger, but from general government.

I just want to express some concern when I see slide number eight or nine, I can't recall which one it was, where you've submitted a kind of ceteris paribus here, all other things being equal, that there would not be an increase in property taxes

So if you have really limited funds coming out of ARPA source, and we have an even more dramatic set of school division capital needs combined with the goals and objectives of the board to address

inequities out there in terms especially sidewalks and conveniences for pedestrians.

Where are the funds going to come from?

Understanding the fact that $36 million was the last authorization by taxpayers for a bond issue and $36 million would not begin to come close to addressing the needs of this

Capital plan that I see here.

Attached to that is the concern now that interest rates may be going up in the very near future and the window of opportunity for bonding authorization looks like it's narrowing dramatically.

So that's one other question.

Sure.

Thank you for that feedback.

I'll admit I'm kicking myself a little bit because as I was preparing for this presentation, I was thinking, this is really financially heavy.

How could I cut down some of the information just to make this little more digestible?

And two of the slides I took out were two that we talked about with the board and school board related to this change in tax rate in terms of where were we two years ago and where we are now.

So I don't have those slides to pull up, but I can speak to conceptually where we are.

And I'll say,

This certainly is a starting point, the CIP Advisory Committee and also the Board of Supervisors could take that in a different direction.

But we just to kind of recap where we are, you are correct that the plan back in the winter of 2019 prior to the pandemic contemplated an additional penny that would be in effect from 21 through fiscal year 25.

And when the fiscal year 21 budget was recommended by the county executive, there was not that additional penny that was included.

It was essentially delayed a year.

And before any action was really taken on that, the pandemic started, all the budgets were redone a week, so we just, everything changed.

And so, working through, you know, why we simply wouldn't go back to, at least as a starting point, as that plan, as much has changed.

And just to give an example of some of the things that have happened,

is that we've looked at U.S.

project schedules and lead times and our ability to execute.

One of the things that we're seeing already, especially we know with school projects in summer where there can be such a tight window to deliver on those and if materials don't arrive, we've seen some projects that have essentially been moved a year.

And so as we think about, particularly for a lot of those projects that are borrowed heavily, when does that actually happen and when does our borrowing happen?

Because part of this goes into the cash and debt analysis in terms of when does the money have to actually be available for what we can execute on.

The second thing I would touch on is that we will have more capacity than we did in 2019, in that winter session, because of the refinancing that took place, as you alluded to, those very historically low interest rates.

I can't remember, Tia will probably correct me, but it was well under 2%, which is just, you know, far beyond what the county has seen historically.

And so there will be capacity available there as well.

There are options to explore revenues that the state has granted in the last two years that could be explored.

And I'll share information that we gave to the Board of the Libemarle Third that will be followed up as well that I did not include in this presentation is that we have seen a really dramatic change in our local economy in the fourth quarter.

And if we were to look at, you know, what happened in the first three quarters of fiscal year 21, you would see year over year revenue growth of around, I think 2.6% was the number.

And what you would see in a typical year when there's not a pandemic going on is that you'd see fourth quarter would tend to be in a percent or so of that 2.6.

The actual year of year revenue growth we had in the fourth quarter was actually plus 7%, which is just an unprecedented change.

So as that base is happening, based on how we allocate funding to capital and the school division and local government, there will be some additional funding available in the local base, because what we're seeing in our data

is those trends are continuing to fiscal year 22.

And we gave the board of supervisors a preview on November 3rd.

And we'll actually tomorrow as part of the board's long range planning, I'll be talking with the board in terms of the data and what we're seeing and how things are changing.

And that will lead to a budget amendment on December 1st coming to the board.

And so part of this, too, is that it's we're seeing changes in our local economy that we just have not seen and some flexibility in our financing that didn't exist.

So part of the thinking was not to say that tax rates wouldn't be considered in the future, but

ensuring that we were doing our due diligence to explore all those other options in that capacity that we have gained.

So that is certainly a piece where we can reasonably disagree on that approach.

That was sort of the rationale that was presented in terms of why there's a different approach to what was considered in the winter of 2019.

OK, I don't have a follow up question to that, but I had really just a point to make.

I noticed that transit shelters were listed as a desirable entities to be supported by CIP budget.

And I just make an observation that the Planning Commission has looked at several redevelopment projects, special use

projects where transit was something this body, as a planning commission, talked about.

And we urge that there be, provided by the developer, transit stops.

And I don't think there was much support for that from the county, nor was there residence, not residents, but residents on the board of supervisors for supporting transit stops.

And my point is, rather than being part of the CAP budget, that could really be something that developers should have a hand in funding on these special use projects, especially when they're on a public transit route.

It's not really the role of the government locally to provide those post facto.

But when that development comes in, it seems totally appropriate, as we ask also for bike lanes, sidewalks, that we also ask and expect transit shelters to be included as part of the cost of doing business in the county.

to cover infrastructure needs for our citizenry.

Yes, I think your point is well taken is that in the spirit of leveraging funding is there are state programs that can be provided to provide support to either be a combination of CAD or VDOT to put those stops in place.

Tim, if there's anyone else, I assume there will be.

If you would raise your hand, that would be helpful.

But Tim, then Corey.

And Andy, thank you for this.

I guess having heard this for a number of years, and I realize that there's been a transition in the people who are managing this and thinking about it at the highest levels in the county.

But when Steve Allhouse and Trevor Nelson

and Mark Graham would come to us, there would, in past, there was kind of a budget 101 that was presented up front.

And I think because many citizens listen to these presentations, it would be helpful to have just the succinct discussion up front of the different components of input and output to the county budget.

So you're placing the CIP in that context.

Also,

I think what's been most helpful to us in the past as opposed to just having projects listed with dollar amounts that you have, they're actually spread out, projected out over a number of years.

So ongoing and large expenditures, such as the new Northern High School that was being considered at some time.

I mean, I realize that there's a different framework now, but

just using that as an example.

That was projected through the courts.

The courts improvements were projected through.

So I think it would be helpful to have that and then to see which of those are actually CIP pieces and which are not.

In conjunction with that and something that we haven't had really since Mark Graham departed is a presentation to the Planning Commission each year

before the budget, ideally before the budget cycle, sometimes it wasn't, but it was in around that time that talked about what the staff hopes were for budgetary items for community development and planning in particular, and then how those were broken down into what were ongoing

internal budget funded and which of those were going to have to be pushed out to the CIP.

And we were having discussions with the last planning director before he departed about not having things like small area plans happening, coming out of the CIP funding anymore.

So to my mind, this has been a very good general overview

and maybe it's appropriate at this point in the process.

But I think that there's a lot more that we need to see and we really should see it up front.

Most of us are aware of that notebook that you have to put together with all of the different pieces, all of the different requests, many of which can't be funded.

And so it's important for us to have a sense of what really is going to be funded outside of the CIP process and then what

we need to decide whether we're going to be advocating for because it's really important to planning and land use thinking for the county.

And just as another, so that's just more common, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

And then as a follow-up to Commissioner Randolph's point about the increased property tax, real estate taxes and property taxes, there've been lots of interesting discussions

a while back when we were really concerned about where revenue streams were going to come from, about breaking that down, what was the real estate, what was the machinery and equipment, how those pieces fed into the budget.

And then a sidebar to that would be, can we assume that the reason that staff at this point is not suggesting

Real estate tax increases is the anticipation that the assessment value of properties are going to be going up significantly, especially with the inflation factor that we're starting to see, and certainly the new material costs.

And therefore, in effect, there's going to be a real estate tax increase, even though the multiplier is not going to be increased.

The taxation multiplier is not going to be increased.

I'll respond to a few.

I was taking notes.

So if I miss one, please let me know and I'll step in.

I would say that thank you for that feedback on a budget 101.

I know that we have done things in the past as new board members and plan managers have come on.

I will say that knowing that we'll be doing that with the new board members soon, I can discuss with that onboarding process and figure out what we can do broader.

But also your point is understood in the public is that

Beyond just tonight's plan, there's a lot of other high level budgets in terms of where does the money come from, where does it go in terms of operating capital and some of the basic mechanics that we can cover.

I appreciate your feedback too on the kind of showing projects over time in terms of kind of also long range planning where I feel like we, about 18 months ago, we sort of had to call time out.

Maybe this year we're sort of crawling in long range planning and next year we'll be walking.

knowing that we've kind of had to shift from a plan there's so much uncertainty we didn't know so much and now is we're working to a plan where there will be

And there will always be unknown, I guess the degree of which is what I mean.

So I think as we work with in the future, as we work with the Community Development Director and her staff to bring those priorities back for the Planning Commission, I think we can find time to do that as well.

I think to the question as well about how those studies are funded, we did make a change based on the recommendation of the CIP Advisory Committee, I believe it was two or three years ago, to discontinue funding those studies through the CIP.

And we've been able to

The last few years, set funding aside and other designated reserves to be able to move forward things like the Rivanna Corridor Study, the Rivel Corridor Study, and actually the

comprehensive plan funding to implement that and the related work on the zoning ordinance.

We identified, I believe it was around 665,000, maybe slightly off of that number in the most recent budget.

So put that in the operating budget to take care of the needs that the community development department would need multiple years.

And so there's a regular dialogue that I have with myself and Ms.

Florida, the director and her staff to ensure that while the capital process isn't a funding source there, we do have a plan to address those.

I would say in terms of the, looking through my notes to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Certainly the reassessment discussion will be actually an update on December 15th from our county assessor to the board on where those properties are.

We assumed at the time of the 22 adopted budget, there would be reassessment plus 1.75% compared to calendar year 21.

You know, they're too early in that work to determine where that is, but certainly when we all look at anecdotally what happens in the housing market,

There are signs to have a more positive reassessment than that, but it is too early to say that.

But that will be an update that we have with the board on December 15th and how that fits into our long range planning that could certainly be an influence in terms of the available revenues for next year.

So while I don't have a number I can provide on that, there certainly is a update that will be coming.

And as we all expect, many of us call, pay attention to what happens in the local economy and the building community.

There are anecdotal signs that number could be higher than 1.75%.

So I think I've commented on everything.

You did well.

Thank you.

Good afternoon or good evening, I should say, Mr. Bowman.

It's great to meet you.

A handful of questions.

If you could go back to this slide that showed the school CIP proposal.

There you go.

Okay, so like the high school renovations and so forth.

I don't know what's included in that but my question kind of goes back to like the AARP and some of that funding can be used for HVAC, you know renovations and so forth so I'm curious for the first question.

As we're looking at these renovation projects, and let's say some of them are planning to do HVAC renovation, is there coordination to say, hey, while I'm doing the HVAC, this might be a nice time to replace the roof, or it might be a nice time to replace the windows.

Is there coordination included in that number if AARP funding is being planned to use?

I'll ask Ms.

Yeah, I think I understand what you're asking.

So I think it's important to note that these projects used to be called the below the line projects.

They do not include our maintenance replacement projects.

So we have a pretty robust maintenance replacement program that includes

roof replacements and windows and mechanical equipment and things like that.

So to answer your question, yes, we try to coordinate those projects wherever possible, where it makes sense.

In terms of ARP funding, I'll draw your attention to line nine, which is indoor air quality.

That is a comprehensive program around mechanical improvements that there is some opportunity to have some matching funds from ARP funding.

Thank you for the answer.

I just want to make sure I got it right.

So in the example I used, it wouldn't come out of this right here.

There's a separate maintenance budget that would take care of that stuff.

All right, thank you.

But my second question would be, I guess I'll go back to Mr. Bowman.

As you're coordinating with economic development, I was just curious about what level of priority is placed on some of those utility projects?

Because I saw a bulletized list of, hey, here are the things that were talked about at that board meeting.

Here's how we prioritize things.

curious, like how much of that goes towards like site readiness, right?

To try to bring in employers, which in return obviously would bring in tax revenue.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think on the slide of projects, there was a reference to water and sewer connection, which I think in the board's mind was more around kind of the assistance program from human services perspective.

But to answer your question, in case I'm interested in what the reference was on the slide, we do have in the county, there is currently around $2 million in kind of a public-private partnership fund in the CIP that is related to

147 million that is included in that amount separately from the CIP.

This is a good point to Commissioner Keller's point of all the different parts of the budget and how they talk to each other.

We maintain a separate economic development fund that is used if there are issues of site readiness or

leveraging state and federal funds or providing whatever opportunities we need for performance agreements with county cash investment, whatever flavor that may take given the project.

We currently have a balance of around, I believe,

Well, I'll say it's a couple million or so.

I'm not going to quote the exact number of us.

I'll probably say the wrong thing.

That's a discussion we had with the board in December as well, is that because we had strong financial performance in consumer 21, it's created some build a one time funding.

And certainly one of the board's nice priorities is economic development.

And how do we begin to invest that funding to have a greater kind of growth by not rather than divided up separately?

And so there would be a kind of discussion outside of the CIP the board will be having over the next couple of months in their long range planning.

Yeah.

Very, very helpful.

Forgive me if some of these questions are silly.

So last one.

If you go back to, I guess there's a slide that kind of showed the priorities and the bullets from the discussion from the March board meeting.

I think it's one more back, actually.

I'm trying to take notes.

I was typing notes as you had it, so don't worry about it.

But accessibility projects or public safety projects, I was just surprised not to see any of that.

I would say for public safety, well, I'll have to make sure.

No, I was thinking more like the fire stations or police stations.

The largest cost in our public safety is a lot of the maintenance and replacement.

What we should refer to as the kind of maintenance and replacement program.

So apparatus, replacement of engines, neighborhoods, all taking care of that base.

Really through the comp plan and the vision that was set out long ago, we've been on kind of a 20 year path from fire rescue where we've built stations around the urban area in that ring.

So at this time, in terms of new stations, there's nothing on the horizon.

Now, there are other long-term needs in public safety out there.

And I think certainly, you know, the PD may have just with radios and other kind of basic infrastructures, we work with them.

But in terms of the new facility, there may be long-term issues on the horizon related to training.

But this is kind of a snapshot of where we're going on public safety.

No, I think you covered it.

My last one was accessibility.

It's like ADA upgrades.

Yeah, I think certainly, well, I think with ADA, we would certainly look at that even for equity.

That's an amazing thing.

As we're looking at retrofitting facilities, that's certainly something that would be considered as part of that, really as part of that maintenance replacement budget.

If we are going into

I'm escaping.

I remember there was an issue at a school a couple of years ago.

While we were doing some work, we needed to do something on the side to ensure ADA compliance.

Thank you.

I'm done.

Thank you.

Daniel?

I just have one question with the, I see the, you know, as you had that list up there, we had a broadband access as one of the CIPs.

I'm curious if the new, you know, kind of

infrastructure that had a lot of support for broadband in it coming from the federal government.

It's certainly hot off the presses would be a good reference because I think I got an email this morning with kind of a high-level infrastructure sort of where they're, you know, what would amount for climate, what amount for broadband and those other things.

I know that typically, based on the experience of CARES and ARPA, there's usually a little bit of a delay as this kind of feeds down to the state and those governing agencies within sort of set out the guidance and compliance there.

So we'll be watching what is available for broadband from that infrastructure bill, but there's no details at this time.

But we do have at least that $4.5 million from ARPA funding already identified with hopefully a dollar-for-dollar match from the state with contingency plans should not have that fully materialized.

As a portion of the last video, I had off the press information.

Yeah, I guess from a Planning Commission perspective, I guess this could be the others, is that I know the FCC publishes a broadband map and I know there is already existing.

Yes, when we look at Albemarle County, a lot of their judgment is on areas that have one or less providers and how that cross-referenced with our population and need there.

The ones that have one or less often have priority for some of that federal funding.

Thanks.

Luis.

So yeah, I certainly appreciate particularly the slide where you talk about the school board improvements in the schools and the five-year plan and you have it prioritized.

So it kind of gives you a sense on the expenses there and the need.

We've outlined a series of other needs, infrastructure, sewer, water, transit,

and I'm just wondering if you have the same level of detail in terms of cost associated with some of those and prioritization, right?

So we, you know, we approved master plans recently we had a Crozet master plan approved.

It has a number of infrastructure needs associated with that.

There was an extensive traffic analysis that was very good and it identified

several issues that need to be addressed.

And so I'm wondering how we're looking at those approved master plans with the CIP and putting the same kind of rigor as we seem to be doing with the school board.

And maybe they exist, I'm just not seeing it here.

Grant funding cycles.

So a lot of them are sidewalk improvements, trail improvements, road improvements, things like that.

A lot of infrastructure related improvements, we often we identify them in these master plans or other small area plans, corridor studies, and that's kind of the very first phase of identifying a project.

and then we'll go through some of the conversations we've been having with Mr. Bowman and his staff would be this next phase of vetting it through a preliminary engineering study or some additional work to try and vet that project a little further, identify costs and identifying the best funding mechanisms.

It may be, once we have that, then we can come back to Mr. Bowman's team and discuss

Would this project be best suited to be funded directly out of out of county dollars?

Would it be better to pursue a state grant, a federal grant or whatever that funding source might be?

So it's really the master plans are really that first avenue that's an adopted project and adopted goal.

but it takes a while to work through the details of those so that we make sure that once we do commit to funding we can actually implement those projects.

Simply drawing a line on a map saying we want to sidewalk here.

As you know there's a lot of variables that need to be worked out before we can flush out the details of that project.

Yeah, and I certainly appreciate that.

And certainly, maybe my reference to the Crozet was not the right one.

I mean, we've had infrastructure issues throughout the county for many, many years.

And there's some listed here, right?

We had a whole list of sewer and water and transit.

And so I'm just wondering, are we able to get the same level of

detail in terms of cost and prioritization to some of those projects as we're seeing with with the school board because you know there's there's I mean certainly those needs are real that we understand them in terms of new schools and upgrade schools but there is a lot of other things that we've touched on here today the broadband issue, the sidewalk issue, ADA issues and

And so is there more detail that perhaps we could see in a comprehensive CIP?

I mean, the CIP is certainly more than just a school board.

And I'm just not seeing the same level of detail.

So my question is, is that available?

Yes, we did.

That is available.

I think some of that may just be the intent of having a higher level discussion.

But as we head with the advisory committee,

We'll have estimates for those projects, timelines that would go with them, and all those things.

And we can share that with the entire planning commission.

I think as we think about this conversation now, I'm thinking about what's happening now versus what will happen in the future as well.

And some of the information that I'm hearing from you all that will be helpful the next time we come before you before we're planning the 24 to 20 ACIP.

What are some of those things that will help you provide better input?

And did you have your hands up still?

Do you have another question, Tim?

Your hands up.

OK.

So part of what we were sort of intimating was about what happened during the funding that came through over the last of this administration, the previous one.

But do you have a sense, so this is, I guess, for you, Mr. Baldwin, do you have a sense, or is there a group of people inside the organization, inside the county, who will be

sort of work plans start coming out because there's a number of pieces in there that actually could supplant and provide some breathing room for some of the other projects that we're trying to do.

Yes, we actually when ARPA funding was announced in the spring we took one of our analysts and kind of restructured and dedicated her essentially full time on this federal planning because at that point we were essentially wrapping up CARES and how to embark on ARPA and just not knowing what else would be out there in terms of those other kind of buckets from the state that may be available.

And so she is regularly plugged in with all of our national and regional state organizations to say the latest.

So I'm going to ask you to sort of put a marker on your calendar.

And I think it would be helpful when you're in the midst of this if I realize that we have a member on the committee, Ms.

Firehocks, that I think it actually would be helpful if you could come back and have a sort of detailed conversation about how does the CIP integrate with the sort of things that we're seeing.

I think that'd be helpful for not only for the Planning Commission, particularly as we go, we sort of begin the process of thinking through

the big issues around the comp plan.

I think that'd be a helpful process, but I also think for the community.

And now here's my big bugger book.

So here's my bugger book.

One of the things that we hear about on our meetings, particularly when we're looking at significant projects, is that we don't have enough school space to put our little kids in, even though the little kids aren't there.

And the little kids aren't going to be there for some x amount of period.

And I sit on another non-related advisory committee from the school board and have said, and will say it in this environment, Rosalind, it would really be helpful if the school board could say, in very public ways, what the plan for capacity is.

because there's a lot of misconceptions or things that get brought up in our review of projects that if we could just have a school board angel right here to say, no, this is actually what we're doing on this, might bring some of the angst down in communities or say, this is really what we're doing.

You don't know about this yet, but we're actually about to talk about this.

So a way for

Our plans for building, our plans for conceiving the way our young people are going to be educated would really be helpful given that we've got this expectation for new housing that the county is expecting.

So I think our most comprehensive document is this long range planning report.

I will caveat though, it's all depending on funding.

I think just having being able to speak in a way to get your public affairs person out into the community or in the press or however, just saying these are the plans.

Because sometimes it feels like some of the feedback that we're receiving is that they don't even know that there are plans, which then puts in

on any sort of new or resistance, I shouldn't say all because it's the supervisor, but a resistance to hearing about new and emerging projects that come around the community.

That's all.

Anyone else?

And since we were receiving this information, unless the commissioners feel so inclined, I'm not.

I'm not going to open it for public comment.

I'm going to let that happen at the supervisor's level when you're going to wrestle with this, Mr. Bowen.

And assuming that you have ways for the public to come to you, we received this.

I think we put a good number of requests before you about more detail and how does this connect to the kind of projects within the areas that we're concerned about.

And then how do we get the resources, just the on the ground resources, the system resources,

for community development so that we can be effective as they're looking at the projects and dealing with the projects that are coming before us.

It feels like something's released, so we're seeing a bit more things than we've seen over the last year.

I will imagine that that's going to continue as people are racing against sources of money.

So getting them to be able to respond to that will allow projects to get completed and allow

Thank you.

This has been a lot of helpful discussion and feedback, both in the short term and long term.

Again, thinking about the upcoming weeks to build a 23 to 27 CIP, but also thinking about how Department of Finance and Budget and our staff effectively partner with Community Development and the Planning Commission for the future.

And I would offer that if there's a time where, aside from just kind of these meetings where there's interest in learning more about how the budget process works, how the county handles our financial policies,

and my staff are available and I'm sure Schmidt and her staff have stayed the same.

Thank you both.

I appreciate you spending time with us this evening.

So we're going to let you go.

I'm going to wish you good work and that all the various pots of funds that can come your way will come your way and come there with some clarity and speed.

Commissioners, are we going to go forward?

Does anyone need to take a short break?

And I do mean a short break if you need one otherwise.

Hello, Rachel.

Hello, Tori.

Otherwise, we're going to keep rolling.

Keep rolling.

Good, fine.

And we'll move on to our next work session, which is a comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance update.

Thank you, Chair Bivins.

I'm going to kind of set the stage for us here.

Since we didn't really have any interesting materials and stuff, it's still fairly early on in our planning stages.

But it's been a while since we were with the commission to talk about these projects.

And I believe since our last work session together, Rachel and her team have been back to the board.

to discuss the scope, further refine that based on the feedback we had as well as establish an engagement approach for the comprehensive plan.

And so some of that work is underway.

Everything you'll see tonight is still at a very high level and we're just starting to kind of get into some of these topics.

So felt it was a good time to re-engage with the commission here.

And then we also have, as y'all have seen, some zoning ordinance work already underway and quite a bit more will come in tandem with this comprehensive plan update.

I really wanted to find an opportunity to update you all, get some feedback, and hopefully outline the process for moving forward.

Thank you, Charles.

So hopefully everyone can see that OK.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Tori Kennelopoulos and also joined this evening by my colleague Rachel Falkenstein.

And this evening, we will be sharing updates on the comprehensive plan.

We will share the project goals and rationale for the plan update.

Then we will cover both the updated phasing plan for the overall project scope and timeline and the phase one engagement plan for collaboration between community members, county staff and the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

And we will have time after the presentation for Planning Commission Q&A focused on content feedback.

So as a reminder for any members of the community who may be listening in or watching this meeting at a later date, the comprehensive plan or comp plan establishes Albemarle County's long range vision that guides growth, development and change for the next 20 years.

It assists county staff

appointed committees and boards and the Board of Supervisors when developing public policies related to private land use activities and use of resources in Albemarle.

The comprehensive plan serves as the basis for land development regulations and decisions such as rezonings and special use permits, capital improvements, new county programs, and the distribution of county budget dollars to programs and agencies.

The county's comprehensive plan divides Albemarle County into designated development areas, which are approximately 5% of the county or 35 square miles, and rural areas being approximately 95% of the county or 695 square miles.

And the intent is to focus development into the urban areas to create quality living areas, avoid sprawl, improve access to services, and protect the rural areas.

And each development area has its own master plan.

We also wanted to provide a brief summary of board and Planning Commission feedback to date.

Staff presented a draft phasing plan and project budget estimate to the board at their February 3rd and March 17th work sessions.

The board expressed a desire for a more streamlined process to allow for concurrent work on the comprehensive plan and other high priority projects.

and the Planning Commission had a work session on April 13 where staff presented a revised draft phasing plan and the Commission expressed support for concurrent comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance updates.

The Board of Supervisors held two recent work sessions to review updated comprehensive plan materials.

At the October 6th meeting, the board expressed support for concurrent comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance updates.

And then at their November 3rd meeting, the board adopted a resolution of intent for the comprehensive plan update, which included the updated phasing plan and phase one engagement plan.

And the board also requested more information on the working group, which we'll cover in a little bit more detail in a later slide.

And there will also be more information placed on an upcoming consent agenda for the board.

So before diving into the project phasing plan and phase one engagement plan, we thought it would be helpful to share a bit more detail on the rationale for the conference of plan update and why an update is appropriate at this time.

Since the latest 2015 Conference of Plan update, the county has undertaken substantial planning and policy initiatives across the county.

These efforts are not currently integrated into the existing Conference of Plan.

For example, the Board of Supervisors prioritized a strategic plan in the fall of 2018.

The board's strategic plan includes climate action planning, economic development, infrastructure planning, revitalizing aging neighborhoods, and expanding broadband

All topics which are relevant to the content of the comprehensive plan.

Additionally, several planning and policy efforts have been adopted by the board since 2015, including the Economic Development Office's Project Enable, the Climate Action Plan, and most recently Housing Albemarle.

Finally, to further the county's commitment to providing the highest level of public service and enhancing the quality of life for all residents,

The Office of Equity and Inclusion was created in 2018.

And subsequently, a new county value of community was added to the organizational values, which states that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into how we live our mission.

Coupled with recent work and initiatives, Albemarle County is also a growing community demonstrated by both the number of new residential units that have been constructed over the past five years and the amount of population growth in the last decade.

According to the U.S.

Census Bureau, Albemarle County's population increased by about 10% from 2010 to 2019, yet not all of this growth is experienced uniformly across the county.

As shown in the Albemarle County Equity Profile, co-authored by the Office of Equity and Inclusion and the UVA Equity Center, over 37% of Albemarle County households were ALICE or Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed Households

and an additional 9% of county households were living in poverty according to the latest 2018 data.

Alongside this growth, there has been increasing demand for urban services and infrastructure, especially in the context of the pandemic where we've seen increased use of county parks and demand for broadband to support students in our school systems, as well as those employed and working remotely.

The last two slides were intended to provide a summary of the changing context of our community and the associated work that the county has undertaken since the last comp plan update.

This slide and a couple that follow consider the content of the existing plan and why an update is appropriate at this time.

For example, the existing implementation chapter includes 70 priorities.

There is not a clear prioritization of these items and the order in which they should be completed.

The chapter includes 80 indicators of progress that are intended to be tracked annually, but tracking this data is unsustainable and the sheer number of indicators make it unclear for community members to understand what success looks like.

Additionally, the comp plan includes inconsistent and at times conflicting recommendations.

For example, there are different land use categories across different master plans and master plan language that conflicts with comprehensive plan language.

And these inconsistencies make it difficult for staff to evaluate development proposals and consider the plan's content when making recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

The county is also in need of undertaking multimodal systems planning for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

to allow urban street types to be constructed, such as those found in downtown Crozet and the recently adopted standards outlined in the Rio 29 form-based code.

The state code provision requires coordinating transportation planning with land use planning and provides an opportunity to integrate climate-related initiatives.

Finally, this moment provides the opportunity to integrate best practices that exist within the county's policies and plans, such as housing Albemarle, as well as in the planning and development field at large.

There are a variety of examples of successful and award-winning planning efforts.

Some of these include Minneapolis 2040, which reviewed the city's land uses and identified opportunities for a mixture of housing types and levels of affordability.

Richmond 300, A Guide for Growth, which focused on environmental justice, walkability, and economic growth through clear priorities called Big Moves and Memphis 3.0, which focused on flexibility and enabling the growth of its urban assets by reinvesting in identified areas of activity.

The county's comprehensive plan update alongside all the county's work is in support of its mission to enhance the well-being and quality of life of all community members through the provision of the highest level of service consistent with the prudent use of public funds.

And these three project goals for the comprehensive plan update highlight the rationale discussed in the previous slides.

The goals are to update plan content to reflect county-wide strategic initiatives, including climate action planning, economic development, and multimodal transportation planning,

Ensure that equity is integrated into the engagement process and the updated plan content consistent with the county's recently added community organizational value.

And improve plan usability by articulating clearly prioritized goals, incorporating metrics for tracking progress, and applying a modern streamlined document design.

And now we'll transition to talking about the phasing plan for this project.

This is the updated phasing plan, which incorporates feedback from the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors and supports the project goals.

The phasing plan outlines the four phases and the general timeline.

This project started this fourth quarter of 2021 and is expected to conclude in the second quarter of 2024.

And the phasing plan also includes concurrent zoning ordinance updates along the bottom of the document, which Planning Director Charles Rapp will cover later this evening.

We are currently in phase one, growth management policy and framework.

This includes reviewing, evaluating, and updating the growth management policy as needed using the lenses of equity, climate action, and capacity projections.

A capacity analysis for housing and economic development in the county is currently underway.

And this is to understand if we have the capacity in our development areas for the projected growth of our community.

This phase will align the comprehensive plan with the county's updated values and will identify the level of detail that should be included in the plan and develop a framework approach.

This is an opportunity to identify the content and level of detail that should be included within the comprehensive plan and which content should be included in separate plans, such as the county's climate action plan or economic development strategic plan.

And hopefully doing this work in phase one will help us provide a more focused approach for the subsequent project phases.

Phase two is policy review and framework design, and the goal of this phase is to identify major topics of the comprehensive plan, evaluate existing conditions for each major topic, and update policy statements, goals, and frameworks through the lenses of equity and climate action.

Anticipated major topics include transportation, economic development, land use, and resource and rural area planning.

Based on the work done in phase one and feedback from the community, the topics could be adjusted slightly.

And phase two would include pulling in content from recently updated county plans and policies and conducting more detailed community engagement on topics that need more significant updates.

For example, we anticipate transportation will require more community engagement as this topic will include the county's first countywide multimodal systems plan.

Phase three is strategy development.

This phase will review and update the county's action steps and implementation approach.

Action steps will be used to implement the policy goals for each major topic identified in phase two.

In the current comprehensive plan, these action steps are referred to as the strategies.

And in this phase, we will identify priorities and metrics for each topic area to allow for more clear checking of progress and success going forward.

Phase four is titled Final Draft Review.

And this is where we will pull together the full draft document based on the work done in the previous three phases.

We will focus our efforts on identifying and eliminating plan inconsistencies across content.

And we will engage community and decision makers on overall plan priorities once all of the content is considered as a whole.

Finally, there will be a public hearing process with the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors for final plan adoption.

And our hope is that after completing these four phases of work, we have an updated document that achieves the project goals, reflects the county's strategic initiatives and priorities, integrates equity,

and clearly identifies community priorities and metrics for tracking progress.

Hi, Tori.

So I'm going to start us off by speaking a little bit about how we developed our phase one engagement plan before we get into the details of what engagement will look like for the comp plan update.

Our approach for engagement planning will be to scope engagement

plans for each phase of work as the process evolves.

Our hope is that this will allow us to be reflective and responsive to community feedback on effective methods and will also allow us to be mindful of the content we'll be focusing on with each phase as we design those methods.

Next slide, please.

So to start us off, I'll share some engagement goals that we've drafted in keeping in mind the new organizational value of community.

The first goal is to conduct engagement, to conduct outreach and collaborate with community members.

These perspectives have not historically been well represented in county processes, and we can take into consideration factors such as age, race, place, and income or other demographic factors.

Second is to develop and implement a transparent community engagement process and decision making process so that people have a clear understanding of how we're using the feedback that we receive.

And then third is to provide consistent and varied opportunities for community input throughout the update process.

Next slide, please.

To help inform our engagement approach, we've also looked at best practices and examples of processes from other localities who have done recent comp planning efforts, especially those that align with our engagement approach and goals.

And a few examples are shared here on the slide.

Tori already talked about Minneapolis 2040.

We also like the engagement approach that they took toward their planning effort.

They completed a comp plan update in 2019, and at the beginning of their process, they developed engagement goals, which allowed them to be pretty intentional about the design of their engagement methods.

And they're also able to evaluate their methods throughout their process and make adjustments to make sure that they were aligning with their goals.

So we like this approach, and that's why we shared those goals with you earlier that we've drafted to help advise our work.

The second planning effort that we've researched is Richmond 300.

They created an advisory council to assist in shaping and reviewing the content of their comp plan and to also help build awareness of the project to encourage community participation.

And so for this process, they had an application for interested members of the community to serve on the council, and they selected members based on community demographics to achieve a diversity of perspectives.

based on age, ethnicity, and race in place of residence.

Then lastly, I'll cite some research compiled by the American Planning Association, which is a professional association for urban planners.

They've adopted a code of ethics for planners that talks about the importance of planners to serve diverse publics and to recommend planning activities that integrate the topics of historic context, equity, and social justice.

Next slide, please.

So our engagement approach for phase one involves four major components.

And this flowchart on the left is meant to represent the main elements of our engagement approach and show feedback for content creation and engagement.

And there's a four-part approach that I'll talk about in the upcoming slides.

That includes internal staff, a working group, broad public engagement, and then legislative review.

And the work of each of these groups will be supported and supplemented by online and in-person outreach and communications.

So if you go to the next slide, I'll start first with internal staff.

So the engagement planning includes creating a team of interdepartmental leaders and the purpose of the team would be to coordinate planning efforts across local government divisions and departments.

and assist with gathering input on the existing comp plan and then draft content as it's created.

Coordination with external partners such as the City of Charlottesville or UVA and our service providers such as Rivanna, Water and Sewer Authority or Albemarle County Service Authority would also support this team's work and would be included on an as needed basis.

Additionally, neighborhood planning staff will also prepare work products as part of the first days of work, including a background report with a summary of existing conditions and the history of the comp plan, which will be used to inform the comp plan update process and serve as a foundation for educational materials.

It will also be case study and precedent research on growth management and best practices that staff will work on and to draft growth management policy for the board's consideration.

Next slide, please.

So next is our working group.

The working group is an approximately 8 to 12 person group of community members whose role would be to advise county staff on plan recommendations, community engagement approaches, and to support staff's community outreach efforts by sharing information with their networks, their neighborhoods, or their communities.

The working group would meet about once a month and would include staff-led training,

on fundamentals of urban planning and community development content before beginning discussion of potential recommendation and policy options.

And the goal of integrating these trainings would be to ensure that all members have a shared understanding and background information to inform the subsequent discussions.

Next slide, please.

In alignment with the engagement goals for the process, county staff and planning, the Office of Equity and Inclusion and Communications and Public Engagement,

will use the county demographic data and equity profile to design an application and a selection process that is representative and inclusive of the county.

And staff has access to working group resources from other localities such as Richmond that I spoke about earlier and the design efforts.

They have used similar approaches in their design of the committee.

Next slide please.

One other thing I'll mention on this is that we are going back to the Board of Supervisors with information sharing about the selection process at an upcoming board meeting in December.

The next topic of our engagement will focus on community workshops, and this is where the broad public engagement will come into play.

So we'll provide a variety of opportunities for community members to participate in the planning process

through several workshops.

These will provide opportunities to learn about existing conditions in the county and planning practices and for members of the community to provide input on potential policies, conceptual plans, and review draft policies and plans.

Next slide, please.

The formats and methods for our community workshops will include a variety of different content, topics, and designs.

There will be virtual and in-person events with presentation, videos, and activities.

We envision also pop-ups and roadshows at various locations throughout the county, online and paper questionnaires, possibility of artists or collaborator-led engagement events, and in-person and virtual meetings geared towards specific interests or populations depending on the topic and ongoing evaluation of engagement processes.

Next slide, please.

And then lastly, the topic we're calling legislative review with this includes engagement with both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

We'll facilitate work sessions with both groups to review policy and planning options, existing conditions data, community engagement summaries, and draft planning concepts and policies.

Work sessions will be held with the board at the start and end of each phase to review comp plan content and scope of work for the upcoming phase.

and Planning Commission will have a little bit more frequent work sessions, perhaps two or three per phase.

We're planning at least two for phase one.

Next slide, please.

All of these different aspects of internal and external engagement will be supported by a robust communications and outreach plan, including online website hubs,

that's consistently updated with planned progress, upcoming engagement opportunities, summaries of past events and educational materials.

County staff will also utilize existing county outreach and communications tools, including the county newsletter via email, the social media accounts, and the networks of our working group.

Materials and engagement opportunities will be provided in both English and Spanish with translation services for other languages made available

as is possible and as is needed.

And then additionally, county staff will be regularly available for one-on-one discussions and community outreach at reoccurring pop-ups at various locations throughout the county.

Next slide, please.

So lastly, I'm going to spend a few moments talking about a rationale for this engagement approach.

First, it integrates the new organizational value of community

which states that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into how we live our mission.

Second, our engagement plan aligns with existing staff capacity and the resources that the board has agreed to allocate to this project within the community development work program and budget.

And then lastly, the board has stated the desire for a strategic update to the comp plan with a phased approach.

And based on the board and planning commission feedback, we've designed an engagement plan that offers the appropriate level of engagement

to support the stated goal of the conflict update and the engagement goals that are previously shared.

And the engagement plan focuses on resources and staff efforts on achieving those goals.

Next slide, please.

So our next steps for this project will be to refine the working group selection criteria and process.

As I mentioned, that will be a consent agenda item for the board in December for them to

sign off on and then we'll begin outreach and trying to recruit for our working group.

We'll continue work on our capacity analysis and background research.

In December this year, we'll do outreach on the working group and have a live application for members of the community to apply.

And then in January 2022, I'm sorry, I'm realizing there's a typo on this slide, that the December, should say December 2021 is working group outreach and application.

And then January 2022 will be our public kickoff where we'll begin the broad public engagement on the conference updates.

And our next slide is, I think, just a wrap up opportunity for you all to ask any questions you have or to share feedback you have, especially related to content you think we should be focused on in the update process itself.

So Rachel, let me just pause for a second.

So tonight, are you looking at input from the commissioners on topics or on broad topics?

If so, I would ask that we pause that for tonight and give us some time to sort of think about that more rigorously and then come back and sort of wrestle with that.

Because I mean, people probably have things that they want.

But I also know we have two of our commissioners who aren't here.

Absolutely.

So this is really meant as an information sharing for you all, but also open to suggestions if any came to mind as we were sharing that.

I will share that the process itself, the phasing plan and the engagement plan has already been kind of endorsed by the board and they've directed us to begin work on it.

So

There's not much that we can change on those big pieces right now, but if there are details that come to mind that we should be focused on, definitely open to hearing that and then we could come back at a later time.

Thank you for that clarity, commissioners.

Just curious, how will you all, I guess, proactively try to get fresh voices on those advisory committees and so forth?

That's a great question, and we haven't fully detailed that out yet.

We're in the process of meeting with a team from Office of Equity and Inclusion and Communications and Public Engagement offices.

But I suspect we'll do some pretty targeted outreach, reaching out to people with networks in census tracts and areas of the community that are less represented in our processes, as well as the potential of just kind of showing up places.

We have a community engagement van now, and we can show up in neighborhoods and put flyers out.

Rick?

Rachel, I'm recalling, and Tim, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm recalling that in the last comprehensive plan development, there were 52 meetings of this planning commission in the deliberation and development process.

And what I want to focus in on is what happened two years into the process when there was an election, which resulted in many new members of the Board of Supervisors coming aboard with the county and

the board basically having had a finished product provided by the Planning Commission and then the board took it unto themselves to basically revise the comprehensive plan and thereby there wasn't a lot of consultation with the Planning Commission.

I do recall that we saw the finished product

But I don't believe there was a lot of discussion.

And given the fact that there is an election for the board in the midst of your schedule, of course, there would be any time it's longer than two years, you're going to have an election of the board.

and not knowing anything as to what the composition, future composition of the board would be.

My only concern is just trying to ensure that there will be provision if, in fact, this body completes the major part of work on the Planning Commission that if the board wants to dramatically or in a major way revise

the recommendations of the Planning Commission regarding the new comprehensive plan that there be some opportunities for consultation during that process with the Planning Commission so that they can get an understanding of the rationale for why the Planning Commission was making the recommendations it did.

I feel as I look back, and again, Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt there was a little bit of disconnect between what the Planning Commission worked on and thought that was the final product.

And then what we ended up with as the final product after the board primarily worked

within its own body on revising the comprehensive plan.

And that's not a criticism of the board.

I think, by the way, the comprehensive plan was better by the involvement of those new supervisors, four new supervisors.

But it was a little difficult as planning commissioners to suddenly have such a drastic revision.

And then we were not really part of the process.

Yes, I remember it the way Rick did really when when I came on.

Most of the work had been done.

It seems to me that there was something maybe with a railroad that hasn't been asked.

So there had to be a public here, another public hearing so that so that that piece could be covered about railroad crossings or bridges or something.

And then it went on to the supervisors.

So those of us that came in as new commissioners with new supervisors really didn't have much to say at all about

that comprehensive plan and then the supervisors elected to work through almost paragraph by paragraph.

I think the question I have, and I know I'm going into dangerous territory given the moment that we're in right now and seeing what we're seeing with the two trials that are going on in Wisconsin and Georgia.

But it seems to me that

that there's a lot of doublespeak going on about the equity and inclusion.

And if you really want to have that entity, and I think we should, then I wonder if it almost needs to be called out what it is and it's not standing for the full committee.

Because if you're talking, what were the numbers that you were putting out like around 10 for the membership of that group?

Yeah, so if you're really going to hit the points, and I don't think we have to tick them off, we can look at the demographics of the county, we can look at the socio economic information that you gave us about the poverty percent and poverty percent and whatever levels, and we can see that a 10 person group representing those various communities that have been

for a number of reasons excluded in the past.

And even one of the things that you mentioned was kind of planning our urban design 101 for that committee to get them up to speed.

That is a different kind of body than the kind of folks who self-select because they are design professionals, planning professionals for the most part.

And so I think that what we've seen in the city

and you all are planners and you've got your friends who are in the planning world in the city.

But what happened was that there was this movement towards having more diverse voices up front.

And then when it got really close to things starting to happen, then a lot of other voices that had been the traditional voices that were of people who were invited to the tables before may have felt excluded and started to speak up.

I would hope that in the county, we could have a way that we could have all of those voices speaking to one another from the beginning.

And I'm not sure that a super large committee, based on my experience through the years, a super large committee that's trying to represent everybody is the way to do it.

I don't have an answer to it.

And I think that what you all have proposed, that there's a great deal of logic

to most of it.

But that's the one piece that seems to me to be failing around the country.

It's getting people with different voices speaking to one another.

And from what I've seen that you've presented, I don't think you've gotten that yet.

That's my two cents worth as a person who's been involved in community involvement for many, many decades and tried to have more voices to the table.

knowing the challenges that you're confronting and trying to do it, which is admirable.

No, I don't think that.

I think, thank you for that.

Thank you for both of them, both of those comments, Rick and for Tim.

But what I'd like to then ask now,

Not at the end, as Rick is saying, when there's already a set of, a recipe's been completed.

But we build in through this time for the supervisors and for the commission to sit together.

and so that we can hear each other and discuss how these discussions before we get to an endpoint.

So if you will, when you're looking at your schedule, when you take this back to our supervisors to tell them that there's been a request that there be an integration of the two boards at more than one time.

and perhaps during the various phases so that we can sit together on this.

And that I think the, that goes to I think the piece that Toronto, try to perhaps head off what Rick and Tim were talking about when we first started this.

The piece about bringing the working group together, I also want to add into this piece that I hope that we can create the type of working group and construction that avoids the kind of tension that we saw or that you experienced around the Crozet master plan.

that people are very clear about who the decision makers are.

That there's people who can offer opinions, people can offer observations, but at the end of the day, this is a legislative process that has a certain number of steps and certain procedures that it has to go to, and that even their best decisions may not make it to the end, and that's not an affront to them.

that they are not being disregarded if their idea doesn't make it into the final document.

So how we do that throughout I think is important and helpful because I, for one, I don't know if I will be here when this is all complete, don't want you to have to go through that experience on a county-wide level.

I would feel that that was a really unfortunate

Those are just around how we conduct ourselves, how we engage with our supervisors, how we set the appropriate tone

with the community so that they understand how this process will evolve through this time period.

I think it's a consistent message and it's also an important message to set into the DNA of this process.

Hearing the two of you, I wanted to come in

coming between that and so I'll let Daniel and Luis and whoever else has a comment on that piece on the various things that there are others.

Do you need something else from us?

As I understand, we are going to have a time to just sit with you and sit with you and the team in blue skies and stuff.

We'd really like to talk.

I know there's plenty of things that I don't need to put, but there's a list of things that I would go back over our meetings that many supervisors said, yeah, can we talk about this?

Oh yes, can we think about this?

Are we going to have an opportunity to sort of rethink this?

The big thing that comes to mind is the net versus gross.

Certainly, Chair Bivins, I believe we'll have those opportunities.

I think at this point, it's just so high level.

There's so much to kind of

share with you all this evening about where we are in our process.

And as we get into these different phases, you know, the different type of topics will become relevant and we'll have opportunities to dive into them, whether they be ordinance work or a comp plan work, they might tie together.

So, you know, when we start talking about growth management policies and that's kind of that big policies and framework phase two that Rachel mentioned, where we will really dive into some of our county policies, review them,

and establish that framework.

And hopefully this approach that Rachel's team has set out also will help to keep us on track so that we don't dive too far into the weeds and finish a product that then, as Commissioner Randolph mentioned, gets opened back up.

If we can all agree on the policies and the framework before we start drafting individual chapters, then we can kind of all work together in tandem

with our community, with the PC and with the board of supervisors as we work through this thing and gradually get it towards a finished product.

I think that feels reasonable.

So I don't have a whole lot to show y'all, but I just wanted to give you an update.

The way the Zoning Ordinance is gonna work, we'll bring some through it.

We have a first phase right now, it's called modernization.

Two of those have been brought to you through a resolution of intent.

that deal with bonus densities and waivers and special exceptions.

We have two more part of that category, which will be looking at our land uses and taking them what is currently listed in each zoning category and bring that into a consolidated chart and simplifying those uses quite a bit.

Over time, it tends to happen when localities get more and more specific and that list grows and grows and grows and grows.

And I believe our current chart is something like 16 pages long right now, very specific pieces.

We want to kind of tailor that back down to something more reasonable.

We also want to take a look at our setbacks.

Our setbacks are quite complicated to figure out multiple different ways with any zoning classification.

We want to try and improve that and make a little more clear for folks applying our zoning ordinance.

So those are kind of the first big topics.

Those two will be coming to you soon.

And then as we work through items and establish policies, we'll relate back to the zoning ordinance.

Some of the big ones you know obviously are a lot of our development regulations, landscaping, lighting, some of our development process changes, road standards and things like that that we'll work through in tandem with the comp plan as we cover topics.

Some of them may be able to be handled internally with staff and then we're also bringing on a consultant with just about

through our procurement process to assist with some of the heavier lifting, some best practices and some production on that end.

And so once we get them on board, we'll be able to really start scoping some of these out.

And each one of those will come to the PC, into the board for a more detailed discussion, get your feedback on them and we'll work through them.

Really?

Nothing for Planet, and we also have the opportunity to actually see Bart.

So, you know, so if anyone has anything to say, okay.

Hearing none.

And again, this was an update, so I'm not gonna, you know, we're gonna just keep on moving on this one, I guess.

So any other questions?

I'll give it a moment before going on, seeing no hands.

Cool.

Rachel, I'm going to ask you a question, Rachel.

Can we see you for a second?

Thank you.

OK.

I didn't get that question answered.

I don't want you to go away thinking about that about us.

So I just want to make sure.

OK.

Then we'll move on to committee report.

And again, thank you.

what I imagine is going to be the functional equivalent of putting an offspring through the various phases of its life for the next four years.

So thank you for that.

Are there committee reports, please?

Yes, sir.

I hate to do this to make this go a little bit longer, but I think these are two important things that you all should be aware of.

At MPO Tech today,

Two things stood out.

One is that this needs assessment for transportation.

That was a joint house bill 542 and 2021 that passed.

We have folks in various agencies, transportation and regional transportation and counties, I guess, all jurisdictions looking and working on this.

It has a big transit equity component to it, and they're going to present their findings to the legislature.

at the next legislative session.

So that's going to be interesting.

Of course, all of us that are following Commonwealth politics, we're thinking about changes, committee changes that could happen.

and the impact, I guess the fact that a former transportation secretary who worked with both the Democrats as well as Republicans is in the kitchen cabinet of the new governor, most likely votes pretty well for transportation.

But that leads me to the second part, and I cannot get into the weeds to explain it, but I think it would be really useful for this body to get Kevin

and Chuck Proctor to come and explain the smart scale changes, the smart scale rating changes, which is, I understand it, three of the projects that we got that relate to us in this last round with the new scoring we would not have gotten.

They most likely would have been funded because of that influx of additional monies.

But in the future, this is really kind of detrimental to the areas that don't have the larger urban population.

And then, of course, there's a factor for the ones that are really rural.

So ones like

our MPO are kind of in an interesting position because of that.

Another subset of that besides changing criteria within is shrinking the buffer.

And the shrinking the buffer, this might be of interest to Rick, may actually be beneficial in terms of more of the pedestrian and bicycle ways.

But at the same time, it can have

a detrimental effect on the funding because it means that you're not looking at a larger area and being able to count the commercial pieces that are giving, potentially giving you points in that.

So again, it's, what's really interesting is that Chuck Proctor has actually done a spreadsheet where he has compared and kind of projected out what he thinks would have happened in this last round.

using the new criteria and then sort of a geospatial piece where you're looking at it around the state and which places would more benefit than others.

Now, again, we all know what happened in the election and we know that there's going to be an interesting payback to rural areas, most likely in the next administration.

So who knows whether this, and that there will be new committee members appointed to the transportation boards.

So, but I think that these new criteria are most likely going to go through while this administration is in place and will most likely be the standards for that next smart scale round.

Those are, again, it was really kind of thought provoking and it was kind of meaty information

And so I would hope, maybe Charles, that you could speak to Kevin about it.

These are all... Mr. Proctor would certainly be the one to speak to us.

presentation, and then I have a feeling that with the kind of questions that our body might have another 20 minutes for questions.

So those were the biggies from this.

Well, I guess another that's useful to know is that, as we know, because we poached one of their transportation planners to the county,

their short staff just as they can.

All bodies are now short staffed.

So they're actually talking about pushing out some of the studies that are supporting county requests are being gonna be spread out.

So again, Charles, you might, when talking, this is sort of that budgetary things that are being stretched out.

You can talk about the effect, some of those things on us too.

Tim, I was just going to add that I think it's an excellent idea for Mr. Proctor to come, but to speak to both the Planning Commission and the board in a joint meeting.

but there's a first of our perhaps let you and I talk about how we advance that because I think that would be important because what's happened and this is so Tim what you've just said is sort of flows through on what I saw when I was on the MPO tech.

So the Commonwealth has been focusing on where there are choke points in traffic

which go along with where there are not population influx but it's really where the infrastructure has not stayed in check or has not kept up with the population movements in those areas.

And that's why we saw a couple of years ago the additional span or the tunnel going under the

under the harbor there, that new tunnel, the additional name that's going in there.

But they've made it, there are some calculations that this young man from the transportation department came and talked to us a couple times, and he never said what the end result was, but it was clear that the analysis was that the commonwealth was going to put dollars in places that people were stuck in cars.

I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it felt like because none of the criteria that he was using seemed to apply to our area, even though we have lots and lots of commerce that flows over 64 and that flows over 81 and comes around us to get to those various places.

None of that seemed to matter to me.

It was only where you were kind of stuck in cars.

And so, Tim, what you have just said is about how they're going to redo, how they're recalibrating the smart scale.

That's about it.

It makes a lot of sense.

And it also, we need to be aware of how successful our staffs at county, city, district auspice levels have been

That's right.

That's right.

So I just give you that actual look.

Now this all makes sense.

You know how you see these various pieces, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah, OK, I see what we were being told way back then.

Someone else have a committee report?

Seeing none.

Old business, new business, we have some new business.

Anybody want to meet next week?

Come on now, everybody's not going home for Thanksgiving, are they?

All right, well then, seeing none.

Counselor, we don't have to take a vote on this.

If there's no business to come before the commission, then there's no need to meet.

Rick, I haven't heard your pup tonight.

He's in with Susan.

He's actually happier.

We will be back here on December 7.

We have three public hearings scheduled for that, I believe.

I will say also while we're on that topic, our schedules are, as you've heard Mr. Neil Williamson mentioned, we have quite a large volume coming in these days and we are already getting requests for January and February public hearing dates.

So I know we set our schedule typically in January, but I may need to look at some potential options for January just so we can start to fill up that schedule and accommodate some of these requests.

work through our volume.

We're OK with that, aren't we, folks?

Tim, what's up?

All right, so you put it on that.

One other thing that came up, and again, it was when we used to get these quarterly reports, and we kind of do now with building startups, but Charles, as things are gearing up, and because I'd like to think you guys appear to be more organized than some of the past groups, there was a statement made in the MPO Tech about 1700 new homes that were going to come before

the Planning Commission that were in some stage and would be before the Planning Commission very soon.

And of those, that was primarily three projects and the two of them would fall under the category, I guess, because of size, because of location, whatever, that there would be significant VDOT review implying that there would be opportunities for

What do we call them these days?

I don't think they're called proffers, but concession, can you help me with the right word, Charles?

Concessions from the developer that might help with the alleviating the transportation issues that are already there, or we'd be exacerbated by the new development and that one of them wouldn't.

And that this would be an interesting place for the

for the county for a change because we've had so many smaller projects where we haven't really been able to get much from the developers in the way of what a lot of us are calling impact fees, but of course they're not impact fees.

So I just thought that was interesting to hear that number.

And then I look at them in the places that were discussed and it's like, yeah, it's actually over 2000 when you add in

what we're reading in the paper from Southwood.

And I'm not sure that that's even counting North Point, is it?

North?

North Point.

Yeah.

There's quite a bit on the southern end of the county as well as the northern end of the county.

Is that something that would be useful for people because we're having this so much pressure about build, build, build.

Well, the thing is most of those are all rezonings, so they're not yet approved.

So they have been submitted and they're under review.

We have a community meeting for Southwood coming up.

and that hasn't been brought to the commission.

Okay.

I just think that when we hear all of these statements that are made by people who really aren't in the know about how nothing is coming forward, even if there were lots of caveats put on, it would be interesting just to be able to have a little bit of

This is the reality, folks.

Thanks.

Any additional or new business?

Well then folks, thank you.

We'll see each other next week.

And may your team win, if that's helpful.

If you pay attention to any of that stuff, may your team win.

And that is unless you went to Virginia Tech.

And I know a few people here did go to Virginia Tech.

Well then, hey, you're getting a new coach.

So, you know, what are you talking about?

I thought you meant around the Thanksgiving table.

Yeah, that is, you know, that's what I was talking about.

I know some of that gets rough around here.

Yeah, and they're trying to hire his son.

I don't even get that.

What Greek tragedy is that all about?

So see everybody on December the 7th, and until then, have fun and be safe, please.

OK?