Board of Supervisors Legislative Luncheon   11/29/2017

Okay, so we're good Claudette?

All right, I'm gonna call us to order.

Welcome to our legislative luncheon for today.

We're pleased to have folks here.

And right off the, from the very beginning, let me start with introductions.

We're gonna move pretty quickly to our legislators.

Priorities, which is at the end of our agenda because Rob and David are going to have to perhaps leave a little bit early.

I understand you all have to be back in Richmond by what, 2 o'clock or 2.30?

exactly, so we're gonna try and accommodate your schedule.

Let me introduce first though, we have from Almar County Police Department, Officer Paul Inge.

Thank you for being with us today.

And I'd also like to take a minute to introduce our new county executive, and I'm gonna have to stop saying new.

Oh, I've got 30 days under my mouth, Madam Chair.

So our county executive, Jeff Richardson,

And with that, let's do a mic check and an introduction.

If everybody will just go around, make sure their mics are on.

And if you can introduce yourself, Claudette will let you know with a nod of her head if she can hear you.

Liz Palmer, Samuel Miller.

We want to be able to hear you, David.

you're gonna have to hold it up to your mouth.

Alright, welcome everyone.

So David I was just explaining we understand that you all have a little bit of a time crunch as far as getting down to Richmond so if you look at the agenda we're gonna flip it a little bit and move to I think the suggestion was to move it to legislative priorities is that Greg what the thought was David that good

I honestly don't.

I thought you and Greg were working it out.

So it's between the two of you all.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too Ann.

Greg Kamptner, County Attorney, I want to thank the members of the General Assembly attending today.

This is our opportunity to identify the legislative priorities for the county and this is a very short slideshow presentation.

The board has identified four legislative priorities for this year and they are tailored to address some existing issues in Albemarle County that have been developing for a number of years and one of the priorities is centered on the events surrounding the August 12th Unite the Right rally.

We are asking to join legislation that has been identified by the city.

There are some themes in this year's priorities.

The first is to address issues in the county's urban ring to make them more livable.

For three of the four priorities, the county is merely asking to be added to the list of localities that are already identified in existing legislation.

The first piece of legislation would be to amend Virginia Code section 46.2 1222, which would allow the county to regulate on-street parking on secondary highways.

legislation already exists, a number of localities already have this authority to adopt ordinances that restrict parking, establish penalties, and provide classifications for vehicles.

What we are finding in our urban ring, primarily the area surrounding the city of Charlottesville, is that we are

having problems enforcing some of these issues through the zoning ordinance has been problematic and we are finding areas where parking on streets is creating conflict within particular neighborhoods.

This particular piece of legislation and the one that I'll show you on the next slide are both tailored to deal with our urban ring.

The overarching objective is to make it more livable.

because in my neighborhood there recently some no parking signs were put up.

What is the current, obviously somehow some way no parking signs get put up.

How does current law work?

And you're in Forest Lakes?

Briarwood.

We'll have to look at those.

The state controls primary highways, and 29 is a primary highway, but the state also exercises control for a certain distance within, once you get off the primary highway, so it's possible there.

I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that there's obviously some mechanism that there was an issue about the fire trucks not being able to get down, so I mean, I just somehow

This is to give us the express authority, this is, so this is in addition, it's also possible, I don't know off the top of my head whether all of the roads within Briarwood have been accepted into the state system?

They have.

Some of the urban areas where we were looking at having these problems, Rob, we were specifically told that we could not use no parking signs.

The second priority would be for the county to obtain the authority that the localities in the counties in Virginia Planning District 8, and that's Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, and I think there's a fourth, to require

owners are occupants of property with sidewalks to remove snow and ice within a prescribed period of time.

Again, having this authority would allow us to make our urban areas more livable.

One thing that the board has been on for the last couple of years, and it's certainly moving into the future,

is retrofitting our urban streets for sidewalks for many years.

Even in the urban ring, sidewalks were not required, but they are required now by ordinance, but we do have a fairly aggressive program to build out sidewalks for those streets that were built to the rural design.

So again, this would,

And we'd like to recognize that Delegate Landis arrived, so we appreciate you being here.

Sorry we started so quickly.

The third priority would be asking Albemarle County to become one of the localities to which this provision of the criminal code applies.

The city is also asking for it to be added

to the localities to which it applies.

It prohibits carrying loaded firearms and they are specified in the current statute.

Semi-automatic rifles and pistols along with shotguns that are able to discharge certain types of shot and bullets.

This would obviously improve public safety in public areas where many people may be present and

The situation on August 12th really brought the need for legislation such as this to light.

It is supported by our police chief.

It said it would give them more control.

Again, this will be part of the

tools that the county uses in the event that we have these types of events such as the Unite the Right Rally again.

We're waiting for the state report, which will be coming out on Friday, and the report from the city's consultant, which is due out next Monday.

And we've been doing our own independent research

in our office in order to make sure that in the event that we have these situations rising again we are fully ready.

I think that one of the key words in that is actually loaded.

Yes.

I mean, so that, you know, hunters could still drive through the county with a shotgun.

They just can't have it loaded on their truck.

Yes.

And the other part of the statute does create exceptions for law enforcement officers, security guards, military personnel, any person having a valid concealed handgun permit, or any person actually engaged in lawful hunting or recreational shooting at an established shooting range or shooting contest.

So it allows people to carry loaded shotguns

Yes.

and the fourth priority is to amend section 15.2-1535 under the constitutional elected officials, elected officers of local governing bodies are not allowed to be appointed to other public bodies unless the enabling authority provides it or it is one of the

16 to 20 public bodies that are identified in section 15.2-1535 and this is another priority that the city is joining in asking to amend this section so that members of the city council and

The Board of Supervisors can be appointed to an executive board that would help oversee our local convention and visitors bureau, our tourism body.

These bodies are funded by the localities and

both bodies have a desire to have more direct oversight.

The purpose of the convention visitors bureau is to promote the resources and advantages of the participating localities and that's from another provision of the state law and under this board, the local visitors board was established through a joint exercise of powers agreement.

Jeff was at the meeting yesterday that we were reporting out on.

Jeff was at the meeting, but what I will say is that Kathy Galvin and I, several weeks ago, made an appointment and went down and spoke with Kurt, the current director, and explained to him what we were

looking to do, it's a little bit more of a model like we have with the airport authority you might think of because right now for Albemarle County we're investing about $840,000 of taxpayer funds, the city a little bit more than that.

And so we've had the same model for about 14 years.

and we're looking to really model it a little bit differently in that having an advisory board, which would be the same group of folks, but having representation from our elected officials at another level so that we have a better sense of exactly how taxpayer funds are being distributed.

So Kurt and I went over that along with Kathy.

He didn't seem to have, he asked questions, didn't have a lot of concerns at the time.

And then it was presented to their executive board.

Jeff was at that meeting and then yesterday it was presented to their entire board and there did seem to be a little confusion over what we were asking so I think we're going to be able to rectify that pretty quickly I think with their board.

That what appeared to me, sir, was that board members were just genuinely asking questions, wanting to understand a little bit more of the reasons behind that.

And I think what culminated out of that, the action that was taken yesterday was

I was just trying to get some sense of whether they had actually taken a formal position.

And of course, all this does is give the ability to do something that may or may not ever happen.

But I was trying to get as much information as I can about what some of those folks were thinking.

That's right.

Council and Board did send the CVB Board a letter two weeks ago asking them to respond by the end of this week about their agreement to go forward with this.

But I think the sense from our Board as well as City Council is that what we're really asking for is elected officials to have a

I'm sure we'll do that.

When we have a bill, we always say, what's the problem we're trying to address?

How does this fix it?

And what are the unintended consequences?

That's the three part.

Right.

I'm getting that feeling.

I get sometimes that there's some subtext that is very important to some people.

And I'm listening as carefully as I can.

I just pulled up the article.

People feel real strongly about something.

What's going on?

Is there some issue that the money's not being spent the way you want?

It matters enough that you want state enabling legislation requires a lot of heft on our part to get through so it must be significant enough

and there's got to be a reason why.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Ann, do you want to take that or do you want me to?

I'm happy to.

I think whenever the county is investing $800,000 of money raised here that we elected officials are responsible for that even though we right now can't do anything about it or even be involved in the decisions which are made, the evaluations that are made.

We've tried very hard to make some changes in the structure in the last four years, five years ago, which have not really been successful.

Having electeds at the table, the funders is the description that I think is the most important.

No, we have no representation at all.

So the advisory, the committee right now is made up of a large group of folks that represent the business community, the hotel industry, but we are not at the table at all.

There's a county staff person, one of 11, so we have not been able to achieve the things that we need.

I don't think that we have the details worked out as far as how the exact changes would be foreseen but

I think the letter explained that there would be an executive committee that would be made up of the county executive, the city manager, the representative from both of the economic development groups from the city and the county.

Representative from the elected bodies, both of the elected bodies, a representative from the chamber, that would be the, there's an executive committee and then the current committee, the management team right now would become an advisory board.

So in essence, what we have now to answer both of your questions, and I think they're very good questions, we have an anomaly.

If we were to look at all of the bodies that city council and members of the board participate in, where there is taxpayers' money directed to those boards,

there is not another one that I'm aware of where there is not a member of council or a member of the board that sits on the decision-making body that ensures some degree of oversight of taxpayers' funds.

And so we're just, I think the effort here is to try to make this convention bureau and visitor bureau

operate on a parallel track with other such bodies that the county and the city share together.

There's no power grab here.

There's no statement about a failure to manage properly.

There's no aspersions cast on the existing board.

It's just an effort to try to bring it in harmony and make it consistent with the other boards and commissions that are out there.

And I can't believe that I was, it's been I think 15 years since I've been on the council, I think this got created after I left the council.

14 years ago.

Okay.

Well, you guys can all refresh my recollection, but if I'm not mistaken, this was created as part of an

There was a sales tax referendum, I think, right?

And the Chamber was involved in creating this thing, and the City Council was involved, and there was an agreement that various people would put money into the pot, and the theory would be that the private sector would help figure out how that money was to be spent.

I think partly to keep the politicians out of it.

Now, I don't remember for sure, there are people in this room who might remember better than I, and I don't have a dog in this house.

I just want to understand the dynamic of it all.

I get what Rick is saying.

I think the library board operates sort of like this.

I don't think there are elected officials on there.

And there may be other boards too.

But the principle is the same.

There's public dollars.

They're being allocated through a board.

And the board is allocating the money independent of what you all do.

I mean, you can always cut the money.

But I think part of the tourism fund is through a dedicated source.

That's what it was.

Right.

So, I guess part of what has to be sorted out here, and this is independent of whether the enabling legislation is passed, but locally it would seem to me that the private sector has to be somewhat involved in

trying to figure this out because they were at the table at the time it was put together and for some reason was set up the way it was.

As I remember, it was the city manager, county executive, and chamber president, Jane.

Those were the three decision makers who made it happen at the beginning.

Made it happen.

And that was the funders had the majority of the control.

Yeah, the funders.

I don't know if anyone has other information that can help us understand.

Ultimately, it seems to me, it has to be made at the local level.

POT money is my understanding.

Well, then, I mean, the reason it was set up this way was the funders are not the county.

The funders are the people who pay the transient occupancy tax.

And they said, we don't mind this tax so long as we have more control over how it gets spent.

This is visitor's funds.

It is not the hotelier's money.

It is the visitor's funds that they collect and pay to the state.

So that's a little bit different in my perspective.

But if we did not have a joint city-county board, many counties have their own staff.

Nelson County has its own staff who does their tourism for them.

If the alternative is that we don't have a joint effort, then that's an alternative we can certainly look at.

And Greg might be able to answer this.

One, and I think Rick addressed this, but you have other boards or commissions that you set up in similar fashions, so that question was answered.

Secondarily, I guess, is for other tourism-related boards or commissions that are set up like this in local government,

It's a very familiar model in North Carolina and I know your specific question is Virginia.

The other thing I would add is that this legislation would not do away necessarily with the representation from the hotel and the business industry.

Well, let me ask this, the change would be, it would, make sure we can hear you because I'm having trouble, there you go, thank you Steve.

Maybe I'll just hold it, I think that's easier.

It would give the local government elected officials more of a

I guess for lack of a better term, a veto authority over whether and what recommendations that come from the advisory board, I guess.

Is that what it would allow?

Which would be a departure from what has now occurred, I assume.

For me it was to give better information sharing and I would have a better sense of where the money was going and what was actually happening.

Now having said that, sure I guess it would give veto.

If there are two elected officials out of seven with economic development, tourism staff, county manager, city manager, county executive,

Madam Chairman and Ann, I would just say that those other folks work for you all.

but it would certainly give us the ability to have discussions around more information perhaps.

Any other questions?

I'll be very brief with an overview of the priorities of the Regional Legislative Program.

The top three priorities we have in the program for 2018 are the same request, the same ask that we had the last several years of personally dealing with the state budget and funding obligations.

We're asking the state to enhance state aid to localities, don't impose mandates, don't shift costs for state programs to localities.

Second priority, public education funding.

This year in the development of the two-year budget will be the re-benchmarking of K-12 education costs.

We've been looking to really kind of narrow that gap between what's actually going on in our school divisions and what localities are doing above and beyond the state standards.

So that's our request in that area, that we have the state slip more money.

The third is the priority that we've had for a number of years on local revenue authority and just asking the state to give us more revenue options.

I would point out we do have one new position statement in this priority that deals with the communications, sales, and use tax, which was implemented about 10 years ago.

It was really a consolidation of various communications taxes at the time into one broader tax.

It now, ten years later, does not cover a number of telecommunications mediums that we now have.

For example, prepaid phone cards, streaming services.

They are not captured by that tax because we didn't have them ten years ago.

So the request that we have, and this request is largely in line with positions that have been taken by both VML and BACO, would be to, number one, broaden that tax to have it cover additional, I guess, mediums and things that are

Secondly, the tax is at 5%.

It is a sales tax.

It did not move to 5.3% a couple of years ago when the General Assembly had previously approved the legislation that moved the sales tax to 5.3%.

So the two asks there are to broaden it and to move it to 5.3%.

Here at TJPDC we can go a step further and ask that additional revenue that would be generated by the bump from 5 to 5.3, which is estimated to be about $24 million, that that would be put toward expanding broadband.

which is our next priority.

We've really made a concerted effort to focus on broadband.

It'll be the subject of our legislative forum and really trying to reach more unserved and underserved areas with broadband and asking the state to be supportive financially and in other ways and be partners with localities, be partners with promoting public-private ventures to help us move that ball down the road.

The Children's Services Act is another priority.

Some changes to that position from what we had last year to emphasize and react to I guess a concern with a proposal we had this past General Assembly session.

that we felt would have limited CSA dollars that are going to services for kids.

And specifically, the proposal would have shifted to the Department of Education CSA dollars for special education.

And our fear, our concern was that once they're at the Department of Education that they would then be distributed

on a per-pupil basis rather than current mechanism by which the funding is some sufficient to cover the cost of the needed services.

And I know after a number of years of the CSA costs really at the state and local level declining, last several years they've been going back up and a lot of it has been driven by increasing numbers of students having been identified with autism and day placements that they are receiving services in.

Yes.

That would be what I've seen is the estimate for the bump from 5 to 5.3.

That is a good question.

I do not know.

We certainly don't want to tax people or watching boards of supervisors streaming.

That's a public benefit.

On the other hand we do want them taxing

Streaming for City Council, because if that's the case, we'll be rich.

They all want to watch that.

Right now the Providers of Service are there, they're collecting the tax that's remitted to the state and then the tax is then sent back to the localities through a formula.

The provider of the service can levy that tax on the streaming service.

It would follow the same path to the state and then back.

That has been a declining source of revenue.

Again, I think because you've seen a drop in the number of landlines, which was probably 10 years ago, was the main driver.

And even more frustrating is the phone books have gotten smaller and smaller.

Could I also add on what David presented on broadband if you members look at page three the second item on the left on broadband there are two numbered points there and asking you to support legislation that would number one ensure the coverage maps used to determine underserved and unserved areas or census blocks are accurate they're not known for their accuracy and

The second point is an ongoing concern, amend the definition of coverage to mean that service actually exists in a census block or area and the service availability within that census block or area is substantial.

The way the law is written currently, an ISP can have a single household in a census block and claim that it's providing coverage to the entire census block, but it's only one household.

and that really does create problems as we've established our Albemarle broadband authority and we're looking at census blocks where it looks like there's coverage.

In actuality, the number of households may be on one single hand.

Madam Chairman, with our two attorneys here, actually I guess three attorneys.

Getting them to agree on what's substantial is going to be interesting.

Hopefully it's lots more than a majority.

But if you want a specific example, the 456 exchange in Greenwood has a tiny corner.

and they get $130 a month wireless broadband that doesn't work when the rain falls and the wind blows.

It's also interesting that we have, and I just opened a letter from Delicate Bell actually coming from someone who wrote him about some property they wanted to sell tower down in southern Albemarle on Schuyler.

and this is, we have several people who as, two things I'd like to say, as CenturyLink took the FCC money, I'm sure you all know that they took six years of money from the FCC, $900,000 a year for six years and it's great but we have people

that where the service goes right up to the edge of their property and then the next house over, they don't get anything.

With respect to the Verizon area, they decided not to even take the FCC money.

So those folks have not gotten any upgrades in those 540 areas.

So it's been a really, really problematic, this whole issue as the county,

tries to put county money and what we've been doing is we've been going matching funds with CenturyLink.

CenturyLink comes in and says, okay, we can make it happen if we have another couple hundred thousand dollars to make it viable from a business standpoint to get to this one little clump of 40 houses or something like that.

And so what we're doing is we're applying to state grants and matching that money to try to get these little groups of houses here and there.

But it's really a ridiculous patchwork that we're facing.

And the more people stream,

the more problems that we have.

So it's this whole idea of what coverage is has been really problematic in the maps also.

Talked about putting towers on some school property.

Is that helping, irrelevant to this?

Right, yeah.

But yes, we have been doing that.

The companies are co-locating.

We are trying.

Madam Chair, one of the things about, following up on Rob's ask about what the schools are doing with towers, my understanding is some of the broadband capability takes different forms.

It's the hard-wiring

it's satellite connection now but then they're also doing some things related to existing cell towers and sending signals out that way so at least from the state standpoint they're looking at all those things because you know in many rural parts of the state the only way to provide it that we're never going to have

Now Albemarle's in a little bit better shape, but we're never going to have the hard wire capability, at least with fiber optic and that.

It's just, it's not even anywhere close.

So they're looking at, what's the other one?

It's white something, white space, yeah.

And I don't understand that, but that's another whole aspect.

So hopefully you all are looking or would consider any of those things as they're moving forward.

Our IT department is very involved in trying to pursue any private company

who would like to work with us and apply for grants and get matching money.

No doubt about that.

I'm excited to hear you mention satellite because people in the national radio industry are saying, what's the matter with these localities fighting about what's on the ground?

Go to satellites and get it done.

So given our two, our own local as well as what David is presenting from us, what do we need to do to provide you all more information?

What are your reactions to what we're presenting specifically?

Madam Chair, if I could, a couple things.

One, I wasn't aware you guys have actual impact fees in Albemarle County.

I don't know why, but you do have them.

Is that correct?

No, you want impact fees?

Well on that topic I was just gonna let you know I'm carrying an amendment to fix the proper bill to make it more amenable But there is going to be some movement with regard to this issue of impact fees because impact fees are quite clearly more transparent so

I don't know what the weight of the assembly will be on this stuff, but I've already got a bill filed to try to correct that and I can send Jeff that language once I get it out of drafting.

I think it'll help.

I don't think you're going to see any movement to have devolution of roads down to localities.

I don't think that's even on the radar.

I have a question about the body worn cameras and I can take that offline probably after the report's issued on Friday as well as the loaded gun weapons that's addressed in the report as well I just can't get into specifics on some of that stuff I was on the task force so I just I just wanted to make those comments

I think we've tried the June primary elections before because everybody brought up the issue of having kids in school and doing all that stuff.

I think it might make it through.

I can't remember all the arguments for that over the last couple years, but that's probably got a good chance of getting through this year, and the rest of it I just couldn't tell you.

That's great, but that's very helpful.

David had already spoken to me about the snow and ice removal, and so we're at least going to put that draft request in for that, because I always want to try to do our part.

As Bryce said, some of these, at least with the public safety issues, I think many of us are looking to what the task force, the governor's task force recommendations

I think, and I don't know how David feels, but I think a lot of us would like to see kind of a comprehensive and bipartisan support for some of those initiatives.

And I think other than Charlottesville and Albemarle, I think other localities are also interested because if it can happen in Charlottesville, it can happen literally anywhere.

And I think the task force has looked at it

So we'll look for that.

Related to I just want to Talk a little bit about funding because David talked about that and that you know now from locality standpoint always comes down to funding You know the the challenge we're gonna have And we just came from the Appropriations Committee retreat and the Senate Finance Committee had their treat actually at the board's head So they were here and in Albemarle County spending taxpayer dollars to

into the economy locally, which was good.

And the houses had meetings here, too.

But the challenge we're going to have is when you look at re-benchmarking, you look at the Medicaid additional dollars with our current program, we're about $220 million in the hole.

based on what we think are fairly accurate revenue estimates.

So we still have some challenges.

So I just point that out as we've got to figure out how to meet that and any other obligations.

But I think K through 12 funding, and I know that's a big ticket item for any locality, is still a priority for folks and we want to try to work on that.

The other thing, and I know we've talked to the school board and Dr. Moran,

you know we're still looking with whether it's SOQs or the SOAs flexibility for localities because Albemarle may not be exactly the same and Diantha you know this having been on the school board the exact same you know positions for

for every school.

So we're trying to figure out a way to have these goals and standards, but at the same time provide flexibility.

And we've started that process and we want to continue that.

Yeah, Steve, that would help a lot, because you're right, very different places throughout the state.

That's always good.

And I didn't hear any other volunteers at this point, but I'd be glad to work with the delegation on some of these others if we can do that.

I'm going to let David and Rob take care of the regional board to promote tourism.

they have much more background about that but the on-street parking issue you know Greg one of the things would be helpful is to get I will tell you I'm having come off a campaign and I know Diantha and Liz probably you found this too you learn a lot by walking neighborhoods and you know the one thing that really impressed upon me is a lot of the loca a lot of your development

where they're wonderful developments but the developers really didn't anticipate public safety when they made those, you know, and developed the roadways and everything and I rode along with the Albemarle County Police Department too this fall, early summer, late summer, early fall

It is.

And an urbanizing.

Yeah.

That's great.

Thank you very much.

And then we'll speak with David and of course David and I've had to leave but we'll get with them on the

the CACV issues.

And we'll be hopefully hearing back from them this week as well.

And hopefully after Friday there will be more consensus on the weaponry changes.

It was interesting in the sort of out in the discussion, I remember Secretary Moran being quoted on the radio saying well why didn't communities set up better rules for their events?

The challenge I think we've all been dealing with after the situation in Charlottesville is

It's really tough to balance public safety and free assembly and making sure that people can freely assemble to whether it's a protest or support or whatever but at the same time making sure that it's done in a safe way or that there's some control from a public safety standpoint especially local law enforcement.

We had to sign a confidentiality agreement so until it's released I can't give you a whole lot but I will tell you it will be a guiding document for localities should they choose to implement some parts or all of what we put out and we tried to keep in mind it's at a 30,000 foot view not just specific to Albemarle County but the things and lessons learned from Albemarle County can be applied throughout any jurisdiction with those.

There are some localities in the Commonwealth that do it phenomenally well

So we took best practices from some of those localities, tried to apply them in this document.

And I think it's pretty thorough.

And there's, of course, always going to be things that we overlooked.

But again, I'll reiterate what Steve said.

I'm not an attorney, but we had a constitutional attorney that came from Harvard, talked about the First Amendment, freedom of assembly, all those sort of things.

And there's a very fine line there.

But I think we've addressed that as best we can with what will come out.

I always thought freedom of speech was saying something, not beating up on somebody.

So that's sort of my recess monitor for years and years and years.

So safe places are really important to be able to have any kind of conflict.

So we'll be looking for that to come out.

Senator Reeves, could you just, I'm really interested in your, what you mentioned about the impact fees.

Could you just broaden what you mentioned?

So some localities have tried impact fees in the past.

They've failed.

Some have worked.

This wasn't my bill to begin with.

I think it was Senator Oben's change bill.

But for some reason, it stuck to me.

So I've had to take this nexus on, which is something I didn't really want to have to do.

Typically in the General Assembly, it's one or two bad localities or players that cause us to have to put in legislation.

There is.

You know, there's a certain locality on 95, if you go through there five miles over the speed limit, you're getting a ticket.

And we did some stuff with that, if you remember, Steve.

So I think with the changes in language that I have for the amendment for proffers that allow local governments to get back to the business of approving rezonings and that sort of things and allow

constituents or petitioners to come before their boards and have civil discussion without worrying about lawsuits and liability.

Because that's the big thing that happened with county attorneys and boards of supervisors were I can't talk to this guy because they could think that

You know I'm bending them over and I'm going to get abused by it and so that wasn't the intent of the original legislation so we're going to fix that till something else comes in place but there has been talk of impact fees so I don't know where that is I'm not carrying anything with impact fees I'm trying to fix what's broken right now before I start looking at anything else I know there might be a study for impact fees to see if they'll actually work universally across but every locality is different

Albemarle's different in Fairfax.

They have a whole different set of animals that they have to contend with up there.

And where they're located, to the Chesapeake Bay and run off and all the other stuff.

Okay, thank you for that information.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At the time when the former proffer law was in place, that was a better plan.

So I just have one more question, I think, because it looks like we're pretty close to wrapping up here, which is we're actually early.

The legislators are very busy this week because on Monday they have a deadline to get their drafting, bill drafting request in to legislative services for those bills that they want to pre-file.

and I have them count against the maximum number of bills of interest in place.

So, as Steve mentioned, we're making the drafting request for the parking and ice removal.

We've had some conversations with a couple of the other offices, legislative offices that represent you all to make sure that at least the drafting requests are going in by Monday.

And Madam Chair, to that point, Greg, can you send us just information, just email us so we can get that request in, at least for those two, just so we can get the draft request in for those.

Just a little bit of a summary of background.

And it's pretty easy because we're just adding locality.

That's great.

Can I ask a real quick question?

I think maybe quick.

Since we have two representatives left, can you tell us what your priorities are this year?

Or do you have any that you're specifically very interested in?

So I'm already up to about 32 bills without even finishing all my stuff so I have a lot on my plate and I'll preface this with I'm a chairman of social services and rehabilitation so I've got a lot of work to do there specific to those 88 programs within Virginia

My main emphasis this session will be the heroin epidemic and some of the things that I'm trying to get past to help address that.

I think I've got about 15 issues with veterans and veteran services going all the way from veterans docket to some of the other things with regard to our veterans.

So two years ago I tried to get a veteran's court set up so we can get the services directly to the vets that are going through the system.

They never made it out of courts in the house side so they didn't want to set up another courts per se.

So we worked through the Supreme Court justices to come up with some guidance from the Supreme Court.

Great, thank you.

Is the mental health docket already up and running?

My understanding, and maybe one of our representatives can talk to this, but it has not been approved yet.

But we're hoping that it will be.

And we are going to hear, I think in January, Diantha would know about this better because it's on our agenda.

Yeah, we're having a discussion about that.

I don't know if Cree might know something, I don't know, but the Supreme Court gives most of the guidance for any of those specific dockets, and it's up to those individual judges to decide if they want to do that.

And there's some federal grants that are out there.

A friend of mine who I actually coach lacrosse with is a circuit court judge in Spotsylvania, former Marine.

He set up

the only one that I know of in existence, a veteran's docket already and he's running through that so we're using that as a to gauge the metrics of the effectiveness of it right now so once Judge Regal gets about a year and a half under so we got enough cases to show the effectiveness of it they're doing it well in Norfolk they're doing it great in Fairfax there's a couple judges that are doing that so as these things come about I think you'll see more guidance from the Supreme Court on that rather than set up mandated by the General Assembly

There's also this thing that happens in the General Assembly where we don't want to step on the judicial branch or the executive branch.

We just want to stay in our silo of the legislative branch and vice versa.

So we're trying not to step on their toes as well.

Before I mention priorities, to follow up on the different dockets, I think one of the concerns the General Assembly has been is that the Supreme Court and the court's management, if you will, has not been as involved in some of those.

They've been legislative initiatives.

and then the problem is some areas of the state have them others don't and there needs to be a better coordination maybe at least looking at things regionally so that you know every part of the state has the option of having some of these drug courts for one example so

so the Supreme Court I think has finally started getting and engaging more and then also thinking about okay what are the additional costs because there's you know there's always a cost associated it needs to be part of their budget not just some you know separate you know thing and grants coming from the federal government are great as long as they're going to be there sustainable if they're not then they have to you know kind of plan if you're going to continue that DACA that special you know court how is that going to be funded so that's been one of the issues

My priorities, as they have been over the last six years, one, continue looking for areas to help with economic development.

I've been working with the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity and trying to tweak those small business grant programs and making sure they're being as effective and efficient as possible.

We're still working on that.

There's been some discussion about

how the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity, how they work together.

So we're looking at that as well to see if there's some way to really promote that.

As you've noticed probably with a lot of the Governor's announcements, whether it's Perron Robotics, you know, in Crozet or others,

A lot of these announcements are dealing with small businesses, which is great.

I think small businesses are where really future growth is.

But the problem is a lot of our economic development efforts in the past have been geared towards the big elephants, looking for the big corporations and that kind of thing.

So we've got to look at that and how to be more effective.

also working on some education issues.

I've already introduced House Bill 3 which would set up a standard for dual enrollment for our high school students so that UVA Tech or JMU or whoever in state would take that credit and provide the same assignment for that credit once the students completed that dual enrollment class.

There's going to be some pushback from our institutions of higher learning because they want to determine what the credit worth is, but we need to have a standard.

If we're going to continue to move with the high school redesign and the like, that's something we're going to have to make sure that is more seamless and more assured that if you take the class

no matter what college or university you apply to it's going to give you the same credit hours.

So we're working on that.

One of the things working with Dr. Moran on and actually there was a conference here in Charlottesville hosted by the Curry School of Education at UVA was dealing with teacher shortage and in some parts of the state that's a real concern.

In fact earlier today I was

and touring schools, so that's one thing that I was talking to folks about.

Certain parts of the state it's not a problem, other parts of the state it's a real problem.

One of the things that Dr. Moran and I are working on is a piece of legislation to deal with recruiting instruction personnel for career in tech and trying to tweak that and there'll be some other things that I'm trying to work with the McAuliffe administration on before they leave on how to address that issue, both short term and long term.

The schools of education I think have come to the conclusion that a five-year program was great but it's not providing us in the pipeline teachers quickly enough so we've got to look at that and I think that's but that's going to take a little while to make a change.

So looking at that and then continue to look for issues surrounding health care reform, just trying to make the systems more efficient, cost effective, and at the same time, getting resources out to additional individuals for the health safety net, whether it's through Medicaid or other programs we've got.

I know CRE has been working on, there'll be a lot of recommendations related to behavioral health, mental health services.

but we need to have that coordinated with the physical health services we provide too and moving our system more towards a community-based system truly a community-based system where there's assurance by citizens that no matter where you are you're going to be able to get those services at the same level or at least anticipation they'd be at the same level so those are the things we're working on right now and apparently I'm going to have a couple more bills from county

So we'll work on that as well.

And I don't have 30, I'm trying to keep it down to 15 if I can.

Hopefully ours won't be too complicated.

No.

Tracy, since Cree couldn't make it today, did you have anything you wanted to add just since mental health has come up and I just want to make sure that

You don't have to, dear.

I just wanted to make sure.

We probably ought to hand you a mic if you're gonna, yeah.

Sorry.

I am not the member.

And we are very excited about the mental health docket that's going to come here locally.

But we haven't, anyway, we'll be following that.

He is planning on carrying

A couple of the county's bills.

I know he's got some bills coming from the city.

We've got a slew of drafts in related to what happened in August.

Obviously, we'll read that report, see how those ideas blend with what comes from that report.

And there was something else I wanted to mention.

Oh, and also,

Although I don't think there's much we can do at the state level about the premium issues that we're seeing here.

Oh absolutely.

The thousands who can't even reach out to us.

There have been hundreds who have reached out to us and thousands more who can't.

delegate that is did you still have redistricting on your list because I appreciate all the work you've done so far in past years and every year gets better and better so I've got some I've got some different ideas the and and actually I think it would help localities but so far I've not been able to figure out how to do it legislatively is you know part of the problem with the redistricting process is

the fact that you all work on redrawn precinct lines after we've drawn the congressional and the house and senate district lines which has precipitated more and more based on this you know one percent or or less you know deviation that

that the federal courts did like, they've kind of backed off of that so we could actually get back maybe to a more 5% deviation, which then allows you to do less splitting of precincts.

But the recount, the whole issue is the fact that we've had split precincts.

And we tried to fix that, but because of political reasons, that just didn't occur.

And so now we're in a bond with close elections.

So anyway, I was trying to come up with a methodology so that the census information could be shared with localities.

They could draw their precinct lines and then the legislature could do the larger districts based on where those precincts were off the new census data rather than the old census data.

The attorneys tell me that might not be possible, but I'm still looking for a way to see if there's some way legislatively to do that.

I think that would be a great reform.

And then I'm going to look at other things too.

Are they going to be resolved by 2020?

I think the federal and the state court cases will be resolved this year.

One way or the other.

I mean, I don't know what the outcome obviously is, but I think most of the depositions, the actual cases where both sides have been heard, all that's occurred.

So now the

various judges and the like.

Now there can still be some appeals so that's why you've got to allow some additional time but I think at least the last person I've talked to that seems to know about these court cases more than I do is that at least there could be some outcome before the end of the year.

So but that's complicated.

But your puzzle approach to the precincts taking our existing precincts and just making a boundary around a number of them to equalize the population, that at least would create sort of a more concentric

And again, the problem with the process, and it's not because the legislature set it up this way, it's just always historically been that way, it became more of a problem

Once we had computerization, once you got census blocks in the Census Bureau, and you all were talking about that related to broadband, that has become much more scientific and actually you can literally, with mapping and everything,

you can find out where the one house is to make sure you've got X number of people or whatever so I mean businesses are utilizing that I mean Google Maps all those folks are utilizing it but the problem is we do the districts

Has had their questions answered and comments.

Yes.

Thank you all so much for coming.