Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with Scottsville Town Council   11/9/2021

All right, thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

And it's my pleasure to call to order this joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors of Albemarle County and the Scottsville Town Council.

I am

Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville Magisterial District, the Vice Chair of the Board.

Our Chair, Ned Gallaway of the Rio District is currently traveling to Norfolk for the Governor's Housing Conference.

He will be participating by telephone and if able, he will take over the meeting a little later this evening.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with Ordinance Number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, and again myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received, which is not going to take place this evening.

We also have present our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Clerk for the Board,

Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Well, thank you, Supervisor Price.

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Councilor Bullock.

Councilor Bullock.

I'm sorry, we are muted here.

Councilor Gritzko, are you with us?

Yes, I am.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You do have a quorum, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Thomas.

Appreciate that.

We want to welcome all our friends from Albemarle here.

Before we do that, I want to ask for a vote on the consent calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

And all those in favor?

Aye.

Now we will formally welcome our friends from Albemarle.

and Supervisor Price.

We get to see on a regular basis down here.

We meet about twice a month after your meetings.

On Wednesdays, we meet on Thursdays and she keeps us surprised of everything that's going on with the county.

I don't know that we have anything special at the moment.

I was just going to say, Mr. Mayor, just thanking the county for its ongoing relationship with the town.

I know this meeting was the desire of our

former mayor and I'm thankful for our current mayor and this desire to have a relationship with you all strengthened is really important to us as a town.

I think all counselors here and those not here at this meeting are very thankful for all that you do serving our citizens of both jurisdictions and we're looking forward to ways that we can make sure that we both are supportive of what y'all are doing and you learn more about the

to be biased, the best part of the county down here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Mayor Smith, and I want to echo Vice Mayor and County Councilor Gritzko's comments.

I too want to thank former Mayor Gill and former Supervisor Randolph, as well as Mayor Smith and Town Administrator

for working with the county to make this annual meeting a regular occurrence.

The relationships between the town and county have only increased over the last year or so and we really are working together to better our overall community.

So thank you for taking time to work with us that we can all get together this evening and talk about some of the things that we can do together.

Rachel Falkenstein from the county who will talk about the county's comprehensive plan project.

Good evening members of the board and town council.

I am Rachel Falkenstein and I am going to blow up my slides here.

I am a planning manager in the county's planning division and community development.

And I'm going to talk today about our comprehensive plan update project that the county is just getting started.

So a little bit just a quick agenda what we'll be talking about today.

I'm going to share the project goals and the rationale for our comprehensive plan update.

And then I'm going to share some mechanics of how we're going to do it.

So I'll share a phasing plan and then our engagement plan for the first days of work.

Slides today will be familiar to our members of the board who have had work sessions last month and then

last week on both topics of the facing plan and engagement plan and adopted a resolution of intent to begin this work.

So a little bit of a repeat for the board members this evening.

So a quick refresher on what is the comprehensive plan often also called the comp plan.

It establishes the vision for the county's long range planning and it guides growth, development, and change for the next 20 years of the county.

Similarly, the town of Scottsville has its own comprehensive plan that has a similar vision established in that plan.

It'll assist staff and appointed committees and boards when developing public policies that relate to land use activities and resource uses in Albemarle County.

And it also serves as the basis for land development regulations and decisions, as well as capital improvement planning and distribution of budget dollars.

So before sharing the phasing and engagement plans, that would be helpful to share a little bit more detail on the rationale for why we decided to do a comprehensive plan update now and why this is an appropriate time to do a review and update of our plan.

So first is alignment with recent work and initiatives within the county.

Since our last update in 2015,

The county has undertaken some substantial planning and policy initiatives across the county.

And these efforts are not currently integrated into the existing comprehensive plan from 2015.

A few examples are listed on this slide such as the strategic plan that the board adopted in 2018.

That includes climate action planning, economic development, infrastructure planning, revitalizing aging neighborhoods and expanding broadband.

all topics which are relevant to the continent counties comp plan.

Additionally, there have been several planning and policy efforts that have been adopted by the board since 2015.

And these include project enable, which is the county's economic development plan, a recently approved climate action plan and a new housing policy.

And then lastly, 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 for the county.

And subsequently the board has adopted a new value of community, which is listed on this slide that we expect diversity and equity and inclusion to be integrated into how we live our mission.

Since 2015, the county has also experienced significant growth.

In the decade from 2010 to 2019, the county's population increased by approximately 10 percent.

But not all of this growth has been experienced uniformly across the county.

As shown in recent data from the Albemarle County Equity Profile, which was co-authored by our Office of Equity and Inclusion and the UVA Equity Center, over 37 percent of Albemarle County households were Alice.

or asset limited income constrained employed households.

And then an additional 9% of county households were living in poverty.

Alongside this growth, there's been an increasing demand for urban services within the county and infrastructure, especially in the context of the pandemic.

We've seen increased use of county parks and demand for broadband to support students who were attending remote school.

The last two slides were intended to provide a summary of the changing context for the community since our last comp plan update.

This slide and a couple that follow are going to consider content of the existing plan and why an update would be appropriate at this time.

Our existing implementation chapter in the 2015 plan includes 70 priorities and there's not clear prioritization of these 70 items.

In addition to that, the current plan has 80 indicators of progress that are intended to be tracked annually.

And tracking this data has been proven to be unsustainable for our staff.

And the sheer number of these indicators also makes it unclear for community members to understand what success looks like.

The comp plan also includes some inconsistencies and at times conflicting recommendations.

There are some examples we've seen recently

across land use categories and across different master plans, and then language and master plans that have conflicting language with the comprehensive plan overall.

And these inconsistencies can make it difficult for our staff to evaluate development proposals when making recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

Next is consistency with state code.

The county is in need of undertaking a multimodal systems planning effort for

The Virginia Department of Transportation to allow urban street types to be constructed in our county.

And two areas where this has recently come up for the community is downtown Crozet streets, and streets that are outlined in the RAD 29 form based code, which is recently adopted.

And the state code provision requires coordinating transportation planning and landing planning, and will allow for more urban streets once that is approved.

Next is the concept of leveraging best practices.

This moment provides the opportunity for the community to look at best practices from the recently adopted county policies that I previously mentioned, such as housing Albemarle, but also to look across other communities and successful award winning planning efforts that we can learn from.

And a couple of them are cited here on this slide that we've spent some time researching and reading about.

Plans from Minneapolis, Richmond, and Memphis all integrated these different measures to align with the goals of our comp plan update that we'll be looking at and learn from these.

So the county's mission statement I referenced earlier,

The county's comp plan alongside all the other counties work is in support of the mission statement which is here on this slide.

To enhance the well being and quality of life of all community members through the provision of the highest level of service.

And then with that in mind, I'll share the project goals that we've drafted.

These are the initial project goals.

We expect more might be added or these might be revised as we go along.

The first is to update the plan content to reflect recent countywide strategic initiatives that I had previously talked about.

Second is to ensure that equity is integrated into the engagement process and the updated plan content.

And then third is to improve the plan usability by articulating clear priorities

and incorporating metrics that are easy for tracking progress.

So now I'm gonna talk about our phasing plan.

We have spent a couple work sessions, as I mentioned, working through how to best achieve these goals with the board and have settled on a four phase process.

This phasing plan is anticipated to start

in the fourth quarter of 2021.

It already has started, but it's estimated to last until about the second quarter of 2024.

And it also will include concurrent zoning ordinance updates.

They're shown along the bottom here as also four phases, but more work is needed still to scope that project, so more to come on what those phases will look like.

And now we'll go into each phase in a little bit more detail, because I realize the text is a little small on this slide.

So the first phase we're calling growth management policy and framework, and we've already begun this phase.

This will include reviewing, evaluating, and updating our growth management policy, if needed, using the lenses of equity and climate action, as well as capacity projections.

So we're doing a capacity analysis for housing and economic development in the county, and this is currently underway.

And we'll look at projected growth and determine if there's

Ample capacity within our development area to accommodate the projected growth.

This will also allow the comprehensive vision value to the county's updated values that I previously mentioned, and we'll identify the level of detail that should be included in the plan and develop a framework approach.

So this will be an opportunity also to identify the content and level of detail that should be included in the comp plan.

I think as I mentioned with the 70 priorities, we're finding that there's a little bit too much detail in the plan and this will be an opportunity to identify what the right level of detail is for the subsequent phases.

So phase two, we're calling policy review and framework design.

The goal of this phase is to identify major topics of the comprehensive plan, evaluate existing conditions for each major topic, and then update policy statements and frameworks through the lenses of equity and climate action.

The anticipated major topics would include transportation, economic development, land use, and resource and rural area planning.

And then topics could be adjusted based on feedback that we received in phase one.

Phase three is called strategy development.

In this phase, we'll review and update the county's action steps and implementation approach.

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

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

And also in this phase, we'll plan to identify priorities and metrics for each topic area to allow for more clear tracking of progress and success moving forward.

This tour is titled Final Draft Review, and this is where we'll pull together the full draft document based on the work from the previous phases.

We'll focus efforts on identifying and eliminating plan inconsistencies across the content, and we'll engage the community and decision makers on the overall plan priorities once all of the content is considered as a whole.

This process will conclude with a public hearing and adoption by the Board of Supervisors.

So now I'm gonna go into our engagement plan.

How will we do this work?

How will we engage members of the community and seek feedback on the plan content itself?

And I will also mention that we plan to revisit our engagement planning at the beginning of each phase.

And this will allow us hopefully to be responsive to what we're hearing from the community about what's working well and what adjustments we might need to make

for subsequent phases of work.

So keeping in mind the updated organizational value of community, we've drafted three initial engagement goals for the project.

The first is to conduct outreach and collaborate with community members whose perspectives have not historically been well represented in county processes and looking at demographic considerations such as age, race, place, income, or other factors.

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

And then lastly, is to provide consistent and variety of opportunities for community input throughout the update process.

Again, to inform our engagement planning effort, we've looked at examples from processes from other localities and recent comp planning efforts, especially those that align with our stated goals and have looked at researching guidance as well.

And a couple planning efforts that are cited here versus Minneapolis 2040.

They completed a comprehensive plan update in 2019.

And at the beginning of their process, they developed engagement goals, which allowed them

to take an intentional approach toward the design of their engagement activities.

So we're taking that approach of adopting goals as well to inform our engagement.

We also looked at Richmond 300, which is a comp plan update for the city of Richmond that they recently completed.

One aspect of their planning effort that we liked was they created an advisory council to assist in the shaping and reviewing of the content of their plan.

and they had an application process for members of the community who were interested in serving on the council and selected members to achieve the diversity of perspectives based on age, ethnicity, race, and place of residence.

And also we're seeking a diverse range of professional expertise, including those who didn't have a planning background.

And then lastly, the professional association for urban planners has a code of ethics and guidance about

how to ensure that processes are equitable and all voices are represented.

So we've been reading up on that and taking trainings as well.

So our engagement approach for phase one is summarized on this slide.

The flow chart on the left of the slide is meant to represent an iterative planning process that will send feedback and use that on content creation.

And this focus approaches is on

This approach focuses on four different streams of engagement, internal staff, a working group, and then broad outreach and public engagement, and lastly, legislative review.

And I'll go through each of these in a little bit more detail on the next slide, and then we'll support this work with outreach and engagement and a mix of online and in-person opportunities.

So the first group that we'll engage with is

engage with is internal staff.

And this will entail engagement with staff across various departments and divisions and includes creating a team of departmental leaders with the purpose to coordinate planning efforts across the county local government and gathering input on existing plan and draft content.

We'll also conduct outreach with external

external partners, and this would include the Thomas Dotsville, as well as Charlottesville, University of Virginia, VDOT, and other partners such as our utility providers.

And then lastly, we'll prepare several work products in the first phase of work, and that will include a background report, some case study and precedent research, and a draft management policy, and we'll work with our partners to draft that.

The next aspect of our engagement approach is a working group.

And this would be comprised of approximately eight to 12 person group of community members whose role would be to advise county staff on plan recommendations, engagement approaches, and then to help support our outreach efforts by sharing information with their networks and neighborhoods.

We expect that working group meetings would occur monthly and include staff-led trainings on fundamentals of urban planning and community development before discussing potential recommendations and policy options with the goal of integrating these trainings to ensure that members have a shared understanding and background to inform their decisions.

For the working group criteria and selection process, in alignment with the engagement goals for our comp plan update, we would work with staff in the planning department, the Office of Equity and Inclusion and Communications and Public Engagement, and use data from the equity profile to design an application and selection process to achieve representation on the working group.

and we've accessed some resources from other localities who have done similar efforts that we'll use to help inform our process.

The next aspect of our community engagement approach would be community workshops and we'll provide a variety of opportunities for all members of the community to actively participate in the planning process through these workshops.

and these will provide opportunities to learn about existing conditions within the county and planning practices as well as to provide input on potential policies and conceptual plans and to review draft policies and plans as we draft them.

Formats and methods for our community workshops would include a variety of formats depending on the content and the topics and our engagement goals, but some examples would be virtual and in-person events and presentations,

pop-ups or road shows at various locations throughout the county, online or paper questionnaires, artists or collaborator-led engagement events, and in-person or virtual meetings geared towards specific topics.

And finally, county staff will facilitate work sessions with the Planning Commission to review policy and planning options, existing conditions, community engagement summaries, and draft planning concepts and policies.

will hold work sessions with the Board of Supervisors also at the start and end of each phase through new draft content and the scope of work for the upcoming phase.

And planning staff will also complete summary reports for board consent agendas.

All of this work will be supported by communications and outreach, internal and external engagement, including an online website hub that is consistently updated with PlanProc

progress, upcoming events and opportunities.

County staff will use existing county outreach and communication tools such as the Albemarle County newsletter and social media accounts.

Materials and engagement opportunities will also be provided in both English and Spanish with translation services for other languages made available as is possible and needed.

And then lastly, county staff will be regularly available for one on one discussions and community outreach

a recurring pop-up at various locations throughout the county.

So in summary, I wanted to spend a few moments talking about our rationale for the engagement approach.

As I mentioned, it integrates our new organizational value of community, which states that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into how we move our mission.

Our engagement plan also aligns with staff capacity and the resources that the board has agreed to allocate to the project.

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

And based on that feedback, we've designed an engagement plan that offers the appropriate level of engagement to support the goals of the comp plan update project and the engagement goals.

And that is the end of my presentation for this evening, but I'll be here if you have any questions about our process or anything I didn't cover.

where you'd like me to go into more detail on.

And I'm going to turn it back over to you all for your discussion.

Thank you, Ms.

Falkenstein, for that great presentation.

Before I ask for any questions from our council, I also want to thank Ms.

Falkenstein

for her presentation.

We will be facing this dilemma starting next year as our comp plan comes up for revision in 2023.

So we'll be watching closely how you're working on yours and see what good hints we can gather from your work when we get ready to do ours.

One of the things I was going to ask related to the update would be what do you see in terms of what you see in the southern part of the county?

What can we do to help in that process?

What do we need to understand?

One of the reasons I ask is that I know that we're all thinking or I would think we're all thinking about the changing dynamics as we both

progress through COVID and then come out of it whenever that is.

There's a lot of sociological changes happening that it'd be wise that we understand.

I think our supervisor did a good job as she helped us as we understood as we first went into this.

But so I guess what I'm asking is both what do you need from us to help related to the process either from us or from our citizens to help in your process?

And then secondarily, what type of things have you all talked about or thinking about as a county

I often think about where the county is positioned related to tourism and things that I do in my job working in tourism and where we are in proximity to DC and many things related to that.

So just, I'm interested to see how does that play out in the county and then what role might our town play in that.

So Ms.

Sure.

So the first question on what do we need from you or how can we work together?

I think two aspects of our engagement approach would be appropriate to engage with the Scottsville versus is staff.

So on a technical level, we're thinking about a group of kind of local partners that we would want to convene.

And that would include Scottsville as well as UVA, the city,

And so I would think we'll have regular check-ins with staff just to make sure we're aligning what we're doing.

And then more broadly, we'd love for members of the community of Scottsville to participate in our broad engagement.

So helping spread the word when we have events that are open to the public or we have questionnaires online, would appreciate you all kind of helping spread the word with the community when we do the outreach.

Second, as far as content or what we anticipate might change, I don't think we're far enough along for me to respond to that this evening, though I will share that transportation will be a big part of our update.

And that's one where it's really important to coordinate with our neighboring localities.

So that's something that we're going to put a lot of effort toward.

And as far as tourism, that's something I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about just yet.

There will be more to say about that.

Thank you, Ms.

Falkenstein.

And kind of following up on that latter thought, I think two things, two offices, one would be the CACBB, the Charlottesville Albemarle County Visitors Bureau as it relates to tourism.

And I will notice that, or I'd like to comment that they do have their mobile van down at the Scottsville Farmers Market on at least and every other week.

weekend basis.

I see them on Saturdays when I'm down there at the farmers market.

And also our Economic Development Office and Economic Development Authority.

And as you know, Counselor Munson is our Scottsville representative on that because Roger Johnson's office and his staff can help to work within the desires

of the town of Scottsville to try and help identify the local businesses in particular, but other businesses that we might be able to get to locate and expand down in the Scottsville area.

I'll ask the supervisor for the district.

I'd be very happy to start off with that.

I see Scottsville as such an integral part, not only of the county, but of our entire community.

As we know, Scottsville carries over into Buckingham County and Savannah County, and we get influences coming in from Nelson County and us influencing them as well.

So it really is a central hub, and you've got some opportunities right now.

I know you've got some proposals that are coming up before your town council for a couple of developments down there.

and in conjunction with us all working together and actually a question I'm going to ask a little bit later is there's been discussion as to whether the town of Scottsville should be a designated development area and I think that's part of the conversation should be as we go through this process in order to identify and determine what you as the town of Scottsville desire and what we as the county of Albemarle desire and where we can find us in alignment

towards improving the overall quality of life consistent with the goals of the county and the town.

I can just make a comment.

There are several chapters in the comprehensive plan.

We're looking at housing, we're looking at natural resource protection, climate change is being integrated into this.

So there's a lot of rural area and

more urban development area sort of stuff in this comprehensive plan.

So Southern Albemarle comes into play in each one of those chapters, except for possibly some of the development area stuff, unless we end up making it a development area.

So it's completely integrated.

I don't see it as separate.

Yeah, well that's exciting.

I'm glad you raised natural resources.

I know...

when we last met.

And this is the kind of information I think would be good to have logged with the county in some way.

We've recently, in terms of our own riverfront down here, I know last time we talked about CSX and the issues related to that.

CSX has done an OK job of at least being tidy.

But our own efforts as a town, we now have a protective easement on the wetlands on the western side of town that's going through.

which we've worked through various state agencies to get.

We've also worked with a local organization, the Green Infrastructure Center, to try to restore the bank of the James, the sort of top of the horseshoe bend that is starting to face erosion in cooperation with the Department of Wildlife Resources.

and hopefully to make that little, it can't be accessible, but uninvitingly inviting is the sort of a nice way to think about that from their perspective.

But I think that's good for you all to know in terms of the kind of forward motion that we're making because you have Providence over the river into the middle of the river, we just go to the bank.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

I'm just going to say it's very good information.

I wondered, I hadn't heard the follow up on what had happened after last time.

Thank you.

And I did see Supervisor McKeel.

I did.

Thank you, Donna.

And I just want to piggyback on what Donna mentioned about having a discussion about the Council on the Development Area.

I think that would be a great discussion for our two boards to chat about.

I would ask, and I'm going to take this opportunity right now, I would really appreciate seeing a copy of your all's complaint.

I have never seen a copy of your comp plan.

And that's probably my fault because I haven't searched it out.

But in recognizing that you're going to be changing yours in a couple of years, but that's fine.

Is there a way that you all could just send us an electronic copy of your comp plans so that we could review it and take a look?

Sure.

We'll have one in your direction tomorrow.

Okay.

That'd be great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

As others have mentioned, many chapters of interest in the comp plan that all of us will be digging our whole interest into.

But historic preservation is another one which I think would be really important for the Scottsville area to study since you were our first county seat and have lots of historic properties.

And so I encourage everyone to give that some attention.

Supervisor Price, if I may ask a follow-up question.

Well, and I think that's what the conversation has to be about.

Not for me as an individual supervisor to say, but I think that, I mean, I've heard people ask about it.

And I think that's part of what our conversation needs to be.

What really are we looking at or do we envision?

a very significant historic asset that's not in the town but nearby, which is the site called Pine Knot.

Are you all aware of Pine Knot?

I think the supervisors probably are, but I'm not sure if the staff is.

The reason I mention it, this site that was visited by President Roosevelt eight times during his presidency is something, whenever we have tours, again, working 30 years in the tour industry, whenever we've organized tours around Scottsville, Pine Knot's always the most

exciting place that they go to.

And while it's a beautiful site, it's kind of the best kept hidden secret of Southern Albemarle.

Nobody knows about it.

And I don't know how much you all communicate with them, but I guess I'm making more of a suggestion that that site is really valuable and it's great.

It's just that nobody knows about it.

And they have such a beautiful place that I suggest we work together maybe with the county and with the town.

Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor Gristo.

I've had the pleasure and good fortune to visit there several times.

Yes, thank you very much.

I agree with a lot of the other supervisors regarding the historic value of Scottsville and I think the development aspect came about because last year when we met with you all there was an interest in increasing the population of Scottsville.

So I think that's where that probably came from and maybe we can help out in that area with our comprehensive plan.

The other thing is I do believe that the visitors bureau should be made more aware of what is happening in Scottsville because you really have a little gem of a town there and with the river and the things that happen on the river and such I do believe that

I was going to say I appreciate you bringing up the visitor's bureau.

I ended up picking up a map of county parks the other day, which is a lovely little guide to parks in the county.

But I'm wondering if that's another place of alignment that we can hit together.

Because down here in town, we had the Van Cleef Nature Area, which

Absolutely, I would say you know the best thing is let's make sure all of this is in writing and in being

you know, retained and recorded so we can follow up on it.

I just wanted to add when Supervisor McKeel asked for the comprehensive plan for Scottsville, our comprehensive plan, our new comprehensive plan isn't going to be completed for a couple of years.

And I'm wondering if you guys have seen our comprehensive plan.

It's actually kind of difficult to look at it in electronic form because it is so long.

I think that's yeah that's an easy that's an easy thing to do.

Yes, just to add to the tourism discussion, Ann and I right now represent the county on the tourism board, the CACDB.

and while that may change in January, but that's not the point.

I was just thinking it might be interesting for you all to think about coming to the CACBB board and making a presentation and just informing the board about Scottsville and that could easily, now that probably wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't be able to have that happen until after the first of the year, but an agenda item of the CACBB board might be really informative for the board.

All right.

Regarding your comp plan, there we go.

Who is that?

Oh, this is Chair Galloway.

So along the lines of the town council, you have your comp plan, does the council

Does the town council have, whether it's formalized or not, a strategic plan or council priorities?

Thank you, sir.

We don't have an annual strategic plan update.

The last one followed our comp plan adoption a couple of years ago, and we've made progress on it.

More recently, the American Rescue Plan was very hands-on and specific for town council, and it came up at a good time in our budget.

So some of the, you know, a sort of quicker hit or big picture action items we picked up

in the course of ARP planning.

So that little presentation I might include as a recent example of how town council set priorities with some discretionary funds and what we thought of as the most important projects from riverfront improvements, beefing up public safety, and investing in pedestrian infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Lawless.

Thank you for that.

Not at this time.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Supervisors, we did have a chance to basically comment, but I would ask just by a show of hands if any supervisors have any other comments at this time about the comprehensive plan project or that discussion.

Thank you.

Sure, thanks for that question and sorry I didn't explain that better.

So it means that the content will evolve as we

We work it through our engagement process.

So typically what this looks like would be staff would here come out to the community with a question about what's your vision for this area?

We will get feedback, take that, turn it into a draft recommendation, bring it to starting with internal staff.

What do you think of this?

Do you see any issues?

Go back to the drawing board, make edits, bring it out to our working group.

What feedback do you have?

What do you see any issues?

Make edits, go out to the community, come back, make edits, go back to our working board with a revised draft, make edits, and then work its way through our planning commission and board.

So essentially it just means we, it's a feedback loop.

Thank you, Ms.

Falkenstein.

Yeah, Rachel, I've been thinking about this since our last comp plan update and, you know, we mentioned the strategic plan there and there's not a right or wrong.

I guess I'm curious how the staff wrestles with the strategic priorities and how they weave through our comps plan, especially since the comp plan has a longer shelf life than our strategic priorities.

We update that with more regularly than with the comp plan.

We would have gone through our own update had we not

extended it a year before going through this comp plan.

So we will go through a strategic priority update during the same process.

That's a great question.

I think that's a conversation we've had internally quite a bit and something that I think I'd like to work through and be a little bit more intentional about on this update.

I think when I mentioned the level of detail in our comprehensive plan, that's something I'd like to be more intentional about and get the right level of detail so that the strategic plan perhaps can be a little more detailed and specific than some of the broad kind of goal statements that we have in our comp plan.

so that with every two-year strategic plan update, it doesn't necessarily put us in a position where our comp plan is no longer consistent with the strategic plan.

So that's something I want to think about.

I can't answer it right now.

I haven't spent much time engaging with others about it yet, but I think I'd love the board thoughts on it too, about how we can make sure

Thank you.

I'm going to be big picture again.

One of the things that I think a lot about, again being in the tourism world, is I think about where our county is in relation to the state, in relation to tourism.

I know we compete with

places like Colonial Williamsburg or the Richmond, Metro Richmond area or Northern Virginia.

And I would like to hear from the perspective of any, really either any supervisor or any staff, how do you see where we are as a county?

I know, for example, all across the country, we're struggling with the issue of employment, struggling with the issue of how that plays out.

Are there things that we can do as a county or things we can do as a town

that will aid in that in the next six months or a year.

Okay, so I'll just look for a show of hands if any supervisors want to respond, but also I want to give our

County leadership team, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Walker, if you would like to weigh in as well on that.

So any supervisors want to speak up?

Thank you.

Just this one example, people in tourism have said the most important thing that a community can do is to be welcoming and kind to its visitors and to help them by being good human beings, help them to learn the special things about our place that make us unique and different from any place USA.

but also to answer questions when people are lost and you know instead of blasting your horns and saying get out of the way to say you look lost how may I help these kinds of experiences people never forget and just in the last two weeks on our farm we have had two different hot air balloons land in a hurry in our pastures at five o'clock in the afternoon as dark was coming and the airport is nearby

and people could not have been more grateful to be rescued in this way.

And I think they will never forget the fact that our cows come right up and look in the basket to see what's going on.

So we have so many different unique experiences here, whether it's our history or our outdoors or our universities.

And telling our story, the Beto Festival, all the arts and crafts people who are hiding away in the woods and neighborhoods all over the place, working together to try to tell those stories makes us well able to compete with

RVA and DC, Northern Virginia.

It's a different experience completely from Williamsburg.

And so I think we need to give ourselves credit that we can do our very best to tell our story, warts and all, with people who come to visit.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

And I totally agree.

We are better situated than most of those other areas because we offer everything they do in our own way without the congestion.

and expense that they have.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Price.

I would like to take a moment, Board, to ask Mr. Johnson, who is our Economic Development Director, but in specifically relating to travel and tourism, Roger has served for the last

two years as the chair of the CACBB.

And I believe it would be great if Roger could talk just a little bit about the travel and tourism aspect in the broader context of economic development.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson, mayor, vice chair,

Chairman Galloway, I heard, I believe, on here and members of the respective board.

I hope I've recognized everyone.

If I didn't, I apologize.

As Mr. Richardson said, I serve as the CACU chair, and it may be of interest to this group to know that there is a new branding initiative associated with our community, and it's really built on the lure of our wineries, which is indisputably an attraction into our community.

But I think probably the thing that would be most exciting to you all

is those vans that were discussed earlier, as well as the plans of the CAV, CACBB, are to make sure that when visitors get here, they spend time and energy exploring the myriad of opportunities within the county, including the Scottsville area and all the cool things that you guys have on the James River.

So while you may not be top of mind in the information that we send out, try to bring people from Washington, DC, or Charlotte, or Raleigh, or sometimes even internationally, once we get those folks in our community,

The CACBB is working hard to make sure they explore all parts of our county.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Any other councilors have a question or concern or anything they want to say to Albemarle County Board?

I know that

Matt Wallace, our town administrator, has a lot of good friends in Albemarle County government and he gets help from them when he has a problem and I imagine they call him once in a while if they have a question.

And so we have a good relationship in that area and we hope to keep it that way.

But if there's anything more that we can do,

such as recruiting someone to serve on certain committees with the county.

Thank you, Mayor.

At this time then, I'll turn it over to the Supervisors.

We'll go around in our order for our roundtable.

Anything that you want.

Yep.

Yeah.

I just look forward to more meetings like this.

I think they're very beneficial.

And I'd love to see something for a Scottsville scheduled on the CACDB board agenda.

And I think Roger has already shown up tonight, so that's a really, really good sign that he knows about that request.

And I think with that, Donna, I'm okay, but thank you.

I think continuing to work together will be great.

I know a couple of years ago there was a big bicycle race that was supposed to happen.

I think COVID may have taken care of it, but there are so many different ways which we can encourage each other to have and sponsor events that bring the community together, all different sorts of people, all different levels of interest.

And I'm a real fan of the soda festival things with tents and people and things to do.

So I hope we can work together on those in the future.

Thanks.

And Ned had his hand up.

I think it's been up for a while, but I'll be getting to Ned, but thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

I'm just enjoying, first of all, meeting you all, or most of you, last year, then some new people this year and enjoying this.

I'm hoping we do continue it every year because I think our strength lies in

working together both for the county and for the town of Scottsville.

And I will say that when I was by there last weekend and went over the bridge, it looks like on the left side, a lot of that has been cleaned up from years past.

So I don't know who did that, but thank you.

I guess a lot of the, I don't know, train or equipment or something like that, but it looks a lot better from when it did years ago when I first moved here, 14 years ago.

So it's, I love that town.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm just, what I'm going back to is the comment about helping

find people for committees and commissions.

And many of our committees are based on the magisterial district that you live in.

So Supervisor Price is, that's her bailiwick there and finding people from her district to fill those.

But there are a handful or several committees and commissions that are not strictly based on the magisterial district.

and I'm wondering if it would be a good idea when those openings come up just to send them to town council and they may be able to distribute to help find people to apply for those.

And I know Supervisor Price recently worked hard to review all of those boards and commissions so that just might be something that our board can look at going forward

to get some information to the town council for more participation on some of these boards and commissions that are not necessarily magisterial based.

And that's it.

And thank you very much.

I've enjoyed this and I think we just need to continue to work well together.

Thank you.

And Chair Galloway, I'm not sure if we lost your... Oh, there you are, Chair Galloway.

Yes, Mr. Wallace, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I believe, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the Regional Housing Partnership meeting where you talked about interest of the town, and obviously on the topic of affordable housing, but also in density, the growth management policy.

I wonder if you could just share your thoughts here with the whole board and expand on it,

Certainly Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Mr. Lawless, yeah, it was sort of an echoey sound.

I don't know if perhaps you were just too far away from the microphone.

Is that better, ma'am?

Much better.

Okay, thank you, sorry.

Yes, I had the opportunity to comment on the county housing policy when it was updated a few months ago, and I appreciate that.

It's a good example of how those policies do align, and I could cite the town's comprehensive plan

which calls for measured growth and mixed use and mixed income development within our historic district and the town limits and the housing policy that you've got lines up with town goals really well that you create affordability by stabilizing historic buildings and you look for

I saw a lot of alignment in those plans, but it didn't call out Scottsville as a good place for those strategies to be deployed.

So with the update and the little edit that worked just fine.

the town's had some zoning updates done and some development proposals in place now so the town council has the opportunity to scope this right and that gets at the development goals that you were speaking to but like generally speaking we're able to do a lot of the same things on housing policy

Thank you.

I do not.

Thank you, Mr. Lawless.

And so before we give a wrap up from Mr. Lawless and Mr. Richardson, I'd like to make a little bit of a roundup.

First off, again, I want to thank former Mayor Gill, current Mayor Smith, former Supervisor Randolph, our County Executive, our Clerk's Office, and Chair Galloway for last year getting this meeting started.

And last year, what seemed to be more complicated this year,

Pierre, just seamlessly to be able to arrange this joint meeting, which I think is very beneficial, not only substantively, but also so that our community can see how we are working together for the betterment of our county.

I also want to shout out, I just got an email this afternoon from Aaron Root that the Scottsville Center for Arts and Nature was granted and is the recipient of a $25,000 grant from the Virginia Outdoor Association.

That's going to be

Great for them to be able to improve their facilities down there.

I want to give a shout out to Albemarle County Parks and Recreation, Mr. Krickenberger.

I have been working with the town to get some dangerous holes filled near the entrance to Doria Park.

And as soon as Mr. Krickenberger's office found out about this, they filled it the same day, which has removed a hazard from that area.

I also see that we've got online Mr. Culp from the Albemarle Broadband Office and just yesterday Mr. Culp and Mr. Trevor Henry our Assistant County Executive and I met as we continue to seek actions that we can take to help improve and resolve the issues with broadband through CenturyLink down in the southern part of the county and we're hopeful and optimistic that we'll have another message on the efforts we've been able to take there in the near term.

I want to thank all of our county staff who are here tonight.

If you can see the screen, you can see we've got our finance and budget and our broadband office, our clerk's office, our county attorney, Albemarle County Police Department

We have a lot of people here from county staff that were ready to answer any questions that you might have.

And I think this has really been a very good meeting.

And so I thank everyone for their participation.

Thank you, Supervisor.

And you're exactly right about the impressive lineup of staff on the screen.

I appreciate all of you working with me.

It makes everything that we do easier here, and I hope that I can carry some of your work and represent things down around this area as well.

Not present on the call that I want to recognize is Ed Brooks is doing a fantastic job of community organizing at the ANSI School.

He's been a wonderful neighbor from food security to disaster cleanup.

We work real well nearby here and that community center is doing wonderful things that ripples out to our area as well.

I might also ask if Mr. Greg Jenkins wants to say hello.

That's a

Another unique example of this cooperation as he moves over into his county retirement and starting work as the town's police chief, I know we'll be able to cooperate very well on public safety there.

Thank you, sir.

Do you want to say anything else about police work?

Yeah, very well.

Sounds like I've got an echo.

Mayor Smith, Council and Board of Supervisors, I am just honored to have the opportunity to serve our community in the town of Scottsville.

I've had a wonderful career with Albemarle County Police Department.

And I'm gonna be hanging up my cleats as the Deputy Chief for the Police Department.

But in turn, coming to the town of Scottsville where my wife and I have raised our two girls,

for the past 23 years.

And I'm going to be able to serve in the town of Scottsville as their next police chief starting January 1st.

And I'm honored and I'm thrilled to start this new chapter of my career.

And I'd just like to express appreciation from the county for your dedicated service.

And if you're going to leave the county, it's okay if you're moving down into Scottsville.

So we're happy with that.

Thank you, and Mr. Lawless, also thank you for mentioning Mr. Brooks.

That was an oversight on my part.

The things he has been doing down there have been incredible, and he's really been such a voice and connection between the different districts and the town, so I appreciate you mentioning that.

Recognizing that the mention of some is always at the risk of the exclusion of others, which is unintentional.

Vice Chair Price, thank you very much.

First of all, thank you to the town council of Scottsville for your time and your leadership and helping our community to be all that it can be for the wonderful community members and our citizens throughout Albemarle County.

I had an opportunity several weeks ago to be at Simpson Park for a Saturday event, and it was packed.

We had a lot of county services, a lot of partnerships down beside Nancy.

Several of our board members made it down, but we had the Albemarle County Police Department.

We had several of our departments there.

It was there for all afternoon, and it was a wonderful event.

And we saw so many people from Southern Albemarle County.

that were out.

It was a gorgeous Saturday.

So, Matt, thank you for recognizing our staff.

Thank you for recognizing Ed Brooks.

Our board is so gracious to our staff and I appreciate it very much.

Rachel, you did a wonderful job tonight, as you always do.

But if I had to close, Madam Vice Chair, with one person particularly on our mind, it would be Lori Allshouse.

Lori is the Deputy Chief Finance Officer for Albemarle County, and she will also be retiring at the end of November.

We will be recognizing her next week at our

We're meeting and we're thrilled to recognize her as she'll take her next step in her career.

Most recently, though, as the deputy CFO for Albemarle County, she's been focused on policy partnerships.

She's been working some with Scottsville, and it really doesn't matter what Lori does.

Lori does it well.

She's a public servant in the truest sense, and we're going to miss her greatly.

This will be her last opportunity as Albemarle County employee to be with Scottsville in this way.

And so, Madam Vice Chair, I just wanted to have an opportunity to thank Lori publicly and our town council and our good folks in Scottsville to know that she will be moving on into retirement with her family and her wonderful kids.

And so Doug and I,

and the County Executive's Office.

We just want to wish her the best and she's made us so much better than we otherwise would be.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Those are really well-deserved remarks to Ms.

Allshouse.

And Mr. Walker, I saw your hand up briefly.

I was using the reaction button to clap.

So just it works differently on Zoom than it does on Teams.

So that's it.

Well, thank you.

That was a big hand that we saw there.

I have been looking forward to this meeting since last year.

And I want to thank former Mayor Hill and his

We are here for you, just as we know you were there for us.

We appreciate everything our supervisor does.

I know the other residents of Albemarle County feel the same way about their supervisors.

We have a couple of new rustlers getting ready to open and a new bakery, which makes the best cupcakes that I don't think I've ever had.

They've already spoiled us with some samples.

So no reason not to come down on a pretty weekend or really anytime you feel like it, you're not that far away.

Welcome, Mayor Smith.

In preparation for the meeting, county staff provided a multi-page document to me that highlighted the communications with town council, the direct support, staff collaboration, community outreach and engagement, and COVID-19 mutual support.

It's been a great year since last year, and as with everyone else, I thank you all for participating in this.

We will now adjourn this meeting until November 17th, 2021 at 1 o'clock p.m.

It will be an electronic meeting held pursuant to ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Information on how to participate in the meeting will be posted on the Albemarle County website, Board of Supervisors homepage.