Board of Supervisors Legislative Forum   11/29/2021

November 29, 2021, 11 a.m.

meeting.

It might be 1059 on somebody's watch or clock.

But we are called to order.

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 Ann Mallek, representing the White Hall District,

Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District.

We also have with us today our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner,

Our Board Clerk, Ms.

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

As other staff members participate, they will introduce themselves and their title at the appropriate time.

And we are here today to do our, oop, we already just got a note.

We're still waiting for some folks to come into the meeting there.

We're going to give just a second.

There she is.

Morning, Tracy.

Morning, everyone.

We should have, we'll go ahead, I'm gonna introduce those who are present, and then based on our RSVP, we should have others joining, so they may be joining a little late.

But with us representing Senator Cree Deeds of the 25th District, we have Tracy Eppert.

Also with us representing the 57th, Delegate Sally Hudson, and representing the 25th, Delegate Chris Runyon.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

We are expecting, representing the 17th Senate District, Senator Bryce Reeves,

and representing the 58th, we're expecting delegate Robert Bell to join.

So they will likely be logging in here momentarily.

But in the interest of time, we will keep the meeting rolling.

We appreciate the legislators taking time out of their schedules to meet with us for our annual legislative meeting.

So thank you to all of you and welcome to this Zoom room, Zoom meeting.

And we don't need a whole lot of

Oh, Delegate Bell, I believe, has just rolled in.

Good morning, Delegate Bell, representing 58th.

But I believe the plan for today is we're going to be first going to David Blunt of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

He's the legislative liaison there to go through the TJPDC legislative program.

Yes, Chair Gallaway, thank you.

And I will just spend a very few minutes to highlight the regional legislative program for 2022 for the localities in the TJPDC region.

It was adopted by the Albemarle Board earlier this month.

and it awaits final adoption by one remaining locality.

Just very briefly, the program lists three top legislative priorities for the coming year, the coming General Assembly.

They are support for recovering communities, secondly, budgets and funding, and third, broadband.

Most of you all, I think, are pretty familiar with the TJPDC's legislative priorities and positions.

and I can tell you that these are the same priorities from 2021.

But we have had some language changes and some amendments that I wanted to briefly point out.

First, in the support for recovering communities position, there's some new language that speaks to maximizing the use of federal and state support for the benefit of Virginia residents.

When we were putting together the program last year, we certainly didn't know about the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan.

So that's just some added language to recognize funds that have been flowing from those federal programs.

Under budgets and funding, there's some new language too that is included to urge the inclusion of school bus drivers in the standards of quality funding formula and for providing funding for mental health positions and services in schools.

Some things that have been talked about a lot by our school divisions and our localities during the pandemic.

And then finally in the broadband position, there's new language to emphasize the cooperative work among private providers as it relates to broadband and also to stress affordability for providing broadband service.

The legislative program also includes a position or rather a number of positions that are focused on some of the most critical recommendations and positions in other areas of current interest or concern in our region and I'll just highlight a few of those.

There's some strengthened language in a position on internet business regulation to put more emphasis on local authority.

We've already had a position secondly in the legislative program calling for flexibility for localities and awarding salary increases to state supported positions.

We've taken that language and added a similar statement pertaining to compensation board positions in another one of the position statements and also urging the comp board to support realistic staffing levels.

We've added some language to support the expanding the allowable uses of electronic meetings outside of emergency declarations.

I think we'll see some legislation on that in 2022.

And then we've also strengthened a position on state funding for elections.

We've had a long standing position urging more state responsibility for funding elections at the local level.

and the new language is really to recognize the possible extra requirement for elections that we may have due to the delayed census numbers and redistricting.

So those are just a few of the highlights of the regional program.

When it does get its last approval, the final adopted program and a one page summary of the priority items will be provided to you all.

Thank you, David.

Do we have any questions for David at this point?

I'm looking through my emails and there's all these advantages of doing things, you know, this way, but sometimes you can't just hand something across the table.

Yeah, we're the step before that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, any other questions at this time for Mr. Blunt?

Not seeing any hands raised, scrolling the screen.

And the next item on the agenda, number four, would go to our Albemarle County 2022 legislative priorities.

Mr. Kantner, good morning.

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to share my screen.

Good morning, members of the board, members of the General Assembly and their representatives.

I'm Greg Kampner, County Attorney for Albemarle County.

I want to start with a recap of the success the Board of Supervisors had this past year.

in the General Assembly with the amendments to Virginia Code sections 15.2-520 and 15.2-2506.

The amendments expressly authorized Virginia's two counties operating under the county executive form of government, Albemarle and Prince William, to allow funds appropriated for multi-year capital projects to be carried over from year to year without being reappropriated.

Our research had found that other localities were already applying this practice, and our internal review found that reappropriating multi-year capital projects each year was inefficient.

Among the problems with the old process were the significant administrative burdens affecting calculations and required closing and then reopening purchase orders.

The Board of Supervisors and the county thanks senators

Reeves and Deeds for being the Senate patrons of this bill and the entire delegation for supporting the bill.

And now on to the board's three legislative priorities for this year.

These are the three that we will be talking about.

And the first

priority which pertains to civil penalties in lieu of criminal punishment for violations of local ordinances.

The first sentence of Virginia Code Section 15.2-1429 states, any locality may prescribe fines and other punishments for violations of ordinances which shall be enforced by proceedings as if such violations were misdemeanors.

Section 15.2-1429 imposes a cap on fines and punishments.

They may not exceed those for a class one misdemeanor.

In other words, up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

The board's first priority for 2022 is to amend this code section.

to enable localities to adopt an ordinance to establish schedules of civil penalties in lieu of criminal punishment for violations of certain local ordinances.

The initiative would authorize a schedule of civil penalties of up to $500 for the initial summons with increasing amounts up to a total of $5,000 in aggregate under the same operative facts.

Violators would be allowed to prepay

The board's initiative also seeks to include those violations for which civil penalties are already authorized by state law primarily the civil penalty schedule enabled for zoning violations in section 15.2-2209

The maximum civil penalties for violations under that section are $200 for the first violation and $500 for each subsequent violation.

Those amounts are unchanged since 2007, and the county has found that some zoning violators see those payments as a cost of doing business, which prolongs the enforcement process for those localities that have opted to pursue civil penalties.

The enabling authority would exclude those acts expressly punishable as misdemeanors by state law that allow a local option to adopt those crimes into their codes and also traffic infractions which generally have minimal penalties.

Examples of current violations enforced as misdemeanors in the county code include violating the county's road naming and road signing regulation,

having an abandoned refrigerator and failing to return library books.

The rationale for this initiative is to enable localities to decriminalize numerous activities regulated by local ordinances by allowing the use of civil penalties instead of criminal punishment for violations.

I think maybe for each one, we should stop and pause.

But did I cut you off too soon on that one?

No, no.

I'll first open up to supervisors to see if there's any additional points or questions needed by the supervisors.

Supervisor Mallek, any additional items here?

No, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

I think just as perhaps a little bit of a clarification, in the sense that if an individual continues to engage in the activity that results in civil penalties up to a certain point,

To model the enabling authority that exists for the zoning violations, that would be the possibility.

And also the localities also have the ability to pursue injunctive relief.

and in general district court, a judge can order violations to be abated even in this civil penalty process.

Right.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

But then the other would still be available rather than totally in blue.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

And thank you, Chair Galloway.

No questions at this time.

Supervisor Palmer?

No questions.

Thanks.

I don't have any questions.

I appreciate Donna's clarification though.

I don't have any questions here either.

I did want to point out that, and, uh, representing Senator Reeves, we did have Mark and is it Snas Savage?

Can you say your name for the record?

Oh, you're good.

It's Snee Savage.

Thanks for having me.

Snee Savage.

Thank you.

Oh, very good.

Well, we appreciate Senator Reeves and both of you joining.

So we'll go through the legislators, see if there's any questions or reactions here.

I'm just going to go through the list that I have.

I don't have any questions.

Delegate Bell.

Could you back up a screen?

I have some observations.

All right, so Mr. Ken, you and I, you were nice enough to talk to me about this.

I don't remember when, but at some point recently, it looks as though you, this is not exactly the same as what we talked about.

I just want to make sure I'm getting it.

Currently, there are a large number of state violations that are separately also county violations that can be charged either way.

And so both in and outside the traffic context with this, you and I talked about different ways to manage those different ways that what you're describing could be done.

Is it now that you're not going to this would not affect those or this would allow them to be

chargeable under the county.

I think what we were, yeah, as we discussed, which I think was, I'm not sure we had this discussion with the board, but when the state imposes a punishment as a misdemeanor, that we were not seeking to, the board was not seeking to turn a criminal violation into a civil violation.

And the example that we had in our conversation was a

driving under the influence and other serious things.

But there's a lot of enabling authority where no punishment is specified.

And so the board's intention would be to have the authority to make those civil penalties in lieu of a criminal punishment because 1429 seems to be the overarching enabling authority which makes everything criminal

in the absence of the express civil authority.

And, Delegate Bell, we also discussed in it your concern about having this enabling authority override, for example, the existing enabling authority for civil penalty schedules for zoning violations.

And we talked about that and

I'll let you discuss your concern about that.

The board's desire would be to have the ability to include that or in lieu of that, just updating the civil penalty schedule for zoning violations in 15.2-2209.

Delicate Bell, you still there?

You cut off there.

Looks like he froze.

May have to give him a chance to log back in.

Delicate Bell, are you there?

We'll move through, and then when he comes back in, we'll come back and follow back up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is only operational.

Delegate Bell, have you been able to return?

Delegate Runyon, any questions, comments here?

The drafting piece of this, I think that's what today is.

Yeah, a couple of thoughts.

One, Delegate Bell is trying to get back in.

I don't know if you all need to do anything to allow for that or not.

Excuse me.

We've not done an exhaustive review, but I gave you some examples from our county code, the abandoned refrigerator, the unreturned library books.

There are a number.

Our subdivision ordinance is enforced

either through criminal proceedings or injunctive relief.

And the county does not have many subdivision ordinance violations, but if there are, the option is either a criminal enforcement or injunctive relief.

Injunctive relief can sometimes be a rather lengthy process.

But all the chapters have sections in the county

All the chapters of the county code have provisions for which misdemeanor punishments are imposed.

Okay, I would appreciate that.

Just curious to see what are the major areas of concern that you have?

No.

You know, there's a range.

One of the non-zoning type violations that are regularly enforced by police are a class of noise violations, which right now are enforced criminally.

We do have enabling authority, which is at the lower threshold of the $200 and $500 to enforce.

in a civil proceeding.

The county code up to now makes that a criminal violation for our county police.

That's a tier three violation, which means that they usually are not able to respond to those calls until, unless there are no other active calls at the moment.

And this ties into, I think the recognition by the board that

For a number of violations of county ordinances, we are probably moving towards a more comprehensive code compliance effort in civil proceedings rather than pursuing beyond just a zoning enforcement.

Okay, alrighty.

Have you all established the best practice in the Commonwealth for these?

Well, I can speak to the enforcement of the zoning ordinance, and I think that civil enforcement has been a best practice.

We made the transition about 20 years ago and our ability to get compliance has been much more effective and efficient.

The general district court judges are, particularly when we had visiting judges, when we were enforcing our zoning ordinance in a criminal proceeding,

We had a string of visiting judges who were reluctant to impose the stigma of a criminal misdemeanor on a violator.

When we shifted to civil penalties, that changed.

The burden of proof is different.

The ability to prepay is different.

The violators are not stigmatized with a criminal violation.

And so our

Compliance has gone up, I would say, dramatically over the last 20 years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Delegate Runyon.

I know that Delegate Bell has been able to rejoin.

I was making some very thoughtful observations.

For you to hear the words of... I was asked to understand the pivotal part.

Delegate Bell, you are... You have no way to do it.

It's real choppy right now.

Looks like he may attempt to relog back in.

I also have been told we do have a representative from Delegate Matt Ferris's office, either Delegate Ferris or a representative on the call, so thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hopefully we can get Delegate Bell back in and we'll certainly give him an opportunity to clarify questions and comments as needed.

Mr. Campner, I believe at this time we can move to the next item unless there's additional questions or comments out there.

I would just express that the deadline for us getting the first round of bill drafts in is 5 p.m.

today, so there is a flexibility for patrons in getting things rolling.

Others may have different views, but my view is that there's a relatively low bar for wanting to keep things moving and we can continue to discuss them in the days ahead.

So I would be happy to initiate a draft request for this and we can continue to mull it over and think about it.

Understood.

Thank you.

I'd like to respond a little bit to Delegate Runyon's questions.

And while I am not the only supervisor who supported this, I know that I was one of the ones who first raised moving more towards civil penalties as an option of first recourse rather than criminal penalties for low-level misconduct.

And Delegate Runyon, I would just say, as a former prosecutor, defense counsel, and criminal trial judge during my time in the Navy,

I have long been troubled by over criminalization minor misconduct so my initiative behind proposing this was to try to move more towards civil penalties as a mechanism of changing behavior while still leaving available the option of criminal charges for those individuals who are so recalcitrant that they will not otherwise change their behavior.

Thank you, Supervisor Price.

Any other additional comments or questions here?

May I add something?

Yes, sir.

And when Delegate Bell is able to return, you can certainly speak to this.

But I was under the impression that he would be willing to request the draft to move this along, and that would be the next step.

Great.

and Delegate Hudson has offered as well.

So we'll want to make sure we coordinate between the two.

So I would imagine sometimes you guys do.

I have not seen that Delegate Bell has been able to rejoin.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The second board priority,

is to expand the authority to use photo speed monitoring devices.

In 2020, the General Assembly added Virginia Code Section 46.2-882.1 to authorize the use of photo speed monitoring devices in highway work zones and school crossing zones.

This photo speed monitoring device is equipment that uses radar or lidar based speed detection

and produces one or more photographs, micro photographs, videotapes, or other recorded images of vehicles.

The enabling authority of self-executing.

No ordinances required in local law enforcement offices may have the devices installed in those zones.

46.2-882 has authorized the use of radar and lasers.

Lasers are the science that is used for LIDAR.

to determine the speed of motor vehicles since 1994.

Before 1994, those tools were allowed to check the speed of motor vehicles.

So the board's second priority is to amend Virginia code section 46.2-882 if necessary.

And 46.2-882.1 to enable the use of photo speed monitoring devices

on segments of secondary roads where speeding has been identified as a problem.

Over the weekend, we realized that there are some rural roads of concern that also should be included that are not secondary roads, and those would include routes 22, 231, 240, and 250.

Enabling authority would be implemented by ordinance and would apply only to segments of these roads having posted speeds of 35 miles per hour or greater.

The roads would be selected by the governing body based on speeding, crash, and fatality data.

In addition, the selected road segments would have signs posted informing drivers that the devices are being used to monitor speed.

The rationale for this initiative is to give localities the option to use photo speed monitoring devices as an enforcement tool on designated segments of the identified roads where speeding is prevalent.

And I'll add also one of the original concerns that brought this initiative to the forefront was the safety concerns of the county's many very narrow roads where it would be unsafe

for both the driver and the law enforcement officers to pull over a speeding vehicle.

Using these devices would promote public safety by providing broader enforcement of speed limits, use technology for human intervention is unnecessary, and allow law enforcement officers to do other critical police work.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

I'll do what I did last time.

Thank you very much.

Just one clarification to make sure I'm not missing something in the change.

So we're taking out secondary in our proposal and putting in rural roads as chosen by the board according to the adopted criteria.

So if you have multiple highway deaths, et cetera, or repeated some kind of statistics on a rural road section, it does not have to be big enough to be of any particular size.

It's close.

I think the intention that what the board adopted on October 6 was to have this enabling authority apply to secondary roads and have this posted speed limit over 35 because we were trying to find a way to

established some parameters around the original concept, which was rural roads.

And how do you find rural or not?

So we settled on secondary roads with the posted minimum speed limit.

But then we realized that there are some three digit roads, 231, 240, and 250.

And as I always do, the forgotten route

22, which are not secondary roads, but they're very rural in nature.

And we know that in the conversations that the board has had over the last several months, at least some of those roads have been anecdotally cited as roads where speeding is a problem.

And so it would be secondary roads plus some other roads.

And one of the ideas that have been thrown out would be to include those roads that are designated as scenic byways.

All right, one follow-up question.

So I'm thinking particularly of Half Mile Branch.

I don't know the name, the number, whether it's where it falls in the VDOT categories.

I know it is the official Western bypass for the 8,000 people who live in Crozet, and it is at 35.

And I remember once earlier today, you said at or above 35 miles an hour.

So I want to make sure that the board did adopt that change.

because it was also mentioned the other way.

So if that at or above 35 would allow the inclusion at the board's discretion of a road where people go 55 and 60 and we've had multiple deaths there in the years when the county has unfortunately been the state winner of the highest highway deaths in the whole commonwealth.

So I'm very appreciative of that explanation.

No, thank you for the presentation.

Yes, thank you very much.

This has come up in, especially in the Keswick area, all over the county actually, as being a real problem because we needed to, what is it, secondary roads, we have 22 and 231, which are two lane roads with no

with ditches for borders, very windy.

We've had in the past few months for two accidents and a fatality.

So there's no way for law enforcement to be able to pull over anyone because there's no place to pull them over and without creating a miles long backup.

And if someone tries to pass them, that's a dangerous

thing too.

And we want to be able to keep our law enforcement officers safe.

They do support this.

They have a Marl County Police Department.

This is a better use of technology and tools to be able to keep our officers safe, our citizens safe, and keep those people that are really egregious in speeding down these roads, which they shouldn't be, keep everybody safe.

Thank you very much and I know this is a high priority for the board.

Thank you.

I have no additional questions.

I don't have any additional questions.

I want to just confirm what Bea has just stated in that we have rural roads that are very dangerous and our law enforcement officers tell us

clearly that they cannot address the problem based on the terrain, the roads themselves, and the danger it would put other people in if they tried to address or to go after the speeders.

It's probably what we hear from the most, I believe, from our constituents regarding safety is our roads.

So we would really appreciate help with this.

Thank you.

And I'll go through the same order we did with the legislators.

Any questions or comments here, Ms.

I would just note, Senator Deeds has carried a number of bills about speed cameras over the years.

He's very supportive of the technology.

His thoughts on this, you know, certainly with the changes in the General Assembly,

In the past, there had been a lot of difficulty getting these bills through, and his thoughts were to focus on getting this through the House first.

All right, thank you.

Mr. Steve Savage, any comments, questions here?

I don't think of any comments here.

I believe Senator Reeves was

Thank you.

Yeah, sorry about that.

I'm on a landline in downtown.

I don't know what the issue is.

I apologize again.

I don't have any questions.

I would appreciate a chance to talk to if there's a point person at APD about this, because I think that

I'm reading what is drafted.

It is not exactly what is being described by some of the speakers as what they're looking for.

So I think it would be helpful probably to go to the source and talk to APD.

The world has passed by.

I'm sure that we will survive amazing, thoughtful comments.

No, thank you.

I'll follow up and appreciate the chance.

Thank you, sir.

One question, a quick follow on to Delegate Bell's comment, I would love to join you at that meeting so that we can come to that understanding together because I'd love to hear from the law enforcement officers what they're experiencing.

My sort of question about

What we might consider with the drafting is that I think that the intent is sound and that historically sometimes automated enforcement devices have been disparately positioned throughout communities.

and so might appreciate some language or guardrails in the bill that would require some kind of public analysis regarding where they're going to go so it doesn't become a sort of bespoke squeaky wheel situation where the most vocal constituents can organize for a

a machine on their road, but it means that they don't wind up in other parts of the county.

Thank you, Delegate Hudson.

I think when the board started talking about the crash data and the data that we have, just as we look at intersections or transportation changes,

that conversation was around that very thing, that it wasn't just arbitrarily picking places because of complaint, but more backed up by safety concerns, et cetera, as well as what the police department has to say.

Yeah, there is a public process because it has to be implemented by ordinance unlike the existing enabling authority for

School crossing zones and highway work zones.

So you have the ordinance process.

So you have a public hearing related to that within the county and the board's decision.

Any governing body's decision is directed to be based upon data that would justify the reason.

Within Albemarle County, we have an Office of Equity and Inclusion through which

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Yeah, a couple of things.

I would like to also participate in the meeting with APD with Bill Gates-Hudson and Bill.

I think that would be very interesting to see their perspective.

and hear what they have to say.

I am curious why we've excluded the residential communities.

Do your all's traffic analysis differentiate between the rural three-digit road numbers that you know the higher above 600 and then the residential communities and then the more commuter heavy routes and also that

US Highways and the interstate for that matter.

The issue originally arose because of the concern with the safety issues related to the county's rural roads.

The speed limit was selected as a way to narrow the scope and to help define

the targeted area, which were the rural roads where speed limits tend to be at least 35 miles an hour or higher.

We do also know through Mr. Blunt's wisdom that when 46.2-882.1 was added in 2020,

It narrowly passed and there was some concern that certain residential neighborhoods would be targeted for these devices.

I am curious though, does the data support that

Alrighty, and then there was legislation passed a year or two ago, I've forgotten when, allowing for speed cameras in school zones.

We are evaluating the school zone in front of three county schools on Hydraulic Road.

So our police department is looking at that.

I apologize.

I must have bumped the thing.

If I can ask Mr. Blunt, David, do you recall?

I'm sorry I can't name localities, but I believe that there are several that have adopted for school zones and that some others are looking at it.

I think in some cases they're really taking

taking time and doing due diligence to look at the technology as well as to have some public engagement process as well.

But I will dig a little deeper and delegate Runyon and provide you, I wanna say maybe some of them are towns and cities.

Yeah, it doesn't matter to me the jurisdiction, it's the function.

and I did some research on this and I see that Albemarle in 2020 had a 0.24 deaths per, let me get to the right terminology, death rate per 1,000 drivers and that exceeded the state average but there was significant variance in that number.

The state average including the city's 0.14 so that's a significant number higher but I will say

Rockingham County, for instance, is 0.28.

So it's higher than Albemarle.

Yes, I did.

I just wanted to discuss what Delegate Runyon addressed a couple of concerns like because I've been in close contact with the Albemarle County Police Department.

The reason why they haven't set up the photo cameras in front of the schools yet, a lot of it has to do with being able to find a provider, what kind of a little fish in this nationwide program

being able to find a provider to set up the photo speed monitoring devices that's being done now where they have found someone.

And I think because of COVID, frankly, there were no children in the school.

so as you know and so therefore it wasn't implemented but they are looking at actively implementing it and they found someone to do that.

Our main concern were the smaller rural roads that are windy and where it wasn't safe for law enforcement to be able to pull over.

I mean on the larger roads it's easy for law enforcement

to be able to pull over cars that are speeding, things like that.

On the smaller winding rural roads, it's very, very difficult.

People exceed the speed and we have had crashes and fatalities.

So that is our rationale to keep not only our police officers safe,

but also to make sure that our citizens are safe.

And on these rural roads, a lot of them frankly, they have to cross the street to get their mail because their mailbox is on the other side of the road.

So that's a very dangerous situation just in of itself.

So this is a way to do this.

The technology is such now

that you can actually, as long as you have the signs up, but you can actually move the device to different locations.

So for example, you'd have it on one road, you'd have the sign that says there's a camera, no one knows where the camera is, but you can actually move that camera to other locations where you have the sign also.

So it doesn't always have to stay there and in one location.

But yet the warning is there regarding the

You know, the sign that says that there's a camera up ahead.

Okay, thank you.

All right, are there any additional questions or comments?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, but I'll open it up.

All right.

Yes, moving on to the third.

More priorities.

requiring agricultural buildings used by the public to be subject to minimum building safety standards.

The board's third and final priority for 2022 seeks to amend Virginia Code Section 36-97 and other sections of the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code to require agricultural buildings used by the public to be subject to minimum safety standards.

The proposed initiative would revise the definition of farm building or structure to remove its public use elements, and those include displaying sales and sampling of the product's room, and add a definition of public use agricultural building, a use that would be subject to requirements such as having an outdoor, an automatic fire alarm system, emergency lights at exits, panic hardware on all required exit doors,

portable fire extinguishers, and a maximum occupancy of 200 persons, with occupancy over 200 being classified in a different use group.

This is an issue that has some history.

Before 1998, Virginia Code Section 36-97 defined building and included an exemption from the building code, what were then called farm buildings, provided that they were not, quote, not used for residential purposes

frequented generally by the owner, members of his family, and farm employees, end quote.

The definition of structure had a similar provision.

That exemption was very narrow.

In 1997, Albemarle County prevailed in an administrative proceeding involving a county winery before the state technical review board, which determines compliance with the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code.

The technical review board concluded that a proposed building at that winery would be subject to various and would be used for various public activities while subject to the building code.

However, in 1998, the General Assembly amended Virginia Code sections 36-97 and 36-99 to its current form, which exempts from the building code farm buildings or structures that are used for a number of purposes as previously described.

including those where a large number of people may congregate for various activities.

Since those early days, the agritourism, farm, winery, limited brewery, and limited distillery industries have grown significantly both across the state and in Albemarle County.

County zoning regulations for these industries were developed in a collaborative process with those industries.

The county participated in the 2019 state committee study

have reviewed whether agricultural buildings should be subjected to minimum building safety standards.

The board's rationale for this initiative is public safety.

The stated purpose of the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code is to, quote, protect the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of the commonwealth, end quote.

Historically, farm buildings and structures were not regularly hosting hundreds of people as they are now

at farm wineries, limited breweries, limited distilleries, and other agricultural operations.

To protect public safety in the event of a fire or other emergency, the farm buildings and structures that are open to the public should be subject to minimum safety standards.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you.

I think that that's a great presentation, but the emphasis in my thinking has been to get the people safely out, not to protect the structure.

And that's why I think that Loudoun County and others are also looking at this and looking at ways to keep the participants safe.

Many people who go to these properties have no idea

that these buildings are not inspected and that they don't meet the building codes.

So the fair and transparent thing to do is to make sure that those decisions are made with the best information to go.

The minimum life safety standards in the portion of the building only that are used by the people, not the areas where the cattle are lounging or the tractors are parked, seem to be really important things to do

that they have minimal fire suppression when something goes wild that they have exits that actually function and enough of them to get the people safely out quickly and emergency lighting.

I know all of us are familiar with horror stories which have happened in other places and we certainly don't want them to come home to roost here.

We have dozens of older farm buildings that are very successfully used and I know during our study process before the state meeting, the state summer study,

The whole point was to not have requirements that are so financially burdensome that they could not be accomplished.

So sprinkler systems and things that were thrown out as the end of all business as we know it were not included because of the cost and the fact that they are designed primarily to protect the structure.

So if we take the structure out of the operation and concentrate on the people, then we can do that successfully with many fewer regulations.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you again, Mr. Campner, for a great presentation.

I totally support this.

We do not want anything that replicates or comes close to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich, New York, nor what recently happened at the Astral World Music Festival.

So we want to ensure that we institute protective safety measures to avoid a calamity.

And that is extremely important because as Supervisor Mallek just mentioned,

We must believe or expect that public attending these events would expect that the buildings would be safe.

No questions.

I have no questions.

I could just piggyback and agree very much on Ann's description of protecting the people inside and not addressing the building.

I agree.

I won't repeat because my fellow board members have described it very well.

I concur.

So we will go to Ms.

Eppert from Senator Deeds office.

Um, I don't have any, well, I, I just wanted to know, I don't know that Senator Deeds saw this draft.

Um, but I,

It's my understanding that somebody has agreed to carry this already.

Get my unmute done here.

So as we go through, if somebody has agreed to do that, if you could please let us know.

Mr. Snee Savage from Senator Reeve's office.

Not necessarily.

I'm just trying to figure out one comment that was made about the music festival disaster.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What I was simply using that as an example where a community failed to take proper precautions in advance and has had a calamity.

and people had to suffer and die as a consequence of that, and what this proposal is to avoid anything comparable.

That was a crowd crush, but I would say that that is a similar failure on the part of the local community.

to prepare for a very likely outcome.

And here what we're talking about primarily I think would be fires, but similarly, you know, any safety, any public safety aspect, we need to think about these in advance so that we prevent these calamities from happening rather than in retrospection saying, oh, we should have done this.

Okay, thank you.

I just thought I might have been missing something in the proposal that had something to do related to those type of events.

I have no questions, thank you.

No questions.

I also did not hear that somebody was willing to carry in that.

So we may have to do some follow up on that.

And Tracy, maybe if you could, if you happen to track down that rumor, maybe you could be helpful to us identifying that maybe.

Yes, my question really is so I don't misunderstand and that is in other issues our delegates have followed up with questions or concerns which they had and I'm hearing none of those right now so do I take that to mean that you have no concerns about this bill or what is your level of interest in it?

Can you provide any more information about that?

delegate by raise of hand, like to respond or Senator.

I'll turn in quickly and then my colleagues can follow.

I was mostly deferring to my colleagues who represent territory in the county that likely includes these buildings.

Any additional comments here or concerns perhaps to help us understand?

Yes, as we're going through and we've gone through these bills and now we're at the point where we're looking for someone to carry something forward.

Will you help me clarify, maybe this would be for Delegate Hudson.

She mentioned a cutoff of today.

And I'm trying to figure out how that relates to where we are right now.

Gladly.

So 5 p.m.

today is one of the first milestones in the drafting process.

It's the deadline for requesting bill drafts from the Division of Legislative Services that count as pre-filed.

Basically, we are instructed to get requests to DLS

at this time so they have a sense of the range of topics they've been asked to cover and that those are the drafts they will turn back to us by the end of December.

The system is set up in this way so that each delegate can typically only carry about two bills

that don't meet this deadline so that the legislative drafters are not inundated with requests right before the General Assembly session starts.

So it sort of limits the scope of things they could be asked to do at the last minute.

But at least in the House side, I'm unaware of limits on the number of bill requests that can be submitted.

So for the sake of getting a draft moving, I'm very happy to submit that request.

And then we can continue the conversation

in December.

Thank you.

I appreciate that clarification and I really appreciate your help.

I have a question about this particular, about the farm buildings.

And several months ago, Supervisor Mallek and I met with Delegate Runyon and he was very kind to comment about his feelings about this.

And what I'd like to do is ask him

Now that we've really narrowed this and defined it really specifically to things that are not particularly expensive and address only buildings that are likely to be used for public events, if he feels any differently about what we've presented here than what he did when we had that conversation many months ago.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I enjoyed our discussions about two years ago, I guess, now on this.

I think it's fair to say that we all have concerns about how these activities move forward.

And no one wants to have an incident where there's a tragedy.

There is no doubt about that.

For me, I think I need to think through this a little bit more.

Different jurisdictions, I'm fortunate to represent three different localities in this, and they're all addressing it in different ways.

And so I'd like to take some time to look and see how that's done.

And then also talk to the users and the providers and see where they are.

And I appreciate the sentiment that these issues are not expensive.

However, I think we do need to think through

how that would actually work in the environments that we're dealing with.

The other area I think is probably a new area of conversation is the limit to 200 people.

I think currently the building, and I may not remember that correctly, but I thought that there was limits at 300 previously.

And so that's another area to check out some information on.

I would love to hear how these other communities that you mentioned are addressing this in a different way.

I think that would be very helpful for us if there's something, some way to safely address this that you have, you know, that another locality has identified that you support.

I'd be happy to.

Oh, I'll have to go back and look.

I didn't.

Yeah, I'm the same way.

I don't always remember, but I think Rockingham had taken a different tack and I'll confirm with Augusta on that as well.

But on

Thank you.

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, Delegate Runyon, if it could be forwarded to our whole board for review, that would be awesome, because even had it been sent prior, it would have just been too followed from your meeting.

Yes, I just wanted to say regarding this in my area, in the Keswick area, which we have a lot of wedding venues and things like that.

I haven't gotten people saying, you know, they're looking at it, but I think everybody wants whoever is there to be safe.

And these are, to me, minimal standards.

So I haven't gotten any pushback from this.

Thank you.

I think with, as I mentioned a little earlier, there were members of the local wine trail who were instrumental in drafting our original effort to get the state building code committee to take this on at their level.

So I know there's been full discussion with them and my memory, and I will confirm this with Billy Kiger, but that Rockingham actually already requires a full building code compliance for their event spaces.

So that's sort of the other end of the spectrum from where we're going, but I will verify that that is true and get back to everybody.

I just was going to include Greg in this discussion.

I was wondering if Greg Kampner had any knowledge of Rockingham or Augusta or what other.

I think that Tom Miller, the Rockingham County Attorney, I think Tom is still there, he reached, we probably discussed this three or four years ago when they were looking at pursuing the course of action that Supervisor Malek just mentioned.

That is a, you know, it's an interpretation of the

of the criteria in the existing building code that is ripe for argument and disagreement.

Interesting.

Thank you, Greg.

And I still see some hands up.

Are those truly up or we just did not really pull them back in?

Just making sure.

All right.

Are there any additional comments or questions here on this topic?

So before we move to the next session, it sounds like we had on number or issue number one and delegate Bell, your name could come up as well, but delegate Hudson had said that we had potential interest in helping move that forward in some capacity.

I'm presuming this will involve continued conversation in any

Well, and again, when you and I spoke, one of my thoughts was that there would be different, amalgamating these different topics into a single bill occasionally has advantages, often has disadvantages.

And the part I would be most interested in would be to enable the county to not have to charge as a criminal matter, things that are not otherwise covered by the county, excuse me,

the criminal code or the traffic code.

In other words, the traffic code already works.

And if you say how, I don't know exactly just that it does.

And every day you go to court, there's people who are charged under the county code and if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

On the criminal side, you indicated that was not your intention, but certainly there's

there's a rule in Richmond that you it's called Rule 69 when you are directly affected by a bill you're not allowed to vote on it so we the library thing may be something I should Rule 69 since I'm a regular user and an occasional returner of your library books so I will certainly think that we should do that but that's the part that I like the best now the thing about zoning is not something I know anything about and I do think that raises

different and arguably bigger issues that would not be part of a bill that I would bring.

So if somebody else likes that part and wants to bring it, they can.

But I would be willing to, and what Delegate Hudson talked about, about the drafting deadline.

So while we were talking, just put in what I've just said into a potential draft.

It's easy to draft them.

Thank you.

And on number two, we had interest by Delegate Bell-Hudson and Runyon to have some follow-up conversation with the ACPD on this item.

So that's the first step in the follow-up to see where this goes.

So I appreciate the interest there.

And then on number three, it sounds like Delegate Hudson can continue or help us keep this moving forward and then can conversation move?

Did I hear that right?

Likewise, I think I had some earlier text on number two, and I already have that going with legislative services.

Very good.

Thank you all.

So that puts a bow on where we're at on the priorities we brought up.

The next item on our agenda was to go through each legislator's office and see what your priorities

Mr. Chair, I do have two more slides.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Did I cut us off?

Just a couple more slides, some good news.

Just wanted to let the local delegation know that the board did adopt a resolution on October 20th supporting the General Assembly's ongoing studies of its information technology systems and services and encouraged

the General Assembly to provide funding for needed technology modernization and staffing to support that technology throughout state government.

And just to share with the local delegation

Just a couple of highlights from the board's 2022 legislative positions and policy statements.

The board continues its supportive legislation to enable localities to impose impact fees on residential development and to eliminate cash proffers.

And it also has a new position and policy statement regarding erosion sediment control standards for ag and forestry operations.

And with that,

And what I'll do in this next section, we'll go to each of the legislators first, and then they can speak to any priorities they wish to talk to.

And then if they have any questions for us on our item, and then I'll give the supervisors a chance to ask any questions related to what they hear from the legislators.

So with that, I'll go through the same order I've been following.

So Ms.

Thanks, and I'll be brief.

There are plenty of actual legislators in the room that you probably want to hear more from.

But I would say first, thanks for including me in this.

Senator Deeds had court this morning and this afternoon, I was hoping he might be able to jump on somewhere in between.

But alas, he did not or was not able to.

Just going back real quick to your priorities.

We would also like to be included in any conversations with the county PD.

And also if we can receive what draft language you might have for the farm buildings, just so I can have him take a look at that.

That'd be

That'd be great.

The Senate this year does have limits on draft requests that we can submit, and it also has a limit on the number of bills we can introduce.

So after the really stringent limits we had last year,

You know, there's just a lot of pressure for bills in the Senate.

I know he's carried a lot of bills for the county over the years, and this might be one of those years where he isn't able to be as helpful in that regard.

But certainly we'll look to co-patient whatever we can.

So anyway, I know that some of his priorities, just like many years, are going to be in the area of mental health and possibly some legislation relating to election laws.

We're still trying to figure out which 20 are going to make it, so to speak.

Those priorities are a moving target, shall we say.

Obviously, the budget's going to be a big issue just like any year, and we're looking forward to the beginning of that process, so to speak, when the governor releases his budget next month.

Senator Deeds has been a conferee in recent years, so it's been a busy time, but fun for him.

So we hope you'll keep in touch with us on issues, funding issues that are of interest as well.

Thank you very much.

I wanted to thank everyone for having me as well.

Very informative and we'll see what we can get done this session.

Some of Senator Reeves' priorities this session, one relates to charitable gaming, which he focused on last year and over the summer in their subcommittee.

There's been some strong evidence that

There's some illegal gambling operations appearing in parts of the Commonwealth.

There's some prevalent in Spotsylvania.

I'm not sure if Albemarle is also experiencing that under the guise of charitable gaming.

So he's going to be focusing on bringing a few bills related to that, making sure that there's legitimate charities

operating under charitable gaming and that the money is going to the right place.

He'll be focusing on restoring funding to the state police to the level that they need to assist local counties as well.

He's carrying a few government bills for Louisa related to Lake Anna.

and another criminal justice specific related bill to ban quotas, police departments, for requiring their officers to have a quota.

There are probably a host of other bills that we'll be carrying, but I guess those are a few off the top of my head.

Again, thank you.

Feel free to reach out to us during,

Coming up to session and through session, happy to work with you guys.

Thank you, sir.

Well, thanks again for having me and also putting up with the technological difficulties.

We're still sort of putting together bill lists, and obviously there was a change in the make of the House, so we're shuffling what kind of bills to look at, what might pass, what might not pass.

One of the things that I think everyone's aware there has been a significant problem with admissions to the state hospitals, and this has had

just has impacted everything like we call the downstream but may probably upstream but everyone upstream who's waiting for those openings to occur so we've heard repeated issues where a temporary detention order has been issued and the difficulty in finding a bed has worked its way up to the point where members of Albemarle Police, Sheriff's offices nearby are having to sit with the person for significant lengths of time in emergency rooms while they look to find a bed.

We've been watching this issue become more and more emergent over the last couple of years and Senator Deeds and I have sort of reviewed what's happening.

The initial thought was perhaps we had a lot more of the TDOs.

That did not prove to be true.

It's been relatively flat.

What we have had is a very significant decrease in the number of admissions to private hospitals.

And this has been a trend line that went from concerning to alarming to the current crisis and were to continue.

Even if you were to build additional open state hospital beds and staff them, it would be a one-time fix.

The next year you would again have the problem arise because we're missing so many from the private hospitals.

He and I have discussed various methods and bills to try to not

increase and simply go back to the number of admits we had three or four years ago.

We had that there would be none of these issues that we're talking about.

So that's something we're looking at.

There's two other, since the bed spaces have become so precious, two other things we're looking at.

One would be that there is a part of the state that is using those beds to restore misdemeanors to competency.

And there's a lot of words there, but that the state hospital beds are the highest value, most capable beds we have, and to use them for that purpose may not be ideal.

So Professor Bonnie has actually, over at the law school, has had a fairly big proposal, but might also address or at least help address that issue.

And at the other end, so to speak, for 200 beds that are for people that are ready to be released but can't find communities to accept them with all the wraparound services they need.

So we're hoping that if we do all those things, we can try to address the bed shortage quickly.

And then over the long run, everybody agrees that if we can have better care before someone reaches the crisis point, that's ideal.

That's always the long term goal.

But in the meantime, we need to do something right away.

A couple of other things that I don't know that would directly affect you.

They come out of experiences and special needs constituents or citizens or whatever you want to describe them over COVID.

And some of the things that have been put together as stop gaps have actually worked pretty well.

We were at a meeting where a parent said the following, I have a child who is profoundly special needs autistic and is physically dangerous, is big enough that when the child, when certain things exhibit themselves, it can cause injury to caretakers.

She has not had any luck with that in finding someone.

Just for the period of COVID, if you have a waiver, they would allow the parent to stay in and be the paid provider.

This doesn't expand who is eligible.

It's just a different avenue for the person to get services.

It's worked through COVID.

I've talked to DMASS.

We can't think of a real good reason why that couldn't continue after.

It's a way to, again, provide for a tiny number of people that really have trouble finding a way to get care.

and also unrelated, but in the same space.

There are some things they're doing with telehealth that they would like to continue.

We would never have tried them absent all of the COVID emergencies, but now we've tried them.

They seem to work.

We're going to try to do those too.

Those are some of the things sort of uncertain and on my plate.

Many of those will be done through the budget process, not a freestanding bill, but those are some of the things I'm working on.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, all of you.

It's good to see you, and I hope we'll get to do this in person someday again soon.

As you may be hearing in the headlines, I think the biggest news out of Richmond is that the state is running a record surplus, and that comes as a surprise to many Virginians who feel like they are

Virginia has woefully underfunded core services in education and healthcare for many years and we have an opportunity now with this surplus to level set to fill those holes to get back to a sustainable

and to set a better course for going forward.

That includes everything from mental health where we closed five state hospitals during the heat of the pandemic.

I don't know any school division that didn't have a hard time hiring enough bus drivers that isn't facing teacher shortages in at least some specialties.

If you talk to the nurses at our hospitals, they'll tell you that the waiting list for primary care is many months long.

So I think that we need to be doing a lot more to provide really meaningful compensation for those workers who are really at their wits end.

That's the budget side.

On the statutory side, I think there's also a lot that we can do to help families stretch their dollars further.

I know one of the top conversations on the campaign trail this fall was the rising cost of living in Virginia, so I will be carrying some bills on the consumer protection front to lower the cost of energy and prescription drugs and protect patients from medical debt, things that we can do to make it easier to make ends meet.

And then also some work to try to make

Help to help more Virginians cope from the fallout from COVID, especially when it comes to substance abuse.

We've seen record increases in overdoses and deaths, and I think that there's some important work that we can do to treat substance abuse like the public health and safety challenge that it is, and to provide less punishment and more support for people facing those problems.

So those are some of my priorities.

And I know that especially for many of you who've spent your careers working in education and health and social services, that they're shared.

So I thank you for all the work you do at the local level.

And especially, it warms my heart every time I see the county topping the list of this or that coping with COVID measure, whether it's our vaccination rates.

We have so much to be proud of from the county and all the Blue Ridge Health District.

Thank you.

And I'll share my colleagues appreciation for y'all putting this together and delegate Hudson's comment to listen.

Hopefully we'll be back doing this in person at some point in time.

I think we've all adapted pretty well to the zoom thing, but it is still zoom.

So I have a number of areas that are legislative priorities for me and just kind of go down through the list in no particular order.

One area that continues is support of the Virginia Tuition Aid Assistance Grant, excuse me, for private education.

I think that continues to be an area that offers particular opportunities for residents of Commonwealth to create opportunities for affordable higher education.

I look forward to that.

An area that's probably a little more narrowly defined is that we have identified, a number of clerks of courts have identified that we have records, paper records that in the way they were stored historically for about a 30 or 40 year period is failing.

And so those records, if they're not dealt with, will disappear at some point in time.

It will be unusable.

And so what we're going to talk about is creating a records retention study that would look at, ultimately, how do you digitize those?

What is the extent of the problem throughout the Commonwealth?

And then what are the costs anticipated so that we can start moving forward in addressing this issue before it becomes a crisis?

I'll share the concerns that delegates Bell and Hudson's did about behavior health issues and providing resources.

I was extremely disappointed that we shut down five hospitals during the recent pandemic, admissions to hospitals for behavior health.

And so those areas are areas that we'll continue to work with on that.

A couple of areas that are applicable more to localities

is that several years ago there was recordation fees that were transferred away from local governments into a transportation authority.

And so at least one of my jurisdictions that experienced a $200,000 loss for these.

So I've worked with a number of delegates throughout the Commonwealth and there'll be legislation introduced to return that to the distribution model of prior years so that

All localities get their equal amounts or their fair amounts.

Another area that is of concern, at least on the west side of the Blue Ridge, is the state responsible prisoners issue.

We've had a couple of regional jails that have reached pretty significant overcapacity issues because the state was unable or unwilling to move their prisoners.

within the timeline they're required.

So we're looking at some legislation that would create incentives for that and try to remove this unpredictable, unfunded mandate that localities have to absorb when the Department of Corrections gets behind on moving those prisoners.

Some areas, again, that continuation of some prior legislation is disability waiver increases, provider care compensation,

There's some particular language to address some funding caps that will make it more user friendly for the various families that are experiencing those funding caps.

Another area that's of a particular issue for localities that has land use, and I think all three jurisdictions that I represent and fortunate to represent utilize land use taxation.

And under the school composite index at this point in time, that is not accounted for.

And so it tends to move some dollars away from the rural areas, excuse me, that participate in land use and other areas.

And so we're going to ask for that to be looked at in a different way.

Sales tax issue relating to some water, wastewater equipment that various authorities and local governments can utilize in the process.

So end up saving them some money there.

Let's see, a couple of other areas, animal control.

We have a mixed bag of animal control officers as they are throughout the Commonwealth of whether they're considered law enforcement.

And we have asked that we see if there's a way to develop legislation that would all those folks would become considered law enforcement and would fall then under the state retirement system and

relating to law enforcement and the other protections that law enforcement folks have.

Just seems the way we're doing it's a hodgepodge and it almost is luck of the draw where you are is how you're treated under that.

Some other areas relating to broadband would be that currently co-ops on their middle mile cost, capital cost recovery are treated differently than other regulated utilities.

So we're going to introduce legislation that would make everybody treated the same on that.

And my thought is that that's going to continue to encourage the electric co-ops to provide the middle mile capacity so that we can continue to have broadband in the community.

There's a number of others that are probably a little more local.

One local government town in Rockingham County wants some legislation and things like that.

But again, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all.

Thank you.

Thank you again for allowing us to be part of this conversation.

We do have a working list of legislation.

I won't go through all of it, but Delegate Ferris is

working on putting forth some legislation for a study directed to the Joint Commission on Healthcare to study the benefits of hospitals, health systems, and other providers addressing the health-related social needs of Virginians.

We are also working on some legislation that was put forth last year for health insurance for realtors and looking at broadening that to different other associations.

We also have a few local government bills that we're putting forth.

So that's our main agenda right now, as I said, we're still working.

And thank you again.

We do also would like to be included in the conversation with the police department and the farm building legislation.

So please put us on that list.

We would like to be in that conversation.

Thank you very much.

I believe I have hit everyone.

I'll certainly go through and I'll give supervisors a chance to do any follow up remarks or comments or any final comments here will be rounding third folks.

So we'll go through our order.

When you were talking about the hospital beds decreasing to private hospitals, is there a component of the licensure process that the Commonwealth has

to require that a private hospital have some percentage of their beds be available for this process.

And that's just an idea to drop with you to think about, because I know in other states where we have lived, they did have that requirement, but it was years and years and years ago.

In support of Delegate Runyon's effort to have

Look at the school composite index as it regards the land use communities.

I'm thrilled that you're willing to pick up that shield and sword again and happy to help if I can.

And that's, I guess, all I had on my list.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, and thank you to all of our legislative delegation for your, again, joining us as we work together throughout our respective communities.

It really is government at work, and we really appreciate the time you spend with us.

Thank you.

Yes, I reiterate that or I concur with what Supervisor Price said, that we are very, very thankful and appreciative of all the hard work you do and also for your support.

We really do count on you to be able to get some of the things that we need to get done here in the county for our residents.

I'll just say thank you.

Everybody hit so many things that have been concerning me that I won't go through them all, but I do want to very much mention appreciation to

Delegate Bell for going through the detail of the hospital beds and whatnot.

And I'm hoping on the mental health issue, our tremendous shortage of mental health nursing staff.

I don't know if all of you are addressing pay on those state positions,

aggressively.

I don't know really what to do.

I know we have a shortage of health care workers in many, many different venues, but it seems to be particularly acute in our state hospitals, so just to mention that.

And I'm looking forward to hearing a little more if there's anything going on about climate change.

I know that COVID and health care and mental health have

really, and all these other issues of first responders and pay and police, et cetera, are top of the list at this point, but I'm hoping everybody is thinking climate change also.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

In listening to our conversation today, it really did strike me as there were many more things that we are agreeing on than we are disagreeing about.

And certainly we really appreciate all your help.

I agree with Liz.

We did have a chance to address climate change.

I would just encourage you to think about

I mean the localities, the ability to deal with some climate change, some issues that might really help us locally with our climate action plan that would take you out of the mix and make it a lot easier for us to take some actions.

I also appreciate

the situation around mental health beds.

I would suggest that funding to localities for mental health issues is really critical at this point.

And someone mentioned the, I think it was Sally, mentioned the surplus funds that the state has seen.

When we're talking about looking for mental health beds, when we're talking about lots of these issues, I think at least part of the improvements would be realized if we upgraded our infrastructure around systems and technology.

We found during COVID how old our systems were when it comes to the Virginia Employment Commission.

We found how old our technology systems were for the health departments.

And surplus one-time money, that's a great

use for some of this one-time money to upgrade our systems and bring us into the 21st century.

I would encourage you to think about that as well.

Obviously, education composite index has been a problem for us for years as it relates to our land use policies.

So I'm thrilled to hear that as well in just education in general.

to see if we can't make education whole again would be wonderful.

I'd like to make two comments, both that originated out of the VACO conference this year.

And one was in a group session where super, I'm not remembering the name and Supervisor Price or Capisto-Kirtley can correct me if I get the sentiment wrong,

There was a supervisor from Rockingham County that when talking about the surplus that is there, reminded that there are some state bills that have gone unpaid to the localities and that there are things that that money should be used for to shore those unfunded items up before we start talking about what the true amount of the surplus is.

So I think that's certainly a worthwhile point to spread around to everyone and have that conversation.

The other is, it was in a session that Mr. Moray of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, in a presentation he made, it was on the state of economic development and specifically what can we do to pull in some good businesses into Virginia.

And talked about Governor Northam's priority of site preparedness around the state, and also that incoming Governor Youngkin also had that priority when it came to economic development.

and that is one that I would just would like to willingly endorse here that as we go through the, whether it's budget or other conversations, that it sounds like that's a good nonpartisan issue that we all can support and agree to get behind and helping to drive the type of economic development that's going to be, that we're all going to benefit from here in the Commonwealth.

So I was happy to hear that from one administration to the next and just wanted again to endorse that idea and concept as well.

I have nothing.

Yes, Chair Galloway, I was just going to add, pipe in on your last statement about the VEDP initiative.

I know I was approached in my capacity with the Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions about a month or so ago about that initiative, and VAPDC has gone on board in supporting the additional dollars for site readiness, I believe.

VML, VACO, the State Economic Development Association, and a number of other groups are also supporting that.

Thank you, David.

Mr. Richardson, we've not given you a chance.

No, sir.

Nothing of substance other than to thank all of the elected officials for your service to the Commonwealth and for what you do for the citizens every day and the people who live here.

Thank you, sir.

And with that, I would like to thank all of you again.

It's been out there, but the level of engagement today and the willingness to have follow up conversation with our police department and or the supervisors, our county attorney, David, to continue working on seeing some of these priorities get through.

So we very much appreciate not just the time, but the level of conversation that we've had and will continue to have to work through these items.

So I know all of you have tremendous amount of

Don't have a tremendous amount of time on your schedule.

So we do appreciate you taking the time to be with us on an annual basis.

And hopefully by the next time around, we'll be able to do this in person.

But if there is no objection and no additional thank yous to give, then I will adjourn this supervisor's meeting until December 1st, 2021, 1 p.m.

That will be an electronic meeting pursuant to ordinance number 20-A-16, 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.

Thank you all very much for your time.

Thank you.