Board of Supervisors Meeting   2/18/2025

We're going to open this afternoon's meeting with public comments.

To reiterate public comments, you get three minutes to say what's on your mind, and with 30 seconds left, Dr. Ligon will put up a sign for you and let you know you're getting to the end at that time.

We should wrap up what it is you have to say.

And if you're speaking for a group, you should specify because you may then speak for five minutes, if you wish.

And if you give your name and address and speak directly to the board, we'll be glad to hear what you have to say.

Good afternoon.

I'm Edith Napier, 43 Napier Loop, Arrington, Virginia.

First, I would like to say a special thanks to VDOT and the county personnel for the road work they did during the snow.

I know it was hard work, but it was appreciated by me and citizens of Nelson.

I come here today on behalf of the Nelson County

and the Juneteenth Celebration Committee.

Special thanks to all the committee members for their continued work, hard work and dedication.

I come to you today to request your support on behalf of the citizens

of Nelson County for the 2025 Juneteenth Celebration, which will take place on June 22nd, 2025.

We're requesting a donation of $5,000.

This year's celebration will focus on historical black colleges and universities and the educational opportunities they offer to all students.

We are thrilled to announce that we are anticipating the college we will be able to offer on the spot a mission for Nelson graduates.

In collaboration with the high schools, students of Nelson will have the chance to be accepted into college on the day that they meet on Juneteenth.

Last year's celebration emphasized multi-generational entertainment and education, including private poetry,

Music and other activities.

For those who attended, it was a growing success.

Lots of people, they enjoyed it, and it was a good time for all.

We are grateful to the Nelson Purdie Center for allowing the committee to host the function there once again.

but it's important to note that the Juneteenth Committee is composed of citizens of Nelson County and operate independently from the Nelson Heritage Center.

We appreciate the support and partnership that the center provides in making this event possible.

Once again, on behalf of the Nelson County Juneteenth Celebration Committee and the Citizen Nelson, I earnestly request you to support the Juneteenth Celebration.

Your backing is crucial in making this event a success.

For planning purposes, we need to hear from you as soon as possible.

And I am here to answer any questions you might have.

Stephen Bain, 620 Farmock, Klein, Nellysford, Board of Supervisors.

This is regarding information received from FOIA requests for Renaissance Ridge, partner Nelson County Community Development Fund, as well as Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and its consortium organizations.

Note that NCCDF, who received significant funding from Nelson County, refused to provide this information and were forced to go to HUD.

From the agreement and marketing terms requested and received, we have confirmation that Renaissance Ridge and NCCDF are prioritizing many specialty groups exclusive to Charlottesville, Albemarle County instead of workforce housing for Nelson County first responders and teachers.

This information confirms the fact that Renaissance Ridge and NCCDF with TJPDC et al.

are using Nelson County taxes and real estate for the benefit

of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

The following are exclusively Charlottesville and Albemarle County groups that are being prioritized in Renaissance Ridge.

Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, The Haven, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Crescendo Juntos, Network to Work, City of Promise, International Rescue Committee.

Following are Jefferson Area community groups of which Nelson County is a distinct minority that are being prioritized in Renaissance Ridge.

Offender Aid and Restoration, L.A.R., B.R.H.D.

Habwa Coordinator, Independence Resource Center.

Renaissance Ridge and NCCDF with TJPDC et al.

have unilaterally decided to expand these groups from Charlottesville and Albemarle County into Nelson County real estate.

How can this be done ethically and morally without bilateral discussion with Nelson County?

How can this be done without at least transparently notifying Nelson County residents?

Nelson County must be prepared for extreme change to and increased cost of service delivery to residents from these changes.

We have known the Renaissance Ridge is a poor excuse for a steward for Nelson County.

All that they care about are the grant funds.

Unfortunately, this appears to also apply

This unfortunately provides confirmation.

Please request and review these agreements and marketing terms, particularly from NCCDF.

Thank you.

My name is Libby Whitley.

I don't live in the northern part of the county.

I live in Roseland, 180 Humbly's Cap Road.

I'd like to associate myself with Steve Bain's comments just now.

Even though I've lived in the county now for 25 years, I just recently became aware of the consequences of Renaissance Ridge, and I have to tell you I'm gravely concerned about the impact on the county as a whole.

I think that my first attention was drawn by the International Rescue Committee reference in the HUD documents.

I have some personal experience with the IRC, which is paid by the federal government to house what they call their client groups.

which are drawn from countries all over the world.

IRC is one of the principal non-governmental organizations, NGOs, funneling people through the Darien Gap up through Mexico and into the United States which given the current administration in Washington DC may have some

Pause, but I really am very concerned.

If you have the IRC as the principal outreach entity to house occupants at Renaissance Ridge, you're going to see populations from all over the world.

The impact on the school system, the law enforcement, the social services is going to be extreme in the county, and I think the board needs to understand that function.

And also, even though I've lived here for 20 odd years,

I was vaguely aware that there was a housing development under consideration up in the Nellysford area, but I do not think that the occupants, the citizens of Nelson County are aware of what is being envisioned.

And there have not been any public hearings that I'm aware of on Renaissance Ridge that are aimed at the county as a whole.

And I urge the board to undertake that kind of a hearing and outreach to the community, because I think you're going to get quite a bit of pushback.

Furthermore, even though I'm in the southern part of the county, not the northern part of the county, I understand that if Renaissance Ridge goes through, there's discussion of similar developments in the Lovingston area, and then Piney River, which is my backyard.

And these communities, we have, at the moment, we already have the Ryan School development, we have Town Creek, we have Lovingston Ridge, most of these

don't attract current Nelson residents.

They're being pulled in from out of the area.

Charlottesville, Albemarle, Flovana, that doesn't address the homeless and the low, thanks, doctor, that does not address the housing challenges of current Nelson residents.

And I think the Renaissance Ridge would have the exact same effect, which is not to reach out to the current Nelson population that needs housing,

So I've taken my three minutes.

I just urge you to have some public hearings on this matter because I think it reaches way beyond simply the Nellysford area.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Stu Armstrong.

I live at 270 Solomel Creek Drive.

I've been there for over 30 years.

And over this last 30 years, I've done about 20 years of public service myself from the school board, the Blue Ridge Medical Center, and actually served on the board of directors of Wintergreen and a variety of other boards.

And I'll tell you, on each one of those boards, like you might experience, I know on the school board, how do you retain

How do you recruit and retain employees?

And I will tell you, I see Mr.

Sheets is here from Wintergreen Fire Department.

What I've been told and what I've been asked and why I came out of retirement to work on this project for the workforce housing side is because a lot of my contemporaries would ask me, wow, where are kids going to live?

If you don't own land and can build something for your child and some land that you own,

Where are they going to live?

I find my kids can't afford to come back here and live.

So that really what drove me and then I also was on the economic development authority and I realized that businesses had a hard time recruiting and retaining.

So having said all that, my expertise is community development finance at Piedmont Housing Alliance where I was executive director for 17 years.

We helped over 750 families buy their first home.

And those aren't people that are associated with homelessness or all the myths or all the mumbo jumbo you're hearing from the community.

It's ridiculous.

I can say that point blank.

It's ridiculous.

And it's a bunch of mumbo jumbo because nobody can really come out and do the math.

How are you going to afford a $300,000 product making $20,000 a year?

You can't.

A firefighter at Wintergreen starts at $48,000.

That's almost $20,000 less than where we can start to help people buy homes.

Your own sheriff deputies are around $50,000 a year.

That's $18,000 less than the threshold to start helping people.

So all this, like I said, mumbo jumbo talk about

How it's going to destroy our community or hurt our community.

I live in Stony Creek.

And I wouldn't do something to lower my property values.

So I don't understand where it's all coming from.

It's just a lot of fear mongering.

And some people might say fake news, so to speak.

And so that's all I have to say.

If anybody has any questions in the audience, in the community, on where the camera is, feel free to come talk to me.

I can give you a nice PhD level education on affordable housing.

Thank you.

My name is Carla Malou.

I live at 1 Mosby Lane, Fallburg, Virginia.

And if I could sum it up as succinctly as possible, I believe that this board's responsibility is to make Nelson County more prosperous.

And I think, this is my personal opinion, that the way to do that is to go out and scour the countryside and bring good paying jobs to the county.

If the board were to succeed at that, the housing situation would take care of itself.

Now, I don't think that we make the county prosperous by going out into the surrounding areas, rounding up and importing in large numbers their indigent populations.

Now, I know that Stu said that these are people that are just on the border of being able to afford their own house.

And if you use the $50,000 example for our deputies, if they have a working spouse, now they are able to afford a house.

So if we want working class people here, all we need to do is to make affordable housing and good paying jobs.

We don't need to become, we're already in the bedroom community for Alden-Arles-Harlesfield and other surrounding

metropolitan areas.

Thank you.

That's all of the people that I have signed up for public comments.

I got here just in time.

Hi, my name is Paul Davis, 2514 Rockfish Valley Highway, Nellysford, Virginia.

I'm just, when I saw the list, I'm here about the Renaissance Ridge also, and my, excuse me, my mumbo jumbo is about three agencies that's on that list, OAR, Haven, and IRC.

I've worked directly with these three agencies over my career.

OAR, I worked there over five years after initial retirement.

OER works for people that are currently in the criminal justice system, probation, pending court cases, drug court, mental health docket.

Most are from low-income environments and have a lack of trust for those in authority, not just law enforcement, but also the counselors in Region 10.

I say this because this is how they would act, and many told me that.

One of my roles was to conduct home visits for the drug court clients.

During my time, only a very small percentage of the clients lived with their family members, parents, and grandparents.

Most lived with their significant others at the time, or other state and local assisted housing.

Their addresses changed frequently.

It was not unusual for the city and county police to contact me about involvement with the clients that occurred well after our normal business hours.

They are a great organization with what they offer.

I did see change in people's lives, not because of their addresses though, but because they wanted a different life, and the process, which could take one or two years, was done with intense assistance.

I'm a believer in the OER and what it can offer their clients, but at the same time, they were not in the business that I was ever aware of of partnering with housing developers for their clients.

The Haven provides shelter, though limited, for food, clothing, and directs basic services to the homeless in Charlottesville.

Some are from all over the country, and I've had some tell me that.

And they say they come here because, quote, everything's free.

Food, transportation, medical, EBT cards.

And it's not unusual for clients from OER to also frequent the haven.

The IRC, International Rescue Committee, just like somebody else said, they bring refugees from all over the globe.

They refine their housing.

But other services are basically up to the locals once they are put in.

At a presentation that was put on by our city to our police department at the time, I asked the representative, so who do we call after hours if there's any kind of issues?

Because there's a lot of language, cultural issues, and so forth.

And I asked, who do we call if there's a problem or issue?

I was told, do not call us.

Use the language line and you determine what services they need.

All three of these organizations are currently based around the downtown Charlottesville area and that's because most of the services they provide are located within walking distance of each other.

Most of the clients I work with have no driver's license or they've been suspended in basic travel.

It's difficult.

They all assist with getting people housing but not building the units or partnering with the developers that I'm aware of.

All three of these agencies do good work and have good intention.

Again, they all do good work.

I was shocked when I learned about these organizations or partnered with the developers wanting to build a Renaissance Ridge.

I'm sure most citizens of the county and certainly those in Stony Creek would be as well.

Not sure if this is a good fit and question would it even be fair to the clients of these organizations living in that development.

Hi.

I'm nervous for some reason.

Margaret Clear, I'm the executive director of the Nelson County Community Development Foundation.

Just wanted to clarify a few points that have been made.

There are no grants that are pending for Renaissance Ridge.

There were some that we had gotten around 2021 that because of timing and some scope issues, we did not use those grants.

Probably the information this group of people is accessing or the marketing that we have to do for those grants that say how are we going to reach out to those normally disenfranchised folks to make sure that they know that there's an opportunity to buy a home in Renaissance Ridge.

So that's the second point that I'd like to make, that Renaissance Ridge is a home purchase.

It's not a rental.

So as this gentleman pointed out, those organizations we might reach out to to market to people who might be eligible to purchase in our scope of helping people buy homes.

And it's required by law and by those grant requests that we do that outreach.

We have no, there's no,

process at all to try to import people into the county for rentals or whatever at Renaissance Ridge.

That's just been completely taken out of context.

The houses are for purchase, are focused.

And matter of fact, Renaissance Ridge is a development company

They do not have to try to make these affordable houses or houses affordable to anybody in Nelson for anybody.

They could just do a market rate and they would sell them all really, really fast.

Because of Stu's extensive experience in affordable housing and also everybody's well known.

Everybody knows that we need affordable housing in this county.

That's why they asked

and Zee CDF to help them find the people who could purchase homes there and help us find the funds to subsidize their purchases.

So some of the organizations are regional in nature like the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

They regionally support us.

They do housing counseling for people in Nelson who want to buy their first home.

So I just wanted to clear the record

that it's not for rent, it's not for homelessness.

I wish we did have homeless resources here in the county, but we do not.

We have to use Charlottesville's resources.

So I guess that, you know, regional nature doesn't want to go this way, it wants to just go that way.

Thank you.

Anybody else like to speak during public comments?

If not, I will close public comments.

Mr. Chairman, I move we approve the consent agenda as presented.

OK. We have a motion or second.

OK. Mr. Parr?

Yes.

Dr. Ligon?

Mr. Rutherford?

Good evening, how are y'all today?

Very good, thank you.

Laurel Road headed towards Route 6, yes Route 6, Irish, probably about a half mile before you get to it.

There's a culvert pipe there that has a history of clogging up, especially in snow events.

I had sent correspondence to staff recently about it.

Some of the neighbors had mentioned, they said they've heard that the pipes just rot out and might require the removal of asphalt and replacement of the pipe.

I'd like to advocate for that because the last several snowstorms, debris was slow to trickle out, created some flooding opportunity there.

I do have another culvert pipe on Glade that I will send you an email about with the address.

I can't remember.

I wrote it down and forgot on that one.

But beyond that, I do not have any further.

Thank you guys for all you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a couple as well.

Finley Gap Road, I call it Snow Hill that term.

Currently

Of course water was flowing over the road in the usual place, but now it's so muddy and slimy that people are avoiding it and are on the wrong side of the road in the turn.

So that's a concern.

Lonesome Pines Road actually I think is in his district, but ran into someone.

That road is bad.

It comes off of Naked Mountain and heads towards Craigtown.

That is your district.

Yeah.

Okay.

Did she call you?

Yeah.

and then before the snow, well during the snow, there's a decent amount of flooding in Gladstone proper in the city itself and I know there's been chatter, we might just have to bring this up.

So first of all, I want to reiterate thank you for all the hard work that your employees and your subs have done.

Fantastic job and you get to do it all again in the next couple of days.

So there is a driveway on Lowesville Road, about 778 in Piney River between Dollar General and the Firehouse.

and a couple of years ago, because of the drainage there, it kicks off and floods Lowesville Road and there's a culvert going into this driveway.

Well, Mr. Brown arranged it where if the landowner would provide the culvert, you all would go in and do the work.

I think the culvert that was found was undersized

and we're continuing to have not only is it continuing to flood Lowesville Road and cause problems there but it has once again washed out the gentleman's driveway and he's got some rough cut sawmill planks getting him across right now so I mentioned this to Mr. Mays and Brian but I figured I'd mention it to you as well so if we could

Truly what needs to happen is a larger pipe.

Jeremy mentioned something about doing some work in the creek, in the ditch, you know, coming into that to help divert some of the water and keep it from going into Lowesville Road.

But that's the bottom line is it's flooding Lowesville Road and it can be dangerous right there.

So I've got a personal story for you.

At the intersection of River Road and Adile, a couple of weeks ago I was

headed westbound and was making a left-handed turn onto Eight Isle Road.

And another car was coming towards me, going every bit of 55.

And I couldn't get out of his way soon enough and totaled my Toyota Tacoma.

And there just aren't enough Toyota Tacomas to go around in the world, you know.

and we were both, no one was injured and we were very fortunate that that's what happened.

But a speed limit of 55 coming into an intersection that is not only a tight intersection, relatively tight, but coming up over a hill.

I know from experience that, personal experience that if he had been going 45 I would have probably

Yielded to him instead of making the term that I did.

There's been speed limit problems on River Road that Mr. Brown is more than familiar with, and if there was some signage going eastbound that would slow those people down, I'd feel a whole lot better when I go home at night coming home from Lovingston.

Anyway, if you could take a look at that, the lighted arrows at Old Roberts Mountain Road on River Road have been really effective I think in decreasing the accidents there.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And again, thanks and gratitude for all the work that you did.

And a couple of us know that we've had, and we're looking for a positive future in the county moving forward.

Thank you.

Spring is getting close.

Thank you.

We've got a presentation, the Virginia State Police Heat Program Grant.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.

Good to be with you all today.

I want to take a few minutes and just bring to your attention an initiative that our office is looking to undertake in the next coming months and explain to you how it's funded and what the intent is for.

Thank you.

Going back to October of last year, our office had put in for a grant through the Virginia State Police heat program.

Heat represents to eliminate auto theft.

Within several days of submitting our application, the sheriff's office was fortunate to have received the grant funding in the amount of $12,500.

That money is to be allocated under the premise that it is to help eliminate any kind of auto theft or go to preventing auto theft here in Nelson County.

So once we had received that, I had reached out to our friends and neighbors to our North Albemarle County, Amherst County, and our friends to our East and West.

And many of our neighbors that had also gotten this grant or some other grant had invested in a camera system by Flock Safety.

Flock Safety is a state vendor.

through procurement.

And what this is, this is a camera system.

This is cameras that, if you all are familiar with what's called LPR, license plate breeders.

So myself and my staff, we've had multiple conversations with Flock Safety over the course, since dated back in October.

What we're looking to do with the $12,500 that was funded to us by the Virginia State Police,

We have to spend this money, which the county would get 100% reimbursement of the $12,500 back by May 31st.

So we're kind of coming up on a deadline here very shortly.

What we're looking to do is purchase three cameras.

And strategically, three cameras will come to the cost of $12,500.

These cameras are intended to be strategically placed upon public highways.

We've identified two public highways to get the maximum increased value or efficiency, if you will, in the detection and recovery of stolen vehicles.

It's not just that it's stolen in Nelson County by air office, but any vehicle that would be traveling, stolen anywhere outside of Commonwealth of Virginia, within the Commonwealth of Virginia, traveling upon a public highway here in Nelson County.

So what we're looking to do

is purchased three cameras.

Two of those cameras will be placed on the Route 29 corridor.

We have located and identified private property, 29 southbound at the Albemarle County line.

This is a individual that has granted consent for a camera to go there that would help detect any kind of any motor vehicle coming south into air jurisdiction out of Albemarle County.

The second location will be 29 northbound, just north of the Amherst County.

These are jurisdictions.

Those dots indicated all the customers from different agencies in Virginia.

So this is very, very prevalent.

OK. You see there the 29 corridor.

So Lovingston, we've pretty much admitted that this was an initial plan that we had talked about and discussed with the flock folks back on, it was last Thursday, I believe.

This was the plan for four cameras.

That's not going to happen because we can't afford four cameras.

What we can't afford is three cameras.

These are not exact locations at this point.

We are looking at two cameras on the 29 corridor coming northbound out of Amherst, coming southbound out of Albemarle.

The third camera we will be looking for on River Road Route 6.

We've identified private property in the 1600 block.

This would maximize any vehicles coming off the 151 corridor out of the Shenandoah Valley that's coming into our jurisdiction, approaching the 29 corridor or vice versa.

The 29 corridor that vehicles are trying to get to the Shenandoah Valley.

So we're looking at three cameras how this works.

If these license plate readers detect, and they're constantly scanning license plates from motor vehicles that are entering the beam of travel, if you will, they detected the vehicle, that license plate or that vehicle has been entered and stolen, then that information automatically goes to our office and the deputy's terminal seat within their vehicle.

We know the location, we know the time, we get an automatic picture of that vehicle.

As you know, and thank you again to this body that gave us, initiated a traffic position back in October.

That traffic position will formalize come May 1st of this year once the school system is let out.

We will have a unit dedicated to the 29 corridor and the 151 corridor.

So that should help at any point in time that we get a detection of this that we will have a unit readily available.

So that is what AIR, that is what the purpose of this is.

In speaking with other jurisdictions, they have success rates in, again, locating vehicles that are stolen, again, outside of other states.

This isn't just Virginia vehicles that are stolen out of Virginia.

This is nationwide.

So it's technology.

For us right now, it's 100% funded.

We're not asking anything from the county.

This contract, this is a two-year contract, so outside of contract year number one is $12,500.

Year two would be $11,000.

Now how do we pay for that?

Virginia State Police will open this back up, this heat awards program, back up with a grant effective July 1.

Our office will submit for this same grant that we were awarded to pay for year one.

If awarded that grant, that pays year two.

If not, if there is no funding available or we are not elected to get that grant, then this program will go from one year and then we will turn the camera equipment back over.

I'm not asking anything from this county or this board to fund anything with this program, zero.

So I just want to make sure I'm perfectly clear on that.

So I'm happy to answer any questions, any concerns, any issues.

As far as the southbound 29th, excuse me, the northbound 29th corridor coming out of Amherst, what we've identified is a couple of businesses I have yet to approach the business owners about having the camera put there.

The issues with the 29 corridor comes down to VDOT right away and they are having statewide there are issues with VDOT and lawsuits that have been pending statewide with the Fox system throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia and we want to avoid all that so that's pretty much where we're at so three cameras twelve thousand five hundred dollars we've been awarded that money cost the county nothing except the upfront

first, year two, we will apply and I will let this board know in writing whether or not we received grant funding for year two.

Again, it costs the county nothing.

If we do not, then this camera system will be in effect and then at the end of the year, equipment will be returned and we'll see what the success rate is for locating vehicles with the next

I'm happy to answer any questions.

This is technology we see that other jurisdictions are using, successful.

I'm happy to bring that technology here to this county.

As you know, again, we identified the 29 corridor.

What we have coming in and out from the Carolinas going all the way to DC, not just locating stolen vehicles, but it could lead to a whole lot of other stuff as well.

We know we have human trafficking coming through the area.

It's hard to say what we have on this corridor with the methamphetamine trade, trafficking, and fentanyl.

Not necessarily.

I want to be fully transparent to let you all know.

Again, thank you, Ms. McGarry.

That's the main consideration is if he's not able to secure the funds for subsequent years, would the board consider that in the future or not?

I want to let you all know the success rate of this.

Year one, let you know how we're doing and what we've identified.

One, what we've recovered, what we've identified, and in addition to the recovery of a stolen vehicle, what other cases that that has also led to.

And I would certainly think that that would be a determinant factor, but as I stand here now, I want to put this solely on grant funding that the state has.

It looks, from what I have recently been told, it looks like that money will be appropriated for us.

So just curious who, you know, obviously this reads the license plate, is it drives by, who's monitoring that system?

It won't be in our office so it is a database.

So it will be state police.

There's a lot of legislature right now in the General Assembly and there's, it has been, it hasn't been finalized yet about how long that that material

It's very, very speedy technology.

So they do.

They have it in their own

A lot of vehicle in-car cameras at this point have license plate readers.

We looked at that.

If you remember, I came before this body about body cameras, and thank you again for funding that.

The vehicle in-car camera system is so expensive, I would hate to even have a business board for it.

Most of the state and most of your larger agencies have this technology in their vehicles, but it is extremely expensive.

No, it would.

So, you said the data is, is the data stored with the state at this point?

We discussed this earlier and you had informed me that both Amherst and Albemarle County currently have the technology?

So it's my understanding through Amherst, I'll give you an example of Amherst, most of Amherst's technology for this is in the Madison Heights area because you get a lot of private businesses and so forth there along the way that they can defeat the VDOT right away.

KATHRYN

What I'm not aware of is the 29 bypass.

So a lot of these vehicles, anything that's coming to 29 bypasses can be picked up through that.

So they could travel to 29 bypass, come all the way into our county and never be picked up by Amherst Flock System.

Albemarle, I don't exactly know where Albemarle's system is set up, but what we're looking at with Albemarle is any vehicles that would be traveling the I-64 corridor, getting off at exit 118 outside of Charlottesville, and then traveling south

into Eyre County.

Without this, we would be relying solely upon a notification, if you will, that our neighbors to our north and south, if they got a notification of a stolen vehicle, that they would pick the phone up and call us.

And keep in mind, wherever those camera systems are, let's say Madison Heights, you're in a business area.

You've got a lot of time frame, you've got a lot of mileage in between, and our people would not have any idea where to look or anything of that nature.

This is precision.

This narrows it down.

And obviously full transparency, the one in Woods Mill is like right outside my office so it'll get to see me all the time.

Yes.

And just speaking anecdotally is seeing the traffic on Route 6 to 29 every day.

That's coming off that 64.

It is a remarkable

License plates that come through there and one thing that I think

comes to my mind of missing persons.

I saw one piece in the flock system that talks about identifying missing persons and being able to hunt down that license plate.

It's not an unknown fact that someone wants to commit a crime.

We're four and a half hours from four or five hours away from Philadelphia, major cities all over the place.

And getting from 29 to 64,

You know god forbid we have a missing person or something that turns into a homicide in this county like we had years and years ago.

If that was to happen this is technology that we could go back and we could review if we do have a

A vehicle of interest, if you will.

This is something that we can utilize these cameras to be able to help identify a time, a date, a route of travel.

It's not what this is being purchased for.

It's being purchased for the detection and recovery of stolen vehicles.

There's been some issues over the last couple of years ever since LPR has really come to the forefront.

I'll just wait and see and we'll speak with the Commonwealth Attorney once everything is finalized and signed off at the executive level.

Yeah I think that's a good idea because that way we'll know exactly what it is we're dealing with.

I mean I know we don't have a decision in this anyway.

I'm not going to make a purchase until, we've got time to make a purchase.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

New and unfinished business.

The VPSA financing for high school renovation.

As the board is aware, the school division has proceeded with their renovation project.

Currently I believe they have issued the bid, invitation for bids for the project and the next step is securing the financing.

for this project.

The financing we're looking to secure is through the BPSA, which would be a pooled bond financing in the 2025 spring pool sale.

You have before you a resolution that would authorize us to proceed with the application

for the VPSA Spring Pool Bond Sale.

And also as part of this financing, you would be authorizing a public hearing on issuing the bonds, which is proposed to be held on March 11, 2025.

And section, state code section 15.2-2606 is the state

authorizing code section to hold the public hearing on this financing.

We've also included in your packet a draft financing schedule.

I won't go through the entire thing, but a couple of the key dates.

I believe the invitation for construction bids went out January 27th.

I think they're expected to be back February 27th.

Let's see, the board is considering adopting this initial resolution for the BPSA financing today.

The school board will hold our budget work session this evening and will also consider adopting a resolution authorizing the application and requesting the bond issued and consenting to issuance of bonds.

Yes.

Yes, I believe we have included a draft of the public hearing notice as well.

Question real quick.

So right now it's the school board that's working on the actual renovation project.

OK. No, I understand.

Just keep us surprised.

I'll be curious as to how that's going.

Sorry.

All right, I'll make a motion.

Okay, motion and second.

Any further discussion?

Dr. Leggin?

Yes.

Mr. Parr?

Yes.

Mr. Rutherford?

Mr. Reed?

Yes.

And, okay.

I'll just briefly introduce this item because we do have Chief Sheets here as well and he can provide some other background and things on the request but Wintergreen Fire Department is formally requesting the appointment of a Fire Marshal for the Wintergreen

Fire Department in Nelson County.

This is pursuant to Code of Virginia 27-30 and would be specific to the Wintergreen Master Plan area.

It would function within the Wintergreen Police Department law enforcement area, and the request is being made to enhance their ability to respond to fire-related incidents with a more comprehensive, organized approach, particularly in terms of fire investigations and enforcement of fire safety regulations.

So as noted, state code session 27-30 provides for a local fire marshal to be appointed and can be given authorities as noted in the resolution under the state code without adopting the statewide fire prevention code.

So this resolution is asking you all to appoint Joshua A.

Dean as fire marshal

to serve at the pleasure of the board whose authority is limited to the geographical area encompassed by the Wintergreen Master Plan.

The appointee would also be an employee of and compensated by Wintergreen Property Owners Association and supervised by the Wintergreen Police Department.

The resolution would give the following authority and duties within those limits.

He shall make an investigation into the origin and cause of every fire and explosion occurring within the limits for which he is appointed, which is the Wintergreen Master Plan area.

He may issue a summons directed to the sheriff commanding the officer to summon witnesses to attend before him at such time and place as directed.

He would have the authority to arrest, procure, serve warrants of arrest,

and issue summons in the manner authorized by general law for violation of fire prevention and fire safety laws and related ordinances.

You will be authorized the same police powers as a sheriff, police officer, or law enforcement officer.

You will be responsible for the investigation and prosecution of all offenses involving hazardous materials, fires, fire bombings, bombings, attempts, or threats to commit such offenses.

False alarms relating to such offenses and possession and manufacture of explosive devices, substances, and fire bombs.

We would also have the authority to order immediate compliance with law, et cetera, or prohibit use of building or equipment.

The appointee's authority would commence upon completion of training as required by the Department of Criminal Justice Services and the Wintergreen Police Department and after the administration of an oath to faithfully discharge these duties.

I'll invite Chief Sheets to join us and he can help answer any questions you have.

Good afternoon.

First of all, thanks for having me.

I've never seen a firebomb at Wintergreen.

That's just code language, so it sounds scary.

But a lot of this is being driven by

Insurance Regulations, we are inspected every 10 years.

Our current inspection kind of caused us to backslide a little bit, so we're in a 12-month improvement window.

One of the areas that we had already identified as a weakness for us that we've been working on for about a year and a half anyway is this fire marshal's position.

This would not be creating a new job.

This is just a dual task of an existing captain.

We do not investigate fires at Wintergreen.

The insurance company sends their investigators to do that.

And the problem with that is sometimes if it's not a high value loss, the investigators are not, it's not a priority for them.

And so we lose the ability to pick up on trending data.

In other words, what

What may be lost because the carpenter comes in and fixes the fireplace, we didn't think to inspect that.

We don't routinely inspect that, investigate it.

But now we're three fireplace fires into this problem, and we wonder, was there a similarity?

And because we don't investigate any fires, we wouldn't necessarily pick up on data like that that we could then go to the condo associations and say, hey, well, your buildings were all

40 years old.

We're seeing this again and again.

We feel that your board needs to hire someone to come in and inspect all your fireplaces.

We don't currently do that that well, and this is a part of that.

Um, as Mr. Perry indicated, it would be limited to the master plan.

And as my boss has stipulated, anything at all that dips into the realm of law enforcement

Monks go through our chief of police whose power is, of course, extracted through your sheriff's office.

So there's tons of oversight here.

Well, unfortunately for you, I was prepared or given this information and prepared last week and then I've had a whole week to think about it.

And when I saw the ISO reference, it made me think back on a few months when I requested a survey of our fire and emergency services and you so eloquently squashed it.

and didn't squash the man who wrote the report.

And unfortunately, what I wanted to bring to the board's attention was ISO scores for Nelson County in general, not just Wintergreen.

I do not know what you're referring to.

Don't really have a lot of trust that you have the best interest of Nelson County going currently.

And I spoke to a few professional firefighter friends that I have, and they all had questions about how legal this actually is and whether we will be liable for something your guy does.

And I don't like that.

I completely understand the need for more time.

You're talking about the fire services board review?

Yes.

That was sectioned by the then boards of process.

Yes.

So that review reviewed not only fire but EMS as well.

They interviewed the leadership of every organization in Nelson County, and then the report came back to the Nelson County Emergency Services Board, not to me, to the full board, and we reviewed the documents and found

Tons of errors, and when I say errors, I mean egregious.

They had boilerplate language that would say, well, we believe that Appomattox County should have more firefighters, but it was the Nelson County report, and we kept running into just substantial errors.

So the then Nelson County Board of Emergency Services Council Board, which I've never been an officer of, decided that we needed to go through the report and rebut the factual errors, which we did do.

And we submitted our corrected version to this board, who then, as I understand it, I was a part of that conversation, voted to reject the Fire Services Board study outright.

But I was not a part of, I didn't request that study.

I was just simply one person who was interviewed out of a panel of probably a dozen.

So I apologize.

I'm interested in the ISO score of all of Nelson.

And the questions that have been brought up were, if we allow this to happen, you're a fire marshal, how is that affecting the rest of our county?

I think that because we have been meeting and discussing this for a good while now with the sheriff's office, with the common muscle attorney's office, with the state fire marshal's office, and on and on and on, I feel like we've gotten through all of that and you should be able to get all the questions that you would need answered through Mr. Payne or others, but because it's restricted to the master plan, then the only way that the county would

A.

Be able to benefit from it or B. potentially have some liability to your point would be if the resource was requested through the mutual aid agreement for us to actually leave the master plan.

So you, the sheriff's office, have called for a wintergreen investigator to come and figure out why did this fire start in the courthouse?

Very, very similar arrangement.

Quick question for you.

As it relates to reading in code section 2730, it says the term fire marshal in the last sentence, and I know you're not looking at it, I'll just read it.

It says the term fire marshal as used in this chapter may include the local fire official and local arson investigator when appointed pursuant to this section.

Is there any reason why

and I'm just talking now and I would probably concur just maybe we've tabled this for a month just to sit and work through some of these details one-on-one.

I mean, essentially that's what we've done.

Yeah.

Josh would be, he, we're all employed by Wintergreen property in our association.

Some are assigned to the police department, some are assigned for fire rescue.

Yeah, I'm just...

Yeah, I'm just speaking out in terms of

For me, I felt like there could have been, there may be a mechanism that already exists that Wintergreen already has the ability to do and I'm sure Phil is listening to me so he'll tell me what questions I might have.

But because you have a police department and it already allows the

usage of that authority, you know, what does a local authority actually do on that?

I'm just curious myself.

In looking at the language that you're referencing, where it says, like you said, the term fire marshal is used in this chapter may include the local fire official and local arson investigator when appointed pursuant to this section.

So it's still, no matter what, even though they have, I mean I would be curious if that still exists even though they already have a private police department in use.

And I also, if we could also find out if other resort communities, does Madison-Dutton have a fire marshal?

No.

No, Madison-Dutton has gone

We can obviously get these answers to you.

As far as the ISO county wide issues that you raised, I'm not an insurance guy, but they

ISO is really only applicable, it can only be fixed for people who live within five miles of a fire station for a fire hydrant, pressurized fire hydrant.

So for

Most of Nelson County, your ISO score, it's always going to end up being about the same.

It's Wintergreen, it's the small section here in your central business district, a couple of other places where you have pressurized hydrants where your ISO score can affect your property hazard premiums.

It affects mortgages and how many banks are going to give money to people that would like to live here.

If you're not within X miles of pressurized water, ISO score is always going to go to nine, which is the worst, typically.

They're going to just say, if you don't have water, it doesn't matter because you've got so many trucks or so many people.

Right.

and even more full disclosure, not everybody abuses ISO.

So if you're sitting out here in the audience and you're thinking, I've never even heard of this from my insurance carrier, not every insurance company uses ISO.

Some use an all-hazard approach where they look at your, where you live, and they're looking at tornadoes, fires, theft, floods, and all of that factors into your comprehensive insurance package, not just your fire department risks.

So what might you be bringing to us next month so we can... Well I think between now and then I just simply need to receive what your questions are specifically and then we need to chase down the answers and then the other

The thing I would recommend is that Mr. Parr get with Danny Johnson to get any of your questions, Dr. Ligon, answered about that report, which I did not quash.

Big day.

No, the EMS council is tonight, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me on today to talk to you about the proposal for the Nelson County Recreation Foundation.

This is something that we've been talking about for a little bit on and off over the last year and met with Ms. McGarry a couple times as well as Grace and formerly Linda Statham.

The Johnson County Recreation Foundation will be a foundation to help support our department, the Nelson County Parks and Recreation Department, for alternative funding.

We're asking, basically what I'm doing today is just kind of bringing this idea to y'all's attention, getting your feedback, getting suggestions, questions you may have on this, and we'll take it from there for the next steps.

The purpose of this today is to

Of the foundation would be to support the Nelson County Parks and Recreation Department by seeking and accepting funds, grants, gifts, donations from organizations, governmental units, and the general public.

These funds would be a approved 501c3.

tax-deductible giving opportunity for folks and this obviously would be able to help offset some of the costs within our department given some alternative funding sources.

The intended uses for the foundation would be accepting tax-deductible donations to enhance department offerings, amenities and the

and the like, including but not limited to future parks and recreation facilities and projects.

One of the big topics with this is the, kind of led to this from the former discussions of the future of Larkin property.

If we do move forward with recreation and amenities in this, this would be an amazing opportunity to capital fundraise a lot of those funds that would go into the creation of that property.

along with that we would look at scholarship offerings for our youth athletics for instance with that we could have a line with the foundation of just for scholarships knowing going into fall athletics we know we have $500 for youth soccer and youth flag football

We would be able to advertise and offer those scholarship opportunities for those folks and know that, okay, if we give out $300 of scholarships to people who might not normally be able to afford to participate in our activities, we wouldn't be able to get those kids in on the fields, on the courts, wherever it may be to have that opportunity to play recreation sports.

The funding from that would offset

The foundation would then pay back to the Nelson County Parks and Recreation Department for those funds to use for that and so on for all future seasons.

We would be able to get back into team sponsorships as well.

This is something the department had done in the past.

However, we had a little bit of an issue where we didn't have enough sponsorships for all the teams that we were getting.

With the increased amount of registrations we had, the number of teams we were creating, we were having, say, 10 sponsors for 15 teams.

Well, how do you determine what happens to the other five teams?

Along with that, team sponsorships, they weren't technically tax-deductible for those businesses.

So those funds were just going into the same pot of money

People's Tax Dollars or whatever it may be just going into the general fund.

So this will allow businesses, individuals, whoever it may be to provide tax-deductible sponsorships to the department.

Another thing would be we'd be able to help use some of these funds for some community special events and it really enhanced the offerings that the department has for that.

The Nelson County Recreation Foundation

We need a singer.

This will be able to increase community interactions and support and kind of build that base.

Once we develop a foundation board, that's kind of bringing the community together.

People who's not normally associated with each other will all be coming in for the same purpose, to help improve recreation within the county.

Foundation would not be an advisory board.

It would be more of a revenue, fundraising avenue for the department.

And also help with volunteer recruitment.

The more people that we can have on our side to help promote and recruit people to help out with recreational activities within the county, it's only helping our department and helping build that.

We've got to develop new community events with this.

A couple of things we kind of tossed around is a recreation foundation golf tournament.

Who doesn't love a good golf tournament?

You know, it brings the community together, it helps raise funds.

You know, we have a nice golf course over at Stony Creek right in our backyard.

And so this would be something that we'd be able to do to, you know, help promote future events.

Along with event permits streamlining.

Some of the, you know,

With event permits just for the general public, as well as my department, sometimes there's some roadblocks we run into with some event permitting.

And with a non-profit foundation, then that does help get over some of those hurdles when planning events.

Another thing that we'd be able to do, our annual Tunnel Electric Dark event, that we help support the Nelson County food pantry, that would also be able to run out of this instead of putting it into my budget line and then out of the county funds, pay the food pantry and be able to roll through the foundation and help streamline those proceeds going to that organization.

So what are the next steps?

Obviously, we would need to establish a 501c3 nonprofit through the IRS.

By doing this, we would need to be able to create our bylaws and articles and corporation, which we do already have a draft of this.

It's something that Mr. Gary and I have been working on back and forth in developing those bylaws.

Obviously, once we get a good, solid,

initial board.

We would have a final review of that before submitting that to the IRS for approval.

We'd be looking at a maximum of 11 member board with the initial establishment of about seven members.

Those members would be myself or whoever

Director of Parks and Recreation would be at the time.

The county's director of finance for our treasurer.

We would be looking at potentially having a possibly a board of supervisor representative if y'all would choose to do so.

I think it'd be great I did have someone from the public schools as a representative on that.

And then also a couple of community members.

We're looking at probably about four to five community members.

and it would be Nelson County as a whole, not necessarily by district, but I would be willing to take y'all's suggestions on that as well.

So other than that, once we have all that established, you know, have to establish our foundation banking account and secure key insurance for the foundation.

Do you have any questions, comments,

I'm sad to hear about the sponsorship piece.

That used to be something back in like 2005 and 2006 people would fight over.

I can remember there was a time when I was playing soccer and my dad and this other guy made me and this other kid race each other to see which one got to sponsor the soccer team.

But recreation is a really, really specific piece in our community and a huge piece in my life.

It was one of my first employers at the ripe age of 13 years old as a referee.

It's important.

And this is where a lot of kids get to commune together and they get to participate and live life and play sports and hopefully not get in too much trouble.

So I generally think this could be a good thing.

I certainly am interested in how we can get community more excited about it.

I think COVID was a huge detriment in losing some of that consistency with that.

And of course, we're also dealing with the people population shift, and we're seeing that around.

So I think generally, I think this has the potential of being a good thing.

You know, giving entities the ability to contribute money directly to a Parks and Rec thing, I mean, that's something I would, if I was donating money, I would be like, hey, can we get benches?

Done.

Yeah, in regards to the scholarships and stuff, or team sponsorships, those numbers never really went down as far as sponsorships we had, which didn't really build

How's that?

Is it the same thing with soccer?

Has soccer gone up, down?

Really good.

What's your biggest block?

You 7, 10?

Are you 11 in each group?

11.

Yeah.

That one is starting to decline a little bit, or not really decline, but just kind of plateau with only about 30, 35 kids total in that age group.

With this, we would have had, like I said, the opportunity to kind of bring back sponsorships.

I think pulling the community members together, it will help increase the presence

Every business, remember back in the day, I mean some businesses still have their plaques from like 05, 06 with the kids on it and churches and all that.

Just wanted to get your opinions, suggestions, any questions you may have.

This is something we'll be continuing to work on.

If you can provide us with some feedback on establishment of the board, would you want

I mean, I think it's something long overdue.

We need something like this.

I mean, you know as hard as we worked on the Cover the Caboose project and how many hurdles this would have prevented us from having to go through if this was enforced.

Do we have an accountant to make the 501c3?

All the positives you gave us for what this could possibly do are huge and I'm really excited about this.

Especially there were people in the community that have

who at different times have said you know we would love to put some money towards something like this you know what what can we do and it's like well you know if we had a project then we could do it this this way you and the foundation have an opportunity to create the incentive for

for us to be able to take action on things that we might not be able to do otherwise.

And that's a really, you know, for the community to be involved in something like that is really good because then it's the community making the moves.

Yeah, we have people all the time.

How can we help out?

How can we help out?

We're going to get money to help out.

I don't want the money just to get lost in the general fund.

Like these last board?

Yeah.

I like that.

Well, I say we can always give it a shot, and if that model doesn't work, we can modify quickly, right?

And by the, with the initial bylaws stating, you know,

We were to take this up to a maximum of 11 members, but starting out with the initial board of less than that, it gives us room to build.

You're not going to get anything done.

I like that.

OK. Let us know as things gel and take form.

I just want to really thank Jerry for his work on this.

Thank you.

The final schematic design and building specifications are nearing completion.

We'll have a planned presentation for the board at the March 11th meeting which will entail a request to authorize the project to go out to bid.

We do have a closing date for the property transfer which will be this Friday so we have

An item to consider under other business later in the meeting that would be an acceptance of conveyance of that property.

Let's see, we've also provided an integrated project and financing schedule through August 2025 that was included with the report.

Some key dates are the March 11th board meeting which would authorize, hopefully authorize the project about to bid.

We would anticipate receiving construction bids in late April.

May 1st would be when our VRA financing application is due.

May 13th we would ask the board to consider approval of a construction contract and also Davenport would present the VRA summer pool plan of finance.

By June 1st we hope to have the construction contract in place.

By June 10th the board would consider approval of the financing resolution and documents.

July 23rd would be when the VRA bond sale would occur and August 6th would be the tentative VRA closing date.

In addition to the final schematic design, I believe DMA is working to kind of fine tune the project budget and so they'll be presenting that also on March 11th.

Any questions on that?

On the high school renovation project, talked about this a little bit during the financing piece, but an invitation to bid for construction of the project was issued on January 27th.

They held a pre-bid conference on February 3rd, and construction bids are due February 17th.

An integrated project and financing schedule through May 25 was provided with the previous agenda item 5A.

These key dates were included there.

I believe I read some of them off to you all at that point so I'm going to read this as it does at this time.

I have an update on our transfer station tipping floor replacement project.

That project is ready to go out to bid.

However, in developing the specs and talking with our architects, it doesn't appear that we will be able to continue our operations as a transfer station while this project is occurring.

So we will need to close the transfer station to commercial trash collection.

We would be able to accept limited household trash at the site for up to about

30 days.

So this is primarily due to the port concrete slab that needs a cure period of anywhere from 14 to 28 days, depending on how fast the concrete reaches the specified design strengths.

So with this new information, we decided it'd be best to just take a pause.

We need to consider providing ample notification of the anticipated closure to our commercial account holders and users of the transfer station

and get our alternate plans in place for disposing of household waste collected from our convenience centers.

So basically this plan would entail direct hauling our trash compactors to Region 2000 unless we can work out a disposable option with Amherst who has an open landfill.

But that option will require authorization from the Region 2000 Authority Board and the Amherst Board of Supervisors which could take a few months.

The cost of direct hauling would be offset by a pause in the cost related to Thompson Trucking who hauls our ways from the transfer station to Region 2000.

So based on when it appears that closure would be least disruptive with the least amount of trash moving, we're playing for a late summer, early fall.

And based on the trash numbers, it looks like September would be a good

Send a letter to the Home Builders Association, if you could.

OK. That way, they can prep their cells and start talking to contractors about taking trash out.

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, FRD.

It's going to have a better cure time in the summertime as well.

We're aiming for September on that.

We'll get those notices out and hand out flyers at the transportation and also send direct letters to all of our account holders and also the Home Builders Association.

Okay, all right, moving on.

For FY26 budget, we have a work session scheduled as an extension of this meeting to review our draft capital improvements plan and agency budget requests.

We will look at a preliminary budget calendar with the goal of setting some ensuing budget work sessions following the general fund budget introduction plan for the March 11th board meeting.

So we're fiercely working to meet that date.

There are some remaining 25 General Assembly session dates.

Now, February 22nd is the scheduled adjournment and then April 12th will be a reconvened session for the Governor's amendments and VDOT's.

The flood insurance rate maps or firms have been finalized and will become effective August 5, 2025.

They'll be incumbent upon the county to amend our floodplain ordinance before this effective date in order to remain in the National Flood Insurance Program.

This process includes DCR first reviewing our draft amended floodplain ordinance for compliance with the NFIP requirements, conduct of public hearings on the ordinance amendment, and adoption by the board no later than July 4.

with a final review of the adopted ordinance by DCR by August 5th.

Ms. Bishop has submitted our current ordinance to DCR for the NFIP compliance review.

What would we amend exactly?

Yes, but you still have to go through that public hearing process in order to amend the ordinance.

Okay, we have added a link to the county's main webpage.

It's for the 2026 reassessment.

It's located, the link to this page is located in the blue banner at the top of the page next to the ACRJ renovation link.

The page contains some general information about reassessments, including state code provisions, assessor's contact information, and pictures of the field staff working within the county.

We'll make periodic updates as necessary for the duration of the reassessment, which would include through the conclusion of the Board of Equalization's work, which is generally about March of 2026.

We have followed up on

The additional street lighting in Lovingston are requested by Supervisor Rutherford.

County staff and AAP have collaborated on the addition of two street lights in Lovingston.

Our request for new service has been submitted along with an AAP work order.

And I believe Jeff Brantley was supposed to have met with them on February 11th, but it keeps moving because of the weather.

So I think they'll have something set up soon to meet with the technician and evaluate the polls.

According to ADP, there should be no charge for the installation and monthly costs are minimal at $6 to $12 per light.

Let's see, we've included the updated meals and lodging tax collections and lodging entity tracking.

I'll just say this from my reports, but you can thank staff related to, it was in the

Building Departments Report where it actually showed the total dollars a month, like what that number and metric looks like.

I think it's important for the board to know what that number is because essentially for every $50 million of valued work, whether that's a porch replaced in Wintergreen or a house being built, is equal to essentially one penny in that moment.

So it's kind of neat just looking at over the years what that has meant.

Some years have been bigger, other years not.

Obviously most development is in the Wintergreen area, most permitting work, but most of that, from what I'm told, is renovations.

The older buildings are getting

Redone, and some expiring housing stock up and around that area.

So it's kind of neat.

It's important to see.

And I think it's important for us to keep in mind where things are happening in our county.

So thank you for that report.

It's going.

I've gotten some responses in to waiting on a few others.

Okay.

Thank you, Candy.

Thank you.

Mr. Parr?

EMS council meets tonight.

Social services met this afternoon, busy day.

One of the things that was brought up is they're going to be working on establishing a reduction in force policy which, believe it or not, they don't have.

And the question came up in that meeting is would they fall under the counties or, and I checked with HR and they would not.

So they're going to be, Mr. Burdette is going to be looking into options and coming up with a reduction in forest policy just so they have something in place.

I was kind of surprised that they don't.

Well, they don't fall under that, but that's what they're going to mirror and reference as they want to check first to see if they would fall into the counties.

And if not, they're probably leaning towards that.

I guess I attended my first Planning Commission meeting last month.

We unfortunately lost two members, which we'll follow up on that a little later.

The general consensus was negative on communication from the Board of Supervisors to Planning Commission.

So it is my goal in my new role to give the general flavor of the board to the Planning

and not vote on Planning Commission issues but wait to vote on the issues at the board meeting, our board meeting.

I am, though saddened we've lost people, excited because we have four relatively new people on the board.

They are all going to get newly educated on

what their role actually is and hopefully with the increased communication they will feel that their vote and their voice is heard by the board.

So it's kind of a big thing there.

I also went to the EDA meeting.

Unfortunately, that sentiment seemed negative as well that they're not heard and the communication is poor.

So, of course, I truly believe a lot of our issues in Nelson County can be remedied with increased job numbers in the county, good jobs, and I feel that giving the EDA power and a voice and the ability to help us create those jobs

is huge and so right now all I've been able to do is say those words, be in attendance and stand up for that and now I'm advocating to these guys about my plans on wanting to educate EDA, empower them and allow them to do what the state says they can do to generate money, help us make jobs for the county.

Question.

EDA related, obviously we gave them some directives.

So actually the last meeting we met and some roles of EDAs was defined.

They were educated on, well, the state vocabulary.

Right.

some successful EDAs due to draw in money, places to start, the lawyer that we spoke with does a lot of bond initiatives, works with a lot of EDAs and really his biggest thing was a good place to start is funding EDA and also good communication between EDA and the Board of Supervisors and

I just know we'll be advocating a lot for this because I really truly feel

On a positive note, I want to remind and thank the EDA that EDA board communication is the reason that we have moved our DSS facility from the original construction site to the new site in the Village of Lovingston, so that is a positive

Communication between the two boards.

Should I go?

All right.

We did not have a jail board meeting this month, so didn't get a chance to go to that.

I had probably about several different meetings related towards gravel roads with constituents this month.

A lot, especially on the Buckingham side of my district,

A lot of gravel roads aren't sustained a lot of this water.

Reminded me of some specific roads I need to inquire with Robert on related to the six year plan.

Some of the discussions that have been had amongst surrounding local governments, some of those discussions happened with the PDC is related towards the future of energy use in our commonwealth as a result of data centers.

This is a huge discussion and you know we're about I think if we're not the number one state in the world or

To have data centers, we're darn close to it.

And this is a pretty serious problem because as a result, our commonwealth is importing a lot more electricity than a historic leak has ever done.

So what does that mean?

Higher rates, our power's coming from Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, down south, out west.

And local governments like ours are going to be finding ourselves, you know, advocating for some of these new, I mean data centers is not a new concept necessarily, but on the scale, it's not creating

secondary problems that, as a result, the house down the street's gonna have a $800 electric bill subsidizing these entities coming in.

I can't look at Louisa and be upset when they're getting these $3 billion entities showing up, bringing in serious revenue to the county.

But at the same time, something's gotta give, and this is a really serious thing that we need to be looking into the future on, a huge

Discussions going on about modular nuclear, that has been really neat to see.

And if I'm not mistaken, Louisa has resulted in one of their data centers.

They already have a nuclear power plant.

Amazon is looking at almost paying for the entirety of a new one just to supply the power needs of some of the data centers in their area.

And it's pretty astronomical.

Now, the problem with some of the pieces of this is

Not modular nuclear, it still takes many years after the point of the data center's operations.

So there's still gonna be a four or five year lapse of the existence of the data center before the energy needs are handled from within.

But it is something we all as community members should be cognizant of.

And you know, hey, I'm an advocate of make your house energy efficient as you can.

There's a lot of housing stock that's not there.

But this really starts impacting our lower income demographics.

We also had a Lovingston merchant meeting recently, it was wonderful, we had a lot of people in attendance, Dr. Ligon was there, discussions about what kind of business do we want to see, what do we want to see the association get involved with, there's a lot of industry people

Libby was there, I think there was a couple of other people, I don't know if there's anybody else who's there other than us, but it was good, it was great and looking forward to some of the opportunities going forward in the new year with this new energy and looking forward to some sidewalks in Lovingston here soon.

Hopefully, I also have correspondence to Robert to figure out what the dates are.

Yeah, so it's going to be a little while.

Okay.

We had a job, a board meeting.

We were introduced to our new executive director, Judith Selzer.

She'll be meeting the board sometime in the future.

So gave her a warm welcome, taking over from Marta Kean.

The EDA meeting, I just wanted to add to that that there was a proposal that we have a joint meeting with the EDA and the Board of Supervisors coming up to work on that communication issue.

So put that on the list of possible meetings that we'll have to have coming up in the future.

and of course working closely on related projects is the hopeful outcome for all this.

TJPDC, I registered for the Regional Housing Summit and I suspect Jesse's going to be there.

Would like to pitch it to everybody else and to the public to do that.

That's on Thursday, March 13th from 8.30 to 3.30 at the Omni in Charlottesville.

The other interesting thing on the TJPDC meeting is that, and it kind of resonates with some of the other meetings that I went to last month, 78% of the funding that TJPDC gets is federal funding.

And so they're wondering what the future holds for the projects that they've already got in the can that they're working on.

For Java one of the big sources of revenue for them are donor advised funds and there's some speculation that that may not hold the same value that it has now don't know what's going to happen with that but the folks at Java and the fundraising community are all paying really close attention to that

I met with John Adkins dealing with emergency services.

The board chair becomes the director of emergency services, which is really not being

It's not always an active role, and I've always deferred to Mr. Parr and Mr. Harvey on EMS things, and that's not been something that I've been personally involved with, with the exception of Wintergreen and Mr.

Sheets, of course.

But I'm going to be taking three days of trainings to learn more of the ins and outs of what might be required in that position, but also how all the pieces of EMS fit together.

and I went to Virginia Association of Counties Chairperson's Institute in Richmond.

It was two days of trainings there.

Whether or not supervisors have been or will soon be

Chairing this board.

It was really extremely valuable.

I was more than pleasantly surprised at how engaging and the information that came across there.

So I want to give kudos to VACO for putting that together.

They do it every year at the beginning of the season after folks have their annual meeting.

And that's all I have

I'll potentially do a signing ceremony, discussions being had between the senator and the delegate who sponsored these bills.

This is a huge step.

It is proof that political divide can be beaten.

It just sometimes takes two years to get some people over the edge.

But it's good.

I'm glad we're done.

Glad I don't have to go to Richmond five in the morning anymore.

Thank you.

If that's it, we'll move on to appointments.

So, as Dr. Ligon mentioned, we have two vacancies on our planning commission.

One for the south district and one for the central district.

We have received one application each.

Gary Scott submitted his application for the south district and

We have received an application from Richard Averitt for the Central District.

As a note, Mr. Averitt currently serves on the EDA.

After doing some checking and communicating with him as well, he cannot serve in both capacities.

He is interested in serving on Planning Commission and willing to step aside from the EDA if you all are also interested in having him serve on Planning Commission, so I'll leave that to you.

I was just going to point out, I know Gary Scott and Richard Avery both personally and both have been stalwarts in our community in many different regards.

I do believe that they're going to go into the discussions at hand openly and I think

You know, it was really fun reading their applications, actually.

And one thing I liked was Richard Averitt's sentence here.

He says, I will bring a balanced perspective, prioritizing individual freedom and private rights, along with a deep commitment to community and the desire to see Nelson County and all of its residents thrive, irrespective of economic status and influence.

And I think that speaks a lot, because at the end of the day,

We're advocates of our respective constituents.

And what Gary said on his side, he's been in this since, like, 2006?

Is that when he was in first?

He never did planning commission.

He just did the biosolids or economic development.

So I'm happy with both these candidates.

OK.

I am we allowed to do both at the same time?

Quick, before I second, do we need to amend that to also remove Richard from the EDA?

and also another possible amendment to that the they're fulfilling existing terms so they're not serving four-year terms so they have to

serve out the rest.

So Central District would expire June 30th next year and the South District would be in 2028.

Dr. William Iverson, I believe he's in your district Mr. Reed, he's interested in serving on the council.

Okay, and that's a two-year term?

Okay.

Okay.

We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay.

Motion and a second.

Can I go first?

Yes.

So we have a group who is patiently waiting all day so thank you Edith and the Nelson County Juneteenth Celebration Committee for being patient with us today but I would like to recommend that we allocate $5,000 for this celebration so I move that we allocate

$5,000 for the 2025 Juneteenth celebration taking place June 22nd, 2025.

Okay.

Further discussion?

Mr. Robert.

Yes.

Mr. Parr.

Yes.

Dr. Ligon.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Parr.

Anything else you wanted to bring up?

No, sir.

Okay.

Dr. Ligon.

The only correspondence I have recently gotten was relative to current weather status, road status.

Not much to report on that.

And I want to thank staff for helping coordinate the two lights over here in Lovingston.

Easy peasy.

Apparently that's less.

When can we get the Christmas lights down?

No, you're good.

Valid question.

Okay.

Before we take a break, I was wondering if we could get our other business taken care of first.

Yes, please.

I have two items that have just come to my attention that I need the Board to take action on.

The first one you should have a resolution I think at your places is resolution 2025-11.

I reference this resolution in my report.

This is the authorization for acceptance of conveyance of the 37 Tambark Drive, Lovingston property for the Department of Social Services building project.

Our closing is scheduled for Friday.

I got it.

Okay.

Motion and second we have.

Actually, yes.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Okay, thank you very much.

The second item is also related to the Department of Social Services building project.

We essentially need to amend our PMA architecture contract to include

Let's see, additional services to prepare site inspection and report identifying lead paint and asbestos containing materials in the building.

They would also prepare removal specifications to be included in the project manual for construction bidding.

So this would need to be done so that any abatement of any lead or asbestos is identified and is specified within the

the bidding specifications so that the contractor will take care of that before the building is demolished.

My understanding is it's not a very optional

Does this require motion or are you just good with the consensus?

Basically, but I did want to bring it to your attention since we are right here at the board meeting.

Mr.

Chair?

Yes.

$5,671 towards the asbestos remediation or identification revenue.

Okay.

Motion and second.

Discussion?

Dr. Ligon?

Yes.

Thank you, Ms. McGarry.

And one last correspondence, I apologize.

We should all have in our packet, but I just want to recognize the FFA team that we allocated $5,000 for earlier at the end of last year.

They did attend the Western National Roundup in Denver, Colorado, had a great trip, got to go to the Red Rocks, which I'm on my bucket list, but yeah, and they placed 15th in the nation, so congratulations to them and to their leaders, Margaret Zeeman and Cole Ramsey.

Thank you, Mr. Parr.

Agreed.

Okay.

We're going to take a 10-minute break, and then we will come back to deal with our capital improvement plan and agency requests.

So we'll be right back.

Okay.

The 2-13, yes.

We did adjust a couple dates because our notice requirements changed for the paper.

All right, so we've got on our list just a review of the CIP and agency requests today.

We do plan to introduce the general fund budget at the regular meeting March 11th.

We are anticipating receiving the school board budget request March 17th and we have a time frame for which a proposed joint meeting with the school board on the budget is suggested.

I haven't heard back from them on what date works good for their board.

I'll let Ernie if you've had any conversations with, oh Margaret was here, she's coming

We would like to try to establish at least, we've got one to three full days during the retreat you all

expressed, maybe not three, David, but during the retreat you expressed the interest in having longer work sessions and fewer of them.

So that's where that came from.

Some date ranges that were suggested, March 17th through the 19th, any time in there, March 24th and 5th, and then March 31st through April 3rd.

I'm going to put it out there.

I'm a believer in losing a whole day if I'm going to lose one.

Full day's fine with me.

I'm good.

The 25th is bad.

Other than that, I'm good.

And that's for?

Good point.

How about the 19th?

So that's our rabies clinic week, so.

If we did that week, Tuesday would be best.

I'll do it.

March 18th.

10 to 12 and then break for lunch.

10 to 12 and then lunch.

Do we want to eat in?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And just make sure if we're in the old boardroom, make sure somebody lets social services know because that's their meeting day.

No, no, no, no, no.

It was just I can't do 26, 27, 28.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I mean do we want to do a budget work session

We can do it, but we won't have the budget by then, most likely, because we're shooting for the eleventh to have the full budget.

Usually the first round is usually we're getting an overview of everything.

Right.

I mean, if we need to do the 25th, I can try to reschedule.

I just had a doctor's appointment that day.

I can try to reschedule.

I have a tentative something on the first, just someone coming by to visit, so probably

If we need to do something the morning of the first, that would be fast.

I mean, if we can be done by lunch, that would be great on the first.

But if we're not, I'll hang around.

So tentatively, 10 to 12 on the first.

I'm fine that entire week in the evening.

Can we just give a suggested date right now so I can put it down?

Let's see, are we meeting, we're meeting the 18th already.

That would be a really long day.

Let's try the 20th.

Thursday?

and fallback would be 19th.

20th first and then the 19th.

Right, third Wednesday?

That's the jail board meeting day from 12 to 2.

On the 10th?

We can, it would just need to be in the afternoon if that's, or we could do a night work session.

Would that work better?

So it's the second Thursday?

April, April 10th.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hopefully we won't need that, but if we do.

We still have it flagged.

The 10th?

10th.

What time?

What's good for you all?

I can do it after two.

Jesse and I can do it after, well, three.

I was going to say three o'clock.

Yeah, three.

Three to five.

I, three to five, okay, I guess.

Okay.

Okay.

Good deal.

All right, so then just following down the rest of the calendar, some of it's for staff as far as notice publications.

Let's see, we would plan to get the tax rates and personal property tax relief percentage to the Commissioner by Friday, April 11.

We will have the budget public hearings while it's scheduled for Tuesday, May 13 at the regular meeting.

and then the treasurer can get the tax bills out the week of May 12th and we will schedule the 20th or 26th budget adoption and appropriation on Tuesday, June 10th.

That's a regular board meeting day.

We have to wait at least seven days after the public hearing to adopt the budget.

Yes.

If there aren't any other questions or anything about the calendar we can

Move on, do you all want to look at agency funding first or capital improvement plan?

We didn't invite Susan's or here since a lot of the items on the FY26 list are technology related.

Let's do that.

Okay.

I didn't put anything in the priority order.

So all of these have been submitted by staff.

We have not done any vetting of any of their submittals so this is all everything that's been submitted so far.

I will say the one that I think pays for itself and pays for more things is the short-term rental system.

12, 180, and 3, 2, I don't know what that means.

Yeah, this is something I know we've been advocating for for a while and if you guys look at the reflection of our collections obviously there's a two percent

increase since the prior year.

If we had a good system in place, and I can speak for this in pretty much every business I've ever had that allowed for an online platform for people to report and pay, your collections go up astronomically, especially on time payments.

And also some of these things are more

things that would go in our capital outlay section of the budget.

Right.

I can venture a guess that we're going to have more non-recurring revenue than recurring at the moment.

I don't know yet, sir.

You keep trying to get that out of me.

I know.

I don't know.

I'm certainly interested, it's kind of hard to look at without dollars and cents of trying to work.

Right.

The only other thing that I

I wanted to bring up, and I'm not even sure this is the right place for it, but under Parks and Rec I was wondering, we talked about getting the survey done for the Sturt Park property, because we need to get a survey done and then there's some of that forest money that's going to be available.

So that we would just need to just do because that money's already in the budget.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think we've actually already gotten a list of surveyors to try to get quotes from.

If it's in the works then- It's just not- Okay.

Okay.

Yes.

Do we want to go from the top and go down?

So if there are things that you're interested in, we can go ahead and build them in the budget as we're working on it right now.

And then you can obviously go back once we know the numbers and pick and choose from there.

But if there are things that are on here that you're like, no, we're not going to do that right now.

Then we'll also know that and we can not put it in the budget.

So this switch stuff, didn't we talk about this last year?

The remote site network switch replacement

I believe Susan, all these are new, right?

This is a lot to read.

I, just to let you know, I went through all of them and these were the recommendations from staff.

Yeah, the first two pages are 26 and the second two pages are 27.

The last one, two, three, four pages.

Do we have 27?

Yeah, the next two pages are 27 and then

I think he's looking at the small.

I'm looking at the first.

Big bad boy.

You might have some notes.

Yeah.

Oh.

So the total for all of FY26, there are a couple things we're waiting on quotes for, is $1,093,689.

The things we're waiting on quotes for have to do with the asphalt repair here around the courthouse area and convenience centers and then roof repair here at the courthouse.

I don't know if that's been discussed.

There were some good points that were brought out today about that in our staff meeting or the potential for that.

And they are some rough looking people.

No, I don't think that would mean paying them more.

I saw, well, at the merchant meeting, Maureen had held up the plan that was done in, was that 18?

Yeah.

I think that's where it was, yeah.

Another spot is behind the people who just bought the Hoover building.

It's a little bit more village-ish.

The problem is there's some floodplain areas and then if we could do it on property we already own that would be good.

I'll study on it.

Yeah, someone else suggested a dog park kind of over there beside Planning and Zoning.

A lot of people apparently get out and use it as such

Do you want to have a dog park?

But so I think that, yeah, the Lovingston Park needs some more thought as far as location.

It's optional, but you should probably start looking for, in particular, the Trump radio system, just to solve traffic issues, and then the $1.5 million

Yes.

Who built that?

Motorola.

Motorola?

Yeah, I guess that's our radio.

And the good news is that the upgrade that we did back in 2018

in 1818.

The truck's component of that would be built on top of existing infrastructure.

It's not a four foot star situation.

It's kind of, it's an enhancement.

We've been fortunate.

We only have one site in the county that we currently pay a lease.

We might have to pay a lease.

Another option to bring the cost down is to utilize a site that I believe is in Buckingham County that we could possibly partner with them to construct something there for shared use with them.

All right, so that's not including a lease, is what it sounds like, the 43,000 annual, okay.

No, we really need a consultant or Motorola to start to look at locations and how well they will serve areas that have gaps in coverage.

And a lot of that work would be done at no charge by Motorola.

I'm wondering, can I put it in the budget this way, instead of if we had buy-in from the board, we could start to work toward the planning

for improvements to coverage, upgrades to the profit system.

And it would be a multi-year process.

Well we're going to have a lot going on in the south district by 2027.

So we should probably get that ball rolling especially if it's not going to cost us money.

The getting them to survey our needs and what it's going to cost.

So does that make sense?

I think it's more just a one step at a time.

It's like okay, the board is expressing interest in starting to move in the direction of improving coverage,

deploying a Trump radio system, it's time for us to roll up our sleeves and look at what those two projects look like, look at what locations service best, you know, what are the obstacles to building a tower in any given location.

It just takes time.

I think you

I think we can get started on the process without expending any money in the current fiscal year.

I mean maybe 26, but I don't know.

Do you think you could find that out before we finish our 26th budget?

Awesome.

So under FY 27, county facility study?

Yes.

The first 2027, right at the top.

That would likely be an architectural firm that does those types of studies.

That was just kind of a wild guess on my part.

I don't know if it would be that much, but I could certainly find out.

The school's facility study I think was 50,000-ish.

I think this is the one we haven't gotten yet.

Correct, but I do have it and I will send it out.

It just depends on what, I guess what time frame.

That the schools don't know if they're going to be staying or have to find another place.

Right.

So that's ongoing.

That's ongoing.

I guess my other concern is, not that I'm a big fan of spending 75K on that, but we got a letter from the Commonwealth's attorney indicating that he asked five years ago.

So punting it to 2027 would really put some smiles on some faces.

You know what I mean?

I don't understand.

We have a problem with room, which has been established and talked about publicly, and we're still punting it two years down the road?

We can certainly be moved.

Okay.

Yeah.

The problem is there's a domino effect.

Somebody's got to move out in order to make his space needs request a reality.

Yeah.

Here in the courthouse.

Yeah.

And really the school board is well aware of the predicament.

Yeah.

I mean.

Yeah.

And talked about for sure.

It would be interesting to see what that facility study looks like, just to see.

It might not have addressed administrative needs in that study, but it might shed light on some possibilities for administrative space.

Right, exactly.

Well, it's the first I've heard of it, and it looks like there's no choice.

It's a federally mandated

Yes, I mean we already have established shelters in an emergency.

We just don't have, we don't have like the cots and things for people and things that we need to really have it moving around.

That's a great question.

And some of these things, there may be grant opportunities out there for.

Currently.

And we would certainly go for any of those opportunities that we can.

I feel like, oh, Lord, she's going to beat a dead horse.

So the trunking, we talked about it last year.

Come closer.

Well, there are two problems with Wintergreen.

One is Wintergreen's dispatch console in the center.

Wintergreen also has AG infrastructure for the repeaters on the towers, and there are actually radio communications in the field.

So the thought with the trunking is that would also enable us to roll Wintergreen in,

on the communications side, using a newer system with better coverage.

The trunk system doesn't restrict us.

We currently have four frequencies, and they can only be used for four different top pads.

Fire and Rescue, typically a fire and rescue backup, sheriff, paging, upward government services, and then we have paging.

But when you go to a trunk system, you can create talk groups.

So you can have many more groups of people whose communications aren't heard by others.

So it's just a system that would give us greater capacity to accommodate Wintergreen and also provide

Better Communications During Incidents for, say, the Sheriff's Department, Fire and Rescue.

You know, I've heard that both from the Sheriff, from dispatchers.

You know that there really is a need to expand upon that.

Which was what we debated a lot last year.

Yeah.

I would say it's doubtful that they have the capital to do it, but it could be wrong.

I guess it would all just come down to their needs versus how much they could contribute.

I think it's a direction we need to go in regardless of whether Wintergreen is going to be able to absorb some of that cost for us.

I don't know what they do.

So there would be around a three to four hundred thousand dollar increase in annual costs related to it.

So is the annual operational cost for that high because of the number of vehicles and so if we're including Wintergreen police

Say we increase our police number by 10%.

I would say not really.

I would say there is just a basic system cost that's not based on a per user or per talk group cost.

where you know your cost goes up there is typically it's subscriber units you know the modals and the portables that they're using in the field I mean I can follow up and see how that equates I mean like right now typically our maintenance is based on you know

A number of sites.

That's a big driver because there's certain equipment and electronics required at each site.

So that's what primarily drives that cost.

You know, in some ways, the foundation would be able to, based on things that they come up with for fundraising and where people are willing to put money, are things that will become our priorities, more or less.

Right.

Right.

And that's valid.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess you could say it could, but... Well, I mean, I modify my strategies as opportunities reveal themselves.

Yeah.

Well, in that, a board needs to have a common goal.