Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Meeting   5/22/2025

Are we all ready?

All right, I'd like to call the order.

The Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Board of Directors meeting, May the 22nd, 2025, and we have a forum.

So with that, we usually do introductions first.

So let's do introductions, as always.

I'm never going to get you to start.

Diantha McKeel, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Christine Jacobs, Executive Director, TJPDC.

And because we don't have very many people usually, I highly does.

I'll ask you to introduce yourself.

I'm Tonya Swartzendruber, Planning Manager for Albemarle County.

But with three, it's okay.

And we have two online.

Katie Taylor, yep.

And Taylor Jenkins, okay, great.

Welcome, guys.

Can you all hear us and see us okay?

Alright, the next item on our agenda is to accept the agenda, so I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Councilor Pinkston, Councilor Oschrin,

Alright, so we have an agenda.

The next item is approval of our draft minutes from March the 27th.

Does anybody have, anybody find any, anybody wanted to point out or any items or changes?

If not, I entertain a motion to approve the minutes from March the 27th.

I vote to approve the March 27th minutes.

Second.

All right, so we have a motion and a second.

Good teamwork over here to my left.

Chancellor Oschrin?

Yes.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Aye.

All right, so we now have minutes approved.

Matters from the public.

If anybody here wants to speak, you can raise your hand.

We don't have anyone.

Alright, so we'll move to the next item, which is non-voting directors, staff memo.

different agencies you might want to buy a different number of

bring on DRPT and UVA as two of the non-voting members and leaving the other two seats, MD for now.

We thought that these are the two most important for you to include in your discussions.

Initially, DRPT serves on several commissions throughout the state that are with different transit and transportation authorities, and UVA is

So the word transit agency in this context, who are you imagining that embracing?

Are we imagining Jaunt and transit agency?

Yes, Jaunt and UTS in their capacity as a whole.

So someone from that office, from that level or that office, it may be whoever is included or someone from that office is authorized to serve.

I don't think so.

It's a pretty important thing.

No, I think they need a vacation.

Not in a direction.

How does the invitation process happen?

I think DRPT is what it is.

Then the next item is our electronic meeting policy which we all have to

One is for remote meetings and for all virtual participation in in-person meetings, so they're both within the same policy.

The first one would permit members to participate in a meeting virtually that is being held physically in person.

and the second one is for all of CARTA members to meet in an all virtual format.

Both of them are contained within here.

So in order for remote participation, a quorum must be physically present in a common meeting space and the person participating remotely must note the reason.

They must be able to, if they're quoting a personal reason or a personal matter, it can be limited to two meetings per year or 25%.

Since CARTA meets six times per year, that's limited to two meetings.

for the year.

You must note the location from which they're participating, and the board must approve their remote electronic participation.

For meetings that are being held in an all virtual format, where all members are participating through electronic means, public notice must include that it's all virtual, must give public access, let them know how it is that they can participate.

The public must be able to hear all members of the body, and when establishing a quorum or conducting action, the members must also be seen via the audio-visual technology.

If a member is not visible or able to be seen, they are actually considered absent during that time in the meeting.

We also have to provide a phone number or other live contact information so the public can notify us if we have lost audio-visual communication.

If that occurs, the meeting does have to go into recess until that connection can be restored so that it can still be accessible to the public.

Any materials provided to the board must be provided to the public at the same time.

And then the public must be afforded the opportunity to comment as they would in other meetings if that is a part of the agenda.

And then no more than two members of the public body can be assembled in one remote location unless it is open to the public for them also to be in that remote location to participate.

And then all virtual meetings cannot occur in two simultaneous meetings back to the, not simultaneous, consecutive, excuse me,

and can be no more than two times per calendar year or 50% of the meetings.

So for CARTA, six meetings, it can be no more than three meetings per year, alternating every other if that's what you all would choose.

There were some changes recently.

They're all incorporated.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second from our team to my left.

Counselor Oschrin?

Yes.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Aye.

All right, so we now have adopted the electronic meeting policy.

Legislative update, and David, welcome.

It's nice to have you here.

Nice to see you all.

I know.

But yeah, we've really started to plug in to your all's work here in the last month or two.

And I guess not only the discussions that you all had, but also within the RTP about

a path toward getting to some perhaps enabling legislation in the next General Assembly session to generate some revenue for transit.

So we wanted to provide you with just kind of an update on some of the things that at the staff level Charlottesville, Albemarle, as well as TJPD staff have been doing toward that end.

And you have just a short one page memo

I think with me having started to plug in

I've operated in the transit and transportation space some, but I felt like I needed to dig in a little bit.

So it's been good for me, I think, to be able to have conversations with folks at the statewide level, some state agency folks, statewide association folks.

You're catching up on some reading.

Try to get a better lay of the land as far as what some of the discussions have been, what are going on right now in other parts of the state and at the state level with regard to transportation and transit.

So I've been trying to do some of that, just kind of making those outreaches, had another one today in between meetings in Richmond.

At the same time, the staff of both the city and Albemarle County have been starting to look at potential revenue options.

What are those revenue sources that might be candidates for seeking additional authority to be able to implement?

In 2009, when the legislation was created that enabled the creation of this body, there was an accompanying bill that was not successful.

that would have provided for a 1 cent local sales tax by referendum if you didn't remember that.

So that and there's probably some other options that some of the other transportation authorities are utilizing but I believe that that work is going on right now.

We also are going to be developing just a little short one or two page memo.

I think when we had our last meeting, we were talking about the past, the present, and the future.

Something that could be an educational and awareness type document, some background about the discussions about transit and transit needs in the region through the formation of CARTA, what's going on now with CARTA in those discussions, and then again,

What is it that we're working toward in terms of being able to look at potential legislation for authorizing the generation of additional revenue for that?

I think that would be a good piece to have, not only for conversations that I've already been able to have, but any future conversations or ongoing conversations

with other stakeholders and other entities at the statewide level or other regions that may be having some similar conversations as you are here.

But then also certainly with state legislators.

So we've also made an outreach with the three legislators that represent Charlottesville and Albemarle.

So Senator Deeds, Delegate Causton, and Delegate Laufer to see if we can get an audience with them.

Again, I think Senator D's been around, so probably knows the history somewhat better.

But really just make sure that everybody is aware of the work that's been going on both within the RTP and forming CARTA, what we're talking about now, and what we're looking to do in the coming months.

I think it's probably also important in those discussions to be able to receive feedback from them.

They're talking to their colleagues in the legislature and other policy makers all the time.

What are they hearing?

What are the possibilities?

Is there momentum in certain areas?

Who might be other folks that they would recommend that we reach out to, that we have conversations with?

It's kind of maybe really kind of helping as we move through the next six to seven months, helping to chart that path towards the 26th General Assembly.

Questions for anybody?

Questions?

I would just add that we invited, and I can't remember and I'll be standing here, a few years ago,

And the delegate of Tuscano carried the bills back in 2009, Cree was a co-patron on the authority bill.

Some of those other revenue authorities.

So if it is something that the General Assembly has seen before and they may be familiar with it, then that probably helps the cause.

You know, quite frankly, I think the 2009

legislation had more to do about politics defeating that than anything else, including what the source was.

You don't have to just have one.

That's right.

Yes.

That's right.

And there have been other taxing abilities that we have asked for in our legislative packet in the region previously for land use value taxes.

That's a thing that's come up that has not shown up in other agencies.

So maybe that's an opportunity.

Maybe there's an opportunity to do some sort of tax increment financing that somebody hasn't done in other agencies.

There are a lot of different tools

We talked about it.

Airbnb.

Just Airbnb.

They were putting a tax on Airbnb, which in a way, I like it when people from out of our community are paying

This was specifically Airbnb.

I wonder if you think this is something you can get away with, if you let me know, to the state.

Robin Peter to pay a call for a tax that already exists in the state.

What I'm thinking are like, for the entire coverage area, there are court fees.

There are fines related to traffic.

There's a lot of them, right?

That might be a good question for the attorneys to see how you could navigate the different sections of the state code.

And then I think you'd have to think about it in terms of any kind of a change like that.

Would it be statewide?

Probably not a nonstarter.

And I don't even know if it would be a starter for just a couple of individual localities.

That isn't really going to help us here, because we're not talking about smart scale, we're talking about transit.

I do want to point out that any, our goal with CARTA was always to generate revenue to support transit.

And how we start is in how we finish.

And so if we can

We might need to think about the inventory of the fees that might be available or the taxes that might be available but we might want to sort of simplify the approach to begin with to sort of get our foot in the door and I'd lean on David a little bit for sort of his thoughts on that but with the idea that we over-complicating it may not serve us well versus

Deciding that we're going to put our foot in the door.

We're going to get that first bit of revenue.

We're going to find that project that is impactful to the community.

We're going to demonstrate that we can do this.

And then the next time we have another project, maybe after that, the spigot opens a little bit more and there's a little additional revenue that we can go in.

It's always good to evaluate what's out there.

We just might want to not just do

I'm risking having one more metaphor in all of that.

Yeah, I think that would be something definitely worth discussing because I said earlier the previous one was very specific to sales tax and there was a referendum requirement so you have to think about that wording and how

I just would also suggest I think

is the most progressive way of raising money.

We have a more progressive way of raising money for CARTA already, right?

And that is just, we all contribute from our general fund in an increased property tax.

That is a better way to do it than a sales tax.

It's maybe less popular, but it's actually normatively better for the community.

And so between those alternatives, the only thing we're looking at is a sales tax.

And I like the idea of a tourist family, but I'd like to be part of it.

So when Danny was here before,

Remember the chart that he had?

Both the governance study did that analysis as well, looking at all the existing authorities and then also some other comparable regional bodies in other states and looking at what all their revenue sources were.

And then Danny did it, a more recent version of even some of the ones that aren't formal authorities, but maybe like coalitions of transit that are receiving funds.

You know, I think we can be certainly prepared.

I don't know if there's some, you know, every other month, maybe there's kind of a standing up

I'm assuming we would make that one to two page memo educational piece available for you all to use as well.

Conversations that you would be having.

And I would say a one-pager would be great.

I think it's important to have the ongoing communications because what you may hear two months ago and now may not be the same two months from now in terms of what people are hearing or certainly

And I feel great somewhere.

Well, I think there's different needs that I'm hearing about in the conversations I've been having in different parts of the state.

Particularly North Virginia, no surprise, and there's a legislative study that's primarily addressing WMATA, but other transportation needs in that area.

There's this DMV moves, which is the COG, Council of Government's effort up there, which is looking at some broader things as well.

Hampton Roads had some legislation this past year, including focused on transit.

It was not successful, wrong timing for them.

So it may depend on where other legislation has come from.

We were talking in our last meeting about some of those other past efforts and discussions that are going on now and maybe what we would see from other parts of the state next session are going to maybe be focused on

More funding for them, whereas we're not asking for funding if we're going to move forward with a request for authority.

We're asking for the authority to generate revenue.

Well, in regards, I would just say with the election in November, we have a governor who said, I'm not even going to give you permission to ask your citizens.

And I know you all had some conversation previously about a comprehensive package.

It may be that that comes together.

It may not be.

But I think if the opportunity, if we're positioned to want to jump onto something and the opportunity is there,

Actually I do have a question.

For the, this might be

The legislation wouldn't speak to fairs because it's not yet speaking to us being an operator.

The legislation right now does not give us permission, it doesn't give us the authority to generate a revenue.

One was the authority piece, the other was the revenue piece.

So we're moving on to item six.

Yes, so in January TJPDC applied to DRPT for a technical assistance grant for this project on behalf of CARTA.

Last month the draft zip document was released by DRPT and it's currently included as a recommendation for funding.

And so the CTP will vote to finalize the six-year improvement plan at their next meeting in June.

But because it's recommended for funding, we are going ahead to make sure we're prepared to kick off on July 1.

And so in your packet is a draft scope document, just a little bit about what this study intends to do.

Using the regional transit vision plan, the project will further evaluate the transit services that were included.

and the unconstrained and the constrained networks to develop a prioritized list of recommended transit services.

The Transit Vision Plan obviously had a lot of public engagement, a lot of community buy into it, but it gave us lump sums for both the unconstrained and the constrained network.

So this project would seek to pull those out and give us individual costs for operations and costs for capital for operating all of those and then prioritizing short term, medium term and long term implementation for those.

We applied for $200,000 total.

There was a 50% match requirement and half of that came from Charlottesville, half came from Albemarle for the match.

Most of that will go out to a consultant for the project, but the TJPDC will retain some of that for administrative costs for invoicing and things like that for project management.

I think one of the benefits of this prioritization, there's really two in my mind, is that we're working simultaneously with any legislative effort so that we can continue the momentum of this body and we can start looking at what are the things

top of mind that we want.

What is that low hanging fruit?

What do we want to implement first?

What are the improvements to transit?

So if we're not given that authority, we are still locally making decisions with funding around what those priorities are.

I think that's one.

I think the second, though, is also to have that prioritized list when we're asking for authority.

It's to say,

So when you say Central Virginia, you mean Richmond?

I think they were certainly broader in terms of the member jurisdictions.

I think they also had some good foresight to make sure that there was a win for everybody in terms of their piece of revenue that they were able to get.

Or it's like, here's that low hanging fruit project.

Maybe it's a regional project.

Well, same thing when we have a referendum for schools.

But this grant and this study can be really helpful

So we use a lot of consultants.

Having said that, the consultant will be coming back to this group, I assume, making presentations.

We have had consultants that we, the technology and where they are and their technology is so bad.

I'm just saying, we need to make sure we have those, I don't know how you do it, you guys work the magic, but it's really frustrating to have a consultant

in Timbuktu giving us a presentation and we can't hear them, we can't understand them, their technology is bad, their connection is bad, somehow or another we need to wipe that into the, you have to, I'm just saying.

I'm less concerned about when they're not physically here than when they very clearly have not ever been here, if that makes sense.

I agree with that, too.

They're not the room with me, and they're never going to hear this.

I'm thinking the consultant we had assisting in the cell tower ordinance building.

Well, it's the same thing with staff.

If you're going to bring, you know, our own staff,

If you're going to bring this up for folks who want to talk about something, I anticipate that you've at least been there, driven it, and looked at it.

It's no different, right?

So, yeah.

But the technology in this room at times with consultants has been appalling way back.

I'm just saying.

Something to keep his mind.

I've seen the audience a bit.

That's great.

Anything else that you all want to say?

We felt the same thing.

I think we have come to other business updates and reminders and I don't have any updates or reminders

But hearing no objections, then I will adjourn us to our next meeting on July the 24th.

And of course, we will wrap around next month for the partnership.

So everybody, see you later.

June 26th.

Well everybody enjoy your extra time we've got.