Planning District Commission Meeting   10/1/2026

Let's do the call first.

All right, Supervisor Galloway, Supervisor Pruitt?

Here.

Supervisor Hodge?

Supervisor O'Brien?

Here.

Supervisor Goolsby?

Here.

Mr. Higgins?

Here.

Supervisor Barlow?

Here.

Supervisor Woodward?

Here.

Supervisor Reed?

Supervisor Rutherford?

Here.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Councilor Fleisher?

Here.

And Councilor Payne?

Do we have any electronic participation?

Not that we are aware of.

Do we have any public participation that would like to make any comments?

We're moving along.

Any email, online, or website?

We have not received them.

So the next thing is staff introduction.

Well, since I know Gretchen appreciates.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Taylor Lowery, the transportation director.

I'm really excited to introduce Eamonn Lauster.

He's sitting in the back.

He's a new regional planner one that started with the TJPDC on September 16th.

He's got his master's in urban planning with a focus in transportation.

And he joins us from the University of Illinois, the Center for Urban Transportation.

So he did some research before he came to join with us.

He's already hit the ground running.

He's working a lot on the rural long-range plan that you all are going to get a presentation of this evening.

He's also been doing some freight mapping work for our rural jurisdictions.

Thank you, Paul.

We're going to do public hearings.

I'm going to end with another public hearing.

Yes, Mr. Chairman and members of the board, this is your six month update on the new building to the right tax burden.

And as the slide presentation is coming up, I'll just remind you that the board was established about five years ago.

In October of 2021, we originally had seven members.

And since that time, we've had two additional counties and two towns come on as a number of jurisdictions.

And then, Mr.

Thank you.

We established October 2021.

The original member jurisdictions began levying their cigarette taxes in January of 2022.

TJPDC, through an agreement with the Cigarette Tax Board, is the administrator.

We've worked on

continuous basis, really, with about 25 distributors who submit monthly reports on sales of cigarettes to retail establishments, and then also remit revenues to be collected for the sales of those cigarettes.

They remit those back to us.

We do our processing and then turn around the money

Electrify jurisdiction back out to the Denver jurisdiction.

So we are working with reports on stamp usage, we're working with HACSOL, we're working with revenues, the revenues that come in,

or the revenues actually that the localities receive.

It's gross revenue minus a 2% dealer discount that by state law the distributors are allowed to compete and then how are you going to be straightening expenses out of that expense.

Next slide, please.

So just to give you a snapshot of the most recently completed fiscal year numbers from the standpoint of both revenues and total tax sold gross revenue from 26.

You can see it's just shy of $3.5 million across that 11 jurisdiction footprint.

That's actually up about $150,000 from fiscal year 25.

The fiscal year 26 total number of tax sold 8.4 million, actually fewer tax sold, about $340,000 than the previous year.

So revenues went up, the packed sold went down.

The reason for that was Augusta County, which is the top seller among the 11 in the region, they increased their tax rates from 30 cents per lap to 40 cents per lap.

So that counts for additional revenue, even though they were even packed sold.

Administrative cost on the part of TJPDC, you can see a little over $117,000.

And then just as we started fiscal year 27, 764,000 packs sold are documented to us and counted by us as those packs of cigarettes that are sold by a distributor to a retail establishment.

It is probably the best available gauge of what sales are because we certainly can't

Keep track among the many retailers of the actual

I'm going to explain that first bullet there in terms of the, yeah, in terms of the revenues versus the number of packs sold.

And I would point out the, even though our administrative expenses for fiscal year 26 were about $5,000 in order in the previous year, it's still a very low percentage, as you can see, under 3.5% of the total revenue that's taken in.

Alright, so let's put some of the PACSOL and revenue numbers into some visuals thanks to Gretchen, our administrative assistant who does a lot of the heavy lifting for this program on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis and put these charts together.

There again, you can see the PACSOL by month

fiscal year 25 in the Burgundy Bar, fiscal year 26 in the Brownish Bar and again in most cases running a little lower in the fiscal year 26 than in 25.

The next slide will show this similarly in pie chart form by locality and you can see the bright orange

and the Burgundy or red on the right side of the pie chart are sales in Albemarle County and Augusta County.

These are the two largest sellers of cigarettes.

You also see some fairly large chunks in the top left quadrant for Rockingham County.

and for Orange, slide please.

Turning to revenues, and this is actually the allocations that were made to the local government members this year, 25-26 again.

Red bars, 25.

Brown bars, 26.

And you can see revenues in most months ahead in 26 of where they were in 25.

And then the next chart, we turn that into a pie chart where that slide is a pie chart.

Again, on the right side, the orange is Albemarle.

Augusta is right below that.

Interestingly, until we got to fiscal year 26, you'd see that

being smaller because of that lower tax rate.

It is now I believe the largest but still combined Albemarle close to being half of the total revenues that are out of cigarette taxes.

Charlottesville has at the bottom has a bigger piece of the pie here.

Charlottesville was taxing cigarettes prior to state law changing in 2020 and their rate was 55 cents per pack.

All of the other jurisdictions are at 40 cents per pack.

So that's state law change, also grandfathered and capped the tax rates for those that were already administering a tax.

So they get a little bit more per PAC than the other jurisdictions.

Next slide.

Just a few notes about the board.

Since the last update, the board has met twice.

They meet on a quarterly basis, met in April and July, approved a budget of about 3.4%.

million dollars in revenue or administrative expenses.

It was a proportion of revenue.

It's pretty low.

So we budgeted one hundred and thirty five thousand for administrative expenses in twenty seven.

One of the actions that the board took at its July meeting was to enact a probationary period policy for instances where you have a distributor

I guess where you see a trend of late reports from late payments.

We have had one distributor that we've had some issues with throughout the time that we've had the board, I guess.

Policy that the board has had was if there was a late payment or penalty in the first month, they would receive a warning.

A second consecutive month of being late, there was a 10% penalty.

and it was very much the way in.

There was a 90-day probationary period.

This policy really addresses when there's a misstep in probationary period, which we had also experienced with this particular exterior.

So if you go through those first three months, you get put on probation for 90 days, and somewhere in that probationary period, you have a late report or a late payment, then it's an automatic six-month suspension of your permit.

have not gotten to that point yet.

We hopefully, knocking on wood, are seeing some changes with that one distributor so that they can think of change some things with their internal processes to get their reports and their payments in on time.

The other thing that we have going on, Laura Greene, our finance director in particular, is working with the TJPDC's auditor to migrate the cigarette task force books out of the TJPDC books so that it was a separate fatality to structure.

That is

is getting closer and closer all the time.

It's something that will be realized here in fiscal year 27.

Which I believe is the final slide.

Yeah, just a little bit on compliance.

Really the goal with compliance and our compliance agent who was out in the field

Many days, most every day of the week is to educate, to make sure that folks are aware, particularly if there are new retailers that are coming on, that they are aware of the requirements of the local ordinances to ensure these are the things that you need to do in order to be in compliance and stay in compliance.

We've got over 250 retailers throughout the region that we're aware of.

So it's not like he's going and checking up on everybody once a week.

If there's a problem where he finds out of compliance cigarettes that have the wrong stamp or only a state stamp, then he's working with them to take care of the problem.

He'll tell them that you need to get rid of these in one way shape or another.

And we'll go back and check in with them a little bit more frequently.

Generally in the field, problems are few and far between.

Most retailers are in compliance and stay in compliance.

We've not had to seize any cigarettes.

I think we're very fortunate that our compliance agent is a retired law enforcement officer.

He's very good about working with people to help them do the right thing.

And again, I just mentioned to the one distributor that is getting, I guess this month will be the last month of the probation, hopefully.

but we have had another one or two distributors here there may have a late report or a late payment and get issued a warning and in most cases they're able to correct that problem and are fined next month.

So I believe that is it.

I can realize that today it's kind of conspicuous that it's a flat per pack cost that the tax is levied rather than the percent, which I guess I get is a supply facing tax, right?

It's not a consumption tax.

But I'm also concerned that we've had, you know, periods of record inflation and I imagine this hasn't been touched.

Well, it was only authorized for most all of the counties in 2020.

So the state tax is 60 cents per pack had been in place for a number of years.

Prior to that it was 30.

I think actually, I think it was just during the urban administration, it went from 30 to 60.

I don't know if there is a need to increase taxes at the state level.

And they would look and say, well, we're going to increase the state tax.

We'll authorize a bump up in the local taxes as well.

But right now, there's a tax of $0.40 per pack.

I could see them probably doing one or the other.

Sure.

They could.

It's why not.

Exactly.

Why not?

Just being.

You have questions?

Good evening, my name is Igor Kalina and I am a part of PATH, Mobility Management part of TJPDC and I'll be speaking about the Transportation Assistance Fund.

It's one of our projects and today actually we have a

First day of the new fiscal year of PATH program and it's also at the same time first day of the new year of the Transportation Assistance Fund.

Okay, so I will briefly highlight what Transportation Assistance Fund is about, what's the goal of the program.

I will give a little bit of the feedback, a background

of the project and at the end I will ask for a little bit of help and I'll tell how the Commission can help us to make the project more successful and that's the reason why I'm here today.

So the goal of the project is basically to be a safety net for the older adults and people with disabilities in Planning District 10.

whenever an older person or the person with the disability is not able to get a ride because the public transportation is not able to accommodate that need like cat, child, micro cat or any other provider is not able to cover that ride where there is no neighbor, there is no insurance covered transportation

provided, and we want to be a last resort to provide the right for people who need it.

That's the whole idea behind the project, and we just finished a little bit over a year of the first grant.

That's how we started.

It was 2024.

where the whole idea emerged.

We applied for the Twice is Nice local grant and we got the grant.

It was $5,000.

Once we got it, we established all the policies and we launched a program in the first part of 25.

And by the end of the year, we decided that we will apply for the DRPT.

to cover the cost of the transportation we are providing using that program.

And we got the grant and it was way, 10 times larger than the initial one.

So having that in mind we redesigned the policies and right now we are on the stage of expanding the program.

So today effective actually October 1st we are able to use the new funds and we will be trying to get with our projects to more people.

So far using the

Once from the first grant, we were able to provide 25 rides.

Initially, we expected that we will be able to distribute the resources from our project evenly.

But as you can see, the demand was the biggest in Fluvanna.

Second was Louisa County.

And then there was even distribution

among rest of the jurisdictions.

So right now there's a big jump for us with the project because we have 10 times more resources to provide rides and now we were able using 5,000 to provide 25 rides.

They were all

designed to help people to get to the medical appointments.

Right now, because we have

More resources.

We changed a little bit the guidelines.

These are the base guidelines for everyone who wants to use our assistance.

So the person has to be a resident of the planning district 10.

The person has to be 65 years of age or older.

That's the requirement which comes from the DRPT guidelines, our grant funder.

And as I mentioned before, the right of the person needs cannot be provided with any public transportation service provider, friends, family, or any other transportation option.

And we also have and also had before an income requirement

Because we have right now more funds, we relaxed the guidelines.

So these are current.

The threshold has been raised, so it really increased the number of potential beneficiaries of the project.

This is how it looks right now based on the HUD guidelines we are using for the project.

We used to be more strict.

Initially, we allowed only to finance the trips which were trips to the medical appointments.

Right now, we won't be as strict.

It can be anything else as well unless the person is not able

to get the right they need.

We also allowed before with our first grant to provide one right to each person.

Right now everyone is allowed to apply multiple times to us and if the person will be eligible then we will provide these rights.

So

Why I'm here today is also to ask for a little bit of help of the commission because for us it's going to be a challenge to spread the message and to get to our potential beneficiaries.

First we want to reach the core target group of ours which is people over 65

and those who have disabilities, but also we want to reach social workers, people from departments of social services, departments of health and age jurisdiction and any other

relevant organizations within the jurisdiction.

So our request as a path is to help spread the message about this program so any person who might be in touch with our target population just to be able to reach everyone and so that everyone

is aware that transportation assistance fund is available that it's the option and whenever there is no other way we will be hopefully able to provide the right.

So we are right now during the outreach campaign we are contacting through our channels all community organizations we know media of course we will have some

Commercials in radio soon and we would like to ask you the Commission to help us spread that message.

So I will ask Christine to send an email to every

I want to view.

We have a request just to spread the message.

We have ready rock cards, flyers.

We have like a cheat sheet for every social worker or person working with the community.

We just want this to be a part of their toolbox.

So if there is someone who has problems with rights, hopefully we will be able to help.

So that's our request and hopefully with your help we will be able to reach more people who needed this kind of assistance in our community.

You said at that one time they were being limited to one?

It used to be like...

I believe, actually no, because there were two or three cases where the same person called again.

And although the rule was that we will only allow once, but the need was, in our opinion, like justifying our decision to provide this help one more time.

Great, so thank you for this.

And I'm glad that you've been kind of raised to AMI, so about 80%, so that seems really generous for a last resort kind of option.

And I hope that debt is at least more meaningful.

Yeah, we hope so too.

I think that's a good spot to be in.

But I'm curious, because that's about $200 per ride

You know, the folks, the twenty five rods that will be completed on crayons.

But remember that these rides are non-emergency medical rides.

So this includes stretcher transportation, wheelchairs.

So the average price is pretty high because lots of these rides were wheelchairs and stretchers.

And a stretcher ride from recently we had from, I believe it was rural Louisa to Charlottesville and back was $800.

Yes.

There are a bunch of non-emergency medical transportation companies.

Those which we are in touch with and like we had good experiences with are Brittany's Transit, H&N Transportation, Hospital to Home,

Reliable Rise, and there is, I believe, one more we work with.

And so far, they were good.

So usually, whenever we have a request, we just send a quote.

We ask for a quote to at least three of these companies.

Where

Do you medicate right into this model?

Is it one of the ones that needs to be checked out that it could not provide a ride?

Yeah.

If the modif care, like actually today we got a call and we were, someone was referred to us by modif care.

This person just wasn't eligible anymore for any assistance from either medic or Medicaid.

I don't remember, but

We are the last resort, yeah.

Do we have any sense of tracking about... Obviously they're getting rid of me because none of them are available.

Do we have a sense of proportions

In terms, like in case of jaunt, it's usually pretty straightforward.

In Louisa, Fluvanna and Nelson County, they don't operate every day.

And if someone has medical appointments scheduled, let's say on Tuesday, there is just no other option.

And if there is no family member, there is no friend who will give a person a lift, he will miss that appointment.

In terms of like jaunt and like rural parts of every county, it's going to be the fact that jaunt does not operate daily.

I had a favor reach out to me about a year ago.

An old woman couple, the gentleman was confined to a room with a chair.

Church on Sunday, and he has nobody there.

The family doesn't have a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

The wife, Kate Henwin, by herself, is now calling a wheelchair.

Is that something that on a Sunday is a possibility?

Should I send them to social services in Louisa to talk to them?

No, you can refer the person directly to us.

I left a bunch of our materials right there, so please feel free to take our flyers.

Our phone number is at the back here, and anyone can call us, and we are open Monday through Friday, 9 through 5, and we will be able just to check if the person is eligible, and if is, we will help.

Please grab more and leave it.

Thank you.

All right.

All right, good evening.

So I'm here this evening to give you an update and provide an overview of the Rural Long Range Transportation Plan, our process and what we've completed so far.

So today we will go over the brief overview.

We'll have a quick overview of the region as a whole, the Rural Long Range Plan draft goals, which you won't be voting on today, but you will at your next meeting, and then some next steps.

So what is the Rural Long Range Plan?

The last time this plan was approved by the Commission was 2018, so it has been some time since we have updated it.

This plan serves as a long-term vision for transportation improvements in our rural jurisdictions in the region.

It identifies regional transportation needs and priorities over a 20-year planning horizon.

And it was initially began as a way for BDOT to help get some local support for updating local comprehensive plans.

And so that's certainly still an option today once this plan is completed.

There's also the option for you to either adopt it as a local transportation chapter in your comprehensive plan or as an addendum.

That option is still there today.

We specifically are working with your staff on this update.

So the Rural Transportation Advisory Committee is something that we staff here at the PDC.

And that's made up of local staff from all of your jurisdictions, as well as VDOT staff.

And John also sits on that committee.

And so they, throughout this process, will be providing any level of data and document review.

They ask us questions.

They validate the work that we're doing before it comes in front of you all.

So anything that goes before them, anything that comes to you for action, they will provide a recommendation for that.

So that would be included in any materials in future meetings.

You all as a commission serve as the formal approving body for this plan.

So you all would provide the policy direction for any goals and objectives.

You'd weigh in on project prioritization and also the jurisdictional priorities as well.

Just a quick overview of the scheduling process.

I will note that this meeting was just one month we moved that one out.

And so where those activities are falling on the graphic is just a little bit shifted.

But right now we are currently still in that initiation phase where we've just completed the existing conditions.

But this is mapped out over the fiscal year with a little bit stretching into fiscal year 28 for plan approval.

And this is when you can expect to see certain topic areas and things come before you for action.

Other concurrent planning efforts that we know are ongoing.

The PDC itself is conducting the regional housing study and also a transit prioritization study.

We know that there are lots of local planning initiatives at all times.

We know there are always plans happening and going on.

So we've got this noted here and we are coordinating with your staff to understand the data that's being collected as part of that and how our plan fits in with those.

So for the meeting today, we completed the existing conditions material for demographics information.

So I didn't include every single individual jurisdiction overview in this presentation for the sake of time, but you all do have a full written draft report that was included in your packet today that has all of that information.

We compiled it and sent it individually to all the jurisdictions to be able to collect all of that feedback before it came in front of you.

So as far as the regional population and projections, according to 2024 US Census data, over 264,000 people lived in our region.

And according to Weldon Cooper projections, we are going to continue to grow for the next 20 years.

and so you'll see at the bottom we've also got a regional growth rate and a Virginia growth rate and we are projected to grow at a faster rate than the state overall.

Within our region, Louisa County is projected to experience the highest growth rate and Albemarle County is expected to add the highest number of residents over the next 20 years.

I'm sorry.

Sorry, did you have a question?

I didn't want to.

Oh, OK.

When the rural long-range planning process was first put in place, one of the main things that VDOT wanted to understand was the connection between transportation and housing.

We know that a lot of commuting and a lot of travel patterns are related to where people work and where they live.

We also know that people choose to live in different places for a myriad of different reasons.

They don't just want to always live close to work.

They also might want to live near families and friends that might be in other places outside of dense urban cores.

And so median housing costs vary considerably throughout the region.

They are the highest in Albemarle and Charlottesville and those who also operate as a regional employment center for the TJPDC region.

And as I mentioned earlier that regional housing study that is currently in process will have a lot more specific housing related data as well as some strategies for what the region can do to move toward more affordable housing options.

Next, just for some regional commuter patterns, commute time is just one of many indicators of the relationship between housing, employment, and our transportation system.

So we looked at that data from the Census Bureau.

The mean travel time to work in the region is 28.3 minutes, although it varies considerably again throughout the region, as one would expect.

Albemarle and Charlottesville have the shortest average commute times and the highest percentage of workers who worked from home.

The rural counties experience longer average commute times with Louisa's commute time being the longest, which also makes sense as Louisa is strategically situated between multiple urban areas.

And then Nelson County also has a significant share of residents who work from home.

Another data point that we looked at, this is just very high level for the existing conditions report, was census on the map data.

And I know some of you are a little bit familiar with that data source already, but I wanted to cover a little background about that and a few limitations so that we kind of have a basis of what the data is telling us.

Census on the map data, the latest year that they had available was 2023, and this is also based on administrative employment records.

This is also strictly work-related travel, so it is only employment commuting, so any other trip purposes are not going to be captured in this data.

But what we're also working on in tandem is a regional streetlight analysis that does not just focus on employment data that can also show us other trips and can specifically show us which corridors and which roads people are taking.

This data doesn't give us that piece.

So the first thing we updated was this regional commute matrix that was included in the previous long-range plan.

And this showed us that where we have the strongest relationship between jurisdictions is between Albemarle and Charlottesville.

65,000 residents both lived and worked within our region, while just about a third were actually commuting completely outside of our region.

So none of the jurisdictions that are in the TJPDC.

We're also attracting a lot of workers from surrounding regions.

And for these next few slides, this is also the census on the map data.

I wanted to provide just a little bit of context so that we can understand how to look at this graphic because the math, I think it's important to point out.

So of the live and work within a jurisdiction in the middle, and on the right, the workers who commute out, that is calculated as a share of the employed residents in a jurisdiction.

So those two are going to add up to 100%.

The one on the left where it says commute in, that is calculated as a share of the workers who are working in that.

So that one has a different denominator.

That's why that one doesn't add up with any of these other ones.

But the two, the one in the middle and the one on the right, those are calculated as the same share, if that makes sense.

So for Albemarle County, 40.5% of the workers in the county both live and work there, 65.8% of the employment base commutes in, and 59.5% of residents commute out.

We also pulled the top worker origins and commute destinations just to understand a little bit more specifically where people are coming from, where they're going related to all of our jurisdictions and what was included.

And the draft documentation was also the concrete number for those, like how many people were commuting to these places.

And it's more than just the top five.

We also have the top 10 we can share with our jurisdictions, the top 20, 50, we can share all of that.

For the city of Charlottesville, 82.6% of the employment base is commuting in from other jurisdictions, 34% of Charlottesville employed residents both live and work within the city, and 66% of residents are commuting out.

For Fluvanna County, 63.4% of workers in the county are commuting in, 16.6% of employed residents both live and work within the county, and 83.4% of workers are commuting out of the county.

For Greene County, 62.4%.

of workers are commuting in.

17.1% of employed residents both live and work within the county and 82.9% are commuting outside of the county.

And I also want to point out something that was interesting to me when I went through this was seeing some of the Northern Virginia localities that are listed on some of these.

I thought that was very curious in there.

For Louisa County, 65.1% of workers in the county are commuting in, 23.9% of employed residents both live and work within the county, and 76.1% of employed residents are commuting out.

I believe Louisa County also has the highest share of residents that are commuting outside of the TJPDC region as a whole.

And finally for Nelson County, 55.7% of workers are commuting in.

Of the employed residents, 25.8% both live and work within the county and 74.2% commute out.

Alright and the last thing that I have on here is a draft of the 2050 Rural Long Range Plan goals.

So this has gone before RTAC already and we've gotten a lot of really good feedback from our local jurisdictions about these.

Largely most of them will stay the same but for safety we did receive some feedback from Albemarle County specifically about focusing only on fatalities and serious injuries instead of overall crashes since that's what a lot of our grant opportunities are also looking for, the impact that we're making on

The most severe accidents that are out there.

All right, and then for next steps, this will go back before RTAC.

The goals and objectives should be finalized and for them to provide a recommendation for approval for you all.

We are also working as staff on the assessment of the regional transportation systems.

We are looking at bridge condition, pavement condition.

We're looking at transit availability.

All of those data points, we're completing the streetlight analysis also in this phase.

We will start talking with RTAC about the public engagement approach about how we're going to reach out to the public and get information about how they feel about transportation and their jurisdictions.

And then we're also going to start talking about the prioritization framework.

So what are some things that we want to prioritize on our projects?

What are the metrics that are going to help us measure how we're doing on our goals in the future?

And then the same information would come back before this group in December.

That's my last slide.

Very good job.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Yes.

Is the question of census data versus volume of paper

For the budget and the plan, do those matter?

No, that's a really good question.

So for all of the existing conditions data, we referenced census data.

Any of the projections that you saw, those were from Weldon Cooper, but we did not use their estimates.

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's not even that.

We've already had some questions.

We're trying to move items over there, and by extension, it's moving over.

And we can serve as a motion for this.

Second?

Second.

We move to the second week.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay.

Any opposed, say nay.

28 with the budget.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm coming back before you tonight as an action item as the projected FY28 budget.

As a reminder, this is the budget that sets our per capita rates that allows us to then come through your budget cycles to apply for our local contributions.

I gave you a presentation on this in the previous meeting.

There has only been one change in that one, and it is the debris management grant that we are applying for.

We are likely to receive, but they are extending the time

that we have to plan so some money was taken out of this budget and rolled into the next fiscal year to make sure the resources last through the planning cycle.

Other than that, everything in the budget is exactly the way it was when I presented it to you last month.

Happy to take any questions.

It's a balanced budget of 3.546 million.

Right now, it does have the need for a reserve transfer in order to balance the budget.

Any questions?

Okay.

Well, first to me, I don't think you get to say what you've been building.

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I'm sorry.

All right.

I think we're going to tag team this one that was going on in the packet, trying to update each month to share all this action to consider this issue being authorized, seen as the executive director, to take actions needed to involve TJPDC in this program.

We've had a lot of meetings, just in short, but the result of all of that is as of Tuesday night, we have a signed contract between TJPDC and the Department of National Assistance Services for TJPDC to be an implementation partner with the state on this April 12th initiative.

We were paired with

I have a graphic and regional commission to our north to be the partner for the northern Piedmont region.

They have been involved in all our discussions as well.

TJPDC, along with four other famous commissions in Virginia, will join the Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission, which will start out the gate quickly in order to meet a federal deadline.

and working with one to two PDCs in their regions to partner with the state on this initiative.

So as I said, a lot of discussions both internally involving our legal counsel with regard to the post-COVID work, with regard to the subject.

We sent me an agreement, which is the contract between us and the state.

We spent

Many meetings going line by line, comment by comment, reading both of those documents as well as exhibits that were included.

Fortunately, DBAS took a number of our suggestions and recommendations.

They're trying to move the four of the five additional PDCs outside of Northern China Valley along the same pathway in terms of getting contracts approved this week.

Then the next step will be opening up a request for applications or a request for proposals, period.

But yeah, a lot of good work.

I think the folks from the state working with this initiative, I think have been very flexible.

They've been very accommodating to suggestions for changes.

They told us when they could, yeah, we can do that.

They also said,

No, that's a federal requirement.

We can't change that.

But I think there's been good dialogue and some good relationships have been developed there.

So I guess most recently in the past week, there's been a lot of work, both between Christine and Rappahannock, Rappahannock Regional Commission and the state on the budget for this initiative.

We are going to be able to recoup our costs for all of these meetings we've had in August, September, and October.

And then we will continue to be able to have administrative costs reverse as we move through the first year of implementation once subawards are made to successful applicants and we're administering

There's projects.

So it's been a lot of work in a short period of time.

It's going to be, I think, a lot more work as we, what was your saying?

Why the plane as we're building?

Building as we fly.

We're going to have a model of Northern Shenandoah Valley.

We're going to have our pier EDCs there to be able to lean on it again.

I think a lot of

Cooperative hand-holding from the state folks as we move through opening up the application period, reviewing and scoring those, making sub-awards, and then getting into the detail work of meeting reporting and compliance requirements of the grant.

That's high level where we are.

I would add that it is 11.8 million needs to be spent by September 2027.

So this is going to be fast and furious.

It is one of the most complex administrative grants I think we've seen in terms of how if in fact they get additional years, which we still are hoping that that happens, how they stack on top of each other and overlap.

And you can only use certain grant funds for administration under certain periods of performance.

So we needed to make sure before going into this that we understood that in the very last year, if there were to be five full years, there would be one year of implementation without administrative funds, because you have to spend the administrative funds within the first budget period of a two year implementation period for performance.

So a lot of the financial analysis I've been looking at is

Do we have the opportunity to defer enough revenue a little bit every year so that in that fifth year we are not worried about being able to administer and I feel confident that we would be able to do that assuming no other major changes happen to our budget.

But we've been very conservative with the state DHCD funds that we use.

We really secure those for last minute matches to new brands.

That would be a source that I would start to just tuck it away a little bit at a time so that we're certain that we can complete this.

Yeah, I was saying, yeah, it's like I just said, you know, the amount that we have to award, just again referencing Northern Shenandoah Valley out of the gate first, they opened up their request for applications.

They're operating solely within their DDC region.

And I believe their amount to award to the sub-grant was 4.8 million.

They had what about a two and a half week window which their applications period was open.

They received 22 applications requesting over 20 million dollars.

So, I think it's gonna be interesting to see for us, particularly with the University of Virginia Medical Center located here, there will be numerous applications from them.

Some of them may get shifted to other areas as they're looking to

Part of the most complex part of this is we're in a unique position with our indirect cost rate, probably more detailed than you want, but

In order to get your full rate recovered, you have to have what's called a NIBRA, a negotiated indirect cost allocation plan from a federal agency.

That federal agency has to be your cognizant agent, which is the person who's responsible for looking at your financials and saying, yes, in fact, these are your indirect costs.

We certify that.

Our cognizant agent is BDOT, under the authority of FHWA.

So we don't actually get our certification letter from a federal agency.

We get ours from the state agency that's required to do that work on their behalf.

So anytime we get a new federal grant, we have to go through the whole process of educating people on how that goes so that we recoup our actual costs.

Originally, this grant was going to be based on the federal de minimis, which is 15% indirect.

Our indirect cost is 50%.

So we would have had a gap there that we would have had to bring

local funding to the table if we wanted to be able to make this work and we did a lot of negotiating and they went to that for us and they brought it all the way up to OAG to say we've never seen anything like this can you advise and they are in fact going to take our indirect rate so that we are fully recouped for all of our costs.

So it's been a puzzle but we are pleased to have arrived where we have been.

I think I already said it fast, fasting sure is the month of hours but

I felt very strongly that if we didn't take this on, this money would go to another region and that we know the demand is there.

Great.

Thank you all.

Oh, I have questions.

Okay.

So you're feeling confident that the milestones, even though we don't know the categories or acceptance criteria can be done this quarter.

Is that what I was saying?

Did I read that right?

That will all be defined within the Request for Applications.

I'm thinking about the three-week application window and how that may not benefit like small FQHCs or

That seems like a UVA Centerra gig and that's kind of a bummer.

So yeah.

Is there any way to get that done?

No, you're going to say no.

Because the funding has to be fully spent by September.

We are, we are under the assumption, and I think all of our peers and the state have said this first grant year, we might have to work with larger established, they have the capacity, we can wire funds, you know, things that we can do in order to get this first set of money spent on time.

Okay, so.

And that's not to say there's a predetermined outcome.

We have to wait and see what the applications are.

We have to score those.

There could be any applicant that scores very high that we would have done.

So that's not predetermined.

I guess we are at risk of conflict of interest because folks in the street... That's right, that's right.

And the state is also trying to make sure that they're looking at Commonwealth as a whole.

So they're kind of helping from the higher level, making sure that all of the

The rural regions piece was one of my, obviously that is the point, right?

But this, I think it said the service area had Charlottesville's in it, but it had to

I'm wondering if I was also concerned about the longevity after the startup money ran out and so I wondered is there a

Beyond your idea of sustainability, which was where it sets and shekels aside to cover the end.

But like Medicaid billing plans for every application or something?

I mean, not that Medicaid exists anymore, but you know what I mean.

When it reimburses, it is something.

Can those requirements be put into, is that allowed?

Like a Medicaid, like what, you know, can you show a sustainability plan?

I mean, I'm asking, it's also, that's kind of a curse because that's been required more admin costs to make that happen.

Yeah, sorry, I just realized that.

Let me just take note of that.

You say that you have to already have a Medicaid billing admin arm, which probably someone who's been replying three weeks can't meet all these criteria does.

Well, I don't know a lot about, you know, prior to DMAS rolling it out to us, they had

I don't know even what they call them, not free applications, but they've had health providers submit to them prior to applying to CMS to say what are the types of needs we have, what are the types of things that we should fund and they used those proposals to develop their application to CMS

It was probably one of the original work that was done in the previous editorial administration to put this in place.

They had, I believe they called it a suggestion box, and they got about 180 different portfolios from across the state.

And then they were able to buy those out by these various reasons and even be able to tell us this is what came in as suggestions.

Thank you, Sandra.

It's so not blessed.

I don't need anybody else.

Everything is going after it.

We appreciate your questions.

I have a question.

There's an organization in San Luis Obispo

and I think they may also be in Sweden, I'm not sure about that.

But it's rural medical care that we need to listen to after they run the fields.

But that's one of the reasons CMAS is involved in the scoring of all the RFAs across all of the different regions so that they can help identify, hey, they applied to you.

We're going to send that over to them because that's more appropriate there.

Or this region didn't get as much domains.

Let's roll some of the funding that's not spent over there so it's still well spent.

I couldn't find this.

The bucket thing we're working out of, a bucket of funding, and a little one of the admin tiers and telehealth.

As long as it fits on a bus, you can put a dental unit on there.

It will definitely,

We have a new business.

Mr.

Chair, I do not have a lot to add.

There are a lot of written notes in this one.

I will draw attention to the rain barrel workshops have been scheduled.

And so all of the dates and locations of those are in here.

Also an update to the transportation

both the rural and the NPO.

Originally, we thought we'd be involved in six studies.

It looks like it will now be seven studies within our region, which is an extensive amount of studies to be involved in and keeping track of.

But we have staff sitting on all of the stakeholder committees for all of those and have been in contact with the other staffs as well.

I don't think I had any other comments to add.

Questions?

I have a question for Steve.

I have not seen the final letter, whether or not that's been given to you.

I believe you say that Mr. Dabble is going to see.

Okay, round table.

Since my last name, and I was always two on speed.

You've never been called for a long time.

I think tonight we'll try and start with Nelson County.

Sorry I haven't been here very since he sailed down the ship to Nelson a long time, so it's good.

I'm working up with Lucas Elliott.

Still trying to get that knocked out.

I'm kind of thinking it's probably going to be a summer thing, spring approval from the best base.

I think that's realistic.

I don't know.

Constituents, you know, I think, you know, the state of inflation and everything else have constituents on an absolute edge, and it doesn't matter what you say, they're going to be quite frustrated.

And rightfully so in a lot of regards.

So I found the temperature

Well, where are we going by count?

I don't have much else to add, but you know, that I didn't bring up last month, just we have the value of the seven star.

Next weekend in Nelson County, there'll be 25,000 people added to our population for a long weekend.

My grandson is a girlfriend for conduct so I'm hosting him for a piece of it in 1910.

But it's the amount of community concern and collaboration with all the folks in the county in terms of

VMS, VDOT, Emergency Services, Farm Rescue, Planning and Zoning and everything has been remarkable.

Now we can just keep the vibration down so you don't feel it five miles away.

We actually have a plan for mediating some of that stuff, but I expect we will, we're still going to feel it.

It's as we've said before, it's the job.

So she was just sitting.

We had the pleasure of having just one, the first thing that I'm going to ask you, Kate, and I think that I'm clearly going to ask.

We were going through a work session.

I'm not going to try and figure that out.

and rather than simply passing the ordinance, they let it be conveyed.

We kind of went with a different approach, and we got into transfer of development rights, purchasing of development rights, and everything.

And we were bringing up, we were running the roadblocks.

Again, we didn't control the company, the general assembly.

what sounds like with audio almost baby do those and we can't do that so I'm hoping that we can get some not the most blunt and TJPDC can figure out how we can do what we're trying to do and get close to anybody.

We're not awfully worried about it, but it's true.

When they send out an obstacle to transfer and purchase them, is that what they'll send them?

Well, in Operation Dave, they're going to be able to do this.

They're going to purchase them from Rice County.

I know we've been traveling around here at least 30 years now.

We have a brother we hired, and I think he's done a great job with paying for all the benefits and stuff.

It's voluntary.

It's all working great.

When it comes to trying to figure out how to do the transfer of development rates and stuff, we've been told that the county has to basically become a broker

and you have to do title searches and you start to find that they develop rights on that rather than be a I'll be there and let the cell and the purchaser work together like they do on everything else.

It's too much county law.

It's making it so cumbersome

I'm not being able to do what we're trying to do.

And the legalities of it are keeping us from being able to move this forward.

And I'm not real sure anybody understands what the legalities actually are.

And if there are things that need to be changed in the general assembly, then we're kind of looking for help.

that's what I had to go back to.

I'll add, Ms. Birdville, we hired to help us through this session.

She has,

And I'm kind of liking that idea, maybe lease them for 10 years, get our FIFAT, ties up that land for 10 years as far as development of that land for 10 years would be a lot less expensive than purchasing the rights initially.

Is this with the county as buyer or the police lessor of the land?

And we've also talked about the calendar and some of that as well.

We finally had a workstation right time.

It took us about five months to get that.

Maybe you're using one of the biggest tools that we use.

I'm not sure.

No, with us it's a ten year, we've been silent for ten years.

But anyway, it's about fifty some thousand acres.

We have those folks in AI and forestry who have at least expressed an interest in possibly doing something.

So anyway, Green County.

You're growing leaps and bounds on them, I say to them, thanks for your time.

I'm trying to sit down and figure out, you know, the over-development on the houses, at least, to kind of work in some ways to bring in more business groups in the long run.

But that cannot keep the taxes down for the people in general.

We've got a lot of updates on the Big Boyer Project to the

which i think the biggest thing in there we just got hit with some of the costs have gone up a lot higher and that's man because the fuel was fell similar some of that maybe have to put them over for a couple months to figure out and renegotiate some of the prices and that but i think a lot of that's the water line and all that's pretty much in place set and ready they're still working on the

Strickland, but the reason why I think it's so important that we either get through all these fuel prices and pricing and all that, but out of the net, Canada's going on very good.

Had a big success when they paid for us, the one that they have every year, and that was a big success in the end of the year.

Very briefly, you may have heard of this.

The Publix Supermarket has announced that it's going to come to the Villages of Terrorist Green mixed-use development on Route 29, just south of Matthew Mill Road.

I'm not familiar with Publix, but the announcement was created with a lot of excitement.

and everybody in the county and people from outside the county.

Next month, we have an open seat on the Board of Supervisors with the half-large seat.

There are three names on the ballot and currently a write-in candidate as well.

It's been pretty quiet.

We had a presentation from Damascus updating us on the move from water pool to air pool.

Folks that are concerned about noise levels, that's a good question to ask about that, but the special use condition has noise levels that are already defined and so they

and the post-war system that they have.

Beyond that, really not a whole lot of excitement going on.

We're, I think, just a few weeks away from wrapping up Amazon, and there's a little bit of a holdup with the wall, due to some right-of-way issues with the lines, underground lines, that were not properly marked, but that's all past us now.

We just had our annual Deville Trail Fest on Sunday and it's been a success for the first time in four years it didn't rain or downpours the entire time.

So we have previously

Since I've been on that planning committee, we have had more than about 350 people participate and get 700 people.

And Supervisor Groovin, one of them.

And yeah, it was a great mountain biker, hangers, families, runners, all on the trail at once in the 20 mile route around Charlottesville.

So that was exciting.

And a nice step forward for the Rivanna corridor and kind of this reignited our

Interesting how we expand that corridor and develop it and invest in it and what it becomes.

So those conversations are starting again.

There's a phase, we had the Rivanna River Basin Conference yesterday and the updates to the Riverview Park in Charlottesville that help restore the park and the water flow through that park as well as phase three of the Rivanna River Corridor Plan which is really the implementation master plan came up and so there was a good panel discussion on that so I'm looking forward to those discussions that

That's a really great opportunity for us to kind of leverage right now.

Thanks everyone.

I'm to the Regional Housing Partnership, my first meeting.

So we've had that on the books and lots of talk of homelessness services and the network and strengthening that you are all part of the continuum of care in the homeless services network and

We, Charlottesville is working with the nonprofits that are part of that to expand the scope of that here and look at the data to kind of where funding, where's the best place to put the money to reduce homelessness and improve services in our COC, in our region.

So we had the National Alliance in homelessness have a workshop hosted by our nonprofit BRAC.

which is our COC lead on the 29th, so Tuesday, and a lot of great data there and what we can be capturing and kind of rebooting our interest in using that data to make informed decisions on homeless services and housing in general.

What types of housing are most successful and are the best investments for mitigating homelessness?

and I'm sure Michael would have a list of things that he remembered.

And I would be remiss to say I did not mention that the Ryan River Basin Commission Conference that was held the other day was really great presenters there.

Just a wealth of information.

I know that Jed was there.

Yeah, a real reframing of, which we've seen kind of come out of Roanoke as one of the leaders, but you'll always hear me say like I have such a crush on Roanoke.

They're just really doing such a great job in this area of outdoor recreation, but they really converted their framing from

Trails and outdoor efforts and rehabilitation are under Parks and Rec or even recreation in general investments and they are just economic development.

So they moved to everything under economic development that has to do with trails and outdoor recreation and they're seeing the

through to their labor.

They're really seeing that investment and that focus and reframing payback in space.

And so that helped.

That was kind of part of the discussion yesterday.

How do these grants convert into economic development incentives for regions who can, like us, leverage our green spaces and that also.

There's a fragmentation by two members from the UGA.

No, it's delightful.

But there are an array of cities across the globe that are designated or have applied to be or joined, I guess, in the other world.

the bio-syllic cities network and it's about integrating your green spaces as part of your city, how you support and sustain those things.

So one of the examples given was Austria just designated a park in the middle of the city as a kind of protected

area that also will be generating economic development and has now a plan for sustainability in it as far as keeping all the plants alive.

Yeah, rail yard, yeah.

And where apparently some thought to be extinct creature was found to be living in there.

I know, I was a little worried about that creature.

I was like, he's like, can you bring a feral cat inside?

And they're like, ooh.

So, but yeah, it was pretty fascinating.

I'm still very good at using it.

I don't know.

I know very well.

But it was a very academic overlay.

Was that a reference?

No.

Being the total living organism.

Apparently, we were put on blast during that presentation, how we're all complete.

I was not able to join for the first word, but our board's direction that we should join by approaching after a while ago, but apparently there's not been subsequent staff action, and I believe that

Fluvanna made a point from saying how disappointing that was that Albemarle County has not joined.

Thank you so much.

We've only had one business meeting in the intervening meeting with the Fed, and we didn't.

Was that the end?

That's not it.

But it was a good amount robust meeting.

The main thing I was thinking about actually could go off of what we were talking about, the main tensions previously is about how long Adam just got a rule awarded a title grant to expand the whole Mills Trail if I'm parallel to the dynamics that I'll bring with the Riverview Park.

is on the other side and actually connects through over Greenbridge.

And it is going to connect to the existing work that we're planning on doing some on development on the now closed Greenbridge Lane.

And we'll hopefully make that whole corridor a little bit more robust.

But the thing I'm really excited is that we own other easements south of that.

And even further south of that, we have a whole trail network that is dedicated to community.

that people cannot access them.

And we now with this are going to be able to blame every existing easement we have and the newest rail system all the way from Darden Town Park all the way down to Woodland Park, which is pretty cool.

We saw with the, the imbeciles being affected all the way from the Rivanna crossing on 29, all the way down to

I always forget the name of the farm.

But yeah, a much larger, but that's going to be more complicated.

That's kind of, I put it all over across.

Anyway, that's exciting.

So like, cool.

The only other thing of note is we all attended a open event over at Rhode Island Station, which was an opportunity for a lot of big

I'm a good chunk of the board.

And it reminded me that there is the potential specter of the events investing too much in our organization.

Y'all will remember that we, one of our biggest economic development kind of leading edge initiatives was to acquire, with the county as the landlord, a significant amount of land around our administration.

which gives them site securities that they're less likely to close down.

And it's one of those parcels, one of those three developable lots that we own.

Being able to develop that and offer it at cost or property to the National Senate goes probably napped.

We got two other big land mays.

If it gets too exciting and the feds are too eager, it's possible that the feds would want to develop their models by any means.

which are showing some of the goals of that development effort.

That's all of them.

Thank you.

I would like to finish up with just saying, Santa Train, we'll be back in a little bit.

So, the June sending rate from the website, tickets are already all bigger, and you can make some availabilities.

I do think that they're also returning, along with that, the adult Santa Train calls.

which I do not normally want to bring to a call.

I'll show you what I did on the government.

The Santa is actually an entertainer from South Carolina by way of prospects.

So it's a lot of fun.

The emo is fixed up.

Y'all don't have any.

So with that, I think we're probably ready.

Our next meeting will be the items for the next meeting listed on the agenda and I will entertain a motion and a second please.