Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to call to order the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors for our June 3rd, 2026, 1 p.m. meeting here in Lane Auditorium. At the dais, we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Ann Malik of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Fred Missel of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor B. Lepisto-Kirtley of the Ravanna District, Supervisor Sally Duncan of the Jack Jewett District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District. We also have with us our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our Board Clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgeson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris. Also present are ACPD officers, Officer Joshua Penn and Master Police Officer Eric Ketchum. Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us here this afternoon. And with that, if everyone would please rise as you are able for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you, everyone. And if everyone would please join in a brief moment of silence. All right, thank you. And board, we'll move to item number four, the adoption of the final agenda. I'm not aware of any change. Do we have changes to the agenda today? I'm not aware of any. All right, is there a motion to adopt the final agenda?

So moved.

Second.

All right, motion has been made and seconded. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missel?

Aye. All right. Thank you, Board. Now we'll go to brief announcements by Board members. Supervisor Malik, you're up first today.

Thank you. I so appreciate the rain we've had, but I will just report from the stream in my place that is normally four feet wide is now four inches wide. So please keep doing your rain dances, everybody, and remember that while we did get some, it's already run off to Richmond or soaked in, so take care. Special Waste Collections Program, just some reports for the electronic waste, 303 Albemarle County customers, hazardous waste, 385 customers, special collections, furniture, mattresses, tires, that kind of thing. Pounds collected, 33,160. So these two times a year, a great advantage for county residents to participate in getting a final resting place for hazardous chemicals, for needed furniture, for all sorts of things at the Ivy Recycling Center, and I hope that people will continue to use it. Thank you very much.

All right. Supervisor Lapisto-Kirtley?

I just wanted to say we, Supervisor Galloway and myself, went to, along with some other members of senior staff, went to Chapel Hill. Very good retreat to see what they have. They have, frankly, a transportation system that really works and is very well, and all the buses are full, so... There's a lot we can learn from them. Of course, I will say that it looks like, according to Mr. Richardson, that even 30 years ago, their buses were full. So they've got a really good system entrenched, which is something hopefully we can emulate. Other than that, it was a very good trip they had. They were very cordial, very nice. We all got along well. Southern hospitality at its finest. And we were just very pleased. I'm going to let Supervisor Galloway give any other comments.

Supervisor Missel? Thanks. I have no announcements.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Yes, a few things. First off, it's beautiful weather. That means we are hitting peak recreation season here in the county. With that comes the opening of several county locations for swimming and recreation. And with that, and I stand to be corrected on this, that means several county recreation spots such as Walnut Creek are going to start to be have a fee associated with them as a way to offset the costs of Our lifeguards that we hire every year, but it's a still a great bargain can't find a cheaper place to swim Additionally with that that means please remember even if you are not enjoying all our summer recreation activities in this beautiful County to be safer on the roads we have people who are going to be cycling more we have people who are going to be quite frankly, drunk driving more. And so it is a particularly, I think, serious time to be paying attention to traffic. There are also a lot of important upcoming opportunities related to this and all the summer fun that I want to put on people's radars. Fridays on the Canal are starting back. This is an event that Scottsville puts on every final Friday of the month. It's a great time. Free music, vendors, non-profits were involved.

We had for-profit folks involved that were members of the chamber. You will likely hear more formal reports of what was learned from that when we do a future joint meeting with the city, just in the spirit of the same thing that was done with Champaign-Urbana a few years ago. So I think a more formalized report out will happen from there, other than what's just shared one-on-one or at the water cooler, if you would. But certainly appreciate the folks in Chapel Hill for having us and know that they are coming to our community this fall. So hopefully we'll be able to return and be as gracious as hosts as they were with us. All right. We will move to item number six, proclamations and recognitions. We do have a proclamation today recognizing June 5th, 2026 as National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Joining us is Bobby Doyle, the director of the Gun Violence Solution Project. We'll have, sir, we're going to have Supervisor Malik read the proclamation as a motion. The board will take a vote. Then we'll invite you to make some remarks as you choose to, and then board members will have an opportunity to make some comments as well. So with that, Supervisor Malik.

Thank you very much. Reading as a motion, National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Whereas every day, more than 130 people in the United States are killed by gun violence, alongside more than 200 who are shot and wounded. And on average, there are nearly 19,000 gun homicides every year. And Americans are 26 times more likely to die by gun homicide than people in other high-income countries. And whereas Virginia has 1,226 gun deaths every year with a rate of 13.9 deaths per 100,000 people and has the 31st highest rate of gun deaths in the United States, localities across the nation, including Albemarle County, are working to end the senseless violence with evidence-based solutions. And whereas protecting public safety in the communities they serve is the local government's highest responsibility, and support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens goes hand in hand with keeping guns away from those who are a danger to themselves or others. Local officials and law enforcement officers know their communities best and are the most familiar with criminal activity and how to address it and are best positioned to understand how to keep their citizens safe. And whereas gun violence prevention is more important than ever, as we see an increase in firearm homicides and non-fatal shootings across the country, increased calls to domestic violence hotlines, and an increase in gun violence, and whereas anyone can join this campaign by pledging to wear orange on June 3rd, oops, I'm sorry, I forgot, and the first Friday in June in 2026 to help raise awareness about gun violence. By wearing orange, people across the United States will raise awareness about it, honor the lives of gun violence victims and survivors, renew their commitment to reduce gun violence, pledge to do all we can to keep firearms out of the wrong hands, and encourage responsible gun ownership to help keep our children safe. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize the first Friday in June, June 5th, 2026, as National Gun Violence Awareness Day and encourage all residents to support their local community's efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and to honor and value human lives. Signed this third day of June, 2026, Ned L. Galloway, Chair.

Very good. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. All right. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missal?

Aye. All right. Very good. The vote carries. Mr. Doyle, we welcome you and invite you to make some remarks as you would like.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Board of Supervisors. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you today and HAVE THIS DAY BE RECOGNIZED. WE'VE SEEN SOME EXTRAORDINARY PROGRESS IN THE COUNTY ON THIS TOPIC IN THE LAST TWO YEARS, AND ALSO WE SEE FAR TOO HIGH NUMBERS OF FIRE AND VIOLENCE AMONG OUR COMMUNITY. I'VE BEEN A PROUD MEMBER OF ALBEMAR COUNTY FIRE RESCUE AS A VOLUNTEER FOR 14 YEARS NOW, AND I WANTED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WITH THE PROGRESS WE'VE SEEN, IT'S NOT BY ACCIDENT. amazing first responders and fire and law enforcement, but also counselors, physicians, human services, victim advocates, a whole panoply of folks across the county who are working incredibly hard. Even folks who are doing summer programs who are working hard to make sure that that our communities are safer. And I hope people use this Friday to acknowledge and consider the work those people are doing, consider the lives that are lost, the lives that have been saved, and how much more we can be doing. And just, once again, appreciate all y'all are doing to bring this forward.

Thank you very much. I'll invite supervisors to make remarks. As Supervisor Malik's in transit, I will go to Supervisor Lepisto-Kirtley first.

First of all, thank you for being a volunteer firefighter. I think that is so important. And thank you for coming here today. This is something that is very near and dear to our hearts. And we want to do everything we can to prevent gun violence and responsible ownership. And hopefully parents will also monitor and make sure that guns are safely locked away and a gun safe so that we don't have any tragedies. We don't need that. We don't want that. And we want to save children's lives, adult lives. We just want to save lives. And there's no place for guns in a violent setting like that. So thank you very much for being here.

Thank you. And I'll return to Supervisor Malik for remarks.

Thank you very much, and I'm so appreciative of all the work that our Moms Against Gun Violence and local organizations have done over many years to help us all do better. And so I look forward to more and more progress on that effect. Thank you.

Supervisor Missel?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Doyle, for sharing this. And, you know, the statistics are sobering. I hope it's okay to just ask a quick question. You mentioned at the beginning we're doing fairly well as a community. What are the general trends looking like?

So there's two competing trends happening right now when it comes to firearm violence. We are seeing dramatic drops in what are called community violence, people shooting each other in communities. And that's, like I said, due to some amazing work. And unfortunately, we're seeing a slight rise of suicide by firearm across the community.

Mental health related, yeah.

Yeah, mental health related. So we are seeing some progress, but we also see a lot of work left to do.

Great, thank you. I'm also eager to learn more about what we can do to assist moving forward, so thanks for your time. Of course, thank you.

Supervisor Pruitt? Thank you so much for the work you do currently. I've said before, I think this is an issue where it is frustrating that there are real quantifiable solutions that I think everyone can work toward, and instead we have an issue that becomes such a a fractionalized and politicized issue. So I appreciate the work that folks in research settings and advocacy settings can do to actually make meaningful progress to halt gun violence. So thank you. Supervisor Duncan?

Yeah, agreeing with everybody else, thank you for bringing this before us and all the work you do. Yeah, gun violence is just very terrifying. And there was just an article today that I read about sort of an increase in buying more guns before laws change. So, yeah, this is definitely something that people should keep to the top of their minds. And, yeah, I do hope that everybody who has guns has them safely locked away.

Yeah, and thank you again, Mr. Doyle, for being here and the work and the efforts. I joined not just with all my supervisors and their remarks, but was thinking what Supervisor Pruitt said so well about being able to do this work where it doesn't turn into just politicized argument and what are actual things that we all can agree on that adjust better for everyone. So thank you for that effort and work that you and your organization does. So thank you again for being with us today. Of course, we all want to be safe, so I appreciate everyone's work on that. Thanks. Thank you. All right, board, it is now time for item number seven, public comment. This is for comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than those scheduled for public hearings. And we do have some folks signed up today, so Vice Chair Missel will go through the rules and procedures and then introduce our speakers. Thank you, Chair.

During this portion of the meeting, individuals may address the board regarding matters previously considered by the board or currently pending before the board, other than items scheduled for public hearing. Speakers are limited to one opportunity of up to three minutes per meeting. In-person speakers will be heard first, followed by online participants coordinated by the clerk. To ensure equal treatment and courtesy for all speakers, the board requests that the following guidelines be observed. Please state your name, and if you live in Albemarle County or Magisterial District, comments should be directed to the board as a whole. Written statements or supporting materials may be provided to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share unused time with another speaker. Back-and-forth debate is not permitted, and speakers should not speak from their seat or out of turn. For in-person speakers, the podium timer will guide your time. Green indicates your time has begun. Yellow means one minute remains. And red means your time has expired. If participating by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called to speak. I guess there are none online. All comments are recorded, live streamed, and published on the county website. With that, we have three on our list. And we'll begin with Nicole Scoro.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I actually have a presentation, so let me pull that up. And my name is Nicole Skrow. I'm a land use and zoning attorney. And I'm also a developer, but tonight I am here as an attorney representing Kate and Jeremy, the owners of the property. And we have Doug Lowe here as well, a Class A contractor who can help with some building-related questions. So I'm speaking about the action item at 145 related to 528 Clark's Track. It's for a stream buffer encroachment. And so I'm going to talk about why that's such an abnormal request and why it's justified. And I'm going to try to do it succinctly because I don't have too much time. So the how we got here is, you know, between 2021 or 2001, excuse me, and 2013, so over a decade ago, the prior owner, a Class A contractor, had, to our knowledge, not gotten permits or inspections for several buildings on the property, one. And then two, he hosted weddings as a business, had a website for the business, several weddings. And those two things are what my clients, Kate and Jeremy, relied on when they purchased the property in 2022. And so in 2023, they hosted their own wedding on the property. They had one other wedding of a friend and then another where Kate was the maid of honor. After those three weddings, the county issued a letter noticing these various violations. And from then on, none of this, no weddings, no Airbnbs occurred afterwards, and they've been in compliance mode since then. And so this is an owner's affidavit that was signed at closing. And it says in 11 and 14, I or we have no violations of any zoning law or ordinance. I or we have never been aware of problems relating to either the issuance of a building permit or the failure to obtain one for an improvement on the property. So this is why my clients are in a pending lawsuit in the circuit court. I'm going to say that and the punishment and who is right and who that is for the circuit court. Tonight, we're going to talk about compliance. And so the goal is that we want to preserve the structures while still achieving compliance. Because this is the building. It is not a small structure to move or to demolish. And that would not be good for the environment either. And so we want to preserve the structure but still maintain compliance. So our two... paths are to pipe the stream, because that does not require county approval, that's a DEQ issuance, or to landscape. We had a meeting with Frank Pohl, Bart, and we said, what is your preference? And they said, landscape. And we said, okay, we're going to go before the board and get this done. That's why we're here. Another point that's very important to make is that you have zoning, you have building, and you have health department. The health department did not approve this nine-bedroom property with two rentable structures. And so in order to improve the downgrade to get it to as advertised, we need to improve the health department's sewage system. And to do so, we would have to go back to the board to upgrade that downgrade. Your time's expired. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm here to answer questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Jeremy Kent. Hopefully I got the order right there. You did, yeah. Thank you.

I'm just going to read from this.

Jeremy, on the left of the podium, there's an arrow that will make that podium go taller since you have exceeded the average size of speakers.

Well, my wife is in contrast, so maybe I'll just leave it like this.

But if you would point those microphones up some, you can adjust those as well.

Okay. Should I start? Yeah, you can go ahead. Yeah, so I'm just going to start from the beginning. Kate and I are both family medicine doctors at UVA, and that's how we met. We're both from Virginia. We grew up in Virginia, did almost all of our schooling in Virginia. And except for the years when I was away in the Army as an Army doctor, we spent our entire lives here. We've been in Albemarle for almost 15 years. We are also a blended family. We each have three children, all under 18. And so when we were looking to buy a house, we wanted to buy a big enough place so we could house all of our kids and each of them could have their own space. 528 Clark's Track was a perfect place for this. The previous owners also said that they had weddings at this property and that we could even get married there because we weren't married yet. So it seemed like a great place for us. Fast forward a year and we're planning our wedding. Weddings in Albemarle are very expensive, upwards of 100K or plus. And so we didn't have that money to spend on it. And so my wife, Kate, is a master at Facebook Marketplace. And so she went online and basically bought all the stuff that we needed for the wedding. 40 foot by 80 foot tent, like 150 chairs, dance floor, everything. And we had the wedding on our property and it was beautiful and it was fun and we all jumped in the pool afterwards. And Kate's best friend, as Nicole said, was also going to get married and she had our wedding at our place and Kate was a maid of honor. And then we had one other small wedding there with about 50 people. At the time, we didn't know that we needed to get a special permit for weddings on our property, even for a best friend. In that time, one of the neighbors contacted the county about our wedding without ever saying anything to us, which triggered the county looking into the property, and they found that several structures were unpermitted. There were major zoning violations, including one of the structures that violated the WPO. Since we got the letter from the county, we have not even thought of doing any more weddings on our property. We're not business people, and we're not construction people, and we didn't really know the law. So we've had to hire two lawyers, including Nicole, Doug Lowe as our building contractor, a soil engineer, Justin Schimpf as our civil engineer. We've had several plumbers come out. We've had electricians come out, and we even had a sewage excavating team come out to be in compliance with the county for the structures on our property. We've spent almost $100,000 at this point, and we're not even finished. It doesn't even feel like we're halfway there. We spent a lot of time and money on this mitigation plan, and so we just ask that you guys approve it. It will be one more step for us to getting back to a normal life. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. And next, Catherine Kent.

Hi. Thanks for hearing us out. Can you hear me okay?

You really have to be right in on that.

So as Jeremy said, we bought this house because we thought we were just forming this blended family together and It seemed like a sanctuary for us, like secluded and like a place of joy and safety. And I'll just paint this picture for you. Literally in the spot that Jeremy and I set our wedding vows in our backyard, there is now a three-foot-wide elevated sewer lid in the exact spot, which is like a very sad metaphor for how this has sort of turned out for us. It's really not funny at all. It's like our actual life that we have to live. live every day, and there's so much uncertainty and not, like, safety in our house. There's certainly stress around all of this. Financial stressors, like Jeremy said, he and I have each gotten two extra jobs in addition to our full-time jobs to try to, like, keep us afloat. We can't even sell the house because of all this stuff held up with the permits if we wanted to, and so we're really just, like, stuck in this, you know, Like, no, we didn't build these houses without the permits. We didn't know about any of this stuff. But we fully accept we stepped into this, and it's our problem now, and we're so willing to do everything it takes to, like, get right with the county and with nature and color inside of all the lines. But we just really need your help, really, to let us know, like, what we can do next so that we can take the steps that are needed to just get some closure on this because, like, You know, there's just no peace in that house. And this was a really formative couple of years for our family, especially a blended family, you know. And, like, it's not a really stable place. And it would just feel a lot better if we knew, like, this is the next step we can take and we will and we'll do, like, all the things. So thanks for hearing us today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes our list. All right.

All right, board, we will close matters from the public. That will take us to item number eight, our consent agenda. Are there any items that need to be pulled from consent? I'm not aware of any. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, motion has been made and seconded. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Lapista-Gertley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missel?

Aye. All right. Thank you, Board. The consent agenda is now approved, and we will move to item number nine. This is the action item that we've heard comments on, SE 2025-40, 528 Clark's Tracked Building Site Modification. Good afternoon to Rebecca. I see Frank joining as well.

Good afternoon and thank you. I'll be doing the staff overview for this item, which is a special exception. We'll go over the particulars primarily of the ordinance since you have heard the background and the context from the owners and their representative. I'm joined by the county engineer, Frank Pohl. And we will be available for any questions that you may have about this. This request is under the zoning ordinance. It is a special exception to what we usually refer to as the building site section of regulations. And it is, as you heard from the owners, to allow that existing structure to remain. It is located in the stream buffer. Our building site requirements require that structures and improvements be located in a building site, which means they're not located on critical slopes, or in this case, they should not be located in stream buffers. The property, as you may be familiar with, is off of Clark's Track Road. And the property outline is shown in yellow on your screen, and it's a 7.86-acre property. There is a pond located on the property, and then on the adjacent parcel is a stream. So that leads to two water protection ordinance buffers. This is an aerial overview of the property and you can see that the structure is located in the bottom corner and you have already seen a picture of it, but it is a garage with finished space above it. The applicant and their representative went into the detail about the parcel history and what led us to this point today. But I did want to note, from the zoning perspective, with it being a 7.86 acre parcel, and that was created in 1992, it has one development right. So only one dwelling is permitted on the property. So this structure that's subject to the request today cannot be a dwelling. And as they mentioned, this is the first step in or part of the steps in their efforts to come into compliance. I believe that some of this information has already been covered as far as the estimated date of construction of the structure was about 2013. And then the current owners have purchased the property since 2022. This is the exhibit that you saw already, but this shows you where the structure is located roughly outlined in red, and the property line is in yellow. This shows you the stream buffers associated with the pond and the stream on the adjacent property, as I mentioned earlier. The outline in red of the structure is to the overhangs and the footprint of the primary footprint of the structure is about 40 feet by 40 feet. As mentioned, the applicants have proposed to allow the structure to remain with mitigation, and that mitigation would mitigate the impervious area, the areas that were disturbed that you saw in the prior slide, and that mitigation would include not only shrubs and deciduous trees and plantings, but also a combination of grasses with the pond there and the dam. There is not the ability to completely use shrubs and trees in some places. Staff believes that that would be adequate to to mitigate the impacts. If you've been out to the site, you've seen that it's stabilized now. There are no unstabilized areas, and the stream is in good health. We provided the criteria from the ordinance. If things had happened in the sequence and application order that they should have, we would not be able to make findings to recommend approval of this type of request. It doesn't meet the criteria, and staff would not suggest that we construct improvements in the stream buffer. However... They are already there, and the criteria is in your packet and on your screen, and that includes no further detrimental effects to public health, safety, and welfare, that it's not contrary to sound engineering practices, and that we can make at least one of the following findings. In this case, there are other areas of the property where this accessory structure could have been constructed, and there's nothing in terms of the size or the shape of it that wouldn't have allowed it to be located somewhere else. In terms of criteria D, granting the modification could serve a public purpose in terms of further mitigating the stream buffer impacts that have already occurred. So for that reason, we believe that findings could be made under the current situation under Criteria D. So we have included in your packet resolutions should you choose to deny it, but also a resolution should you approve generally. choose to approve it. And it's reflective of the mitigation plan that's been prepared and reviewed by our county engineer. And it would establish timelines for compliance and prohibit any accessory uses like homestays or home occupations for the structure. So I'll pause there. Like I said, we do have motions available when you're ready for any questions.

Thank you, Rebecca. We'll see what questions we have. Supervisor Malik.

Thank you. I guess I'm struck by the change in tone from the original packet two weeks ago and today. And I don't, having not received any communication about why a recommendation for denial is no longer front and center as it was for the original packet because of the fact that those four criteria were not met and no alternatives have been suggested. So, the fact that also in email communication has been represented by the applicant that, or their attorney, that Mr. Pohl approved all these things, the mitigation would be fine, which was certainly not the case in the written packet that we received. So those are distressing things to me. While I'm sorry to hear about the personal circumstances of the people who are there now, One of my constituents got pretty concerned when reading about this in the packet and spent about 15 minutes doing research and found all of the history of this property online. So I don't know why one's attorney at purchase, et cetera, would not have done the same and found. And now I'm struck with the fact that people are asking the county to get in the middle of a civil case situation which we are repeatedly instructed we cannot do to solve civil neighbor-to-neighbor problems and also to set aside our buffer regulations, which we have enforced in other places and had people take things down when they got carried away and put things in the buffers. The reason we don't put structures in the buffers is so that when floods come, in 2018, we had 11 inches of rain in six hours, and a lot of things washed away that never would have been considered to wash away before. So we have to be aware of the reasons why these ordinances were passed. Almost half of the structure is in the buffer, and there's a lot of area that has not got any mitigation on it. All the asphalt and everything is proposed to be left. So there's a far greater area that has been damaged, and increasing, therefore, the velocity of all the runoff across the sheet drainage all across this area that will hit that stream buffer. I'm also concerned that there is this ultimatum that is presented that you either give us this waiver or we will just go to DEQ and pipe the stream, and then it won't have any buffers anymore. I did not react very well to receiving that information, and I did contact DEQ and ask them if this would be a circumstance that they would respond in this way, and they said there is absolutely no guarantee that in this kind of circumstance, we would consider granting a piping when it is done to avoid regulation. Reiterated that the county is in charge of the buffers, DEQ is in charge of the water, as is Army Corps of Engineers. So it is up to the county to have consistent application of its requirements in order to have fairness and respect for the rule of law in Albemarle County. People who have called me and said, well, why should I be following the rules if other people don't? This is chaos coming our way if we just walk away from our responsibilities here. I did share with board members, and I'm glad to share it with staff, too, information on the background processes for DEQ if you hopefully had time to look at that this morning. So getting to questions. I guess I'm... Is there any feedback from what I have said and my concerns about this, the changes from before to now, why this postponement really happened, what is really going on? Because it was pretty clear in the original date that this was basically recommended for denial, and that's certainly what I was expecting to have happen.

So we have both resolutions in your packet, and we have included the analysis based on the findings.

In the original packet, there was a recommendation for denial.

There still is.

But it's not being presented that way to us. It's presented as if this is going to be fine. So that's my concern, is the way it's, well, it's already there, so we're not going to worry about it. And this is kind of walking away from what has been a significant problem that did not get detected for a long time does not mean it's less of a problem. I think it puts Mr. Pohl in a bad position when he's represented in ways that were clearly different than what's written in his staff report.

May I respond?

Please.

First off, When we spoke to the applicant about different options, one of the options they asked is can we stay where we are. And in the ordinance, there is a way to do that, which is to come before the board. And as part of that process to come before the board, I recommended that they follow the ordinance and provide mitigation at a two to one ratio for the impacts. We could not go back and determine definitively all of the land disturbance within the buffers, so we chose to use the impervious areas for the impacts, which is how we got to the 11,000 square feet of impact and 22,000 square feet of mitigation. Can you go back to that? Slide with mitigation. 23,376 square feet of mitigation. That essentially fills in the areas all around the, within the buffers around the impervious areas. I did not state that this would be approved. In my personal opinion about what is, what is preferred if something is approved is irrelevant because the Board has to decide. So my suggestion was to provide a mitigation plan. The first mitigation plan I think was a one to one ratio. I did not Not that I didn't approve it, but because they could still have asked for that, but I recommend it go to two to one, and that's what's being presented today. So they have asked how to keep the structure in place, and this is the process for that. We do agree that this would not be approved today, but they are asking to obviously keep the structure where it is.

And that includes the pool, the pool deck, everything else, and the driveway is all part of that 11,000 square feet, because that was not shown on your diagram.

No, that's not correct. Those permits were issued, and there aren't any notes that I can go back and make any other determination for those structures.

Even though the building was denied, I thought, the first reading of the packet, my mistake, I guess, the first packet described that the permits for all those were done without, all those constructions were done without a permit.

No, my understanding is those permits were issued, but they did not get their inspections or a CO.

Which basically means the permits didn't get completed.

Well, the staff at the time issued permits for those structures. even though they were in the buffer. So there was a decision made at that time, and I'm not going to go back and second-guess that decision for those structures. This one we had a clear denial, which is why we're here today.

There just seems to be an awful lot of area that is impacted that is not remediated. So, I mean, pulling up the driveway and putting plantings there would be another way to make this... a more remedial, I guess, because really and truly, if the person had followed the rules to begin with, they'd be doing a two-to-one mitigation. And here it is all these years later with all these noncompliances, and they're still just doing a two-to-one. I mean, there doesn't seem to be any recompense for that. So I guess I'll stop there, and if I have more questions, I will ask to have another chance.

Supervisor Lepisto-Curtley? Yes.

This is a, it's kind of a, it's really a sad situation because we have a couple that purchased this land, had an affidavit saying that everything had been permitted, then found out it wasn't permitted, which is not a good thing. I mean, you would take, it was notarized and everything that we saw the affidavit. I know the other two buildings that you're talking about are the pool and the other building, those have been under the process of being permitted or an application has been asked for permitting. Is that correct?

I don't think so yet. I think they're waiting for this to do that process with this one.

And I understand that there's no intentions. In fact, even in the write-up, it said that it must not be used for any homestays. Correct?

That is one of the conditions in the resolution if you were to approve it. I'm not sure under the ordinance if it could even be used for those types of accessory uses, but that's where that was in the packet.

So you basically have a storage unit. And I went there, I walked the property, and the stream, very small stream, I even asked, I said, this is a stream? But I understand flooding, that could happen, but this would go up against half of it, I understand half of the mitigation is under a patio and the other half is the building. So if there was a flood, it would not be a loss of life or anything like that. So that concerns me. is mitigation, double the size, which I understand is of the disturbed area, which is required That's a lot of trees, shrubs, which they are going to be expending a lot of money to be able to make sure that the site is stabilized. But there's not going to be any detrimental effects to health and safety. You're right. There's no guarantee from DEQ. I never understood that that was any kind of a – I understood that that was something that they could do should they want to go to DEQ. regarding the stream buffer. However, it was never presented anything like, well, if you don't approve this, we're going to do this. Never. It was a mitigation factor, I think, that came from the county. I mean, I feel for them. They were given a bill of goods. I think that's what we're here for in the county is to look at each individual. That's why this job is not easy because we do look at individual parcels. We do look at individual home ownership, and we do make decisions based on what we see. No two things that come before this are usually the same. This... And I think that they've already spent a lot of money. They're going to be spending a lot more money, and that's not it. But it's just that these home sites are not, excuse me, these buildings, these storage buildings, I mean, they're there, so to have them removed or anything, I don't understand that. I do like the mitigation that you all have come up with. I think that's extremely beneficial, and I think that will eliminate our concerns and allow them to continue and hopefully continue and join their home. That's all I have.

All right. Supervisor Missel?

Thanks. I'll try to focus on questions. Absolutely heartbreaking situation, and I'm sorry that you're going through this. I just, you know, I'm going to try to remain, as I'm sure we all will, as objective as possible. I'm trying to learn and understand the facts. And, Mr. Pohl, I know you said your opinion doesn't matter, this is our decision, but to me your opinion does matter a great deal, and I respect that. So thank you. Couple questions. One is, in looking at, and I apologize if I missed this on the staff report, the structure itself is obviously very close to the boundary of the property. I'm assuming there are no setback issues? Okay.

No, the accessory structure setback requirements are six feet. Got it. So it doesn't have any setback issues.

Thank you. And I didn't quite follow what I can't remember if it was you, Frank, or one of you were saying about the staff approved structures. You were talking about the approved permits, the building permit. So did I hear you correctly when you said That there was a building permit approved, but the inspections were not completed? Can you remind me what that was and for which building?

So, you know, the focus of this special exception is for this garage structure.

Yeah.

The house did get a permit and a CO correctly. The house did.

That's what you're referring to.

and to some extent, I believe, some inspections. We can't speculate at the time what the mapping showed as far as stream buffers, but it was approved by staff. Thank you. And then there is perhaps maybe a gazebo that also would need a building permit. Got it. taking everything kind of on whole across the property they want to have this is a key decision point I believe it's been characterized in terms of next steps with the structures and building permits that are left remaining so that's that's the story there with all the other structures and great and I understand from the applicant that they are doing unwinding of of some of what had been put in place illegally so I appreciate that

The DEQ process, if there's a decision to deny this, am I understanding correctly they then can go to the DEQ and they can ask for approval to pipe the stream, which would remove the infringement, and make this null and void? Is that correct?

Yeah, the applicant can go to DEQ and request whatever they want, permits that they want. And I never said that DEQ would approve this. Right. We don't usually get asked when somebody goes for a situation like this, for instance, on the other one. We were not informed until after the fact. So where was I going? And I didn't say we didn't. The only thing I did say is we don't. require a permit if they stay below the threshold of 10,000 square feet, which is a fact. So if we're under 10,000 square feet of land disturbance and they stay within the stream and DEQ issues a permit, then they can pipe the stream.

I'm with you. Okay, thank you.

Or a portion of the stream, I should say.

Thank you. I get asked this a lot, and I've probably asked Mr. Herrick this many times. In terms of precedent setting, this is not a situation where we're setting precedent. Each project stands on its own. That's correct. And my last comment is I appreciated those last couple of slides that you shared that said sort of if this had gone through the process, this is what would have happened, and finding that item D was a helpful piece. So thank you.

That's it. Supervisor Pruitt.

Thank you. This could be a question for our planning team. It could be a question for council. Is there any diminution in our enforcement capacity that happens over time with issues involving permitting or things like this with our riparian buffer? Can you say that again, please? I missed it. Do we have any, like, diminution in our enforcement capabilities? Do we lose tools from our toolbox and enforcement over time with issues like this?

There are... I don't...

Here comes the big guns.

You want to take it, Bart? Thank you. Please.

You're big guns, too. Bart Swoboda, Deputy Director of Community Development and Zoning Administrator. Normally, no. WHAT DIMINISHES IS OUR ABILITY TO BACKTRACK AND SEE WHAT HAPPENED IN KIND OF REAL TIME. SO IF I GO BACK TO THE PERMITS ON THE POOL IN THE HOUSE, WHEN WE GO BACK IN THE AERIALS, IT'S CLEAR ACTUALLY THAT THE POND WAS SMALLER. SO BACK WHEN THE POND WAS SMALLER, THE 100 FEET DIDN'T REACH THOSE STRUCTURES. AND NOW THAT THE POND IS BIGGER, CONTAINS MORE WATER, THAT BUFFER KIND OF FLOATS WITH IT. I think we believe that's what happened with the permits as an example, but we're not 100% sure. But as we go back in those arrows, we can tell that difference, that there's a significant difference enough to measure. It's not just a few feet. It's 10 feet or so. So that's the struggle with kind of delayed enforcement or going back. It's the records. or the photographs, or the onsites that we don't have access to anymore, or the individual's memories. If we have photographs, we'll have those. But if we had an inspector that went out, I'll pick on Dwayne Vai. He's not here, one of our older building inspectors. If he was still working for us, we might be able to pick his brain if he had done the inspections about what he saw or what was going on. So there's other vesting issues with permits and things, but in this particular case to move forward with this permit or any of the other ones. This is just a step in the process. If it's approved, the applicant is allowed to move in one direction. If not approved, then there's different steps that go forward in either enforcement or compliance or both. I hope that helps.

It does. And so like to kind of extrapolate into the absurd, if we somehow did have the records, this process could also happen just as easily 50 years from now. There's no limiting factor. I will...

There's no statute of limitations.

I will just reflect that that's fascinating. It's truly unusual, right? You have statutes of limitation in private action, right? I'm going to borrow an example Supervisor Duncan used in a conversation with me, but if you had instead built a fence onto your neighbor's property, you wait Seven years? And it's yours. And similarly, if it was a zoning dispute rather than a permitting dispute, that could be subject, it's very different, but it could be subject to grandfathering of grandfathered use. It is kind of an idiosyncratic little weird issue that has this perpetual tale on it. I would like to know Something that kind of stands out is that the impervious paved surfaces are pretty substantial on the slot and in the proposal that we're seeing they're remaining intact. Was this something that was ever discussed, either replacing it with a pervious surface or tearing up in part to be part of the mitigation area?

It was not. Okay.

I think those are all the questions I have for now. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan?

Yes. I have kind of a lot of questions and comments. The first question, actually, I don't know if you can answer or if the applicant can come up, but I'm just sort of curious, listening to their comments, do we know how many weddings in kind of like the business that the previous owner was having?

Well, hold on. It's not immediate allowed that the applicant can come back up. So can staff answer the question first?

We don't have a, and if I get this wrong, I'll have Lisa Green come up, but we don't have a previous record, again, Bart Swoboda, of violations for weddings at this property. We have indications and confirmation from the current owner about the three. Their wedding doesn't count. If you have a wedding on your farm for your friend, that doesn't count, right? It has to do with whether it's a business opportunity versus a family friend or your son or daughter and so on. You all get the idea. So we kind of are where we are. We haven't had any issues out there since we spoke with them and they received a letter about being in compliance. So this, again, we're in just the steps of moving forward and going towards compliance.

I guess I have kind of a lot of different thoughts. The first one, I guess, I don't quite understand how the county didn't catch this ginormous building for over a period of 10 years. I know when we're doing assessments, obviously it's not practical to walk every property And they're only assessing every property every so often. But we do have two sets of aerial photos that show this being on there. The common sense part says when you buy a building, especially when somebody signs a legal document that says that everything was legal, and you see a building like this, that surely there's permits. And so are we expecting everybody who buys property now to make sure they go pull all the permits for any building on the property, any additions that might have happened that they don't know about if it's been there for so long. The state building code has a two-year statute of limitations. So if somebody builds something and it's unpermitted after two years, it's just accepted unless there's health and safety. So I guess my first corresponding thought is, you know, is it possible to get a statute of limitations into our ordinance for something like this? Because 10, 12 years just seems just wild to me. And then my other, I guess, kind of bigger thought is that I have questions about whether this should even be in the stream buffer in the first place. I was looking at historical maps, and these are both this pond and the one that's on the adjacent property were man-made ponds built sometime between 1957 and 1966. you know, if you look at the topography, if you look at the USGS maps, like these are not, whatever this stream coming out of this pond is not a naturally occurring stream. I know it's probably marked, well, I know it's marked on the USGS maps as intermittent, but I also wonder if it's even an intermittent stream or if it's an ephemeral stream and then it wouldn't even qualify. And if you just, if you look at the stream buffer maps, we have so many that are ravines or that are coming off of man-made ponds And so I'm wondering you know as we're going to be looking at our stream buffer ordinance You know what if we just focused mostly on the perennial streams because we have so many of them in the county already And that's already an extensive amount of stream buffers, or if we Reduced the stream buffer for intermittent streams to like 30 feet or 50 feet Which would also solve some of this. And I think there's also a thought of, you know, if you look at the topography, you know, it's going downhill, that essentially this man-made pond is also acting as like a stormwater retention pond and is actually kind of mitigating some of the damage to the creek further down by slowing the water as it goes down. And so even if this ravine does fill with a little bit of water from the pond, that it's actually providing environmental benefit to having it like this. I don't know that I totally have a question there, other than I guess, do you consider this even an intermittent stream, or is it actually more of an ephemeral stream?

We could consider it intermittent.

So there's water always at the bottom a little bit?

Intermittent stream does not necessarily flow year-round. Perennial streams do.

Does it, after it rains, does it like dry up though? Like is it just dry or is it like kind of collecting seepage?

This is clearly intermittent stream. It does not, it's not a, it is a natural channel. So, and the pond does provide a pretty consistent flow.

Okay. That's all I have.

All right, I don't, the questions I had have been asked and answered. I'll have, I guess, maybe some, well, I guess one question I would have. If this came, if this was brand new and being asked for some sort of waiver, accepting the idea that it could fit somewhere else on the property, is the major concern the impervious surface? Like, is that the main, I mean, forget for a minute if it's in the stream buffer. I understand that that's a problem. But the primary concern about what could get into the stream is caused by the impervious surface.

Mitigation is based, and I'm going to get to your question a little circular, but mitigation is based on disturbance within the buffer, not just impervious areas. So if you disturb 50% impervious, 50 is disturbance in the buffer, you provide 100%, let's say 100 square feet, that isn't based on just the impervious area. But stream health is based a lot on impervious area. Also turf areas that are maintained which at the foot of this dam is mowed I assume and it's so they'll be putting some native grasses in there which will help with that so Does that so the initial if it weren't existing anywhere in front of us?

We'd have different considerations to have to think about but the present circumstance the primary concern is is the impervious surface. For this application, yes. Thank you. Board, I'll do another round to see if we'll catch any additional questions anybody has and comments that you would like to make. And then we can continue. Supervisor Malik, any additional questions or comments?

Thank you. In listening carefully to others, I agree that no two applications are the same. But that is why we have regulation. So that it is not a subjective decision based upon some staff interpretation, but there are actually reasons why things have to be done a certain way. And that's why I cling so strongly to ordinances. If you don't like the ordinance, you should change the ordinance, just not vote to uphold it. And having community trust that the county is doing its job to enforce the rules that they have already followed, it's really important to maintain the trust of people whom we tax and we ask them to follow the laws and drive safely, all these other things that we're always asking people to do. It's no different here. There's a conservation easement downstream. Those people have given up considerable value to put that in easement. And the buffers and the stream protection are incredibly important when events happen. The four-inch-wide stream that I mentioned in the opening remarks today during the 2018 flood was 15 feet deep. and blew out my driveway and the bridges that had been there for 50 years and covered Advance Mills Road. So these things happen, and they're getting more and more frequent. So we need to be thinking about protection and protection of abutters as well. Neighbors have rights too. They should not have to be dealing with extra runoff, other people's furniture, things like that that get washed away. The health and safety is so important to our county charter, and it is the number one priority listed in one of the staff things, the four things that we're responsible to do. If we are continually avoiding enforcement of the buffer rules, which have been in place for decades for very good reason, we are not upholding the health and safety of neighbors. The pond was put there. If it's anything like my lake, ponds are generally put in places where there are streams. And therefore, you have some water flow. So I'm very grateful that Mr. Pohl explained carefully that it is an intermittent stream because of the characteristics on the banks that show. And I've had great lecture from Vinny Piro of the Army Corps of Engineers to prove that a stream on my property was an intermittent stream and had to be on the GIS. because of the structure of the soil and the history that the banks tell. It's not just something that gathers a little rainwater and then it's gone. It's not like a swale in a pasture. So the pond would be dangerous if it didn't have a drain. Because when that next 11 inches of rain comes, if it overtops, then it will wash out. And then that would be a really big disaster. So there must be drainage coming out of the pond on a regular basis in order to keep it safe. And that would be a liability that no landowner would ever want to take on. I've lost track now of the map. Is there any mitigation planned on the back of the dam, the outfall side of the dam?

That's where the native grasses will go.

But no trees or shrubs because we can't do those because the roots will damage the dam. Okay. Correct. All right. Well, I will advocate strongly for upholding the rules and denying this, and I will have no more questions. Thank you.

Supervisor Lopisto-Kirtland.

Yes, could you go back to the photo that you just had, please? So are you confident that the mitigation of the trees, shrubs, grasses, that that would protect the stream buffer, the intermittent stream?

It will provide additional pollutant removals for the areas that are not shown as impervious because those areas are currently open turf grass areas.

And if this building, which is... which they didn't know is non-permitted and going to be used basically, the only thing it can be used for is storage. If this building, if they were to lift it up and move it over, what, 100 feet closer to the pond, then it wouldn't be in the stream buffer, correct?

That is – we do not believe they have the room to move the structure – toward the pond, because you see the two blue lines are where the stream buffer is located, and as you move toward the left of the screen, you enter into the buffer that's around the pond.

Okay, so if they were to move it higher up between the yellow and blue line at the top over the circle, if they had it there, right?

Correct.

And they had maybe even a smaller, you know. That doesn't mean that if there's overwhelming water flow that I couldn't wash that away too, right?

There is no floodplain here. I don't know what the elevations are and the channel. I did not look at this from a floodplain perspective, so I don't know for certain if there were a flood that backed up this far into this stream, whether or not, or over the dam. whether or not it would flood the structure. I did not look at it from a floodplain perspective.

There are no steep slopes, my understanding. Is that correct? No steep slopes. It's flat land. So if the water rises, it could hit anything. But since that's going to be used as a storage building, it's going to be mitigated. So there are no, really realistically, no health and safety aspects to approving something like this. I understand we have rules in place, but I also feel this is not their case. If they would have built it, that would have been one thing. They purchased it under, in good faith, having an affidavit saying everything was permitted and notarized, and they were lied to. So I don't see if they mitigate it, which I think is better for the stream health for the buffer. It's better that way than to the other thing would be to pipe it. I don't think any of us want to pipe it. But I think with the mitigation that they're proposing, or frankly that you're proposing, I think that would do a lot in making sure that this stays safe and it's not a health and safety risk. So this is something I'll be supporting. Thank you.

Supervisor Missel.

Thanks. So these are general final comments or is this just questions?

Questions and final comments.

All right. So I've got two more quick questions. One quick question. What maintenance plan and oversight would be required if this mitigation plan were put in place? That's a good

What type of oversight would there be?

Yeah, for example, I'm not saying I wouldn't trust these folks. I'm just saying if this moves forward, the mitigation plan, what county role is there in reviewing the installation of the plan and oversight of maintenance?

Number two and three of the conditions address the oversight for mitigation. Number two is completion of the plantings within six months.

Got it.

I'm sorry, that's a plan that must be submitted. Number three is the six months planted within six months and bonded with the plan.

So there's no, thank you, there's no ongoing requirement for maintenance. In other words, if they plant them and they all die, it's not going to be?

Well, the bond will be held in place until they're established, which is typically two seasons.

Got it. Okay.

And then we release the bond. And then at that time, if it's in the buffer, then it would be under the buffer regulations at that time moving forward.

Okay, thanks. And now I'm going to put you on the spot with this next question. The mitigation plan that's before us today, Compared to and I'm not saying the DEQ would approve the pipe. I'm just asking for your professional opinion. What is the better? approach piping the stream to remove the infraction or Mitigating what would your sounds like you're? Recommending the mitigation I would recommend mitigation Yeah, okay, so I guess some comments that I'll make just general comments and I appreciate Supervisor Malik's comments. In fact, if we were to look at this just purely objectively, we would adhere to the ordinance. My understanding is we have some leeway, and that there is the ability to look at the question of whether or not the health and safety of the neighbors is being impacted by this, and if there are reasonable intervention and mitigation that can offset the impacts. For me, this is a unique situation. I don't believe there's intention of impropriety by the owners. I think it's an unfortunate series of events. It's unfortunately and likely an illegal representation by the previous owners. You all aren't coming to us asking for forgiveness. You didn't do this. I think that there's some value in the realization of that. There was malicious intent, it seems to me, in that the fact that the county denied the original permit and the previous owners built the structure regardless a year later. I also am not in favor of piping. I've spent some time in my career daylighting streams because of the value of doing so. I think it is a huge effort to demo that structure and get rid of it and throw it in the landfill. I would see that as unfortunate. Some of the other conversations that maybe you all haven't had that I've applicants reached out to me on which is an understanding that there's some serious and an intentional Rewinding of the issues even internally to the structures that for example no longer make it a dwelling unit And so those I think there's a very clear intent on the part of the applicant to write this ship I Think I'll leave it with that supervisor

Great. Two quick questions, one of which I just neglected and the other isn't really a question, it's more of a statement. There was a comment earlier about us interfering in ongoing litigation. I just wanted to quickly clarify, is there any concern about how we might affect the rights of different parties in litigation?

I don't have that concern, no, sir.

Thank you.

And the other kind of similar in that it's just another law thing. And this is more of a statement than a question. And counsel can chime in if I'm telling tales out of school. There was a discussion about neighbors rights as far as adjacent land uses and I just want to say the neighbors rights aren't on Us if there is subsidence if there is flooding if there's debris that enters a neighbor's property because of any of this development They continue to have a suit in nuisance and that is not our responsibility They can sue the moment that happens if that happens. And we can consider that, and it's part of how we have zoning authority, but it is not our responsibility to police that. Now to kind of, let's say, the normative policy statements on where I am. I tried to look at this as objectively as I could. There was a comment earlier that if we looked at this objectively, we would fall on a specific decision. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I'll kind of clarify that. I think in a matter like this, what we should be doing is looking at what the balance of public harm and benefit is and weighing in favor of the thing that causes the least public harm and benefit. And the applicant is a member of the public, so we consider the kind of equitable justice that impacts them, but they're two members of the public. Well, they're actually like what, seven, eight members of the public? Big house. But that is the extent of that. So I think it weighs on it, but it weighs a small amount. Looking at the analysis of alternatives, there's kind of three different universes. There's they tear it down, either completely, or they tear it down and move it. I don't know what that looks like. So I'm just assuming they tear it down and maybe rebuild it later with new materials. They get an approval from us today and do really extensive mitigation and plantings. or they get a denial from us today, and realistically this is what they would try to do, right? So the first thing I said will only happen if they got a denial, and then DEQ also told them to pound sand. They get a denial from us today, and they go to DEQ, and let's say there's a 50-50 chance they get what they want from DEQ. We've already heard that there's a preference to the plantings over the piping from DEQ, and I'm not a soil engineer. But I might imagine that, frankly, the harm of tearing down and rebuilding a major structure 40 feet away is also real. And I would think that that gap is more than made up by the again, that negligible but real equitable justice piece for the individual. Because I see that as being something that would cause, in the instant case, it's got to take several days, significant additional runoff, significant debris, CO2 and building materials, yada, yada, yada, right? Like that is a real environmental harm. It is a little different than the environmental harm we're protecting against. But this is such a case of of minutia. And I see this as being a matter where I think of the three universes of alternatives that we're presented with. It sucks because it's only happening because someone violated the law multiple times and then fraudulently induced someone into a contract. But I do think approval of the exception is narrowly, but I do think it's actually the most overall beneficial for the public as a whole. So that's where I'm at with this.

Supervisor Duncan.

Just that this is a good example for looking at the stream buffer ordinance and maybe thinking about how wide we want them to be for certain things. That's it.

Yeah, I think the only additional comments I would make is that I understand that we have ordinances and things in place, and they are there for good reason. I think that when you consider those... It takes a lot more time to understand the impacts and all of that, which I think is what Supervisor Duncan is alluding to. But the reason we provide process to come before the board is because if we just did the strict adherence to the ordinance, you wouldn't need the board's decision. It wouldn't come to us. So to me, in past situations that are like this, it means that whoever the six individuals at the time it comes forward are asked to provide their subjectivity and their judgment to the given situation, which is why it doesn't serve as precedent because it's only to that one item. So I appreciate you saying we're going to objectively do. I'll be honest. If the previous owner was in front of us with this application, I'd Because that was a clear violation there's and has to be to that and that's a subjective determination I mean, somebody might try to suggest that it was an objective one, but I'm subjective on my part. So the subjective determination here is where then I have to, as I approach other choices that come before us that require additional judgment by the individuals who've been elected, is to then just be as pragmatic as I possibly can. If the concern is the impervious service and the impact is what then gets into the streams and then there is an acceptable mitigation plan to offset that impact, then I would be satisfied with that. And I don't think, just to put it on the record, that we should open up the Wild West and say anybody can build whatever they want on their properties because I don't think, Supervisor Duncan, you'd be surprised.

Yeah.

what other things have fallen into this area and what people tried to get away with with them in place. But that being said, for this particular item, the pragmatist in me will approve the plan and then go from there. There's two additional questions. Supervisor Malik.

Thank you. Is there a condition requirement for the kitchen to be removed? You sort of alluded to the breaking down of the second house.

That's covered by the ordinance.

So you're going to inspect and make sure that it's going? Yes. Bart is nodding. Okay. And somebody answered the question about the bonding enforcement. So I guess everybody's perspective is different. This is not minutia to me. This is what I've lived for 76 years is taking care of the stewardship. So I'm not going to be put down by that. Thank you very much. That's the last of my questions.

All right. We're ready for a motion.

Okay.

I move to adopt the resolution to approve SC 2025-00040, attachment E. Second.

All right. The motion has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All right. If the clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. LaPisa-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? No. Mr. Missal.

Aye. All right. Motion carries five to one. Thank you to the applicants making comments earlier today and understanding why you weren't able to participate in this action item. It's not a public hearing. All right. Board, we are ready to move to item number 10, transportation project prioritization. And we'll have a slew of transportation staff. Coming forward, I see Kevin and Jessica and Tanya. I'm just going to remind everyone to make sure you're right into the mic. And while you're teeing it up, I want to appreciate that some of the criteria stuff that was requested to be set out in advance, that was helpful. So thank you for doing that.

You're welcome. Good afternoon, Chair Galloway and members of the board. I'm Jessica Dimmick. I'm the principal transportation planner in the Community Development Department. Sitting next to me is Kevin McDermott, the Deputy Director of Planning, and together with others from the county's transportation planning team, Tanya Schwartzen-Druber, Alberic Carina Plun, and Michael Barnes, we have been working on updating and prioritizing a long list of transportation projects, which you last saw in 2023, and we're here today to share with you the results. This presentation will briefly review why we prioritize transportation projects and what prioritization efforts have been done previously. I will explain the effort we've been working on over the past few months, the 2026 project prioritization, including the purpose, process, and what's changed. I'll present the draft 2026 priority transportation project list, and we'll discuss the benefits and drawbacks to the methodology. Today, we are asking you to approve the project rankings, which are attachment F in your packet, so staff can use these rankings for consideration in funding applications over the next few years. Recall that last month, James Wilkinson and I presented on the five work projects to begin implementing the AC44 comprehensive plan, one of which is developing a countywide multimodal transportation plan. It is anticipated that once the multimodal plan is completed, we will come back to this prioritization exercise using what we've learned and make more comprehensive changes to the prioritization methodology after that. So today, we'll ask for your approval of the current rankings and to provide feedback on the methodology for staff to consider for that larger refinement of the methodology after the multimodal plan is complete. Why are we doing this? There's a long list of 169 transportation projects in Albemarle County that have been identified in a variety of prior plans and studies. With such a long list, prioritizing these projects helps articulate which ones are most important to work on first. It helps us make the best use of limited funding and limited staff time. The process can assist in tracking projects over time. It can help us begin to understand projects' abilities to compete for different grants. And it increases transparency in our decision making. This is not the first time that we've done this. 11 years ago, county staff compiled and prioritized a list of transportation improvements. And this 2015 effort coincided with the first round of Smart Scale, which was a significant shift in how the state selects transportation projects for funding. The transportation priorities list was updated in 2017 and again in 2019. And then in 2023, staff updated the project list again, rescored the projects, and presented the draft rankings to the board. And further work was postponed due to the work on the AC44 comprehensive plan. So over the past several months, we've picked this back up. In this effort, the 2026 prioritization, the purpose is, to update the prioritized list of transportation projects that will inform project selection for developing these projects and preparing funding applications in the near term while development of the multimodal transportation plan is underway. We have updated the project list to include new projects from recently completed plans and studies We've updated the data sources and modified the scoring to increase transparency without major changes to the basis of the methodology. This was meant to be an accelerated effort using readily available data and resources and focused on near-term priorities. And through the turning of the crank, we have identified pros and cons to consider for that larger redesign of the process following completion of the multimodal plan. So first, updates to the project list. The list of all 169 projects identified are contained in your packet. Attachment B is a map series that shows the locations of all of these projects. And you can use that to find the projects in any area of interest. From there, you can see the project ID. Then you can look up the details of the project using the project ID in attachment C, which is the list of all of the projects. And from there, you can find the details of the project, the project name, a description of the project, the plan or study where that project came from, and other information. Attachment C also shows the individual project scores. In this effort, we've introduced a project ID for each project to keep track of the projects and distinguish them from similar projects to reduce confusion. The project idea is a unique five-character code for each project. The first two characters are a general prefix indicating the area where that project is located. And you can use that on the map. The prefix codes correspond to these individual areas. The seven neighborhoods in the development area, along with some other outlying areas. And then the rural areas are categorized in a basic quadrant. Rural Area 1 is generally north of U.S. 250, and U.S. 29 is the dividing line between the western and eastern rural areas for reference. The scoring methodology is detailed in Attachment D. The previous scoring methodology relied on six scoring factors, land use, safety, congestion, economic development, equitable accessibility, and environment. These are the same six factors that SmartScale uses to evaluate projects. However, how we have evaluated projects according to these six factors is slightly different from how SmartScale does it. Within each of these six factors, there are three to six evaluation questions. And there are points assigned to each project, depending on how the question is answered. There's a maximum of 10 points for each six factors. So the maximum theoretical score that a project could get is 60 points. I'm not going to go into the details of the six-factor scoring in this presentation, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask during the Q&A. The other part that we've introduced that is new since 2023 is the concept of stages of project development, recognizing that different projects are at different stages of readiness. And the idea is that there is a spectrum. While there is a spectrum, we can think of these as four distinct stages. The first stage is the idea stage. This is an idea for a project, but it needs work to define or perhaps refine the concept for feasibility before we really think about pursuing funding. The second stage is where some evaluation has been done to determine it as a viable concept, but it needs some preliminary design to produce a realistic cost estimate so that we know what funding we should pursue for it. Stage three is what we call a ready project. These projects have been designed to the level needed to seek funding, but they need that funding. And then stage four is a project where the funding has been secured for the total project cost. Stage four projects, because they are fully funded, they are removed from the project list and we have not scored those projects. They have the funding that they need. All projects in stages one, two, and three have been scored and ranked. And the projects in stage two and three, those are listed separately from stage one because those are the projects that are priorities for funding applications in the near term. So that takes us to the priority transportation project list. This list is attachment F in your packet, and it goes along with attachment E. Attachment F is what we are asking for your approval today. It lists the projects in order of their ranking according to two categories, vehicular safety and congestion projects and bike and pedestrian mobility and safety projects. But do note that many of the vehicular safety and congestion projects also include components of facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians. This list goes along with attachment E, which shows just the projects in stages two and three. So you can see that on the map, the first ranked project of the vehicular safety and congestion projects is project N5001, the Fifth Street Interchange. The way to use attachment E is it's labeled by the project ID and the rank for that project category. Similarly, the second ranked project, this is just shown for example, in the bike and pedestrian mobility and safety projects is project N5008, Moores Creek Greenway Trail Segment 2. In the turning of the crank of this exercise, we have identified some benefits and drawbacks that we bring to your attention today. And we would like to ask for your feedback if you agree with these and if you see any other considerations for us as we think about revising this methodology upon completion of the multimodal plan. We do believe that the rankings generally reflect the overall level of need and importance. The two that I called out, the Fifth Street Interchange project that was number one ranked for vehicular safety and congestion, that is a project that has been a priority for several years. It is one that the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO is preparing a smart scale funding application for, and generally speaking, those projects have risen to the top. Another benefit of this methodology is that it has produced a wide range of results. The top ranked project scored a 49, and I think the lowest ranked project scored a 7. And there are some projects that have tied, but there aren't a lot that have the exact same score. There has been variability within each of the six scoring factors, and we believe that the project stages, the introduction of the project stages will help group projects according to next steps. There are some flaws, though, and limitations. This methodology, it does not evaluate how well a project would address the issue. So projects that scored very highly in the safety component are projects where a lot of crashes are happening. But the methodology does not address, well, how would that proposed solution actually reduce crashes? The project does not, the methodology, the scoring does not incorporate project feasibility, constructability, or cost. However, with the project stages, to move from stage one to stage two does require a level of, some level of evaluation of feasibility. But that is not incorporated in the numerical scores. For projects that do not follow a roadway alignment, it was difficult to reflect the accurate value of those projects. We did look at what the crashes and some of the other characteristics were of the roads that need to be used today. But those off-alignment projects were a little bit more difficult to score. The top-ranked projects may not be compatible with particular funding program eligibility or selection criteria, but the scores are one factor to consider, and funding program eligibility would be another that would inform project selection. And then finally, this methodology does not incorporate the priority of a project as assigned in a plan. For example, in some of the master plans, there are catalyst projects and future projects, with the thought that catalyst projects would be constructed first and future projects would be in the future. And this methodology does not really give any special weight to projects that are assigned as, you know, nearer term versus longer term. So with that, I will open it up to questions. Again, the asks for the board today are to approve the rankings in the priority transportation project list attachment F and provide us with feedback to consider for the anticipated redesign of the methodology following the multimodal transportation plan. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We'll go through with questions and see where we get. Supervisor Malik.

Thank you very much. And I have to start with an apology because after reading all your wonderful homework, and it was very well done, late at night I construct this long email with questions and then I forget to send it. So I sent it to you a little while ago, but you're obviously not prepared, so I'm sorry. I will ask a few of them now in hopes that I can get together with you later to have a more full understanding. But that's really embarrassing. So one of the earlier ones was about... worksheets in order to really understand what the numbers mean. Is it possible to get some background? Or I can sit down. I mean, I was just in my mind looking at your attachment D scoring methodology and just using one project in the Whitehall District. I'm thinking, well, there's a one and there's a three and there's a two and whatever. My numbers come out very different than yours and I'd like to understand How and why? And so that's not something for today. But if there's a worksheet that I can read that would save you time, then I'd be very glad to have that, and perhaps others would be interested for theirs as well. Under safety, for example, it was not explained, but maybe it's on your worksheet. Is access for fire and rescue vehicles actually even considered? Because the Eastern Avenue Bridge, for example, got a really crummy safety score, and yet it is the one thing that would provide timely response to south of Buckinghall Creek for both police. Well, police are already on the south side, but fire and rescue are on the north side of the creek. Even in the rescue's new location, they would still be north of the creek. So that's something that I think the volunteers were worried about for 20 years, and certainly paid staff, ACFR, has been worried about it since 2008. And so I think that that may be something that you could consider in the rankings. The other thing that may be implied but is not literally there, or I didn't understand it to be there, was projects which have been the basis for rezonings. So Eastern Avenue Bridge, again, for example, it was in the plans in 1992. And between 1992 and now, there have been literally thousands of residential units approved between 240 and 250 based upon the availability of that road. And so as it doesn't happen... All of the surrounding neighborhoods are just overburdened. And again, the fire rescue access is an issue. So that's something else that may or may not be on your list. But please think about that, and we'll talk about it when we meet. And the fact that all of the schools in the Crozet Western District there, I mean, Brownsville, Henley, and Western are all south of the creek and have all the same access problems without the bridge. So it's not just residential or recreational. It's thousands and thousands of schoolchildren there as well. You already supplied the list in ranked order, which is very helpful. And I don't know if there's a possibility, again for homework, of a workable Excel file so that we could arrange them in different ways. It would save us bothering you for things like all the stage three things in one place. Each of us has slightly different approaches to try to understand the whole picture. And I have learned over the many years that if I don't try to get answers to these types of things before I approve something, all of a sudden it's too late. So that's why I'm being such a pain this afternoon. And so I would love to hear more feedback when you come back at the end to talk about next things about how the continual upgrade will happen and whether we really have to approve this today. Thank you. I'll stop there.

Supervisor Lapista-Kirtley?

I'm absolutely amazed at all the transportation projects we have going forward. It's just, it's a lot. But I did want to ask, and I think you're... Your priorities are, I don't have a problem with your priorities. I have some in my district, but I realize that there are also some others that, frankly, are probably more important, have more vehicles and everything and crashes such. But the one I notice under Stage 2 and 3 projects, the Rivanna River Bicycle and Ped Crossing, that would be the bridge, correct?

Yes, that's the bridge.

I'm surprised to see that. I mean, I like seeing it, number one. Everyone wants it. But knowing what we've gone through on the committee regarding the price where it started out and where it ended up, which was just impossible, how do you feel that that is something that is achievable, frankly? Or is the cost of the bridge always going to throw us out?

I will say that the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization has submitted a raise grant for that bridge crossing. So my understanding is it is a very expensive project, but because it is such a key connection, we are seeking funding for it.

Or you'll be receiving different proposals because sometimes there's a tendency to ask for the Cadillac version when in reality just a regular Ford version would work, if you know what I mean.

Understood. I don't know that I have anything more to comment on.

I'll just remind the board that cost is not factored into the priorities. So that was not something that we considered. That's one of these elements that the board would have to consider is they're looking at possibly moving forward with projects. So there wasn't a way. Most of these projects we do not have cost estimates for. It would be a large effort to try and get those cost estimates. And so we're ranking projects outside of that factor.

Okay, well, then that brings me to another question. If we had a scaled-down version of projects instead of, what, 10 on each, whatever it is, we only had, I don't know, five or something. I mean, it seems to me that costs should be considered because that's money that we may or may not have. Just throwing that out.

It's a good point, and In creating these project stages, one of the things we've seen, not just with that project, but with other projects, there's a need and the ultimate solution is developed. We seek funding for it. We cannot seek funding for it. So at that point, it is in stage three, right? It's designed, but it doesn't have funding. Part of this process, I think, is creating this structured framework to be able to say, This project is in stage three. It's been in stage three for a long time. Does it have to go back to stage one and rethink it so that it is more competitive? This is going to help us have those conversations about what is the next step for that project. And if we want it to move from one stage to the next, what is that next step? What are the resources that are needed? And how do we get it? to move forward.

OK. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. I appreciate that. I just know how I think for the board, I'm just speaking for myself maybe, but how cost enters into it. But if there are other avenues to receive funding, That would be great, but let's face it. I'm just going to take one that's never going to be. Okay. Let's say the old Ivy Road bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Let's say that would cost $100 million. Just throwing that out there. That's probably never going to get approved. And so that, I mean, once again, maybe I'm overthinking it regarding cost, but I think that's important because we can rank them. The board can rank these things. But if we don't have an idea how much this is going to cost, that's what we're all about here, I think.

Agreed, Supervisor Pisto-Kirtley. That's part of the beauty of the stages. And as Jessica was saying, that putting them in stages, when you break those stages out and look at the priorities like that, that tells you how you can prioritize projects to move from one stage to the next. So stage three projects, we have cost estimates on those. That's part of being application ready. So if we want to get full funding on those, we can look at the top projects in stage three. If we're looking at the stage, how we move stage two projects to stage three, you can once again look at that ranking, and that's where you would be able to develop that cost. And same for stage one to stage two. And then related to large cost projects, as you're moving through that stage, what you're also doing is You're doing a value engineering on those projects. So you're looking at ways that you could save money. And you're looking at the viability of the projects. You're looking at ways to break those projects up so that they would be competitive. So that's part of the planning process as you move through these.

Understood, and I appreciate that, which brings me to hopefully my last question, is that having so many, Stage 2 and 3, so you said you have a basic cost estimate for 2 and 3 projects, Projects 2 and 3, Stage 2 and 3, correct?

Just for Stage 3.

Just for Stage 3. Okay. So if we have 10 of them... And you have cost estimates for those how much time how much staff time are we using to get those ten? Estimates are they pretty easy to kind of ballpark? I mean if we're ballparking them I'm happy, but if we're really going in depth and and there's no chance.

We're going to fund all ten In order to submit applications. We need better than a ballpark The and that's required for almost any of one of these grants we have to prove that we've done a enough work that we're confident in that cost estimate. And so there is a cost. We typically don't do those cost estimates in-house. We hire outside consultant, engineering consultants to do those. And it would be, it's dependent on the project to really tell you how much it is. But we have, I think the board and staff, we've all talked about an idea of how we need to have funding available so that we can do those studies to move those forward.

Okay. Thank you. That's all.

Supervisor Missel?

Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate the diligence that you guys go into to put these lists together, and it always amazes me, especially now that I've gotten into this more so. the amount of work and time and effort and cost that goes into creating improvements that are sometimes very obviously needed. And it's almost like I wish I could just blink my eyes and say, well, that one's so obvious, and it's such a priority. Let's not spend millions of dollars on studies and time and just do it. And I know that you kind of do have to go through a process, because everybody in the state would say that probably. Also, you know, it's hard to come in here probably, it is for me, probably as brothers, without our favorite list. You know, like, oh, this one should be number one. Fifth Street, nah, forget about that. Exit 118 needs to be on top, right? So I know these are structured and styled to keep us from doing that, but it's hard not to. So a couple of questions and then a couple of comments. One is, Thinking about the realities of the development world, this may be getting to some of what Supervisor Malik was saying, too. When a developer provides a proffer, for example, to contribute to a road improvement, how does that get factored into the decision process?

So this list... By having this list, it shows what projects the county wants to have happen. And so my understanding is that during the development approval process, a developer could look at this list and consider in their proffer contributing towards a project that makes sense. So development proffers could be one way to implement some or an entire project that is on this list.

And that is adjacent to their development and impacted by their development, right? So I guess one question, and I'll just pick a random one. Say there's a circle adjacent to a development and a developer has contributed or offered to contribute to the improvements associated with that circle. Does that increase the, I guess, the ranking because there is partial funding already identified in that project?

That's a good question. The way that these scores are structured now, it does not take that into account.

So as one comment, that might be one to think about is what's the environment around the improvement like and are there funding sources that are already identified that might help improve that moving forward? The second is the question of sort of pivoting. So if a development pattern that generates a load of traffic, let's just say, If that pattern increases, like it grows in one certain area and it's outpacing the actual improvements, is there a way in any of your assessments to be looking proactively at the needs coming based on zoning and or a comprehensive plan? I guess it's tied to the comp plan, right, in a sense.

I'll say that with major development applications, they have to go through a traffic impact analysis assessment, and so that would identify what projects are needed. As far as is that incorporated into our scoring methodology, under the congestion factor, we did consider if a traffic impact analysis was done and had found that operational issues exist. It's hard to say. I think what you're asking is if in the future And we have identified the development areas and our activity centers, and so there's points you can get by being in one of those areas.

Yeah, I got you.

That plays into it.

I kind of got to the answer of my own question that way, too. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Let's see. So getting back to the – you were talking about moving between stages. If a project is moving forward, and this ties to cost as well, if a project is moving forward and it gets to stage three and you get a cost, it's like, oh, holy cow, that's more than we expected, which is every development project that you ever do. And it has to go backwards. You were talking about value engineering and redesign and things like that. If it's going backwards, does it get any kind of a priority because it's already been up to stage three and is now going backwards, or does it get kind of caught back in the mire of the process associated with stages one and two?

That's a good question. Our scoring methodology doesn't give any special weight to projects that have gone through the process and are coming back around.

That might be something to consider just because there's reasons that it had already gotten to stage three and maybe part of it, you know, there's a benefit to it having gone that far or maybe there's a way to give it some priority. I think that's it. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt?

Yes. First off, I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. I'm not reading there as being a weighting or prioritization in the different categories. Is that correct, or am I misreading it?

Do you mean between the two project categories? No, I'm sorry.

Between land use versus congestion.

All six factors can score a maximum of 10 points. So they're all equal in that regard.

Okay. Was there any concern about the robustness of your results if there was difference in weighting or if one... Even with them being the same weight, you might be able to observe, ah, the mean of land use is eight, and the mean of congestion is two, and therefore land use is actually more relevant. Was there any concern about how robust these results are if there was a weighting change?

we didn't do any sort of sensitivity analysis, but one of the things we did notice was there are some projects where they're kind of mediocre across all six factors, and then there are some projects that are It might be a safety superstar, and it might get a 10, but it may score poorly in some of the other categories. And so it ends up being a lower score than a project that's just... So we have noted that as one of the limitations. And it may be that as we pursue funding opportunities, there's... For example, the Highway Safety Improvement Program is specific towards safety. We have the opportunity, and Supervisor Mellick, I will get you the Excel list so you can do the sorting of this yourself. But we may be able to sort by just the safety category and see which projects score the highest in safety. And while those may not be at the top of the top overall, there's flexibility in that. I don't know if that answers your question. That does.

Thank you so much. And I had another question. Now I'm suddenly blanking on what it was. I apologize. Oh, yeah. So the rankings that you have before us for approval are only things that are in categories two and three, basically in the more concrete pass ideation stage. I want to just clarify what it is we're fully agreeing to with an action to approve. The number two ranked thing is some, if I'm recalling correctly, some pedestrian improvements on North 29th. and it's not in this list right here. If it gets past the ideation stage tomorrow, and you actually have some notional engineering diagrams, does it pop into the approved list, or do you need to ask us again?

We would ask for approval and develop any selection for funding applications before you. This list is, it's just this. It's the results of the scoring methodology. And it is one... factor in which we would select projects for pursuing funding applications. I'll let others chime in to clarify, but what we are asking for your approval of is that this methodology is sufficient for the next several years while we develop the multimodal plan, and that this is a list that will inform but not dictate the selection of projects for pursuing funding.

That makes sense. I just wanted to also clarify that although we have broken these out by stages two and three, stage one projects are ranked also. And so we're asking you, you know, is the overall rank of all the projects acceptable? We do not include stage four because those are supposed to be fully funded. Of course, there's always a chance that we may need additional funding in the future, but we are asking for the board's agreement on stage one, two, and three projects.

I heard... Thank you. I keep forgetting the thing I'm about to say today. What a fascinating thing. I would support the notion mentioned by some of my colleagues of finding some way to... identify or give some kind of preference to things that have additional funding sources available to them. I understand why you wouldn't weight funding or cost here, but I think that's getting to something slightly different than cost. If costs are equal but one the state and a private developer are going to pay for it in its entirety and the other, the only mechanism we have is showing out through the CIP, then I think that there obviously should be some weighting of that. And so, yeah. Oh, the other thing I was going to say is just I assume it is something that y'all are anticipating for or planning that that jump from stage one to stage two can sometimes come with a rating change as you get more clarity on the project.

I would say That the project would likely be re-evaluated when it moves from stage one to stage two. Because in doing that, you're getting a level of clarity on what the project is. So it could be that the score would change because the project has changed.

Great. All right. I have no other questions. Thank you.

Supervisor Duncan.

Yeah, this looks really great. One thing I think we probably all hear a lot is people complaining that we're building but not doing infrastructure, and the county just doesn't care about traffic, and da-da-da. There's like 169 projects that we would love to create and build and improve. So clearly we do care. It's just long, slow, and as you know, projected costs for VDOT are through the roof currently, which does not help. One thing just sort of like big picture kind of like for all staff is like as I've been doing this and reading this, I really appreciate when you guys do your summaries of having like under the discussion of like the purpose of why we're doing this. It's really helpful to like keep it clear of like what your goal is with something like this. So I appreciate that. How long, I forget, is it five years before the multimodal transportation plan is supposed to be done?

Three years.

Three years, okay. So this whole list in priorities is sort of like until that's done. So realistically, do you have like a ballpark of how many of these that you think will actually get done?

I cannot give you a specific number. I can say probably very few.

So sort of like, There's no point to getting down super in the weeds, because this is going to eventually change in a couple of years. Could you talk about, I guess, that you say a comprehensive remodeling of the methodology will occur after that's done? Can you talk about how you're going to kind of, I assume, work this list into that plan and what that kind of looks like?

So I'll first say that we're still developing the scope and timeline for the multimodal plan effort. The current thought is that in the development of recommendations, we will pull all of the projects from this list as potential candidates for recommendations. The analysis of needs will likely illuminate additional gaps. the analysis of needs may also reveal that some of these projects are redundant with each other, and that one, from a system-wide perspective, is a better solution than the other. So I expect that this list becomes a starting point for the recommendations, but it gets culled down and added to, and that coming out of that plan, we will have a more refined list. Whether that's a bigger list or a smaller list, it's hard to say. That makes sense.

And then the separating between bike pad and kind of like vehicle stuff, was there a reason for that? Is it just like easier to see, or are there different funding pots for the different things?

There are different funding pots. That's part of it. And the other part is just they serve different purposes, and so calling that out as well.

But yeah, this looks really great, so that's all I have.

I guess some of my opinions might change based on this, so I'll start with the questioning. Behind the spreadsheet that equals, use whatever there, I'll tell you what it is. The Fifth Street interchange, the score is 48. Somewhere in some other sheet, it's telling you to put a 48 there. So all the individual rankings that it received.

Yes. In attachment C, you can see the scores for each factor.

And then somewhere there's telling it what to put into those cells.

Right. So there's five or six columns for land use that are related to each of the evaluation questions.

So I guess my objection to wanting to approve what you want me to approve today is, is I don't want to get my mind locked into the fact that this has to be static for the next three years. It's like doing a point in time count with homelessness. This is a point in time count. This is the ranking as of today based on the methodology you've presented. And there's already been a few suggestions of how that methodology could be tweaked. So why do we inhibit ourselves from letting it just be the living document, especially knowing the reality of what we deal with with funding opportunities, developers maybe coming up, advantageous moments? I can't imagine to keep these scorings up to date in the behind-the-scenes elements of the data, the Excel sheet, that would mean you would have to update 169 projects every week. but if by the end of the summer, we got different information that impacted the scores on 20 projects, that could be updated in the sheet, and then the priority list reshifts itself, right, maybe significantly, maybe not, don't really matter, in my opinion, because then the list becomes as of whatever that last date is. That's how the world works. We all know that. So why don't we let the data do and help us with that? Then, as methodology tweaks, we can reorder stuff. And I'd be fine to say, because I know, given the reality of the last eight years that I've been involved with it, here and at the MPO, it doesn't really matter if it's an overall rank of two or 22 or 102. Too many other variables factor in to when you can attack. And at the end of the day, Let's pretend for a minute that 169 just stays the same and there'll never be a new 170th transportation priorities project. The objective is to reduce the projects that are on this list. And there's so many different ways to go about it that a static list just doesn't seem to me to make sense. So I think, I don't know who asked the question, It might have been Fred about developers or something like that, but it's in some ways the same question we asked coming out of our joint meeting with the school board about getting better with data. What we don't do a great job with is the predictive part of data. And that's what I'm saying, like, well, if we just, this is part of the reason why I've been, when we get in the new list, when we get in the new list. I wanted the new reality because I knew the 2023 reality is not reality. So now I can look at this and know how it's going to shift and shape and move forward. And, you know, I honed in on Rio district projects. This was just too much to do to try to really do it. So I really had to hone in on the stuff that's in my district. And even seeing how that's fluctuated with projects that have been approved, let's just make the data work that way with us. Because if, you know, if a, just in the last two months, we've approved things on the 29 corridor and Raya Road corridor that could impact the scoring of this. So let's just do it. And I don't think that's, like I don't think that, and Ann can correct me if I'm wrong, the people that have to protect workload, but I don't, I'd honestly have to be taken into a room and explained why that would be an impossible task. Because I don't think it is. It's entering some numbers in when we get them, and it's not for all 169. And if the Excel sheet is set up that way where it's that burdensome, then there's better software out there to do this work for us. So that's where I'm going to suggest that we don't need a list that doesn't change for the next three years or until a multimodal plan is in place. The multimodal plan is going to be a bigger set of variables than some of the tweaks I'm speaking of, so it could be quite a significant change in how some of this stuff is ordered, but why not allow for those changes to happen in the meantime? I just don't, I wouldn't, I guess I'd have a hard time understanding it given my experience on the board to stick with a static point in time priority list. And not looking for a response there. You guys can ponder that. So I'll accept and approve this as of today. But my hope is this is something that the board understood that there'll be a date on it. So the next time they look at it, they go, oh, that's as of June 1st. you know, 18th, and some of these things, here's what changed. And I think a little track record or a note, just like I know these systems can do, can capture that. Now, my tweak that I could see could be interesting in the methodology. You give different points for development area versus rural area. That's fine when it's clearly development area or rural area. Now, we have hard edges. So you're like, well, what do you mean it's clear? It's not clear. It should be clear. Albemarle High School is rural area. Hydraulic and Whitewood and Lambs Lane, that intersection is development area. The Loop Road exists in the rural area. But that intersection's functionality is not going to dramatically improve until the Loop Road is part of the system. So that development area rural area scoring is interesting when you start considering projects that are on the hard edges of rural area and development area. Earliesville Road, Raysford Road, clearly a rural area. Probably won't change anytime soon or approach a different boundary. But how we think about everything along the hard line when I think that on one side of Ryle Road and most of the street infrastructure's development area, but on one side everything that's coming in is rural area? Well, that's going to, in the way I think about it, is it could undermine those projects that are critical to the development area. But since they're in the rural area, they're going to get a different scoring. So those are the kind of things I think like, why wait three years to come back and go, hey board, we thought about tweaking the methodology. Go look at the list. Some things have moved around because of this change in methodology. I don't, I mean unless somebody would really object to that, I think that's something that could live. And honestly, looking at this list, I love being able to change and how you reordered stuff. and how you presented this, like some of the, by the categories, the overall rank, because at the end of the day, I just know it doesn't really matter, because it's really going to matter where you're like, oh, we've got an opportunity, a funding bucket, Now, if it came to that funding bucket that six of our projects could potentially qualify for, then the priority order really comes into play. So you've done that job. We can do that. But honestly, I don't ever see this as a zero-sum game where it comes in where we're like, well, we have to do this or that, and we lose the other one. It just doesn't... I mean, I guess maybe when we put money in to finish the Berkmar project, extension to Airport Road, the board had to commit to that. Now, whether or not that aligned with the point in time priority list at that point, who knows? But the board decided that the reasons for doing that was a higher priority than everything else, and that shifted the funding availability and tele-fee and revenue sharing and some of those things, right? Telephones or whatever they're called. But that could get factored in, I suppose, but that probably impacts the stages more than the rank order in that situation. So I even like how you did that, the staging. Because the staging to me was how far along do we have cost estimates? I, for one, am not in favor of putting the cost estimates in because people get attached to whatever number you show them first. And then we've all been punched in the face with when we get the new updated costs two years later or three years later. So I don't know about you all, but I'd rather not go through that trauma. Let's just wait till we actually get something that's viable and let's figure out what the... what the cost might be. I thought it was interesting how you did this, how the phasing, well, I'll start with the question. The Hillsdale realignment is in there, correct? It's just not called that, because you've got Hillsdale, and then you've got like phase one, phase two, phase three, and I think phase, I forgot. Phase two is some sort of bridge over the ravine behind Fashion Square Mall. Because that's really the critical realignment part. So confirmation is the realignments in there. It's just broken down into different phases.

That's correct. And that is how it's presented in the RIO small area plan.

Correct. But that is, in fact, what we often, in the recent times, even in a submission, said the Hillsdale realignment. And it's fascinating to me how our phases, and it might have just been that we just plopped numbers down on it and didn't give much more thought than that, but like how phase, I think it was phase three, inside the, you know, over behind cores and all that was scored higher to get done first before some of the other things. So when you actually look at the list, phase three is actually higher than phase one. And that was like, oh, well, that's, I mean, that was just curious. I mean, I think I get why and understand why, given the methodology that's there. But if for one of those projects, like let's say a developer comes in and redevelops Fashion Square Mall, that all of a sudden brings the roadway behind Fashion Square Mall that we already have the Eastman on a lot closer than it does as we sit here today, no matter where it's at on the priority list, And if that were to happen, then that would change the methodology rankings for those different phases of Hillsdale. And the list should be able to accommodate that. If somebody went in and redeveloped where ACAC and all of that is, the Gardens Boulevard piece, similar point. So when all that happens, I think our data should be able to adjust with reality. So further to my opening point. I think in the world of what we deal with, I think we often, as board members, see descriptive statistics all the time. We see presentations, we see here's what's here, here's what's happened, here's the information. Crash data is all backwards, right? Traffic impact analysis is all backwards. All of these things are back, and I'm not saying that's not important, it's just what it is. But what I think when we're talking about planning and trying to figure out how to take advantage of funding and things, we should get a little bit better to go, oh wow, this item here, number 42, could change to number one in a hurry if variable one, two, and three happened. And I'd love to be able to be on top of that. And then that's something I think the whole organization has to think about in all of our, and I think we're getting there, frankly. And I think we have the tools to do it. But I don't think we, and I'm not acting like I've had some clairvoyant moment or something. I mean, we came out of a joint meeting where we all thought it was a good idea to get better at data and better at it. Well, that also means what you do with it and how you use it to be forward-looking versus just understanding what's already occurred. So I'm happy to approve this, and I don't expect staff would have an answer to the whole Well, we're never touching the list again for three years, Galloway, sorry. You might need some time to think about that, but I don't think that's something that's really, frankly, that, because one, I think you do it anyway, as you consider projects, because it's just the way you guys work. If VDOT knocks on the door and we have an opportunity to do this, that, or the other, we go in, we look where it's at, but we do it, because it's getting something off the list.

Great.

I'll go back through just to see if there's any... We've still got a little bit of time, I think, with what we had scheduled, just to see what's carried along. Supervisor Malik?

Thank you. This has been such a great learning experience. I feel really great about what you've done so far. So following up on the Hillsdale extension, when I saw the thing on page 2... I thought, is that still the beam? Is the beam gone and what this 2011 and 2011, is that part of the new thing? Because I was totally confused about all those stages and things and said, why aren't we just jumping to the Home Depot list connector instead? That's what I call your new road.

I mean, there's still a project with the Overlook, Northfields, and the Hillsdale intersection, which doesn't go away, but it does change if Hillsdale gets realigned. Because there's a different set of volume that would be going through that, both those intersections.

So anyway, that was sort of a knowledge gap that came to mind. I understand. I just propose for others for you to think about that we adopted a day as a living document instead of a static one. I mean, I think that hopefully you wouldn't have a crisis with us doing that because that, I think, clarifies what many of us have been concerned about. Just a couple of items, background, just because there may have been some unanswered things. Regarding the Urbana Bridge, every grant feedback session with a grantor has been, we are this close. And first it was uncertainty because of the environmental, so we went out and solved those issues and then came back. So we're inching our way along, I think, which is why the Planning District Commission chose to try again. When you get really good feedback and we just ran out of money, then it's definitely a good sign, I think. The... I'm having deja vu from 2008 with outrage on the part of the Board of Supervisors at the time and 2010 too about the cost escalation. What do you mean it's going to cost? Well, because we didn't have enough of a design to get clarity to get a decent estimate. It was just sort of put $20 million on there. And then it turned out to be $40 and it went in the trash. So I understand completely the reason why we don't want to mire ourselves in that. And, you know, my bridge is a perfect example of that. the contingency change approach that VDOT had doubled the price. So we have to figure out a way to deal with that. One question that a constituent forwarded that I would love to just put on your list. It's really important for a way to be found for transportation evaluation methods to account for publicly set priorities in master plans. And I know you mentioned that you weren't doing that, but where would it happen? Because when you have a master plan adopted in 2021 and it has catalyst projects that nobody's even looked at in five years, that's a real concern, and it makes people grumble. And I don't want them grumbling and losing interest and losing trust that we're getting anywhere. The cost estimator issue, you're very well aware that VDOT got itself in really hot water because there were multiple cost estimators and some districts were getting really favorable cost estimates and others were getting killed like we were getting killed on our 118 thing a number of years ago. So now they have had to go to a single... effort to provide fairness across the Commonwealth. And I'm really glad that you're finding somebody you can trust to give you really good data when we get to that point and we have enough detail and design to be able to do it. But I was interested in what someone was asking about if you have to re-evaluate Let's not throw a stage three just because it's being value engineered. Let's not throw it back to one. That would be an awful loss of effort. So, I mean, making changes, and we always have to do that with change orders and things, even when projects have been started, when they find rock or something that messes everything up. But that is all I had to add to your long list of things. But thank you again for all of this.

Supervisor LaPista-Curtley?

Yeah, I don't mind approving this. Once again, I think Supervisor Malik called it a living document. And with 11 items, I'm going back to the cost factor, if it's a Stage 3, we've outsourced or contracted out for estimates on all 11?

No, no, we...

Thank you for the clarification. OK. Tell me.

We have some cost estimates for some of these projects, those that have been submitted for funding applications in the past. Most of the projects that are stage two, we do not have cost estimates for. In order to produce the cost estimates, we would need to do hire someone to do the preliminary engineering work. And this list is intended to help prioritize which projects we do that for. So we don't have cost estimates for the top 20 or the top 10. But this list would help us. This list informs which projects we choose to go after funds for. And in the process of getting ready to submit those applications, that's when we do the preliminary design to get to a defined cost number.

Thank you for the clarification. No other questions.

Supervisor Missel?

Yeah, thanks. I think, you know, having an evergreen document is a no-brainer to me. Every one of your, you know, filters is evergreen by default, right? Real estate is always changing, so it makes 100%. I realize, though, on the other end, you need information to do work. So, you know, I would look to you to tell us how to best balance that, but absolutely agree with this not being a static document. And that gets kind of to the question about pivoting. Like how do you adjust in real time when factors like development intensity change? That's not, it was rhetorical. But that was my point. The other one I would just throw out there is as you're looking at those in stage four and not including them in the assessment, it just struck me that It would be helpful, I think, in some cases, if there are stage four projects that are helping the stage three projects, if there's a benefit to both being somehow combined, right? I would just want some way to look forward at stage four funded projects and say, wow, it really helps this one in stage three, and not just take them off the table. And then the last thing was, and this is not a question, just you did a great job of listing those things that were, was it detrimental in the project methodology?

The drawbacks.

Drawbacks. And, you know, as I look through those, I mean, it's kind of like, well, yeah, those need to be focused on, right, at some point. Are you guys actively looking at how to – improve the methodology to adjust or to minimize those drawbacks?

Our hope was that following this effort to turn the crank on these rankings, we could shift our focus to the development of the multimodal transportation plan.

I see. Okay, that would help. Yeah.

I will also say that whether this can be a living document. There is effort to update these scores, and the data gets released on different schedules. And this is not a smart spreadsheet. So there will be... there will be effort needed to reevaluate the scores, to seek data when it becomes available. So I just want to make that clear. Not that it's impossible, but it is an effort that needs to be considered.

That's all. Thanks.

Supervisor Pritt.

I'm pretty sure I have no further questions. You had a slide showing what you wanted from us in this, right? I just wanted to make sure I fully answered the call. Yep, I've got nothing else.

Supervisor Duncan? I'm fine. I will add, did I answer that? I don't know if I, I think I did. One additional request. I'm looking at you all, but it's not your responsibility. This list should be in our legislative packet every year. And then we should send it as an email on a weekly basis to the General Assembly.

How about daily? The entire General Assembly.

All right. Board, thank you for that. Do you have what you need, y'all? All right. Isn't there an action required? Oh. You need a formal vote?

In the past, the board has made a motion to approve the list.

So I would suggest a motion based on the board action shown on the slide.

I would move that we adopt the rankings of the draft 2026 Albemarle County Priority Transportation Project list as attached to the agenda attachment F. Second.

All right.

Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missel? Aye.

And, you know, I do appreciate the point about it's not a smart document and your point that you made there. But in our strategic plan, we have something that we prioritize called workforce optimization and our business optimization plan, which I took all that to mean there's a lot of human touch that was involved. And those are the areas we're going after in those efforts. So it just needs to be highlighted when they come in front of us.

May I add one thing, and that is I would not expect this weekly, but quarterly would be a reasonable time to probably click the button or something. Please give us some ideas about when you think it would be reasonable. It depends, I guess, on what changes there are and what developments there are and all the other stuff. But three years, that doesn't work. That's all.

So we're scheduled for a recess. We are running ahead of schedule, so we'll go ahead with our 15-minute recess. So we'll be back here in 46, 346.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Chair Galloway, members of the board, Mr. Richardson. Pleasure to be here with you to talk about jaunt today. And I guess I'd like to start with the ending and what the takeaways I hope you'll have at the end are. First is my thanks because of the way that Albemarle County supports Jaunt, both with the long-standing partnership with your financial support, but also it means something when you dedicate the time of your staff and other members of the community to be part of our board of directors. Secondly, I hope that you'll come to understand that really Jaunt is your transit agency. You are owners of Jaunt and that should always be clear. Jaunt for that reason ought to be thought of as your most flexible partner when you're thinking about your needs in this area in the region. And the last thing is that yesterday's Jaunt is not today's Jaunt nor will it be tomorrow's Jaunt. We are really moving forward all the time. And I'll give you the flavor of that a little bit. I'm going to try and talk for only about 15 minutes or so. So even though there's 30 slides, some of them I'm moving through very quickly. And we'll spend a little more time in some places. And of course, answer any question you have at any time. So in September we celebrated that in 1975 Jaunt drove its first six passengers. And so this whole year we're kind of highlighting being in our 50th year. And so you'll see some social media about that. And of course all of you on September 30th will be invited to a celebration that we're hosting at the Hillsdale Conference Center. And we thought it was time to really emphasize with some rebranding some things about Jaunt that anchor to our values, create a brighter, friendlier palette, and have a tagline that makes more sense. You know, a leader or two ago, Jaunt decided to adopt this tagline or slogan of where can we take you?" And I said, well, that's not actually what we do. It's misleading to the public to imagine that you can just call and go anywhere you want, right? But what's true in reaching out to you, other stakeholders, and the general public is that we are a regional operation and that the distinguishing characteristic of Jaunt is the level of care that's provided to every passenger. So our rebranding is here. Our first 14 brand new buses that look this way instead of the old red, white, and blue are now on the road as of just two weeks ago. And so I hope that you'll see one around town very soon. When I came to Jaunt, one of the first orders of business was to be listening to people. I found that it was an organization that either was not anchored to values or had so many expressed values that people couldn't remember them. And so I thought it was really important that it be simple and that it be built into how we talk with employees every day and how we talk with the public. And so people, service, and connection became our values, and it also became one of the four pillars of our new employee performance evaluation system. As Jacob said, I think it's extraordinarily important that, you know, what gets measured gets done and that we have an endless number of things that people might ask us to do and that we need to set priorities. And so in January of last year, I brought the board together We start out with a list of 32 things and narrowed it down to these five to be the five that would guide our next 18 months of work and our next strategic planning retreat with the board is scheduled for February of 2027. So as you know, regionally there is a vision with CARTA and the transition away from RTP and Jaunt has always been a partner at RTP and continues to be a partner at CARTA right now. As I hope you know, there's a prioritization process happening about what projects run forward, and there will be, of course, down the road, potentially a request to generate revenue with the permission of the General Assembly. And in my vision, you know, I believe that each of the providers serves an important role. And actually, UTS, Cat, and John have all been around for nearly 50 years. And I hope that there will be ample opportunity to talk about the different models that will honor what each of those folks do going forward. There is an ADA service agreement typically with the City of Charlottesville. We've been doing the ADA paratransit, which is a core part of our mission, since 1987. But we have been without a written agreement for some time now. The last person to sign it was a guy who was the acting city manager named Mike Murphy. That's been a while now and so it is on our to-do list for sure and hopefully advancing through the city attorney's office while we're talking right now. As you know, and I know that you all really enjoy what's happening with the service administered by CAT with partnership from VIA in MicroCAT, I think that there is a need for on-demand service sometimes. And so I've seen that need. We are doing microtransit right now in a pilot. with Greene County residents and for all of the ADA customers we are scheduling with the software because it's very different than the traditional software where you call in and you're locked in and you just dispatch people for the day. And soon We have a million and a half dollars that I've secured from the state of Virginia to pay for the next four years of scheduling software that will allow us in all seven jurisdictions we serve to have on-demand zones. So that will include Albemarle County sometime in 2027 as well. Performance evaluation system, one of my desires for the board is we had to have an internal priority. I don't think we can be a great organization in a place where when the day I came in people told me they didn't know the last time they had a performance review. That's not how you get to great. And so that has been a real emphasis over this last year. And then, as Jacob mentioned, there's a lot of great new software out there. We need to implement that technology, not just for scheduling, but also for safety purposes as well. Just in this new round of buses, John has traditionally had six to eight cameras on every vehicle. And now we've added four more that, for those of you who have a newer car, gives our drivers, our operators, the view, that bird's eye view, that takes away a lot of the risk that happens with those backing up sort of things that happen. So really quickly through these slides, I just want you to understand the scale of the operation at Jaunt, because it is complicated and there's some complexity of the service. So the city of Charlottesville, where roughly we're standing right now, is just 10.26 square miles. And the CAT routes map like this throughout the city and into parts of the urban parts of Albemarle County. And that covers about 9.84 square miles total. When planners talk about transit, they imagine that somebody can walk to one of those bus stops anywhere from a quarter mile away, and that gives us this footprint of 18 and a half miles. In what we do for you all in the city with complimentary paratransit, our ADA ridership, the federal requirement is that anybody who is found eligible and there is an application process, and lives within three quarters of a mile of one of those bus stops, gets door-to-door service. And they should be able to get that in the same timing as somebody who has access to the fixed route system. And so that gives us a bigger area for the ADA footprint, this 30 square miles that we're talking about here. And of course, I don't need to tell you, you all are a lot bigger than that. And there are times of the day during the week that we serve every square mile of Albemarle County. And oh, there's these other folks too that give us about almost 2,751 miles of reach with the routes that we're running in John. Now, one of the obstacles to people riding jaunts sometimes is understanding what all the ways are that you can ride. And I'm trying to streamline and simplify that. And I'll ask for your guidance later in the presentation about that. But you can think about that as the ADA service that I've described. You know, eligibility. You have to have been found eligible. You schedule your ride. We come door-to-door. Demand response, similar. Call or in the future use an app or the website, door-to-door service. Links, somewhat different. Reservation, only once or twice a day from one area only. of geography to another. And then Connect is a fixed route service. So this is our commuter service. It's very robust, particularly with Albemarle County ridership, and I'll share with you a little bit about ridership shortly. So that ADA paratransit, that square mileage that we talked about before, we have, you know, almost 4,000 Albemarle riders per month in that. And when we talk about demand response, there's a couple of ways that you can think about that. This is that reservation system. And we have these circulator services in Crozet and Esmont and Scottsville. And you see that they don't have the same level of ridership each month. And so what I'll talk with you in a moment about is some refinement. And then out more demand response, which is anywhere in the county for that four hour span Monday through Friday. Then these link services, which you can see some of them are well traveled and some have very small ridership. And while I feel certain that they are important and vital links to folks who are in those areas, I do question whether they are the best use of your dollars sometimes, right? And I know for you all, serving different districts of the county, you say, well, wait a minute. I don't want something to go away from my district. But in the broadest sense, transit isn't meant for onesies and twosies on the bus, right? It is meant for some amount of volume. And so not to pick on like 20 North Link, if we're offering that five days a week, and on average we've got 23 weekdays in a month, right, then it tells you that we're often just one person on that bus. And so maybe we should think about how your dollar is getting spent. Because I hope, going back to the beginning, that you hear from me, your investment in Jaunt really pays off and helps us leverage other dollars. And it really is a game of, it will buy a certain number of service hours and miles. And how we deploy them, we can be very flexible with if we notify the public. And you, along with your staff, should help us to decide in any given year how Jaunt gets deployed. So a little bit more about that in a moment. Some of these, I'll go quickly. Just so you understand the commuter services, we've got the 29 North Route, three different ways that we're serving Crozet. One of them goes up and down 250. One goes out to the interstate. And this is a little more detail I won't spend any time on about all the timings of those routes. All of this is also available to anybody on the website. And this is more on the Evening Loop and 29 North. So talking about service statistics, good news is for here in transit speak, UPT, Unlinked Passenger Trips. So be aware that your ridership has grown in every service during this year, which is great with just a little bit of calculation about what will happen in this final month. And it's good in ADA that we're doing that with a little bit less hours and miles and that makes sense because it's in that urban core and it's easier to be more efficient when you're not doing any long-haul runs. Demand response is a little more complicated because you don't have as much control over the length of the runs. But look at 29 North and Connect Crozet. You have almost 50, over 50,000 residents now who are taking commuter bus service up to the urban core. And let's be fair that, you know, I think 80% of our folks board in the light at a UVA stop. That doesn't mean that they're all going to UVA, either to the academic or the medical side. Some of them get off and travel somewhere else in the downtown area, but that's your folks taking advantage of the service for sure and a significant amount of growth in that Crozet Connect over this last year. And you know, all of this works in some relationship. If you don't know this, the university has had a program called Wahoo Commute that they're really pushing with their employees to get them to maybe not bring as many single occupancy vehicles to come park. Because fun fact, those two parking garages, one that's done now at Fontaine, one that's right by the JPJ, each space cost over $35,000. Cost them $80.5 million to build those two parking garages. And so that's not sustainable. There's not enough land to keep building them. And so at some point you have to look for ways to encourage people to ride commuter buses and others. This is just to remind you and I'd say we're not the same as yesterday nor will be the same tomorrow. One example is in Greene County so this is some of the advertisement when we launch the app for Albemarle County as well we'll do a lot of publicity about this. You know, in the same way that MicroCat doesn't serve everywhere, we'll establish zones. And so that green area, every person who wants to get on and go somewhere in that green area in the left-hand side there, they can do so in the app and get a ride within 20 minutes usually, as opposed to needing to know two days ahead of time that you'd like to go pick up your prescription or go to the grocery store. And one of the ways that we can make this happen is I have really worked with the state, DRPT, to understand every funding opportunity. And one of those is the idea of demonstration grants. And so the microtransit grants being funded with demonstration. And should there be a state budget, and all fingers crossed for all of us that there will be, these three projects will also be funded. And so the commuter service that I showed you, those connect buses, we're doing that in Buckingham, Nelson, Louisa, Fluvanna as well to bring people into town. And what we hear a lot is, well, it's great that you have this and it's good at the beginning and end of the day, but what happens if I want to come in late or get home at lunchtime? And so midday service is now going to be funded for both LaVanna and Louisa. And Greene County will have connect stops. And why I think this is really important for you all to hear is our last connect stop right now is in that Hollymead area. So we're stopping, you know, We have a little bit of a change in the ownership of that Food Lion parking lot up there, and so they would like us to maybe stop on the other side of the road. But in that area, and if we're going to go to green with fixed route stops, You have a lot of development that has happened polar grounds and north of the airport as well. And we do get calls, and when we did our customer survey in 2025, we heard a lot about, could you stop in this new apartment complex here on 29 North? And with the pharmaceuticals coming in. with an opportunity to perhaps stop at UVA North Fork. There is every possibility that we could do that if we're running fixed route up into Rutgersville, Standardsville. So more to come on that. If we get the money, and I hope we are, we are in DRPT's recommendation, that will be for July 1, six months of planning and advertising and then 18 months of pilot service. So more to come on that in the future. And so this is the mindset, and I hope that you all engage in this, reach out at any time to talk with me about it, or challenge the staff to work closely with Jaunt over the next year to say, where are we trying to go? How would you like to see Jaunt evolve with the way that you contribute to Jaunt? because we've had some talks with your planning staff about the high utilization in some areas and under utilization in others, and I think that would best be accomplished with a collaborative discussion that happens planfully over time. This is just to let you know that we've really tried to hold the line on budget. It's been a little bit challenging because on the capital side, bus costs have literally doubled over the last six years. It's really incredible what's happened with rolling stock. And when Charlottesville created all their collective bargaining units, transit was one of the first. And of course the day I walked in the door at Jaunt, the folks there were getting paid 19% less than their counterparts at CAT. And so what you all know from also talking to school folks as well, we're all looking for CDL drivers with passenger endorsements. And so there can only be so much disconnect in the wages between Alamo County Public Schools and CAT and UTS and Jaunt and city schools, pupil transportation, right? The market is what the market is. And so our wage costs have had to change. It's impossible to get somebody in the door to drive the buses, which is the lifeblood of the organization. I have 123 employees today and 82 of them are drivers. Just so you get a little bit of idea about that leverage I was talking about, you gave about $3.5 million for the year that we're in. It turns into over $10 million when we look at state, federal, and the little bit of carryover and interest income that we apply. And then lastly on this money piece, every year, by policy, we come to the end of the year and say on June 30th, did we spend more or less than we intended? And we are good stewards of the dollar, we spend less. And we apply some formulas to say, do we need to use this money for capital projects we promised? Are there any one-time projects? We never spend one-time money on things that are recurring costs. And then after that, in the percentage shares that you gave us money, we return money to the localities. And so on July 1st, we will send Elmore County back a check for the year that ended June 30th, 2025 of $470,030. So, or 30, $470,030. No sense. Absolutely not. And this is not a one-time thing. This has happened now for at least the last four years. This is by policy now. It's a regular part of our process because we want to be partnering with our localities. You are shareholders at Jaunt. You own two-sevenths of our operation. And so you have the influence at any time to decide what it is we do. All right. So how you can help, always a good idea to make that ask at the end. Obviously, we want to continue to be your partner. You know, when you're thinking about the ways the county is growing, I hope you'll think expansively, Jaunt can be a partner in anything you do. I know that we have new members of the board, and we also have members of the board who have not been to Jaunt since I've been there the last two and a half years, and you're invited any time to learn more about Jaunt. I can tell you that even after two and a half years, I learn something new every day. I guarantee that you will as well. There are some times where there's tension at the state level for transit dollars, so in your agendas, please keep an eye on that as well. And when CAT makes a change, remember there's always a collateral impact on Jaunt. Because you're going to have to figure out expanding a route further into the county creates a new ADA zone. And we're going to have to figure out how many rooftops you just took in, how many ADA passengers there might be, and how many more demand response runs we're going to need to do for those folks. And that does generate a considerable amount of extra cost because that is a curb-to-curb service. And I would just, you know, expanding CAT routes is great. Don't hear me the wrong way about that. And when you want to pilot ideas, Jaunt may be a more effective partner because we don't trigger that same need. We can go operate a new service without triggering a collateral, you know, charge for CAT as well. I know Garland and Williams stand here and tell you the same thing. Keep jaunt and cat fair free. You know, the fact is that it cost us more to collect fares than we would recover in the box. And that is because you have to add technology and potentially handle cash and get a contract and a safe and a new staff person. All of those things have gone away now for six years. It would be very difficult to stand them up and you would not get a lot of dollars behind it. I know that for the very longest time when I was at the city, We could not get the council to move the affairs of CAT from 75 cents to a dollar. And Jaunt basically mirrored those. We would not in our, you know, rides for Jaunt recover more than that $250,000 a year. I guarantee that. And then finally, I hope that you all want to celebrate our success and join us on September 30th. And anytime, again, that you want to learn more about John, I'm always available, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Well, don't curse if it goes on. Well, that's some others of ours. That all really happened. Just be mindful of time, but we'll go through for questions and comments. Supervisor Malik.

Thank you, and thank you, Mike, very, very much. As a longtime driver, old 33 was mine for 15 years in the summer for my science camp, and I took annually the safety training and never back up. That's where 99% of all the accidents happen is when you back up, so you have to plan your route carefully so you never have to back up, even at UVA, which is important. But I so appreciate what you all do. The camaraderie, the friendliness of the staff, even when I was a driver, I couldn't do lots of things in the engines that the real drivers could do, so I would just go up to the garage and the guys would, oh, she's back again. But they would go and help me and figure it all out, which is great. So many constituents... in our rural area in Whitehall District need you to get to work. They're perfectly capable to work. They just cannot drive for any number of different reasons. And so various parents and workers themselves would come to the budget meetings over the years and say, please don't leave me out. I love living where I live, but I can't get to work without John. So please keep them in the budget. I'm thrilled about the ridership with the Crozet Connect. And I know when it began, there were all sorts of discussions about where the stops were and that kind of thing. So please keep me in mind. Let me know what you're needing, stress points and whatever, if there are new stops being considered. If you need more places for bike racks or easements or whatever, that's something I certainly support and would be happy to...

We are talking with your staff, Ms. Malarick, about the park and ride becoming a stop. Should that, is that a October completion date in...

I hope it's supposed to be starting digging pretty soon, I think.

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, we are aware of that one for sure as a potential new stop. And, of course, one of the three routes goes past that twice a day or three times a day already anyhow.

And one of the neighbors asked me to consider, asked you to consider a stop at the meadows.

Okay.

Because there are a lot of people struggling to walk through the woods from the meadows and through the school property during school hours, which makes the school people unhappy, to get to Old Trail for the stop.

Okay.

So I meant to send you an email about that, but I will say it now and try to remember. And you still have the bike racks on the fronts of your buses so people can bike to the stop and throw their bike on the front?

Not on every bus, but some, yes. Okay.

Well, you'll decide where that's needed. And... I'm thrilled with the experiment up in green because that will certainly help a lot of northern Alamo County folks who are just outside the microcat jurisdiction right now. So that will be very, very helpful. But thanks so much for doing what you're doing because I still remember those pictures of Donna under the tree changing the oil in the first bus over there on JPA.

There are pictures of mechanics before there was a garage doing that in a church parking lot. That is true. One thing in your district that is actually not in the presentation that has been the case for maybe as long as there's been a service out there is Jaunt does do a fairly specialized run for Albemarle County residents to Innisfree. And that is part of what's incorporated into your budget each year. And so we don't advertise that as a separate service because it is kind of one of those things where not everybody would be eligible to go there.

And does that route stop in Crozet, too, to pick up other people, or is it delegated directly from that residence?

It does take some people from wherever their homes are out to the day programming at Innisfree, and it takes people who are residents at Innisfree into town for appointments.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much for that.

All right. Supervisor Lepisto-Curtley?

Yes, I'm very excited to learn about your ADA and rural improvement of going out to further areas. I just really appreciate that. I think we have a number, like Supervisor Malik said, we have a number of people in the rural area who just cannot get to work. So that's very good. Does your program, we also have MicroCat, which is an on-demand. So are you just extended into the areas that maybe MicroCat doesn't or you work with them or there's no conflict, I'm assuming?

No conflict. There are times where during the week, let's say 10 to two, right? Your service area is all of Albemarle County, and so we are doing the same service as micro-cap, but by reservation, not on demand. So at some point within the next year, we may be able to offer that on demand. Right now, you can make that reservation one to seven days ahead of time.

And is your rural area more expansive than the rural area of microcath? Because that is only... Oh, yes, ma'am.

Okay. Yes.

Thank you very much.

727 square miles.

Thank you.

Supervisor Missel?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Murphy. Appreciate it. I'm in learning mode on this. It's really great information. I really appreciate it. Also, congratulations on what sounds like a great job that you're doing. Thank you. The people-service connection, you know, that order is so important, right? So thank you for that. Let's see. Also, just echoing the really excited about the ADA and rural customer opportunity and the microtransit pilot for that. Remind me again of the timing of that.

So ADA, remember, that's that urban core service. And don't be confused. We have folks who have disabilities in all 2,700 square miles. But because when CAT takes the 5307, Urban, small urban federal dollars. When they take those dollars, they're obligated to either themselves or have a contract with somebody to provide what's called complimentary paratransit. Because under the American with Disabilities Act, you know, you have to serve that same area with comparable service. And so we serve people with disabilities everywhere. Only in that zone do they have to go through eligibility. So when we pick up somebody in Scottsville who lets us know that they have a mobility device, either walking, you know, a walker or a wheelchair, we still provide the exact same service that we do in town with the ADA folks. It's just there's no eligibility required because rural funding from the federal government, $53.11, doesn't require it.

I see. Thank you. That's helpful. The Esmond-Scottsville link, 450, that's fantastic. I mean, I'm not competitive, but it sounds like we're beating the Crozet Connect. Just saying. And then a question about the funding. And forgive me if these are really basic questions. So fiscal year 26 was 3.523909. Fiscal year 27 was 3.523909. That's right. Can you remind me why – there was not an increase, and how you're accommodating things like gas prices and other things that are just obviously increasing?

Well, let me just say that The city and county ask us to write those budgets nine months before they start, and gas didn't cost what it does today. So there is a little bit of a hedge on the gas, but we don't pay what you pay at the pump. Jaunt is a governmental agency because you're an owner, and so we do strip away all those taxes, so it is somewhat less than that. For the number of miles, millions, that we drive, gas prices are a tension right now. Why we have a flat budget is because we had made a commitment that we were going to refine our processes and our staff numbers to the point where we would either be level or no more than 2% in every locality. And so how we got there, if you remember this slide.

Yeah.

How I balance that budget is we hold in cash, typically $8 to $10 million, and so I invested $168,000 in interest income so that it would have otherwise been your local dollar. And so it gets applied to you as a savings, which is why you have exactly that 3.5239 that you referenced.

So that gets to my next question and last question. It's nice that you return funds to the county. And maybe this is, Jacob doesn't want to hear this, but if you're returning $400,000 or so to the county, would you not put that in an investment fund somewhere that would allow you to then utilize more of the interest that comes off of that? Or is that maybe baked into your, I don't know, charter somewhere?

I give my perspective and then encourage your CFO to give you his perspective as well. Mine is this. We've already at that point applied a process that says we are holding in our reserves this much for operating and this much for capital because let's face it, the reimbursement cycles are irregular. You know, when you're talking about state, federal, and local government monies, not everybody pays the day it's due and so we're already holding dollars and so To be good stewards, we should return when we don't spend as much. And those savings are generally because we either spent less on staff or training or some other part of the operating budget. It's never on the capital side, really.

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. That's it. Supervisor Pruitt.

Thank you. I'm going to kind of jump ahead to the end of today's meeting and provide for the rest of the board some context that we recently received another phase of our transit needs priorities study that was prioritizing several existing services we have. So cat routes, but also jaunt routes and jaunt services, including their door to curb services, but also their connect services. against some of our existing cat routes, like Route 2 that goes down Avon in my district that I used to get here while all the way forward has had my car for a month and a half. This is all just to say there was, I think, a surprise to everyone that in general... The longer-range Junk Connect routes were very highly rated, and in particular, the Buckingham, so running through Pantops and then all the way, and the medical center, and then all the way down to Scottsville, and then all the way down to Dilwin, that route, like head and shoulders above, was the highest-rated route. And in general, a lot of these more rural-serving Connect routes were. were more highly rated, which presents a lot of interesting, I think, thoughts as we think about CARTA and what that's going to look like moving forward. And something I immediately caught is a lot of this isn't actually in our currently authorizable service jurisdictional area for CARTA, which even at the zenith of its power cannot encompass Buckingham without new authorization. I say that all as groundwork just to make sure we're all thinking about this in the same context, but it's also leading into a question I have, which is something that just clicked in the first part of your presentation to me today. I have been historically pretty vocally in favor of maybe controversially and maybe like, you know, bespeaks my own ignorance of some of the complexities, but in favor of a single unified governmentally operated system under the auspices of CARTA, which I understand is complicated and probably ticks some people off for different reasons, which would involve gobbling up all other transit agencies and housing them in a unified way. It just occurred to me that that would potentially make current Jaunt Connect sites suddenly new focal points for ADA door-to-curb services. Would that be accurate? Would you have to overnight start offering? Like, if you stopped being a government-chartered corporation and became part of a government authority, THAT DOES INVOLVE, THAT DOES RECEIVE SOME URBAN DOLLARS. WOULDN'T THAT MAKE IT SO LIKE NOW WE HAVE TO DO DOOR TO CURB AND DILLWIN?

NO, BECAUSE REMEMBER THAT 5307 DOLLAR FROM THE FEDS IS ALSO LABELED AND TAGGED TO SMALL URBAN AREAS. AND SO DILLWIN CAN NEVER BE THAT. SURE.

SO YOU'D HAVE TO

And so they don't have fixed route service. You know, what creates the need for the complimentary paratransit is you're taking the small urban dollar and you're doing fixed route service. If you're taking federal money to do fixed route service, then people with disabilities ought to be able to get around in that same area. That's the premise. And so, no, it wouldn't trigger that.

Okay. It would just be a matter of this new unified system would have to do what y'all are currently doing, which is... tracking your money buckets very consciously to make sure that the urban dollars don't go toward. Do I have that right?

For sure, any authority that is serving even Charlottesville and Albemarle County would want to take full advantage of both rural and urban dollars. And so, yes, you would want to track that. And so there is a point on every trip where all of this is in GIS, and we know that these dollars, until we got to this road, are being charged to rural, and then it became an urban trip. and vice versa. And so there's definitely a lot of technology and tracking behind that. And I understand that there are ways in which people envision single system. I would say That's not really what I believe because everybody has their strengths. And even in a single award system like in Richmond, they contract out for the services as well. And fun fact, your version of what Richmond is at GRTC is jaunt, not cat. We're a public service corporation, so are they.

I did have kind of another related question, also about ADA service footprint and how it gets impacted by other decisions. Has microCAT's urban envelope, does it have the effect of pushing out your paratransit envelope?

No, because in the way that CAT and Garland have administered that, they did it first as a pilot and then 100% with your local dollars. And so they haven't changed the fixed route. In theory, if you had used microtransit, in those areas to say, wow, we've demonstrated there's a huge need here, so we're going to put money into fixed route here now to get more people on fixed route because we know people want transit. Then that would push the boundaries out. But as it stands now, and you all making all of the dollar investments, it doesn't do the same thing.

Thank you. That's all I have.

Supervisor Duncan.

First off, I just want to, the slideshow is very, like, well put together and, like, pretty and, like, is, you know, great for the public to, like, look at and it's not boring to look through. So that's really well done. Like, that's difficult and it matters to people. How difficult would it be to get bike racks on all the buses?

How difficult? I would have a mechanic mutiny because the most fixed thing becomes not buses, then bike racks. But, you know, because they are extending out another three or four feet, people hit them And the ones that are available to us through the state contract are not only incredibly expensive, but typically only single bike use. And so they are really not particularly effective. But you could have a number and an answer for sure.

The link service, I was trying to look at it on the website. Is that... That's when people call, and it's door to door.

Link you still call. Connect you don't call. You just show up at the stop.

Is there, I mean, I know the ridership is, like, low on the link, but is there a way where, like, if you hit a certain number of riders, that, like, you would consider doing, like, a, you know, a tiny route from, like, Earleysville to, like, downtown or something? Or is that just...

Great question. I think that that's where I'm encouraging you all to think about whether we should engage more planfully with your staff about their... thousands of hours that were on the road serving exclusively Albemarle County folks, and that's what the three and a half million dollars buys, is there a way that we ought to spend that differently? And if the answer to that was we're going to stop these three places every day at these times, then that's certainly a possibility.

Yeah, to me, I think that would be a fascinating pilot because there are so many people that are driving into work around the same time. Sort of, I guess, related to that, when you do kind of do, like, your connect bus stops and stuff, is it, I guess I don't know what the process is of, like, creating a bus stop, but, like, for example, you know, we have a lot of people that go to Albemarle High School and, like, Cat doesn't have a bus stop there. Like, could Jaunt do a bus stop there?

I would ask what we know about who those riders are, and are they likely to want to ride one of our commuter routes at the times that we're operating, right? Because if really what they're doing is filtering into that whole school complex, then Maybe, maybe not. You know, the beauty of Connect as it stands right now is it's collecting people at a series of stops in more rural areas and making very few stops until it gets into the urban core. And so, whereas, you know, let's just imagine that Cat went out to the airport like we do with Connect, riding that you would stop maybe 15 times coming to UVA and on Connect you would stop three, right? There's a difference in the rider experience. And so if we were to divert people off of 29 or out of Crozet past Albemarle High School, we'd have to figure out what's the use of that or have it be an entirely different service.

And then just kind of the last one, everybody can use Jaunt, correct? Like it's not just for ADA?

Any person who calls in and establishes a profile with reservations can ride in Elmoral County, absolutely. That's right.

That's all I have. I have one, I guess it's more a request, and you may already be doing it through Via Carta just in the spirit of regional cooperation, but when you get on-demand up and running... what we're learning with MicroCat is the data you collect from the service goes a long way to informing what your fixed routes are. You know all that, but just saying that, man, to combine the MicroCat data with any on-demand data you start to collect so that we can learn from both sets would be valuable.

Yeah, you know, even with the information that UTS, CAT, and Jaunt collect today, we're trying to figure out in monthly reporting to CARTA or maybe quarterly or semi-annually, what are the shared things that we measure so that you could understand a little bit more about the scale of each and what it's contributing to the picture, but we're 100% at the ready to share any data with CARTA and it happens fairly regularly. That's great.

Thank you. And I assume the presentation, if we don't have it, we'll have it at some point, because it sounds like others might be interested in having that to share.

The clerk has the presentation, yes.

Awesome. Well, I want to thank you for your time, Mr. Murphy, and appreciate all of the content. Jacob, any final remarks that we need to make there? But again, thank you so much. We all appreciate John, I know, and found this very valuable. So thank you for your time. Thanks. All right. All right, board. We're going to move to item number 12. This is our board-to-board, a quarterly report from the Elmer County School Board, Elmer County Board of Supervisors. I know we have our chair, Rebecca Berlin, and our vice chair, Allison Spillman, with us today. And as they come up, we'll... I'll let them. I won't set up any introductions or things like that. Dr. Berlin, I'll let you figure that out.

I guess as they're doing that, I'll just note with Dr. Berlin's presentation,

okay or patience. Obviously, you didn't see a written report in the packet this time. So there have been some conversations, and I know interest from the school board chair that some of what has been going on may take on some different looks or different content type stuff. So the next couple of iterations of this could be a little different than what's been happening over the last couple of years. And we'll be seeing how it goes as it goes.

And we are just sharing copies of the slides with you.

Oh, you can't hear me? Bend that up really close.

Really close? Yeah, you got to bend it down there. Oh, see, we're usually on the other side, so.

Yeah, it's weird from over here.

I know. Thank you, Chair Galloway, and to the entire Board of Supervisors. It is an honor to share this quarterly briefing with you today. And honored to be joined by Ms. Spillman, who will be sharing the podium with me. I will do my best to document any questions that come up and to get back to you in a timely manner for any questions that we are not able to answer today. I would also ask if someone from the ACPS staff could support me in this documentation, it will be a huge help. So in my daily work, in my public work, and in my private life, one piece of feedback that I receive that is consistent is that I do not pause enough to celebrate and say thank you. So that is how I want to start every presentation to the Board of Supervisors from now on. Yes, there are areas that we can continue to improve on, but we also have so many things to celebrate and so many things to thank the staff for, the families for, the students for, and to you for. I also want to make sure that this regular briefing meets your needs, and so at the end I will ask for any summary feedback. In addition to celebrations today, I want to focus on school openings and scholar studios, recent policy and committee updates from board meetings, and budget reflections and next steps. And I'm going to, there we go. I want to start off by highlighting our high school graduates. We are still gathering final numbers from our graduating class, but our high schools reported the following preliminary data. Albemarle issued 460 diplomas at graduation and 340 students receiving an advanced diploma. Monticello issued 286 diplomas, with 166 being advanced diplomas. And Western Albemarle had 304 graduates, with 232 earning an advanced diploma. In addition, Post High had five graduates, and Community Lab School had 13 graduates with 10 advanced diplomas. Overall, we had over 1,000 graduates in the class of 2006, with 70% of those graduates earning an advanced diploma. This was also the first time that we recognized graduates who had completed their Scholar Studio coursework and capstone in addition to their diploma. Those students walked the stage completing both LINK and PULSE and wearing studios with the Scholar Studio emblem and branding from their Scholar Studio of choice. We will have more data at the end of the summer regarding student post-secondary school plans, on-time graduation, and subgroup specific data, which will provide greater insight into this graduating class. I do want to point out that the progress to graduation is a long one and a different one for each student. Too often, we fail to take the time to recognize the work that goes into making certain that these students are able to make it to their high school graduation with opportunities to pursue a lifetime of fulfillment. So I want to congratulate our graduates and their families and say thank you to all the teachers, educators, support staff, and division leaders for often thankless work they do to make moments like this possible. And thank you to each of you who attended one or more graduations. I hope it was as impactful for you as it was for me. On May 14th, the school board recognized 60 employees who announced their retirement from ACPS. These staff members included teachers, administrators, and support staff from across the division. These are some of our most dedicated public servants who have given time in their heart to helping students realize their full potential. It is always an honor to congratulate our retirees each year because they are often the staff who spent 20 or more years right here in Albemarle County. Many of these employees dedicated 25, 30, and our longest standing employee dedicated 43 years to serving ACPS. Eight of these retirees had more than 30 years of service to students and families in the school division. These employees make a difference each day in our students' lives by greeting them with a smile and a hello on a bus ride when a student is having a bad day, giving part of their lunch when a student came to the office saying they were hungry and had forgotten theirs, and teaching thousands of students individually throughout their career, truly changing the trajectory for the children of our county. I cannot thank these 40 individuals enough for their dedication to ACPS, and I hope they are sitting in a lawn chair with a glass of iced tea, lemonade, or whatever they fancy, smiling as they remember their career here at ACPS. I am proud to share that we've had a number of leadership changes due to retirements, transfers, and internal promotions. Nine hires have occurred already, and three or more are currently in the interview process. We have received much public comment and email communication regarding our current vacancies. Even though we have higher than normal vacancies in principal positions this year, please know that they are driven by positive transitions, including retirements, promotions, and two new school hires. We've had zero system resignations. We continue to have a very strong organizational rate, and we will be happy to share final retention numbers at our next update to the Board of Supervisors. Based on community feedback we received about our selection process, during May, the superintendent listened, and the PTO and school staff representatives will be in his final interview round to hear their input directly and enhance transparency in the selection process. This enhancement will begin with the vacancies at Baker Butler, at Stone Robinson, and at Stony Point. And in front of you are our nine principals who have either changed positions, so two have changed positions, and are new or returned to the county, as is Stephanie Carter, or who are new to the county. I also want to pause and celebrate and thank our amazing students. This picture shows four of our five student board representatives. And if you're still wondering who will make up the next generation of leaders who will go the extra mile for our community and our country, spend 15 minutes with these students, with the members of our student senate and the students in the Star Hill Pathway Program. I am honored and humbled to work with them each and every day. Staff and family voice has always been important to ACPS, but in the past five years, student voice has also become something that we look to in decision making. At ACPS, we are intentional in providing space for student voice in the decision making process of policies that guide their daily lives. through public education. This quarter, our student senate met with state elected officials to share their perspective on the state issues that matter to them most. We also received their direct feedback on school budget priorities and the student activities policy. Along with the student senate, we appoint student representatives who are non-voting to the board, who are given a voice to represent their respective school student bodies at the dais, which allow us to make sound policies for those we are elected to serve. Lastly, we highlight student works and achievements and provide opportunities for students to explore more deeply these academic and co-curricular activities of greatest interest to them. Our students are amazing, and I am proud of the opportunities we provide to students to actively participate in the school system. I now turn it over to Allison Spillman to discuss our school openings and our Scholar Studio updates. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Berlin. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. We're beyond thrilled that we will be opening two new schools this year. We appreciate the partnership with the Board of Supervisors and the county to make this happen for our learners. These new spaces will be inspirational because they both allow really beautiful views of our county. We'll be opening Mountain View Upper Elementary for the 26-27 school year. The site provided us an opportunity to build a facility that's smaller than a comprehensive elementary school but allows us to address the specific capacity issues faced at Mountain View Elementary at a lower cost. The current Mountain View will transition to Mountain View Primary, serving our K-2 students plus Pre-K. The new facility will be Mountain View Upper and will serve grades 3-5. We're on a tight schedule for opening, so any assistance that you all or the county executive can offer to expedite permitting and assist with final inspections will certainly be appreciated. We'll be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, July 24th at 10 a.m. You will be getting invites, but please put that on your calendar. We would love to have you there. In addition to Mountain View Upper Elementary, we're also scheduled to open the Ace Academy Lambs Lane this upcoming school year. This project is on an even tighter schedule, so again, any support you can offer with permitting and inspection would be really appreciated. We're planning a ribbon cutting for Ace Lambs Lane on July 31st. We're still working out details on specific time, but we, once again, will send you an invite and would love for you to join us. For those of you that are curious about how the facility will operate, while it's located adjacent to Albemarle High School, it stands as a separate operation. Students from across the county have the opportunity to participate in the scholar studios housed at that facility. Students will attend their base schools and be transported to ACE Lamb's Lane every other day consistent with their block schedules. Students will be transported from their base school to Lamb's Lane and return to their base schools after the school day so they can still participate in after school activities. Over the years, there has been discussion of the Scholar Studios and the construction of Center 2, now appropriately named ACE Academy, Lambs Lane. They've largely merged together and presented as a solution to the persistent overcrowding of our high schools. That framing has allowed us to lose sight of the purpose of the Scholar Studios. Our scholar studios are specialized learning environments intentionally designed around learning fields and the durable skills employers consistently identify as the most important to them within that field. They're designed to bridge the divide between school and community by leveraging strong local partnerships and engaging with the high school curriculum through practical work-based experience in specific career fields. Our graduates leave high school with the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to prepare them for jobs in today's workforce. When we speak about the Scholar Studio, we're talking about these unique learning environments that are designed to prepare students for the modern workforce, offer talent development that is essential to our economic growth, strengthen our business and community partnerships to enhance student learning, focus on innovation in real-world environments, and support entrepreneurship and innovation by developing student agency design thinking and public presentation skills. This focus is in line with the Virginia Department of Education's goal of metrics around employment, enlistment, and enrollment. These are the scholar studios on the slide in front of you with their descriptions and the number of students currently enrolled in each studio. Eight of the studios are placed at ACE Academy Lambs Lane, which has specifically designed classroom environments to support the studios. Link Studio, with its focus on information and communication technologies, is at ACE Academy Seminole Place, formerly known as Center One. Terra is at Western Albemarle, using the greenhouse space that's available there. We all know that students at all three high schools are interested in Encore, which is our performing arts, and Vivid, which is visual arts. So these studios are available at students' home schools. We're pleased to report that enrollment for ACE Academy Lambs Lane has far exceeded expectations. You can see the breakdown on the slide in front of you. Enrollment by studio that's located there and by grade. You see that 70% of those enrolled are from Albemarle High School, 24 from Monticello, and six from Western Albemarle. It's important to acknowledge that distance from a student's home school continues to be a deciding factor in joining a studio. It's a challenge that we're continuing to work through in our recruitment process. We were anticipating 200 freshmen at ACE Academy this year and are already at nearly 300 enrolled. So we're well above the anticipated growth for our first year. Total capacity for that school is 400 students per day. Stephanie Carter, who many of you know formerly from KTEC, is an excellent match for the leadership position, and she is working extensively on recruitment as well as connections with the business community and larger community to recruit direct support for the experiential learning, including job observations, internships, and support of capstone projects. Back to Chair Berlin.

Thank you so much. Many of you have followed the public discussion and development of our new student activities policy. We crafted this policy with complete transparency and public engagement throughout the process. Work on this policy began in October, and it included a review of all ACS policies related to student activities and fundraising, as well as a review of other district policies to guide our updates. Interviews of teachers and students were included as well as a presentation to the Student Senate for feedback prior to taking the policy to the school board for a vote. I had the honor of observing the Student Senate and saw their reflections, their comments, and their suggestions were included and important in that final draft. Edits were made publicly all the way up to the final adoption, and the board addressed a number of the ambiguities that the previous policy had. The highlighted changes include clear distinction between co-curricular and non-curricular activities, A clear definition of school day is 45 minutes before the start of school and 45 minutes after dismissal. Limited access to school facilities during the school day to student staff and invited speakers for co-curricular activities. but guaranteed access to school facilities for non-curricular activities and invited speakers and guests outside of the school day. And finally, requiring all fundraising for school activities to be managed by school staff in accordance with all fiscal policies to prevent fraud and abuse. All middle school and high school leadership as well as club leaves have been briefed on the new policy and the central office will continue to support the implementation as we move into the school year. At the May 28th school board meeting, we passed the charter for the Achievement Gap Advisory Committee. This committee will provide guidance, analysis, and recommendations to the board on matters related to identifying and monitoring and eliminated the opportunity, access, and achievement gaps within ACPS. In support of this purpose, thank you, Ms. Spillman, THE COMMITTEE SHALL REVIEW AND ANALYZE DISAGGREGATED DATA AND OUTCOMES, IDENTIFY SYSTEMIC BARRIERS AND CONTRIBUTING TO THOSE DISPARITIES, ELEVATE THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF OUR STUDENTS, OUR FAMILIES, OUR STAFF, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS. and provide recommendations to the board to improve equitable outcomes. Membership will reflect the demographic diversity of ACPS, prioritizing representative diversity and lived experience, as well as representation from all of our feeder patterns. We will include two school board members, four to eight students, four to six parents, two to four community members, three to five educators, and two to three administrators. As you can see from this membership, student, family, educator community voice is at the center of this committee. Appointments for community members, parents, guardians, and student representatives will follow the school board's established advisory policy. Vacancies will be publicly advertised by the school board clerk and shared through the division website and other channels that families follow. The committee will provide an annual report in October that may include recommendations to be used for budgeting purposes. This committee does not replace the superintendents, the cabinets, the principals, or the school board's laser focus on closing the achievement gap. The board determined that due to the long-standing issue, a committee is necessary to bring consistent voices from all groups in our community to address this challenge. Finally, I want to provide a budget update and then respond to the questions and comments raised by Chair Galloway and the full board in your budget reflections. We are proud of our comprehensive budget process that the ACPS team conducted from the first meeting in October through the 200-plus public questions that the finance team answered. I have to say I was surprised by some of the Board of Supervisors' comments that questioned if our budgeting process was as comprehensive and thorough as the Board of Supervisors' budget. Moving forward, I want to figure out how to help you see the comprehensive nature of our process and answer any questions that you have. Like all processes, there are already things that Dr. Haas and I have identified just at lunch today that we could do to continue our process of continuous process improvement for next year's budget. I do want to take a few moments to just review the budget that we passed. We were able to include important and new expanded strategic priorities, six math intervention and data coaching positions, continued support for Scholar Studio that include three additional special education positions, as well as needed instructional resources, as well as the operating expenses for two new schools. None of these decisions were easy, but it is important to the board that we continue looking at what is working and what needs to be updated to ensure we are acting in a fiscal responsible manner. Like you, we are anxiously awaiting the passage of the state budget process, and we are already beginning to put plans in place for the 27-28 budget process. The summary of the ACPS operating budget shows the key funding decisions of the school board made to support the $308 million ACPS budget. As represented here, to continue the fiscal 26 level of service at $284,000, this is reflected as the baseline budget and accounts for 93% of our recurring budget. This includes the salaries and benefits, required staffing service, and the ongoing costs. In addition, we had a 4.2 cost increases that we were required to bear due to inflation, and then the additional costs with Mountain View Elementary and ACE Academy. I think it's important to also mention the green piece. And in that green piece was our investment to employee compensation and improve working conditions. This important investment supports the district's greatest resources, our teachers and professional staff, through the collective bargaining agreement to bring greater clarity and predictability to staff costs over the next three years. while also reinforcing the workforce stability so that we maintain strong retention, low vacancy rates, and growing employment engagement. Providing educators and education support professionals a meaningful seat at the table strengthens ACPS internally and helps us remain competitive externally. All of this finds our way to our students and their quality of learning. And then in blue, you see our $1.4 million of reductions, as well as the cost for our new proposals of $3.3 million. This creates a recurring operational budget of $305 million, including the one-time expenditures of $3 million for a total fiscal year budget of $308 million. We are proud of where this budget ended and are excited for the additional support for all staff, as well as the two new schools. And lastly, I appreciate Chair Galloway and the Board of Supervisors' reflection discussion on the budget process. It was helpful to hear your thoughts about what went well and what did not. I will start by saying that I'm glad we were able to have some difficult conversations that are necessary in a public budget process. And I appreciate Chair Galloway's willingness to have an honest dialogue that is focused on creating meaningful change. Together, we are all elected by the people of Albemarle County to serve their interests. Since January, Chair Galloway and I have had regular meetings over coffee, excuse me, focused on how to improve our overall working relationship and the processes themselves. Specific areas where I think we need to be more intentional and strategic in the budget process, both on our feedback as well as your feedback, are as follows. to have a retreat that gives us time to build relationships across the two boards, in which I did some counting, and just about the majority of our members are new within the past two years. This could also include discussion of roles and responsibilities, rules of engagement, ways of working and communicating, and learning together on topics such as RCIP. A budget philosophy policy that allows the Board of Supervisors and School Board to look at multi-year budgeting. More early opportunities between the Board of Supervisors and School Board to discuss priorities through joint meetings and two-by-twos. Lastly, like you mentioned in your comments, I believe we would benefit from more public discussion and honest dialogue. We will certainly have disagreements about priorities. Each of us are elected by our constituents to advocate for specific needs and interests. However, we need to have more public discussions so that the public can see how we come to our specific budget outcomes. I would like to see a more collaborative process where we are free to have discussions, disagree, and find those places of common interest. And last, if there are any specific small things that we can do to make the process more transparent or to better follow up, such as providing paper budget books, providing a briefing on how to access our comprehensive budget documents online, we have heard you, and we would like to make that happen. Thank you again for your time today, and please let us know if there is any other information you would like us to bring forward for these briefings to meet your needs.

Thank you, Chair Belan. Thank you, Vice Chair Spillman. We'll go see what questions, comments we have. Supervisor Malik?

I don't have any questions right this minute. Thank you, ladies. Thank you so much.

Supervisor Lopisto-Kirtley?

No questions.

Supervisor Missel?

Do you want comments?

Comments, questions?

Okay. So thank you. This was great, really helpful. And, again, learning curve is ongoing. I think your approach to pausing and celebrating is great and being a part of that. Graduation was really a story I've shared many times. Thank you for your support. Just some thoughts. And you guys can go, like, that's ridiculous. But this is just some thoughts. One is, as we think about the CIP and what could potentially be in this presentation, it would be great to kind of have, I don't know, a dashboard or something. Like, how are we doing? Where do things stand? Has it changed? What's our strategic sort of big picture? And what does that look like kind of near term? Nitpick on the leadership changes slide. I'd love to know the roles of each of those people, just who they are on there. That would be good to look at. Retention numbers and trends would be helpful to see. Got both the ribbon cuttings on my agenda. That would be awesome to go to. Let's see. Scholar studio growth projections. Lots of different numbers. Some are really, really popular in the 200s and 300s. Some are like 41 for some reason. That number's in there twice. So just kind of knowing that and what that looks like. Overall safety in the schools. I'm just curious as to are there ongoing initiatives to improve safety or what is the status of that piece?

Can we answer any of those questions right now? Did you have any specific questions around safety?

Not really questions. I guess just you were asking what you could improve. Yeah, no, I just didn't know if there was something we could answer for you right now. No, I'll just, in the interest of time, I'll just for future.

So I'll just follow up. So I heard you on the, so I think in the kind of quarterly updates we can do a CIP dashboard. Yeah. We will have retention numbers and safety number, safety number, like, That reporting, it follows a school year, so it closes out at the end of June, I believe. I'm looking behind me. So we should be able to do that at our next briefing. And then we'll follow up just with a document. Most of them are principals of those schools. There's one new chief technology officer. But we'll send over so you have the face, the name, and the position. That would be awesome. And then I think we will also, because it has been a question of both our board and your board, on Scholar Studios, I think we will keep a dashboard of that enrollment going as well.

Thank you. And then my last guest point was you nailed it on the budget process reflection. I think that was really exactly right on, in my opinion, having been new to this. And I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Supervisor Pruitt? I think we're all being a little brisk just in the interest of time, just for context. So don't take this to mean anything that I don't have much to say. The only thing I just want to really drive a point in, because I gather that both of you all have listened to our discussions on the budget process. And I think I said this then, but I want to really emphasize it now. I feel like so much of our conversation during the budget with schools has been us expressing Here's what I'm frustrated with schools about. Here's what I'm frustrated about. That is all true. Those were all real frustrations. But I think the bigger takeaway that I think I haven't said loud enough is that I do think this was the best budget process we've had with schools since I've paid attention to politics. in that it existed. It was real. It was substantive. There was back and forth. There was dialogue. And I think, if anything, the biggest gripe I've raised about this consistently has been there wasn't as much dialogue and back and forth as I would have liked to have seen. So I just wanted to say that very loudly and clearly. As much as we've talked about our frustrations and displeasures, I think the top line note would be radical improvement.

Thank you. I appreciate that, and I did think about quoting you in my presentation when you said that, but I decided not to. But I think, as I said as I started, we have things to celebrate and we have things to improve on, and I think we are all willing to come to the table and continue to grow as leaders. Thank you for saying that.

Supervisor Duncan.

Yeah. This was much better than a report just attached in the consent agenda. So I really like this format. As far as sort of budget suggestions, what I'd like to see is I would like to see the CIP in the budget. And I also, I know this is not, I know you guys are not physically making the budget document, but I would really like it to be Control-F searchable and ADA accessible.

Yeah, we heard you on that. We're working on it.

I'm going to turn, just because... Has that already happened? Where am I?

Jason was working on it.

Jason is working on it. We will make sure that it is in place before the next budget, and we'll get back to you if we are going to do anything going backwards or we'll only do it going forward. But thank you for bringing that because I didn't even realize that. So I appreciate you saying that.

And then just a couple of questions. The Ace Academy, Lambs Lane graph that you have is great, and the percentage is broken down by schools. Is there any way that we could also get the other academies at the other schools similarly broken down by percentage from each school? And then also within the studios themselves, What is the percentage per school? I know it's like kind of super in the weeds data, but would be kind of interesting to see. And then you said ASIL can hold 400 students a day, correct? Correct. My understanding is ninth graders are on their own day, and then 10th through 12th, and then they alternate days. Is that correct, Dr. Haas? That's correct.

It is true because we projected 200 ninth graders, and we're at 300 now.

Just the 546. I was like, oh, those are going to be overcrowded, but we're alternating days. Yeah, so that's 546 is actually like really great for the money we've invested in it.

And if you ever come and watch some of the studios in action, like Dr. Haas and I visited the Pulse Studio, which is our EMT nursing, it's really impressive, and the students are really, really engaged. So welcome, you guys, to come see them.

Yeah, and I'm going to be out of town on the ribbon-cutting day for it, so that's a bummer. But, yeah, that's all I had. This was really great, and thanks. Thank you.

Well, first, just thank you for the report. You mentioned earlier, like, want to make sure this report, you said, meets your needs. And I want it to be a mutually exclusive type thing. If you all have questions of us, this is a great time for you to surface those as well. I think that meet your needs piece is a two-way street, but I do appreciate the thought that's been going in here. I thought it was interesting the fact that the Chair and I have been meeting throughout the past budget process, but trying to keep the hat on future budget improvements, not just having repeated conversations about the budget we were going through. Right. So I appreciate that. And I know that as we go through with what we're planning, the board will learn more and more about how that stuff will come forward. So I think that The coming budget cycle is going to be, while everybody had some good things to say top line to Supervisor Pruitt's point, I suspect the next one is going to be a very different look for folks in our community. Did you?

I did have one I forgot to ask. So on your future list for when to come back, I would love to learn if the return to phonics has had a positive impact on the reading gap. and the success there. And I would also echo what Supervisor Pruitt said about the December meeting. The fact that there was true engagement was the first time in 19 years. That was really great. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, and we're getting our presentation to the board on our SOL scores in July, and so we'll make sure we get you all that information, and we'll have a better picture of what our reading scores look like then.

And just for the board's awareness, I had shared the questions, the prompts that I had offered to this board to kind of, it wasn't an official formal thing, but I'd shared that with Dr. Berlin as well. So look forward that that's a start of a conversation, not the end of an evaluative conversation as we look to the fall and move through it. But I do think roles and responsibilities both boards, we're going to do that work. We're in the proper preparation to do that. And I know that you all will do that too. And it's kind of like under our own little roof. But for both boards to understand the other board's roles and responsibilities of their respective elected position I think is just as important as us understanding it in our own house. So I'm calling that out to say that that'll be part of the joint work that we do moving forward. The one question that I, and if you have an answer today, great. If not, then the follow-up. The The touring, if a supervisor wants to tour a building, we just want to make sure we understand what protocol you want us to follow to do that. This past year, great, but it was different than what was instituted a few years ago, which was different than what had existed before. So I think just because more of us probably got into buildings this year than what has maybe occurred in the past, that there's interest to continue to do that. And we just want to make sure that we're doing what you all would like us to initiate those on our own part.

I wanted that to be as streamlined as possible for you, and I'm thinking about having it come through the clerk's office to the principal, but let me do that as a follow-up when we do the other follow-ups, because you won't be able to get into schools in the next month. Well, you can, but there's nothing to see. But I want to make sure it is easy and as streamlined for you guys, because I know everyone has busy schedules, and we want it to be as simple as possible.

And I will say that to what you just said, that there's nothing to see, well, it's also less disruptive. So if there are things that supervisors, if you're just doing a pure facility look, sometimes we all love seeing kids. And for like Albemarle High School, you've got to see, or if it's a school that's overcrowded, the kids being in there, that's part of the piece. But if you want to like scrutinize quality of building and things like that, that sometimes it could be easier. That's a good point. to do that. But that's for you all to let us know.

You're definitely welcome to visit in the summer. If you want to see the workings with the students, then after August 12th.

Is the ACE Academy going to be set up in similar fashion to the high schools in terms of metal detector security, check-ins, all that? Yes. I think of the many students there and now there's this new cool building and I'm assuming, though, it won't be a free flow in and out the front doors?

No, safety is still a top priority for our board.

Yeah. Just curious about that. Yes, please.

Also, to add to your list, I would love to learn about what the policies are for background checks for coaches, referees, for contractors who are there on school grounds at the same time that all the children are, just in general. Thank you. These are all questions I've been asked by constituents. Yeah.

Dan, is that something you would like to answer now about background checks? Background checks?

Later?

Follow up? OK. He'll send a follow up. Thank you. And we can, because there definitely are around, you know, teacher, like, background checks when students are present, not present in schools. And so making sure we can kind of outline those for you as well.

All right, did you have an additional question?

Yes, I just wanted to know what your, the average length at a school for your administrators, for your APs, and for your principals. You probably can't answer that now, but I do notice there are three elementary schools that have, you're currently interviewing for, I guess, a principal or assistant principal.

A principal, correct.

But I'd like to know the average length of stay, because if they're good, continuity is something that's important.

Thank you. And we can provide that for the school building as well as the county as well because I do think that it is important right like this is my retention for the school building because sometimes transition happens because a AP wants to go to a larger school or or a or move to a principal position so some move some of that movement no no I I understand that I'm just wondering what's the average length of stay I mean you want to make sure that AP has enough experience

And does move around. That's correct. But I want to know, I'm mainly interested in the length of stay of a principal.

And I think it would be interesting to note, too, the national trend of, I think, gone are the days of the Ben Hurts that are out of school for 30 years. I mean, it seems like the national trend is that principals are not staying very long because it's a much different experience now than it used to be and much harder. And burnout is real. So I think it would be interesting to look at what the national numbers are as well to compare it. Yeah, that trend has been in effect for about 30 years.

Yeah. They switch a lot. Yeah. No, they switch a lot. Yeah. But I wanted to know how we do it. Sure. Absolutely.

Thank you. I guess to wrap, I would just say that I appreciated being able to watch how you handled or celebrated the retirees and the student reps and the student senate.

Oh, thank you.

And the fact that listening to the last board meeting on how the – The new student reps, how you did that introduction of them to the board, I think that's great. I mean, how it's given some gravitas and some acknowledgement of not just those who serve, but those who are coming on.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I would say that the only time that my voice cracked during the last school, since January, is when we had to say goodbye to our student reps. They had that big of an impact in our work and our decisions and how we look at schools. Thank you for acknowledging that.

Well, thank you for the report. Thank you for the time and for joining us and for answering the questions. And we look forward to the next one, the next time it's scheduled.

And just so in follow-up, Chair Galloway, I have documented these questions in a very messy way. So I will put it into a cleaner document, share it with you to make sure we're on the same page, that I didn't miss anything, and then we will get back to you. Some will be answers and some will be to be addressed at our next briefing.

Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, thank you, Board. We're going to move to our closed meeting. And do we have a motion to certify, or not to certify, to go into closed meeting?

I move that the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia. Under subsection one, to discuss and consider appointments to various boards and commissions, including without limitation, the Blue Ridge Committee for Shenandoah Park Relations, the Crozet Community Advisory Committee, the Historic Preservation Committee, the Jaunt Board, the Pantops Community Advisory Committee, the Region 10 Community Services Board, and the Regional Housing Partnership.

Second.

All right. If without objection, if the clerk will call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt. Aye. Ms. Duncan. Yes. Mr. Galloway. Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley. Aye. Ms. Malik. Yes. Mr. Missel.

Aye.

All right. We'll go to 241. Mr. County Executive.

Yes, sir. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize our Deputy County Executive, Mr. Trevor Henry, and he is going to make two special introductions this evening for our board and our general public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Chair Galloway, members of the board, Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive, I have the privilege of working primarily with public safety and economic development as part of my portfolio. And I'm honored to be here tonight to introduce two significant hires. One's a promotion, one's a new hire in the county. One is, the first is Lily Gregg, with our emergency communications center. And part of my role in the exec's office, I sit on the ECC management board and actually have been chair for the past year. And on April 30th of this year, we announced Lily as the permanent executive director for ECC. And so just a bit on Lily. She comes from this area. She has worked in the ECC for 14 years, started off as a systems engineer, worked her way up through and served as deputy director for the past three years. And then over through some gaps in the executive director position, she has served two stints as executive director over the past, really over the past 18 months. Lori is a pleasure to work with. She has a strong collaborative nature, well grounded on the technology side of ECC, project management work, and we found her to be a great partner WITHIN THE REGION. AND SO IT IS REALLY MY HONOR TO INTRODUCE HER. I SHOULD ALSO NOTE THAT LILY'S HUSBAND IS A SCHOOL TEACHER AND SHE HAS THREE CHILDREN, ONE IN HIGH SCHOOL, ONE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND ONE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. SO SHE HAS PUBLIC SAFETY ALL AROUND HER IN THE WORK THAT SHE DOES. I LOOK FORWARD TO CONTINUING TO WORK WITH LILY. With that, I'd like to invite her up for a quick introduction from herself, if that's okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Trevor, for that nice introduction. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm very excited to step into this role and to continue to serve our community. So thank you.

And I'd invite real quick, supervisors, any welcoming remarks? Supervisor Malik?

I know you need more space for all those extra bodies, so please be thinking about your CFP request.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Supervisor Lopisto-Curtley.

So happy to have you. Thank you very much for agreeing to be with our family.

Supervisor Missel.

I echo their comments. Welcome. Thanks.

Supervisor Pruitt. Welcome to the team. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan.

Same thing. Thank you, and this was great.

I was going to say, been on the team. We're ready for you to be leading that team permanently. So well done, and congratulations on that. We look forward to the work that you will do.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My second introduction tonight is our new emergency management coordinator. Dating back to last fall when the public safety staffing study was finalized and presented to the board, one of the areas of consideration in the recommendation was for us to move our our emergency management function out from under fire rescue, for which it's been embedded really since the time of the pandemic, into a standalone office. It's the best practice really in the country for emergency management. It is one that the county executive and I both believed in, and we really looked at what was the right timing to do that. And so with the change of chief in the fall and kind of working with Chief Bucket, and working with staff, we felt like it was appropriate to tie this to the FY27 budget process. We talked about that over the fall and into the spring. The Board certainly supported that work with the 27 budget. THAT PROMPTED OUR RECRUITING PROCESS. WE OPENED UP THE JOB DESCRIPTION FOR ADVERTISEMENT, AND WITHIN 14 DAYS WE HAD 61 APPLICANTS.

WOW.

IT WAS SIGNIFICANT. AND I'LL SAY OF THE 61, 30 WERE WELL, WELL QUALIFIED. WE WENT THROUGH A PROCESS. WE HAD MULTIPLE PANELS OF INTERVIEWS. AND IT IS MY DISTINCT HONOR AND PRIVILEGE TO INTRODUCE JOHNNY SWITZER. JOHNNY COMES FROM the town of Wellington. He has over two decades of real progressive leadership experience in public safety support. He includes about 20 years as a volunteer firefighter, kind of from his youth days to just recently. But at the town of Wellington, Johnny came in and served first in their fleet management and kind of their facilities role. He represented the town in the region for emergency management. When COVID hit, the town said we need our own office of emergency management. Johnny, would you be willing to, you know, kind of stand that up? And he, I've learned from him, he likes challenges and he took that on. He has a tremendous public servant heart and a heart for public safety and emergency management, emergency response, which I learned just on Monday ties back to, you know, the work that his father did. And so it's kind of, it's in the family. And so Johnny was our top candidate. We are grateful that he's here. He, as part of his role at the town of Warrington, he created OEM, the Office of Emergency Management, from scratch. So those skill sets, I think, are very transferable to what we're doing. Fire Rescue has done a great job in that work. Johnny will just take kind of their, you know, the basis of that work and grow that to support our community, support the region, and I just, I'm really, I am excited to be part of this process to support Johnny. He resides up in Madison, lives on a small farm, raises cattle in his spare time, married and has an eight-year-old son that he's teaching how to, you know, run small equipment that, you know, will probably follow in Johnny's footsteps at some point. So Johnny's on day three, and he's in front of the board. I'm excited to bring him up and introduce him.

Thank you Mr. Henry for the warm welcome. Good afternoon chair and members of the board. I stand before you today incredibly honored to be named your emergency management coordinator for Albemarle County. The creation of the standalone office is a major milestone for this community. I would be remiss to mention that the framework I'm walking into has been laid out by Albemarle County Fire and Rescue and it's a strong framework. I wanted to specifically name Mr. John O'Prandy, your former coordinator, laid an amazing foundation. And the interim coordinator, Ms. Emily Palicia, has a framework that's been awesome to walk into. And the support that I've received in the last two days has been second to none. I wanted to mention that the hard work that they started really came before you from the Public Safety Studies, and on behalf of me and walking into this amazing opportunity, it's really humbling to see that. I am eager to continue this legacy, to collaborate with all county departments, and to ensure that all corners of the community are protected prepared and supported through this transition. I thank you, and I look forward to serving this community. Thank you, sir. Supervisors? Supervisor Malik?

Thank you very much. And dear John O'Prandy had been on his role for three days when we had a terrible ice and snow storm in January, and he managed to pull things together to bring life-saving services to one of the neighborhoods in my district, which had been abandoned by their landlord. No power, no oxygen, no nothing for old folks. And it was a real learning experience for all of us. So I hope that never happens again, but I'm sure there will be lots of other challenges that you will have to address. And so thank you so much. Thank you.

Supervisor Lopisto-Kirtley.

Congratulations. It looks like you've got all the experience we need. We're really happy to have you. So just welcome to our family. And also thank you for being a volunteer firefighter. I'm very impressed with that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Missel. Thank you and congratulations on being in this critically important role. I'm trying to draw parallels to cattle farming in this role. I'm not sure there probably are some. Congratulations. Good to have you.

Supervisor Pruitt.

Congratulations and welcome to the team.

Supervisor Duncan.

Yeah, this is very exciting to, like, have an official role in office and leader. A lot of places, they're sort of emergency management is sort of done by, like, volunteers from various staff who are not necessarily, like, trained to do it. So this is really fantastic that we are taking this step. So I'm very excited you're here.

Thank you. You know, Trevor said something about your youthful days. Up until recently, you look like you're still in your youthful days. Yeah. Don't let another day go by without making sure you check any comments like that coming from folks inside the organization. But it's impressive when we hear, anytime when we do some recruitment efforts and we have 61 applicants, the person that rises to the top to get the position that That's all on you, right? So congratulations on that. And I know that says to me that we're getting a quality individual to come in who competed and earned the right to do it. So we're looking forward to working forward and having you in the family. So thank you so much. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you again. Mr. Richardson, any additional items?

Yes, sir. I do have one additional item this evening for the board. Board, you may or may not be tracking that we have several local news agencies that have decided to run stories today on the leave status of our police chief, Sean Reeves. And so we have prepared a statement. We've answered questions from three news agencies today about Chief Reeves' current leave status. And we have released a statement to one. And I'm going to share that statement with the board this evening. regarding our police chief, Colonel Sean Reeves. Colonel Reeves went on medical leave May the 8th, and at this time, when he did, it was disclosed to all Almar County Police Department staff, as well as other key local officials that we work with on a regular basis at that time. There was no proactive public announcement when the Chief of Police went on medical leave because we are committed to respecting his privacy and complying with all applicable federal privacy requirements. Regardless of an employee's title or position, the county is required to protect the confidentiality of personal information related to medical leave. It's not our standard practice to make public announcements regarding employee medical leave at any level of our organization. To put this in context, Almar County has processed 106 medical leave cases in the past 24 months, including leave for department heads and deputy directors. We've applied the same privacy protections in every single one of those situations. The county strives to balance personal privacy with the public's interest in transparency. We take this balance very seriously when releasing any sensitive information. In this instance, privacy laws guide what information can be shared. During Shawn's medical leave, Major Camille Stewart is our acting chief. Day-to-day operations remain consistent under her leadership. We're checking in on a regular basis along with the support of a lot of other command staff as well as connections back to all county departments. I'd like to take a moment to thank our Outmore County Police Department because they continue to do amazing work in our community and I'm very, very proud of the men and women who serve our community every day. We all wish Colonel Reeves well. We expect him to return from his medical leave within the next 12 weeks. Board members, I'll share this later with you in the form of an email, and I would encourage you that if you have questions, contact me directly. And if I can help with any constituent concerns, also please share that with me as well. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Any additional items?

Is that the last of it for tonight? All right. We'll move to item number 17, public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled for public hearings. We do have a sign-up at least, I know. So Vice Chair Missel will take us through the rules and walk us through our speakers.

All right. All right. Thank you. During the portion of the meeting, individuals may address the board regarding matters previously considered by the board or currently pending before the board other than items scheduled for public hearing. Speakers are limited to one opportunity of up to three minutes. To ensure equal treatment and courtesy for all speakers, the board requests the following guidelines be observed. Please state your name, and if you live in Albemarle County or Magisterial District, comments should be directed to the board as a whole. Written statements or supporting materials may be provided to the clerk. If representing a board or organization, you may ask others to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted, and speakers should not speak from their seat or out of turn. The podium timer will guide your time. Green indicates your time has begun. Yellow means one minute remains, and red indicates your time has expired. All comments are recorded, live streamed, and are published on the county website. We have one on our list. Claude Corbusier.

Good evening. Good evening, Chairman Galloway and members of the board. My name is Claude David Combasser, and I reside near Whitehall. There's a severe risk of creating a base of operations for organized crime aligned with fossil fuel interests if the county if the county aids in committing public money to an unnecessary low-barrier shelter for the homeless or to supportive housing of the kind Vista 29 seeks to open, like the crossings already in existence at 4th and Preston. A law-abiding resident of the crossings just complained to me about financial extortion that some residents habitually impose on others with impunity. As a homeless man these last two years in this area, I had breakfast nearly every day at the Haven homeless day shelter for the homeless for 14 of those months and came to know both the regulars and the newcomer guests. Again, I'm a flashpoint because the $500 billion federal lawsuit pending by my straight vegetable oil fuel company challenges our reliance on fossil fuels promoted by the lawsuit's defendants. Many seeming homeless people or residents of the crossings are in fact on the payroll of these fossil fuel interests. They tried to distract or intimidate me from continuing with my lawsuit. When I persisted, four men, all agents of opponents in my biofuel business, assaulted me in nine separate incidents inside the haven. As I showed you the last time I spoke, in addition to the haven's unlawfully procuring for these agent's Virginia driver's license in their fake names using its address. I witnessed countless drug deals take place inside the Haven's men's room. When I alerted the front desk once upon seeing three men close a big drug deal by sharing a glass bowl pipe, a female staff person entered, but she did nothing to discipline or expel them, then or at any other time. Why did Will Christians of Impact back out of speaking to you two weeks ago in favor of two disabled adults? John Frazee's agenda for Impact, hidden from its public membership on behalf of Big Tech's Global Intelligence Service who employs him, is to promote housing schemes like Vista 29 that give cover to its agents. May I suggest, instead of VISTA 29, that disabled adults be given rent subsidies and integrated into regular housing where they can gain access to services they need by telephone. It is wrong for MPAC to use the disabled as a crutch for justifying another center, VISTA 29, like The Haven, from which organized crime agents will insinuate themselves into our community and wreak havoc, not only on business competitors like me, but on who knows who else. I will contribute, from any proceeds of my lawsuit, a lot of money towards turning this area into a permaculture model that the rest of the country can follow as we wind down fossil fuel use. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. That concludes our list. All right. We will close public comment and move to item number 18. Double checking. Number 18, fiscal year 2026, budget amendment and appropriation. This is the first of our public hearings this evening. Good evening, Mr. Davidson. Good evening.

Good evening. Ryan Davidson, Deputy Chief of Budget. Today, we're going to have a public hearing and an action item to amend the FY26 budget. I have just one slide here to provide a brief overview of the contents of the amendment, after which I will turn it over to the Chair and to the Board for questions and to hold the public hearing. The Virginia code requires that we have a public hearing any time we are amending the budget that exceeds 1%. That's the case here tonight. The overall budget amendment for discussion for tonight's public hearing is approximately $8.3 million. And it's broadly made up of the items that are listed here on the slide. Attachment A included in today's agenda contains the details of all the appropriations that are in front of you tonight, but generally the areas of usage are listed here on the slide, and we're looking at about $7.9 million in the Special Revenue Fund appropriations. This is primarily related to items that were discussed with the Board during the FY27 budget development process, mainly around $4.9 million going towards the Affordable Housing Investment Fund and $3 million going towards the Economic Development Fund. THIS IS JUST THE ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION ITEM TO MOVE THOSE FUNDS INTO THE APPROPRIATE PLACE AS THEY WERE DISCUSSED AND APPROVED BY THE BOARD AS PART OF THE BUDGET PROCESS. WE ALSO HAVE ABOUT $400,000 IN THERE'S A TYPO IN THAT SLIDE. IT SHOULD NOT SAY $400 MILLION. IT SHOULD SAY $400,000 IN EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION CENTER FUND APPROPRIATIONS. THAT'S MAINLY RELATED TO SOME TECHNOLOGY REPLACEMENTS. And so to wrap up the presentation, I will say that the staff recommends after the public hearing that the board adopt the resolution in attachment B. And I've double checked that is the correct attachment letter tonight. We had a little issue last time, but attachment B. And with that, I'll turn it over to any clarifying questions and for the board to hold the public hearing.

I was about to give some side eye to my fellow supervisors for missing that $400 million. Any questions? Supervisor Malik, any questions?

No questions, thank you.

Supervisor LaPista-Kirkland?

No questions, thank you.

Supervisor Missel? No, sir. Supervisor Pruitt? No questions. Supervisor Duncan? No questions. All right. I do not have any questions. Do we have anyone signed up for this item this evening? We have no sign-ups, so we will open and close the public hearing. And the matter is back before the board and looking for a motion. To approve, go ahead.

I move that the board adopt the resolution in attachment B.

Second. All right. Without objection, if the clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missel?

Aye. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Davidson. We will move to our second public hearing, number 19, public hearing for conveyance of easements across a portion of county-owned parcel 7858L at Freebridge Lane. And good evening, Tanya.

Good evening. I'm Tanya Schwarzengruber with Community Development as a Planning Manager. I am here to talk to you about VDOT's request to convey temporary and permanent easements near Freebridge Lane. You can see on the slide that the easements are actually outlined generally in the orange, while the project that is necessitating these easements is outlined in blue. And I'll go through the specifics of that project. BDOT is basically adding some lanes to three legs of that intersection, as well as some sidewalk from the McDonald's driveway further north. And what's necessitating this easement request is the maintenance and construction of some drainage and stormwater facilities. So this public hearing is required by Virginia Code 15.2-1800 whenever we convey county-owned property, including this easement. These easements are comprised of two different types. One is a temporary construction easement. The other is a permanent construction and maintenance easement. Both equal roughly four-tenths of an acre. Our staff recommendation is that you adopt the resolution in attachment D for the following reasons. The intersection improvement is a priority transportation project funded by a smart scale grant, as well as the commands of this county property reduces the project costs helping the project receive the funding in the first place. With that, I'll open it up to questions. All right.

Supervisor Malik?

Thank you. I couldn't tell from the maps. Is there also an outfall into the river that's being constructed on this location?

Not constructed, but maintained.

So there is one already, and it's going to be improved. And you mentioned stormwater detention, and that's not shown. Not detention.

It's actually the piping.

So just holding it in the pipe and letting it go from the intersection somewhere else. Right. Okay, thank you. That's my question. Thank you.

Supervisor Lapista-Kirtley?

No questions, thank you.

Supervisor Missel? No questions. Supervisor Pruitt? No questions. Supervisor Duncan?

No questions.

All right, I do not have any questions. Do we have any sign-ups for this one this evening? No sign-ups, so we will open the public hearing and close the public hearing. The matter's back before the board. Are there any additional questions or discussion? Then we are looking for a motion.

Okay. I move that we approve the conveyance of easements across a portion of county-owned parcels 78-58L at Freebridge Lane.

Is there a motion to adopt the resolution? To adopt the resolution.

That's attachment D. That's attachment E. I was just going to say that. Thank you.

All right. Is there a second? Is there any further discussion? The clerk will please call the roll.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lepisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Mr. Missel?

Aye. All right. Thank you, board. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That will take us to item number 20, SP 2025-5, Crozet Fellowship Church Expansion. Mr. Newberry, good evening. Good evening.

Okay, good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is JT Newberry, and I'm a senior planner with the Department of Community Development. I'll be providing staff's presentation on this special use permit request, SP 2025, number five, Crozet Fellowship Church. As you can see from the area map on the screen, this proposal is located just west of the I-64 Route 250 interchange in Crozet. So this proposal is comprised of three separate parcels that total approximately 16 and two-thirds acres. These parcels are located in the rural area zoning district and the rural area section of the comprehensive plan. This property has had some type of non-residential use on it since the 1970s. A special use permit was obtained in 1973 for a country store, and it later converted into a religious assembly use. The last special use permit was approved in 2003, and that allowed a religious assembly use of up to 93 seats. Some members of the board may recall, though, that later in 2019, the county amended its zoning ordinance to align with federal law, which resulted in religious assembly uses of up to 200 persons being permitted as a by-right use. Crozet Fellowship Church purchased the property in 2024, and its congregation has continued to grow since that time, and its growth is now approaching that 200-person by-right limit. So tonight, the applicant is seeking this special use permit to allow religious assembly of up to 400 persons, construct a new sanctuary building, expand the existing parking area, and provide new stormwater management facilities. Here's a look at the applicant's conceptual plan. And I'm going to use the laser pointer to try to orient everyone to a few important elements. Just off the bat, on the right-hand side of the screen is Route 250. And on the left-hand side is Interstate 64. And the property is generally highlighted by this green buffer that you see around the perimeter. So the conceptual plan shows proposed envelopes for the new sanctuary building, which is right here, the new expanded parking area, which is right here. It shows an additional 50-foot buffer that would be applied on top of the existing 100-foot buffer to a stream that's at the rear and side of the property that's tucked away branch. The conceptual plan also labels the 125-foot parking setback. And that green area is a 20-foot undisturbed buffer that goes around the entirety of the perimeter of this area. The jagged line here shows the existing tree line. And it's notable that the proposed improvements are within areas of the site that are already disturbed. And this note, if you can see it, it talks about preserving the wooded areas to the extent possible as those improvements would be made. So all special use permits are evaluated under the four factors on the screen, and pages four through eight of the staff report contain our analysis of each of these individual factors. Staff determined that with a few recommended conditions, a positive finding could be made for each of these factors that's required for a special use permit. So those conditions include several of the elements that we just covered, namely general accord with the concept plan, including the location of the proposed building and parking envelopes, maintenance of native vegetation within the WPO buffer and the additional 50-foot buffer, establishment and maintenance of that 20-foot use buffer that we saw in green, and the last condition would be a maximum religious assembly size of no greater than 400 persons. With these conditions, staff found two positive aspects to the proposal. It met all the review criteria for special use permits. And the redevelopment of the site is focused in areas that have already been disturbed. No concerns were identified as part of the review, and the Planning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend approval at their meeting in April with minor revisions to the SP conditions, which were integrated into what we just saw on the last slide. So staff recommends approval of this request and has provided the following motions. And with that, I can take any questions that you might have.

Thank you. Supervisor Malik?

Thank you very much. And you may desire to punt this to the applicant, but I'll start with you. At the Planning Commission, and I know in the community, there's been concern about lights because this is the top of the hill. And it's visible for miles in all directions. So one of the suggestions that a constituent made to me was the use of motion sensor lights as opposed to having, because if someone's there late, we don't want them stumbling around in the dark because they're there at midnight if they have to be there. But to have it stay on all the time until some arbitrary cutoff time is not necessarily helpful. So I would just leave that thought, and others can tell me what's possible with that. But that was the main thing that I was concerned about. And I remember in between the original country store and the church that came along was Kitchy Ewald's wonderful clothing store up there at the top of the hill. So that was always an adventure to go to. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Supervisor Lopisto-Kirtley?

No questions, thank you.

Supervisor Missel?

Thank you. I think this is probably going to be in the development plan, but the grading into the critical slopes, there was a comment, I think it was in the conditions, that said site development is focused on existing already disturbed open areas of the site. Focus doesn't necessarily mean limited to. I'm just curious, are there plans to expand beyond that?

Yeah, I could let the engineer representing the applicant talk more about that, but the purpose of identifying those elements of the plan are to allow the disturbance that might be necessary as determined by the zoning administrator to complete improvements to the site, but nothing greater than what is shown on the concept plan.

Got it. Okay. So, for example, I mean, on this you're showing adjacent to that tree line critical slopes, so you'd need a critical slopes waiver to get into those anyway, right? And that's not part of this application? Correct. Are you aware, and I can ask the applicant, of any ancillary uses like daycare that would take place here?

We talked about that during the community meeting and shortly after the application. Right now, there's no plans for that, at least at the time that we talked about it with the applicant. But they understand that that's available by special use permit if they wanted to come back and do that.

Great. Thank you. Those are my questions. Supervisor Pruitt?

Looking at the topo now, I'm realizing this might not be that applicable, but I know we've had some serious incidents with flooding not that far away. Is that a major concern on this particular parcel?

No, I don't think so. The applicant's engineer could probably provide an even better answer, but based on my site visit, I don't think flooding would be a challenge for this site.

Great. The other thing I'm thinking is I know we're pretty close to the interchange, but we're on the other side of where we previously talked about mostly. When we were entertaining the possibility of a special overlay for some of our rural area interchanges, Would this site have been included in the envelope that we were looking at? I think the main criteria would be whether or not it has pre-existing ACSA service, which I'm guessing it doesn't just because of its location, but I'm not sure. It definitely does not. It does not. Okay. So it's outside that envelope.

Okay.

Thank you. That's all I have.