Welcome. Recording in progress. I'd like to, be all together on our special session on officer Ngoirzari and officer, Laura Daley. Thank you for your service today. I'm on behalf. But mostly, I really want to welcome. Alright. Well, at this point, I hope we'll be joined soon by, delegate Yes. Her wife. Yes. From her wife's. Yes. And her wife's. Yes. Gina Carlson. House District. And we're also joined. Thank you. Tracy Becker, legislative director for senator David Yates. We're unable to be here today,
but you'll be representing him, and we appreciate your presence. Thank you. I would love to give all the background and and all the others, but I think we wanna get right to it because two hours goes very quickly. Yeah. And then, turn it over, if that's okay, to, Emily Kilroy, who's first going to open with some, description of her, you know, futures project Yeah. And ask for something. Excellent. Thank you, supervisor interest. Thank you to the whole board of supervisors. I forgot to mention collective corporate center of work, and we have as far as our senior.
Okay. And I will take us through some slides and then there's plenty of time for discussion throughout. If you have a burning question about anything that we're going over, please feel free to ask a question. Don't feel pain to wait. And, and I'm excited to be talking about, AstraZeneca, and really an update on the Rodanac Future Project in the context of, the AstraZeneca announcement earlier this year. And we wanted to take a minute as part of the legislative forum to go over some of this with you all. Many of you were able to join us at the announcement event itself, and you've certainly seen some of the news articles. But we wanted to sort of recognize,
the support that we had at the state level, on our Managed Futures project, which has been, you know, many years in the making, but really positioned us to be successful for AstraZeneca. And we thought it was important to just recognize that, a little bit today. So this is, a graphic from the Urbana Futures work that we've, really kicked off in earnest in 2023, that you all have seen before. It sort of lays out the, the context for, the county's land acquisition, directly, adjacent to Ravenna Station, which is a military installation in Albemarle County. That is, the operating location for the National Grand Intelligence Center.
There's a a defense intelligence agency presence here and support teams from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. And that's, in the areas labeled, number one, two, and three. There's a private office building that is located directly adjacent to the secured perimeter there. That is, office space that's used by, the mission, Verban Station. And then, there had been for a very long time, all of this, undeveloped property around Ravenna Station. And several years ago, the county, really in partnership with the state, the Veterans of Defense Affairs, Secretariat,
a real focus on this being the only military installation in the Commonwealth Of Virginia that has, land available for expansion, surrounding it. So every other location in the Commonwealth is either surrounded by development or surrounded by water. And the defense sector is a really critically important one for the Virginia economy. And so it was, a keen interest, really driven out of that office. We talked last time we were together, about, this idea that the Ravenna Futures Project was locally driven, state supported, and federally shared. So much bigger of an opportunity than just Albemarle County. And,
there's a lot of things to say about that, now. So state supported. Staff have been invited to participate in annual briefings to the Gambit. Many of you have joined us at those briefings over the years, just to get sort of a state of, the property and the mission set there. Compared to other military installations in the Commonwealth, Urbana Station has plumbed a little bit below the radar, because of the nature of the work that they do there. And so it's been really important to sort of raise awareness through those General Assembly military veterans caucus meetings about, the work that they do, here in Albemarle. You all have been very supportive with state budget requests introduced in 2024 and 2025
towards prevent a future site readiness. And, while state budget requests have not been successful through the end of the process, we think a lot of that has raised a lot of awareness about the opportunity. And we have been successful in getting $11,000,000 in, sight readiness funding from the state, from the, the entities listed there, which has really enabled us to to advance the work for property development that, again, has positioned us really well for the AstraZeneca opportunity. So I just really wanted to take a a moment to say thank you for this the support at the state level in helping to bring this this, this vision that has felt,
multi decade, to fruition so quickly. And so this is an update to that graphic. This is, showing, where AstraZeneca will be located as they, complete their their development over the next several years. It's a total of of 82 acres of the property, which is incredible. The earlier version of this graphic had, this area labeled as 30 acres, and, and this was, this was a combined 55 acres. Through the process of working with AstraZeneca site or facility, we've we've sort of relooked at how we conceived what areas are developable and what
areas are not developable. We had originally conceived, this area in particular as being, perhaps office, suited for office type uses. Manufacturing footprint is much different than office. And so we've learned a lot, along the way on on what's possible. And so you'll see, the the total, developable acreage has increased significantly, and we'll be focusing, on making sure that AstraZeneca lands successfully on the timeline that they have identified for their facility to open, as well as, what the future for this Land Bay 25 and this now Land Bay 55, look like.
And that's, some of the exciting work ahead. This is a concept early concept, for what the Actorsenica facility will look like. This is the office building that will be sort of the front door to the facility. There's a lot of green building principles sort of hidden in this picture. There's, laminated timber construction, lots of opportunities for daylighting. They have a real strong corporate commitment to sustainable building practices, and we look forward as they refine their designs to be able to share more what that looks like, but really living the value of sustainability through, through their, built environment.
Just some of the numbers that we're excited about. It's one biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus. They're actually locating two manufacturing facilities within that. There sits on 82 acres. There'll be 600 direct new jobs associated with new facilities, primarily manufacturing jobs. But, as you might imagine, HR finance type functions will be located there as well. They're estimating 3,000 construction jobs that will last several years to build the facility and prep the land for it. And then, AstraZeneca from their own experience in other places,
has a multiplier of every job they create directly. It indirectly creates, five jobs. And so, their their number is, 3,000 indirect and induced jobs associated with the work that they do there. The minimum salary for these jobs is a $125,000 a year, which is just incredible, especially given that so many are manufacturing jobs. And, the capital investment by the company, on the on the property will be $4,500,000,000. I talked a little bit about green building. They they do have a corporate commitment to carbon neutral, operations, in the next several years.
And, so they'll be working on-site to site solar panels on top of roofs, some ground solar panels as well, and then any additional energy that they need to power the facility. They're working with their energy provider to get, green energy out of their production portfolio. And then they also have a big emphasis on closing systems as part of their manufacturing process. I we highlight this information because one of the, first cuts that they made when they were looking for a facility in Virginia was communities that have a commitment to sustainability. And Albemarle County made it through that cut,
very strongly because of some of the work that the board of supervisors has led on, climate action, biodiversity action, etcetera. The two facilities, have two different production types. One is a biologics facility, the other is small molecules. You can see just a little bit of information about when they plan to open, and the types of, buildings that'll be associated with each. And that's what I have on that. Again, really just wanted to to make sure that you all have the latest information on the AstraZeneca project, and to thank you again for your continued support. And with that, I'm gonna introduce Kevin McDermott to talk about transportation. Thanks, Emily. Hello.
I'm Kevin McDermott. I'm the deputy direct or deputy director of planning here at Albemarle County. And I was asked to talk a little bit about transportation funding in Albemarle County. As I get started, make sure that everyone recognizes that, Albemarle County, like most localities and state, primarily relies on state funding to do our transportation projects. And we do that through two major programs, smart scale, which I'm gonna really focus on in this presentation, and then the revenue sharing program. I don't have a lot on that because it's a fairly stable program.
It provides every other year, $10,000,000 that would be matched with the local amount of $10,000,000, for for any transportation project that we we select. Then that is we made it. Right now, we've got 200,000,000 available in the state overall for this programs. That has not really kept up with inflation. 200,000,000 does go far, though. And so we've taken advantage of that almost every year. We really do come close to maximizing that 10,000,000 in, in state funding by matching with with the local match. But I'm gonna focus more in this presentation
on smart scale because really that's where we get the significant amount of funding that we that we rely on for our transportation projects. All the major projects come come out of that program. So this is, some information that came from, rounds, those were annual, and then they went to biannual after that. So really, if you wanted to compare apples to apples, then you would want us to add those two, round one and round two together. And really, I wanna focus on a few of these numbers. What you can see here is the total funding. This is statewide, what has been requested.
And you can see that that number has remained generally similar with a little bit of an increase towards the end here. And then, of course, the total funding allocated. And once again, you see that number, it was high in this first couple years and remained generally, generally the same, through these last three years with a little bit of a decrease recently. And the important thing to note about that is that when you look at the number of projects that were funded throughout the state, you can see that number has kinda gone down. And this most recent round,
the round that was awarded in the f y twenty six, six year plan, was only 53 projects in the entire state. So throughout all Virginia, only 53 projects was were awarded money through SmartScale, this primary source of funds that we have for transportation. Moving down a little more locally, Culpeper SmartScale allocations. This just shows, the way SmartScale is done is it's broken up into two different the highest level of the state. And so, the way our scale is done is it's broken up into two different pots of money. One is for the high priority projects, and the second is for the district grant program. So the district grant program for us only comes from we only compete against the
Culpeper District projects. And what you can see here, once again, is that, the numbers have, you know, gone up and down throughout the years. But the number of projects that got funded in Culpeper, you know, remained fairly steady if you were to average those. But once again, in this most recent round, you see that drop and down to only four projects in the entire Culpeper District, which is very few. We did get one of those awards. Kevin, do you want us to ask questions at the end? Or you want us to What do you want to do? The bank reference?
I was gonna say while you're mentioning both of those slides, can you help us with the why? Yes. And I'm actually gonna kinda move into that. Okay. That's fine. Yes. I just said that's an important question. Yeah. And and I I will say that, you know, the the Commonwealth Transportation Board is the one who identifies this the funding. They're they're given an amount of funding for transportation overall. First, they pull out the maintenance funds. And one of the reasons we've seen these numbers go down is because maintenance costs have gone up. And so that maintenance has come comes out first,
and then they divide all the others all the other money up among all the different construction programs they have. And one of those is smart scale programs. So the high priority project, the district grant program. So that's why some of those numbers have gone down a little bit. And so this is Alcamore County. This is how we have done over these past six rounds. The orange are the projects that we did not get funded. The blue are the projects that were funded. So you can see, you know, we've, when we're allowed to put in four applications from Albemarle County,
but also the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO is allowed to put in four additional ones. And the, in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is also allowed to put in four. We continuously go to them and say, hey. If you have extra room for applications, could we get some more applications submitted on our behalf? And that's why you see that we have been consistently asking putting in about 12 applications every year. More recently, we did, we were instructed that we should really focus on higher priority projects for the county
and for the state through their B TRANSC program, things that were identified through B TRANSC. And so we have we have reduced that number a little bit. I know I did eight in this most recent round. But what you can see there is that, we, had had we had a good year in round four there. In round four, the county did actually put in some of our local funds to try and buy down the cost of those projects as a cost benefit scoring analysis that's done. And so that allowed us to get, quite a few projects. We put in about 9,000,000
of local funds in that year. Other than that, though, we've remained kinda steady, and we've had these couple years, including this most recent one, where we only have one project funded. This just gives you kind of an idea as to what's going on there. So this is the total amount that Albemarle County has requested for each round. And in round three, I'll just say the reason that spike is there is because we actually submitted three projects for the Hydraulic 29 interchange. I'm sure you all know that's a really big important interchange. There were three different proposals for that.
And so that's why that number jumped up. Each one was almost a $100,000,000. But when you look at the median amount of all those projects that requested, you can see that, it still remained even until you get in these last couple years. And that's what it gets to your question, supervisor McKeel, is that what we've seen is that the cost of projects has significantly increased in these past two rounds. That huge jump you see at the median that we've requested, is is kind of indicative of that.
Mhmm. And and just to give him one example of this, this is a recent project that we had submitted. We submitted it. The actual cost estimate was done in 2022. This was two rounds ago. And it's for a roundabout proposal out on 250 right in front of Western Albemarle. I don't know if you all know where that is. This is Old Trail. And, so you can see it was a a pretty standard, roundabout. You have two lanes in most directions of one line here. That cost estimate in 2022 was almost $13,000,000.
In 2024, it was unsuccessful. When we submitted it, it went down 30%. And the only difference you can see in that is that we moved the stormwater basin from property that the county didn't own to property that the county did own. So that was intended to try and reduce the cost of this. So it just is kinda an example of how we see cost increasing. And so I think, overall, what we're looking at here is that although money's remained steady and we're really grateful for the wins that we've had, the cost of all the projects has continuously gone up.
And so that's really where we're struggling to try and get all of our, priority projects implemented. And I'll also say that, just down the road from here, you all have probably gone through the 151250 Roundabout that was constructed, quite a few years ago now. That was submitted in around I think the cost estimate was done in 2016. That roundabout, very similar to this one, was only $5,800,000 So that gives another idea as to how that cost increases occurred. With that, pass it on to Peter.
Yeah. I think it's a point where we take a moment to see if there are any additional comments. And I'm gonna go through, starting with supervisor Galloway and then some of the transportation. I I don't have any comments on the, Ravenna Futures. The transportation funding discussion, I think I'll make a couple additional points. One, just a few weeks ago at FAICO and now for two years in a row, it doesn't really matter the size of the county, whether it's rural or urban, whether it's Northern Virginia or Southwest. Everybody's talking about transportation funding. The transport not just the funding of it,
but then also the criteria to get things approved. And it's a problem across the board. So it's not just Albemarle County. I think when you have over in the last round of smart scale, over 30,000,000,000 in applications made when when jurisdictions have to limit their applications. So if you only get four and it changed, the last ground what the MPOs and the PDCs can submit. So the criteria of what they could submit, like Kevin talked about in years past, we've maxed what we can ask through them. Can't do it that way anymore because now you may can only submit certain types
of projects, so now you can't even get triple 12 applications in. Right? So, you know, these are fluff projects. They're safety priorities. They're economic development priorities. They're congestion and flow priorities that match what the state says they want these transportation projects to be. But at the end of the day, in Almar County, how many things are on our transportation priorities list? A 100 and 65. A 165 transportation priorities, and we can submit four every two years through SparseChem. So, you know, we just had Thanksgiving,
and I've noticed something in my house. When I host a dinner for 10 people, if six more wanna show up, I either have to carve up the portions even further for them, or I have to go get more portions. You or I'm gonna be a bad host because their pie is a lot thinner than what it was the year before. Eli just told us at an MPO meeting last month that this next round of smart scale is going to be even more competitive than the current round. And Albemarle didn't receive any applications that we submitted other than one that was portioned to, Pan Tops that was already in play and had gone through around couple of rounds
before, and they're they're not very big addictions. But I think the only reason they got approved is because with the DDI and the other things they've been doing on Pan Tops, if you don't do these, then you limit what the impact of that project does. So all this is the saying whether it's rural roads, whether it's secondary roads, whether it's smart scale, you have maintenance costs that are rising, and you have transportation projects throughout the whole Commonwealth that need to be done that aren't fluff. And there's clearly not enough resources to get them done. And it becomes the question of what what can you do about that.
Delegate Reid this year at Vaco sounded like he was talking off of the same talking points that delegate Austin spoke about the year before at Vaco. And when I hear a Republican say the same things as the Democrat, and they don't really answer the question about what they're going to do about transportation funding. They explain why we're in the funding system. They seem to understand why we are where we are. But I don't ever hear any possible or Solutions. Solutions of how we're going to fix it other than, well, we've been thinking about trying to figure out if mileage used could be done every
and how we could do but people don't want dongles in their cars. Well, that's, to me, just not, with all due respect, because I've never discussed this with you all. But that's really not a real educated conversation to have when we're barely funding and limited application request for one program, a third of projects that require a $1,000,000,000 of mobile maps. So I can't I've, I've been talking my my colleagues at the TJPEC. You all should have received a letter. I don't get a chance to to read it about a month or so ago
or the all the counties that are under the TJPDC footprint agreed and spoke to the need and the the situation that is transportation funding. And we hope that you all will take this seriously going into this round. I know there's a lot of competing things. You are working at a scale that you know, we all have similar things that we work with. The hard one about transportation, is this something our citizens come to with this all the time? And I can't just say, well, we could raise your taxes, I guess, here in Albemarle because that won't do anything about transportation funding because it's dictated through the state.
So I'm hoping you all could speak to that today. And and and I don't you know, I understand what the what where it's at. Delegate Reed did a good job of explaining what some of the big concerns concerns are for the state budget. If at the end of the day, it's it's not an r r d issue. This is an issue where these projects aren't gonna get less. Maintenance isn't gonna go down. Costs aren't gonna go down. It it's my opinion that we have to find a way to increase the portions and figure out what we're gonna do about transportation funding or else the state's really gonna languish with unmaintained roads, poorly operating roads,
and no way to improve situations that are now critically a problem. So I appreciate you giving me a chance to speak my mind on that. Thank you. And I I wanna make sure that, we recognize those relevant remarks and just add on what we need to add add on from there. So supervisor, will you still cover me? I agree with everything that, supervisor Galloway said. I just wanted to ask he said that there's a pot of money that comes from the state. Some of it goes for, what the counties ask for, and the others, the other money to go for, I I think,
was There there I mean, there's a lot of different programs. Right. Right. It's a big yeah. Just to fix the roads. Yes. So there's a maintenance the maintenance fund and then really the construction Right. And the construction funds broke up and then multiple different. So the maintenance fund, I think that is that hasn't gone up either. Right? I I believe that has increased. Yes. Has increased? And that's what goes to v dot to maintain our roads. And then cities get port a portion now by their mile. Right. I guess. And so that's my concern also,
is that we we also have these I get calls a lot that v dot is not maintaining the road or v. Is not filling the potholes and things like that, which that's important also. I mean, not only the projects that we have that we would like funded, but also the maintenance of the roads. If that money's going down, also, that's gonna just increase, you know, dangerous road. And I I consider it a, a safety issue also because that's what's happening is that if we're not maintaining our
road, that is a safety issue. So that's my input. Okay. I'm going this way. How about you? I think we all agree with what Ed said, and we said it very succinctly and clearly. I would just add that Alamo County over the last couple of years had two pipe one projects. Pipeline projects declared about Vidot, which means that they were projects of state significance. Vidot, intentionally delayed one of the pipeline funded. So you're to so to add to what Ned said,
you have VDOT declared pipeline projects that are, really important transportation projects based on statewide significance, right, that are not being funded. Got to do something, folks. We've gotta make the pie bigger. We used to say that when I was on the school board all the time. We take the pie and we cut it in different sections, but the pie has to get bigger. Thank you. I would just, again, endorse, the points that supervisor L. A. Made. And I would further add, it it's not lost lost on me that the caucus is disproportionately represented by people
who are serving incorporated, cities. These issues do not follow the segue. And communities that are served served by comprehensive transit systems who might not have these issues land on the same way. This year we've seen a growth in the caucus from communities that are not necessarily incorporated cities, which I think might create a window of opportunity here. I would would further raise that, you know, that delegate offer specifically. You you are kind of alone in representing a a very rural county specific, community heretofore. And and I would hope that this puts you in a really strong position to
lead on this issue as someone who represents communities that are particularly impacted and has more seniority than this new tranche of people who will be joining from that. Thank you. Just two quick things to add, regarding Ravenna Station. Years and years of hard work went on behind the scenes, and timing is everything as they say. So when the stars aligned, that was the reason why all of that was able to take that quantum leap forward. I don't think anybody snapped their fingers and put this hat, and I just wanna make sure people understand that. Transportation,
what we need, in my opinion, is a governor moment here where he staked his entire reputation on the tax increase dedicated to massive transportation improvements. And he did not get run out of office. It was a wonderful success. And until the the recession came along in 2008 and took away $700,000,000 employees and massive amounts of funding, which was never replaced since then. We're back where we are, and we have 3,000,000 more people since he was governor. So I understand. I agree with all the things that have been pulled forward,
and it's a real situation that the assembly will have to face. But hopefully, some strong leadership will happen and get some serious changes, not just pushing the chairs away along the Titanic. Thank you. I I can't get a couple I I can't do a couple of comments made by my colleagues on the board. I'll add one comment sort of on the left field, and I know that I've read that, housing is an issue throughout the Commonwealth and and, we certainly have a focus on housing. And, of course, when you help develop developing housing development projects in the county, you know, we get a lot of feedback from residents. And one of the things we hear most common from residents is that,
oh, this is gonna just go as our transportation. Because every time we increase it, that's, that we're having very we're adding that we have cars potentially on the road if we don't do it right. And we need that transportation to be functioning a little better than it has been. So, put that on there as well. Thank you. If there's nothing would you have any, Yeah. I can just say that, I've gone on too many workshops about funding for, and a lot of things are happening. I could probably just echo fire with, telling you, Rene said, so I won't. But I know that this is an issue.
And, you know, the way we fund transportation is through fuel tax, but most of the cars are way more fuel efficient than they were when we started this. So and then compound that to the electric vehicles, which is part of why there is an electric vehicle tax because we're trying to get money for the, transportation. But it's something and there's a lot of questions about what is the transparency for VDOT. So I know, I've been talking with, delegate Delaney. She's the chair of transportation about what is this criteria.
And there's a lot of ways we could be more efficient, which asphalt recycling, which is something I'm working on, making sure that we can make the road with the same asphalt and actually save millions of dollars, if not billions, and time efficiency. So, that's the kind of where I've been trying to focus my energy on on is how can we do it more efficiently and, cost effectively. So but there is a discussion definitely going on right now. Thank you. Amy, could I just add to to what you've done about efficiencies. The highway research council a few years back used to report that suggested that bridges
in Virginia at the end of the web be washed to rip them up the salt. And they said the life expectancy of the bridges could would be, expanded exponentially just to get enough salt off of them. And what Vidal would've said was that they didn't have the money to wash the bridges. I'm just saying that some of those sources Yes. I I'm and that's another example of what you're talking about. I was just trying to give you another example. Thank you. Well, you know, I I will definitely look into this. If it was in the packet, I would have, like, you know,
yeah, I would have dove, head first. So I I can get back to you with some of what the discussion has been from the chair and chair education. Yeah. I would just, so, Tracy, did you wanna go? I would echo what supervisor Pruetz said, and I think there's a window of opportunity that's happening right now. Not to use bluff language, but we have a whole new administration coming in. So, you know, you're talking about frustrations you have felt over the conversations like this, this is new to me, supervisor Galloway. I had not, heard conversations about BEDOT in our meetings in the past in the past. Conversations like this will make their way to governor Spamberg and her team. There's gonna be a brand new administration. I'm just presuming a lot of new people in the Department of Transportation.
And it would absolutely, supervisor Malley, be a time where there can be a moment to focus on transportation. So I would encourage you guys to continue to do the advocacy you're doing on it, at the state level. And then I don't have I mean, I'm just being honest. I don't have much more to offer on the transportation. I don't sit on the transportation committee. It's not typically my wheelhouse. I would have to get prepared. What I can offer you is that Amy and I sit on finance, and we did just do the finance retreat, and they they gave us the predictions about what they're seeing next year. So I'm happy to share that with you all, the slides that we got about the transportation.
And then I can just tell you that the pie is is the pie metaphor almost doesn't even work anymore. The pie is all kinds of messed up right now. You know, we got federal things happening that are making the pie having to get split up in ways that don't even make sense. And so, you know, the work that I've done, and I know if senator Deeds was here, he would echo it, has been so much on the the Medicaid front. It is just such a big chunk of the pie that, you know, my conversations haven't really been on the transportation front. All that to say, I hear you. Because it was loud and clear, and it was repeated by all of you that VDOT is the frustration and that your projects aren't getting funded and that our roads are not being kept the way that they need to be
and there needs to be something done. So thank you for bringing it. It's not too bad what I hear. Question too. Iowa eighty one was a major project that, you know, was really siphoning in a lot of funds, which is kind of closing. You know, we're in the closing stages of that. So that was a major effort. I mean, and that was multi jurisdictions, and that was really the rural aspect was to make that a safer highway. And I know a lot of funds have been, you know, specific to that. And then, of course, we are trying to extend rail up in Northern Virginia into the Fredericksburg,
Stafford County. So, you know, I hear you. I I will also add finance is one area that I do actually anticipate there being a bit of movement. You're talking about tax taxation finances, taxation, and how we give revenue for our state. And, I do think there'll be movement there. It's gonna be the first time that there's been kind of an administrative change. There's gonna be majorities in place. There's things that can be done to kind of right size the taxation in Virginia that could, make it so that people regular people are not necessarily being taxed more, but we are having more revenue generated.
There's lots of options on the table. So I think it is actually exciting here to talk about how to get different revenue in. I think they said when I was able to say I wish to come out with us here. Thank you. I'm just gonna turn So good morning. I'm Andy Herrick, the county attorney. It's a pleasure to be with you all this morning. And I'm gonna be going over in just a few brief slides the county's 2026 legislative program. Before I begin presenting on that, in addition, miss Kilroy, I'd like to thank our legal services coordinator, James Douglas, and, and, David Gond with the TJPDC for their work, in preparing this year's program.
What we did this year is we reorganized and restructured our program to hopefully make it more succinct and and easier for folks to present and and to discuss. We replaced a series of nearly 50, legislative positions, with, a series of priorities desks in front of you the county's legislative program. And I'll I'll walk, again, through with very briefly in a in a few slides, the priorities, the principles, and then the positions as well. So among the county's priorities, we have, four basic priorities, three of which have to do with the post amendments to the Virginia code, and one of which is a is a proposed budget amendment.
The first of the code amendments is to enable localities to enforce the Virginia landlord, tenant act. And that is because, what we're finding is that so many, tenants find themselves in in substandard housing, have issues, and don't have the resources to enforce it. What we're asking is for the enabling authority on the local option for localities to be able to, enforce the this act, to to allow, the localities to take upon themselves, the ability to enforce substandard or to enforce the remediation of substandard housing conditions. We're also asking for expanded authority to use photo speed monitoring devices.
This is a a repeat request that has been made in prior years. Right now, the authority for, photo, speed enforcement is limited to construction zones, and and school areas. We're asking for the authority that localities have the ability to petition, for, the ability to have that in specific other areas as well. Our third request is for a referendum on a local option, 1¢ sales tax for, school construction, school capital projects. I'm sure that the delegation is very familiar with this request. Report on this in past years. As you know, for the benefit of our audience,
this is a a proposal that has made its way, it's been approved as I understand, by the last two sessions of the general assembly and then the veto at the gubernatorial level. Obviously, we're going to, hope for better results in the in the upcoming session. But again, we would this is an important priority to the county that we'd ask the delegation support on, this year to allow localities to have the ability. Again, it's not necessarily an automatic, tax increase. It's just allowing localities to decide for themselves, to have a referendum for this 1¢ sales tax. And then finally, we're asking for a budget amendment, to, enable the construction of a
in the county Biscuit Run Park, specifically a request for approximately $1,500,000. Again, we were very pleased that this request, made it through the assembly this year. Vetoed. Again, we would renew this request this year. Biscuit Run Park is, as the delegation may be aware, is a state owned property that the county leases. The county is simply, seeking to enable the state's vision for the development of this park. The county has opened the park in limited areas in December 2024. As we continue to develop the park, we're looking for the state to join us in investing in it and looking for
the, delegation support on this continued funding request. So those are the the four priorities that you see in the first few pages of the legislative program. It's then followed by a series of principles. And again, we tried to slim down the extended list of positions that we had and just, have legislative principles that would articulate, in in broad brush strokes what the county seeks. Increased enabling authority, the ability to, enforce and, support our strategic and comprehensive plan, expand the local authority related to land use and taxation, providing state, support for mandated activities,
especially education, and promoting environmental sustainability. And you'll see that we have We did it at the same time. So so we both advance the spine. But but this is the the next slide. So we have this series of legislative positions. So in addition to the legislative principles, we have behind it a series of legislative positions. And we have to swim that down again from about 50, position statements in the prior year to to just 28 this year that's organized, into the same general areas that our legislative principles are. They're rooted by broadband and the Internet, economic development. We have several in this third category,
growth management, environmental protection, land use and transportation, health and human services, housing, local government finance, and public safety. And again, just seeking to avoid unfunded mandates at the local level and increased enabling authority. So that's, just in a in a a brief overview of the county's legislative program again that should be to each of your desks. I'm happy to take any questions either from the from the court or from our delegation. Open up for anyone's questions. Alright. Well, yes. Let's hop in. 1% sales tax is gonna be brought again. I'm not gonna be the the patron.
I don't believe offered this. It's gonna be, the chairs of education. It's gonna be the same people carried it in the past. I anticipate can't promise anything, but I anticipate it would pass. It passed over two thirds of the vote of the general assembly. I anticipate it would pass through, governors elect Spanberger as well because typically something that has two thirds of the vote of the general assembly would be approved. So that one, I'm feeling good about. I'm gonna have one hopefully. I will let you talk about photo speed device monitoring because you carry a bill for them in the past. I will jump in before I hand it over with the Virginia Landlord tenant act. I can there's a deadline for drafting. So I did not put that in for drafting,
but I can do that. And then we can talk supervisor for it, and we can talk about how that's happening. I have a different thing which is coming out of home and, one other advocacy group which is about having the warrant warranty of habitability of the affirmative defense for nonpayment of rent if someone brings suit against the tenant. So a different thing but same wheelhouse. And so let's just talk. But I can put it in for drafting. I will raise so this is we kind of this has been in our prior or our position to pull around our priorities. And it's previously been a bill brought by a delegate price. And I have been assuming she's bringing it again because she's very passionate about it.
Perfect. I don't think it needs to be put in for drafting. We just want to make priority for Elizabeth. Okay. Great. Well, then I'll just I'll stick with my I'll check with price and make sure that she has it done and that one should be that one should be handled. Yeah. So those are two of the three. And then you can talk about speed cameras as well. Yeah. So speed cameras, we almost had it passed last year. It was, but it was gonna have 18 amendments on the house floor, floor, which people felt pretty strongly was not a great idea to open up 18 different
amendments. So the I think there's really, I would say, two concerns about this. One was many of the localities actually had a lot of their revenue stream was coming from the speed cameras and trying to make sure that that is a fund that doesn't feel userist, and that we make sure that it's funding, like, walkability. There became, like, a whole group of subtext of what projects could be funded with a speed camera, you know, violation. And then the other one was the idea of tracking so much information about people.
You know, so this is still a question of how long can the, you know, as we're using more technology information that that is collected on people that haven't violated it and making sure that their privacy is maintained. And, so there was a bill, I think Sharnell had that last year, on how long you could keep the information and, what it could be used for. So that's still somewhat of a concern. I think Charnell's bill kind of helped with that. But there's just a lot of parts, especially right now with the federal administration and how they're monitoring,
citizens and the concern that this might be, you know, potential to be used for that kind of monitoring. So I talked to delegate Seibel. She's still putting it together. She's working with, delegate Delaney, who is the chair of transportation, making it a bill that, feel feels doable to you know? And and we weren't the only locality that wants this, just so you know. Like, it was widespread. A lot of the folks, though, are really looking at it for pedestrian safety, beyond school zones, but also,
they have a lot of high traffic roads that are retail and a lot of fatalities. So but ours was very specific to rural roads with a certain criteria that were locally driven, which we're still trying to make sure her, her, bill contains that. I could put in my own, but I know what's gonna happen is we're gonna try to make it one bill because, you know, it'll be too confusing unless I could get some rural folks to jump on board with me. That might make a compelling argument for it. But, Delia, I will definitely she I and we were working very hard. Literally,
every we had a lot of meetings about this before session actually started trying to get the pieces right. And we're almost there. So I'm not sure, though, with the federal, environment the way it is, how people are gonna feel about this, you know, form of monitoring. Has has there been any feedback on monitoring Is there any feedback on monitoring already from load speed and construction of school buildings? So, I guess, I know I heard from you all how many violations you have within, like, the first month is several thousand.
But you know, and but it's gone down. So, actually, Yeah. It changes the behavior. So in that regard, actually, that was my argument was we see that it changes be it actually reduced, you know. So right. It's a balancing act, you know, with all the other things that we're talking about, the the revenue stream and then the monitoring. You know, but I would say there's a will with some of the legislators that really wanna do this. Yeah. So I think generally yeah. Those three issues, and they mentioned, like, earlier price. On the senate side,
those ones that sales tax is typically carried by, senator Van Eijk. So we'll make sure that he's putting that in again this year, and looks back to that it'll be signed, but I guess you can and it's back to that it'll be signed, but I guess you know. You know, but so in terms of those wheels that are typically cared by other people, then we'll just make sure that 17 signs on as a co patron and, you know, try to help if we can, with that. You know, obviously, he carried the biscuit ruffles in the moment last It wasn't the only one of his to get swept away. So, you know, but, obviously, you know, you won't try for that again this year. The budget situation is much different than it was last year.
And we've already talked about it with with I'll be putting in the biscuit run budget amendment as well. And I think you did a great job reminding everyone that it's actually state owned. It is. So building their obligation to some extent. And I would just say because I've got a, you know, I it's not having a paved, walkable path is important for so many segments always think that when I had my two young children, how I could only go to pathways that had that so that I could push them on a stroller. So the, opportunity we have to expand that, I'm fully behind. And I should have mentioned that Sutter Dietz was fully intending to be here.
They scheduled a, education subcommittee meeting of senate finance and appropriations, in case nobody's aware of action in a higher education space. Unfortunately, we are a lot of cloned people, so thank you. I can add to that. Yes. I just wanna mention thank you very much for your support actually on all of these. We really do appreciate that. So it's all very meaningful, to all of us. Regarding the phone and speed cameras, thank you again for you know, I'd love to be able to get this across. And I understand the privacy aspect.
However, we all know there is no privacy. And but whatever they do come up with regarding not keeping the information and such, that would work. It's a way for us to keep our rural roads, not all of them, of course, but, you know, certain, certain rural roads safe because it's easy to have the, the police enforcing the rules in our urban area. Not so easy in the rural areas. There's no place to pull over cars. We don't have the the force, the police force, to be able to be out there everywhere. But yet we continue to see crashes.
We continue to see fatalities, And this is a way, in the long run to save money. So and wherever you wanna put the money, as long I know if there was a state literacy fund, that was what Yeah. Esther was. Yeah. Yeah. That was, like, two years ago, which which I understand actually doesn't go towards literacy. It goes to the general fund. Yeah. It's kinda like Yeah. So I was really Yeah. So it's They took it away. Yeah. And now we're happy about that. But, wherever they choose to put it for more for additional safety, for our residents and everything would be,
I think, probably be basically, whatever you can get past. That would be great. Something that would be in the group. Yes. Appreciate that. Thank you. I have a couple of things up here. Okay. Are you are you gonna do that? Yeah. I think we can. Yeah. I just gonna do so the staff staff presentation is concluded. I'm happy to turn back to the chair and the discussion. I wanna also check with our county executives here and see if you have anything else you wanna add. No. Nothing to add. Just a big thank you for the support. The the Ravenna Futures work has has really taken a ton of staff time,
and the the partnership at the state level is just absolutely amazing. So thank you so much. The the job creation that we will see from this project will be, transformational for our community. We're we're a lot of families wondering, what their kids will do when they graduate and how they would ever get back to this. Community that the work that is now going on with these with the job creation, and and it will we will see significant, job opportunities in the next five to ten years because of the
anchor tenant that we now have, with a high compatibility with private sector and the DOD work that's going on out there. That's something that I didn't want the general assembly to know because this all started with our strategy to retain the DOD defense jobs. And we have been working very, very close with the Department of Defense, and they are very happy with the the compatibility of what they see and the growth that they see at this campus. So thank you so much. I appreciate that. Jerry, thank you for your help. Thank you. And and,
of course, years from the rest of the boycott, we want another one of these extras. Quite quite a, good thing at that. I do want to identify, a big of both again, if you have anything you'd like to comment or not, since you're representing Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, I want to give you that opportunity. I would just thank you, Mr. Chair. I would just, say going back to the 1% sales tax, there's been a really good, concerted effort by a lot of folks the past couple of years to work that legislation, local governments, school boards, and then their parent organizations, the VMLBECO, the school board's association, the superintendency association.
So I know that will continue. And again, I hope that we can get that one, across the finish line this year. I would I would add one thing also on the, speed camera, legislation. I know one of the things that was part of the bill last year, and I think this goes back to, the revenues that are being generated in certain localities, that there was some, amendments amendments proposed at one point or probably more than one point in the process that would have taken those local locally generated revenues and shifted them back to the state. And I know that the local governments were not happy about that.
That. So hope that, that when those discussions are going on, I think that the idea of having them go into some local fund for certain enumerated, improvements or projects or whatever that are safety related is good. But I think there's been too many instances in the past where we've seen locally generated revenues going the opposite direction. And, we're not seeing that this time. Thanks, Chicky. And I will run the and I will run the opposite way this time to see if any additional supervisor comments. Thank you, missus. So some of these are going back to where we were talking a few minutes ago.
Just one example of how important permanent tenant changes would be is when you have a tenant who is has no other option but to live in their 50 year old mobile home with the leaky roof and is afraid she's a blankie for a minute. The tenant owner has already said, you know why you don't. They have no option. There's nothing for her to do anything about money to do a process. It's that there is no option for her period in any case. And I just thought sometimes a a little small story is helpful to persuade.
On the speed cameras, it is ironic ironic that people who the perception in the countryside when we see general lawlessness everywhere on the roadways. Grandmothers having trouble going to their mail box because somebody is deciding to drive 80 miles an hour on early snow road. There is no way for enforcement to deal with that. And what has been said to me numerous times has been so these people in the legislature wanna just be able to speed everywhere, and they don't want anybody to know. That is what people are thinking.
And this us and them mentality, the people who are citizens feel like they're totally left out of this process of hearing by the people in the assembly or the governor or whoever who is refusing to let any local government make a decision that might positively impact the quality of life of their residents. So I just I'm just trying to use some arguments you might find useful in the, I understand the financial constriction of the federal changes, etcetera. But when you add up even some of the tax credits given to corporations who
are fully wealthy and invested by data centers who pay $4,000,000 an acre in in Prince William County, they don't need a billion dollar tax credit from the state. So I just that's something else for the finance wizards to put in your pot and think about. Are we really using our tax dollars generated for the for the state in the most appropriate way? And thank you. Supervisor Bremer? Yeah. I would just like to I think you all are all pretty well sold on what our key priorities are.
The only thing I would want to do is maybe, like supervisor Malik is doing a quick deal with some more, like, stories and arguments for the road. Something I know on the local enforcement piece, a critique I hear of this sometimes is that, Oh, localities can already do this. They have code enforcement powers. Condemn something. The thing I always raise for people is that the experience reality for the the harmed person is radically different there. Right? And we are not in a position where we would want to, institute code enforcement in substandard,
facilities because what is the reality for the individual tenant, is actually worse. They not only have this experience of living in a substandard place, but then they're suddenly evicted, functionally because their their home is condemned. This gives them them the opportunity to receive recourse, to have an advocate who is seeking potentially inductive relief, visually, renumeration for them, which is something they otherwise don't have meaningful access to. The biscuit run piece, I always worry because the phrase that you see there is park. It connects a park to a park. I know I mentioned this last year,
but I would raise it again. Currently, Biscuit Run connects several upper class suburban neighborhoods that are siloed in their development. It connects Mill Creek, Lake Renovia, and South Mill Creek South, which all otherwise can't access each other, but now can through this trail network, and they can reach the trails. We're also building we're building the Biscuit Run Greenway, which will connect it up to, the the the Riding On A Trail and and walking paths into Charlottesville, that will also connect it to Boxcroft. What none of this does though is connect it across the river to,
Southwood. Right? The key thing that this is doing is connecting the Southwood community into that walkable network that allows them to actually access this. Currently, if you were in Southwood, you want to access the Riviera Trails or you want to access a skip run, you either muck it through the river or you go all the way up this street in sun I've talked with Executive Richardson on this. The shape of the transformation and continued investment in the AstraZeneca work, but also Granada features generally,
is really hard to get your head around. I grew up in Upstate South Carolina, where we actually do have a really strong comparison point. The ARC and local stakeholders worked to have a massive investment in a, a BMW plant and career, which had knock on investments of up in Michelin, relocating their global headquarters, which then led to significant financial institutions relocating a lot of operations. Also, like, the port of South Carolina built an inland port to support it. The hidden knock on jobs were in the tens of thousands, and it created a really vibrant middle class where I grew up that did not
exist there. It was a deeply poor area. The transformation ability of this is really extraordinary and that is really the only comparison I can think of along the Eastern Seaboard for the scale of transformation that I think we're looking at that this facility can offer. That is just a counterpoint, something to have in your back pocket, a reference point of what we can really accomplish by by really plowing ahead with this. Andrea. First, I wanna thank you for your willingness to call us back and to reach out to us.
You all have been really, and Tracy, obviously, I'm including Credence because because he personally is not here. But, but you'll pass it over to him because you reach out to us and you say, what does this mean? How can we help you? And you respond to our phone calls. Thank you very much for that. And I wanna just agree with Mike on what he just said because it really is critical. But but and I wanna just move to a couple of things that, I would point out. And certainly the landlord tenant act is really critical,
especially for those of us that represent these older neighborhoods that don't have HOAs. We're trying to get to keep the the middle class in those neighborhoods sometimes, and affordability. Right? And, the, it's not uncommon for us to hear from folks at the that come to our meetings and talk about this specific problem. We our constituents are reaching out to us, based on concerns that they've run into. But moving on, I would also just like to point out that we hear a lot from our
constituents in our community about biosolids. Sludge. Yeah. As they would say, sludge. But a nice name is a lot. And that would not cost the state any money if you would just cast the permission. We're not asking for you all to spend a lot of money. We're asking for permission to do to help our constituents with the application of biosolids. So think about it. Do that lens? Because we have lots at almost every meeting, or certainly many, many meetings we have constituents coming to us with concerns. And many of us have expressed the same concerns about the application of sludge,
I. E. Biosolids. And then I just would move on to stop extending the sunset provisions for certain development approvals. Again, that doesn't cost the state any money. I know that there is a huge lobbying effort here in Richmond every year or every session when this comes up to not, extend to not, extend furtherly those provisions. I'll give you an example. On Hydraulic Road and Georgetown Road, there's a corner there, and it had a office building approved in 2004.
Because of this disability, the developer didn't and I don't know how many gaps it changed hands. It may have changed hands. But nothing was done on that property until 2022. Now in that amount of time, that whole area changed completely. And what we would have approved we might have approved that in development, but we would have approved it in a different manner than we have than we were forced to allow the developer to build, because it was a two decade old project. So looking at sunsetting,
those provisions for certain developments, and not just allowing because this is really causing, not an enormous number of problems, but it it does come up occasionally. And the developers know that they could just put it off, and put it off, and put it off, and then get back to that approval, and the whole surrounding of the area will change. Yes. And then the only other one that I marked here, was the demure points for Trump violations. That is a high priority for, I know, for our police department and our safety
again, it doesn't cost you all the state money to do that. But talking to, chief Reeves and some of the folks if you needed to, but I know just from the police advisory committee that that's a high priority for the police. Just to point out a few others that are, maybe wouldn't cost cost the state so much money, but would you give us permission to do so much? It may, in fact, cost us money. Thanks. Thank you, mister Bricker. Also, thank you very much for being here. We really appreciate not only being here, but we appreciate your support.
You have been very supportive of everything we do at Albemarle County. We consider ourselves, I think, special because what we're focusing on here, we're interested in helping people with our landlord tenant. We wanna help people. We wanna save lives, save crashes, and that's before the speed camera, our rural roads, we don't have, any room. You have two cars. There is no extra roadway. Once you go off there, you go into a ditch, you go into a tree. There's no way.
And it's also very dangerous for our police officers, for the without photo screen cameras, it's very dangerous for police officers to be able to pull someone over. Two lane two lane road, and then you got a mile back up also. So photo photo suite cameras are really integral to being able to keep our area safe and, our officers safe also. Very supportive of the 1¢ sales tax, of course, because we're supportive of education, very supportive of our schools and of education. That's gonna be a game changer just like our Vanna Futures,
just like AstraZeneca coming, because account executive Richardson has said, it's a game changer. So we look for opportunities. We don't just sit back and expect you to give us everything. We look for opportunities where we can work with you to make our community safer and better. Once and Biscuit Run, that's a quality of life issue for all of our residents, especially the ones in South where if we can make that connection, which hopefully we can. But once again, thank you very much for for being here. We always appreciate working with you,
closely with you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'll be interested to hear what y'all's priorities are, what you're gonna be working on in addition to what we've talked about. I'll just share a quick on photo speed cameras, a quick anecdote, and then I'm gonna make a comment just because I can't help myself. So it's not really for you all. Tuesday morning, I drove down to Virginia Beach and then returned Wednesday. And what was striking to me is that, you know, there's not a lot of construction between here and Richmond. There's not even there's there's none except little maintenance kind of things. But between Richmond and and Virginia Beach, there's several big projects going on.
And what was and I've made that drive a lot of times. And it's like, as soon as you get past 2295, get into that running east, you're like, oh, these are my peeps. You're you kinda get locked into a flock of people that you're gonna be driving around for two hours. And you're at your peril if you try to go faster than them or slower than them. You just gotta kinda go with the rhythm of it. And the last time I made the drive, I don't recall the photo speed cameras being there in the stretch between Richmond and Williamsburg, and it's there now. And there's several spots, both east and west, where that photo camera's in.
And with with what I've experienced, it was crazy to me. And I'm not even talking about the non construction zones because there's construction in the bridge, there's construction coming out of the bridge, and there's construction points between Williamsburg and Hampton and all of that. And people were just doing what they do in those other construction zones. As soon as you hit the photo speed camera thing, everybody started to space out. I was having a fun little time talking about being userist. I was having a great time when somebody would speed past me. I was like, oh, more fun. I and I will tell you that at your level,
when you say user, so people think this is a money grab. This is my comment I can't help but say. I will take that argument on with any person locally that's going to come and complain that they sped through a construction zone or a speed camera and are complaining that we're doing a dollar grab. I love that conversation. Too. Yeah. It's my favorite complaint to receive as an elected official. And my one answer to them always is don't speed. We won't collect any money from them. And that's what we want. So I would hope that I understand why they think,
you know, all is a concern of ours that it's a money grab. I don't buy that as legitimate argument. And, until we start mandating, and limiting people for putting doorbell cameras in their doors now, the privacy thing is really starting to just wonder, oh, everybody else can put cameras up, but local governments and the government because the government's doing something bad. Well, how many of those folks have doorbell cameras? Every retail place you go into is allowed to have a security camera. And why? To protect people, to protect protect assets. That's what we're doing here.
So, you know, I understand and appreciate those arguments, but we're asking for a local authority to let us take those arguments on with our local constituents, and they can they can decide to throw us out if they're thinking we're invading under privacy or being user as with their with their fines that they're paying for speeding in school zones. Thank you. Thank you. Just wanted to echo what's been said and, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate what you do every day. For example, I I know that you know, you walk the table in the SWAC meeting. I heard about environmental concerns there.
I know you've been to, you know, throughout the community, and and so it's more than just this sort of meeting that, really, we should be absolutely send it to your needs to sit throughout the community all the time. I wanna turn it back to you if there's anything further. Hi, Ken. Supervisor Galloway mentioned, I can give you today's the day we put all our bills in for drafting. They're new. I'm sure we have a suite of bills. I will just say two many of the same things, affordable housing, all those two big ones are PBM, so so pharmacy benefit manager reform. I'm anticipating there being more reform. I passed a big bill last year working on that and then board of visitors
governance for our university. So that would be one that's affecting us locally, but there's a lot of work that's going on there. And I'm gonna be carrying an omnibus bill to kind of restructure that, hopefully make it a more transparent and and I would argue fair process in the future, better for our public universities and how they're governed keeping autonomy in our state for our own state schools. That's what I'm working on. Happy to talk about that if that's an interest to any of you guys. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to a great session. I hope I'll see you all there. Thank you. And since I haven't stopped yet, I would just say this to y'all,
y'all, y'all have done a great job. I've been to many of these. I've also been on the other side of the table because of the school board I presented, and I appreciate the pared down packet. I appreciate how well this was run, and I appreciate how, informed y'all are at what you're asking for with a really, cohesive message. So I just want to say that this is clear it's clear to me what you're asking. I appreciate it, and I will take that with me to Richmond. Hopefully, we can stay in touch. We will stay in touch. I'll see you guys out there. Yeah. I wanna say the same thing. Like, this is fantastic. I love getting it beforehand because I do look through this.
So, some some of the stuff I'm working on, is back to SWAC. I have, you know, I'm really trying to get recycling going across the state. And, we're I'm putting in a bill that I know I won't find its roots yet, but it's called Circular Economy, which is I'm trying to effectively recycle as much as possible, but I'm also gonna do my recycling bills that are one offs. I think I have buy in for one of mine this year, so it might get through the finish line. I do have another board of visitors bill I've been carrying for the past two
years, which is staff and faculty on the board. This year, we're going to add a voting component, a voting component, because of all the things going on. I'm also working on biosolids, PFAS, with local authority for testing. You know, I'm also you know, there's just so many different things. I'm the chair of the disability commission, so I'm carrying two bills for, the disability commission trying to get, transition counselors that we already require at K-twelve, trying to make sure that the higher eds have a program to offer in that, certification area, as well as we passed the blue envelope bill, which is, anyone with autism can have this,
envelope in their car, and it's basically handed to the police officer when they're pulled over. It gives them all the information about kind of what their, nuances might be as they interact with the public. I'm trying to actually change it from blue envelope to being what it is so that people know what it is. And then we're trying to do a couple of, you know, the guns and cars bill, working with the senate on that. It was a civil penalty, maybe moving that a bit farther than that. I'm working on a threat assessment with the k twelve's for,
using red flag laws and threat assessment at the together so families can know about the red flag law. What else? I just mentioned the PFAS again and a couple of other things, probably with agriculture. I also have a pharmaceutical bill talking about the the federal qualified health care centers and their, relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and trying to improve that. So yeah. Two Sorry. I think I'm trying to there's a lot and today is the day. We've been I've been throwing them in.
Yeah. I've been going back to my office. Yeah. Throwing all of them in. People are texting because they're, like, trying to get bills in at the last Did you get it? Did you get it? You guys are the first ones to get this all done. We had Savannah last week. Oh, so yeah. Yeah. I guess the city too. Sorry. You'll like the first one, but you did get it done before the draft deadline. Is that weird something? Because that has not always been the case in the past. If I can just give you a quick preview on what I think is gonna be the top topics. Energy. Yeah. So, you know, I think energy is gonna dominate. Another big bill that's gonna come through that maybe would affect y'all. I don't know. I'm about to go to commission tomorrow's retail marijuana market.
There might be some real movement there this year, coming forward, just so you know. But I think energy is gonna dominate the day with data centers being a big component of that. I know I have a bill touch on the Clean Economy Act, and I think there'll be some movement there. So Yeah. I have a transparency bill on, PJM, which we tried to get through last year, but other states have passed it now. So there's a lot of effort in, trying to do some, you know, at at the water commission, I'm also on the water commission, presentation was given to us about data centers collecting their own water from their impervious
services to, be a closed loop for the water that they need, which I think is a compelling argument, to be mild, honestly. No. Yes. I totally agree. We're trying to work somebody asked me to work on, the data center issue where they're all using their generators, and they're getting, you know, so working on that, making sure that that's the air quality is maintained. I would actually just turn that to you all because we have you guys right now. Do you all have a position on data centers that you'll have? Or since we're not touching yet because I'm not here.
So because I'm curious because it's, you know, it's a complicated thing. And so you don't have to say I don't wanna catch you off guard, but I would be curious to know how y'all are feeling about it because I will say what we're contemplating on our side is, you know, data centers are here. They're concentrated in Virginia. We're the biggest concentration in the world. They're probably not going away. And if you're pushing away for environmental reasons, they actually probably will just go right over to West Virginia or somewhere that doesn't have the same protection. So it's more how do we regulate them in a way that, protects what we care about and makes it so that our own energy, like, the average user,
our rates are not being impacted and artificially raised by a business that's sucking all the energy and profiting off of it. So that's how I'm looking at it. Would love to know how y'all feel about it. I think it's gonna be a dominating conversation to some extent this session. Will you guys head your forum? I know about this. Well, we had How much? We had looked at other different options, and we basically said, we looked at 40,000 square foot as a as a, for particular locations in the development area, as as something that can be approved by right meeting the conditions that we would
expect for, a routine operation of a data center. And then anything above that would require going through the board supervisors and doing special permit process. And that's that's where we landed. And I would say that add that, we landed there in part because, we thought the state needed to take some leadership in trying to address some of these issues that have been running over this, energy usage or You know, I would add in the Jim framed that framed that really well, and I would wanna give Jeff a minute to to come in and discuss this
as well. But the data centers are one of those things that are confusing. We get all these emails constantly. No data centers. Yeah. He is trying to There are data centers existing that people aren't even aware of that are here. And so it's a tricky topic to talk about because we're not what we're talking about is certainly regulating all of them in some way or another, but the mega data centers are what people are really concerned about. But I had many, many constituents that didn't even know we already had data centers in our community. So it's a little tricky when you talk about it.
But I I would like to give Jeff a chance if he wants to say anything. I you lean in a little bit. I did. I did. I did. Because I wasn't sure if the board would would wanna ask me to take the leader, he would. I I don't I don't have really anything to add. I would look to miss Kilroy, in economic development to say to ask her if she has anything to add that that we may have missed. I think Jim did a nice job of framing it out. Yep. Yep. I think, mister Andrews covered it. I'm gonna have to look for the best and now I can. Okay. Okay. It's hard sitting on the corner. I think this is one example of many of the things which are going to
be facing you this year in the new membership and also the majority is totally taking away local authority to make these kinds of decisions, whether it's utility scale, solar location, the 1.5% increase in units every single year. Skyler's bill will be coming back. I understand. And when you already have 12,000 units in your pipeline today, adding more when we don't even have the bill that we're already approved is a concern. So I hope that you would please keep global authority in mind for all of these different aspects because
when our citizens come to us and say, why aren't you doing something about x y z? They're really disgusted to hear that we don't have the authority to make the kinds of decisions on the ground that affect their lives every single day. And so I just want to share that with you all. And also, thank you so much for your work on the motor commission. I was interested in hearing the meeting the other day and, look forward to your progress on that. Last, lots of work on, dark skies and getting some direction to to widen their options and for LEDs because there's a lot of scientific work done out
there that I know that the levee things that we are allowed to have do not reflect the extra impact that LEDs have. Our coolants are based on building kind of sensors. It's not the same. Thank you very much. Yeah. I just wanna go back. Oh, so Please go ahead. You know, so I'm part of this, PJM, which at the moment I cannot remember what it stands for. But it's a consortium of all the states that are kind of sharing electricity, and we have literally a weekly meeting. And I I think one thing that's happening with the data center space is, bring your own capacity is something,
states are looking at, so that if a data center wants to come online, they have to bring their own capacity, which has its own, you know, pros and cons. You know, but we did have four governors signed on to that, including, Governor Youngkin and the governor from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. But now New Jersey, Virginia have different governors. So I think there'll be some discussion about if that's, a path going forward. You know, I just wanted to bring it to your attention because I think that would be a lot of discussion this year. Sure. Just so unlike the house of delegates,
at least as of right now, the senate has bill limits again this year, and they made them even more complicated this year for some reason. But you you know, limit between either 15 or ten, fifteen to 25 depending on when you get them drafted and filed. And then we can have a couple more for commissions that you sit on. So so our deeds list of bills can continue to evolve and shift based on new things coming in or things going out, so making new space for for something else on the list. But generally speaking,
you can have bills, again, in the energy and data center space, in criminal justice reform, governance prevention, and, again, higher ed, what what would you want to to reduce the politicization of those boards? So at some point, we'll have a specific list. But right now, you know, there's a lot of yeses, nos, maybes, and then everything just keeps shifting as we continue to add, subtract. He sits on the commission for energy, electric utility regulation, our sewer, cure. Yes. And he may carry some bills coming out of that this year, and, obviously,
chairs the behavioral health commission. And they have a whole fleet of legislative proposals, so expect him to carry himself here as well. Thank you, Evelyn. It's good to know there's a limit for you guys. You all have had that in the past, but it's good for us to process that because of the changing landscape that includes it. I think it complicates. Yeah. But also, it makes me a better combination too. I have one house having it and not the other is Yeah. I think we just kinda need it. That's gonna be a long, long set shift.
On the data center piece, just I would raise this concern because when my travels outside of Albemarle, it comes up with some frequency. And it's something I've had to start listening to. Is that this kind of sets up odds with the Clean Economy Act, in that it strongly incentivizes specifically natural gas fired plants because that's what is going to be easiest for that solar developer to build without having to acquire the huge amount of fur. For solar, for the extended timeline for nuclear,
which then in addition to you know, making it much more challenging to hit our economy goals, it also potentially has a greater likely of passing down costs to to individual rate payers because gas prices can be incorporated into rates without going through the corporation debate, which is not true of other types. I just raise that as a I believe in this in your capacity. I think we can talk about that. An anxiety that I know a lot of Yeah. Rural residents feel.
Yeah. I also I don't even really need to bring this up, but I just when you mentioned the the biosolids bill, I had a bit of of a moment internally because I'm pretty sure it's my first year working for Senator Deats. It would have been the 2002 session. He actually carried a bill allowing localities to ban the spreading of of sludge. And it received so much attention, that the agriculture committee sent a special hearing in the evening, a two hour hearing, just for the one bill, and it was standing room only.
And And I ended up having to walk back to the parking garage in you know, be because I couldn't stand in my shoes anymore. But, anyway, that obviously wasn't successful in 2002. I don't know whether that would Well I wish it was not a new issue. Yeah. Walking back in your bare feet, that was really memorable. What is a new issue is now we know about the constituents and nobody would agree with that in 02/1011. So he was way ahead of the game. And a lot of today, we need to be day shopping all over again. Yes. It is. I'm sure. We're letting the locals have more.
So yeah. Did you have anything additional here? Because we're at the end of our meeting. So I know. I know. But I appreciate you guys taking this time. Okay. And and I would say, Sarah, he's very much appreciates the leadership Diane, I have a resolution for you, but we're sitting over debating because Cree's not here. We want him to be able to be here when we give you the resolution, so we can wait. Is that why you were That's fine. Like, is there anything that I'm trying to say? How about I we would love to read this for you if you're if you
would like. So this is, a joint resolution and it was patron by myself, by Delegate Law Firm, and by Senator Deese. And would you like to read it, Amy? I'll read it. I mean, well, it's for you, Diane. Yes. Whereas, Diantha McHale has served the Albemarle County community for nearly three decades, including sixteen years on the Albemarle County School Board and twelve years on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. And whereas, in native of Stanton, Diantha McKeel pursued a career as a licensed nurse and spent many years working in the gynecological and cardio cardiology departments at the University of Virginia before retiring in 2015.
And whereas, in addition to her work in health care, Diantha McHale spent twenty eight years in local government, beginning with the Albemarle County School Board where she provided outstanding leadership McKeil was first elected to the Alamo County Board of Supervisors in 2013, representing the Jack Jewett District, a primarily suburban district located just Northwest of Charlottesville. Whereas, since every election after her first, Diantha McKeil has run for office and has received more than 95% of the vote in both 2017 and 2021. And where as during her tenure in local government,
Diantha McHale improved communication and coordination between Almar County Public Schools and county government and was an advocate for issues related to education. And whereas Diantha McHale further enhanced the quality of life life in El Mar County by supporting economic development, improvements to transportation infrastructure and public transit, and advancements in affordable housing. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring that the General Assembly hereby commend Diantha McKeel for outstanding service as a member of the Albemarle County Board of Super Supervisors be resolved further that the clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to
you, Diantha, as an expression of the House of Delegates admiration for your personal and professional achievements. And I will will just note So this is not that there's wherever we in the history books in Virginia, it's been passed, but there's so much that can't be said on a page and everything. So I remember meeting you, one of the first people I ever met when I was gonna run for support. I know you have been such a passionate advocate for students. We've all seen it. We're sitting right now on your task force to bring dental health care to students in the Lamb's Lane campus. You pretty much almost single handedly did the Lamb's Lane campus,
made us focus on bringing that in. It's just your advocacy is so well known. I'm sure everyone probably in this room has stories about the work that you did. It was our honor to pass this. I wish we could have said more, but, it says it says enough, which is that you are a true public servant, and we appreciate you. I just wanna add a couple of things. I I loved every minute of it, the good man and the ugly. But I wanna just say that I'm gonna hang that proudly beside the general assembly. To say the proclamation that you all passed for my husband in '12.
So we're gonna have a walk with Wally McKeel and Diana McKeel, which is really special. And Cree, you all weren't here at twelve, but Cree was a part of that that, proclamation as well. So I thank you very, very much. We'll pay it tonight. Thank you. Thank you. There's nothing further. We will adjourn.