Good afternoon. I am pleased to call to order this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 12/10/2025 at 1PM in Lane Auditorium in McIntyre Office Building. For the Board of Supervisors, we have Supervisor Anne Malek of the Whitehall District, Supervisor McNett Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Vanta McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor Bea Lupisto Kirtley of the Ravenna District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District quorum is present. We're also joined by our County Executive,
Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our Clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgeson and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Travis Morris. Also, let me please welcome the Albemarle County Police Officers present, Officers Daniel Bonnie and Lauren Dailey. Thank you for your service today and every day on behalf of the residents, citizens of Albemarle County for our safety, security, and protection. If all present could now stand as you are able and join us in 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. Thank you. Now please join us in a moment of silence. Board, as always, our first item of business is adoption of the final agenda. I've heard no request to change anything on the agenda. There may be something on the consent agenda, but that's not the agenda. So if not, I'm looking for a motion to approve the final agenda. So moved. Second. Motion from supervisor McKeel, second from supervisor Malek. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr.
Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lakisha? Kirtley, aye. Thank you. Board, this brings us to brief announcements by Board members, and our order for today's meeting begins with Supervisor Pruitt. Little to announce other than to say I had a lovely time joining the Scottsville holiday happening over the weekend. A lot of artisans, even though it was, let's be honest, brutal, brutal weather, there was also a nice bonfire, though. So it all worked out. And I mention this in part to remind everyone, we are getting into the holiday season.
We're pretty deep in the holiday season to the point where people might be scrambling to find some stocking stuffers. We have so many local artisans and local businesses throughout Albemarle County, and I'm sure that folks would find that they can find plenty to stuff a stocking by walking down any of our main streets. That's all I got. Thank you. My local. Supervisor McKeown. That's true. I have two items today. I just want and I know that perhaps many of the Florida supervisors members are aware of this, but I was pretty excited,
and I wanted to point out that the governor elect Spanberger has named Nick Donahue as transportation secretary, which is absolutely Mister Smith. The best. And for those of you that don't know, I am thrilled. I worked with Nick around transit and rail, but especially transit a few years back when I was, involved with the, the, transit association, the Virginia Transit Association. But, he was the inspiration for Smart Scale years ago.
And that really opened up, at the time, funding for Albemarle County for transportation. And, he's been in private in the private world since, I think, 2020 perhaps, or 2022, I think. '22. But, I am thrilled because we talk right now about a little frustration about smart scale, and, hopefully, we will be able to have to be in a better place once we have Nick in in place. So I'm really just thrilled. He's a great, appointee for our transportation, in Virginia. So I wanted to point that out.
And, the other thing, sadly, that I need to make remarks about is that Charlie Tolbert passed away on December 4. And Charlie was a friend. He was a neighbor. He was a mentor. And more importantly, he was my campaign treasurer for twenty eight years. Do you realize how many submissions that is to the state board of elections in twenty eight years? Having said that, Charlie was also I promised Jim I would make note of the fact that he
was a physicist, and he was in the astronomy department at the University of Virginia for years and, was many of you might have seen Charlie if you went to a graduation over the last ten years because Charlie was the grand marshal and carried the mace for the for the graduation ceremonies for about ten years. So lots of involvement with the University of Virginia and and a real community member. And he also, for us, served as my representative on the Albemarle County,
service authority and was vice chair when he passed away. So he was a really influential person in our community and a great loss for the county and personally. Thank you. Thank you. Mister Professor Malek? Yes. Thank you. And so thank you for both of those news because not getting paper every day, I don't see anything anymore, unfortunately. I'm always behind, so thank you. But great news about it, for sure. Thank you. A this morning's pancakes and politics, breakfast was brief and informative and wonderful.
Our general assembly delegation members were all present and reported on the insanity that's already underway and some of their highlight things and answered questions. I think that the general consensus is that everything that was vetoed in the last four years is coming back and with perhaps very little regard for the authority of local government. So this is be ready for defense as well as making sure that we are in the best position possible with our, legislative lobbying to make some progress on some things that, that we really need to do.
Secondly, reminder that this Saturday at noon, as at 3,000 other places all across The United States, wreaths across America ceremonies will happen. This one at the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial at McIntyre Park. Wreaths will be laid there and then at the memorial here on County Office Building Grounds and then out in Earleysville. So thank you all very much. You're all invited. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. Yes. Thank you. I believe Supervisor Pruitt made comment of this last meeting, and I think it is worth repeating that obviously,
it's the holidays. We have a lot of folks out on the roads. And this year and it's been a couple of years since in December that we've had these weather events happening as well. But with all the extra travel and cars that are on the road, just ask that everyone be patient with one another, to drive the speed limit. Don't wanna have something like that happen that, will upset the holidays. So just a friendly reminder to when I get maybe a little agitated when I'm driving behind the wheel and somebody does something, I usually just say Merry Christmas and smile or Happy New Year instead of other
words that could fly out. So just offering it out as a reminder. I'm going to modify that to say a drive at or under the speed limit as appropriate. Especially with that. There are times when the speed limit was defective for these ruts. Supervisor, please don't forget. Yes. I just wanted to say that, in the Ruritan for the Ruritan District, the Ruritan next Tuesday will be having their holiday party, at Stony Point. And so that's going to be really nice to be able to see a lot of, constituents as such. Also, I have been for the last few years,
scouts. They part to get their badge, I think it's the eagle badge. To get their badge, they need to interview local elected officials or, I guess, any elected official. So I've been doing that for a few years, but I'm sure it's also takes place in everybody else's district because we have scouts in all the districts. So, a shout out, to them because they they actually they do listen and maybe some of them will one day be on the board of supervisors or school board. We can only hope. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. And, Ward, I'm sad to have to report,
but it's, a long well lived life, that Jerry Fisher passed away on December 1. I didn't realize it until after our last meeting. Jerry was a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors beginning in 1972. So he was elected, I believe, in like 'thirty five. Could you imagine that? Sixteen years. So young, representing the Samuel Miller District, and became chair of the board in 1976, a position he held for twelve years. Anyway, I shouldn't comment. He was well known in the community, a very formidable figure, I think, because of that position.
And I know he became he remained active, actively engaged in watching what was going on, and as a significant member of the community. Oh, I should also add, he was a physics major in college. And my condolences to his family. So unless there are other yes. Mr. Chair, with apologies, I had a close round that I had forgotten. So maybe a moment of privilege, but I represent the Scottsville District, which includes the largest and most prominent oath of citizenship ceremony in The United States. We house the IRC's farm.
We house one of the largest migrant communities in the county in Southwood. And my opposite number on the school board representing Scottsdale on the school board leads the literacy volunteers of Charlottesville and Albemarle. Sometimes this board receives letters from the community, and I think it is wasted if those aren't shared with the community that we've received. And we were contacted by, a member of the community sharing a statement by the literacy volunteers of Charlottesville and Albemarle noting that many of these people who are adults who are learning English for the first time, many of these people are,
legal migrants, and quite a lot of their students have had their oath of citizenships canceled. After they've completed their full interview process, after they've proceeded through the legal immigration process, they've had their oaths canceled in the last few weeks. The the literacy volunteers letter notes that many of our students have risked their lives for the American cause in their home country. They have worked side by side with American soldiers. Others have waited for years in refugee camps. They have come to this country determined to make it their home. We are heartbroken to see America break its promise to them.
I would like to echo these sentiments, and the the form of betrayal it represents to the dedication to a legal process to build a nation of immigrants. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. One thing. The cancellation of the nationalization ceremonies at Monticello is another form of losing that sense of building community that affects all of us, even long, you know, long time residents or people who were born here. So I'm really horrified by that as well.
That was what the Charlottesville band was notified that since we're not having a ceremony where we won't need you on the July 4 anymore up there either, which is horrendous. Well, it sounds like we're piling on, but I just saw on the news this morning that there was a naturalization ceremony scheduled in Boston yesterday, and two of the citizen two of the applicants that were going to swear their allegiance to The United States at that ceremony were taken away. From the line going in. From the line. Yes. Going in.
Because of their country of origin. Not to pow along too much, but this is not a good place to be right now. Alright. Board, our next item is proclamations and recognitions. And I know this is a bit unusual for me, but I'm going to take this one and make read the proclamation as a motion on behalf of the Board. This is recognizing the work to achieve universal broadband access. Whereas broadband access is an essential service for full participation in our economy, an important tool for building community and social connection,
a lifeline for accessible public safety and telehealth services and increasingly essential to access government services and educational opportunities and that many rural areas of Albemarle County have never had adequate broadband access. And whereas Albemarle County has been dedicated to achieving universal broadband access for two decades, pursuing opportunities to expand broadband through strategic investments and public private partnerships, and whereas the Broadband Office of the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development established and implemented the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative,
which led to the creation of the Albemarle Broadband Authority and the development of Albemarle County's Broadband Plan. And whereas, through the leadership of the Board of Supervisors, County staff and the authority, with the support of community organizations and elected and appointed officials and in partnership with broadband providers, Albemarle County invested in $1,300,000 of general fund appropriations in broadband expansion and netted more than $60,000,000 in state, federal and private funding, which will deliver broadband to nearly 11,000 locations by the end of this fiscal year.
And whereas the recently awarded Federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program sets in motion a plan that will continue efforts to ensure the 500 unserved locations in Albemarle County not included in prior grant programs will ultimately be connected. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby commend all of the contributors to this decades long effort and recognize the tremendous accomplishments of our partners to bring the county to the doorstep of universal broadband
access. Sign this December. Second. So I've made the motion. Supervisor Malek has seconded. Without objection, if approval, call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lakisto Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. And here to accept, Mr. Jason Inafuentes. Thank you, chair. Thank you, supervisors. I I will not be receiving this, proclamation. I'm gonna introduce, Bucky Walsh. I'd hoped to introduce Mike Culbult. Unfortunately, he has taken illness, today, and so he will not be able to join us today. I wanna just take a minute before I introduce,
Bucky to say a few words. First, despite having a hand in writing, those words, it is humbling, to be here to, to hear them, to hear them read aloud because, I came in on the tail end of twenty years worth of effort, to make this a reality. And so, I don't know what required more work, the 200 or so miles of the Grand Canyon, being carved out by drops of water or, getting broadband across seven twenty six square miles, but I think it's close. I think it's pretty close.
A lot of that work, can be attributed to Mike Gault, who was my predecessor in the Broadband Office and also our IT director for quite a long time. Mike, brought all of those people, that you heard about, the community partners, the state legislators, to the table, to make this a reality. And so at the at the end, of this, I will read it into the record some of the names. I've got a list of about 70 that I'll provide to the clerk, and that doesn't include the hundreds and hundreds of people involved on the ground actually doing this physical labor to make this a reality.
But before I do that, I want to introduce Bucky Walsh, who is another of those clouds that eroded the grounds to make this possible, to make the Grand Canyon. And Bucky Walsh has been serving as the chair of the Albemarle Broadband Authority, since I believe its inception, and has been as dogged as anyone else in, in pursuing this. So, with that said, Well, Mr. Walsh. Did Jason say I was a cloud or a clown? I wanted to, call out a few groups and individuals,
myself today. First off, the Board of Supervisors, not exactly constituted the way it is today, but many of you were here then, to have the vision many years ago to study this problem, to commission studies of this problem, and then to finally launch the Broadband Authority, and just as importantly, assign staff such as Mike Culp and now Jason Edifuentes to be working on this project. Nothing would have happened without people to do the work, and these people are critical. I'd also like to call out, because I was so startled and delighted when it happened,
governor Northam for deciding he wanted to be the Internet governor and putting the state's money where his mouth was. We would not be where we are today, but for the funds that were available from the Northam administration. I'd like to call out my fellow, members of the, Broadband Authority, some of whom are here on the board, some of whom are here in the audience, for being there for the last, eight plus years now. And, as I as I think about this entire journey, I I consider that without some of the partners that we've had to get us
here, we could not be where we are today. And specifically, the one that comes most often to mind is the one that the Broadband Authority is still actively working with right now on the RISE project, Central Virginia Electric Co op, which created its Firefly subsidiary, to launch, basically, broadband to the rural community. They are like a gift from heaven. First, they brought that into their own CVEC customers here in the county, and now they're part of the largest deployment of fiber in the county, which we're very much hoping they bring to a conclusion,
next year, when my neighborhood gets connected, and I finally get broadband. Oh my god. Not that I'm personally committed to this 100%. Anyway, it has been a great trip with a lot of people, a very good return on the county's investment, in my opinion. And I thank you for your proclamation today. Thank you. And I'm sure the supervisors would like to make comments before, and thank you personally. So supervisor Provitt? Yes. Thank you, Bucky. Something we say in the military is leaders eat last. So it sounds like we're kind of realizing that vision with our deployment of broadband.
The leadership that, you know, I serve on the broadband authority currently, but it's not lost on me that there is hundreds of hundreds of hours of leadership of previous authority members that that precede me and that you're among those. And, of course, Jason has committed tremendous amounts of of energy to making sure that we are one of the most digitally inclusive communities in the entire country, in all of Virginia, that we have a level of broadband access that's pretty unparalleled for a rural community like ours. And on top of that, that we we don't just stop at access.
We make sure that we actually have the education. We actually have the supports to make sure that communities are connected beyond just saying, oh, well, there's a there's a line out there. That's really critical, and that's part of the really pioneering vision that I am really grateful this community has been such a major leader on. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel? Yes. Excuse me. Bucky, thank you for your leadership. I remember when we first, or when Jeff first suggested that he was going to have this committee in this office, and you stepped right up to the plate, and you've just done an outstanding job in staff as well.
And, to bring it home a little bit, though, I was just thrilled because I finally had somewhere to send all the emails that we were getting from the community expressing their frustration, and I got it completely. And, and I know you really handled I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails, but we really do appreciate the work, and our community does as well. So thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Malek? Oh, goody. Thinking back to 2008 or '9, as the recession is crashing around us, there was also presented to the board at the time a big study from a
consultant who predicted that it would cost $30,000,000 of county money to bring everybody in with fiber. And there was general panic mode around the day of dais here. And I think we sort of slid slowly and nibbling away over the last and, as one of those as the chair and I are and you are in those those left behinds looking eagerly forward to the next what was 2022, maybe 2026 will be the the right year. It will be great now that my all those high school children who did school
at home during COVID are now in college and, you know, on their own. But the three adults who are home will certainly appreciate it. No question about it. The Whitehall District, being so mountainous and being, having such old copper line as well, on which most of the residents of those 500 or more, still rely. I am, sad to say, a frequent flyer with Jason on the other role that he has been voluntold by those by the demand, not by his staff. But he has stepped into the fray to help the customers who have constant failures
with our legacy cover phone because they're told, oh, it'll be three weeks until we get to you, and you have a heart condition, and you have to have your monitor going through your doctor, and they could care less. But somehow, Jason has managed to have the right phone number for the right person, which I never do. And I really appreciate his work as well as all of you all and be a big celebration in 2026. That's for sure. But thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. I echo the gratitude expressed by my fellow board members of all the the energy
and the hours of work that you all put in to make this successful. It feels a little bit like, you know and I've this is this year this month is the completion of my eighth year on the board, and I still feel like I was jumping on the surfboard with you all as you were, you know, in the final years of getting this to happen. So I can't wait until all those five hundred are served. I know that will be a a big task. It's just phenomenal when you put it in perspective of how much the technology has changed over the last twenty years and how integrated it is to supervise mister Malik's
point, in our lives and how quickly that can happen and change to make this infrastructure so, so critical and how long it takes to get the infrastructure in place. So, really appreciate the diligence and the focus and the efforts to make that happen for Albemarle County. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor, would you please repeat the question? I haven't had a chance to work that much with you, but we have worked a little bit. But I'm gonna focus my remarks on, regarding Mike Culp and also Jason because they saved, my district, especially the Stony Point area.
Well, no, with the Keswick area also because you were so responsive. And for a while there, I think I was calling you guys almost every day. No. Just kidding. But almost. Because there were so many issues and problems and you were right there. You were always there. You responded, and you helped us. And I I also remember when Mike Hope came out, we had a community meeting, on Saint John Road with all the community there because they wanted to know what was going on. And he was great, and we had the the heads of the,
Internet providers there also. So it was really, it was showing the government cared, frankly, in my opinion. And which shows how much you all care, because you just didn't brush us off. You helped us. You helped us solve the situation. And so I thank you for that. And, gee, I'm not getting any more calls. I don't know what to do with all my extra time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I can echo that, that the number of calls has dropped significantly. I have to say to Bucky and Ann, I your leadership is going on because I actually learned that Firefly is on our
road today. So maybe by March, you'll get started. Pretty excited about that. And it is important for people who are listening to recognize that there's a commitment that these will be served 11,000, that there's still a lot of work to be done, a lot of infrastructure still to be put in place, but that significant progress has been made and plans have been put in place to cover that many people, with a few that we still need to work on. But, progress has been tremendous, and it's been under your leadership. I played a little role at the very end,
and I'm really happy and honored to be part of it. So thank you. I'll add one thing. Yes. My note was in the wrong place, and I missed it. I also because of the more deliberate approach that was taken, I think the focus that the county always has had on fiber as opposed to all the other stuff has been such a good idea because other communities who galloped in wanting to be first took all the shortcuts, and now they're finding that those are not working, and they're going to have to go back and resend to do it right. So slow and steady wins the race.
Thank you all very much. Thank you. And I know, Jason, you wanted to read the names in the record. I want to hand this over to Bucky. And I assume that in your list will be the other members of the Broadband Authority, Waldo and Bill and Trevor and others. Thank you. I'll let you come up. I'll meet you. Alright. As I mentioned, this is not an exhaustive list, but this is a list of 70. I will only read a number of highlights, including some of the people that are actually here with us today. From the Department of Housing and Community Development's Broadband Office, Doctor. Tamara Holmes and Chandler Vaughn,
as well as Carl Caudle, past and I'm sorry. Current and former, supervisors, including, Liz Palmer, Rick Randolph, Norman Dill, Donna Price, Mike Culpa, of course, and then a number of county staff that have been integral, including Morgan Raikes from, OGA, Robert Rejonis from the county schools, Laurie Alshaus from, TJPDC, and then our many fiber providers, including, from Firefly, Gary Woods and Dennis Reese, as well as Missy Allen from Comcast. And then lastly, I want to highlight, the large number of community organizations and members that
saw fit to reach out and send letters of support, including many of our legislators. So I will hand this over to, the clerk, and thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yes. Do we have members from the, Internet community? I saw someone raise their hand and maybe they'd like to stand. I'm unaware. I must come all the way from Richhead. Oh, okay. Thank you. I I appreciate your presence here today too, mister Wood. Yes. Hey, Gary. Thank you and all. Great. Thank you. Board, at this point, I'm going to turn the agenda over to Mr. Richardson for a couple of matters that were sort of added,
but we knew we're coming. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Chair and members of the Board, this is a real honor and a privilege for me as County Executive to take an opportunity and recognize for both the Albemarle County organization, the community and the community that we serve as well as to the sitting board members who are, not retiring today to recognize two board members from this board: Jim Andrews, our chair, Diantha McKeil, our vice chair. And for Albemarle County government,
it is both a very happy day, and it's also a very sad day for our organization because these two board members have made the decision to retire at the end of this year and to step down from their, elected position where, mister Andrews and miss McKeel has served this community, from their districts and as a part of this board for the time that they have served in this community. I'm gonna turn it over in just a second, first to supervisor Ned Galloway who will really start the process in motion of this
board recognizing their service to this community. And before I turn it over to Ned, because we're both losing the chair and the vice chair today, I had a I had a moment to speak. And I just want to recognize, mainly for our community, that both mister Andrews and miss McKeel are examples of citizens in this community who at some point in time in their lives, they were recruited, they were sought out, they were approached, And, eventually, they elect they were elected by the community through their districts that they represent to
serve Albemarle County, on a day to day basis as part of this board. This board is six members. When I became county executive eight years ago, I was so intrigued as to why an even number. I'd served both in North Carolina at the county and the city level and never had I seen an even number of board members, except in the case of a city where the mayor did not vote. So that meant you really had an odd number. And it was made clear to me by retired county executive, Greg Campner, that this this is purposeful in the Albemarle County,
ordinances, our charter, the things, our legal documents, that it sends a message that these board members are represented are elected by the districts they serve. They serve all of the citizens of Albemarle County, and they must work together. They must communicate. They must collaborate. And in the, what I call, very resounding words of Doug Walker, our deputy county executive who retired several years ago, He told me a number of things before he retired, but he said, never forget that in Albemarle County, you get to be both a city and a county manager at the same time.
Board members, you get to be board members that serve an urban ring and an urban community that looks just like a city, and you also get to serve some of the most most beautiful and rural areas that I could ever see and be a part of. What a wonderful community. And regardless of your background and your experience, each each of you are elected and you step in day one into a very demanding job. And as I turn it over to Ned, I've thought as we look through the broadband celebration today, again, this board had your fingerprints all around that and identifying a gap,
working with the state as a partner, and saying, let's solve a problem. That as a Rotarian for twenty three years, the mantra in Rotary Club is service above self. That's what it means to be a Rotarian. Well, probably in my career, I've never seen any better example of service above self than with the local elected person that takes office in a city or a county and and is elected to serve your community. That really is service above self. So it is an honor and a privilege on behalf of our staff to serve this board.
Mister Andrews and miss McHugh will get to tell you by as a staff tomorrow, as at a staff get together, and we look forward to that. Mister Galloway, I will turn it over to you and let you kick this off. And, again, I wish you the best, and thank you so much for your hard work and leadership in this community. Ned? Well, I think I'll start with the formal the formal items and then make some remarks. I don't know who's going to make remarks, but there's no way this is happening without me making some remarks. Great. But the official presentation, on behalf of our clerk's office, Claudette, Travis, and Grace,
and on the fellow my fellow colleagues on the board, we want to present you with the captain's clock and a plaque commemorating your service, I would say, to both the school board, although you probably have a different plaque for that, and here at the board of supervisors. It's nearly thirty, thirty years of public service. And I know because I I know you have other items displayed that these are will hopefully be displayed alongside those items to remind you of your time serving Albemarle County. So I'd like to present these to you first. The plaque for those who are put my glasses on.
Presented with sincere appreciation to Diantha h McKeel for her dedicated service and leadership as a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from 01/01/2014 through 12/31/2025, enhancing the quality of life through public service. In making some remarks, I thought, well, if I had to go through all of the goals, successes, etcetera, that you have done over that time frame, we would be here till Friday or next Monday. So I'm going to just make some casual remarks, if I could. In 2009,
I believe it was June 2009 is when I first met Diantha. I had nobody knew who the heck I was. I had filed to run against Pam Moynihan, who loves to remind me she whooped my butt in that election, for school board. And the day after I filed or the Thursday after I filed, I sat out there in Row G and started attending school board meetings. That very first meeting, Diantha came up and introduced herself to me. And and I have to tell you, that is the epitome right there of who Diantha McHugh is. It's straightforward. It's like, well, who is this person? I'm a go find out.
And to this day, really, has been the only elected that's ever come up and introduced herself to me, curious about who I am. Because a lot of times you have to go, and and we're outgoing people, and we go and we talk. But that started, really an education for me because Diantha is the one that taught me a lot about Albemarle County. She taught me a ton of about Albemarle County local politics, and she introduced me and still does to so many people over all that since that time frame. And that networking, that connection is really what is the power of Diantha McKeil.
She loves networking. She loves connecting. And she uses that to bring people together to achieve things that are important for our community. I wrote down some thoughts like she is a networking machine, which I just said, but really just enjoys that. She is the embodiment of determination. Now Diantha would call that being a dog with a bone, as she often has said. But there's nothing that stands in the way, really. When Diantha wants to get something done, she's gonna figure it out. She's gonna call on that network. She's going to politic. She's gonna build relationships and partnerships,
and she's going to power forward to achieve that goal. I love that. She is clear and direct. If you all know Diantha, a little bit or a lot, you know there's no subtlety involved. You know what she thinks. You know how she feels, and you know where you stand. And I have to say that that is so refreshing in politics these days, especially these days, where the answers you don't you could you could hear a politician talk for half an hour and not know what where the hell are they saying? Well, with Diantha, you know. And I've always appreciated that.
She is innovative. To not be would be to use her own phrase would be wackadoodle because you can't keep doing things the same way over and over again and expect different results, to quote Diantha. And she herself has changed over the years, not just on positions or policies or ideas, but on how and think of just what has changed since your first days on the school board with relative to what was sitting in you and the technology and things like that over thirty years. She is a complete master at constituent service. And this is not to remark on anybody that served prior to Diantha and the
Jack Jewett District or, remark on anybody who will follow. But the citizens of Jack Jewett are going to miss you because they saw you so often on their doors and not just during campaigns. And I know that that is something that's appreciated. So networking wasn't just about the people that you work with to try to get things done. It was about serving citizens and being a true retail politician by being on their doorstep talking to them about what mattered to them, whether it was a tough conversation or not. She wants to get things done, and then she cares. And she cares deeply about this county.
We don't all agree. We don't always necessarily think that we're that the goals are maybe we have differences on that. But if but if anybody gets blinded by those type of conversations to the care that's behind that initiative, then then they're kinda missing the boat as to why Diantha McKeel decided to run for office. So I wanna thank you for the front row ticket. I got to serve with Diantha on the school board, and then she came over here to the Board of Supervisors, and we were able to partner, one as a school board member, one as a supervisor, and now it's been phenomenal to be able to serve and have Diantha,
as a colleague on the board of supervisors. So I'd like to just share a little funny thing because here's Diantha, I have to admit, and I have done this with trepidation over the years, but I've been seemingly the last four weeks, six weeks, been talking behind your back a lot about you because people have asked questions, what's it gonna be like, and what do you think Diantha will do once she retires from the Board of Supervisors? So I've been thinking about that. I said, you know what? I'm gonna try to answer that question maybe today. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna use something from Diantha's own wheelhouse to probably gives us a foreshadowing to what's to happen.
Abby, could you play the Oh, dear. Play the, little video that we're With pleasure. Oh, dear. Uh-oh. I'm terrified. Oh. I still have that car. Shenanigans. Yeah. I'm dying for McKeel, and I approve this massage. Massage. I hadn't thought about that ad in years. And thinking about what Diane McKeal will do now that she's retiring, I expect the massage might be first on the list. But after that, my suspicion is she will continue to work for this community every single day because she's Diantha McKeil. So thank you,
Diantha, for your service. I expected that you might have been getting a few things today. So to put them in, I found this nice little tote that says it's wackadoodle, John, to commemorate one of the best words that Diantha likes to use. So knowing that starting January 1, it's wackadoodle time in a whole another way, and you could maybe put a few items in here. But, Diantha, thank you for all of your service, and thank you most of all for your friendship. That was lovely. I always say pushing up daisies, not till I'm pushing up daisies. Ned gave me daisies. Thank you very much.
That was lovely, Ed. Thank you. Thank you. Lord, I believe that next is, Mr. Prude. Just one second. Oh, I'm sorry. Should we make comments out loud? First? For each would be fine, if that's okay. Sure. So Who gets to go next? Okay. Well, okay. Because you had you you call. I'm just waiting. Mike Pruitt's got something here, so I want him to go next. So I will say this is my first set of retirements from the board, and so I was not quite as familiar with the the process of vetting of gifts. So I I don't have a the kind of extensive and heartfelt speech prepared.
My apologies to both of you. And what I do have is actually coming from another member of our community, the immediate past chair Donna Price. But it's something I think we have a little bit of shared history in. When members of the armed forces, especially in the navy, retire, there is a traditional poem that is, that is read on that occasion. And, this has been adapted for the immediate purposes before us. So, you know, fewer ships and bums. But I would like to read it into the record at this time. The watch. For thirty two years, this public servant has stood the watch.
While some of us were in our bunks at night, this public servant stood the watch. While some of us were in school learning our trade, this public servant stood the watch, doing everything she could to improve our public schools. Yes, even before some of us were born into this world, close, not quite, this public servant stood the watch concerned with equity in our community. In those years when storm clouds of division were brewing on the horizon of history, this public servant valiantly stood the watch. Many times, she would cast her eye to home and see her family standing there,
needing her guidance and help, needing that hand to hold during those hard times. But still, she stood the watch. She stood the watch for thirty two years. She stood the watch so that we, our family, and our fellow Albemarians could sleep soundly in safety each and every day, knowing that this public servant stood the watch. Today, we are here to say, public servant, the watch stands relieved, relieved by those you have trained, guided, and led. Public servant, you stand relieved. We have the watch. Boson,
stand by to pipe the side. Public servant going ashore. So this is normally, you know, as part of a change in command, change in the watch, right, representing both the daily turnover of a watch and then the broader from from generation to generation exchange of the watch. Like Ned, Diantha, you have been someone who was some one of the first people I learned from about politics in this community. I pinned you down and grabbed a coffee with you over at the Wegmans, and I think I probably irritated you a little bit at the time because I
I'm just young, dumb, and full of ideas and didn't know what was feasible and what wasn't. But you have been a steadfast, mentor and person who has shaped my understanding of politics in this community and helped me be someone who feels ready to relieve the watch. And because I don't think I'm going to be afforded the opportunity in the order of business, I would I would say the same to Jim. Jim, you have, been one of my closest confidants since I've joined the board. I have valued immensely being able to to work through serious issues with you,
to pick your brain, to draw from your experience, generations of familiarity with this community that I I recognize I'm a newcomer to and I don't always know the relationships. And you have helped me think through the issues that affect this community deeply and critically, and have shaped the way that I view the work that we do fundamentally. So thank you both. Thank you. Supervisor Merkel. Oh, okay. Thank you. The six members which our county executive described also describe six different perspectives, six different backgrounds,
six different points of view. And all of those exchanges really bring about so much better decision making and solution finding than any of us could do by ourselves. And I so appreciate all of those exchanges. I have, at a board retreat years ago, learned about, from your own words, your eagerness and enjoyment of debate, which was a great thing to learn because I thought, oh, okay. This is this is a positive. I needed to take that more as a positive than than anything else. But I so appreciate the honesty and the frankness which you had always brought to
all of the discussions. As the other native Virginian on the board, I also appreciate your emotional connection to the county to the county residents as a whole in addition and far beyond those in the Jack Dewitt district. And the leadership that you have shown by bringing younger folks in as the next generation and I've taken that task to heart. That's you know, I've got two years to do it. I'm I'm hard at it working on that because it's important that people have that chance to think about it and be in the audience and learn about things over
a long period of time rather than just sweeping in and thinking that it's easy because it's local government is not easy in any way. And if you give yourself a chance to learn slowly and, sort of take it all in by osmosis, then you're have a much more enjoyable time. But I expect that I will see you on the other side of the podium because I do not expect that you will disengage from what's going forward, including zoning re modification and all these other things that are really, really important to our success. So thank you very much. Well, first of all,
I will say that, when you show up again, I'm gonna lower that, the podium so that we can, you know, see you because we've always had this contest about who's the tallest. Obviously, Diane is the tallest. You know, I think he beat me by a couple inches. So but we're not only losing, unfortunately, a good board member. We're losing a friend. And not permanent in a permanent sense, but we're losing a friend in that you always worked with all of us. You and I have gone through trying times as you know.
You've been frank. I've been frank. But your your heart was always in the right place, and you always wanted to do I'm gonna don't don't look at me because I'm gonna cry. You you always wanted to do what was right for the community, what was right for your district, and for Albemarle as a whole. That is something I've always I've always respected. Thirty two years of public service is a great length of time. You've done it for the school board, hoping you know, doing the best you can,
making sure that things are really good for the children, which is the most important for our community, the children. And then also on the board, I marvel at you are on the I was on the RTA with you, and then you came you wanted a regional approach, and I'm going, god. How's that ever gonna happen? Well, guess what? We now have CARTA. That happened. You made that happen along with your the other board members in the RTA. So congrats to that. And you always show up for everything. You show up whenever there's a ribbon cutting, whenever there's a presentation.
You're there. You're representing the county, and you're there to support. So I'm hoping that I don't don't look at just to stop looking at me. I'm good. But, I'm hoping that, frankly, that that that will continue, that we'll continue to see you continue to get your advice because thirty two years, I mean, you've got a lot to offer. Still a lot to offer. So just because you're stepping down, don't think you're stepping away, frankly. So that's what I that's what I do. And I'm I'm anyway, don't think that my remarks are short because I don't have a lot to say,
but because I always feel as chair that I need to keep things going. But your presence as vice chair hasn't been remarked upon. And I think that without it, I don't know what I would have done. You have been there at any of our meetings where we're discussing how agendas would go and how other things would go, and it's been tremendously valuable. You are a formidable, supervisor, but I have great admiration for your passion for public service, your convictions, your tenacity, your sense of community and your connections within the community.
And clearly, when the other organizations that you serve on in your Board capacity, your presence there is greatly impactful. So when we hear about the ACRJ, we know you're involved and you're doing things with them and CARTA and others. So those have always had your legacy is well beyond just what's happening at the Board of Supervisors, but those organizations as well. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. And, I don't know if there's Yes, Mr. Chair. At this time, we will now turn it over
to B. Lapisto Kirtley, who will present plaques and clock to Mr. Andrews followed by, Ms. Malek. I have a plaque here to give to our chair presented with sincere appreciation to Jim H Andrews. What does the h stand for, by the way? Herbert. Herbert. Herbert. I love it. My grandfather's name. Okay. I love it. Especially if it's your grandfather's name. I love that. Okay. For his dedicated service and leadership as a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from 01/01/2022 through 12/31/2025,
enhancing the quality of life through public service, given this day on 12/10/2025. And with that plaque, because I can't give them both to you at the same time, they weigh more than I do. But it's a beautiful clock. Isn't that? Wow. So that way you will never forget what time it is. And and what's more important, you'll be able to know whether or not we're starting our meetings on time. Oh, okay. So if I can present that to you. And I'm just gonna say a few remarks.
That being a physics professor, that blew my mind. And that's what Jim is, a physics professor, probably because I didn't do well in physics. Actually, I never took it. But anyway, he's a physicist, and that's just, that's something special. His leadership has been calm and persistent, getting us on track of what we need to do. I've always appreciated that. Your calmness, I've always appreciated that. Some of us on the board get a little more excited about things, but you've always had this, this I see a few members, last staff members laughing.
But, you know, you have this calmness that, brings us all together and and helps us. You communicate extremely well, on issues. You you'll call. You you and that I appreciate very much as a board member. You know the issues and how they affect our county, and you make sure that you make those issues clear, as chair. And you've done that your the entire time. You're ready with everything, and, we really I really appreciate, your services being chair because I think you've you've done a remarkable job,
in in being chair and letting us know what we need to focus on what we need to do. So and on a personal level, you've gotta be one of the kindest people I know, and really very much caring. So you care about this community and your and your environmental stance and etcetera, but you really care. And, I know that you've you've always done your best because that's what you wanted to do. That's what you came into the this position for. And that is greatly appreciated. So Thank you.
Gonna miss you. Thank you. Alright. So I'm fortunate to present the gavel plaque. And having had several years with the gavel, which I never remember to pick up and use, I've always think of that when I see see mine at home. This says presented with sincere appreciation to Jim H. Andrews for his dedicated service and outstanding leadership as chairman of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from 01/01/2023 through 12/31/2025, enhancing the quality of life for public service from the board of supervisors.
And my comments are quick to say that the tone of what you have created in the meetings is so positive. Having been in the audience for seventeen years before I joined the board in 2008, I understood personally the anxiety that speakers feel when they come to the podium. And during that seventeen years, there were plenty of times when there was not a lot of welcome generated by the chair at the time, several of them over those many years, who really were like, what are you doing here? What do you want? And that is not very helpful.
But I really applaud your approach of welcome to our citizens who come to the board meetings to make the effort to either come online or or by phone or truck all the way down here, some of them are 45 miles one way, to come to the meetings. As as been mentioned, you're calm and respectful, but firm. And that demeanor creates the fact that the meetings are running well, but people don't feel rushed to say what they need to say, to have the debate they need to have, for citizens or staff to answer questions. In times of turmoil, that safe space of our board meetings extends to the the welcome to participants who
would never come if they saw the chaos they predicted or were worried about the chaos in this room as is exhibited in so many other jurisdictions across the Commonwealth. So this is a legacy that we all work hard to maintain, but you have done such an admirable job to do that. And, also, as the other rural representative on the board, I very much appreciate that as well. So thank you very much, and everybody is great. Thank you. If anybody else has any but otherwise, I'm okay. Well, yeah. I'm not going to go through one round and not do another round.
Today, I wore I don't have many ties right now. I don't need to go into why, but I just received some ties, from my father-in-law, or I guess he's still father-in-law. And I bring it up because Gemini realize when you start working and get to know somebody new, it's often that you try to find some sort of common common ground or something that you've shared, and we both had time in Shaker Heights, Ohio. And, my father-in-law was a long time city council member in Shaker Heights, Ken Kovach, And he sent and it's kind of a Christmassy tie,
and it took me a few times looking at it. I said, I think it's an abstract Santa. But anyway, I thought, you know what? I like I like that. I like having something with me today that connects us back to the to something that we had a shared background, because Shaker is a special place. It certainly was for me when I was teaching there. Jim, I've always appreciated your approach. I remember one of the first meetings with you and the questions that you came with, and I think you weren't even sworn in yet. But it was clear, in your lead up to becoming a supervisor that you were going to that you were going to take the work seriously, and it was going to be something that you wanted to do well.
And I think you've certainly accomplished that. It was mentioned that you're even keeled in con. I think that's phenomenal, especially in the role that you're serving in, as the Chair. To Supervisor Malick's point, I do think that communicates a sense of confidence and trust and, integrity to the community and those who come here for the meeting. So for that, I'm very appreciative. You know, sometimes it goes sometimes the Chair has to take on some roles not in front of the public, amongst us six board members. And, you know, I think you've handled that. And what I really appreciated was it was like,
all right, well, I'm not going to wait till next week. We'll just deal with this right now. So, thank you for that. That really helps with the governance and how we relate to one another, as as board members. So, I think that's wonderful. The packets, the analysis and preparation you bring, I mean, it's clear. I mean, I keep mentioning that you're a physicist, but you're also an attorney. And not only did I not take physics, I'm not sure I could spell it with confidence. But this the, the fact that you bring a level of the level of intellect and the level of analysis you have brought to so many topics,
I can say that there have been times I've sat up here thinking one way, and then after hearing you state your opinion based on what work you've done, I have changed in some of my thoughts and minds up here. So, appreciate that. So thank you for being a great chair. I think it's been a wonderful two years having you as chair, and hope you're and and I think, you know, I I hope that you feel like you, that you enjoyed the time and and the work here with us, and and hate to see you, hate to see you retiring after one term. Thank you. Thank you.
It just occurred to me that I haven't spoken and you have not spoken, and I wanna give you the opportunity or, kind of intimidating. Yeah. It's intimidating. I agree. I I really appreciate all the kind thoughts and words. And I like to think about myself as an old soldier who's just supposed to fade away, but I don't think I'm gonna do that. But, I have been around a long time. I know where a lot of the bodies are buried. Just teasing. I actually started though, and I will say this and then I'll I'm gonna I'll I'll let Jim have a few minutes. But before I was elected,
I started with Almar County Public Schools representing my district on the health advisory board because I was a nurse. And I was very upset that the teachers and the students, every parents were all smoking in the schools. So that was that was the issue that got to me. And there's always an issue. I see someone in the audience right now, and I can say affordable housing is her was her issue, you know, is her issue. So we all have something that draws us in, and I was drawn in with a a health concern for the teachers and the
students that, I would go into the, a teacher's lounge if I was invited in, and, you know, you could cut the smoke like this. You know, I'm just and I was very concerned. So that's what drew me in. And we we could all probably say what drew us into this into into this world. But, I really do appreciate the kindness today and the and the good words and the thoughts. And I've I've just let it go with that. But and, Jim, I've enjoyed so much working with you. Thank you. I think about us as, in a way, opposites because they're right. You're very calm and thoughtful,
and you get down into the weeds. I'm much more emotional and reactive, but maybe that's why we work together. So we we we, play off each other perhaps fairly well. And and you've done a wonderful job as chair. Well, thank you. I I believe that I've had pretty good examples before me as to how to be a chair and how to make sure that this county has meetings that are on the topic and working their way through the issues in a thoughtful manner. That's all. Thank you. And I again, I also just want to press my appreciation to the Board,
appreciation to the public who elected me. Mentioned that I often wear a different tie almost every meeting because I, in my teaching career, had a lot of them. Still do. But this one particular today, very meaningful. It's my father's. And I said, I don't know where my father's tie. My wife said, that's a really old tie. And I said, yep. I know. It was my dad's. And so, again, I could go through a list of names, but I think I'll leave it, for tomorrow or whatever. But I really appreciate this, and I'm very happy to have had the opportunity and look forward to,
sorry, Duncan, who's here, and Fred Messel, I think will be welcome additions to this Board. They'll hit the ground running and provide strong voices. So thank you. This brings us to I don't want to last for those who appreciate your patience with us. Public comment on matters previously considered currently pending before the Board other than scheduled public hearings. And Vice Chairman McKeough will read the rules and introduce the speakers. Oh, okay. Let me just see. So we have we do have someone who's signed up to speak electronically, and then we have,
five speakers in person. So I will read the the instructions. Let me get the right form here. Alright. This is the last time I'm gonna read this. Alright. During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board, other than scheduled public hearings, individuals may address the board of supervisors. A sign up sheet is managed by the clerk's office and community members physically present for the meeting will speak first, then those who are attending the meeting electronically will speak.
For those attending in person, I will announce the speaker. For those participating electronically, the clerk will announce each speaker before it is their turn to speak. For in person speakers, timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium. You have three minutes and the green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking and the red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.
When When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If you make comments through Zoom, you may upload written comments through the eComment portal or email your comments to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hand in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted. All comments are live streamed,
recorded, and published on the Albemar County website. If participating by phone, press 9 to let us know you want to speak, then 6 if from a landline to unmute. If by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called on to speak. And with that, our first speaker today is Sue Friedman. Welcome. Thank you for having me, and it is my privilege today to speak about the board of directors. In particular, I am here for both a personal and professional salute to Diantha McKeel on her
retirement. How do I know Diantha? Well, before that, my friend Jane Foy, our mutual friend, Jane Wave, is with me today. So we're both here to offer a salute for Diantha. When I came to town in 1999, Kevin Kastner invited me to be on the superintendent's equity and diversity committee. And lo and behold, Diantha McKeel was on the school board. So I met Diantha immediately because, as Ned mentioned, she will seek you out if you are involved in what she's involved in.
After that, she and Gordon Walker asked me to consider running for the board school board, which I did in 2003 and spent four years on the school board with Diantha, two of those years as chair. And then following that, my business at the time was in the Jack Jewett District. So, of course, I was on the RIO CAC and was able to work directly with Diantha in her work. And most recently, in the 2024, I get a phone call from Diantha McKeel saying,
Sue, we have a problem with dentistry and pediatric dentistry. Will you please join me? So the past year and a half, we have really made some phenomenal progress in addressing the needs of students in our community and realizing that there is a lack of dental professionals in our community. So you'll learn more about that later. But that's a little bit of background. Diatha is opinionated, but opinions come from information, deep information and research, and also from caring.
So whether you agree or disagree, Dayatha will listen. She will actually hear what you're saying. She and I have not agreed on several things, but we understand that both of us come from a point of view of deeply caring about the community. And I think that's something that is rare in this day and age. You six of you, an exception, is finding people who are in elected office, who are willing to listen to every point of view and willing to consider and
willing to discuss. So I'm hopeful the legacy of Diantha McKeil, as I call it, will continue. And Diantha, thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Our next speaker is Donna Price. Welcome. Good afternoon, Jerry Andrews, vice chair McKeel, supervisors, county executive, mister Richardson, clerk for the board, miss Borgerson, and county attorney, mister Herrick, supervisors, all of you and your colleagues, I wanna thank you for the public service that you do. I rise today to recognize three supervisors. I don't want supervisor Galloway to be left out because all three of you have
your term ending at the end of this month. And supervisor Galloway, you have gallantly decided and you ran. You were reelected. And I wanna thank you from when I was on the board serving for two years as vice chair under you for the leadership that you provided, not just to the board and the county staff, but to the entire community. You reluctantly agreed to serve a third consecutive tour or term during what is probably the most difficult challenging time that this community has faced, the COVID epidemic. And during that, you brought a sense of calm to this board that,
candidly, I did not observe when I was running for office. I am so pleased that you've been reelected and that you will be able to serve this community again. Chair Andrews, I concur wholeheartedly with the comments that supervisor Malek and supervisor Galloway have said about you and your leadership style. You have a calm demeanor, a presence that unifies the board, and I believe follows the culture of this community, which is that the chair of the board is there to facilitate the board action, not to mandate what it is.
And that allows the six member board that mister Richardson talked about briefly to actually perform its duties better. And I wanna thank you for that because that is the type of leadership our community wants, deserves, and needs. Supervisor McKeel. Members of the board, I have to tell you, after the hour of y'all telling each other congratulations, I now remind myself why I don't watch things like the Academy Awards. They go on forever. Now supervisor McKeel is the only member of the board that I still work with on the Police Citizens Advisory Committee.
And y'all may not know it, but by coincidence, today is the actual day that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded in Oslo. And the recipient, Maria Kocina Machado, is not able to be there for her own safety. There was another award recently announced, and that was the FIFA World Cup Peace Prize. Supervisor McKeel, I want you to know that I have here for you the first annual non FIFA World Cup Peace Medal that I want to award for you. It's as tacky as they come. It doubles as a as a really tacky Christmas ornament.
And like the president, you may wear this anywhere. So thank you all for your service. Can I come get it, Donna? I'll give it to the clerk. I wanna show it to my grandchildren. Yeah. Yep. Thank you, Donna. Alright. Our, next speaker, and I may not be able to I can tell it's Heidi. Heidi, would you help me out? It's a hand on the My name is Heidi Divya Berthu. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well, these are all very hard acts to follow, and I'm appreciating you being here to listen to what I have to offer.
I am a member of the Court Square Citizens History Group. Yesterday, we emailed you all, an important historic mural for your attention. Our photograph reproduces a mural hanging in the Illinois State Capitol that commemorates the moment in 1819 when Edward Coles, aboard flat boats on the Ohio River, freed all 18 enslaved adults and children whom he had inherited in eighteen o eight
and later. Albemarle, ancestor, Coles, was the second governor of Illinois from 1822 to 1826 and a lifelong opponent of slavery. Born in Albemarle County, he was raised at Enniskorte Plantation, almost adjacent to Monticello. Upon inheriting a dozen enslaved workers from his father and against his family's wishes, Coles determined to free them. Certain that enslavement constituted a serious threat to the American Republic and a stain on
Jefferson's legacy, he entered into correspondence with the with the retired president urging that Virginia begin emancipation. Well educated at William and Mary College, Coles became the private secretary to president James Madison, who appointed him special US envoy to Russia. Accompanied by his enslaved foreman and boyhood friend Ralph Crawford, Coles traveled in search of western lands where he could free his slaves and settle. They kept the plan secret as they wagged the group group north to float down
the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. A few miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Coles gathered his people together and, in a simple statement, granted their immediate freedom. We can imagine their astonishment. Age 33, but a steadfast vision, of justice and liberty for all, Coles promised each of the three main families a gift of land. He supported the newly free families purchased and conveyed, the land parcels as promised. Elected as,
second governor of Illinois in 1822, Coles promoted the abolitionist cause. With the backing of churches, Coles defeated the pro slavery faction in 1824 to create Illinois as a free state. He assisted the aging James Madison on a plan to emancipate Madison slaves in his will. Coles lives, lived to see the emancipation proclamation and passage of the thirteenth Thanks. Thirteenth amendment. Can I Thank you? Can I just finish my sentence? Yeah. Thank you. This favorite son of Albemarle County,
Virginia died at his Philadelphia home on 07/07/1868. Freeman will continue with our request of you. Thank you. Thank you. And the next speaker is Freeman Allen. Yep. Please inherit another three minutes. Yes. Three minutes. Yes, sir. Yes. I am Freeman Allen, Avob Avob, remarkable supervisor b, Lipisto Kirkley's Ravenna District, and I'm glad to be here with you this morning. There you go. Thank you so much. That's great. Thank you so much, mister Pruitt.
Supervisors, kindly turn around for one moment and look at the large screen above and behind you and realize that this remarkable mural in that size decorates one of the important walls of the State House in Springfield, Illinois. Our history group has been in contact with the secretary of state there in order to gain permission and coordinate receiving this remarkable, much smaller copy of the mural. But I want each of us to think for just a couple of minutes.
Let let's put our feet in the shoes or perhaps no shoes of 18 or 19 people working out here when Albemarle was a much huger place, and little old Nelson County was part of us. And out there on the on the, Rockfish River, this 850 acre plantation, that this young man, as early as 21 or 22 years old realizes, he's been educated right here, in our state that something is wrong in the state of Denmark,
and we've got to right it. And he starts dealing with a wise older president who says to him, you're exactly right, young man, but it's for another generation. It is too, too radical for right this moment. But this man does not give up, and he has to wait about eleven or twelve years, a long time to get things straight with his family. His family is like, oh my god. Don't even speak of something like this. How can we, the elite, the ownership class of our county, won our plantations. He does not give up, and as Heidi's explained,
this is the result, this remarkable dancing on the flatboats. And he actually said they jumped for joy in an electric moment. And they laughed and they giggled and they fell into thankful promises of loyalty to him, throughout the remainder of their lives with him. So we have felt this young man was, somewhat neglected or somewhat forgotten here. I know many of you probably have known about him, but we are proud to be presenting this to, the, general district court during Black History Month and want to simply alert you to that
fact. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's beautiful. If if you could just give that tomorrow. He's they're gonna take that He's gonna take it with you. I'm taking this with me to show judge Gautaro, over at district court. But, as I walk out, I'm just gonna show this to, to folks because it's me. Thank you so much. Thank you. And the next speaker is and, again, handwriting is, it looks like Mary Cumbian. Yeah. Was I even close? Close. Alright. Welcome. Hi. I'm Mary Crumbine, and I'm here because y'all have a special exception on the agenda for a homestay,
and I'm the owner at 2895 Rolling Road. And I just wanted to say that I amended my building plans and filed this special exception as I worked with the county in an effort to make this safer for building code and fire code. This was kind of the recommendation and the thing we came up with that we thought would work best, and, I'm sure they have all the information to help you ask all the questions you need. The county does as you review that. Thank you so much. Thank you. And our next speaker is participating electronically. Her name is Alicia Linehan. And, Claudette,
I'm gonna turn that over to you. Oh, let's see. Hello. Ma'am, can you hear me? Yes. We can. Welcome. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in the Scottsville District. When it comes to protecting the rights of our immigrant and refugee neighbors and everyone who lives in this county, you have the constitution on your side as evidenced by the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and fourteenth amendments. When it comes to protecting the rights of our immigrant and refugee neighbors and everyone who lives in this county, you have the code of Virginia on your side. It is unlawful to commit armed assault and battery while wearing a mask.
It is unlawful to impersonate a member of law enforcement, state, local, or federal. When it comes to protecting the rights of our immigrant and refugee neighbors and everyone who lives in this county, you have the facts on your side, including those noted earlier by members of the board. Seventy three percent of individuals booked into ICE detention facilities have had no criminal convictions of any kind. US citizens and legal residents have been detained by ICE. Some, including children, have been rendered to other countries, and you have remained silent. Are you elevating pragmatism over principles?
To be principled is to think and act consistently with fundamental truths and to be willing to stand alone for them if necessary. For pragmatists, truth is based on the usefulness of the ideas. Whatever works is true. Truth is a process, constantly changing according to time, place, or personal experience. Is appeasement pragmatic? The question brings Jim Ryan to mind. He tried, unsuccessfully, to walk the fine line between principles and pragmatism. History and UVA's experience have taught us that making concessions to aggressive powers to avoid conflict, anger, or further trouble can have catastrophic consequences.
You invite escalation by giving concessions to an uncompromising aggressor. You misread the opponent by relying on the assumption that he is a rational statesman with limited definable goals. You forfeit the balance of power by allowing the aggressor to grow stronger, unchecked, often making the larger conflict harder to win. You pay high moral and credibility costs because appeasement is often condemned as a sign of weakness or moral abdication. Governor JB Pritzker described your role this way. To be in public office right now is to constantly ask yourself, how do I make sure that we're standing on the right side of history?
There's a simple answer. The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous. Expect courage from people around you, and it will show up. Expect fear, and fear will rule the day. I'll close with this from justice Sotomayor. The rule of law is not a given in this nation nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And that's all. Thank you. Board, this brings us to our consent agenda.
And it's my understanding that we're going to pull item 8.5, which is for information only just because a comment is requested on the item. If, with that, if not, there's something further, I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda of so many. Amended. So moved. Second. Motion from Supervisor McKeil, second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Appeasier, Kirtley? Aye. Thank you. And with that,
I'm going to turn to, Supervisor McKeel, who pulled this item just to allow for the comment on there. It. Yeah. I just wanted to make a comment. And for those that don't know, 8.5 is an information item, and it's the Facilities and Environmental Services quarterly report. And I just had a comment I wanted to make about something, but this is an absolute I will do preface preface it without saying this is a wonderful report. And I'm always sorry when I see this report that it's on the consent form because a lot of people don't get to see it.
It has wonderful information in it. And I understand why we can't have these on our agendas all the time, but I would urge folks, as you look at our agendas, to make sure you pay attention to some of these types of reports. This particular one is about the joint litter reduction campaign with the city of Charlottesville. We have participated in a litter pickup program to try and clear away litter in our community with the city of Charlottesville, which I think is absolutely wonderful. I really applaud it.
I would just and my comment only is, and I'm kind of looking at some of the folks I see within this, departmental area. We have a huge problem in this community with visual litter. And by that, I mean signage, illegal signage in the right of ways. Mhmm. And Charlottesville has the problem as well. And I'm just putting it on the record that while we're working with the city of Charlottesville, we both have the same litter ordinances. The problem, of course, is that sometimes the enforcement in the different localities is different.
And it when we have areas that meet, Charlottesville and Albemarle jurisdictions bump up against each other in the urban areas. If it's not enforced consistently, then it's easy for the visual signage litter to creep into the other locality and, like, back and forth. And so I'm just putting on the record that if we could somehow or another work together with the city better on their ordinance and our ordinance around the that signage, I would really appreciate it.
I'll be honest with you. I've reached out to the city a couple of times, and my section of Barracks Road in that area right through there doesn't get much signage litter anymore because they know that they will get a call from me. So I'm just putting this on the table, and I will say that this is one of the areas I hear a lot Mhmm. From our constituents about. We get a lot of emails about all the can we wash your windows? We have free dogs. We have this. We have that. And it really it really is a problem because I travel a lot in other
areas, and I don't see this type of litter in other communities. So I would just love to have an effort between the city and the county to to to see if we can make an impact. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it. Thank you. Ward, this brings us to our first action item, SE20250025, 2895RollingRoadHomestead. And this is being led by Lisa Green, Manager of Code Compliance. Welcome. She's walking south. I love it. Two legs. Two legs. Thanks for your patience.
Good afternoon, Board, Chair Andrews. Before I begin, I'll just add on Supervisor McKeown. Chair Andrews, it's been a pleasure working with you, and thanks for all your support, and thanks for working with me all these years. Thanks. Thank you. I'm Lisa Green. I'm the manager of Co Compliance. And today, I'll be presenting special exception SE 2025 for 2895 Rolling Road. This request is for the use of three newly constructed accessory sleeping units for a homestay use on a rural area property.
The applicants are requesting a special exception from County Code Section eighteen-5.1.48 (two)II for the use of accessory structures built after 08/07/2019. These new units have not yet been constructed. However, the property owner has applied for building permits, which are currently under review. This slide provides an overview of the existing and planned structures on the property. This property may seem familiar to you. On 04/17/2024, this board approved a special exception to authorize a resident manager for the Monticello Inn
and Cottage LLC, solely owned by Mary Crumbian. The 10.8 acre parcel is located in Simeon, across from the Morven property held by the University of Virginia Foundation on the James Monroe Parkway. The property was previously the location of the Slate Hill Baptist Church, shown here with the blue star, which is currently under construction to be converted into a single family dwelling with the homestay rooms. The associated parking for this homestay use is shown here with the orange P at
the bottom. The owner, Ms. Crumbian, is also constructing a new primary residence that will include two bedrooms intended for homestay use, shown here marked with a red star. Once constructed, this will be the second dwelling on the parcel and the primary residence for miss Crombie and her family. The associated parking for these structures is shown with the green p to the north of the property. Finally, you see the location of the proposed accessory sleeping units indicated with the yellow stars
that are subject of the special exception request. Each unit will support the homestay operation with dedicated on-site parking per zoning requirements. This exhibit focuses on the specific area where the three new accessory sleeping units are proposed. These structures are the subject of the special exception because they are going to be built after 08/07/2019 and therefore cannot be used for homestay without board approval. The site layout demonstrates the applicant's intent to place the units together in a defined
cluster on the property with parking located immediately adjacent for ease of access and to minimize disturbance to the surrounding area. This parcel meets all the requirements for the homestay use and by right is permitted to rent up to five guest sleeping spaces within a single family dwelling or previously existing accessory structure. This particular parcel has the development rights for the two single family dwelling units, therefore, can have up to two separate homestay uses, allowing up to 10 guest rooms for sleeping by right.
This special exception is only required due to the new construction of the three accessory sleeping units. A condition has been added to the resolution attachment f to limit the number of detached accessory sleeping unit structures to the three as shown on the plan submitted by the property owner. If the special exception is approved, the owner's homestay zoning clearance application, currently under review, will proceed through the approval process. The property is currently in compliance with all zoning and taxation requirements.
Upon evaluation of the proposed newly constructed accessories leaving units to be used in the homestay, staff finds no evidence to suggest any adverse impacts on the surrounding neighborhood or on the public's health, safety, or welfare. The homestay constitutes a by right accessory use to the primary dwelling on the property. It is consistent with the goal and policies outlined in the comprehensive plan and given the scale of both the parcel and the structure, are compatible with the character of the surrounding area.
To summarize this 10.8 acre parcel, with this application, the request is to permit the three newly constructed one bedroom accessory sleeping units for a homestay use built after 08/07/2019, in the rural area. Based on the analysis provided in the staff report, staff recommends approval of the requested special exception. I have for you here a suggested motion, if you'd like, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. We will go through our orders, beginning with supervisor Proulx.
Yes. So, this is an interesting one. Right? Yes. It comes to us in the posture of a special exception to a homestay, but I feel like it begs questions that go beyond that related to to zoning. So I hope you'll forgive me for asking a few questions that deviate outside of the normal homestay process because it it kind of is straddling an interesting section here. So, my understanding is that there is one unexhausted development right currently. There's the church, which is acting as a dwelling, and then there's the owner residence that is to be built,
which is currently unexhausted but would be exhausted by that construction. Is that accurate? That's accurate. And the additional dwelling, the additional owner dwelling Mhmm. Dwelling Mhmm. Is going to require a certificate of occupancy process, and there will be a similar process that hasn't already happened for the church. Is that accurate? Correct. Each of those have two have their own building permit. One is the church's has a a permit to, the change of use and and for whatever construction. And, yes, that will get a a certificate of occupancy. The I'm going to call them the outbuildings because it is
I think, it it invites lack of clarity to use accessory structure. And that I know that's the language we use, but I feel like that implies an accessory dwelling unit, which is a full certificate of occupancy thing. Right? And so I'm just going to clarify. I'm going to say outbuildings of accessory unit for that purpose. Are they otherwise if not for the fact that it's a homestay, are they otherwise by right? Yes. They're clarif we we they're classified under the building permit as an accessory sleeping unit. So it meets all the, definition of a dwelling except for the kitchen,
so it's just a sleeping unit. So those are under the, those fall under the building permit process as well, and they also get a certificate of occupancy. And so similarly, would there be by right, no obstacle? It's this whole thing, like, the entire site. It's not I know it's not a site plan, but I'm gonna call it a site plan. The entire site plan was built as as presented, but was presented for long term residential stay, like year long rental contracts for both the two main buildings, but also the three separate outbuildings, would that be permissible by right?
Those can't be rented out long term. They're not dwellings. Understood. Okay. I think that gets at everything I had. Thank you for for helping us walk through this additional clarification point. Thank you. Supervisor Kiel. Yeah. Lisa, thank you for this report. And my my sense is it's coming to us because of the multiple buildings, which is different from most of the homestays, which is why it reverted back to us because we've been trying to not have so many homestays. Once we've figured out the the rules of most of them and what we're right.
So multiple buildings. And I did notice in the report what you all are alluding to, maybe just for people that are listening, these buildings don't have kitchens. That is correct. So and when you refer to a sleeping quarter, it's it's really just a place where people can sleep. Correct. Which is interesting. Yes. And I'm sure you will tell me if it's none of our business. But it always worries me because if I stay somewhere and I can't cook, am I going to bring in a Bunsen burner? Am I going to bring in something that I can actually heat something?
I'm just saying, Lisa. And are we talking about something then that's a fire hazard that we get into? It's I'm just I'm going down probably a black hole, and you need to stop me. But that's my first thought. Okay. I'll stop you. That's good. But those the as as, with all of the homestay requirements, these homestays will get the fire inspection annually, like just like every other homestay that we have. Okay. Now, you know, as you know, just like in a hotel room, for instance, you can't control what someone brings. Yeah. That and that that's what I knew you would tell me that this it's none
of our business and in a way. Right? It just always worries me Yeah. Because I've seen fires start that way, certainly in dormitories, but maybe that's young people, and that's a different issue. I don't know. That is right. And and we these go through all the the building, these have building permits, and they go through all the building, inspections and regulations, just like a dwelling without a kitchen. Okay. Alright. That was my question for right now. Thank you. Supervisor Mallard? Thank you very much. This is interesting. In addition to the I'm so grateful that the church is being historically renovated,
and I missed the thing for last week presentation, but there will be a recording from the historic society about the presentation in this room last week that some of you may have attended, but I was not able to do it. Please help me remind me the there's a difference between a stove and other cooking things like a microwave. Correct? So if in that dwelling thing. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? That is tricky. We, when you have built in appliances and permanent, it's under our definition, it's permanent provision for cooking, that is what then makes a kitchen.
Again, we can't we're not there to see what people bring in. But typically speaking, the countertop I mean, the microwave on the countertop is not a permanent provision for cooking or Okay. The Keurig coffee machine or a pot that boils water for soup or something like that. I mean, now people even have their air fryers or whatever. Okay. Those are not considered permanent provisions. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Connolly? Thank you, Lisa. This may be for mister Herrick. We we do have the right I've confirmed this before,
but I always forget, that if we wanted to if we granted the permission for this, that we could stop it with just this owner. Don't we didn't that change in the code where we can it doesn't necessarily have to run with the land? That's correct. That's now part of the enabling authority allowed by state code to make it owner specific. That's not something that staff recommends necessarily, but that is within the board's, capabilities. And here's why I bring it up. I I know and and I have I'm fine with like, this doesn't change my opinion of this particular application. I'm surprised we haven't used this given past concerns
my colleagues have brought up about business operations and LLCs. This site kind of speaks to me that once this owner, if, you know, who knows, it could be fifty years and stays in the family. But if ownership changed, it seems like you're immediately saying it's the new owner has to run the same operation. So this one, I don't know enough about putting this stipulation on these, because all it would do is we require them to come in and get the special exception, but it at least requires them to do that,
and say, I'm taking this on. It's a new business, etcetera. So, you know, if this were just one farmhouse and it had its accessory structure, I think that could be a little different. But this is starting to say that if this property were to go on sale, that you basically have to run homestays. I mean, you could convert the three and do other things with them, etcetera, or tear them down. I mean, you'd still have all those rights, but it's already set up for a homestay operation. And and I just bring it up because I'd be curious to hear what others would think about that. Now I don't know in terms of, legal review.
This is you know, you're hearing this for the first time. I'm sorry. I didn't give anybody a heads up on it. But I it just seems to me to be a place where we we we would maybe wanna exercise this option. I don't think it changes anything for the applicant and her running of the of the property or anything for her, but it may set up something that that I've at least heard voiced as concerns for future business. Like, if you're an LLC and all you wanna do is run home state businesses Right. Then this is the this is like an ideal site down the road. And that's that's the reason I bring it up,
and I and I wanna put it in the ears of those who have voiced these concerns in the past to hear what your thoughts are. Now Andy would have mister Herrick would have to advise us on the the legal ramifications of it, and I'm not there and saying let's do it until I hear that, but but I but I wanted to bring it up based on this particular application. Thank you. I just wanna offer a quick response to the, to the idea that this basically requires the owner to operate a home stay. The the special exception homestay. It's an additional right that the owner has in addition to all the other rights that come under the zoning ordinance.
So if the next owner chose not to run a homestay, that would be their right not to as well. I can't speak probably as well as Ms. Green can to what a change in ownership would involve in terms of further approvals, whether some sort of zoning clearance would be required for a subsequent owner so that, that might be another opportunity to revisit the continued use of the homestay upon a change in ownership. But again, just to respond that the granting of this special exception, if it were granted, would not require the owner to continue homestay use. I have a question along these lines,
and maybe it's the same one that Jim is thinking, but maybe it's different. It occurs to me that the owner of the homestay and the person to whom we're issuing it is not Mary. It is Monticello Inn and Cottage LLC, which is a separate legal entity that can be sold rather than changing the ownership of the property because it's still owned by the same LLC, that doesn't that kinda defeats the purpose. I'm not sure we can I'm not sure we can avail ourselves of this law functionally because it can tact to it can be inherited by whomever and still have
the same owner, because which is a thing for us to remember moving forward and maybe to think more judiciously about issuing to LLCs, which currently requires the matter to come before us. Which has been our concern multiple times. Yeah. Which is why we wanted to keep you The LLC can sell. It can be sold. And if if this is the only asset the LLC holds, I don't know. I mean, it could be. And we've had as many Yeah. The ownership can I'm not sure if this is a thing that we can pierce the veil for I don't this is no.
It's a corporate education I never got. Well, I mean, conceivably, conditions could be added both to making this effective only as long as it were owned by such and such LLC and so long as the LLC were owned and operated by specific individuals. Again, that gets away from land use principles, where we're looking at is this property properly used as a land use rather than looking at the ownership. And I imagine that's probably why staff is not recommending that, the use be conditioned on ownership. But, again, I think that conditions could be added. It becomes more complicated if the board chooses to do so.
Interesting. Supervisor Lopita Kirdle. Okay. We're gonna have to think about that one, but I I did wanna ask. There are two homes on there on two separate properties. Correct? They're the same property. It's the same property, but 10 acres, but allowed to have two homes on there. Okay. So you have your one home where the resident resides with, available home stays and then the three out outbuildings. Right? And then in the other house, it's a church that's being converted into a residence. Correct?
Correct. And it's supposed to be for a homestay. Would it have, we mentioned before earlier, a kitchen. Wouldn't that have a kitchen? And is that going to be part of it or demolished or or what? Is it just gonna be single rooms in that converted church? The converted church is gonna be a a a full single family dwelling. Okay. Considered a full single family dwelling. And my understanding from the property owner when I've spoken to her is that there will be folks, also living there,
caretakers. So in this Whole family dwelling, the church conversion. There will be people living there that helps take care. And then the new residence to be built, again with a red star, that will be, the property owner's full time residence. Right. With a couple rooms for home stay. Correct. But Correct. But it'll it will be it's built as a full single family dwelling. And the church is a full single family dwelling also. I thought there were rooms in there for homestays also.
But it was But There are. So think about it just like a large house with many, many bedrooms. Right. Right. Okay. So that will have a kitchen, but it'll be the owners, and then they can rent a separate bedroom. Okay. It it will have a kitchen. Okay. You know, because it's a residence. Okay. Thank you for the point of clarification. Thank you. Yes, it's my understanding that our rules, as they are written, basically would say you could have there are two homestay uses on the property. Yes. And there could be five with each. Correct. Right. But in this case,
the three external would have been allowed if they had been built prior to this particular date, 2019. But it's the fact that they're being built now is the sole issue? Yes. That is the sole issue. If they were all built under the same roof, it would be one large house, much like the church. And so if you built a large single family dwelling with 10 rooms, five of those rooms could be used as a homestay, and this would not be before you. Right. So if so if they had these two houses and they just put five rooms
in each, that would be fine. But in this case, we're taking the three that are trying to turn into external structures that weren't built previously. Correct. Okay. I see it as within our rules, except for the fact that these are due construction. And while it feels a lot like a hotel or a rural inn, I don't see it as outside the rules except for the fact that these structures aren't in existence right now. So are there any other comments or questions by the board?
Yes. Question, just to get future explanations some other time. The I was under the impression that we were already requiring new owners to have process, and that that was the the comfort that people got that if a new owner came along for one of these LLCs, that they had to start all over again or at least come back to SAFE and make sure that all their ducks were in a row. And that was the only way that we had gotten over the angst about LLCs, period. But now I'm being told that that's not the case because you can then then
sell the LLC name to somebody else. And so just my alarm bells are going off big time on that. And in the future, I hope we will all think about ways that we can get back on track with what our whole goal for allowing homestays, period, was to help resident homeowners, which is what this owner is. So, anyway, I'll just leave that grenade. Authority to do what you're saying until quite recently. I remember But I thought that within the last year, it was now done in our documentation, but I guess not. Yeah. I think I think so. We've implemented it. We haven't we haven't used it yet.
It it is kind of a toggle we can select from when approving, and one has not come before us, I think, since we've had this authority. And this is the first one where I think we've both had the ability and remembered we have the ability. Mhmm. And it's because it's held by a LLC, which was previously approved. Mary has come here before the board previously to get approval to run it through an LLC rather than through her own name. It is slightly more complex, and this is a complexity I don't think we've encountered before with the fact that they're LLCs.
So either we can do it through additional restrictions, which I don't think we're in a position to do today, or we can exercise a higher level of scrutiny and care before approving LLC ownership, which has to come before us. Those are the two kind of different ways to do it. But, yeah, this is this is kind of a that part of it, I would say, is an issue of first impression, with this. While I'm yakking, you know, this is in the Scottsville district. So I would just say, you know, the things that I have told the board before that I care about and think about with these things, obviously,
character and cohesiveness with the character. I think this is interesting and that it's slightly challenging, but honestly, I think we're retaining a historic building. We're putting a good use to it, and we're having some amount of economic activity in the rural area, which I get excited about. It's this is like a small impact version of the project that, our neighbors in Fluvanna torpedoed at the border of Scottsville, if you all remember that. And the other thing I'm concerned about is when a homestay would functionally remove housing from the long term housing stock. That's only come up maybe once,
and that gives me pause. That's not implicated here. We're actually creating new housing stock. Yes. For sure. We're not we're not depriving existing housing stock. We're turning something that wasn't housing into housing, and we're creating a new outbuilding. And so I have no reason to oppose this. I think it's a novel way to engage with our code as written. And I'll just if you could go back a couple of slides, maybe one or two. I can't remember. It's not very far. There. Those are the criteria that I really would be looking at in this in my case, and I don't see those as being a problem.
But I do agree that we need to be careful, because if this were something that had an adverse impact or potentially an adverse impact, then I would feel very differently about it depending on the location. So If there's nothing else, if we could have the sorry. We just got off for No, thanks. Sorry. Thank you. I would like to move that the board adopt the resolution for special exception 2020Five-twentyFive-two895, Rolling Road Homestay, attached to staff reports, attachment F. Second. We have a motion from supervisor Pruett, second from supervisor Malek.
Without objection, mister Kirk will call the roll. Miss mister Pruett? Aye. Mister Andrews? Yes. Mister Galloway? Yes. Miss Malek? Yes. Miss McKeel? Yes. Miss Lakisha? Aye. Okay. Thank you. Well, it's thought through, but Can I ask a question, mister chair? Just Sure. Because it's related to this then. Because in hearing as part of Andy's explanation, he was mentioning that it sounds like staff takes it into consideration that they can exercise the option to not have it continue past the applicant. I wasn't aware that was part of the process. Does staff do that?
I mean, in the past, we haven't had but so many since we've got the authority. But I always kinda thought that that was an option that the board would have to remember to do and then do the do the thought process on it. But if but that would be new to me if staff is taking these applications and using that as a consideration. And then, I mean, that presumes that someday you might recommend we do that. But if that's not part of the conversation, I'm not saying that's good or bad or needs to be or doesn't need to be, but I I think we need to know if it is or isn't. And it needs to be somewhere in our guiding documents that we're thinking about,
it would seem like to me. Because just for board members to remember Yeah. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Well, and I don't want staff to be like, oh, we haven't been doing this. Like, that's that's not a problem. I never thought you were. I just want to know that that's something we all need to remember to do. And if it's on the board, it's on the board. But, I just don't know if it's a consideration or not. Typically speaking on these type of applications, especially with the new mandate that we're in for legislative approval, that would be something we would get guidance from the board. So I can say based off of this conversation today,
that is something we will definitely, take a look at and and talk through more. Yeah. Yeah. It would seem like it to me, and I I think that maybe what you're saying, that there should be something in our guiding documents that would help us a little bit with this as well, Lisa, not just that we can remember out of the blue that we had this, because I just like I said, I can't remember what I had for breakfast much less. But No. And I and, like, I didn't I didn't expect you all to do that. Yeah. So that's what I but I think it's something that that we have to remember for sure.
But if it's in our document somewhere, somehow, then that guides us to that if we wanna use it. Think about it. Right? That's what I'm saying. So as part of the template, Stafford Board, the board has the option to x, y, z? That's what I'm getting at is let's have it somewhere so that when it comes to a board And it's not just homestays. Right. Well, that's right. Be exercised on other land use decisions, so it's not just homestays. Correct? I'm I'm afraid I'm not understanding your question. Could you be more specific? I thought there were some other instances where you could not run it with the land and stop it with the current applicant,
not just homestead. Correct. Correct. And and as indicated, it's a a newly enabled authority. That's correct. We've never had that discussion. We're making this sound like it's just homestay applica it's other land use applications as well, I thought. And as a board, we've never had that discussion around that new, guidance from the general assembly. We need a learning opportunity. Exactly. That's what I'm Absolutely. Okay. Oh, here comes Bart. There you go. Oh, Lord. Well, the candidate has got the posh open now. Bart Sabota, deputy director of zoning administrator. So we'll look at that. I I think we're here to miss Green's point and mister Herrick's.
We'll look at that legislation to make sure how it applies. We'll also include kind of feedback on these applications if if that's an option that that we see is, something that either we wanna know about and talk about or whether or not that we think that that situation calls for an ownership limitation, we'll take a look at that. But I don't wanna, without having the legislation in front of me, I don't wanna do it kinda And I'm looking for that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So which which land use decision it applies to? I think it's fairly narrow,
but we'll take a look at it and and make sure that the board gets the proper feedback on these applications. Something that would trigger. Yes. Yeah. That would be great. I I think it also helps to to look at the issue of LLC ownership and whether it can be pierced, as you said, to look at Yes. Here today. Yes. That particular applicant, supervisor approved. Consistency consistent treatment among applicants is incredibly important to me, that we have this nailed down ahead of time so that we know that person over here and person over there are gonna have the same rules.
Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Good afternoon. Lot of discussions when these come up about LLCs. Mhmm. Just saying. Thank you. Board board, you know, I'm proud of us. We saw that there was only a three hour meeting, and we said, no. I'm gonna earn my salary. I'm going to add an award ceremony. I'm gonna add a work session on land use policy. Where's that? So Well, let me just if if I could, I I don't wanna delay the point further. But just to be clear, in terms of the homestay regulations, there's not a per se restriction on LLC ownership of homestays. What it is is there's a residency requirement. And since an LLC is not a natural person,
the board needs to grant a special exception in order to allow a resident manager when a homestay is owned by an LLC. So again, I just wanted to clarify what the LLC tie into homestays was. It's not a per se restriction. It's a limitation on owner occupancy of the homestay. Right. But my question has to do with whether the LLC transference can trigger any kind of review. Correct. Thank you. Board, I think this brings us to our presentation on the fiscal year twenty twenty five annual comprehensive financial report and audit results.
About time, thank you. And this is sorry for the delay, Paul. I appreciate your patience with us. Shanandra Usher, Assistant Chief Financial Officer of Operations. Welcome. Thank you, Chair Andrews. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Shanandra Usher, the assistant one of the assistant CFOs of, our department of finance and budget. And I stand before you today to present the highlights of our fiscal year twenty five annual comprehensive financial report, commonly referred to as the ACFR, and audit results along with Megan Argenbright,
our managing partner of Brown Edwards, our auditing firm. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge and thank our CFO, Jacob Somner, for his leadership and support. In addition to Jen Land, our controller, Dennis Click, our deputy controller, Mukhtar Farhang, our payroll manager, Shelby Coleman, lead accountant, Stacy Smith, lead accountant, Deanna Davenport, lead accountant, Lisa Davis, senior accountant, Troy Arevello, senior accountant, Eric Rigo, accountant, Adrianna Thomas, accountant, along with supporting offices,
the office of management and budget, the office of investment debt management the office of investment and debt management, the office of revenue administration, the office of procurement, the office of grants and agreements, the office of enterprise risk Management and Shared Services, the Office of Real Estate, Schools Fiscal Services, and the Office of the CFOs and the Office of the CFO. If you are here this afternoon, please stand so that you may be recognized. Thank you. Again, thank you for your diligent work and dedication. Before we jump into revenue and expenditure figures,
I'd like to provide an overview of the ACFRA. There are four delineated basic sections of the ACFR. They are the introductory section, the financial section, the statistical section, and the compliance section. Within the introductory section, there's a table of contents, the letter of transmittal, organizational chart, list of principal officials, and the GFOA certificate of achievement award if received. Within the financial section, it contains five segments. This is the independent auditor's report, the management discussion and analysis, which is required supplemental supplementary information,
basic financial statements with notes to the financial statements. This is the audited information, required supplementary information, and then other supplementary information. The basic financial statements oops. I didn't mean to go that way. The basic financial statements include two types of statements. These are government wide financial statements and fund financial statements. The government wide financial statements are enterprise wide financial statements that cover government activities, business like activities, and combine component unit activities. The fund financial statements include financial reporting on the county's major and non major funds,
the internal service funds, investment funds, and custodial funds. Fund financial statements focus on near term inflows and outflows of spendable resources at the end of the fiscal year. Within the statistical section, it's broken into five categories. There's the financial trends, the revenue capacity, debt capacity, demographic and economic information, and operating information. Finally, there's the compliance section, which typically includes the independent auditors report, the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, commonly known as the SEFA report, and the schedule of findings in question costs for the current and prior year.
Due to the federal government shutdown, the federal compliance was delayed in its release for fiscal year 'twenty five. Therefore, the CEVA report is not a part of the documentation that you all have received. Megan, our managing partner from Brown Edwards, will share more on this when she presents. Now let's take a look at our fiscal year twenty five general fund revenues. The total revenues for general fund for fiscal year twenty five is $458,000,000 with the majority of our revenues in personal property taxes at $308,000,000 This consists of real estate, personal property,
mobile homes, and machinery and tool taxes. 84,500,000.0 in other tech in other local taxes, which includes sales and use tax, business, occupational, and professional licenses, transit and occupancy taxes, cigarette tax, and bank franchise tax. I'd also like to highlight the revenue from use of money and property. This is from the county's investments and the rental of county facilities in the amount of 8 point approximately $8,200,000 Now let's take a look at our general fund expenditures for fiscal year twenty five.
The total expenditures are 400 approximately $458,000,000 Our larger expenditures are in support of schools at $213,000,000 and public safety in the amount of $69,000,000 This demonstrates our county's commitment to providing the foundation for a flourishing community. Our transfers out for debt and CIP are around $49,000,000 And of the $33,000,000 in expenditures that you see displayed in community development, 17 approximately 17,800,000.0 as a part of the revenue sharing program that we have with the city of
Charlottesville. Our total revenues equaling $458,000,000 and total expenditures approximately $457,700,000 The excess of the revenues over the expenditures brings us to our net change in fund balance, which is about 450 approximately $452,000 for fiscal year twenty five. So the net change in fund balance plus the beginning balance from the previous fiscal year, which is $97,900,000 roughly, brings us to our end of year fund balance in the amount of $98,300,000
Finally, let's review a breakdown of our fiscal year fund balance. There are three categories of fund balance as defined by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. They are non spendable, committed, and unassigned. Non spendable funds in the amount of $897,000 is the balance of our inventory, prepays, and net leases receivable. Our committed funds, approximately $7,800,000 are funds that have already been approved by the board for future use in all functional areas. This includes in conferences, reappropriations, and the school reserve balance fund.
Our unassigned funds, approximately $89,700,000 these are funds that are available for future use. According to our policy use of unassigned balance funds, these also cover our 10% fund balance reserve and our 2% budget stabilization reserve. At this time, I'll hand the presentation over to Megan Ardenbreit of Brown Edwards, and she will present to you the results of our fiscal year twenty five audit. Thank you. Welcome. I saw Shanandra move it up, and I was like, what does she do? You're one of the first people we've seen do that. That's really cool.
I'm Megan Argenbright. I'm a partner at Brown Edwards. And, I brought with me Addison Roeschle. He's sitting there in the back. Addison runs the job. He's the manager on the job. He oversees the day to day, and he actually is the one who prepared the ACFR. So, I'll be fairly brief here. Thanks to county staff, it is not an easy process. We're always, add on, right? You have to do your normal day to day and then the auditors are here and asking you questions for two to three months on end, to get the process rolling. So, would not be able to do it without the effort, put in by county staff.
We do have three deliverables as part of this process. The first one, the big one, is the ACRA, the annual comprehensive financial report. We did issue a clean opinion, an unmodified opinion. That's the one that you want. As part of that opinion, if you were to compare last year to this year, you will see there was one new standard implemented, and we did point that out in the opinion because it is a new process. That standard was GASB one zero one for compensated absences. It's just the way GASB is going with increasing liabilities. They did the same with pension and OPEB and leases,
and now we're recording a slightly larger liability for compensated absences is generally the direction that that standard went. County staff, though, was very involved in coming up with the estimates for how to record that new standard. A couple of things also in the act for, the transmittal letter, which is the very first thing, is gonna be a lot of economic information, a large overview of the county and what's been going on and what is coming up in the future. After our opinion is management's discussion and analysis,
and that is the only place really in the ACTRA that you're gonna find a current year prior year comparison. So if you wanted a nice summary, it's like 40 pages, but if you wanted a summary, you could read this management's discussion and analysis. It provides a little bit more information than the rest of the, ACFRA does. As Shanandra mentioned, usually at the end of the ACFAR, there's a little bit more bulk to the compliance section. So because the uniform guidance, and the compliance supplement was not issued, it was issued the day before Thanksgiving.
And so in order to not rush through that process and make sure that we completed the federal audit, to the best of our abilities with all the correct information, we did not want to rush to meet the the state deadline, which was December 15. So all of this information, we have enough to submit to the state timely. In fact, we've issued you guys had finals, not to pat ourselves on the back, but last year if we had drafts, so, very excited and that's a testament to the efforts by the county staff, to get this done sooner. So, we will be issuing a separate report on the compliance.
I won't need to come present that to you, but we will be providing it, to the finance department and you will, I'm sure, receive a copy of that. We did already start testing the federal awards. That process is well underway. We just couldn't finish it without the final documentation of the compliance supplement. Our other deliverables include a, what we call, management letter. It's a letter on internal controls. To point out there, all of our comments from last year, had improvements and a lot of them were, what was a significant deficiency or material weakness last year,
there are no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses, which is a level of internal control comment. So worth noting that we made these recommendations last year and staff made improvements in each area where we had a recommendation. And there were no new comments for this year, which is also a very, important thing. So not only did they focus on the areas where we said you could have improvement, but all areas continue to operate, where they should be. Our there's also, I guess, at the end of that letter, some upcoming standards if you're so interested in reading about what maybe what I may be talking about next year.
There are three pages related to what's out there on the horizon. The last deliverable is to the letter the letter to those charged with governance. This is also commonly referred to as the audit committee letter. It's very standard boilerplate letter. We have to communicate certain items to you all, including that there are estimates in the financial statements. As I mentioned a little bit ago, there was a new standard this year, GASB 101. There is a new estimate in that letter for that new standard. There's also a place, in this letter for corrected misstatements.
There was just one of those, and uncorrected misstatements, which are items that we do not feel would influence anybody's decision making on the financial statements. Attached to the audit committee letter is management's representation letter. As I said, we come in here, we ask a lot of questions, we ask for a lot of support, and this representation letter is essentially saying we've told you everything we know, to the best of our ability. We did not withhold information and we answered all of your questions, but it's seven pages long. So beyond that, if you guys have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.
But again, I'll just emphasize it was a clean opinion. There were no, state findings, no new current year management letter comments and improvements to all of last year's management letter comments. Those are the key takeaways. Thank you. We'll go through our order with questions, starting with Supervisor Prowler. I'm not sure I have anything. Thank you for your word. Thank you. Supervisor McKeon? Thank you for the report and the good news. Good news. I will say that occasionally over the years, I've heard people in the community question why we have unassigned monies Everybody.
And while they're we have given them a tax increase if they're unassigned dollars. And I'm just saying that if they're capturing or looking at that unassigned, doesn't mean that that the monies are unassigned, but the word leads folks down. And I don't know if you want but maybe addressing it now would be helpful rather than by email over the next week or so. Just saying. Sure. Jacob Sumner, chief financial officer. The categories of fund balance that are presented in the financial statements, those, those titles are dictated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.
And so we don't get to choose those titles, but there are certain reasons why things are classified in those. So essentially, the unassigned fund balance for us or for governmental entities are the things that aren't, restricted, either by the governing body, or restricted by some external outside entity. And they're also something that is, can be spent. So the non spendable is another category like, inventories and things like that. So the that assigned is almost like a catch all, category for our fund balance. And for us, according to our financial, management policies,
we also include within that category. That's where our, our unsung fund balance for our, our 10 unsung fund balance and our 2% budget stabilization reserve, resides within the that category. And that's helpful. And that's what I think of as our rainy day fund. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. You are. Thank you. Supervisor Malek? No questions, but I was surprised about the name change because, I guess, wasn't it called the CAFR for, like, twenty years? And now it's ACFR. It was. Yeah. They had to change the name. I think it was three years ago.
It's yeah. Now it's part of my everyday. I say Acura naturally, but it was a transition Okay. For sure. Thank you. Supervisor Gallo? No questions, but two just comments. With Jim, I serve on the audit committee. So, as there, I just wanted to commend staff because all of the, items that were noted last year, the fact that they were all addressed, and it does state in the letter no concerns currently exist. So I appreciate they made improvements, but they've actually corrected. Yes. So it's an improvement, but it's also handled.
It's not further improvement needed. So, congrats to you all and grateful to you all for doing that. And then this new standard, I'm still not sold on. I know. It seems a little weird for auditors. While liability is something an auditor would be concerned about, sure, It's a little too theoretical or abstract for me what they're trying to put a number on because it's this is uncommon. It's like trying to predict what your sick leave might be. I mean, that that to me is the part that's still a little fuzzy wuzzy, And it's just funny to me that auditors are trying to prognosticate versus,
Right. We're adding another estimate. Yeah. So yes. But I won't yeah. I've said my piece at the committee meeting on that one. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor McPhee, sir. So is fuzzy wizzy going to take the place of wackadoodle? Just what Wackadoodle is more fun to say. Wackadoodle. A little more fun. Right. And wackadoodle made Virginia Mercury at one point in the article. Article. So I don't really have any questions either, but I do want to commend you on the fact that we don't have any state findings or management letters we have to correct and the fact that you corrected everything from last year was previously stated.
Thank you. And did all. Thank you. Appreciate it. My understanding is we need to accept this with a do we need a vote to accept this? There's a motion. Motion and there it is. Great. So and the, CFO's office had, coordinated with me this proposed motion. This is the motion that's required, or the code section you see at the bottom is the required action. It's the the, executive summary wasn't quite all pointed. It doesn't the report doesn't need to be accepted by the board, but the board just needs to authorize the chair and the county executive to sign this statement. Okay. Thank you. I would like to move that the board authorize the chair and the county executive
to execute a notarized statement that the county's audited financial report has been presented to the board. Second. We have a motion from supervisor Pruett, second from supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if the court will call the roll. Mister Pruett? Aye. Mister Andrews? Yes. Mister Galloway? Yes. Miss Malik? Yes. Miss McKeel? Yes. Miss Lakisha? Hi. Thank you. And thank you for that report, and, good news. Thank you all for your time and attention today. And I believe it's time for us to take a fifteen minute recess. Okay. Welcome back, Ward. Next up is zoning modernization,
formatting and early updates, led by Leah Rumpfelt, Senior Planner II. Welcome. Thank you, Chair. And let's get this presentation going. There we go. Good afternoon, everybody. Members of the board, chair Andrews. My name is Leah Brumfield. I am senior planner two in the zoning division of community development. And today, I am presenting, an update on our zoning modernization project. We did just adopt AC 44. Yay. So we're working to incorporate it into the ordinance, and today's presentation will be an information sharing update about how that is coming about.
So briefly, we'll start with a reminder of our project goals. We have simplified those into four objectives, which we'll go on in the next slide. Following that, we'll talk about the work we've completed to date, which AC 44 and best planning practices are possibly going into the zoning ordinance, what that will mean as we as we look at that, and then the phased approach we're taking to accomplish our overall project goals. Finally, we will wrap up with next steps. I know we are going to probably have a lot of questions, but I would request that we hold them to the end of the presentation,
because a lot of the questions on one slide are probably going to be answered on the next slide. So we have distilled all the paragraphs of descriptive, beautifully evocative goals that we've written throughout the ROI's for this project, the early evaluations, the early presentations. These can be summarized into these four bullet points. We are rewriting the ordinance for clarity and for ease of use. We're streamlining administrative processes for both efficiency and for the appropriate amount of staff and legislative body time. We are aligning the ordinance with AC 44 comprehensive plan,
and we're updating the ordinance overall for modern best practices that meet today's county's needs and move forward into the future. So this first phase, which we are calling the foundation phase, is complete. This phase, we worked with the aid of local government consulting company, the Birkin Group. We conducted staff and development community stakeholder interviews, two on twos with planning commission members, and, the Berkeley Group provided a general review of the ordinance against best practices and project goals, ending up with a zoning ordinance evaluation.
And at the end of this stage, we drafted new draft articles for the ordinance, establishing the language, the tone, the overall structure that we were going to be using throughout rewriting all of the ordinance. We're also we also condensed and simplified a few administrative processes here. We involved heavily involved, the community development teams involved in those processes. And then at the end of drafting that, we did bring the four new articles to the legislative bodies, and they are currently available on our engage website.
So as a recap, the four articles we drafted in this phase were article one, general provisions, with the overall, pre boilerplate, same establishment of authority as our current ordinance. Article two, which was establishing the authority of the bodies involved in administering the audience. I'm sorry. The, the ordinance, the zoning administrator, planning commission, architectural review board. Article three, which outlined all the applications, the various permits that are covered under the zoning ordinance, and the processes for each of those applications. And then article 10, which describes nonconformities.
This was also fairly boilerplate. It's very standard, and, didn't require a lot of decisions. Very similar across all of Virginia. So all of these sections do follow the basic same basic structure, and this provides a logical consistency, starting with the intent or purpose, ending up with any modifications or waivers. So a very natural progression of standard to less standard and everything in between. As we needed, different regulations would have different sections added or would have, subsets under a larger umbrella of different provisions.
But, overall, the architecture of the regulations is very consistent. So it's kind of an early bird special. We applied this ordinance architecture to the proposed revisions for riot and form based code, which will be presented to the Planning Commission, I believe, in the 2026, I think around January. Obviously, a board meeting to follow. Our, zoning modernization team has had a very strong overlap with our RIOT two ninety nine Form Base Code team. So, we have been able to follow that same tone, the same language style, and the same overall structure. So here you can kind of see the two sections on the left,
the draft article three, and on the right, the draft right to an end form based code, and really highlighting the similarities of the format there and, like, the overall structure. The numbering scheme is different, but that's because we all have to, put the form based code into our current ordinance, not the updated one. So as phase one is completed, we are moving to phase two, and this we are calling format modernization. This is a slightly different project organizational scheme than we previously, discussed, so I'll go into that in the next couple of slides. And the reason we are calling this format modernization is because this phase focuses primarily
on the format, less so the content and the regulations themselves. So going back to our project goals, this phase completes what we started in phase one, rewriting the ordinance for clarity and ease of use and organizational structure. So at the end of this phase, phase two, we're anticipating adoption of a fully rewritten ordinance, article one all the way through, that will have simpler, clearer language, logical and navigable format, and simpler administrative processes. However, this preface phase would not include the majority of the substantive regulatory changes,
and those changes would be rolled into what we're calling phase three. So, as an example of what we're doing in this phase two, this would be rewriting and reorganizing the ordinance, and one of those big changes that we're looking at is taking the lists of uses that you have to go through every single section to find, and putting them into easy to scan tables. So we have been working on these tables for a few months at this point, and as you'll note, the example on the screen is for the format review only. The lorem ipsum text is to kind of show you that this is just format,
not content. What I would ask you to look at here is the ease of use of reading them. You can easily see that something is either administratively approved by right, or it's a special use permit use requiring a board approval, is only permitted as an accessory use, or whether it's just not permitted at all. So these kinds of formatting changes do make it a lot easier and simpler, and that is the standard for modern ordinances. Additionally, we would have some simplification in language here. The one example I would have you look at on this chart is the very
bottom use, campground. We currently have two uses in that category, boarding day boarding camp and a day camp, and they're treated exactly the same, and they both require a special use permit, and they have exactly the same permissions. They just have slightly different names, and most camps are both a boarding camp and a day camp. This would just be a simplification, and that's the kind of thing that we are looking at in this this phase. Another of the changes here in phase two is reorganizing and rewriting language that exists. That is, again, not a substantive change in this one. Here you see the supplemental regulations.
Currently, section five of the ordinance are being renamed performance use standards as a clarification of what we're trying to do here, is avoid, impacts from uses. So here we have reorganized, the types of uses into a more logical format where all of the agricultural uses are together, all the residential uses are together, and etcetera. So, here, just an example again, not completed. All of the, the social clubs and lodges are grouped under public civic and recreation use, and so is community center.
And so if you have a public civic recreation use, you can automatically go to that section. It's clearer. It's faster. This, this kind of language change as well, pulling the larger paragraph and pulling it into an easier to read list with a bulleted format, that's the kind of change of update that will be applied in phase two, providing a fresh slate of the ordinance that's easier to read before we go on to the more substantive changes. And finally, phase two will have some small regulatory updates that are as currently adopted in the comprehensive plan,
but are smaller and not, not large changes. This slide highlights just a few of the types of changes that staff are considering rolling into this phase. These types of changes would just be codification of standard practice, that we do every day. Or it's a very simple adoption of industry standard practice, as a type of performance use standards. So these are being brought to this project by staff, who are noting which types of special exception applications are approved the same language over and over and over again,
with very little changes. Example, taller building heights with, without requiring step backs, or, very low hanging fruit kind of implementation actions that are currently listed in the comprehensive plan. So, these would be things that are, being pulled from AC 44, and we are working very closely with, that team to determine which, if any, of the comprehensive plan actions would fall under this category. So this is, something that we'll be continuing working on. So moving to phase three of the zoning modernization project, this is the regulatory modernization,
and this phase is pulling the last two goals, aligning the zoning ordinance with AC44, and updating regulations for general best planning practices. So, as the, newly adopted comprehensive plan is a fairly weighted document, staff engaged with the public extensively on that process. And the culmination of that work had numerous actions and goals for the community as a whole, spanning every department in county government. But one of the direct ways that we implement the comp plan is through the zoning ordinance. And so one of the big moves of AC 44 implementation plan is to align
the zoning ordinance with AC 44. Of the other big moves, the ones that are listed here are ones that can be incorporated into zoning modernization. Just a couple of examples of what that would look like. The zoning modernization team is working closely with AC forty four team and also with the county executive's office as we are determining how these goals and actions are going to be implemented. And throughout the phase three of this project, we would be bringing many of these types of changes to the board in draft ordinance format. So that's kind of the high level, zooming into the individual,
individual action level. The comprehensive plan currently has, not currently, it does have 68 individual actions, which might be included in zoning modernization. And as we have mentioned, we are working to prioritize those actions, figure out which actions and, which goals are recommended to be included in zoning modernization, and the discussions between staff will culminate in work sessions with the board, and the resulting priorities will be written into new draft ordinance in zoning modernization phase three. So, at the same time that we're having these conversations,
we are consulting with other departments as well. We're trying to figure out how we're going to be addressing comprehensive plan goals and actions that are outside of zoning modernization, and making sure that the actions that we're taking are going to be coordinating and meshing with other departments to make sure that our initiatives aren't working against themselves and are bringing about the most effective changes that we need to make in the county. We currently have a target date of spring twenty twenty six to bring, approval for the prioritization goals to the to the board, and,
other departments, of course, will also be providing updates on different project initiatives along the way and continuing forward. And then also the best planning practices that we had talked about. We're incorporating a number of initiatives that, staff, developers, property owners, commission members, and board members have been saying, oh, we should fix this for many years. Updating our parking regulations, for example, simplifying our sign regulations, codifying minimum sizes and standards for tree wells, for landscaping requirements, and those types of things that are really,
just overall industry best practices. And these types of changes will largely be informed by the recommendations from professionals and from other best planning practices from other ordinances, both across Virginia and in the planning field in general. As we are trying to figure out how this is all going to happen, how this is all going to line up, as we will notice from the handouts provided, which are also available in the sideboard for the public, and also available on our engage website. These two phases are concurrently both running.
They'll be following each other, and they'll be kind of playing off of each other as they move forward. So the format modernization phase, we're working on just rewriting the ordinance without substantive changes. We're looking at concluding with the adoption of that cleanup ordinance with a, target date in 2026, at the 2026. The rewriting of the ordinance overall, however, reviewing the or the uses as we're going through that, reviewing all of the different aspects of the regulations, and then taking note which ones will require more in-depth work. So right now, we're really in the pre planning stage of phase three,
and then we are going to be, noting which things we're going to be looking at, and who we're going to be talking to throughout the, drafting phase later on. Once we receive direction on prioritization of the overall larger goals, the staff level review will guide work with topic based focus groups and also our overall project partners, DDOT, the health department, ACSA, to write regulation changes that meet the directives that we have been given from AC44. So as we are pulling larger countywide goals and directions from the comprehensive plan,
the groups that we're going to be meeting with will largely be targeted topic experts, and industry experts who will provide us with best practices and very specific implementation strategies. So our current goal for the regulatory changes, incorporated into the previously adopted new clean formatted ordinance will be in, 2028, hopefully early in that year. This approach with staggered milestones has a much faster delivery of the new ordinance with both clarity and user friendliness right off the bat,
and then allowing us necessary time to do the research and engagement on topics that will require more in-depth discussions. And every zoning text amendment that I've worked on, the board might remember there had been a few, have involved an iterative process. So by building that iteration into our project timeline, we're allowing continuous progress, we're We're allowing for progress project learning, and we're also creating efficiency in both staff time and in legislative body time. So our public engagement strategy here focuses on information sharing to the broader public.
We're talking about updates in Albemarle County news, which you can sign up for under the news section on the primary albemarle.org website. The Albemarle County social media and our engagement website, which I will share the link to that on our last slide. You can also go to engage.albemarle.org and just search for zoning modernization. Throughout the process, overall, we are keeping the public informed with both the progress and then also an emphasis on the hows and whys we are rewriting the zoning ordinance. And, an education series for anyone who wants to really understand what is the difference between
the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance, among other types of topics. So following the robust, general public engagement of the comprehensive plan, which provided the county level broad goals, this project will be focusing heavily on target engagement, working with the topic experts that we are looking for as we're writing the ordinance that is already outlined in the broad goals from the comprehensive plan. We are working with our CAEP team, communications and public engagement, building those topic level groups, and we will be, obviously, consulting with them throughout our engagement,
efforts of the project. And we will also have, of course, legislative work sessions throughout to tackle any questions and direction and receive feedback. Our project's next steps will be continuing working on, uses uses and use tables, general formatting, general language rewrites, and the overall reorganization of the ordinance to make it easier to read and follow. And then our project engagement and education will be just ongoing throughout. Zoning modernization and the AC forty four team will be coming to the board with a work session, scheduled for spring twenty twenty six to determine which of the AC44 regulatory changes and
which best planning practices will be encompassed in phase three of this project. So after that work session, we'll be conducting the topic based discussions and, the legislative body topic review, starting that, around summer and then continuing throughout the life of the project. So this concludes our presentation on zoning modernization phasing updates, and we do have our engage, project website here. And now I would love to address any questions you have been waiting very patiently to ask. Thank you. We will go through our order beginning with supervisor Pruett.
Yes. So I wanna begin by saying I appreciate the additional clarity that you provided because my immediate question when just skimming through some of the materials was the format development process is as long as the regulation development process. And you clarified that that was going to be done in parallel. So I do appreciate that. So there's actually essentially twice as much time working on substantive regulatory changes, and that is because the first half there is in parallel a formatting change that's proceeding.
Something that this board knows has been on my mind in the past, and I would now reflect back looking because I don't see it explicitly called out. Can you help me understand what the the role of the CACs is going to be during this process? Are they kind of bundled in there with work groups? Is there a are they soft advisory? Do they have a concrete role? I think that we're gonna be working with CAPE on their direction for this, for for that aspect. I do know that, overall, the the the focus of our engagement is really gonna be on topic level experts.
And if there are any members of the CACs who are topic level experts, for example, professors at UVA in landscaping, then that would be something that would be useful. Okay. Thank you. There's I I guess maybe part of what I'm getting at is that when I previously expressed, like, some concern over the fact that the comprehensive plan includes a flume that had not been thoroughly community vetted, that was said as as that's a separate process for the master planning process. I'm I guess part of what I'm asking is is the is the CAC's master
planning process that may affect individual land uses, is that going to be happening as part of this, or is anything that happens there discreet and parallel? This is not a master planning process. This is pulling all of our direction from the planning process that's already been done. Okay. I think I have the answer I need from that. The other thing I'd be curious is if you could help me make sure I'm understanding. Because in in some ways, what we're doing is gonna be, like, dozens of things that we would individually normally have hours long work sessions on.
Right? We we've never met an ordinance that we don't Spend three hours with. And we're going to be doing probably two dozen comparably scaled projects at a time with discrete, level reforms. I I appreciate we wanna move faster than that. Can you give me a sense of what the shape of, like, normative check ins with the board is going to look like over the course of this? Because I can see how there's a tension there, and I I don't want another five year planning process for a five year plan
on the comprehensive plan. Well, I can reassure you that Claudette will get very sick of me requesting hours, for work sessions. K. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor McKeown. Yeah. I appreciate everything, Leo. Thank you for the presentation, and and I I thought you explained it very well, but I have a question that's probably I'm asking a lot of questions now because it's my last opportunity to ask questions. So and to get things said or on the record. So if we're talking about ordinances, and I understand this is way up,
and I'm I'm really drilling down. But so we have an we have an ordinance for home occupations. Yes. Yes. Mhmm. And I've asked multiple times for that ordinance to come before us because it needs to be reviewed. Because in b's opinion, in my opinion, and I think even Anne's opinion, there are home occupations, and Anne is agreeing with me, and I'm gonna look at me and she's agreeing with me. That ordinance has inappropriate home occupations identified, And it needs to be reviewed, and I think the board needs to have a chance to review it. So what do I do with that?
And my and what I would say is that ordinance also gets into neighborhoods, rural areas, development area differences because I I represent neighborhoods in the development area that have tiny lots and they have no home HOAs to protect them. And people get, home occupation for landscaping and then they bring in all of their trailers and all of their trucks and they park them either on the road or in their yard
or wherever they can make room for them, and it's not fair for the people for the neighbors. If you live where Jim lives or where Ann lives in the rural area on a piece of property, I don't care if you have a home occupation for landscaping. Am I making sense? And to try and and right now, everything that we're approving, almost all of the developments have HOAs. So some of my old neighborhoods and even Ned's old neighborhoods that have no HOAs to protect them get caught in this, and they are just full of
I mean, I of people who have a home occupation for landscaping. I thought home occupations were supposed to be not seen and not heard. They were and Anne is saying that. Yeah. They were supposed to be, you're working on your computer in your den, or you're teaching music lessons, or you're doing a, you're helping kids learn how to do math, or maybe you're giving physics work on physics. Right? Helping people understand physics. Not running a a landscaping business out of a house on a quarter acre of
property. And I'm not fussing at you. I've asked numerous times that I know Bea and I have had this discussion, Anne and I, home occupation ordinance before us. So is this process going to do that? That's my question. So that would be a question that we would bring to the board for the, the, unfortunately, I'm sorry, 03/04/2026. So do I have to come back and make sure I'm at the at the at the because they're not well, b will remember and a n will remember. I'm sure if you let me know, I'll come back because it's a huge problem in my urban neighborhoods where they have
a quarter and a half an acre, and it's it's really causing a lot of consternation, and it's not an appropriate home occupation for people that don't own property and have the property to store that equipment on. You can't have a landscaping business without having equipment, and people don't go out and rent property to put their, equipment on. A few do. The good guys do. I have one in my district who rents property for his equipment, but most people don't. I'm just saying. So can you put that that tickler on your list or
or do I just need to remember and whatever? We can make note of it. Definitely. Yeah. That would really be great, and I think I know at least Anne and Bee would appreciate it. And maybe Sally because believe me, Sally's gonna hear about this too. Thank you. That's the only question I have. Thank you. Supervisor Malick. Thank you. And that's another example of making sure that we're doing things the same because we did have one of these blow up in the rural area outside of Crozet where there are tiny little lots. It's an old hillside neighborhood from the forties. And it actually was forced to be removed after a while because of all the
impacts that were happening. But, that puts staff in a really bad position when they're having to deal with these things as one off. So I look forward to that. And please sign up for the agenda notices so you can keep after us. That's probably so this is sort of going back to, what engagement really means, because what I understand you to be saying is that the engagement you're talking about is one way. Kate is gonna be delivering what staff is doing and not really should in feedback. My concern is that the real work is getting done with the stakeholders.
Those you have mentioned are the people who are in business and applicants coming before the county with interest to make things go their way. And that's back the way it was in the eighties and nineties, and I am absolutely not interested in going back there. So there has to be a broader definition of who stakeholders are. The number one stakeholders are the citizens of the county, and then others who do business with the county is different. But we have to have a broad view if we're talking about what should be done.
I mean, the board needs to decide what should be done in these things if there's a question, not a bunch of people who are gonna be building houses or doing whatever it is that sector is doing, without having full minutes and full availability for everybody else to be part of the discussion. So I may have totally misunderstood what you were saying, and it looks like Jody's gonna help me out, which is good. The other feedback is the when there are presentations to the board, my own personal preference would be smaller topics more frequently because we looked looking back at the fire hose approach that we tried a couple of meetings during AC forty
four, that was a fiasco. And we ended up taking four times longer because we were going round and round in circles. So I would just suggest that you put that on your list as well. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor oh, go ahead, please. Thank you, Chair Andrews. Jody Filardo, community development director. Thank you very much for the feedback, Supervisor Pruitt and Supervisor Malek. Wanted to just clarify something. As, Leah Brumfield had shared, what we're doing with these next two phases is first, we're taking what you all have already passed as your zoning ordinances and just changing
the format on those things to put them into something that's more understandable. So the we're not making up new things, per se, in that phase two with some small exceptions for things like step backs where every single time we brought them to the board, you guys have approved the elimination of a step back. So those are the kinds of things. We will name those for you when they come to you, but that's what we're talking about for phase two. For phase three, the reason we're going more toward focused,
topic oriented interactions with people is because already through AC44, we've gone through a full public process. And what we're doing in phase three is activating the things you've already adopted in AC44. So we're using that as the rubric to bring it forward and putting it into ordinance language. So I appreciate this smaller bites of the apple is probably a good idea because we've all been through several of those really long, big AC44 meetings, and they were quite challenging.
But that, with the town hall approach to outreach and kind of reporting out to the public what we're going to be doing. It really is focused on activating the all of the actions that you've already adopted. We're trying to be sensitive, supervisor, to your concern about, we've got these plans, and they sit on the shelf, and you guys don't ever report out on what you've done. So we're trying to bring that back to you and actually activate all of those actions in AC44 you've asked us to implement. So I hope that clarifies a little bit. That does. And what triggered me was the thing on the slide about the housing from the
comp plan because there are a million different approaches that could be taken there, and I want to make sure that there's a full public discussion of which one of those is gonna be chosen. I think that's entirely appropriate. Thank you. We we we we don't wanna create problems for ourselves here that the general assembly is gonna do to us already with saying one size fits all everywhere, which is what they want to do now. So we are in big trouble if that passes, but we can't do it to ourselves. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. Can you can you go back to slide 14? Because I don't remember.
When you went to 15, I was like, what the hell was on fourteen? Alright. We're good. So if you can go to fifteen, and then sixteen is the actual call out of one of the action items. Alright. I know throughout AC 44, I mean, obviously, somebody's got in there update the zoning and ord ordinance that that that language is gonna appear and happens in different action places. Perfect. Exactly. And those if we're making changes to it that haven't already been decided, then those will come back to us for discussion review, all of that. Fine. What I don't remember or didn't track is outside of action items listed in AC
44, I seem to recall both during AC 40 four's process and others, you know, a lot of different meetings, things being said. Well, we'll handle that when we update the zoning ordinance. Parking lot. Mhmm. And I don't I don't like, right now, if if I were in a town hall and somebody said, how many items are in your parking lot and what are they? Do you guys have that in track that you could share with us at the get go so that we know what's in there that we're gonna be contending with? Yeah. So that, that's a really great question. And that is definitely going to be the focus of what we are talking about
in the spring. So So you'll bring that list forward then? Yeah. Our our, our two teams and, you know, honestly, the entirety of CDD and county executive's office, we're really focusing on which things are going to be aligned in these phases, and then bringing those recommendations to you, and reviewing all of the action steps that are in here, and saying, okay, well, this is really a short term action that we can accomplish within this project. Or this is a really, really huge action, and this is a a,
something we're going to need multiple external partners. We're going to need, incentives for, for a lot of other, potentially, like private partnerships. And so that's not really something we can tackle within zoning modernization. So that's really what we're going to be looking at, and then talking about which of those the board wants us to really move forward with. Unless this is just a massive request, March is but we're in the midst of budget season. So content rich from mid February through April. So to add something like this in there too, I mean, we're gonna have to do it. We don't wanna wait wait till after the budget.
But my request now would be, can you share that parking lot list of items so that board members can see? Because you're gonna be coming forward with game plans like you just said, but it would probably be it would be helpful to me to have a list of the items that are in there because then I can start going like, what was this in there? Why is what is this? I don't remember this. And we can talk about it. And it and it's just, it's it's nothing that I need. Like, I don't need explanations. I'll I'll use the example that I would bring up, and I don't even know if it's in here or not. But I remember that there were the folks from the Scottsville District out there on
250 that wanted to do woodworking and needed something changed. Now I seem to remember that that got tossed into the we'll handle that during the zoning modernization. And that, in particular, I don't really remember being discussed all that thoroughly during AC forty four. It was discussed in other times. So that's where I'm like I'm kind of awash where we're like, oh, man. I need to know what's in these buckets just to start getting my head wrapped around them. And to be able to say in March or whenever you bring it forward, where's this? Or, you know, maybe do a little I can do a little work ahead of time so I'm
not spending works valuable work session time going explain to me again what this is all about. I could maybe do that ahead of time. Jody Filardo, community development director. Again, couple things. The Funk brothers, I think, is the group you're referring to, and you all just saw them for an SP last meeting, I believe, where you approved that use as just an updated use for that particular product mix, that furniture, manufacturing, refinishing thing out on February. But they still had made a request previously that we consider looking at the artisan
uses of their special use permit, if I'm recalling, confines them to making up at least 50% of their sales with retail sales or maybe vice versa in a way that is constraining to their business practice. Well, and folks from early correct me if I'm I'm mistaken. I don't remember that constraint on this last past, but I may be wrong, so I don't wanna speak out of town. It hasn't come yet? I we've had a special permit in the last couple of months here for them. I would have remembered maybe We had a permit for it was it's several months
ago, that we saw for them. Yeah. They came before us. Connor, who has since moved on as a lobbyist for another organization, came and spoke. And I I remember it being that there was a special permit required, but it it does have a constraint that they had hoped not to have through a text amendment, which is that they have a there's a product mix of their total sales that have to be retail. Again, I I might be telling tales out of school, but, like, there is still work on the text amendment to supervisor Galloway's original point that I think was implied by that.
So there are first thing, thank you. I don't have more definitive information on that, but I certainly can get back to you on that. The request for what's on the list, we have a list of 63 items now that we would be happy to provide to you. It's in draft form. We are, the way this is planned to go forward is that we are bringing this to the county executives. The county executives are taking a look at that list and, kind of bundling and thinking about how would this come forward relative to your strategic
plan and relative to your budget. So we're trying to navigate and integrate these things for you so that it's not just a bunch of one off lists that you're having to think about and process. So that is underway right now. But we will happily provide this list of things that we're aiming for with the zoning ordinance modernization to you, just under please understand that it is draft, but it would give you something to start from, I would hope. Well, part of it is just kind of outlining the playing field. So I get that the the,
you know, the the bases or the lines, whatever mixed metaphor I can find here to make this playing field thing work. But the idea is I don't mind thinking and processing a little bit ahead of time. In fact, it helps me when it comes if it's go time, especially in those type of presentations at the last slide. There'll be probably some very specific questions they want the board to address. So having some drafts ahead of time would be helpful. Mhmm. Be happy to provide that. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. Supervisor Lupista Girdle. Okay. From what what I understand, is in the spring of,
'26, we're basically doing a cleanup of language, transferring it from legalese maybe into English. No offense. But, you know, that's basically what you're doing, for this coming spring. Correct? So what we are actually doing is we're doing that right now, and then we are going to be bringing that cleaned up language to the board at the 2026. Got it. The meeting that we're looking at in the, like, early in the 2026, that is really starting to work on the more regulatory,
bigger questions. The, talking about, what our districts are going to look like, talking about, what our use permissions and what kind of connectivity we're requesting, those kinds of things. Okay. And you had mentioned, or I think Jody mentioned about 63 items. Are those things that you're going to be actively working on, or give me when you say 63 items? So I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those are the actions that are pulled from the comprehensive plan that are directly related to zoning modernization.
So they are, if it's actually in the implementation chapters of the comprehensive plan listed initiative, it's I'm sorry, it's objectives like 1.1, 1.2, all the way down. Right. But there's okay. I remember going through all those, and there's only 63 that That are related to zoning modernization. Reso Yes. Okay. Related to zoning modification. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you. And then the as we as you go through this, will I know the final adoption is in January, February '28.
But as we go through this, will there be any other adoptions that we could do on the way to 2028? For the will it all be done in one lump sum, or or could we do it as we go along? You know, basically things that make sense or or that are prioritized by the board? The the big two big lump adoptions that we're looking at are the the format adoption and then the regulatory one. It would be theoretically possible, but we would really have to investigate looking at smaller adoptions.
I do know there are a number of smaller board and strategic plan priorities that are in the works right now. That might be something that would be adopted along the way. I think that, my my own personal feeling is that getting the individual ROIs for each of those would be, more headache than it would be than it would be worth. But that is definitely something we can investigate. Okay. And I think, Ms. Florida wants to mention something. Thank you. The overall work that, Ms. Bromfield is speaking of today really is the large zoning modernization project. However, we have a habit of bringing forward to you all key smaller items that are
of interest. Think about things like the solar ordinance, the wireless ordinance. And so we are aware there are a few things that you are are very interested in bringing forward outside of this large rewrite of the zoning ordinance. And so based on priorities that you all will get to set, you can tell us we'd like you to bring these things forward sooner than later. But that will be a Board decision, and we'll look for Board direction on that. Okay. That's a good point of clarification. Thank you.
Thank you. I think I'm following everything. This, obviously concerned about the fact that appreciative of the fact that these are phases, but they're taking place simultaneously rather than, they'll arrive at different times in a sequence. But in that, the December 2025 where it says prioritize and review regulatory changes, I just that's December, which is now. That's something that you're doing internally that will come to the Board then sometime in the spring? Yes. That's correct. And this this is really a,
as you can tell with the vagueness of the of the dates on here, it's really just a general concept. I think it sounds like a good plan. I certainly would encourage you to consider bringing things a little more frequently rather than waiting too long, because I think that every one of these that gets done helps somebody down the road to get something done. And that's what it's all about. And if we the board can act in a timely fashion without I mean,
if it fits in a bigger picture, then it obviously needs to come at once, one time so it can be discussed in that context. But if things can come that stand on their own before, then I think that would be helpful. Are there any other questions or any other information you need from us? I would like copy of the slides. We can definitely just read that. I do know that the clerk already has that, and, I can also have that sent to the emails as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If there's nothing further, then we'll move on to the next item on the agenda,
which is from the county executive, Aaron Revill, Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it very much. Give me just one second, please. So board, and I've got Ms. Stump, who's going to get up in just a second. I'm going to hand this off to Abby As our Community and Public Engagement Director, each year, this board receives an end of the year report. And each year, we visit after that's completed and talk about because it's something that's posted out on our website, and we encourage our community to take a look at it.
This year, under Abby and her team's leadership, we took a little bit of a different approach. And I want to take just a second just to say a couple of things. And that is, at our most recent national conference, we spent time looking at how the community is changing and how it interacts and receives information from local government. I would say that Ms. Stumpf is an expert in this area. She recently took, about 40 of our leaders in the organization through a discussion and broadened the conversation with our department heads,
our assistant department heads, key leaders on how we interact with the public, how local government interacts with its public. And that really was not the start of Abby and her team thinking about this differently. They've been thinking about this differently for a while. But, I would really, emphasize to this board that, gosh, in the time that I've been in this business and and and Ms. Wall has been in this business, man, have things changed with how we interact with the community. There was a time and day when we just put press releases out.
Our local media, worked. We worked through newspapers and we worked through the traditional stuff that all of you remember. And the change now is just so fast. And so today is just one opportunity, and I'm gonna ask Abby to step up and really give some more detail to this, please, if you would. And and as I ask Abby to step up and then she will tee this video up, I do want to take a minute and really brag on our CAPE division of the county executive's office. Board, you know how much work they do because you are in leadership positions and they
oftentimes get you ready for interviews. They get you ready for radio spots and that they give you an overview of what we're doing, what we're into. They give you bullets. You're in the middle of a lot of stuff. They do it for me. They do it for the county executive's office. They do it for our department heads. They they work really behind the scenes. This is a moment that I've asked Gabby to step up and and share more with this board. And and again, really thank you so much for your leadership in in the organization, in the community, with this board, with our key staff.
And we'll continue to evolve and try to do it better every year because there's not a one size fits all approach to this stuff as it relates to how we communicate and how the community likes to take their information in. So Abby, I'll turn it over to you. Great. Thank you. And speaking of bullets, I made sure to bring mine so I don't talk for too, too long because that's step number one, right? Make sure you stay on point. I'm going to add a little bit to the celebratory meeting, and I'm just going to share a few things that you sort of already know that will help prime, the approach that we took to this year's year end review video that also gives
a little insight of our general approach that we've been taking with particularly communications, this past year and and how we're gonna be moving forward. So the communications landscape is more challenging than than ever. Two, mind boggling data points is there are five hundred hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute. So that is just one pond of content and communications that, we're we're wading into. And then there are studies that say that people receive about a 140 notifications a
day. So that's, you know, bings on your phone. I did take our, our leaders through an exercise to show them how many notifications they were getting, and it was a little eye opening for some folks. And so if you need me to help you with that afterwards, I'm happy to show you. You may not want to see it, but I can help you find that number. Another key thing to know is that opinions are changing on how people want to receive their information. There is a decrease in trust in institutions. And so that polished PR, press release and statement isn't received,
as it was even, you know, four or five years ago. And so we have to look at different ways, to share that share that message. So to cut through all of this, if you ever come into my office, there's three things on my whiteboard that I always sort of keep in mind this year, and it's our focus area for communications. And, one is to humanize local government. We need to show that we are we are people. We are humans. We are in the community trying to do the best that we can, and have best intentions. We want to highlight purpose driven work.
The work that you all do, the work that the staff members do, it matters. And they get into this career to do better for the community. And so, we want to tell the community that but also because we want people that want to work for us to come and do those things. And lastly, we want to use clear, concise, and easy to understand language. And this is a launch to get people into the door, speaking to what's the issue that is going to get them in here. What are what's the hook that we can get people into and then be part of more deep engagement conversations as they come along down that spectrum.
So this year, we launched our Monday Minute. If you haven't seen it, it's a sixty seconds recap every Monday that says, here are the things to know this week, what's happening in the county. It can be road closures. It can be here's the school thing that our police department did. It can be here's a meeting. We even put in the board of supervisors meetings a few times, come and here's what they're they have on their agenda this week. And so we've been trying to just give sixty seconds. There's even a little timer at the bottom of the screen that ticks it down to, you know, sixty seconds. And so we took a page out of that,
that effort and challenged our department heads to say what in sixty seconds was most, impactful for you? What's a recap from your department? And that is not easy. It is not easy to say everything that these departments do in sixty seconds. But we worked hard. I think we, got around a minute ten for for most people. So we got close to to a minute for everybody. But it's really an example of how we're trying to show what is the real
impact, what is real outcome of the work that we're doing. And so this video, again, as I say, every year and as people have said it before, barely scratches the surface of what this organization has done, but it's a good way to highlight it. We will be sharing these out in one minute segments, so you'll see that it's segmented, by department as we watch it. It's a compilation tonight, but we'll be sharing that individually, over the next couple weeks as we wrap up the wrap up the year. And then right before I I hit play, I just wanna recognize the work that went into making these videos.
Is that as fun as it seems to just record, it's actually a lot of work. And so, thanks particularly to the departments who, were willing to get on camera, some a little bit begrudgingly, and some of them really excitedly. So they all they all, hopped on. And then also the CAPE staff who worked with, all of those department heads to get ready, the talking points, the scripts, filmed them. So we we planned, recorded, and edited this all in about three weeks. And I want to just give, special recognition to Reagan Samuels, who joined our team this year and was,
the real, workhorse behind this project and recorded all of our department heads, even though she never met some of them. And she, introduced herself and got them all ready and on camera. So without further ado and I think I wish I brought popcorn, but I did. This year, the County Executive's Office focused on strengthening regional partnerships, identifying organizational needs, and also deepening community engagement. Alongside our police and fire rescue departments, we conducted a comprehensive public safety staffing study.
This provides a data driven roadmap to support workforce stability and ensure our emergency response keeps pace with community expectations. We also expanded opportunities for residents to expectations. We also expanded opportunities for residents to connect directly with the county staff. Through community town halls held across the county, residents were able to share what mattered most to them and speak one on one with staff from every county department. This year, we also advanced our organization wide continuity of operations planning, ensuring we continue essential services should our community or organization experience challenges and disruptions.
And finally, we strengthen partnerships locally, regionally, and with state and federal agencies to support key initiatives, including Ravenna Futures, transportation improvements, emergency management, and other projects that directly impact our community. We are celebrating transformational milestones for Albemarle County's local economy. The board adopted the new economic development strategic plan, which outlines priority industry sectors, workforce strategies, and our approach to business attraction, retention, and expansion. When we're successful, we support companies to create jobs, diversify the tax base,
and support a resilient economy. The big news in 2025 was that AstraZeneca will invest $4,500,000,000 to build two manufacturing facilities at Rivanna Futures in what will be their largest global manufacturing site. This project positions Albemarle as a national leader in life sciences manufacturing. This builds on momentum generated by the new Commonwealth Bio Accelerator and the groundbreaking of Affton Scientific for their $200,000,000 200 job expansion. At the Rivanna Futures property, we celebrated $11,000,000 in grant awards that will allow us to spend time in 2026 extending utilities and
preliminary earthwork. Throughout this year in IntoNext, our focus remains on creating the conditions for businesses to thrive and delivering long term economic opportunity for our community. This year marked a major modernization for the county's financial systems. We successfully launched the Tyler ERP financial management system, our first major upgrade in more than a decade. The system upgrades solidates multiple legacy systems, allowing departments to complete their financial transactions and have access to reporting all in one platform. Following a comprehensive training program across the organization, we've already seen more efficient processing and improved accuracy in daily financial operations.
Procurement also launched the new vendor access portal. This portal makes it easier for vendors to access their transaction history, including purchase order status, invoices, and checks, thereby reducing the need for internal follow-up and improving our customer service. Together, these improvements strengthen financial accuracy, accountable government. The Elmore County Police Department continued to strengthen the public safety response ACPD partnered with Aquila to develop an in house fitness coordinator program and invest in officer wellness that supports readiness and resilience. We launched neighborhood to work with residents to address crime. Residents can register their exterior home security cameras with our detectives so they can quickly
identify what potential footage may be available during an investigation. ACPD officers partnered with the Charlottesville Police Department to host a safe worship workshop where more than 80 faith leaders from around the state receive safety training and resources to support their congregations. The department also achieved accreditation on December 4, reflecting our ongoing commitment to professional standards, accountability, and continuous improvement. With everything we do and during tens of thousands of calls for service we receive each year, ACBD officers remain focused on our community by providing compassionate and professional service every day.
This year, the CDD team advanced major initiatives that strengthened customer service, modernized our systems, and supported long term planning across Albemarle County. We launched the enterprise permitting and licensing system, including the new civic access portal, giving residents and businesses a more reliable and user friendly way to apply for permits, track applications, and communicate with staff. The board of supervisors also adopted AC 44, the county's updated comprehensive plan.
This milestone reflects four years of community engagement and collaboration and sets the long range policy framework that will guide land use, housing, and transportation planning for the next twenty years. We continued work on the three notch trail master plan, supporting regional partners and advancing planning for a safe, connected, multiuse corridor from Charlottesville to Crozet and beyond. Across all of this work, our department delivered professional, responsive services and planning for our community.
In support of our mission to attract and retain committed public servants, the Human Resources concentrated this year on enhancing employee well-being and strengthening the foundations of our workforce through updated policies and expanded training. This year's most significant milestone was the opening of the Albemarle employee care clinics, which for the first time provide employees and their families with holistic, convenient, and affordable medical care tailored to support their overall health and well-being.
Another key initiative included a comprehensive review of key personnel policies, updated essential procedures, and enhanced training requirements to strengthen workforce capability across the organization. These efforts are designed to ensure our nearly 1,000 employees are equipped with the guidance, skills, and support needed to deliver high quality services to the Albemarle community every day. This year, the Albemarle County Information Technology Department faced a year of challenges and successes with resilience
and professionalism. IT delivered several major initiatives that modernized how our organization operates and how we serve the community, including a new financial system, a new community development system, a time and attendance system, which all streamlined the user experience. This year also brought significant challenges. Our organization responded to a major cyber incident that tested our resilience and readiness. IC staff acted swiftly and responsibly, minimizing impacts for our customers and our residents. Through it all, leadership, dedicated staff,
our partner agencies, and our community stakeholders demonstrated dedication and professionalism in the face of a challenging situation. We remain focused on building secure, reliable, and innovative technology solutions that support our mission and serve the needs of the community. Human services collaborated with community partners, nonprofits, and county departments to improve community well-being and access to resources. The broadband office celebrated digital inclusion week with programs and resources focused on closing the digital divide and helping residents stay connected.
In partnership with Charlottesville and UVA, the Office of Equity and Inclusion released the county's well-being report, providing data and insights that help departments and partners understand local conditions and improve outcomes for residents. We also made progress in affordable housing this year. The county established dedicated tax revenue for future initiatives, and the first project advanced through the affordable rental housing incentives program, which provides support and a tax incentive for developments that include affordable units. Across human services, our work is centered on improving access,
removing barriers, and supporting residents where they are. Good. 2025 marked major progress across the Albemarle County Parks. Biscuit Run Park, the Albemarle County's largest public park at 1,200 acres, completed its first full year open to the public. And since opening in December 2024, the park has welcomed more than 120,000 people. While the park is open, work continues to bring additional amenities online, including expansion of trail network, development of athletic fields,
steady progress on the future downhill bike park, and a trailhead pedestrian bridge in parking on Hickory Street. This project will allow public access from the west side of the park. This year, we also continue planning for two urban pocket parks, Charlotte Humphreys Park and Hillsdale Park. Community meetings help shape the early design concept for both parks, which will expand across the green space into two growing areas of the canyon. And also,
the right down river, we tran transformed Free Bridge Lane from a pilot promenade to a permanent pedestrian and cyclist space, including a new half mile Greenway waterfront connection that's accessible to all of all of those. Through these projects, arts and recreation continue to expand recreational opportunity and experience and protect the natural space community. This past year, the Department of Social Services has focused on providing essential services and strengthening community partnerships.
We launched a cleaning supplies drive to support local families facing risk risk factors that can affect a child's healthy development and well-being. This effort also filled a gap by collecting items not typically available through food banks or covered by food assistance programs. We developed the community resource database, giving residents and providers a single place to find local support for housing, food, health care, and other services. Through the Albemarle County Emergency Relief Program, we helped four nineteen households with a total of $349,477
in support between January 1 and October 31. During the federal government shutdown, our eligibility staff stayed closely attuned to evolving guidance around SNAP benefits. They work directly with clients to provide accurate information and empathetic customer service during a period of uncertainty. Through these efforts, DSS continues to strengthen families and connect residents with the resources they need. Our Mark County Fire Rescue continued to grow community connections and improve emergency responses in 2025.
We launched Community Connect, giving residents a simple way to share critical household information with first responders before an emergency. More than 800 households registered in the first two months, helping our crews arrive to incidents better informed. We strengthened staff development through recruit schools, specialty training, and our largest paramedic school class to date, which had a 100% pass rate. We also completed a major renovation to the to the fire training center, supported in part by grant funding. Operationally, new services began serving the southern part of the county with dedicated staffing and a twenty four seven engine,
in Scottsville Station 17. And in emergency management, we secured a half million dollars in grant funding to support radiological preparedness and flood mitigation. Through training, prevention, and community engagement, ACFR continues to prepare for the future and serve the community with professionalism and care. Facilities and environmental services advanced an exciting program of capital and environmental projects. We opened the new general district courthouse in partnership with the city of Charlottesville, moving our judicial functions into modern, accessible, secure facility. This was phase one of the Quartz Complex project,
and the team has already begun work on phase two. Phase two includes the renovation of the historic courthouse building. At Biscuit Run Park, we completed key elements of a project restoring approximately one entire mile of stream corridor, improving water quality, stabilizing stream banks, and supporting long term ecological health. We're even beginning to see signs of wildlife returning to the restored stream. In Crozet, we completed improvements to Crozet Square, enhancing pedestrian access, parking, and the overall visitor experience. Throughout construction, the team coordinated closely with local businesses and supported the shop the square campaign to
encourage continued visit during the project. Across all projects, our focus remains on delivering high quality services and sustainable infrastructure that support county operations in the community we serve. Turn it back over to you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. That was wonderful. Supervisor Proulx. For the motion, yes, which I totally have. No, no, no, no. We're not ready for that. Oh, no. We're just going to go through that. Oh, for columnist reactions. I forgot I was first in the order, so I thought you were kicking it to me for that. I was, listen. My apologies. No. This is this is great work. I appreciate all the work that Kate does.
I I I will unapologetically share that I do get some of my news sometimes from scrolling on LinkedIn and watching the the County Minute, which I is a great product y'all put out. And I I guess I would just be curious what the, what the dissemination profile of the of the year end review is. I hope it's not just experienced by us here on the dais, because I'm sure a lot of serious staff hours went into that. Yeah. I'll share that. So it's compiled today, but we'll segment it, and we'll put it onto all of the social media platforms that we have.
And we may also adjust it based off of audience. So the LinkedIn audience is different than your Facebook audience is different than our ACNs. And so we'll tailor which audiences are most likely to receive the different segments of it, and we'll do it that way over the next two weeks. Excellent. I don't need to tell you how you do your job, but I would just reflect. I'm always intrigued by how much more user engagement we have on our, two public safety departments' profiles. So if they are separately sharing their own segments, I'm sure that would get a lot of engagement. Great work Thank you.
To the whole team. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Supervisor McKeown? Yes. I do enjoy this very much. And I think the idea of segmenting it like that so that you can use it in different ways. And, boy, I'll tell you, I don't envy communications these days and the challenges you have. Even I have really, over the last couple of years, just changed completely the way I get my news. I mean, I I still use some of the old ways, but, boy, it it's really a challenge to keep up. I can't imagine. But this was really great, and I appreciated it very much.
And I'm gonna have to find Monday minutes. I didn't I was not aware of that. I guess I should admit it, but I wasn't aware. Well, clearly, we need, a broader reach. So we'll work on that to make sure that we get to but good to know now. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Supervisor Malek. Well, thank you. I was gonna say, if we're not on LinkedIn, how do we find the county minute? Because for old people like me, we I I don't do that stuff. So I would like to have the, news have it or at least a link to it so I can find it that way. Yeah. I'll share that we put it on all of our social accounts.
But we also have a website for it, and so you can go through because some people don't wanna watch the video. And so we have it bulleted so that way you can see what each month. So I'll make sure that you get that link. Thank you. You just did it to help. You're welcome. Thank you. Supervisor Gallo, do you put the Monday minute in the, the the briefings that you send us? I've never said Briefings are what I use. I'm sorry. I I mentioned the Monday minute. Now we're all talking about the You should talk to no. No. No. Abby brought our my heart hit you that on the witching. Fair game. Before I make my other comments. I don't include it in that weekly email,
but, I can. Absolutely. Because that's where I go. Yeah. Sure thing. Thank you. I mean, just not repurposing. So Easy way because I know all of us look at that daily briefing. I mean, the daily is the daily effects. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. It it pops up in all my it it it it pops up in all my social media feeds. So if I'm going through it, I always catch I've been catching it, so I appreciate that. It's hard for me to even believe that we just watched the 2026 or 2025 year end review. And I know there's a lot of things that we've celebrated throughout the twelve months
that that aren't in there. So just kudos to all in the and even reminded me. Like, I should have probably said something about being doing a tour of the courts at the start of the meeting and just, you know, it's already been a week, and I kinda it's left my brain already. That's fine. So I I think it's smart. I think the the approach to how you're going to disseminate this out in the short segments really does matter. It's it's to watch a sixty second video is probably even becoming more you know, someday you're going to be asking those departments to do thirty seconds probably,
if it continues to go in that trend. But just kudos to staff and all the leadership and all of the hard work that's that of all the things that we've done this year. So thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lopiste, first. I was very impressed by what you all did. And what I'm wondering also is whether or not, you've communicated with Allison and maybe present this to all the CACs in their January meetings, which would be nice to see a recap of everything. Yeah. They I know that she sends out a monthly, note to all of the the CACs so we can also put it in there
so that they can get it and that they want to put it on their agendas. It would be nice. Good. Well done. Good job. Yes. I agree. Well done. And I do think that breaking it up is nice, but I love the way we just got to see it Fits together. All department by department. And it's very impressive. So and as you mentioned, a lot of things I think that were on there, but a lot of highlights too. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. If that is it, then we will now turn to, from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agendas.
Still not ready for a motion, but 36 to the last report. I have nothing in this juncture. Okay. Supervisor McKeown? I do. And I realize everybody's anxious to go. People are looking at the clock. It's 05:00, but I'm gonna take a few minutes because I do wanna give you all a couple of updates. It's my last meeting, and I think it's important for you all to know some of this information. You don't have to know it in real depth, but I do think it's important for you to be aware. And I'll start first with the Lambs Lane Campus Dental Task Force. And I'm going to pass out
information, and this will save some time because everybody there's two of these. You should get a sheet that says the Lansdowne campus dental task force that's a one pager, and then you should get a second, handout that it says summary report July to December. So, yeah, there should be enough there for Annie, but you shouldn't need to be giving me any back. There are two things for each one. There are two. One stapled, and one's a single page. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Alright. So this is an initiative, and Ned is aware of it, but this is an initiative that I have been working on now for the last
sixteen months. And I've just quickly and then I'm gonna just let you all have the ability to read this later. But quickly, in '20 in July 20 June 2024, I was doing some tours of the schools over on the Lance Lane campus, and I asked the principals at Journey and Greer if they had their druthers, what, what would they like to have? And they said dental care for our children. So I left, went back, and called Eileen Gomez, who is the nurse of all of the nurses in Alamar County Public Schools and
an old friend. And I said, what in the world is going on? And she said, I've been working on this for two years, Diantha. And she said, our children in the Lans Lane campus are sorely in need of dental care. And I said, well, we've got to fix that. So I called together, Sue Friedman, my friend who alluded to this today, and Eileen Gomez and I, and we sat down upstairs for two meetings, and we said we're gonna start a task force. And I call and I called Jeff, and I called Matt, Rick Matt, Haas, and I said,
I'm starting a task force around dental care on the Lansdowne campus, and I'm not asking you for any money because it's not in our wheelhouses to to provide They don't care for students on the Landslade campus. That's not but we're gonna start seeing how we can solve that problem because in this community, as wealthy as we are, it is unacceptable for the principals to feel that way. So we started our little task force, and we began meeting by Zoom every month. And every month, we had more people on the Zoom.
Ned had joined us occasionally when he could. And, so the Zoom the last Zoom meeting that we had was just last week. Actually, it was the first of this week. It was Monday of this week. Sorry. I have time flies. And, briefly, what we decided was we we realized that the lack of dental care was partly the demographics of the Lamb's Lane campus. And if you look at page one of the summary report, you can see Greer Journey and Albemarle High School,
the no insurance and the Medicaid and and FAMIS, percentages. So there's a real lack of ability to pay on that campus. So, we knew that we needed that process to somehow or another identify the children with the most urgent need for dental care and get them served in the community. If it was pro pro bono, however it was, we needed the attention of the dental providers. And we created a list, and I was shocked to see that urgent immediate need dental, care. We had a 100 students on the list.
A 100. It's pretty and at the same time, we had a child at the University of Virginia emergency room septic from his teeth. I mean, I could go on, but I'll I will make it briefer. So we had that goal, which you'll see task force goals. Then this but as we went through the process, we realized that part of the problem that the dental providers in this community had or they were experiencing was the lack of dental assistants and hygienists. We do not have enough dental assistants and hygienists in this community and in the
whole state of Virginia. For us, the closest program for dental hygienists, is in at Trivanna Community College. They have six 40 to 70 applications a year, and they graduate five students. So we made that our second goal. And I know in my own dental office, my own dentist, years ago, she had six dental hygienists, and at that time, she was down to three. And if you think about it, dentists can't work and see patients if they don't have hygienists to back them up. So my dentist was having to clean teeth
and not see as many patients. So, you know, it all comes together. So the task force members that you will see here are listed. We ended up with folks from, the local dental providers, from the state organizations, from the local organizations, and it's pretty clearly stated here. And we also have, on the task force a representative from the Albemarle Foundation for Education as well as, Jean Runyon from who's president of PVCC because when with that second goal of lack of dental hygienists, I just picked up the phone and I called Jean and I said,
we need to meet about this. This is crazy that you all don't have a dental hygienist program. And she said, funny you should say that, Diemza. When I was the president of the the, of the community college in Colorado, I started a dental hygienist program. And I said, I know because I've googled it, and they are the largest dental hygienist program in the state of Colorado. So she was very interested. She said, let's set up a meeting, and we'll and you can show me the data. And so some of my representatives from our task force, we just tromped on over there and had our first meeting at PVCC,
and we explained. And I had state people. I had, all kinds of folks at that meeting representing our task force, and we presented the data. And Jean said, I'm gonna start looking into this. So that was our first meeting at PVCC. Meanwhile, our dental task force kept meeting, and, eventually, Jean called us back, and she said, we need to have another meeting. So we had a second meeting at PVCC, and she presented what she found out. And she said, if we can do this, then we can have a dental hygienist program in this community of some sort.
And it would also be a dental assistant in a in a hygienist program as well. So, in the meantime, Eileen Gomez and our task force kept working with the providers locally, and we managed to get a number of children seen that had significant problems through the local providers. But it's a one off. Right? For example, we had, at one point, we had $10,000 in to do some work because not all the dentists are willing to do a pro bono, and one child took 7,000 of that $10,000 grant we had just because of the need in his.
And you can imagine. I mean, I get it. So we continued. So if you look at the very last page, and I don't I'm not gonna go through all of this. I'm trying to make this short. But if you go to the page three of the summary of our last to sixteen months, what we did was we were we did a lot of our work through the community dental center because this community center the community dental center is right across the street from Lance Lane Campus on Hydraulic Road up in those,
you know, all those professional buildings up on the hill. They had no clue of the need, and they were really not very active. So Ted Horn is chair of that group, and we Sue and I had two meetings with him, and he said, I agree. We're gonna do something about this. So he energized his center board and started helping us. And, I will say this summer, they actually hired a second dentist, which has helped all of the dental providers in this community because now there's another
dentist at the, dental center seeing patients. And then in October I'm going down these updates. October, Jean brought us all back for a third meeting at PVCC, and she presented her absolute plans to open a dental hygienist program, at PVCC. She's hoping to get it open by not this not not '26, but '27, which would be great, and you can read about that. And then on December 8, we had our just recently had our task force meeting, where both PVCC and Germanna were there,
and they were explaining what that dental, the the the dental hygienist program would look like and how PVC will open the dental program, but they will come under the auspices of Germanna for right now because it saves a lot of paperwork and time with the idea that down the road, PVCC will operate on its own eventually. So you can read about that. And then, Friday, December 5, the Almor Foundation for Education voted to add dental health services and dental education prevention to their ongoing programs for
for the Almar County Public Schools. And the reason that was important was we had to have a nonprofit. Our task force had to have a nonprofit that we could send people to if they wanted to give money for dental care in the community or to support a program at PBC, make it up, but dental care. So they voted to open up their foundation as a one of the buckets to be dental, dental services and, education and prevention, which was a really big step forward. So we have that now,
and Sue Friedman has been appointed to the, the Al Mohl Foundation for Education board representing our dental spouse for us, which is really wonderful. And then, the last bullet you'll see is that I have been pretty insistent that the program at PVCC has to hook up and have a working relationship with Almore County Public Schools and the Career Academy because the Career Academy over on Lansdowne campus has a dental hygienist pathway
established, and they can't be out there doing their pathway if they're not talking to PVCC because of the program that PVCC has established. And just a couple of quick and that you all can read all this, but it's really been wonderful work. Jeff and Matt have been giving us in kind services to some degree, although, of course, Matt has really provided more in kind services with the help with giving us Eileen Gomez's time, which has really been great. We focused on the Lamb's Lane campus because 25% of all the kids are on
the Lamb's Lane campus. Highest need population wise, diversity and poverty. So we focused there. It was in the right location to be able to go across the street to get services from the the dental, center. But we have always planned that once we got the process figured out, we would be able to roll it out to the other schools. We know Woodbrook has a great need. Agner Hurd has a need. Red Hill has a need. But we thought if we started in a discrete location first, concentrated there, it made a lot more sense,
and then we could roll it out as needed to the other schools. And with that, I'm not asking you to anything from you guys. I just don't even wanna leave the board and you all hear at some point, what is this Lansdowne campus, dental task force all about? Because I just thought it was important. And you never know. Jim might wanna give us some money sometime for dental care or or, or Mike might wanna give us. So I wanted you all to know because once the foundation gets the paperwork completed after the first of the year, they'll be able to accept money for scholarships for the kids to get dental services.
So, with that, unless you all have any questions, I will stop on this topic. You have a question? I have I have a question. Could each individual school, once you get it rolled out to the other schools, but could they, under your foundation, could they then raise money themselves for their population? Well, what they do is they would go to the see the the Elmore County Public Schools that their Education Foundation covers all the schools. So that would cover all the schools. Yes. And you could identify, if you wanted it for Broadus Wood or Okay.
If does that make sense? Yeah. I was thinking, like, the, the fire department, you know, the volunteer fire departments, they each raise their own monies in their communities. So I I didn't know that. I think it would be better because what that the Education Foundation is is a five zero one three c, and it allows but it can serve all of the schools. Because it's Each one doesn't have to do it. Exactly. That's right. And I will just add that what we found out this fall was that Augusta County is thirty years ahead of us.
Of course they are. Augusta County has been serving their children in their school system for thirty years with a program that goes into the schools. And we're going over there in February and touring. And any anybody who wants to join our tour is more than welcome to join us. But they have a, dental clinic that is a four zero one three c. It has been paid for by the citizens of Waynesboro, Stanton, Stewardstraft, Augusta County through non a nonprofit work,
and that dental clinic sees patients in that area, and they go into a school every Wednesday. All of the schools in Augusta County have two visits a year from the dentist in that clinic. So they're in the schools every Wednesday. They take two dental chairs that are portable, X-ray equipment, and the nurses in the schools line the kids up and they see the anyway, it is fascinating. I had no I grew up in Stanton, and I had no idea that they they were that far ahead of us. So that could be a model in the future,
but we're gonna go over and tour it and see. And I'm gonna stop with this. Ned, do you have anything you wanna add? I mean, I've been, I mean, I've been, able to listen in. I do recall when Diane and I did, the day that Steve Saunders over at Greer when we did a joint tour. Said it was you know, in addition to asking what do you want, it's a huge educational, obstacle when the kid's dealing with that to be able to learn. So I've just been I'm not participating. I'm more just kinda heavy ears and listening. Well, you come to the Zoom meetings. But to watch in these meetings,
I mean, we're talking this isn't three people. There's there's, like, 30 people, 20, sometimes twenty, thirty people on this call of dental providers, different organizations, health organizations from both two different community college systems. And it's impressive what all these folks are doing with the gaining energy and what it's gonna turn into. So kudos to to everybody involved with it and Well here heading it. It was just one it's been wonderful work, and I will say that I plan on continuing that work. But that that task force was always intended If we do if we accomplish our goals and do what we're supposed to do,
we will be able to disband in '26. We're that close to getting what we needed. Right? Because we can't go on forever. That's not the intent. Right? It's to accomplish those two goals, and then we'll disband. But, anyway, any other questions? I'm just so grateful that you have been doing this for this almost two years because it reminded me when you started your story about probably fifteen, twenty years ago, a child in Richmond died Oh, really? Because of his dental complications. The general assembly fell over themselves, couldn't adopt a program fast enough, and they never funded it in all this time.
I mean, Leo was practicing then, and he was so frustrated because Mhmm. There was just nothing. No support, no dollars, no nothing to make it happen. So this is really great news, and congratulations. Well, it's really it's been good work. And and you're correct, and you know because of your husband's work with Leo, is that people think, oh, you just pull out those baby teeth and it doesn't make any difference. No. What are they supposed to do? It set well, it sets children up in adulthood for huge health problems. So that's why it's just so important. It really is important. And I'm and I will add and because you know how I am,
that what I'm gonna do in my retirement is I'm gonna get Invisalign's phrases on my own. I'll have them for the next year. But anyway, any other questions? No. That's great. You said you would Oh, so two things. So yeah. And I I appreciate you got Jim Jim saying let's move on, and and he's right. So the second thing that I have been working on is you all will remember Well, I'll back up and say, you all recognize that for many years, I've been doing art projects in my district. So I have three murals on what were three big,
ugly concrete walls that I have included that Alamar County, Alamar High School students actually, for two of them, painted those murals. And then I've done the the Art on Fire, which were the the, Gary O'Connell with Alamar County Service Authority wanted to do a project around hydrants, and we did that. We had, like, 10 hydrants scattered around. You have one in your district. People have I mean, different districts, but anyway so we did that, and then then I turned my eyes to bus stops. And what I was trying to do was art on
CAT bus stops. And I worked on that project with multiple people. We had multiple meetings and trying to work with vDOT around their bus stops and CAT around getting the bus stops because we needed the shelters. And it just became, for lots of reasons, the project just couldn't move forward. So I turned my eye from the bus stops and the bus shelters to those metal boxes that are referred to as the signal control cabinets that you see where
there there are stoplights. And they're big stainless steel boxes. Not big, but, I mean, they're different sizes. And they have the and the VEOP folks go into them to control our stoplights. Many of them in your district, in my district, in your district, in your district, some in yours, are covered with graffiti. Mhmm. Gang tagging. Absolutely. Oh, and it they're awful. So I I started out by asking Vidot if we could do some sort of artwork on there to cover the graffiti because we know that if you have artwork somewhere,
especially if you involve your high school students, you don't get graffiti. They respect the art. It really is great. And to in involve the high school students makes it even better. But having said that and I so, I had a Zoom, we had a Zoom with v dot, the local v dot, and they were not very excited about our idea. Even though Anne and I have been googling now for months, signal boxes all over the state of Virginia and all over other states. Culpeper has them. Of course. They're they're everywhere in the state of Virginia.
So I got a little frustrated, and I called a friend of mine who, happens to be the, chief deputy commissioner at VDOT, and I said, Kathy Good friend. I I well, I don't pull rank very often, but I was just disgusted. And I said, Kathy, can I have can we have some of the art on our and she said, of course, you can? Who told you you couldn't? And I said, I need that in an email. So Anne Wall and I have that in an email that VDOT has approved for Albemarle County to have artwork on their signal boxes. So where I'm going with this is that last year,
you all agreed that we would put $4,000 into our budget for transit art. I want to switch that to signal box art. That $4,000 to signal box art. Now we can figure out how to make that happen. I understand that the money is in the CDD operational budget in the general fund. And so somehow or another, it just needs to be retitled or reclaimed if you all say that that's okay. And during the budget cycle,
I would suggest that you give us maybe add another $50 or $500 or something because that that is a set $4,000 a year. And if we're trying to do this art project and we wanna do two installations or four installations a year with inflation and everything, that money is just gonna eventually disappear. So just to think about a way that maybe you could think about boosting that every now and then, and we're not talking about a lot of money. But having said that, let me keep going.
So so we have $4,000. We're thinking that $4,000 will probably do maybe two wraps a year. What you do is you you can scan those boxes digitally, and then there the design folks create the wrap with the art on it, and it's just wrapped around the boxes. It the holes where they need the box needs air are all built in. It's all just Anne has been is very familiar because Anne has a had a project like that down in North Carolina.
So we have an expert here on wrapping those boxes. And if I said anything wrong, Anne, please let me know. So far, I'm doing okay. Alright. So we had VDOT permission, and we knew what kind of wraps we were gonna do. The wraps will last about two years. You have to chain we have to, in Virginia, change them out every two years because if we try and keep them on more than two years, we have to go to the, architectural review board in Richmond for approval for a rewrap, and we don't wanna do that.
So we just wanna switch them out every two years, and that'll work. I mean, it'll keep them current anyway. We have already identified 20 locations in some of our districts. Anne and I drove around for two hours and looked at signal boxes. And we so but we have identified the five five top sites to start with. So then we had the problem of who's gonna do the design because when I was doing all those other art all those other artwork projects, I used the Albemarle County Service Authority, and I used the the bridge mural project in Charlottesville,
and they've collapsed. They are no longer that art group fell apart. So it occurred to me that we had graphic designers students at center one, which is, as you all know, the Almarrow Career Exploration Center. And so I said, Anne, why don't we reach out to Almore County Public Schools once again and see if those students are interested in designing our wraps for those boxes? And Anne just marched herself over and met with Jay Thomas,
who's the principal at the, center one at the ACE, academy over there, and he and two teachers are really interested in taking on the project. And if you think about it, it makes sense. They have graphic artist design kids in graphic art design over there, and they said, they can do that and put it on their resume. They can use that for their jobs. It would be a great connection. So we now have $4,000. We have the box some of the boxes located that the top five. We have the folks who are going to do the graphic artwork for us,
and we know the process that we need. And I just needed to let you guys know, and please keep $4,000 or at least $4,000 in the budget so we can continue this project. Any questions? Did I understand you to say that you could not paint because you'd have to do the state It's better to It's better to use the wraps. It's just like you're buying a wrap for the cap buses. Oh, I understand. It's just that only one side is ever visible, so I was just trying to wrap my brain around that part of it. Well, actually, some of the box Road is the one I think No.
But if you go on to 29 North, we have boxes with graffiti all over them and all four sides are visible. Okay. Well, that'll be good. So it just depends on where the location is. Cool. Yeah. What is the wrap made out of? Anne, what's the wrap made out of? It's a plastic material that goes through a country. Okay. And if the buses dry it with Anne, do you have anything you wanna come up and just say about this? Because she's been my partner in crime. I'm sorry. You're okay? Yeah. Yeah. But she Anne has done this. So I think it would be a fun project, and I would hope you guys would support it and and we can move on
with our 4,000 plus or whatever. Thank you very much. And that's all I had, Jim. I know you're thrilled. Yeah. It's a pleasure, Melanie. Sure. Well, soon in your inbox, I will be sharing with you all topics for twenty six that are on my mind, which are completely all over the place. As usual, having a conversation with me is an all over the place activity. But please consider adding your own and, circulating it around again, and we'll try to have some conversations about things that we can try to either not let fall through the cracks and or make some progress on.
And, the sludge group is charging on and working with legislators, and there will be some bills already drafted on this. And Amy's supporting it at the water commission. So I will hopefully have some good news of things we can go lobby for when that time comes. And that's all I have right now. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Gowland? A couple of quick things. So next Wednesday at one, the Regional Housing Partnership quarterly meeting will happen. We're going to have a nice, presentation from a group out of Charlotte, North Carolina, that does some work with folks to help keep them in affordable units in places
that take vouchers. It's an interesting program. I heard of a similar program that was out in Seattle by a different group through the, committee I'm on it with NACO. And I'm not aware of any program like this in the area, so I'll be curious to to learn more about it myself. In addition, the Regional Housing Partnership has, in our bylaws, we've always had something called an advisory group or advisory committee, and we've never really created this or tasked made this happen. We have an executive committee that meets and does regular work, then we have the full partnership. There's about 20 some members who vote,
and they meet on a quarterly basis. This advisory committee does not have any time obligation to it. So let's say that that Mike is, you know, in his legal career, is somebody that would like to just be able to have it, you know, this this would be a great person to come speak to your group, or here's some great articles that you'd want to do. It's really what the advisory committee is all about and has access to our resource library that we've been trying to get up and running since, we came out of the summit this past March. So I bring that up to say that if you have folks that you think might be interested in being on such an advisory committee,
because it's an ask you can make where it says this doesn't commit you to any time. If you wanna attend the meetings, you can, but you don't have to. And if you want, you'll have access electronically to be able to provide resource material and have some kind of content input without needing to be a participant, if you don't want to be. So I'm inviting you to attend that meeting virtually next Wednesday at one if you want to hear about the program, and then just also opening up, because we're trying to kind of beat the bushes, if you would, for some advisory committee members. Then at four next Wednesday, the MPO meets,
and that's when VDOT is going to give a presentation on how transportation funding works from the top level down. So you may be interested in that presentation as well. I'm pretty sure we're still meeting virtually. Mhmm. So it but even if we're in person, you can log in and, you know, listen online. So those two topics I'm following up with. And then just I should have said this at the beginning, and it it did remind me. I mean, I really wanted to is Trevor Trevor the name of the gentleman that gave us the tour at the courts? Is it Walter? Oh, yes. We were gonna do a recognition for him today.
Walter, man. I mean, that was I mean, you could tell how integral he was and how appreciative the judge, I was having trouble saying his name. Cortara? Cortara. But anyway, it was nice to go in and get to see the the facility and give a tour. But it was really impressive how, that young man walked, how integral he was to make that project happen and, how that's working over there. So if you, have a chance to go, you really can't just walk freely through the courts either. So having the having the tour, you might have to ask it to get the to get the official tour, I suppose. But even even there after hours,
you're kind of limited to where you can go. And then the other one that the presentation that y'all showed today reminded me of, for the first time, I was finally able to attend the graduation ceremony for the Regional Police Training Academy. That was over in Fort Defiance, and that was a couple weeks ago, December, I think. And didn't even think to announce that last week. But it was really cool to be able to see from the entire region all the different, you know, sheriff, police department, jail employees, graduating from the program. And then I was able to then turn and attend the next day of the
swearing in ceremony of the couple of the Albemarle folks that were there. And, it happened to also coincide with they did some promotion recognitions that day. But if you get a chance to go attend that full I forgot the name of the museum that's over there in Fort Defiance. It's a the academy is not held there, but the graduation, I think, it must be held in that location all the time. I'm forgetting what the museum front well, not the frontier. Doesn't stand. It's a different it's a different name now, but it's right off Lee Highway, right right in Fort Defiance. But, yeah, it was it was great to be able to do that
and and attend those ceremonies for the first time. Work had always prevented me from being able to attend things like that in the past, so it was kind of fun to be able to do that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lupista Curley. Yes. I just wanted to say that the Fire Rescue Foundation, that is coming along very well, and that should be up and well, it's up and running already, and they have a board. And then, also, the five zero one c three status was delayed because the federal government was shut down. But that hopefully will be approved this month,
and then they can start, fundraising for things that they need. I was also able to attend, the police department when they had, those who were recognized for saving lives and such. And that was extremely that was very heartfelt. And there was one officer who actually saved two lives, the female officer. And, of course, her name slips my mind, But, that that was, extremely important also. And I just wanna say thank you, Jim. Thank you, Diana. And we're gonna miss both of you. Thank you. We're gonna miss you guys.
I'll just come down and sit in the back. Okay. I don't know if we're all ready for citizenry, Keel. This is gonna be interesting. Buckle up, supervisors. Seventy two years right out there. That's where you need to go. This is great. I'd cause serious trouble for that. Thank you. With that, I will look to supervisor Pruitt for a motion. This is you know, we've had a lot of lasts and finals today. This is, supervisor elect Duncan. This is the last time I'm going to be reading one of these. I would like to move that the board of supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant
to section two decimal two tech three seven one one a of the code of Virginia, first under subsection one, to discuss and consider the annual performance of the clerk of the board of supervisors. Second. We have a motion from supervisor Pruett, second from supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mister Pruett? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lakista, Kirtley? Bye. Okay. We are rolling. We are back. So we're looking for a motion from supervisor approval. I would like to move the Board of Supervisors certify by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom
of Information Act and identified in the motion authorized in closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, clerk call the roll. Mr. Pruett? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Halloway? Yes. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McHale? Yes. Ms. Lakiester Kirtley? Aye. And board, if there is nothing further, this board is adjourned to 01/07/2026, 1PM Lane Auditorium. As you're trying to keep that smile.