The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Chris Fairchild & Ned Gallaway Joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller On “Real Talk With Keith Smith!”

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Chris Fairchild of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors and Ned Gallaway of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Wednesday and Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by Charlottesville Settlement Company, LLC, El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, MejiCali, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co and YES Realty Partners.

Good Friday morning, guys. My name is Jerry Miller and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's an absolute pleasure to connect with you guys through the I Love Seville Network on a show that is headlined by Yes! Reality Partners and one of its principals, Keith Smith, the distinguished gentleman. We're live in our studio in downtown Charlottesville

in the heart of a 300,000 person region that is dynamic and ever changing. You the viewer and listener can offer perspective and challenge our panel in respectful fashion by asking questions or sharing your thoughts in whatever platform you're watching upon and I will relay them live on air. Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. He is getting LinkedIn up and running, confirm when we do. And I want to kindly welcome Keith Smith and supervisors Chris Fairchild and Ned Galloway to the show as elected officials from four different jurisdictions are watching the program.

Judah Wickhauer, studio camera and a four-shot. Keith Smith, good Friday morning to you. Good Friday morning, gentlemen. It's chairman, right? You're the chair of the thing. Correct. Yeah, for now. For the moment. That's early in the year. It's early in the year, and they change in November. You never know on that end of it, which we're going to get into that a little bit later. So, you know, gentlemen, I just wanted to thank you. You know, we had an awesome summit yesterday, and Chris, I was thinking

about you on the way in. So those who are watching and listening, Chris and I used to run half marathons and long distant races together. And these summits take so long to get to the day, right? This is years worth of work to get there. And it was over. It's kind of like when you finish your race

or your marathon, you're like, there's a little bit of a letdown. But we're back up with coffee and maybe a sip or two of bourbon and keep on moving. So and then we've got Ned Galloway, Alamar County Board of Supervisors extraordinaire joining us. We'll just keep the stuff keep on rolling here.

So what do you two gentlemen thought? How did we do yesterday, right? How did we do from a summit's perspective? And then we'll dive into a couple other questions. I would say, generally speaking, I thought you did a great job. And I'm not one to fluff it when I don't think so. I think the opportunity for people of differing thoughts

and backgrounds and efforts to come together and respectfully have a conversation about how you make change as needed. You and I talk about this all the time, right? We may not see eye to eye on certain things, but we always respect each other's opinion and we typically go out for a drink afterwards. I think the whole world should be more along those lines. What do you think that had to do with it? I thought it was a tremendous success.

I think staff did one hell of a job. Keith was on the summit committee that did a lot of the work to get that put together. It's a lot of logistics they have to pull up. Just forget the content and what they have to deliver in terms of speakers and all that. But just pulling it off that day and then making sure the mics are working and all that stuff. But the sentiment there, the energy

in the room felt good. So as people were arriving and as they were leaving, everybody was positive, the networking events were working out well. So I think when you feel that kind of vibe, I think I mentioned that in one of the interviews somebody did yesterday. It's like there's a good 29, a good feel here, which usually would then hope, or not hope to, but I think it will turn into actual projects and things that will get to the solutions that were discussed yesterday. I think we should do this because I'm seeing the comments in the feed here. I don't think any of the legacy media has reported on what happened yesterday yet. Secretary of the embassy, 29.

I'm looking on their website. It's not on their website. And folks with watching the 11 o'clock news just do not do that anymore. So a lot of people are asking what exactly are you guys talking about here? So this is probably the first documented of the who, what, when, where, why of what's happened right now. So the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership was formed under the umbrella of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. So I'm currently the chair of that. Keith is the current vice chair.

And that's a body that the Executive Committee gets together more regularly, but the full partnership will meet each quarter. It is built around four pillars that of which those four pillars work towards affordable housing issues. So we discuss what the problems are and try to come up with solutions for folks. Those four pillars are the public sector, so not just electeds but our staff and the people that work on housing. And then you have the private sector, so the for-profits, the developers, the folks that are out there building the housing. Then we have the non-profit sectors, your habitats, your community land trust, places like that. And then we have our citizens, the folks that we're serving. And all of those

four different areas are represented in our partnership. The partnership decided this was our third summit, right? We do it every other year. And it's to pull together and build on the work that we do throughout the year and then to try to bring in experts and bring in folks that do this work and share that not just with our partnership but with the broader community. And basically the summit is like a big partnership meeting. At the beginning yesterday in the intro we went around and said raise your hand if you're from the public sector, raise your hand if you're from the public sector.

And there was a great mix of people from all those sectors. We had, we sold out. We had 200 confirmed seats. We booked it for 200. We ended up with 220. There was hopefully 20 people that came in, mostly the elected officials, which I don't understand why,

but we'll leave that alone. Maybe elected officials can't read e-vites or something, something along those lines. But it was mostly elected officials that came in. But, you know, to your point, and jump in, Chris, the first two summits, did you attend any of the previous? I did not. That's just the first one.

The first two summits were more about what was the crisis or what was the issue, right? This one was very solution-focused. So anyway, I ended up doing it, and I think we did an interview, a quick little interview on 29, and I don't know where it is. And I sent the link out this morning. I said, look, Mom, first TV interview without handcuffs on. I want to say, if I'm hacking and all that, I apologize.

I thought you were just going for that deep sexy voice. If people wanted to learn more, they could go to the Thomas Jefferson planning district or Google central Virginia regional housing partnership. It will bring up the website where it's at, the members of that, members of the executive committee. They are all public meetings. They are all things that the information that we go over on a more regular basis are all posted there. And the – correct me if I'm wrong, Keith, but at the summit – I mean, all the sessions

were recorded. Yeah, so that's a unique thing that we've done this year. So we were – you know, anybody who's ever put on summits before, they're a tremendous amount of work. They're extremely expensive. And we've had some awesome sponsorships. And we actually – it's fully funded and ended up with about four or five grand left over, which is great news to kind of go to the next

summit. But part of the expense was we brought in a company that videoed the whole thing. So they're going to be loaded on the website. So if you missed a session or want to go back and take a look at it, you can go. So you can go ahead and replay your session over and over and over again. You were on 29 too. I saw your face. I wasn't really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to go look at it. So gentlemen, how about Chris? State of the union right now with Fluvanna County. We got budget season, maybe we'll get some breaking news from the two gentlemen and how they're pursuing potentially another term in office. It's getting close to that time of year. Open edit, Flavanna County, Chris

Fairchild. Well, we're just coming off the reassessments, which we in Flavanna do every two years. So that's certainly a hot topic we had. On average on residential, I'm guessing it came in at low 30‑some percent increase. Overall ‑‑ So we have to highlight this. On average in Fluvana County assessments year‑over‑year uptick low 30 percent. Over a two‑year period. Over a two‑year period.

That is an astronomical uptick. It is. With residential mostly coming in more in the zero to two or three range. So on average, we came in about 23% or 24%. But when you just take single-family homes on smaller properties, I'm guessing it's in the low 30s. And then kind of an odd dynamic,

but it seems odd at first, then it makes sense. Roughly 1,300 square feet and below were ones that saw the highest uptick. Some of them as much as 60%. But the reason is, is because house prices are so high, that's the most affordable range. So suddenly that's the hot range. So I'll add some numbers to that. I crunched numbers this morning for today's show just to talk about our county. The median sales price at the year to date as of today, from January 1 to today today is 398. This is in all of Fulvanah County. We'll talk about breaking out Lake Monticello and

and there's but says all of Fulvanah County at the end of 24 that was 364 so we're already up 9.3 percent just from the end versus the numbers at the end of of 2024. So we in the first two and a half months roughly have jumped up 9.3 percent from 364 to 398. And I think you and I talked about last week the assumption is that that will be cyclical throughout the year right meaning that the first couple months don't necessarily make up a year. Yeah so what it is is a step. The graph would look like a set of stairs, right?

It might go up a little bit level off, go up a little bit level off. Yeah. I don't see it going down. Down is I don't think in the cards at all. It's just a matter of how much it's going to go up. Yeah. So it's a beautiful way of life in Flavanna County. We I just saw a report I think last week that 88% of our citizens own their own home, which is a strong number.

I think is that the highest in the region, do you know? That I can't tell you, but 88% is high. I bet you I would be hard pressed to find another region or another locality in central Virginia that's eating that. Somebody like Neil Williamson is watching. Neil's watching. Can probably crunch that data and send it home. But either way, it's a great number.

Tax rate, what are you guys doing with that tax rate? You might throw that question to Supervisor Galloway over here. So well, and I'll throw this quick if I can. So there's been a lot of confusion with the assessments over what the tax rate would be. And on the notices of the new assessment amounts, it states under our current fiscal year tax rate 84.4 that under your new new assessment your tax rate would be X. The state directs that you have to do that, which is so odd to me, because the state also directs that you have to equalize. You can do it every one after you equalize, but equalizing for

those who don't know means you, with the added revenue that you would get off the values, that means you have to adjust the tax rate. If it's added revenue that you would get off the values, that means you have to adjust the tax rate. If it's added revenue, then the tax rate goes down. And then again, from there, you can build off of that, go up, down or nowhere on the budget we're working on. So we equalized it 68.9 cents. We advertised the rate at 75, I guess, two weeks ago, two meetings ago. And I suspect it's going to come in something under that. But, so you and I had a great conversation last night after the thing, talking about equalization. And I think you mentioned you had a conversation with a citizen that you spent a couple hours or whatever amount of time and you couldn't get it there.

So I'd like to try to do a shorter version of it. Let's try to explain what equalization is. So I'm going to take a shot at it and then you tell me this is your world, right? So I'm currently paying $5,000 a year in real estate taxes on my personal home, right? So at the end of next year when you come in, if equalization works right, your assessments, your budgets and your rate, I should be paying roughly the same amount of money in 2025 or 2026. That's equalization, right?

Right, so this is a math problem that you guys have to work on internally to match your budget with your assessments, with your rate. So I don't pay any more than $5,000. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean it's the year over year, you get the same money from the year before and you just adjust the tax rate to accomplish that. So if assessments go up, the equalization brings your tax rate down. If assessments did the reverse, you'd have to actually increase your tax rate. So why in God's holy name do you have to put this current rate because it just freaks people out? Well, the explanation is that when the notice goes out, many municipalities would not have equalized yet.

So there's no real rate to attach to it. But why is it there at all? What's that? Why is it even there at all? This is in its state code. It is. Yeah. And it's so unfortunate because the mass of the people,

and every board member tell you they've gotten a lot of contacts after the assessment came out. The mass of the people that are concerned are seeing that number. And although it does say, it does explain on the back, kind of a fine print thing, that that's not necessarily a real number. But it's understandable. It freaks people out. that that's not necessarily the real number. But it's understandable. It freaks people out. Yeah. You know, I always say, if you're a couple that has kids and you both work all day,

you get home, you got to feed the kids, be sure the homework gets done, cleaned up to bed, and then you do it again tomorrow. I don't know until I was on the board of equalization years ago that I would have known and understood that myself. I think I probably wouldn't. I think I'd see that number and be alarmed. So it's absolutely understandable. And it's a bit deceptive.

Want to jump in now? I mean, I think I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think we do when we go out and do our public town halls, we like our folks to know what the equalized rate is. It's almost just like, all right, look, folks, here's our current rate. Because assessments have gone up, especially over the last three years, four years in Albemarle County, I think it is a transparency thing that people should know what it would be if we equalized so that they can say, all right, if you took the same money in you took in last year, what would the tax rate be?

And I think in Albemarle, I said it the other day, I think it would be around 81 cents, something like that. We're at 84.5 right now for our tax rate. The proposed is a tax rate increase on that rate. So when you're going to go out to the public and talk about, well, here's the current rate, here's what we might propose, especially if it's an increase, and somebody wants to know, well, what would it be if you just got the same money last year? Well, that would be 81 cents. But then, you know, and I'm sure we'll get in That's also assuming the budget doesn't change either, right?

Well, right. But, you know, costs go up, expenditures go up. So if you don't bring in more revenue and you do have increased expenditures and you're not going to increase your tax rate or and you do equalize, then you're effectively going to have to make some cuts somewhere. Just because you got the same revenue as last year doesn't mean the costs are going to remain the same. Your revenues, you can force that, but you can't the only way to force keeping your expenditures are to get rid of some things. And what do I mean by that?

Well, if you have growth and you need an extra firefighter and you have the same revenue as last year and you don't have that extra $150,000 to hire another firefighter and then equip that person, well, then you don't add it and that's an effective cut. Some may disagree with the way I just worded that. Not adding a position is a cut. Some may disagree with the way I just worded that. Well, not adding a position is a cut, but it is if you have increased demand on your services and you're not keeping pace with what you need to staff it. So it gets ‑‑ And we've similarly tried to as a county government tried to get the word out of what the reality is of those numbers in a number of different ways. I will say that if you – let's say the average is a 32 percent

increase on homes, there is going to be some marginal – if we just went with the equalized rate of 68.9, there's going to be some marginal increase in what they pay because their value went up enough to make that happen. Your taxes are going up. Yeah. The question is, is how much? Right. Correct.

You know, so and the how much? If you're, if you had an, yes, if you had an, if an increase that's above the average, your taxes would go up. The average taxpayer in our county is probably going to go up, right? Yeah. Unless you make substantial cuts in the budget, which is... Right. So let's talk about budget season,

because I don't think a lot of people watching the show understand how that works and how long that process takes. So anybody want to jump in on budget season? And before I do that, there was a guy sitting at the table who told me, do you want to know how an elected official is going to vote watching during budget season budget season. His name was Ned. Yeah. Well, it's important. Especially in election year, because what's coming out of our mouth in the fall, if you're running for reelection, you just finished the budget

season. So are the priorities that you say, do they match what you voted on and where you put the dollars? Yeah. And that's important. I think it is a long process. A lot of it is driven by some state code type things that localities have to meet and timing of it all. So already, I mean, we've already had, you know, the county executive gave the recommendation in late February.

We've had now three work sessions. I mean, they get jammed together here. They all start to kind of run together in my head. We have another one Monday. By Wednesday already, we have to set and advertise the cap that the tax rate could be. So what that means is that, like right now, the county executive recommends it would push our tax rate

up to 89.4. We have to advertise, unless the board picks a different number what the cap would be. From that point forward, you can come down on the rate but you just can't go above it. So you have to quickly get up to speed on what's going on with your budget because if you want to do something different than what the county executive did in terms of maybe going further, well then we have to make that decision by Wednesday. So, I'm sorry, go ahead. We advertised, we did our advertised rate several weeks ago, and then this coming week

we will advertise, we'll set not only the advertised rate, but the all rates. We'll advertise the budget itself. So personal property, everything, that's what we'll advertise and then have the public hearing on it. And pretty much from, you start working on it in January, and pretty much from sometime in February, it's a weekly thing that we, every week we're studying, the budget book, I can't imagine in your all's case, but that over just over a hundred million, you know, the budget books is probably six inches thick. And then one thing we did different this year is this board said that nonprofits needed to turn in financials so we could. Good. Yeah. I mean it's a great it's a big first step. And we do that in Elmore County? Yeah, we've there we used to do a process that was kind of in combination We could. Good. Yeah. That's great. It's a big first step.

Can we do that in Elmore County? Yeah. We used to do a process that was kind of in combination with Seaville. And then we both kind of went and we've internalized now. But there is a process where they have to come in and we tier them. So you can look in our budget book and see where places score in terms of effectiveness and then what they're trying to help us achieve strategic plan wise. I like that.

I like that. Well, and part of what spawned that, one of the good business practices, if it was a, I always think of government like a publicly traded company. You've got a board of directors and you have all your shareholders, stakeholders. And any publicly traded company that doesn't analyze the financials of where they are sending their money to. They're sending their money to. They're sending their money to. Right.

And, you know, we found a nonprofit last year that had millions of dollars in the bank and their director was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I'm not… And it came to you asking for money. Yeah. And they have been for years. And I'm not slamming them. God bless them that they're in a good situation.

But I don't know that the fluvanna taxpayers need to be sending them more money. Well, I'll tell you, as a chairperson of a nonprofit, I like to hear that. Because it puts me on an equal playing field. Yeah. You guys are talking about raising the meals tax. That is a discussion.

Yeah. I don't, let's just say at this point, it's not something I'm for. And it'll probably be voted on in the next week or so. In Flavanna, we're a county that has very little tourism. Almost all of our restaurants around Lake Monticello in that beltway, you know, we have some others. And when I go in those restaurants, almost everybody I see is from Flavanna. And so if we ‑‑ You're just taxing your citizens. Yeah.

I say just raise your real estate rate then. Because you're just adding more tax on the people who live there. My interest was if we made Zion's Crossroads a taxing district where we could capture those cars coming off of 64, get their money and then send them back on the road. Now you're not paying all of the cost of community services, but you're getting that revenue. A lot of that being built around the wah-wah that we have coming in on the corner, but it ends up, it seems that's not something you can do in a state of Virginia. So we have to do something in our county, right? And it's been this way.

We talked about this last night forever, for as long as I've been at the county. You know, the local side of the budget, 95, 97 percent dependent on who you talk to, comes from rooftops and five to seven percent come from commercials. So we have to figure out some way to capsulate that. In Ned's case, it's closer to 30 percent, right? Thirty percent of Alamark County comes from it. And I know we're talking about Fulvan and I want to jump in on Alamark, but you know, let's face it, this is election year, gents, right?

You may or may not be running. You may want to talk about this today or not. That's cool. Whatever you're comfortable with. But what are we going to – I don't know. Go ahead. The question is not who's running against you. But anyway. What are we going to do to change that dynamic? In Flavanna?

We're doing it. I'll start with Jennifer Schmeck, our economic development director, is a rock star. She is just doing a wonderful job. There's a lot in the mix that's at this point all closed session or the mass of its closed session, right, where you can't talk about it. But we've got a lot happening and- And we're gonna move that five to seven to some other number. That will be changing soon.

The percentage, I haven't done the math. And in Zion's crossroads, a lot of people for a long time have been saying, Chris, you know, why don't we on our side of 64 do what they're doing on the Louisa side? And my response is typically, well, we don't have a side of 64. All four corners of 15 and 64 are Louisa.

Flouvena doesn't start until 9 tenths of a mile on the Palmyra side of 250, 9 tenths of a mile off 64. So the old adage real estate, real estate, real estate, there's a reason Walgreens is on a corner and CBS is on the opposite corner. And we just haven't been in that position yet. However, that Green Springs district is starting to bump up towards the top of that planning area and on our side, starting to fill in back to there. And our day is coming. And we're there.

Again, Wawa is coming. And let's just say there's a good chance that behind that Wawa might be a lot more commerce. They usually follow. I mean, that's a logical step, right? How's things looking in Elmore? Well, we're trying. I mean, before this particular budget, we were in that like 66% was going to come in

from the property. And we have, we directed the county executive years ago to say we need to start moving that number down. But how do you do that as the economic development? Same answer. We have a little bit, I mean we have a different demand coming in where our meals tax and transient occupancy tax, that stuff, we pulled dollars from that. But that is capped at the state. So like our food and beverage I think is at the cap already. I don't think we're at the cap on the TOT but we're in line with the city at 9%.

But our big thing, the economic development initiative. So I've been using three examples. Obviously the 462 acres that we purchased around Ravana Station. But that's not going to, you know, it's going to take years before we start to realize the impact of that. But that is the long game of trying to then take the pressure off of the property tax. The more ‑‑ the ones we'll see get online that will make a difference, Fashion Square Mall. If you looked at the assessed value of Fashion Square Mall compared to 10 and 12 years ago, we've lost a ton of

revenue as that site has done nothing but decline. So we're turning that around right now, right? Home Depot is going to be – I hear they're going to be open by July now, I think somebody said. They have to be open by Christmas of this year based on tax or an incentive that we gave them to help get it built. Good for Albemarle County because it meant that they were going to open sooner. We also got an easement for about, what, 95% of a road realignment that we're interested in doing behind the mall on Hillsdale Drive. That would have cost $8, $9, $10 million in today's dollars.

Who knows what it would cost in five years or ten years. So when that home depot opens, we've got the public safety center over there on the other side that a different owner owns, the old J.C. Penney site. Belk has got its own little thing. But Home Depot now, Home Depot will own most of that property. And once they get the box store open, then they have to go, all right, now what are we going to do and redevelop? And if they make some efforts to achieve our small area plan, then you can start to see some mixture of

retail and residential. And I hear Home Depot has done some of that in other places. They're not just box store. They do other types of developments. And then there's smaller things that matter too. Down the road there'll be a project coming to us here in the next month or so where Bright Speed currently is out on Railroad West. And it's a utility. So guess what? We don't collect any tax from that property.

But if a new company comes in and takes that over and they're not a utility, it's gonna be on the tax rolls. So it's small things like that that we had from those small things all the way up to the big investment like we did around Ravana Futures that eventually is going to take this 68 percent if we pass the current projected proposed tax rate increases, that would put it up to about 68%. And it's just not based on comparable other comparable communities and where they're at. You want that commercial piece to be greater than what it is

right now in Alamar County. So for those who are listening, you may not know the complication of the Fashion Square Mall. It's owned by several different partners. Richard Hewitt owns the JCPenney. Belk owns the Belk Location Corporate. Fashion Square Mall now owned by Home Depot. One thing to add some color to what Supervisor Galloway said,

Home Depot also has the responsibility of revitalizing the Red Lobster location. So perhaps the most influential, or one of the most influential developers guys in Almaro County is a Fortune 100 company publicly traded in Home Depot because this is one of the most important gateways of Almaro County. Also your district. Right, it's right in the center. You hit the heartbeat of his district here. So follow this very closely. The July news is big time.

And I don't know, I can't confirm that. That's something I heard somebody else say they thought it was July. That's the first I heard of that. Kind of spreading a little rumor. The deadline that I know for sure is Christmas Eve of 25. Yeah. So if they come, but I drive past there every single day and it's incredible how quickly they don't mess around. And I suspect just based on that now I don't you know the interior and stuff They have to do a lot of work yet So I'm not trying to put pressure on her up people's expectations But I think it's fair to say that I don't I don't think they're necessarily gonna wait around till Christmas Eve I respect that there's a time when Home Depot at their peak was opening a store. I think it was one store

On average just less than every 24 hours or something like that. So they're a machine. I suspect ‑‑ Is that one of your customers? No. Well, the very interesting aspect is Home Depot is going to be pretty much across the street from Lowe's. So we're going to see how the Lowe's and Home Depot dynamic plays out and where market share

comes from. And there was a time where that Lowe's was the number two highest grossing. That has since no longer the case, though. Is it, right? Yeah, yeah. But there was a time where that Lowe's was the number two highest gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross tax increases to fund housing affordability initiatives, at the same time tax increases pinching the middle class ‑‑ And raising the cost to own the home? And raising the cost to own the home. Those seem to be almost a contradiction to me. A third component to that, while both of our jurisdictions' prices are going up. Right. We just moved to Ivy, which is the Jack Jewett district here. Twenty-three percent assessment increase year over year on our house. So that ain't cheap.

Wow. While you're thinking about this, to add some context to the sales side of it, the same time period, right, year to date versus last year, your single family detached, and this includes new construction, actually didn't go up as much as ours did. It only went up just a little bit shy of a half a point. It went from 710 to 713. So when the single family detached, you're just climbing a little bit, which feels like a normal percentage for the first three months.

The attached stuff went up 3%. So that's townh and dude flexes. But we need to highlight that the median value is $713,000. Okay. So while you're saying it only uptick 0.42%, we're still talking $713,000. That's more accounting. And I get that, Jerry. That's the reason I threw that in there for a third component of the conversation. Yeah, please. Long to hear what Ned has to say on this. And it's on the heels of the fact that two years ago it was on average 7, 8% in our county. Last year it was 13%.

Compounded. This year the 5% isn't exactly representative residential because if you take commercial and some big multifamily out, in my district, the bigger neighborhoods all around my district, we get a little breakout for each of our districts and the commercial is not in there. It's about 7, 8% in RIO, what the actual increase is. So I understand. We are not just trying to pull revenue in from the property tax. We just spoke about the economic development that we hope will eventually allow us to reduce or not rely on it so heavily, which would

ultimately help with those costs. But in the meantime, with the services we feel we need to provide and to try to give support, which we are being advocated strongly to give more support for affordable housing specifically, well, you have to ‑‑ we have to go to our revenue sources to find it. So, you know, that may mean down the road that what we're doing now may not continue to exist, but when we've ‑‑ whether it's been assessments and we haven't equalized the rate down or we haven't raised the actual tax rate since 2019. When we do it, I always say, well, if I explain to folks what those dollars are going to go for and be clear about it and why we need the extra tax income to

come in, then they can decide whether or not they agree with us or not about that. So this four cent tax increase that's proposed right now is a little different than what we did back in 2019. That 2019 tax rate increase was actually approved to meet the bond referendum for the schools that got passed back in when did that pass? 17, 16? So that tax rate got delayed a year because we didn't need it, but when we put it in place, it was to meet that bond referendum.

This 4 cents, it would be dedicated 3.2 cents to public safety. And what does that mean? Well, if you don't dedicate it, it means all the dollars go into what we call the split. And roughly it's 10% to capital. So the new revenue would get split 10% to capital, and it's about 60% to, or 56% to schools. Schools. I'm not doing the math right here. It goes to capital, schools, and government by the way that we do our split. If you dedicate it, then it doesn't go into that split, and all that new realized revenue would go to what you dedicate it to. So in the current proposal, it's 3.2 for public safety, which

are fire and police officers. That's six police officers. And we have, we've added since 2021, 97 fire positions. And we did a lot of that using FEMA Safer Grants, which helps you get the money up front from the federal government, lets them get trained, get up to speed, but eventually the cost comes over to your locality. So that's what we've been realizing. We were great in winning these competitive grants, but now the cost is coming home and we have to cover it. So that 3.2 cents is about roughly $10 million. That's all going to be dedicated to public safety items. None of that 10 million will be split between local government and the schools in the traditional way.

0.4 cents is dedicated to affordable housing. This would be the first time that we would be dedicating ongoing revenue to the affordable housing issue. The dollar amount for that's 1.2 million at the 0.4 cent increase and then the other 0.4 cents would go to schools. So that's the current proposal. There started to be some conversations the other day in our work session that maybe some supervisors are interested in that split cutting out differently.

So we'll see how that goes when we pick things back up on Monday. Well, Supervisor Pruitt has certainly made that very clear. As Supervisor Malik introduced some thoughts on the matter. Yeah. We'll see where we get on Monday. This comment is coming in for Supervisor Galloway. To add to Jerry's comments, my assessment went up 28.3% in Alamaro County. So adding another 4% is a 32.3% increase.

How can the board expect working families to come up with several thousand dollars overnight? Well, I appreciate that comment and understand it, and that's why we have to decide if we're going to do it or not by the time we finish this budget. And it's not just their property tax. We're increasing the real personal property tax rate, which is actually returning as to what we were pre pandemic at $4.28 per assessed. We had reduced that back then and

then we got it halfway back to 396 which is the current one and it's going to go up to 428. You know, you have to go to your taxpayers and say here's what we need. And if we have a funding gap, we have to say, well, we're going to ask you for more revenue and here's what it's going to be used, you know, here's what it's going to pay for. And do you agree with that or not? Are those important things? And if a lot of your citizens tell you no, well, then you have different decisions to make. And if you disagree with them, then that's when election time tries to equalize that. How do I answer the question, how do I expect people to come up with $1,000 overnight, a

couple thousand dollars? I don't expect them to. But the reality is, is that this is how we grow revenue, is through our tax rates. And right now we have services that we need to provide, we are expected to provide, that people want us to provide, and we need to come back out to the taxpayers right now and say in addition to this assessed or your rising assessments, we need to hit at a different rate to be able to afford those services that a lot of you want us to provide. I respect that answer.

I respect that. It's not an easy position. Please. I can't wait to hear your answer on this. Well, I had a question. So I think Albumeral, as you said, you all maintain the same rate, right? So if there's a bump in values that bumps the tax ‑‑ We get more revenue.

We have not equalized the rate down, even with these big increases. We have kept the tax rate the same. It's been 84.9 since 2019. That's changing. But now we're saying we're going to take that to 89.4. That's what I say. 85.4 is the current. It will go to 89.4.

So force that increase on the rate while assessments since COVID have gone bananas. Like compound year over year over year bananas. So I'm not remembering the revenue amount that we would get just at the new rate. I mean, it's about 5%. That's the average increase. So the tax rate itself brings in an additional about it's about 13.3 million dollars. So that's what the new tax rate gets us. But we are already getting increased revenues from the bump in assessments. And

we have been. That's why we have not had to touch our tax rates since 2019. We have effectively been pulling in more taxes, but not because we have had to change the rate, but because you know Jerry's ‑‑ what did you say? Your home went up? 23% year over year. That increase has meant more revenue coming into us. Now, when folks in the past budget years, it's been the same question. Well, my tax bill is going up. What are you using that money for? And that's what budget season is about and that's why I say, well, pay attention to us. Because if you want to make a decision on me, if my name is on a ballot, I'm going

to say what my priorities are and I should be following those priorities when I program dollars. So I'll say point blank right now. The 3.2 cents, I mean, I get what we've had to do in our fire department, but we haven't added I think in the same time frame over the last 10 or 15 years, we've only added maybe seven, eight positions. It might be more than that in the police. But our police department is only about 1.3 or 1.4 officers per thousand people.

We're massively understaffed in our police department. And this is at a time right now where public safety is of a major concern in our county. And I say that, and it's from as simple as the everyday speeding concerns that I hear, that's the biggest safety thing I hear from constituents all the way up to some of the violent crime that has hit our community over the last few years. And, you know, just policing the roads and dealing with the traffic. We had three tractor trailers overturned in this county in the last month. When your police department goes out for a tractor trailer overturn and then some other call comes in and they have to spread for that, can't be spreading these men and women

too thin. In the Rio district in 2024 there were 16,000 calls for service in my and I think I broke that out, something like 200 calls a day. And if it's just citizen initiated when it was like 45 calls a day. And if it's just citizen initiated when it was like 45 calls a day. That's something happening there that means that police needs to respond. And you can't just keep pulling that thin. We have got to reinforce them. Can I add, so the reason I asked about the, if you've maintained the same rate, and just to add for my constituents who we say law says we have to equalize, if I understand right, you all do technically

you equalize and then bump the rate back, right? So by law, it might be just in the office. You've got to go through the equalization process and then you can bring it back to what that rate is. I think Fluvanna is either one of, if not the only municipality in our region that truly equalizes and so let's just say 84.4 is where we're at. We don't maintain 84.4 going into the new year. We, if values go up,

we actually do go to our equalized rate and then start building our new tax rate off of that. But I just want to be careful. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm not going to pay more cash, right? I might end up paying more than $5,000 come the next – even if you hit the equalization rate. That's what I was saying earlier. If your values went up, then even if you equalize, you're going to pay a little bit more based upon the value. And I'm not saying good, bad, or indifferent.

I'm just saying in our case – and I understand the argument for the other side – but in our case, we don't get the extra bump from the revenues if your values go up 20%. I'll put it in perspective. Ten years ago I was paying half and I agree with you. You equalize almost every year. I've never seen it not happen. But I'm paying double in cash and I was paying ten years ago. I'm not sure that's relevant to what I'm saying though. I mean to that taxpayer's concern, what they're saying is, what'd you say, the values went up in Elmorrow? Elmorrow County on average, what was it?

It was the average county what was five, but that was everything. Residential's probably in the seven, eight percent range. I think that's right, yeah. So I guess I'm just saying that's the difference to my constituents, that's a difference of how we do it. They're not seeing that, let's say the average residential, well, just countywide was again like 23 or 24. We're not going to get the income off of 23 or 24 and then reap the tax increase

off of it, on top of it. The point he's going to make is he's going to make his parents being gentrified out of their house. That's what you're going to make, right? When they're on a fixed budget and they're now moving into a basement apartment at a house. No, no, no, no, no, no. A terrace level independent living facility. Okay. There we go. Yeah. I'm very curious of your take, very curious of your take of that dynamic between increasing, finding, improving the tax base or expanding the tax base for affordable housing

initiatives? Yeah, I think the mass of our citizens are not for continuing to increase taxes, you know, for government to participate in the building of homes, be it apartments or what. And I say continue to because we do have an apartment complex now that it was before I was on the board, but it came in and the county is giving ten years of zero taxes on the buildings, 124 apartments, I don't know how many buildings that is, 10 years of zero taxes, and then the next five years it escalates by 20 percent to where it's not until year 15 that they pay the full amount of taxes. And that was something

that the citizens, you know, that's tax money that the citizens gave up in order to put those apartments there. That seems insane to me. There are people in Flouvanneau who agree with you. Absolutely insane. Because of the strain on infrastructure when the revenue is not being generated for what was created. That's just absolutely insane to me.

When I first heard about that, I said, okay, so the narrative is always that the burden is on the rooftops. So we got to build more business to take the burden off the rooftops. But then we build homes to bring people in, apartments are homes, we build apartments and homes that we subsidize to bring people in which means they brought no real estate revenue off those buildings. So now if you, on average, you had to have X amount of economic development to take the pressure off of those that do pay the taxes, now you just brought in residential that pays no taxes. So how much more business do you need to balance that out?

And I'm not saying there's a good and right answer and it's different per municipality. But that's a theme and concern in Flavio. Well, isn't that, and I don't know, but I think Will Park talked about this in his session yesterday and that project. That project has commercial on it that does get taxed. So the tax abatement is just for the residential, right? Well, how they make these projects work sometimes.

So it's 200, how many units is this? 200 and no, 324 units, 125 are the departments, 24 you're talking about. There's 200 residential construction, town homes and single-family detached, which by the way, they'll be built out by the end of this year. And there's a gas station site and about 60,000 square feet of commercial which is about ready to hit the market So is the is the tax abatement on the full property or just the affordable? So just the affordable getting taxes on the Single-family detached single-family attached so the insanity is not necessarily insane right because you're taking you're subsidizing to get those affordable units

Because the commercial should bring some revenue in So it's not like you're not collecting anything on the whole property, the whole site. Your market rate units and your commercial stuff will bring in revenue for you. I would love to hear his response to that. Yeah, wait until you hear this. Some is the key word. Yeah, there we go. You know, who cares about revenue without profit in the business world? The expense of those homes is going to be higher than the revenue.

So it's still a net negative to the taxpayers who are currently ‑‑ I get it. But I've made this comment a few times over the last few days. And I don't mean to be disparaging, but I'm saying that poor people can't live in this area without subsidy. That's fact. So while you guys have been talking, I've been crunching numbers. I don't think that's necessarily a fair statement.

Middle class folks are starting to have a hard time living in here without some subsidy. That's just fact. But respectfully, Supervisor Gowdy, tremendous respect for you. If we raise the taxes on middle class folks, that's going to push the middle class folks out first. Isn't that straightforward? Okay. But it's not just the tax rate that's going to push them out. There are bigger things that can push folks out of a community. The market rate that's hugely climbing with those

assessment pieces is not allowing them to come in and build new, right? Land use policies, so right, I would almost argue that our land use policies do more to affect that value and push people out in the cost and that's a bigger burden than the tax rate. 5% of Alamaro County is allocated for development. That's what he's talking about right there. Some folks are asking to expand the development area beyond 5%. I am vehemently opposed to that. I live in Alamaro County because I love the green aspect of Alamaro County. This is a county I'm choosing to live in because I like to see green, not Fredericksburg, not Northern Virginia. I know that's the sentiment in Fluvana County. I really like a lot of

Fluvana County. You should talk about this. Please, I would love to get this out and then Keith, you jump in here. What is the ‑‑ a lot of people have a misconception that if you build more houses that the tax base is going to increase. I would love to hear your take on that. »» Yeah, so I hear that from many. That you're just putting more ‑‑ of course the county, the government wants more development, more residential, you know, just puts more money in the coffers. And I understand where that thinking would come from while on average, I think it was two years ago, a study was done throughout the state, on average for every dollar in residential tax revenue, it's $1.18 in expenses. So roughly a 20% net loss. And so as those people come in, and God bless them,

and growth is inevitable, it's going to happen, you've got to plan for it. I have wonderful friends who are come here is not from here's, and I'm blessed by that. While still the math that doesn't change the math that the more you have residential development the more your cost of living goes up through schools, fire trucks and so on. So I always say if you're trying to promote that my question would be if it gets rid of your trees and fields but raises your cost of living. What are you working towards? I'm purposely staying quiet about this. You want to jump in? Well, I mean in Albemarle it's been our plan because of the how we've proposed it five percent should be where the development area

It gets targeted and gets pushed and that ninety five percent is that rural area and that's us trying to plan for that inevitability Yeah, and so but what's happening is that it pushes all the burden of the density rural area and that's us trying to plan for that inevitability. But what's happening is that it pushes all the burden of the density into that development area and the type of housing stock is not the whole gamut of choice for living. So if you wanted to come here and you're one of the come here's that wants to come raise your family and you would love to have a home that was $300,000, $400,000 brand new or build brand new, you can't do that. That's not an option right now.

So that's what I mean by even the middle class are going to need some help to be able to make that work. Keith knows that working with his land trust, when he explains the math to me and what the AMI at 124,000 and what it needs to be able to get the folks into that home, well, you do want to do things. You subsidize and help them do it or you don't and they don't live here. So I've been wanting to jump in on that math and I did not want to interrupt the conversation because it was going in the right direction. But I did some math on your 1.2 million dollars to your point

So 80% AMI area medium income right at which in the area meeting has a hundred twenty four thousand Two hundred dollars that is for our region which includes Fulvan County Mark County. That's a twenty twenty three number That's a twenty twenty four numbers about to come out a 100 percent. It's going to be higher. 100 percent higher. So these are lagging indicators because the number is going to get worse. So at 80 percent AMI at that number, so the area of New York, so that is for a household, right? So two cops or two firemen or whatever. I want to make that. In order for them to buy a home, at today's interest rate, the cap number then goes about 200 grand. So if I'm using an Alomar County attached product, which is where the first time homebuyer is going

in your thing, at 464, which is the medium sales price, you can only do four units with that $1.2 million. Now, if you jump that number to 100% AMI, which is 124,200, you can jump that number to 7. Right? So you are, the point is that 1.2 million dollars isn't going to buy you that much in your county, our county. So we've got a medium sales price of 370. So we're about 170 short at the 80% and we're $70,000 short into 300,000. It's, we had a conversation yesterday

about where we're going to go, Buckingham County, right? We talk about this on the show all the time. Where is the first time homebuyer going to go and it just keeps on going out and out and out. But at those type of price ranges, teachers, cops, firemen, so forth, can't leave in either one of our counties because the subsidy is that long and as far as our county is concerned as taxes go up because prices are going to go up. We're going to start pricing people out of our county and as Jerry Jerry said, it'd

be my parents. But I just wanted to put a perspective to it. What an 80 and 100 percent area of median income and what the current market rate is now that it's going to grade, how much subsidy is needed to make that work or some other solution than subsidy? And I'll shut up and let you guys talk. Question. Do you want to jump in on that?

I mean, you know, it's the argument or debate over the extent that government gets involved in the private sector. And there are good arguments, of course, on both sides. And I mentioned yesterday, sometimes you've got to go to the saying from a justice in the 1960s, I'll know it when I see it. You have to add context to that though. It was over porn. And so everybody wants to help their neighbor and wants their neighbor to prosper and the balancing act in question comes in the extent that you help pay for that for your neighbor to get there.

So I've been really trying to hold things back, but I'm going to kind of go into this a little bit at the moment. We don't need money to make this work. What we need is the red tape to turn the green tape. What we need to do as far as developers go and affordable and non-profit affordable is to rework the rules and the pathway so that we can make it happen. I don't need money to build affordable housings in Fulvanah County. I just got to be allowed to do it, right? I had a great conversation at the convention at the summit yesterday with

Lloyd talking about the city zoning ordinance. And at our executive committee, at our full body meeting, he was jumping in along with Mike Pango, and they don't understand why new houses are actually being built. And they're not being built in the city of Charleston because of the red tape. Because in order to do it, you have what, three units or more, it's a full site plan, it's a couple of hundred thousand dollars, it's years down the line. You have to do E&S impacts and all these different things that just make it so expensive. As a land trust chair and provider, I have multiple parcels in the city of Charlottesville that we can't build affordable housing on. I'm not asking for money.

I'm just asking for the rules to be looked at a little bit differently so we can actually produce them. Your county, right, 80% AMI. If we get we're allowed to do 115, I can make some magic happen without asking any money. Well, here's what I've learned over the last few years of watching projects that have gone up not just in our area, but when you try to learn, like the two associate directors of economic development, it was from Prince George's County, was that the right county? Yeah. And also from the city of Richmond, we were there yesterday. And then Will Park and Steve's presentation, this isn't just, oh, the answer is in the private sector or it's just public subsidy.

Yeah, 100%. It's a combination of a bunch of things. When you look at successful projects, yes, there could be some tax abatement. Yes, there might be land leases of its county or city-owned land. Yes, there could be some regulation streamlining that can happen to help save time because time does add to the cost factor of it. And yes, private developers get together and start working with one another.

Look, I'm a residential developer. You're a commercial developer. Let's team up and see what we can do to figure this out. Some are more expert at doing the low income tax credits or not. But I haven't seen a single project in our summit presentations and the Virginia Governor's Housing Association's summit presentations that the Virginia Governors Housing Association's summit presentations

that made one tool make an affordable project work where it was like, oh, it's just tax abatement or oh, it's just regulation piece. It's got to be a combination of it all. I finished this. It's Robert Liberty, the silver buck shot. It's not just a bullet. Not a silver bullet. It's a silver buck shot.

So the reason he says it, because every time I say it, I've got to VIMO five bucks to Robert Liddell. And I want to respectfully push back on you. The reason that there's been no development in the city of Charlottesville is with the new zoning ordinance, 10% of units with development projects of nine units or more have to be affordable for 99 years at a 60% AMI. That math does not pencil out for a developer. And secondly, secondly, with all due respect, there is an active lawsuit against the new zoning ordinance. What developer is going to pursue a zoning code

that may change tomorrow? I'm talking low hanging fruit. I've got a land trust that I wanna build 12 units that I'm allowed to do it by right, that I can't do it because the development expenses are too expensive. If they can retool that, then we can produce it because from a land trust perspective, we don't care about the lawsuits because it doesn't matter to us. We're going to move forward with it no matter what. But I

can't do it because the math doesn't work out. And I had a great conversation with a nonprofit and a for-profit. They both got the same problems, right? They both have the same development problems. But in order to make this work, I wanted to give a shout out to Ned in Atmore County. And I want to talk about a success, right? So I'm putting Land Trust hat on, and if you can let me bore you for here for a second. Land Trust hat on, we produce, just wrapped up producing

30 permanent affordable housing. And how did we do that? We connected to your point with a local developer, local builder, local commercial thing. We sat down and talked to your county, we were glazed enough to get $650,000 worth of grants. But what was more important than that was helping us navigate the interpretation of ordinances and so forth and so on to get there. So your staff chimed in. We then teamed up with two other nonprofits, PHA and ourselves, and within 18 months, we sold, built and put in

30 permanent affordable housing, which, oh, by the way, we just sold our first one and that buyer walked away with $50,000 cash in their pocket and they're walking up the housing ladder, right? They're moving into a market rate house and comes in because it's a 99-year program. It came in and bought it and we have new people climbing that ladder. So to your point, Ned, this isn't about all about money. This is all about how we work together to try to figure it out. And that's what yesterday was about. I would add, go back a little bit.

Again, it's a balancing act. Let's say a municipality does free up where you can build more of those residential units. Well, back to the roughly 20% cost above revenue. It's a real issue, yeah. You just, let's say that the average home in Flu Vanna couldn't go, you know more than a month or two without a paycheck and yet We're gonna increase their taxes. So that's what yesterday was about. That's what this conversations about That's why I love having this conversation with you because we mean I see the same thing

But we understand the challenges right and we're not just throwing our hands up and saying, well, we're not going to do anything about it, right? We're in, you know, what was Theodore Roosevelt's in the arena speech, right? You know, we're staying in the arena, we're staying in the fight, because even though we all may think about this differently on how to get there, we understand what the problem is

and we're willing to try to put in the extra hours to do it. But the conversation we had yesterday, you know, you're running again and that may or may not be running, but that's a 40-hour-a-week job. I'm trying to bait you, brother. That's a 48-hour-a-week job and, you know, you guys bust your butts to go ahead and do it. Well, budget season is certainly a busy time of year. But yeah, I'll leave it there.

I'd love to throw this to Supervisor Galloway here. We bumped the tax rate four cents. And with a four cent bump, while assessments are popping as well, $1.2 million is being created for housing affordability. $1.2 million in 2025 buys you a couple of tents and some coolers. Well here's what? Technically four at four. Okay, as anyone shoppers some tents and some coolers at Dick's, it ain't cheap. So I think right now, and I think this is interesting because sometimes, given the locality,

I don't think there, I don't know, I guess I don't know in Virginia how many counties are split politically by the traditional Dems, Republicans, that sort of thing. But we're all Democrats on the Almer County board. But we're not of one mind of how to go about affordable housing in terms of the funding and the mechanisms. Now, we are all committed to trying to attack the issue and do things for it. But there are some that would even want more.

So right now, in addition to the 1.2, that 1.2 from the.4 cents, we're saying that's even dedicated in the future years. And that, like when I say that's the first time we're going to give ongoing revenue for it, prior to this year, our housing fund was brought in by one-time money that came up from surplus. So if you have revenues go up more than you anticipated and what you budgeted for or expenditures are different and you gain those extra revenue dollars, we have chose to use that money in other ways for one-time things and that has been to put in our housing fund. Every time we put money in the housing fund, I think the

biggest year that we got to was like $5 million. July 1 is when the fiscal year is over. By the end of July of that fiscal year, all that $5 million was gone because $20 million of requests came in. And it didn't get us very far. So there are folks and the advocates, we had 30 people, around 30 people show up for our budget public hearing, two or three spoke to don't raise our taxes.

Now we've been getting emails in. I'm just speaking specifically to the folks that showed up in the Lane auditorium. All the others, it wasn't about don't raise taxes. It was about how to use the money. So affordable housing folks want more money coming their way. There were school advocates there that want more money going to the schools. So when you hear some of that sentiment, and I'm saying to folks that if you don't want your tax rate increase, speak up.

You got to come out and talk to us. You got to send your e-mail. Some are. So continue that because all that information is going to come in. This is a tough job. This is easy for me on the microphone to go blah, blah, blah. We're money morning quarterback. That's what I was going to say, though.

$1.2 million isn't necessarily we're just going to go buy a home for somebody or put it in. It's for other things. There are some supervisors that would like and even if we formed a trust fund, even how that trust fund would work and operate, we have varying ideas on how that could be. And yesterday, that's why ideas on how that could be. And yesterday, that's why I love the summit, man. We had talking about how some places give 0% loans out to developers. It lets them get a job done because of the way you're lending it.

They pay that money back, so you get the units and you also get your money back, right? You could use that money if you could build an investment pool or a trust fund up high enough where it could start bringing investment returns in. You're allowed to do that with trust funds. Then that could start self-watering a little bit down the road. But that's not a, you're not going to do that with $5 million.

You need a higher amount. So there's creative ways to get at it where you can take, I think every county supervisor, every jurisdiction, every city counselor, we're always trying to turn a dollar into two or three or four dollars. And that's we just right now are thinking of different ways. We will be having a conversation about the trust fund coming up here. I don't know the exact date, but I think it's in March before we get to April and finish

this budget up. So we're way beyond our time. So oh, and I want to thank Jerry for letting that happen. But, you know, this is an important discussion. I think I'm just going to wrap it up around this and stay around housing. And we talked a little bit about this, you and I, offline, Chris. The reason I'm so passionate about the Regional Housing Partnership, because housing is regional.

What happens in Ned's County impacts Fulvanah County, right? So housing is not just a jurisdictional bubble, right? It impacts what happens in Charlottesville and how it impacts us, impacts Green. So the fact that you're at the table is huge, right? And your voice is super important. So I wanted to thank you for that. And I think we learn from each other, which is what yesterday was about. And that's what I wanted to thank you for that. And I think we learn from each other, which is what yesterday was about. And that's what I wanted to end my statement. So thank you for wrapping that up for me. Without the vitriol, we can talk.

We can disagree. We can have these debates. But if you know you can learn from one another, then you don't feel like you have to get in an attack or defense. The takeaway here is we all give a shit. And we're all trying to do the best we can to get it. And we may not have the magic answers, but we and we're all trying to do the best we can to get it done.

We may not have the magic answers, but we're at the table trying to have the composition. Any announcements you want to make? I will make this announcement. On March 18th, Tuesday at the center will be the one public budget town hall that I'm doing that I'll definitely be at. If I'm attending others, I might not be the lead supervisor, but we have a series, go to our website, series of town halls on the budget. But that's gonna be an opportunity for the folks at RIO

to come out and hear what we're doing with this money, hear what decisions we're making, how the discussions are going, and then they'll have an opportunity to ask questions and tell us how they feel. And when you're ready to talk a little bit more about it, we'll give you a mic to go ahead and talk about that. Anybody running against you that you know about?

Not yet. The scuttlebutt? No, I mean, you always hear stories and there's always chatter and there's always people who are unhappy about what you're doing. So there's a lot of season left until November. And you would rather have a contested than an uncontested race? I'll take it either way. I can't affect it, so I'm going to roll with what I get. Do what you can.

Yeah, I mean, if it was to come, you know. Thank you, gentlemen. We're waiting. We're looking at tomorrow. Keith Smith, Chris Fairchild, and Ned Galloway. Judah Wickhauer behind the camera. Props to Judah. Keeps us on air since the other day.

This is a real talk with Keith Smith. We did not get to, I think we missed 30 comments and questions from the viewers and listeners, so we'll have to do this again. And we went an hour and 15 minutes without stopping, folks. Here. The I Love Seville show is up at 1230, where we'll continue some of this discussion, guys. So thank you for joining us. So long. Thank you. That was a great message. Can I move on? Yeah.

Probably do not get to. Thank you for joining us. So long. Thank you.