The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Dave Shreve, AlbCo Board Of Supervisors Candidate; Introduce Your Campaign & Platform To Voters

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Dave Shreve, AlbCo Board Of Supervisors Candidate Introduce Your Campaign & Platform To Voters Shreve Has Called Property Tax Increases “Regressive” What Separates You From Opponent Sally Duncan? Why Should AlbCo Voters Worry About Sally Duncan? Is Albemarle Democratic Party Working Against You? The Great, Good, Bad & Ugly Of Albemarle County Independents & Republicans Can Vote In The Primary CVille Police Chief Mike Kochis On Tomorrow’s Show Dave Shreve, AlbCo Board of Supervisors candidate, joined me live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Welcome to the Isle of Seville show guys. My name is Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us a Tuesday afternoon in downtown Charlottesville. I am very much looking forward to today's show. Dave Shreve is in the house in Elmora County, Board of Supervisors candidate in the Jack Jewett district. We've highlighted the Jack Jewett race for about a month and change now on the Isle of Seville network. I think it is, frankly speaking, still flying under the radar.

The Jack Jewett district race is one, frankly, that's heated. And while both candidates are Democrats, from my standpoint, they are quite opposite in their ideologies and their pursuits for Almar County. Dave Shreve is our guest today. We will introduce you to him in a matter of minutes. I do wanna highlight we're equal opportunity employers here. So if Sally Duncan would like to come on the show, she's certainly welcome to join us on the program as well.

A lot I want to cover on the program, we want to introduce you to Dave. We want to talk about his campaign, his platform. I'm going to ask him tough questions. I'm going to ask him this. Is the Alamo County Democratic Party working against his campaign? He's had some pushback from some members in the Alamo County

Democratic Party with his employer. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the commentary he had to legacy media about the regressive nature of property tax increases. Boy, oh boy, when he made that comment, did that resonate with me. The idea of housing affordability created by taxing people's homes additionally

makes absolutely no sense to me, but I want to hear it from the candidate himself. Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. Before we welcome Dave, why don't we thank our partners at Charlottesville Sanitary Supply. The Vermillions are proud Alamoore Countyans. John Vermillion is two generations in Alamoore County. His son, three generations in Alamoore County.

They own Charlottesville Sanitary Supply guys on East High Street, and online at CharlottesvilleSanitarySupply.com. They do things the right way, the honest way, the communicative way, the way of integrity. Judah Wickhauer, let's go to the studio camera in a two shot as Dave has a boatload of people watching him on Tuesday afternoon in downtown Charlottesville. Thank you for joining us, Dave.

It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me and thanks to everybody for tuning in as well. I've long admired the way in which Jerry runs this show and asks some of the more incisive questions that you'll ever see and hear coming from local media. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I'll get out of your way.

Introduce yourself to the viewers and listeners. Yeah. Well, I suspect, Jerry, that you and I don't align perfectly in political circles, but we have one big thing in common and that is we both love Seaville. And in fact, I think if I were hard pressed to describe why I'm running now, if there was just one thing, it's for that reason alone.

It's been a home to my family since I moved here about the same time you did in the late 1990s to come teach at the University of Virginia. I had a post at the Miller Center of Public Affairs as well. And my two daughters prospered when we came. One was born here, the first we moved when she was in kindergarten and they went through Greer, Jack Jewett, Almore High School. They're on to amazing careers now

and I credit the community for a lot of that. So more than anything else, and I've been deeply committed to serving in this community since we arrived back in the late 1990s. And so I've served nonprofits, a number of boards. I've been the chair of the Jack Jewett Democratic Party for almost 17 years now, helping to elect other fellow Democrats who share my concern for the community.

But it's just been a great place in which to live and more than anything else, I wanna keep it that way. I respect that, I respect that. I respect anyone who's willing to serve the community. They certainly do not run for board of supervisors guys for the money. We're talking a 40 hour plus week job for compensation that is less than $20,000 a year.

So folks, it's not for the money, it's for the commitment to the community. Let's get to the platform and the campaign. I'll get out of your way again. Introduce the platform points to the viewers and listeners. Well, I think if you were to go to my campaign website, you would see a couple of things that really jump out. One is I've trained as an economist and an economic historian,

so my bailiwick, my life's work has been devoted to really one big thing. That is to figuring out how we make prosperous communities and economies that serve everyone. So that's point number one. Everything should flow from that. It should fit into that design and that approach. Along the way, of course, we have unique special problems that I think we have to pay attention to.

Affordable housing is one. Transportation, traffic jams, and congestion is another. Making sure those schools that I mentioned earlier that were so good to my two daughters remain strong and can do the same for other families. And so I'm committed to really working hard and effectively with our leaders in the school community, teachers, administrators, support staff, you name it.

And then beyond that, I think I should stress because a lot of what we're probably going to talk about today is connected to this is that I'm an environmentalist and I understand the way in which we live in an increasingly fragile environmental situation or, you know, and that goes from the global to the local. And I think we, you know, we have limited control, of course, over what we can do locally, but we have to be aware, at least, of what we're facing and how we should best approach it. You touched on a lot of points that are important to me and

will highlight Neil Williamson watching the program, Deep Throat's watching the program, Jenny Hu gives us a retweet now in Marl County, goodness gracious you got a lot of people watching you right now Dave. I've been here 25 years. I went from first year at UVA to now a husband, proud husband, proud father, two little boys that, like you as a father, they're our world. Fatherhood, motherhood, being a parent, it's like your heart is walking outside your body. And you live this roller coaster of emotions as your children are trying to figure out life. And it gets me choked up thinking about it. When I first arrived 25 years ago to what it is today,

it's completely different. You touched on traffic, it's worsened. You touched on schools in Almarra County, they've worsened. The data justifies this. The performance of standardized tests justifies this. The students are living in trailers. They call them educational villages outside the school buildings themselves.

I don't understand that. We talk about density in this community. Yes, density is uptick, but has it uptick at the sacrifice of quality of life? The last thing I want with Alamaro County is to turn it to Northern Virginia or Fredericksburg. And we've all seen what happens there. So I want to get out of your way here. It seems like to me this election is going to come down to how do we prioritize driving the county budget from a taxing standpoint while not sacrificing quality of life in Albemarle and that sacrifice of quality of life seems to be from prolific density, prolific rooftop building at the cost

of everyday living. Anywhere you want to go on that topic, then I'll talk specifics. Well, let's start with a simple declaration because there's a lot that can be said about that. But one thing that you sort of alluded to here regarding density is that density per se is a more efficient way of organizing people than sprawl. So that's good. But what we can't overlook is that that doesn't mean it's going

to be cheaper or not costly. It will still be costly. And when you pass certain thresholds of density, not only do the cost keep increasing but they increase geometrically because life gets more complicated, traffic management, public safety, housing students in schools, you name it and you reach these thresholds.

A good example of that is storm water management, you know, up to a certain level of density. Mother nature provides it for free. But then once you reach a critical level, you have to pay for it. And it's irresistible. You can't, you know, work around it. It just has to happen.

So I want the viewers to be aware that we're, you know, we're, as you said, I think you used the term crossroads. I think we are on the cusp of a potential change where we either overlook that basic fact and just kind of carry on and hope for the best, or we face it squarely and try to manage it as best we can. Your opponent has campaign commentary and campaign imaging and advertising, specifically a television spot we highlighted last week on the show that seems to allude that if she is elected to the Board of Supervisors and represents the Jack Jewett district, she's

going to invest in a lot of ways in Almaro County. From our standpoint, reading between the lines, investing means additional taxes. What is specifically your stance on taxing Almar County residents? Because it seems to me we are at this cusp of county residents screaming at the top of their lungs, we cannot afford anymore, and we're being gentrified out of this community we love.

Yes, I don't like to use the term gentrification because I think it's kind of a soft word. Okay. I use the word displacement. Okay. Because that's really what it is. And my own four decades long study of housing affordability problems suggests that that factor alone, property tax led displacement, is probably, at least in the top five,

probably in the top three factors that make housing untenable and unaffordable for a lot of people. And so one of the things I think you'll see distinctly about my approach, if I am fortunate enough to to be elected is that I will focus probably more attention on displacement and keeping people where they are, where there might be some affordable options still remaining in our community rather than trying to build more

to and hope for the best, you know, that that will create affordability somehow through the marketplace and the way it'll work. You recently in a media in an interview, I think was with MBC 29 You were quoted as saying this Quote for the first time since 2019 Taxes are increasing It's a choice that you said you're neither for nor against.

You said property taxes and the rate increases are always problematic and it's mostly because it's a regressive tax so the poorest pay the most. You also said if elected you would work on developing a consensus on changing the current property tax model. What does that mean? changing the current property tax model. What does that mean, changing the current property tax model? How? Well, it's both a difficult question to answer, but also a very easy one to answer. And the reason it's difficult is because you mentioned the word consensus there.

My career looking at tax reform has convinced me of one really big thing and that is when you start talking about taxes, people get really anxious and they get nervous because the history suggests that they often get screwed when we, you know, talk about taxes and we take the easy path and the easy way out. And so I understand that. So I will never be one to go in and say, here's what we do, let's do it, everybody listen up, let's make it work. That will get you nowhere. So I want to build a consensus. But I also know how it should be done. I worked with several city councilors, for example, in Charlottesville. It's been going on now for seven or eight years in trying to, my thought was maybe they're more primed for the change than the county and I'll work with anybody who wants to make the change. And what I introduced there was a model that was taken up by some counselors and we tried to go forth with a few city managers as they came and went. And it's based on a couple of tools

that are in use around the country. One is a homestead exemption and the other is what they call a circuit breaker. And what you do with these things is you make the property tax behave more like a tax based on ability to pay. So that if you're poor, your rates and your assessment combined

don't keep putting additional pressure on you, even if your income stays the same or heaven forbid goes down, which is what a lot of people face in our community. And that's what I mean by a regressive tax. Unfortunately, we've local governments have had to live with it for a couple of centuries and I know why. It's not a good reason, but I know why and I think we can change it. Property taxes are undoubtedly regressive guys.

We have 24 tenants in our real estate portfolio. The taxes are without question paid in very large part by our tenants. They're always passed in the form of triple net leases or other language and leases to the tenants. It's rare that the landlord or the real estate owner is paying the brunt of the taxes if there is a tax increase. It's important to emphasize that. Furthermore, those that are living on the financial margin in Alamaro County, when you uptick the real estate tax rate four cents, at the same time that assessments have upt 40% plus from pre pandemic until now,

it's those that are on the financial margin that will feel this burn the most. It's not the wealthy that have disposable income. I'd love to throw to Dave, the candidate in the Jack Jewett district, what the plans are for economic development. From my standpoint as a capitalist and as a business owner,

I see an opportunity for Almar County to go even deeper in economic development. I was a huge fan of the Ravana Station purchase to solidify the defense sector in northern Almar County, basically building a campus. A lot of folks said the Board of Supervisors bailed Wendell Wood out on some land in northern Almar County that wasn't the most developable for Mr. Wood and his heirs, but at the same time they were able to keep the development sector here.

I thought that was a genius move. Donna Price sat in your seat and called it the most significant economic development in Alamaro County history save the creation of the University of Virginia. She went that far as saying it. What are some other economic development opportunities or ideas that you may have that could also drive incremental tax revenue for the county because we need to highlight the Wendell, the Weldon Cooper study that said, look, residential rooftops don't necessarily drive incremental

tax revenue for any counties and they actually put a number on it. First, the economic development piece and then we'll get to Weldon Cooper. Yeah, I'm glad you connected those two issues because they are connected in important ways. Economic development, I served on the Economic Development Authority for eight years and I'll say two things related to the Ravana Futures and then economic development in general. For the Ravana Futures Project, I think you're right and Donna was right that it is significant

and it will present opportunities for many. The biggest thing you'll probably see, the biggest outcome that I would call positive is that it will, through what we call the multiplier, drive additional sales and economic activity in our community. I would say that that's probably less important to us as a fairly wealthy community than any other factors,

but it's still significant. And the other thing that I always tried to do when I served on the EDA was at the same time we looked at opportunities like that also focus pretty squarely, maybe even predominantly on existing businesses in our community, why they're struggling, why they're failing and they do fail and they don't, you know, it's not just a struggle.

And moving where we can to assist them. and they do fail, and it's not just a struggle. And moving where we can to assist them. One really smart way would be to go back to what we just talked about, and that is tax reform. Because if you help take the tax burden off the poorest in our community, these are folks who spend every dollar they earn just out of necessity because that's what they buy, necessities.

They can't afford luxuries. And so that's coming right back into the economy. And I think by and large, if you look at economies, capitalist economies everywhere in the world, that's probably the most critical factor, whether the poorest in a given community, the working class, have spending power or not. And if they don't, and if you're sucking it out of them with a regressive tax system, you're clipping their wings. And by virtue of doing that, you're clipping the wings of lots of small businesses who

sell to them and depend on them. How have we gotten, and let's go, we'll go Weldon Cooper next before I lose the train of thought. Weldon Cooper and this is very much up your alley data that look if you just create more rooftops and and and say Alamaro County it's not going to be a net positive for the budget and for the county in fact it's a negative. Put the Weldon Cooper study into perspective that I'll ask some specific follow-up questions. Okay. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. And I worked at the Weldon Cooper Center for a number of years at the Center for Survey Research.

But Terry Refan, the economist who authored that study as an old friend, and I'm very familiar with his approach to these things, he's a consummate economist and what I like about Terry's work is that he does have this problem that many economists who are dedicated to their craft share and that is they say, well, on one hand and then on the other, you know, and so many caveats and exceptions to the, you know, the conclusions they draw. And Terry did that with this study, of course. But the top line numbers are pretty solid.

And the reason I say that is because I've also worked with American Farmland Trust for many years who pioneered these cost-benefit analysis. And they come up with similar figures everywhere. It's really consistent. And you can challenge them on a number of grounds but only on the margin. So the the overall results tend to be the same and what they show you is that residential addition of residents to a community is going to cost you more than they bring in period. How much? It varies depending on the size of your community, its density, whether you're at the cusp of

you know moving from medium density to high or low to medium. Varies on the housing type? Housing type as well. For instance if it's multi-family housing it's going to be even more costly to provide public services and so the gap between what you bring in with revenue and what you pay out in for public services broadens even more. So generally what you see is somewhere around a dollar and a quarter of expenses for every dollar of revenue. So more residents, more costs, the gap widens. For multi-family housing, it's usually a little bit higher, around $1.35, sometimes

even higher than that. The other thing to remember, and Terry put this in his study, but it was buried, and most people probably didn't see this, is that if you see that and you say, well, how in the heck do local governments make ends meet? Well, they do it two ways. One is they defer infrastructure. They let classroom size increase. They neglect transportation, let traffic jams rise.

They do a number of things where you're actually degrading your quality of life slowly, almost imperceptibly. And all communities do it. It has nothing to do with mismanagement. It's just that you're facing this cost structure that's really mean and you have to, you know, there's only limited ways you can do it.

The other thing you do is you rely on state and federal aid. So one of the really important points in Terry's study is that he puts in an additional figure if you removed state and federal aid, that is if the locality had to pay for everything out of its own pocket. That cost deficit would widen for residential property in general to about $1.40 and if you put multifamily

in its own category, it would probably be up to about $1.60 of cost for every dollar. So it doesn't mean you can't have more residents. It doesn't mean that you stop building homes, but you have to face it realistically and understand you're bringing in more costs and you've gotta pay for it somehow. Chris Fairchild, supervisor of Flavanna County,

who's seeking a second term, has highlighted that on the I Love Seville network a number of times. Additional rooftops does not mean a positive for the county from a budget standpoint. 60% of Albemarle County's budget roughly is for public schools. And if these additional rooftops that you attract to Albemarle County, that you build in Albemarle County have a lot of kids in them. Parents with children that go to the public schools. The public schools every year are asking for more money. I think teachers should be paid top dollar. Teachers are molding the next generation of students,

of minds, of Alamara Countyians. But we gotta realize, as the population increases, because rooftops are increasing, it's just gonna mean Alamara County's elected officials are gonna come to you and me, to us, and ask us more for our hard-earned dollars. That's why the economic development is so important. Lonnie Murray is watching the program. Then we're going to get to deep throat. We're going to get to – I've got about half a dozen comments I'm going to get to, and I still have some comments that

I need to ask you. Lonnie says this. After I ran the Blue Ridge Marathon in Roanoke, they sent out a physical analysis of the economic impact of the race, which was $1,700,000. How can we do better to recognize the economic impact of sustainable outdoor recreation like Roanoke has? We are at the gate of the Shenandoah National Park, but there doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement from that from an economic development standpoint. I will add to that and then pass it your way. I've highlighted sports tourism on the I Love Seaville network for what seems like 10 years. We've got the University of Virginia here. Why isn't there a joint venture at JV with the University of Virginia, Almore County and the City of Charlottesville to attract major soccer tournaments

for youth, major basketball tournaments, baseball tournaments. We got Darden Tau that's vastly underutilized. Why don't we have mountain biking? Why aren't we using the Ravana River? Look at what Richmond has done from a sports tourism standpoint, then think about what Charlottesville has done. I think we should highlight what's happening with this lacrosse national championship at Scott Stadium next year. We're going to have 30,000 lacrosse fans coming for nearly a week to Charlottesville in a down time. It's going to have a huge economic impact. These are the ideas that our elected officials should be thinking about and asking or pursuing as opposed to just going after us and rooftops. So I'm going to go Lonnie Murray to you, Roanoke and the race, economic development, outdoor recreation tourism, sports tourism

and out of the-the-box ideas that are not being used now by the board of supervisors. Well, I don't know that it requires any out-of-the-box thinking because we've known for years that tourism is a great elixir for local governments. Essentially, you're bringing in money from the outside. And the other thing I'll hasten to add is that one of the reasons we face this conundrum with affordable housing and how to support affordable housing if we decide to do it is that the biggest factor is probably

inequality and that's nationwide, regionally certain. And that drives certain, you drives certain flows of hot money that drive up prices and so forth. One of the ways you can take the edge off that a little bit is that you take some of that hot money from the pockets of very wealthy citizens who like traveling and like going to places of great natural beauty,

which offer a lot of amenities like our own community, and you provide things for them, and they support your local economy. I'm very pleased to see, for example, I'm a native West Virginian. I was born in a coal mining region where both of my grandfathers were miners and, you know, eked out an existence there for many years. And many West Virginians, as you probably know, were stuck with the coal industry for years and nothing else.

Two things changed. Robert Byrd brought in federal installations for them in great number, and highways, and they did a little bit on the margin. But the other thing that's really noticeable today is they've gone in for recreational tourism and taken advantage of their beauty and the natural resources there. And I'm there in my native state a lot, you know, on a motorcycle tour, fly fishing, things like that. And, you know, I think what you said,

there's many, many examples. You just cited a few. There's a lot we can do here. People love to visit this area. There's a lot we can do here. People love to visit this area. There's no doubt about it. I think we we still should not use that as a crutch. There are places that do like Florida. They use it as a crutch. They have the most regressive policies raising funds for public services that you could imagine and they do a really crappy job of it. And they can rely on tourism to kind of carry the day. You know, I don't think we need to go that route, but it's an important thing to do and we can exploit it

to our benefit in many ways. James Watson watching the program. James Watson says, sports tourism, easy money, an absolute no brainer. Deep Throatats got some commentary He says take a four hundred thousand dollar townhouse two kids in that household The marginal cost of those kids to the county via school contribution is 20k the townhouse pays thirty five hundred Maybe you have a thousand of two thousand and other taxes. It's a total loser for Albemarle County from a budget standpoint

He also says you might want to ask this, Jerry. Weldon Cooper last month we talked about this, released a report on the sectorial breakdown of revenue and expenditure. $1 of revenue from residential uses implicates $1.30 of spending, which you said. Albemarle County needs to attract more businesses, what I've been saying. That might mean trying to steal business from the city. The city is quite unfriendly to business. I can concur to that. I can agree.

Is your guest willing to try to poach from the city? Is jurisdictional competition good for efficiency for government? Or does he see the better path forward as more regional cooperation and even fiscal cooperation? That's a question for you. Easy question. I'm not for poaching.

I see that generally what you get there is cannibalization that's not good for anybody. And you have to recognize too, even with the business category where the Weldon Cooper study and other studies, and I've done some of these and they come up with similar figures, where you have a positive revenue impact. Usually if you look at commercial, industrial, separate, go ahead and combine the two, you're

looking at somewhere close to 40 to 50 percent, 50 cents, excuse me, of costs for every dollar you bring in. But the caveat there, and it's a really important one, is that these studies are based on historical data, which means that the employees of corporation X, Y, or Z is counted not in that category, but in the residential category. So to do a proper analysis you have to look prospectively into the future and you have to say, okay, what happens if business X comes in, they're costing us, and it's mostly public safety costs, that's where it's heavily allocated, they're costing us X amount for every dollar we bring in.

What happens to the employees they bring in from other places that add rooftops? And you have to have a blended figure for that. And what I've discovered is there's a pretty good rule of thumb, big caveat, because it's based on a lot of differences between company X and Y. But generally, if more than 50% of their new employees are coming from somewhere else, you're approaching a break-even point. So even there, you're not going to really get a lot of room,

breathing room, tax-wise. So you have to be really smart about how you do it. It should be obvious to people who understand that, that that's one of the compelling reasons that these dang data centers are so attractive because they bring in few employees or costs, public service costs, but a lot of revenue. They have other big problems. But...

You want to highlight some of those problems? Well, there's just... Because I'm torn on the data centers, frankly. Yeah. I mean, we got Amazon investing $11 billion into Louisa County for data centers across, I think it's three campuses in Louisa. 11 billion from Amazon into Louisa County.

I'm torn on the data centers, though. You should be torn. I mean, again, it's easy money, which is why it seems attractive. And any administrative officer looking at budgets for a local government has got to pay attention. But the downside? The downside is enormous. There's two new studies that just came out, one at Virginia Tech, one at Columbia University,

that show, unfortunately, and I don't think this is by design, I think this is just the way it tends to work out, 75% of the new data centers in the country are in areas with a stressed water supply. Right. And that's the thing to go first, is they're really thirsty, they suck up a lot of water,

they put really giant straws in the ground. And two things will happen, maybe both of them at the same time. You'll lose sufficient supply to provide water for your own people. Or you'll expand it only at great expense. So we're talking about another layer of expenses added on. Do you break even by the bonus you get, the revenue bonus, and those costs that stack up over the years,

and maybe you run out of water during a drought when you wouldn't have otherwise? I mean, it's really amazing to me, the Columbia study in particular had a map, and you could focus on where these clusters are happening. There's some like... There's a heat map. Yeah, in the Mojave Desert are a couple of them.

Why you would do that? And the other is electricity. They're going to drive up electricity rates wherever they happen and stresses on that network. Meg Bryce, welcome to the program. Kelly Jackson, welcome to the program. John Yordnallis, Greer Akenbach welcome to the program. Kelly Jackson, welcome to the program. John Yerdalas, Greer Akenbach, watching the program.

Got every media outlet watching the show right now and six elected officials I'm counting watching the program as we speak. I think we need to get to brass tacks here. Sally Duncan versus Dave Shreve. Characterize the difference between the two candidates? Well I think there are two big differences. One is that I come to this race having already been heavily invested in the community, serving the community for 30, 40 years, serving as a public policy analyst during that time, focused on all these issues. So it's not something

that I just stumbled into in the last few years. I'm not saying that these issues. So it's not something that I just stumbled into in the last few years. I'm not saying that she has. She seems very passionate and dedicated to figuring things out. But I don't think her experience in that regard compares at all to mine, which has been, I've devoted my career, my life to this.

That's why I studied economics, that's why I studied economic history. Not to get a job in those fields, but to find answers to these problems. That's it. The other big difference is, I think it's clear that she appears to have jumped on the... Don't hold back Dave. Yeah. Three weeks away from the primary. The bandwagon that suggests that if you just build more, housing is going to become cheaper. And I know two ways in which that backfires. I think you used on one of your earlier shows the term Pandora's box. It's a Pandora's box here because what will happen is the relationship between rooftops

and property taxes that we've discussed, that comes into play, taxes will rise, that will lead to displacement, creating more of a problem, not helping you solve it. The other factor involved here is that when you just rely on the marketplace and hope for a little, you know, peeling off a little affordable housing on the edge temporarily or at a certain level of AMI etc. You might take a baby step in the right direction but you'll probably end up taking two big giant steps in the wrong direction because you're opening it up to outside investors, hot flows of money and that's the key factor probably more than anything else, driving housing prices in this country,

are those hot flows. Sometimes, you know, I remember looking back at the odds when we had the housing bubble and it burst, and some of us held out the vain hope that with the bursting of the bubble, some places might become affordable and some working- class families could grab them. Which is not what happened. No, we were so disappointed because what happened was they didn't have any money to move. Right.

They couldn't move. But the investors did. They cornered the markets. And in fact, I would argue that investor behavior today in real estate markets is predicated largely on the lessons they learned back during that decade. Without question. That you can corner those markets and take advantage of them and jack up prices and get

rich. Unfortunately, that's the way it goes. The other thing I always say about housing markets is they're schizophrenic. I have a former student who's the president of California, Yimby, and they're in this, you know, they want to build more and make it cheaper. It might actually work in a place like San Francisco where people are, the hot money's leaving, not coming in. But it's, that's kind of rare.

But one of the examples he pointed me to was Austin, Texas. He said, we built a ton more there and the prices finally dropped. Well, they did after about eight or nine years of intense overbuilding, which degraded the place in so many ways. The traffic jams, and I was in graduate school studying there for a number of years. The nickname for Austin is the the city of the purple crown, of the violet crown.

Those are the blue bonnet flowers that ring the hills. You can't see. Also where the movie theater was birthed. Yeah. The movie theater changed. Yeah, the violet crown movie. You can't see the violet crown anymore if you're there. It's just devastating.

And you sit on a I-35 traffic jam every day for at least an hour. It's, they built about 50,000 additional units in the last couple years, and slightly smaller number than that in the preceding decade, and the prices just kept skyrocketing. Only when they reached this saturation point and the tech people stopped coming in from California in great number did the rental prices start to drop, but the housing prices haven't the single-family dwelling prices are still going up and what alarmed me the most was when I read a recent report from the Austin area Board of Realtors their final note was don't worry responding to the price

drops in the rental market we think it's going to start appreciating again so things are going to work out. They were looking at it from the lens of just an investor, not somebody who needed a house or a place to live. That's unfortunate. Absolutely. So much to unpack right there. I've got a lot of people leaving comments, and I want to get to their comments.

I have a lot of comments myself that I want to throw to you. I want to highlight what you were talking about, density and multifamily to the point of not quality planning. I highlighted last week and the week prior the old Ivy residences that are being built on the bypass on old Ivy Road by St. Ann's-Belfield, a development project that is coming online at the same time that VDOT is redoing the

bridge on Old Ivy Road. It's turned it into an absolute cluster over there. At the same time, in the city by Moe's Barbecue, there's a apartment tower that's being built. At the same time that Second Years are about to be on grounds with the University of Virginia. At the same time, the Rio Apartments are coming online. At the same time, multifamily development is happening at North Point. At the same time, an apartment tower is happening next to Scott Stadium. At the same time, the Elysian and Stonefield is half vacant.

I mean, it looks to me we have a multifamily glut. Now, to the point of elected officials saying, look, we approved these, we permitted these, we special use permitted these years ago, and it's just a coincidence that they're all coming online right now at the same time. That's out of our control. I understand that point from them. Oh, you want to rebuttal that one right there? No, no, no. You're exactly right. It is partly beyond the control. Partly beyond the control. What they did have control of and what I thought was poor governance

was the special use permit with the old IV residents at the same time that the transportation, the roadways on Old Ivy Road and the bypass weren't completely up to par. Do you want to touch on that topic because it's a hot one for viewers and listeners and voters in the county? Well again I said this earlier and I'll say it again. One of the ways in which you paper over the deficits when you face this conundrum between what it costs you to provide services for new residents and what they bring in is you let infrastructure kind of, you know, lag.

And again, it's not mismanagement. It's replicated everywhere across the country. I have yet to, and I've worked with local governments on tax reform and we look at these budgetary issues all the country. I have yet to, and I've worked with local governments on tax reform and we look at these budgetary issues all the time. And I've never found one that really gets ahead of the curve if they're like us and they're attractive and growing in some ways bringing in new people who want to come here.

The only ones that kind of get ahead of it are the places that are withering on the vine and people are leaving and then they have a you know an infrastructure in place that can finally serve everyone you know even though they can't pay for it anymore to maintain it so that's a that's an additional problem. So that's what you're facing there. Will VDOT figure out a way to make that better in the future? Probably. Will we do it tomorrow?

No. It'll take at least a decade, I think, to do a work around. And that's what we do. We do work arounds with this. And that happens with traffic, it happens with schools, any form of public service like that.

Public safety is that way. One of the reasons we had to raise the tax rate this time is we had to pay for some positions in the public safety department where the federal government picked up the tab for us. For fire and police, fire and police. With FEMA, they got a nice FEMA grant that paid for that. That's what I meant earlier when I said,

the other way we rely on, the other factor we rely on to close know, what we, the other factor we rely on to close the gap is federal and state aid. If the state and the federal government wants to be more generous to help us with those things, it can square the circle. If they don't, and I'll let the listeners judge what we're facing right now on that front, but if they don't, then boy, we're in a bit of a pickle.

I want to highlight, and Jason Noble emphasized this prior to the show, Jason, I hope you're watching the program now, Republicans and independents can vote in the Democratic primary. I'll say it again, Republicans and independents can vote in the Democratic primary guys on the 17th of June. I'll throw this to you. It seems to me, and what was the exact title? The chair of the Jack Jewett Democratic precinct? Is that what, what was the exact title you held? District. I was the chair.

The district chair of Jack Jewett. District chair or co-chair for the last 17 years. Okay, so you're intimately involved with the Elmour County Democratic Party. Yes, still am. It seems to me that there is at least one person, maybe a couple others, that may be behind the scenes working against your campaign for Board of Supervisors. Is that what you feel you see or is that the tea leaves that you're reading?

I see it. I feel it. And my campaign is built mostly on one approach, door knocking, going out and visiting people who live in the district, talking to them, hearing their concerns, letting them know where I stand and how I think I can help run the government soundly and sensibly. And when I knocked on a lot of doors, and I'll go to the doors where someone has already put out a

sign for my opponent and talk to them because I want them to, you know, measure this up. And in some cases, they've already voted early and that's okay. Because if I'm going to serve the people of the district I want to hear from all of them not just the people who jump in and said yes I'll support you right off the bat and there are plenty of those folks so so yes I see it I because I'm gonna follow up up with a pointed question here. Yeah. So if you want to get ahead of my pointed question. But I know why, I think. And a lot of it is because of the matters we've brought to a head today.

That one particular person prominent in the party and I don't see it the same way. Okay. So I'll follow up pointed. That's why people watch the show. Supervisor Diantha McKeel on a show on our network a couple Fridays ago was very quick to emphasize not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in about a 20 second period that viewers and listeners and voters should get to know your employer. And that seemed to be from someone who is sitting right next to her, okay, that

seemed to be her attempt at trying to wave a red flag, either because she was backing your opponent strategically or had some concerns with you. Pointing question, why does it appear that Diantha McKeel has some beef with you in your campaign? We see economic development and taxes and housing differently. And I don't know.

Even though you helped get her elected on how many times? Four occasions. I was part of a small group who convinced her to run as a Democrat for the first time. She wasn't independent before that. And I won't take any credit for, you know, helping her win because, you know, as most of the listeners know, she didn't face any opposition the last time.

But we worked hard for her, and I like her. We don't agree on some of these important issues, and I think she has determined that those distinctions are important enough where she wants to support somebody else. And that's her, you know, she has every right to do that. I don't think it's going to wound my campaign in a mortal sense, except that a lot of people who won't have the time and the luxury to really do some research on our backgrounds will just take her word for it and assume that I'm not a very smart person and that I'm very cavalier about the way I go about these things and I'm willing to do some rather reckless and

stupid things that will hurt the people in this community. She understands the value of being an incumbent, she understands the value of ‑‑ incumbent is not the right word. She understands the value of a multi‑term supervisor. She understands the value of name recognition. And she's ‑‑ supervisor McKeil is a strategic person. And it seems to me that she was trying to utilize her platform and brand recognition against you. Explain why she's trying to utilize her platform and brand recognition against you. Explain why she's trying to utilize your employer against you because I think that's a conversation

that's going to be had. The Center for Advancement of Steady State Economy. Sure. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because first of all, I think the listeners should know that I've only been employed there for a few months, and I was hired partly as an economist to do some troubleshooting. It's an amazing group of people, most of them are wildlife biologists and environmentalists,

and they have a really great grasp of environmental limitations and constraints and all the many ways it's gonna affect our quality of life going forward. And I'm perfectly aligned with them on that. What I'm trying to help with is fixing their economic policy as a companion to all of that. And as anybody would know, if you work with the Policy Institute of that nature, you're going to have a lot of hiccups and a lot of disagreements, and we're still working those

out. So the first thing I would say is that understand that I'm different from the organization in many important ways on economic policy. The other thing is that it's probably easy if you look at one issue that they tackle and that is the carrying capacity of the planet and population and how that fits in to make the assumption that a lot of people make that you're for control. Population control. Coercion. Yeah. And the way I always explain my approach to demographics and population as a

critical factor is that it's not at all about control, it's actually the opposite. It's about keeping options open for people because if you ignore it, what happens is the planet makes the call for you. It tells you that you can't drink water anymore if you live in a certain place. Or you can't build a home in a coastal area because you can't insure the property anymore or because it's going to be buffeted by storms, wildfire, hurricanes, floods.

And believe me, I lived in Louisiana for 26 years and I know it's reached a crisis proportion there. I have a buddy who's an attorney, a partner in a law firm there, and he spends every waking hour trying to help people getting screwed by insurance companies who won't insure their property in flood prone, disaster prone areas there. And we're seeing more and more of that emerge. So that's the focus. And it's also, you know, the other thing I've learned about population dynamics is there's

one really natural and easy answer to doing it well, and that is you empower women. And when you empower women, you give them educational opportunities and reproductive rights and economic opportunities in general, then fertility changes and we automatically kind of adjust our population and its pressure on the environment.

And the $64,000 question then becomes, and this is where I'm working hard to get Cassie to work this out, is then, OK, how do you make people prosperous if you don't have this automatic more people, more demand, more sales, kind of papering over problems for you. And I think what we argue there, and I will stand by this 100%, is that we've kind of put our eggs

in that basket of eternal growth because it's the easy way out, instead of making hard choices about how you share resources, how you tax people, how you make an economy prosperous, it's much easier for us to just say, well, we'll bake a bigger pie and then everybody can have an additional slice.

I would argue that if you look at it historically, that hasn't always been true. It's a relatively new approach going back to post-depression years. And it represents more than anything else an easy way out. We can do it better and more efficiently to the benefit of all of our citizens. Dr. John Shabe watching the program, Pro Renata's owner. Thank you for watching the show. Viewers and listeners, put your thoughts in the feed and I will relay them live on air. You're getting props on

YouTube from Colleen Swingoltitis, I believe. Thank you, Dave, for a solid, calm and greatly informative discussion about complicated issues Colleen puts in YouTube. This comes from Jason Noble. The county could make a little money if they were friendlier to short-term rentals. There's so many hoops to jump through for me to build an ADU on my rural zone property to have it be a short-term rental. Very cost prohibitive and a massive time suck. Friend of the program, Keith Smith, would call this turning red tape into green tape from a development standpoint, real estate standpoint.

I'll throw this to you. I've noticed momentum gaining for this idea of substituting out a portion of the development area for another portion of the development area. Michael Pruitt, Supervisor, Scottsville District started this idea. He realized that the Glenmore neighborhood, my former neighborhood, and I was part of these conversations. We, I watched as someone that was newledmore neighborhood, my former neighborhood, I was part of these conversations.

We, I watched as someone that was new to the neighborhood kind of as a wallflower, but the elder statesman in the neighborhood utilized their wealth, their influence, their clout, their business acumen to kind of galvanize, organize, and strategize against Breezy Hill, a development plan by Southern Development, Frank Bailiff and Charlie Armstrong. This very organized group of people inside Glenmore was able to get Breezy Hill chopped

down significantly in its density, and they were able to do that by utilizing essentially word salad and buzzwords. They had merit, but they also knew what they were doing, like fire and rescue and services lacking and road safety. And that persuaded the Board of Supervisors to really limit what can be developed outside the Glenmore neighborhood. So Supervisor Pruitt, this is his district, the Glenmore area is his district, and he said I want to substitute out essentially, is it Ravana Village for

another portion that's outside the development area. Ravana Village is in it, another portion out. And he's trying, it seems to me, and Supervisor Pruitt's a really smart guy. He is. He's a very smart guy. It seems to me what he's doing is he knows that the community right now, he gets the temperature of Albemarle is opposed to expanding the 5% development area. So the first step of expanding the 5% development area is substituting out portions of the development

area. And I saw Supervisor Galloway who was sitting in your chair right there, I saw the wheel starting to turn and him becoming more open minded to that. What is your stance on substituting development area out and in for parcels of land around Alamora County? Well, first of all, I think we need to step back and go back to our earlier discussion about the costs of growth. And we should not assume going into this conversation about substituting one place for another, that that's going to make progress, help us either transform housing into more affordable options

or improve our revenue base. It won't do either of those things. Now, if the community decides that it needs it anyway, then it should do it in the smartest possible manner. And generally, I'll go back to what I said at the outside of the show, and that is that dense development is cheaper per capita than sprawl. And so we have infill options, and I think we will go a long

way before we exhaust those. Opening up. Infill options specifically where? And I think we will go a long way before we exhaust those. Opening up ‑‑ You can fill options specifically where? Urban Ring, you know, pretty close to ‑‑ and Jack Jewett District, you know, what's unique about it is that it's Urban Ring, it's mostly apartment dwellers rather than single family homes, and it's the poorest district in the community. Jack Jewett is the poorest Rio District, the second poorest Samuel Miller District, the

most affluent Samuel Miller District, the largest from land size Samuel Miller district, also the smallest from human density standpoint. And you mentioned another important point, sort of ticking off a number of new developments and then throwing out just a generic appraisal of vacancies, but the last Census Bureau study we have from the end of 1923, so it's a 24 publication from the Census Bureau, has the vacancy rate in the Jewett District at 8%. Most housing economists would regard a rate of between five and eight to be neutral, eight being close to the high level, where it actually might have a mild depressing cost effect on rental properties in particular,

maybe single family dwelling. In Jewett, it's gonna be a rental property equation, because that's what dominates the district. So we're certainly not facing a shortage. It's a misallocation problem. It's again back to the hot money chasing the properties that come onto the market. There's a good reason why everywhere in the country, including our region, that new properties, the median price is a good bit higher than sales of all properties. Yeah, cost of goods and labor, much more expensive.

Yep, on the margin. Land use, more expensive. Exactly. And it's an irresistible change. Again, it's not mismanagement or somebody taking advantage of somebody else in a peculiar way. It's pretty uniform. And that's what you can expect.

Now, how do you create affordable housing when you face that? Well, I think you have to be very intentional about it. You have to invest in two prominent ways, and some communities have done this well at the public forum. The other night I cited the case of Pittsburgh and Ithaca, New York that do a pretty decent job of this.

And that is they bring in nonprofits and they bring in Public money, but not public money just handing it over to development and hoping for the best but public money Almost in some ways as the developer themselves or at least the manager of these properties and when you bring in nonprofits that helps you at least the manager of these properties. And when you bring in nonprofits, that helps you eliminate another potential layer of costs that is real. You know, the other thing I bring to this that I'm pretty sure my opponent does not

is that I worked as a carpenter and electrician and a bricklayer and in the house building community, I served as a general contractor on a couple of projects. And so I know what goes into it on that level. So I've looked at it at the macro level, you know how monetary and fiscal policies work But also from the standpoint of a guy, you know framing a house. Do you do you make anything of? your opponent's husband working In City Hall and a was it chief engineer? I think I believe his position is Brendan Duncan. Is there anything to that? engineer, I believe his position is Brennan Ducken, is there anything to that?

City engineer? Thank you. I can't comment on that. You don't want to touch on that? No, because I just couldn't make an intelligent assessment about how that would affect these matters one way or the other. I love engineers, I worked with them closely over the years, civil engineers in particular. And, you know, they're the ones who really grasp this basic conundrum that we face with costs, you know,

outpacing revenue. And, you know, they're the ones asked to make the shortcuts for us. And, okay, how do you fix old Ivy Road and manage traffic over there when we don't have the money to really fix it? What do you do? Well, you know, they do a workaround. And sometimes they're really smart about how What do you do? You know, they do a workaround. And sometimes they're really

smart about how they do that. And other times their hands are tied and they just do what they can. A follow-up question for you. Don't know if you want to touch this one at all. Do you make anything that your opponent is employed at a local private school as a teacher? No, I was a school teacher myself in Louisiana when I started my career before I became a university professor. And I know sometimes, depending on the juncture, when you enter the field, when you finish school, that sometimes you don't have a choice.

You just need a job. And I know a lot of the private schools here are good private schools. My children went to the public schools. I'm a public school graduate myself. I think the way a community should approach it is you should work to keep strong your public school system and then the private schools are just an option for some and maybe it's a tenable and a useful option for many. But I won't make anything of

that because I think perhaps what happened there was they offered her a good job and she took it. Okay. I won't take her to task for that. Okay, follow up question on this. We talked last week about the alias with your opponent that we covered. Her online pseudonym, is that how you would characterize it? Anything you want to touch on the online pseudonym, is that how you would characterize it? Anything you want to touch on the online pseudonym we talked about last week? This is news to me in a way. I'll have to confess that I am not a social media creature. I love what you guys do here. You're part of social media. Thank you.

And there are obvious exceptions to the rule, but generally I don't want to put my hip waiters on and wait into that morass. Maybe worth, you know, just an idea worth looking at if you were campaigning three weeks away from a hotly contested primary. I have a couple more questions I want to throw to you here as the questions. Viewers and listeners, we're not going to get to all these questions. I see 30 maybe that we're not gonna get to. Neil Williamson is watching the program.

I wanna ask something that he's been floating about taking the commercial corridor and allowing it some flexibility for residential conversion. Any thoughts on that? The president of the Free Enterprise Forum, Neil Williamson has been trying to drive home that. Well, if you buy the assumption that commercial or industrial development

and that category gives you a bonus of, you know, more revenue relative to your your costs that you incur. And again, going back to what I said, on the surface, historically it does. Once you bring in residents associated with those enterprises, it's not so simple. But beyond that, it has become common, and for obvious reasons, I think. I've helped people in Chapel Hill and places like Ann Arbor, other college towns face some of these matters and think about them, you know,

in ways that are I think helpful. You have seen this tendency to try to fold in new residences with commercial development as a way of getting a kind of a hybrid effect. It works. But it still doesn't really give you the bonus you need. And I don't think you can count on that for either improving your revenue base or structure in demonstrable ways that help you or providing jobs for people in demonstrable ways. But if you're building something and the question comes to

all commercial mixed use, mixed use can sometimes be a good option. John Blair from LinkedIn. This is a very informative interview, Jerry. I'm curious, does Mr. Shreve believe that direct cash or tax incentives to specific corporations should be part of the county's economic development strategy? Generally not. I have worked with a gentleman named Greg LaRoy at a Washington think tank called Good Jobs First, and Greg's studies are pretty solid, and what he shows is that when you lurch into that territory where you're not just encouraging businesses to visit

or consider opening in your store fronts or developments in your territory, but you offer tax incentives, very quickly you go into negative territory, that the benefits are vastly outweighed by the cost to the people in your community. It almost never works out. I think one of the big problems

that we have with economic development in general is that the whole economic development authority idea started in the 70s when I was a teenager. And I was very aware of this growing up in the East. I was in Delaware at the time. And my family being from West Virginia, North Central, knew Pittsburgh quite well. It was just an hour away from where I was born.

And we saw the Rust Belt and we saw factory closings in the 70s. Most EDAs were not called EDAs in that period. They were called IDAs, Industrial Development Authorities. And what they were all about was getting a factory that had closed, trying to get a new company come in, take over the factory, and they had a skilled workforce already in place, ready to go to work. That's a different dynamic than just bringing in a company lock, stock, and barrel who also brings in their own employees and people to a community.

And so I think we have to at least recognize that when we approach this, that it's not easy money. That's the way I'd put it. And whenever I did a presentation down in Chapel Hill a few years ago, and I closed by suggesting to them, if you want company X because you like company X, and you think it will offer tangible social benefits to your people, career ladder employment, whatever that might be, then do it, but don't dream about how it's gonna fix your

revenue structure or help employ the unemployed or the underemployed. It's probably not gonna do that. You know, a kind of off the cuff example would be, let's say Charlottesville decides it wants an opera company because it would enrich the cultural life of the community. And that opera company, if it had to be on a certain grand scale, would employ 150 or 175 people.

Well, guess what? It would cost us more to do that, to bring them in, to house them, to make sure that they can do business the way they need to do business. It would not benefit us with revenue or providing jobs for the unemployed. Probably wouldn't do either of those things. But it would be a great asset. Look at it in those terms.

Is it a great asset in and of itself? And if it is, then you go forward. And if it's not, you don't stop it from happening, but you may not want to encourage it, especially not with tax breaks. I'm gonna have one question final for you. Why should voters and listeners and taxpayers and viewers vote for you on the 17th of June? I got a couple programming notes I wanna get to

before you offer that answer. Chief Mike Kochis, Charlottesville Police Chief on tomorrow's show, Mike Kochis on the I Love Seville Show tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen. The 17th is the Democratic primary. Republicans and independents can vote in the primary, guys, on June 17th. Early voting, I believe, has already started. Has started, yes. Has already started.

So Republicans and independents can vote here. There's three seats up on the Board of Supervisors. Ned Galloway announced two Fridays ago on this network that he was going to seek, Republicans and independents can vote here. There's three seats up on the Board of Supervisors. Ned Galloway announced two Fridays ago on this network that he was going to seek, I think this is his third term, for Ned Galloway in the Rio district. He's running unopposed Supervisor Galloway. The Samuel Miller district has got a Republican and a Democrat going toe-to-toe. Missil versus Smith.

That'll go to the general election in November. This is the only one that will be determined in June, which is three weeks from now. And Sally Duncan, I've been told that your campaign is watching the program. You are welcome to join us on the I Love Seville show. We are equal opportunity employers here. And we close with Dave Shreve with the last words here.

Why should the viewers and listeners vote for you? Well, I would say you mentioned my friend Ned, whom I admire greatly. And by the way, my thoughts go out to his family as they recover from the recent tragedy. But perhaps the only reason you wouldn't want to vote for me is if you were hesitant about putting another West Virginian on the board of supervisors.

Ned is a West Virginia native as well. But the reason I think you should vote for me, above all else, is that I think I stand in the best position to help the community prosper and maintain, even extend its high quality of life to everybody in the community. That includes focusing on the issues we've talked about today, extend its high quality of life to everybody in the community. That includes focusing on the issues we've talked about today,

affordable housing and traffic in schools and so on. So I think I'm best positioned, prepared to take that on. I don't have all the answers. I've always approached my work assuming that. But I've learned pretty well over the last 40 years how to ask the right questions and whom to go to for expertise and expert advice. And I know where that often resides.

So if that appeals to the voters in the Jack Jewett district or in the county in general, you know, these concerns are countywide. If you live outside the district, but you want a member of the board who looks at it this way, call your friends in the Jack Jewett district and tell them that they should support my campaign.

This is a monumental election cycle, folks. As you see, Albemarle County at a crossroads, really searching for what its brand identity is today and what its brand identity will be tomorrow and for years to come. Remember they serve four year terms here, ladies and gentlemen. I thought you did a hell of a job.

His name is Dave Shreve, guys. He's running for board of supervisors in the Jack Jewett district. For the viewers and listeners that are asking, the show will be archived on ilovecville.com and wherever you get your social media and podcasting content. Thank you for 72 minutes of questions and answers.

I really appreciate your time. Very much appreciated. Thank you, Jerry. Absolutely. Our pleasure. Mike Koch is tomorrow on the I Love Seival Show. For the questions I didn't get to, we will archive them and try to talk about them tomorrow and as the week matures. Judah Wickhauer behind the camera, thank you kindly for joining us

on the I Love CIVIL show for so long. Thank you, Judah. He's gonna tell us when the mics and cameras are off..