The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Diantha McKeel And Ned Gallaway Joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller On “Real Talk!"

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Diantha McKeel and Ned Gallaway of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors joined Keith Smith and me on “Real Talk: An Insider’s Guide To Real Estate In Central Virginia” powered by The YES Team Realtors! “Real Talk” airs every Monday, 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, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Pearl Certification 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 a pleasure to connect with you through the I Love Seville Network, our studio in downtown Charlottesville on Market Street. Right in the epicenter of everything we call Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Central Virginia, we are in the heartbeat of our community. And this show is dynamic, where you, the viewer and listener, can help shape the discussion by asking questions, offering commentary, and giving your thoughts in the feed. Judah Wittkower, the director and producer. My friend, if you could go to the studio camera and welcome a talented panel on a spring Friday in central Virginia. Usually it says cast of characters.

But I think because you're here, we're being respectful. This is because Ciantha is here. I had to up the language a little bit here. We're being a little respectful. And, you know, today's National Women's Day, so congratulations on that. I appreciate that. When I'm here with Neil, it's different.

Cast the characters. And one never knows who's going to show up in that. But thank you, guys. Today, we're going to just kind of kick off, maybe do a little bit of a state of Albemarle County. We just had the State of the Union last night, so maybe you guys can chime in. For those who do not know who's there,

we have Diantha McKeel with us, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, and Ned Galloway, Albamore Board of Supervisors. Partner in crime. Partner in crime. I can't get this cast of characters out of my head. But interesting. I couldn't think of a better group of folks to kick this off.

We've crossed the five-year mark. Today is show number 600. Congratulations. 600 shows. 600 shows today 600 one-hour episodes I've spent across from you know you have my sympathy but the best we could do was we tried but you know we'll give it for that so Diantha why don't you kick in from your perspective and say, you know, how's Albemarle County doing? And I know you guys had a couple of good board meetings here recently.

Just kind of do a little roundtable. Yeah, I think the state of Albemarle County is strong. I think we are moving our community forward. Certainly the budget that has, the proposed budget from our county executive addresses many of those needs, the needs that we have to move us forward. But we're strong. Economic development is strong. It's interesting because just one point that I think is fascinating, CHO, our airport, serves a community of about 350,000 people, right? CHO has approximately 20 commercial flights per day on general aviation side, we have seen recent activity of 60 flights per day on the private side. So if you look at commercial versus the private, we have a three-to-one ratio of private versus commercial activity. That speaks to, I think, engaged economic development

that people are coming in for tourism, they're coming in for business. Some of it's probably generated by the University of Virginia. But certainly we have a high level of economic development that's happening in this community. And I did notice that one of the statistics that was shared with me was that CHO is comparable to Jacksonville right now. In volume?

On the private side. Not the commercial, but the private, which is really interesting. They serve about 900,000 members of the community. We used to fly is really interesting. And they serve about 900,000 community members. I mean, you know, members of the community. We used to fly up to New York out of Richmond and we do this now out of Charlottesville. There's a couple of three, I think it's three non-stops a day that go out of Charlottesville directly into LaGuardia which is, you know, it's a quick 45 minute

hour flight, something like that. It used to not be like that. It used to be you had to go to Richmond or whatever to fly out. So that's really interesting. Well, in our TOT, you know, our tourism, is showing about a 17% increase this year, which is, again, a healthy economy. And I'll stop with that and let Ned point out something that he wants to point out.

Well, I think overall, I think hit it the nail on the head I think we are you know we are in a very strong position in Albemarle. I think this year's budget is going to show some discipline on the board's part we've had two years of phenomenal

real estate growth and this year was still over 4%. So we've been bringing in a lot of revenue. We haven't done anything with the tax rate, but taxes have still gone up. And we have used that money to go after what we've said we're going to in our strategic plan. But we knew it wasn't going to stay at 8% and 13%. We even knew that last year. So last year's budget was actually a prep for this year's budget going, all right,

if we would have just gone whole hog last year and put all these things in, we wouldn't be able to afford to continue that. And you don't want to turn around and have to cut things. So I've been pleased that we have a county executive and the budget team and the finance office where we get the economic outlook report the folks from virginia tech that we work with we look out five years we do our financial planning based on what our strategic plan says we're going to do and um this year there are many diantha just printed out she brought it i haven't had a chance to review it

yet but there are pages of items that we asked for a list of things that are not funded that you could consider initiatives or things that we're unable to do because the revenues that are coming in aren't able to get us there so there's still a lot of things that we're not doing and that's what I'm saying is the discipline yes like the board could you know in my opinion you could you could always raise the tax rate and bring in more revenue, but is that the right thing to do after you've seen the last couple of years of the property values increase? And that's what city council is doing right now. And I will say, I have six pages here of items that were requested, not funded, or

cut, actually cut from the budget in order to for Jeff Richardson to balance the budget and that he presented to us so I think this is helpful for our it's public information will be on our website I think it's helpful for people to go and realize that that's what we're not going to this is what we're not doing right well. So Howard, when we were talking in the budget, the school board, when they put forward, that's going to be the challenge in our budget this year.

They have a $13.3 million gap. Now the budget at the state level, I guess, I didn't even catch it until late. It changed last night. They actually came to some agreements on the budget and the sales tax piece. So some of the $8 million gap from the state is going to close.

I just don't know how much. And we should talk a little bit about that. For those watching or listening, it's always a struggle for the local governments to really try to get their budget squared away because you don't really know what the state's going to do. So the fact that it sounds like they settled on a budget, I'm sure your folks at staff are going to be looking at that. And it's really difficult for the schools because they rely on a lot more state funding than the local side. So this year there were two different things that they were watching. The local composite index crushed us.

Us and Nelson County got hit. You might want to explain that for those so it's it's how this the state's formula to figure out how much um money they're going to send you and this the composite the local composite index is basically what you can afford to pay based on your income and things the different factors that they use so we've we do have a lot of, we have wealthy folks in Albemarle, and when that climbs, you know, the state looks at it and goes, well, you can afford to do more on your own. And this year, they adjusted every two years,

and the hit this year was about $8 million for Albemarle County Schools. Now, in addition to that, we also get the, I hate to bring this up, but we get the double hit because the revenue sharing agreement we have with the city, the money that goes to the city, the state counts as still in our coffers for our ability to pay. So we don't, we've tried for years when we were on the school board to get the state to allow us to not show that money in our coffers, but they weren't having that. And that's a two-year lag again.

And this year it went up by $2 million. We're paying the city $2 million more. Which comes out of your side of the ledger. Yes. I mean, yeah, right. But in any case, $8 million. Now, the sales tax, what's been going on between the House and the Senate in the different budgets, this is the part where, like the composite index, we were hoping maybe they would give a forgiveness or something like that.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen. But the sales tax agreement is going to do something for education because the Senate and that was what pushed that over. But even if some of the $8 million gap gets closed, in addition to the $8 million, the schools had another $5 million in needs that they brought forward. That's how you get to the $13.3 million. So the schools, no matter what the state does, are going to have a budget gap.

Have a challenge. But the superintendent has said that he believes that he can work with his school board to cover that gap. We did, though, Jeff Richardson, in the budget he proposed, he did give the school board an additional 10, oh no, almost 11 million dollars, and the reason for that was because they had school construction, new school construction, in the five-year CIP. And as many of us are experiencing, construction costs escalated. Sure. So that was an attempt to try and help them cover that gap in their budget so that they wouldn't have to go back to the school design, construction design, and reduce the design

of the schools. We were trying to make them whole, which I thought was appropriate. Right. We've made that mistake before where we've cut back on projects. Greer Elementary and Dianthus District, they cut back the capacity, and then it wasn't too long that you're already dealing with capacity issues. So not good. Well, there have been multiple projects, I could name them, in all of the districts that

have been that way. So we were trying to make them whole. So we did at least address that challenge. So the list that Diantha has, like the schools, you're going to know, like if they cut things, so they do a needs-based budget presentation. But the county executive brings us a recommended budget. It's balanced, rather a balanced budget. So you don't see the things that are necessarily that you maybe want to do but you can't afford to do.

So that's what this list is about. We should show folks, okay, these are the things that where we currently stand with keeping the tax rate the same, keeping the personal property tax rate where it is. That's what suffers. This is what we're unable to do. And if people think this is a wish list, we're talking about seven FTEs for the police. In a time when we're hearing about speeding, pedestrian safety, vehicle driver safety. So this is not necessarily just a wish list of fluffy things.

That's exactly right. This is a really serious list. So at one point we're going to get to something that's near and dear to your heart. Transportation. Which is transportation. And rural transportation. Because that came up last night at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. But I do want to talk about two things.

One, I want to kind of give a little bit of a kickoff and a shout out. I want to talk a little bit about solar and pickleball. Pickleball was a big part of our discussion yesterday. It's booming. But so we're very fortunate Tiger Solar. Jerry, I haven't shared this with you, are going to sign on as a sponsor. Oh, fantastic. So we're going to be talking a little bit more about solar.

That's more of a residential level. But let's talk a little bit about on the lodge level. I know solar is something that is coming quite often before you guys, and we talked about it yesterday a little bit. So you want to give folks a little bit of an update on what solar is looking like in Albemarle County. Well, I know what it looks like on Route 53. Right. So Louisa County was bringing up that they had too much too fast,

and they had to pull back and kind of contain it a little bit, kind of check and see where they're at. Supervisor Barlow was sharing that information. See, I missed that conversation. But we just had a siting agreement. So we had already approved the large solar woodridge down in Scottsville. Scottsville District. And we had the approved the large solar Woodridge down in Scottsville. Scottsville District. And we had the siting agreement.

So basically the siting agreement is your revenue piece. So what counties are allowed to do by the state, you kind of have to pick. You can collect taxes of the machinery and tool tax on the equipment, or you can do it on the megawatt generation. So the machinery and tool tax is kind of a revenue that declines over time, whereas the energy production is one that would grow over time. So a county has to pick one and then stick with it. You can't flip-flop back and forth.

So it's like, well, what do you do? There's analysis to try to help you with that. We were fortunate in our agreement with Hexagon that the siting agreement is going to, between the company, this is a mutual negotiation, that's going to allow Albemarle to take whatever's better. The greater of. The greater of. And it's in supplemental payments. So let's say the machinery and tool tax, I mean, it's going to be much higher than this, but let's say that's a dollar. But the revenue that's generated

from the energy output is $1.50. We'd get the extra 50 cents through the supplemental payment. So that's a win for Albemarle because now we don't have to pick and gamble. We have no real risk. And you're allowed to do that. Yep. You're allowed to do that. And there's're allowed to do that. State gives that ability to do that. And there's certain things that the money has to go to. It looks like there's categories, but they're pretty broad. So, you know, the machinery and tools tax comes in.

That just goes into your general fund. But the supplemental payments, it seems like, have to go to certain categories. And I might not even have that right. That's still a little unclear to me. But it just means that a big project like that for us is going to that Albemarle kind of wins in that situation. So I was pleased that we were able to get that siting agreement that way. And I would just say while we're talking about solar and that particular project down in Scottsville,

I know I hear and we hear from the community that they're very concerned about solar projects like that consuming prime agricultural land. It's an issue in Orange County right now. There is certainly, and I think I can say this, that there is an agreement on our board that we don't want solar to be eating up and taking our prime agricultural land. I will say that that, I was just going to say, that piece of property was a moonscape. The one on Route 53? Right. It was not. Behind the trees.

I drive by it every day. Behind the trees. I think almost all of us at the time we were dealing with that proposal, we were out there in Jeeps or whatever. You were four-wheeling? We were four-wheeling. I would love to see you on a four-wheeler. I have to tell you that at one point I was almost seasick because of the way that it's washed out and the ruts and the just terrible. I think you were going yeehaw.

I'm pretty sure that's what you were going to say. I'm just saying, though, that piece of property was a moonscape. But what we learned also yesterday from Ernie from Nelson County, they're having a project they're working on. If they were to actually take all the megawatts that that's produced, it could actually energize or provide electricity to the whole county of Nelson County. So that's kind of an interesting thing. Yeah, continue with what he said. Go ahead, you finish. No, go ahead.

But it's getting a bit of a pushback. So they're on CEVAC. CEVAC? What's the cooperative? Centralback. So they're on CEVAC. CEVAC? What's the cooperative? Central Virginia Electric Co-op. CEVAC. But this line that their solar will attach to is Appalachian Power, which doesn't serve all of Nelson County.

So they could get the revenue from the solar, but the energy is going outside their county. It only serves a certain part. That was the part I was kind of going to skip over. But, I mean, that's a dynamic that they're dealing with. It's like, well, you know, he would, like in the case of the Woodridge, it was right on a power line. Yeah, and it was for us.

But in Nelson, when I was listening to him talk about that, and, again, Supervisor Barlow and Louisa with what they're dealing with, I mean, it's interesting conversations. What I find fascinating in the environmental lobby, which is a large lobby in Albemarle County, watching, because I think immediately, whether it's fair or not, people think solar, they think environmentally friendly, that they're just going to have automatic support from the environmental lobby, which in many cases you do. But in these large pieces of land, then there's the debate within that lobby. About what? Right. About is the gains of the solar outweigh or is it do more harm based on the land

and the disturbance of the land? So it's an interesting debate that happens within that one particular lobby. So the Route 53 property was totally timbered over. Oh, it was a moonscape. It was just awful. But for the most part, it's like a development project. You're clearing that thing all the way out. Ray Canale watching the program.

He says these two supervisors are the two most easy to reach and the most responsive supervisors over the years. That's nice. And he's giving you guys some props here. We have multiple media outlets watching you guys on the feed. Keith, you finish your thought and questions are coming in. So, Diane, everybody wants to absolutely hear every word that you're saying. You just need to be a little closer.

Oh, I'm sorry. Here we go. Did I do that well? Excuse me. I have a tendency to do that. You do that extremely well. Thank you. I'll do this and see if that's better.

In front of the program, John Blair watching the show. If I didn't do it right, I'd get beat by my wife and my mother. I will say, though, while we're talking about solar, I just attended the school division's sustainability. I'm a liaison for the school division on their sustainability work. And, of course, the school division has a lot of buildings, right, unlike the county. And I have really been impressed as to how this county school system is putting solar on their buildings. To include the new Boys and Girls Club over at Lanslane campus has solar all over their roof. I'm just

speaking to solar. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging because it's going to come out this way but this little place that my wife and I go a couple times a year down in the Caribbean is completely run by solar. Yes. Yeah. The whole property. Yeah And I think that's what they're looking at for the Boys and Girls Club, for an example, right? But the school division is doing a great job with their solar on their roofs. So we have comments coming in, and I'll just put these out in the conversational universe for our panel.

How does the Board of Supervisors manage population increases for Albemarle County? It's been put in the feed here from Jennifer in the Whitehall District. and this one is based on a comment that Keith just made and it's from Steven who's watching. Pickleball? Did someone say pickleball? Pickleball? Yeah, that's what's in the feed. The sport is booming. Right? Louisa County, the Louisa County Board of Supervisors, Tommy Barlow, that's all he talked about,

because what we do, if you have ever attended one of our Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission meetings, there's always this round table, right? And the chairperson, my fine friend, Ned, he'll deride me, goes around and asks everybody, and that's what all he was talking about,

the groups packed with pickleball. I believe your... Some in favor and some against, right? I believe your district, Greencroft, has got some fantastic pickleball courts. I belong to Greencroft. I do not play pickleball at Greencroft, but they have a great court. The courts are fantastic.

Give them a little plug here, and Darden Tao does too. I will say, though, it's very messy. As the nurse in the room, as the medical person in the room, I will tell you that. Folks that start playing pickleball need to be careful because it is injury. People think, oh, there are no injuries. You can get injuries with pickleball. And usually they're kind of my age and up, right? Exactly.

So I'm just putting that little warning out there. At the district level, the only thing that I've heard about in Rio about pickleball are HOAs where people are getting fed up with the pickleball because the sound. Because it is noisy. So they have tennis courts, and people are going to play the pickleball on the tennis courts,

which is fine. But if it's right by a house, the people in that house are going to play the pickleball on the tennis courts which is which is fine but if it's right by a house the people in that house are not thrilled with the pickleball right but that's an hoa level yeah that doesn't rise to they reach out but it's like all right you gotta yeah go to your hoa board and figure that out and we had some problems with some of the neighbors behind green greencroft concerned about the noise. And I think that was somehow or another addressed, but I'm not going to get into that. But there is noise that's affiliated. I've got nothing else I'm going to speak to. But to get back to your original question. So you're talking about growth in Albemarle County.

One of the ways that we limit growth in Albemarle County is our 5% of development area. We're going to go down that road. And 95% rural area. But I'm answering your question. That designation of 5% being the development area definitely puts limitations on our growth. And I'm not saying that we should expand the development area, or I'm not getting into that debate right now today. Well, you've said previously on this set that until the 5%

is at full occupancy, why would we expand the 5%? That's exactly right. And I still agree with that. Having said that, I think people fail to realize that that 5% in 95 does limit growth, and it has protected Almar County from what many people think about as sprawl. Well, my cohort to the right, or my cohort in crime probably to my right, mentioned something yesterday that actually Almar County is really a rural county because of the five. Of the 95 and the five. 95, 95, 5. Because back on transportation, we had a great conversation yesterday about,

and I'll let you kick it off, Ned, about the rural transportation that's coming our way and the authority. Yeah, I'll tee it up because Diane is the expert on the transit. But we were talking about the regional transit authority. So the BJPDC advanced, we had to approve saying yes, go ahead with the direction and give staff the direction on continuing the work with that. But the rural counties that were at the table, so the start of that transit authority is going to be Charlottesville and Albemarle. But I brought up the point that don't forget that first off

our urban ring doesn't have a fully functional transit system. So we don't have fixed routes that work well. Micro transit, micro cat will hopefully be the solution to that. But the rest of the county is rural. So the fact that this transit authority allows us to bring some new funds in can maybe help us figure out and solve some of the, well, there's the rural transit needs analysis, figure out what the problems are, where the service needs

are, and if Albemarle can start figuring that out for us, that could then become a benefit to the other rural counties of how they figure, it's low, I've got to like I can move the microphone. That's perfect.

That was my point last night. Speaking to Green, Fluvanna, Louisa saying, all right, if Albemarle starts figuring out what we can do in rural transit and the transit authority helps us get at that, then you'll have the benefit of seeing that and then can decide for your own jurisdiction

this is something that could work for us. And I really believe that once we get the regional transit authority established and we work out the, because I'm sure there will be challenges along the way, but once we get that authority established and we figure it out for us, right, then the other counties will come knocking at the door. But I understand their reticence right now. The regional transit partnership, which is only an advisory group,

and I've helped with the creation of that partnership because of our lack of good transit in the urban areas. We have now, the partnership agreed this last meeting, we have challenged or asked the city and the county staffs to work together to come back to us in about 90 to 120 days with not a full-blown plan, but with the beginnings, the suggestions of how to get that authority off the ground to get it started. Because we can't just keep talking about it. And the localities cannot continue to fund transit if we want a robust transit system out of our operational funds. We need funding and that

means we need an authority. What I found most interesting about that discussion, and I'll turn it over to Jerry to some other questions, is it requires Charlottesville and Albemarle to do it. Even though Fulvanna County would be part of that, we could join in, but really it's the city of Charlottesville. Well, that's because there are – and I didn't mean to interrupt you. Did you get interrupted any time? But where we had the agreement that the legislature gave us, our statutory said that it has to be begun, started, the authority by Charlottesville and Albemarle County. So that's the first step. Let's see if Jerry has any questions. I do. And I'm probably not going to let the 5% go away. Well, neither is Neil Williamson.

Before you make another comment, because the question was about how do we manage growth. Yeah, population increase. So part of that on top of what Diantha has said, you know, micro-cats are a good example of this i think when people say how do you manage the growth they're really talking about the impacts that the the continued growth give when we have issues on our roadways we have road projects that need to be done to help the people move around but microcat the calls for service in mid-december were a thousand by the last report in mid-february it it was 8,000. So two months later, it grew by 7,000

calls for service in a small area. And I'm not, MicroCat is the pilot that we're running, microtransit, where it's basically curb-to-curb service, like an Uber, that you get on your app, you call up MicroCat, they'll come pick you up, and they'll take you where you want to go, whether it's a fixed route bus that you want to get on there and go downtown or if you just want to move around within the area so like for folks in my in the woodbrook area to go across i always use this example just to go to kroger they have to get in their car and drive across 29 because there's no safe way to walk but now they can just jump in the microcat and go over to the kroger the library and move around within that immediate area without necessarily getting into their car.

I don't think that solves our congestion issues, but it certainly helps. It's a start. So as roadway projects come online, which we're vigorously going after, although we are behind in getting a lot of the road improvements done, but getting a fully functional transit system, especially in that urban ring, is going to help with the road improvements done. But getting a fully functional transit system, especially in that urban ring, is going to help with the road impacts, I believe. And that's another way that you manage growth that comes into your county.

And the only thing I would add to that is that the microcat pilot that we're running right now, which I think we had in early February our highest call data per day and 140 calls in one day in February and we haven't really even started advertising this yet, right, and it is a very limited area. Having said that, what that pilot is going to show us is where the demand is. I can tell you that right now because I'm looking at it. And that's the beauty of it, to be honest with you.

So new construction, single family attached. While you guys were chatting, I wanted to see what's in the pending bucket right now. So these are homes that are under contract that have not been built yet that are going to close. There's 100 of them. This all happened within the last 30 to 60 days so there's a hundred houses for sale 30 of them up by the airport 30 of them up over in Crozet there's only three that I would consider the urban ring it's actually probably a little bit out of it everything else is already outside of this urban ring this This is the new

construction. We talked about it a little bit off air, and we'll talk about it later, where the sales are going, where the people are buying. Well, that's where they're buying. So it's totally outside of the urban ring, and I'll let Neil jump in on his question. Well, Neil pushes back, respectfully, of course, the president of the Free Enterprise Forum on the 5%, and he says it's not 5%. It's actually less than 5%. And he highlights, well, I will highlight. I know Neil well enough to ad lib for him.

The topography of the 5% is not conducive to development. So I'll throw that topic for conversation. I know Neil well enough that he'd probably say office conversion as a follow-up because I know Mr. Williamson loves that topic. Yeah, he does. He's not wrong. No, he's not wrong. And I'm surprised he's not in there saying, and the board has not, the board collective over the years has not approved developments at their full density capacity, which then also limits your 5% because you're not getting to the expected numbers. And that's one of the problems we have is that we have only been supporting

about 58% of the needed density in the proposals that have been coming to us. So we agree with Neil. To support what you guys are voting on, your constituents and voters have encouraged you to vote that way. There does not seem to be an overwhelming appetite, including yours truly, for maximizing density. Well, even at 58%, we're catching hell for that. But again, it goes to the impacts, right? In the areas where the infrastructure is supportive, so when Willow Glen came back for its final approval, North Fork, when we did the North Fork redevelopment, I received one email about that development asking about and concerned about traffic impacts.

But that's up to 1,400 potential units out there. And nobody really came out because it's in a place where there's going to be a new elementary school that's going to come online soon the road improvements are there i just found out actually they confirmed for me yesterday that the last leg of the burke mart airport road looks like the hundred percent of the funds are there oh great that's good that's good so that's a big deal so when you've got things in place, you get a different level of impact. Now, that being said, we had a development of 122 units in Crozet, and there are infrastructure concerns.

I'm not going to sit here and act like there weren't. But that was opposed by the community. And that had what I thought was a really wonderful development, which we passed, had a really great mix of housing types and some affordable included in it, and to include some habitat homes. So that was just what we need to be building. As the recovering developer and builder on set, the market is telling you where they're going.

And it's Forest Lakes, it's the airport area, 29 North, and Crozet. I can also tell you from a commercial side of it, ever since you guys passed the UVA rezoning, my phone has been ringing off the hook for commercial folks and saying hotels, stores facilities, retail because they see that's where the growth which is what you guys were talking about

that's kind of where you wanted it to be anyway right? Well and to be to speak for UVA a little bit, they made it clear that that residential that would exist there they're not looking to recreate what already exists at Hollymead Town Center with Target and the retail spots.

What they want in that Berkmar Road segment, once that's done, that activates. There will be a roundabout there at Lewis and Clark Drive and Airport Road so that people that are living there in that development can easily access Target without ever having to get on the 29th. So once that road segment goes in, that will really activate them. And to really applaud UVA, I am so appreciative that UVA is working with us in my district over at the Piedmont faculty housing. And that is going to be a wonderful project, I believe, at the end of the day for UVA nurses, employees, if you think about sort of that missing middle piece of housing that we really need.

And I want Neil to know that I was quoting him last night at the TJPDC, and he wasn't watching online. Seats available. he wasn't watching online. Seats available. Seats were available online. Seats were available. So I think I'll just kind of say it out there publicly. I think you're going to have to address the 5% a lot sooner than I think you guys are prepared to do it. How so? I think the market is just going to push it that way. And to Neal's point,

you know, I take a little bit of I disagree with some of the staff on your Alamoor 44, right? There is not that much developable space left in the 5%. It's either in commercial already, it's undevelopable, it's just not able to build. Properties,

folks are not going to sell it, and it's part of why you're seeing these two different points in your county getting where it's where it's going but to look at 99 homes that went under contract since the first of the year that are closing that are in the and 60% of the 99 70% 70 of sumi of the 99 or in those two areas that's where the markets telling you it's going. I just don't think you have the voter or taxpayer appetite to expand the 5%. Yes, I agree, 100%.

And, you know, I always say to people, we can't really build new schools until the kids are falling out of the windows of the new schools. 100%. I'm just saying from a practical perspective, it's going to have to happen. It's the political will there or the folks living there is willing to go there? But I want to give you guys a bit of a shout-out here. I love to talk about it since it's a real estate show. I mean, you finally got your developer incentives done.

So we should talk a little bit about that, and then I'm going to do a plug for my ROI thing. I think the biggest thing that I would like to make sure people know, hoping that, because I believe a lot of developers do tune in here. You have four that I see watching you right now. Because the incentive, it landed at 15% of the total property tax would be the incentive back, and that's getting to rental developments where 20% of the units are affordable, and it moves the AMI from 80% to 60%. That 15% of the total tax incentive would be for the 30-year period

is designed to try to fill the gap lost in rental income moving from 15% at 80% to 20% at 60%. It's not a – and I was emphasizing this point several times the day we passed it. It's not set in stone at 15%. It can have some fluidity to it or some flexibility to it. Based on a project. And there can be other incentives. The big one we heard in our work session in December was the tax incentive.

So that's why that is the main one out there. But if you bring a project in, I like to use Willow Glen for this. Willow Glen came back to us and got rid of a road connection that would have been very costly, that would have cut through the little small part of their area, and getting rid of that road piece freed up money for them to be able to do more affordable units there and get their development finally moving forward. So if there are other things that can be done, parking requirements, whatever you have, in tandem with the tax incentive, then that could help bring these projects on.

But here's the main thing I want developers to know. It takes coming in and talking to the county to say let's discuss my project and how an incentive program could help us get to the numbers because what we ultimately want are the units and we know that we have to help developers get there. And in the incentive program, the way it's set up, once it's applied for, would be approved and developers would know what it would be and that they would have it before they ever went to get a rezoning. It doesn't guarantee a rezoning, right? They're two separate animals. But they could walk into a rezoning going, all right, if I get this rezoning from

the board, I have this incentive package and this performance agreement that's going to be able to move forward. And the board's going to have to do some work to make sure we expedite that process, as will staff. And everybody was in agreement that that should happen. I was going to say, we've all recognized that. Sorry, I take up air. No, it's good. You're fine.

We're good. Big deal. But I would encourage developers who are, you know, if I were the developers, I'd probably have some questions and be skeptical. And is this really going to work? There were concerns even leading up to the day that we passed it, but some details had changed. Reach out to both Dr. Petty in the housing area, but also our chief financial officer, Jacob, has said that, yes, let's sit down with the finance folks in the room as well, and let's have conversations and answer all your questions so that you can see that there's flexibility,

because at the end of the day we want to get not just more affordable units, but the units get deeper into the folks that can't afford to get in there. And if you can have that conversation up front, because time is money. So let's do it first so that we're not working at cross purposes. Twenty-five percent of all new construction right now is regulatory expense. And time is part of that. And I'll put my developer hat on a little bit. And I know this because I was in the room and I was part of helping setting this up.

And so any developers and builders that might be listening, you guys are prepared to actually have that conversation. Because in the past, that usually was difficult, right? So you guys have stepped up to the plate and say, let's sit down and talk. I'm an ownership guy. I believe in creating generational wealth. So we talked a little about rental. Where did we land on the ownership side? So what the developer incentive conversation,

now that we've taken a vote on it, does, is allow us to get to the rest of housing album world. There's a lot of good stuff in housing album world that's really been on hold in a lot of ways. And I just happened to bring it with me today. Look at that, huh? And we need to get after this other thing. I mean, we're approaching the three-year anniversary,

and the incentives took up, what, over two years of conversation, almost the whole three years. So having that out of the way, we can start getting at other pieces. So I think the land trust idea, you have now heard, I've said it a few times, some other supervisors are nodding their heads. The county executive has said it publicly that in similar fashion that we've acquired land for economic development purposes that maybe perhaps that's what we have to start thinking about and figuring out how we can do for housing. Well we know it works

because as everybody knows I'm the chair of the Piedmont Community Land Trust but you guys were kind enough to give us about $650,000 on it and we produced 23 permanently affordable new construction units through partnerships with multiple partnerships from Stanley Martins and nonprofits and lenders and so forth and so on. So it can be done, but it does require everybody at the table. Supervisor McKeel has always talked about the current land that we own, and most of it is school property,

but is there any land that we own now that could be used for this type of thing? And then that piece that I just talked about, adding land for that purpose, that expressed purpose. I don't know how else other than the way that we've done it in the past where we're giving money to a project like that. But that's one season, too. That's not on a scale that's going to get the homeownership. Land matters.

And I know there's some frustration over how slow we have moved. Having said that, we really have tried to do it right. And we've brought the policy along. And so this is our next. There's a lot in here. And this isn't going to happen overnight either but we're really trying to be thoughtful and and as we move our housing policies forward I think it was super helpful to have those roundtables yes it in June or July of July and then in December will you guys continue that to explore the ownership side of it?

Because I think engaging the stakeholders like we did or like was done was very helpful to get us this far. I know they want to be at the table. So I hope you guys will continue these roundtable discussions with the stakeholders. I think, I mean, I'd be open to that. We've not really discussed that as a piece of it, but I would, I mean, seeing the benefit of it for this first incentive conversation, I mean, that would be, I'm always a fan of bringing in, I mean, let's talk to the people that are doing it. And I think our staff has been supportive of these roundtables. They've not

pushed back. They've not pushed back, that's right. This is a, well, not to my knowledge. A good topic for the panel. Charlottesville City has recently upzoned much of its territory and jurisdiction. Would Albemarle County consider upzoning for the urban ring to create potentially more housing?

My answer right now would be probably not. I use that based on... I'm trying to remember who was on the that based on... Now, we have a different... I'm trying to remember who was on the board. At one point, we had an affordable housing overlay come to us where basically, if we had approved it, it would have been a basic just go ahead and up zone

in the development area to full max density. And there was, including myself, there were six people there saying we're not ready to go there. There wasn't a lot of interest in that. So that's my only, like, you know, it's easy for me to go, oh, we might discuss that or oh, we might have that conversation and then it never happens. So I try to look back on things that are similar. And if that didn't move forward, I don't know that we would just do a blanket up zoning like that. And we're certainly not discussing it now, even in light of what Charlottesville's recently done.

I mean, there are plenty that think we should, and I'm sure there's opinions that think absolutely not. But just based on that previous conversation, I don't know that we will be going to do that. Yeah, and I'm not being critical of Charlottesville. We're different localities. We're different jurisdictions. But you are attached to the HIP, though. We are.

But I'm just saying that what they decide to do, I'm not criticizing. The big struggle, I think, for you to ever really done and spent to do that you'll find out you don't have that much of the 5% left because the people in the field that do this for a living have and there's the availability of space to Neil's point and I think some

low hanging fruit that could help in that is to tweak your commercial zoning a little bit, do like a ZTA zoning text amendment. I've seen this happen out in Portland and Seattle and different parts of the country that, you know, some of these retail spaces or some of these other spaces that are not fully utilized, you can kind of allow that so it's not a rezoning application to say, okay, if you meet this certain criteria, and it's a very low-hanging fruit, and you will not get much pushback because, A, you already got your infrastructure there. You've got your roads. You've got your transportation. You've got your water and your sewer. And people are used to seeing it. And some people, I mean, the Fashion Square Mall comes into mind right

people are kind of like I get more questions about what is anybody going to do about the mall Home Depot but that's just one small portion of a pretty large project and we've talked we also have the county utilizing

part of the mall as well but there's a ton of property there. It's still common. You still have three property owners. It's very difficult. That's the struggle. I'm glad you said that. Most people don't understand how complicated that is because there's multiple property owners,

and most people don't know they cut through the building. And they're not local property owners. They are not. I'm sorry. One is. One is. Is that Richard Spencer? Richard Hewitt.

Richard Hewitt, excuse me. But at one point, there were fire property owners. At least we've reduced it down a little bit. Woody Fincham watching the program, he is obviously an appraiser, and he is the owner of Fincham & Associates. He says the upzoning is not going to resolve more affordable housing. It's going to result in individual projects that will help strengthen portfolios. And we've talked about this quite a bit.

It is going to take many, many years, if not decades, before it really has a great impact on it. It's going in the right direction, much like your developer incentives, right? Much like your housing album model. These are steps that are going into the right direction. But, you know, from folks that I'm working with, we're looking at individual properties for anywhere between three to six and up.

And the pool of availability properties in the city of Charlottesville is not that great on it. You've got to get the pieces of the puzzle to fit. Back to my 5%. You've got to get parcels have to have the pieces of the puzzle to fit. If not, they're just going to get skipped over to another opportunity.

The question, the real estate tax rate, any insight on what's going to happen there? This has come in from multiple homeowners in Albemarle County, including a couple in the Jack Jewett District and one in the Rio District. Well, certainly Jeff Richards and our county executives' proposed budget to us does not increase the property tax rate. We, as a board, have not had that discussion yet, and all I will say is we need to talk about what's on these six pages.

And if some of those start sliding into the budget. Well, and I'm not saying one way or the other, right? We haven't had that discussion yet. These just came out this morning. Ned and some of us asked the county executive to present what was not funded in this budget. And I will say, I'm just looking here and seeing fire and rescue, police department, sheriffs, social services. Now, a lot of people will say, well, you know, those are. So that discussion has to happen is what I would say. There's a guy that's been on this set a couple of times that said, if you really want to know how your representative is going to vote,

keep an eye on the budget season. And budget season is probably. They sharply dressed Supervisor Galloway, I believe. I mean, it started in November for you guys, right? When did you start your budget? Oh, we talk budget all year long. This budget started last year. Yeah,, we talk budget all year long. This budget started last year. Yeah, we talk about budget all year long.

So that is kind of absorbs a ton of brain space and time on it. You know, the last time the tax rate changed was 2019. Yeah. So one of the things that the staff is working on now that I had asked for was go back to the five-year plan. So if you look at 2019, five years later is now, look at the five-year financials plan back then and what was the expected revenue in 2024, 2020? Where were we thinking we needed to be? And how did we hit it or not hit it? And then where do we compare to where? And how did we hit it or not hit it? And then

where do we compare to where we're at at this point in time? Because back then we had planned tax rate increases over those five years that we've not needed because the values have skyrocketed. So we've got the revenue without the tax rate increase. And I don't know what that's going to fall. I don't know if we have more revenue now, less revenue than what we were thinking. But I think that's a good exercise to say, all right, if you're really going to do the five-year plans, and you're around, some of us have been around that long, well, where are we at? Where are we? Are we hitting on the target revenue-wise of what we were expecting?

And then how does that match up to our strategic plan and the things that the community is saying we need to do? Frankly, I'm not happy that there are no police positions in this budget. That has been one that each year that I try to figure out a way to get even an additional. And because of the roadways. I mean, speeding alone. But it's about 100 and to add a police officer, salary and benefits, if it's a brand new, you know, a brand new police officer year one, it's about $110,000 for the position. And then it's about another 110, 120 to outfit for the equipment. So it's about a $220,000, $225,000 cost hit just to add one police officer. So, you know, what does a supervisor have to do? Well, I'd have to go find that $225,000 that's either being spent on something else and saying I want it to go here instead,

or you'd have to find the revenue. And the only way to do that is to play around with the tax rates. And not only police officers, but we're talking fire and rescue for the fire department. I mean, folks are, you know, the volunteers in the fire department are practically gone these days. And that was, you know, decades ago, our fire department was based on volunteers for the most part. Boy, that has really changed. Then the question is where they're going to live. But a second part of that question that I would ask is where did the values go?

We're talking about 2019? Yeah. So 2019, the median sales price for a single-family detached home. So between a 20% and 30% increase. I think way more than that. I didn't do the percentage math, but the median average in 19 was $424,000.

The end of 23, we're at $600,000. We are at the end of the second month of 24, thank you. 622. So you've got to track 30%. And Neil always reminds us of that. Well, the values went up. You've got the revenue. I know that.

My mind is, it's like, all right, well, if we've got about the same amount of revenue without the tax rate increase, then we're hitting our plan. We're doing what we think we were going to do. It just happened that the revenues came in through, you know, the formula was different because the values had increased so much. So the rate to pay attention to is the one that hits the folks' cars. We dropped that down to 342 is jumping into my brain. I don't remember. It's 342. That was all because of this weird... Well, the pandemic, March of 22,

car values jumped up. The peak was 63% increase in the car values. And then I just read, I shared this with the board at our budget session. We've only, the car values have only declined about half of that amount since. So you're still looking at a depreciating asset is still higher than it was or half of that 63% peak. So you're still looking at

what, a 30, 40% increase in your car values. And when folks have a car that they've got paid off, that maybe they paid back five, six years ago, Maybe they bought an under $10,000 car that was $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. They weren't used to looking at big tax bills on that. Well, I had people coming in at the dealership asking me to appraise their car because they were looking at the book values that were being used. Because in my opinion, if I was trading that car in, I might have given them $ 500 bucks and i'm looking at their tax bill saying it's worth 6 000 yeah i'm like well that's not that's crazy yeah so um i've been pleased that we've kept that rate where it's been over the last couple of years we didn't i don't they're still so high that i don't think

people really realize that the rate was down because they were still probably paying more. But I was really pleased with the way we handled that in the budget. So we're kind of getting up towards the end of our time together, and I do want to get into real estate because at the end of the day, this is a real estate show. This is from Mr. Finch from the appraiser, who I believe, did he not

work for the assessor's office in our market? He did. He says, I'm not trying to be overly negative, but the way the assessor's office has been going after value increases in a lot of areas, they don't need to increase the rate. I've done at least half a dozen projects over the last month where we were having a hard time supporting a value as high as the assessed value that they're going to post on July 1. And that is a very unusual occurrence. I can tell you if 35 years of doing this, it's usually the opposite. It's usually tax assessors are usually below.

Significantly below. Significantly below market value. Now, legally, you guys are supposed to appraise them at market value, but market moves so much faster than what you guys. I mean, a prime example, if you don't mind putting a Jew to slide 1A, gives me an opportunity to talk about my real estate, wonderful slides. But just to take a look at it, single-family existing homes, detached homes, at the end of last year was 600,000.

We're now at 622. That's at the end of the second month of this year, which is a 3.5% increase just in the first two months. Now, over the course of time, that might balance out a little bit throughout the year. We can go and do that. But it's interesting, the single family attached existing actually had a negative 6% drop. So existing attached homes are selling less now than they were at the end of the year. Single-family attached a little bit more, but the new construction stuff is up through.

He puts it in perspective with a home in Glenmore with assessed value. Glenmore is what, that is Supervisor Pruitt's district, Scottsdale district. Right. My neighborhood, 2019, the home 600,000 assessed value. 2020, the home 590,900 assessed value, so effectively zero. Then in 2021, this is the COVID effect. 2021, it jumps to 628,200. 2022, 701,000. 2023, 833,300, and in 2024, 914,200.

So from 2019 to 2024, it spiked from 600,000 to 914,200 in assessed value. That's massive. The five-year delta of significant appreciation. And I think it's important because we always say, well, this year the average increase was 4%. But when you look at it district to district, I think, I have to go back and look at this, but I think the district, the magisterial district that was closest to that average was the Whitehall district. The Rio district and the Jewett district were much higher than four percent on average. I've got neighborhoods that are still eight, thirteen, and

fifteen percent increases this year. And I say that because I don't want, when I say, oh well it went up four percent, we're getting back to something that existed prior. Well, not in all the neighborhoods. There are still some people that are seeing a big increase in their tax bill because even though the average is 4%, there's still much higher numbers jumping up there. And there are pockets that have gone down. Yeah. I mean, I can name two neighborhoods right close to that went down in the Jewett district. In Jewett? Right, right.

Micro markets matter, right? That's right. You know, micro markets matter. That's why at the beginning of the year when stuff comes out, we end up getting phone calls and saying, hey, give me market evaluation on what's going on. But don't you think the landscape over the last few years with COVID and with everything this country went through, the landscape has just been very different. And it's been very... Do you talk about the real estate? Do you chalk that up to an anomaly?

Is that what you're alluding to? Well, I don't know at this point. Okay. But it certainly has been challenging. Yeah, sure. And it's something that I think we haven't experienced, many of us, in our lifetime. Well, this is certainly an area that people want to live. And we were hearing this growing pain from the Louisa County supervisor yesterday as well

about growth coming into Louisa, which does not have an urban ring in the services. And they're moving from places where they expect more. And he was talking about that a little bit. Where they expect more amenity-wise? Services. Service-wise, okay. The services aren't going to be there because of how rural they are, and they're moving in from suburban or urban areas. So the dynamic out there is changing somewhat.

But, I mean, this area is – I mean, your slides, I think, what was the average days to sale? It was like five days or something, six days? Yeah, when we talked about yesterday, or the one that we have on. I saw it on your slide. I thought it said like the average turnaround for. From the unicorn years on out, it definitely dropped down. I'd have to look at the slide to go ahead and do this. So I know driving through Dunlora and Belvedere and Laughlin and places like that,

those for sale signs, if they're up for a day, that's a long time. But it's always the six things I've been talking about, right? Location, price, features, condition, timing, and who's on the other side matters on that. So if you hit all those things right, it moves that kind of way. You know, certain price points are moving a little fast, a little bit slower. I do want to give a shout out to Neil. Neil's working on something that he should hit his presses here in a little while. And he's working on looking at the needs assessment that NAR is putting out where new units need to be put and where things are under and over.

And we'll find out in a little while. I'll do that. But from a quick snapshot, we're in this under permitted area. But we're going to let him or limited anyway. So new construction matters. The prime example is the numbers that we have here in these 90 new construction townhomes because people, that's where they're pivoting to, to go ahead and buy. But, you know, back to your point about I'm doing this for three and a half decades. I've never seen a market like this before. It's very, and it's really, as I would say, whack-a-doodle.

Well, there's just so many things. Look, I've lived through the time of great unpleasantness, so I know what unpleasant looks like. But there's so many factors in here that we've never seen before, at least in 35 years, 2% interest. The cost of construction being way off the charts. They go ahead and do that. So as to steal my good friend Robert Liberty's thing, this isn't a silver bullet to fix this. This is a silver buckshot. This question or topic for Matt Holbrook, and I will paraphrase, what happened with Ragged Mountain and mountain biking?

This is very much recently in the news. So the legal question that was finally settled just this past week by both the city council and the supervisors, the city, the idea is if you own property in another jurisdiction, whose rules apply? Whose sovereign trade, right? It's a question of sovereign trade. And the court settled it that it's Albemarle's. So Albemarle's rules will be settled, and that means no biking there. The offset for that for folks that are, well, where do we bike if we can't bike there,

is that Biscuit Run coming online is going to provide plenty of capacity for biking. And there are other areas for biking as well. And there's other things that are restricted. It's not like we're just picking on biking, but the land around the reservoir is just treated differently than, like Biscuit Run doesn't have a reservoir in it, so anywhere where there's drinking water supply, what's allowed around that property, Albemarle believes, is different than other areas. And I would say, if you think about the legal question, what Charlottesville was really trying to do, or they were doing, I don't know

that they meant it this way, but they were annexing. They were really annexing by purchase, and we just can't have that. Well, I'm a cyclist. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean is that, in other words, Albemarle County could go into the city and purchase property and then have Albemarle County could go into the city and purchase property and then have Albemarle County control what goes on to that property in the city. And I would say to Mike Signer, Mike, we could go over to Belmont and purchase property

and put a go-kart range and run it 24-7. And he would say, well, you wouldn't do that. Well, wouldn't, couldn't, well, you wouldn't do that. Wouldn't, couldn't, two different things. Exactly. That's exactly right. So annexation by purchase is not what a locality can legally, we just can't have that. And I want to be clear for bikers, because the folks that I've talked to about this, this wasn't about biking. This was about the piece that if you're going to own property, that that jurisdiction's ordinances stand.

Stand, yeah. That's critical. And that's what I'm talking about. We can't have another jurisdiction purchasing property and then ignoring our ordinances. It happened to be that biking was the activity that accentuated the issue, but the underlying piece of that is very important, and we couldn't, that would have been terrible if the government. Anybody who developed a piece of property that's in two different jurisdictions

with two different zoning ordinances will completely grab that. But Jerry's got a noon show and 11.15. We're a little bit past our time. Back on the cycling thing, as a road cyclist, anything you can do to help improve the road traffic conditions would be great. And we are really trying to do pedestrian and cycling, bicycling safety. And I think, to be honest with you, VDOT is looking at that much more seriously than they used to.

One of the things in the urban ring that helps with the bike lanes that are currently there is the street sweeper we've got running out there. We dropped 180 tons of stuff pulled off the roads. Well, I've got the bike in the back of my truck, and I'm going to do a loop up around through your district and up through your district and come around. I'll let you know how the roads are doing after that. It would be fun to have a conversation at some point about what the new projects

that VDOT is recommending for some of our urban roads like the Barracks Road Corridor and the Hydraulic Corridor. It would be fun to do that because that really is on... People in the urban ring are really talking about those projects and before we jump off i just want to throw out there that the supervisors are going to do a little different animal this year when we do our budget town halls so there's going to be a little different structure to it it's going to be budget focused but there's going to be other elements to it so those are being scheduled some may have already been like mine's tentative yet so i'm not going to say the date until they lock in the space.

But in the past you just go out and get a budget presentation and do Q&A and that sort of thing. It's going to be a little bit more of an open house. There's going to be specific topics that are going to be addressed in addition to the budget to things that are on people's minds, transportation, et cetera. So just throwing that out there that this year be paying attention to when those town halls come to your district. And please come out and give us not just feedback on the budget, but on some of the other elements that we're going to be doing. And many of them are being rolled into the Citizen Advisory Committee meetings that are already established. So, DeAntha, I will let you have the honors of closing the show out.

So how would you like to, anything to add or say? No, I just thank everybody. Thank you for inviting me. Anytime. You're always welcome. Thank folks for listening and for the questions. You thought this was going to be... This is fun, isn't it? Well, I saw all your data points and I said, whoa! Well, Ned knows

we generally never get to them. There's hours and hours and hours of work and we send them out. We generally never get to them. Well, I said to you, I said, I'm a retired nurse, not a real estate agent with all this data in my head. Well, thank you for not talking about medical stuff. Both of you guys are fantastic in this setting, and I'm seeing nearly two dozen comments here. Thank you for this informative panel and this approachable setting. Supervisor Ned Galloway, Supervisor Diantha McKeel,

the star of our show. Keith Smith. Is that my name? Happy 600. Yeah, yeah. If I was smart enough, I would have gotten like hats and whistles and stuff like that. A new partner for the program you want to highlight? Yeah, yeah. We're working with Tiger Solar

so a little bit more to come. The Suns? Yep. To be a Solar, so a little bit more to come. The Suns? Yep. And to be a sponsor, so tie in together with some of our other sponsors and our trusted advisors on our Real Talk with Keith Smith partner tab. So pull it down and help support those folks because without them, we wouldn't be talking to you guys. RealTalkWithKeithSmith.com. Judah Wickauer, thank you very much. And the I Love Seville Show, folks, is up in one hour and four minutes. Thank you kindly for joining us on a Friday.

Take care, everyone. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. See you.