The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Ned Gallaway, Tim Hodge & Manning Woodward Were Live On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Ned Gallaway of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Tim Hodge of the Fluvanna Board Of Supervisors & Manning Woodward of the Louisa County Board Of Supervisors, joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Mejicali, Tailored Closet, Premier Garage, Budget Blinds 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. This show is archived on Real Talk with Keith Smith.com, and it's the intersection or the crossroads of local government, of the economy, of politics, of housing, of water, of data, of living here in Central Virginia. And I think today's show is an absolute microcosm of that. Keith Smith is a gentleman that's been in this community since 1987. Yes, I used the word gentleman Keith Smith. And it wasn't 1887. He was surprised off camera that I called him gentlemen right there. He's my friend, and he has put a panel together that is one of household names.

Ned Galloway, our friend, is in the house. He's chairman, the chairman of the Amar County Board of Supervisors. He is a good dude, all-around great guy, the Ryo District Representative on the Ammore County Board of Supervisors. Timothy Hodges is in the house. I think either his second or third rodeo here on the I Love Seville Network. And Manning Woodwards, it's his first. rodeo on the program today. Viewers and listeners, we encourage you to ask questions. There's some talking points we're going to cover first and some topics we'll cover

first, but then we'll open it up to a roundtable discussion as I see already a lot of people on the feet. Judah Wood Cowher is behind the camera. Judah Wood Cowher if you could go to the studio camera and then I think it's a Keith is always testing us right here. I think this is a five shot that we're going to have to put on screen. He makes this work over here. You just you just took away my intro Thank you very much on that. I just want to shout out to Judah. So the folks, Ned's an old timer here and comes quite often,

but the set set up for four. And when I ask, you can see what. What? He's smart. He can figure it. That's this many, manning. I got you. Thank you.

But when we set up for five, somebody has to share a mic, and they put the two mic hounds on one end to go ahead and do it. So if him and I and I, start fighting over the mic. You guys have to jump in and keep us going. But I wanted to thank Manning for being here. And this

just first time I had Louisa at the table. So I'm really excited about talking about Louisa and talking about what's going on over there. You guys are crushing it. You guys are on fire right now, Louisa. We're trying. You're doing great job. Well, we'll talk about water, and you guys

have been on fire for a while. And unfortunately, I've got too much institutional memory of that whole project. but I just want to do a quick thing, who you are, where you're from, and you and I had a conversation the other day, everybody at this table, with the exception of you, are from here, right? We've come years, not from years. You're from here, and how many generations have you been in Louisa?

Well. Your family. Oh, thank you. Not you. I'm sorry, fine. If you're not careful, we'll talk about our journals. It goes back five to them. generations. Well, actually

six, because I have grandchildren. That's awesome. Yeah. And we're still all in Louisiana. My sister. The whole family is in Louisiana. That's pretty awesome. That is awesome. That is absolutely awesome. Don't find that too often anymore. That's right. And that's what intrigued me because of what we're about ready to talk about,

you're like generationally into Louisa and how it grew and how it's changed. And I'd love to hear from you in a little bit later when we finish our introductions about, you know, it went from one-horse town to something completely different now and how that journey looks to somebody who's from here, not a come here, like us. So tell us a little bit about yourself, and we'll move on to Tim. Well, Manning Woodward, as Keith has said, I've lived in Louisiana County my whole life.

My family had, well my great-grandfather started with the General Morkin-Tiel store, which led him to be the undertaker. Then he bought an insurance agency in 1890. The funeral home went through my dad. I broke that. It was sold. But I kept with the insurance agency, and my oldest son took that over about three years ago, and is purchasing that for me. purchasing that for me, thank goodness. Good deal, bad

deal? Oh, it's a good thing. It's a great deal. He keeps in the family. He's grown it tremendously. I mean, fifth generation. Good. In one business, you just don't find that. Yeah, you're on your chair on there. So we're very proud of that. Tim?

I'm Tim. I'm currently the vice chair of the Fuvana Border Supervisors. I traveled a lot as a child. I was in the military, so the nomadic lifestyle continued former corporate executive I spent a couple years after the corporate world working for the UK and Ireland's fourth largest housing charity I came here to

retire got wrapped up in a whole bunch of things and now my days are occupied with volunteer fire and volunteer rescue and you're taking your EMT test I passed my EMT exam and I'm a captain in the Lake Montchello volunteer rescue squad You're going to show up and help people. Yes. A lot of people don't know. Yon and I were in that forever. We were, Yon and I were talking about,

we're from Lake Monticello, were talking about that. When we were running rescue squad at the lake, it was out of the marina. That was like 129 years ago. But Yon was advanced life support. I was regularly EMP, but we did that for about 20 years.

They pulled me in from fire looking for drivers. They say if you can drive a fire truck, you can drive an ambulance. I think you had a pulse. so yeah so emt now they want me to go advanced so there you go you'll enjoy it if they offer the class i'll do it there you go who are you ned galloway outmar county uh board of supervisors i'm in my third term first year my third term uh former school board member um you know been in out i've been in the area since 2002 uh so i came you know i think a common story came here to attend uva and

found that this was a great place to live so that was that decision that kind of changed some career choices but been here since then and involved in as you all know local boards and i'm thrilled to have you guys here here the third louvanna supervisor i've had the pleasure of being on the show with and having louisea here because we you know we get jesse on here and but i think it's great that folks get to see the different counties mix like we do at our round tables but do it in a way that can be you know a little bit more public public facing way so This is awesome. This is why I did it.

So every third Friday of the month, this is what we do. We're bringing in a little bit of an announcement. Lloyd just called me, so he's going to be here from the city. So we'll have Lloyd here. We'll have the city next, next 17th, I believe. He's got a long commute. He has a long commute. Right down the hallway.

His law firm. Okay. So, Mani. Yes. Five generations? Five generations? That's right. So talk about that.

Talk about that change from that. And weave in a little bit. bit of data center stuff and then weave in a little bit of water designs crossroads. But you've seen a lot of changes. So from your perspective, absolutely. Louisa kind of stayed the same. And when I say that, I'm not talking about just the town, the county. Stayed pretty much the same, I would say, up until the 1960s. And the latter part of the 1960s, VEPCO, which is now Dominion Energy, approached the county about putting a nuclear power plant there. So they originally planned to put four units.

They built two. And that really advanced Louisiana County in so many ways, just the construction phase of it, the number of people that are brought in. The number of people that stayed in the county, most of those were people that had school-age children. So their kids went to school and school. Louisiana County. And the main, I mean, it's brought a lot of things, the jobs that it brought,

that pay way more than anything else in Louisiana County has ever paid. And the benefits. Now, you know, I'm starting to see people that are around my age, you know, started probably five years ago where they've retired from down there. And it's a whole other group of young people going there to work at North Anna. I think each unit has about 700 employees or something like that so about 1,500 1,500 employees down there but anyway what that did for the county besides the

employment was the tax dollars that it's brought and I really through the years have thought about it Louisa County would be just like the counties that we see down through the southern part southern central part

of the state a whole lot of those counties don't have very much money. You know, what I've always admired about Louisiana County is for whatever reason, you guys tend to make these big decisions pretty quickly, right? You know, the power plan, the water designs crossroads, which was huge, and we'll go through a little bit of history of that because the relationship wasn't so. I have to talk into the mic. I can hear this for eight years.

I can hear you fine, Keith. Thank you, Manning. I appreciate that. I appreciate it. But Manning, I'm pretty sure it's not about you and me. Oh, really? It's amazing. It's as amazing as that might be, Manning.

It is not about you and me. But, you know, we've got water, right? And water came out ahead of everybody. You have your data centers in there. People got all different opinions on these different things. But you guys really jumped into these big picture items and made a big impact. impact on the county. I heard some, I think was at one of our meetings and correct me if I'm wrong.

The amount of money I'm switching the data centers that you're pulling in, you almost don't have to charge property taxes or it was personal property tax. Personal property taxes, we, 27, so starting July 1st year, will be reduced by 15%. Our goal is within four to five years is to not have a personal property tax. Unbelievable. In Louisa. Well, and that's purely from the data centers? from almost completely from the data signers, yes.

Well, it would be nice if we could do it in our county, you're trying, right? So you never know. Tim, jump in, buddy. I think we need to get infrastructure in place first. And anytime you have enterprise and you have business that wants to come in, you have to join up a business that's willing to come with a landowner that's willing to do it,

with a board that's willing to, re-zone and pass it. And with, like you were saying before, Louise is making bold decisions, and with bold decisions come bold results. And you've got to have the foresight, forethought, to see ahead and do the right thing in the moment. And I think that's a challenge.

I was, of certain points over the decades, very skeptical that we would ever get water, the science crossroads. But we are. we finally are getting there. We're projecting October 2027. That's the raw water from the James all the way up to Ferncliffe. And a lot of people don't know. That doesn't mean it's finished water design Scroser. We've got a lot of work yet to do on that. But I was in the room back in the late 80s in the early 90s. I did a little chart on the history of it. It went well. Then it didn't go well. And it went well again. And then all of a sudden we're here. Talk about, from both of your guys' perspectives, the regional impact of getting water designs crossroads. Well, the water allows the growth, the growth that you want to have. It also, both counties realized a long time ago that the James can provide that stable water that you need,

and getting that in was important because right now our water is taken, from the correctional center what's serving our area up there right now and there's a limit to that 120 gallons 120 000 it's slightly less than that and they draw from a creek so there's only so much they can draw out the james gives an opportunity for both counties and had it not been for the partnership Fulvana County definitely couldn't have done it on their own. And a lot of times working with another locality allows you to do larger, grander things that helps both. It's a symbiotic relationship.

The region was... Well, I mean, I was just listening in on water because Alamarl's whole growth area, rural area, situation is set up based on where the water can go. And it's a fight to move a pipe from one side to the other. And that's a specific land use approach. And to your point, because that's how the growth comes. Well, that's how you also keep the growth to certain particular areas.

So it's interesting to hear how you all think about it in that context. To just bring some business and bring some stuff like that in. The regionalism, I think there's a lot of issues that have happened over the last four or five years that are just different than my first couple of years on the commission. and here that whether we've liked it or not, the issue has just become one where it's like, oh, it's not just us, we've got to contend with us at some point. It might be a different urgency level for different places,

but we've, you know, affordable housing, obviously, for everybody. And I always, it's always interesting when Jesse or somebody's on from a county that's predominantly rural, and we sometimes I think Albumaral, we forget how much there is still just rural Albumerl. And all of it, forget the land use, plants, designation but rural housing and affordability is a very different problem than our urban ring and what the city of Charlottesville deals with downtown but it's one that all six of us is a region as the regional counties here in the city contend

with and you know we see it play out at the Commission we see it play out at the partnership where it's like yeah if we don't work together on this or for or don't find ways to join up to maximize the dollars we're putting into it to turn a dollar into two or three, it takes long enough to get things done anyway, but without that regional work, it's just never going to, we're never going to get there. So, I mean, it's important that we all know what each other's doing and we respect each other's jurisdictions, of course, but we also know that, yeah, there's just issues that go across boundaries that don't stop with, and it has nothing to do with the political party designation. Transportation's not an RRAD issue. If we're

getting funding from the state and we don't have the like you said we'd like to do the infrastructure first well good luck with VDOT trying to get road projects first yeah the whole way they's the whole way they score is on what's happening now so you need the condition before you can get the solution so it's interesting on the regional thing I was with a client in your district looking at a home and I couldn't convince them that that wasn't the city right and so the average person doesn't quite understand you know it's easy when you go to

Louisiana you can say that this is separated from Charlottesville area and particularly the Urban Ring and we can talk about expanding the Urban Ring or not the development areas there's a bit of a hot button issue here for the roundtable but the general public doesn't know that I mean it took forever for me to explain

well this is not in the city they didn't believe me I had to actually open up to GIS and go you're paying out more county taxes not city taxes. And if you cross the street from gasoline alley, you're in the city. And some folks move into Belvedere thinking Greenbrier is going to be their elementary school just because proximity, right? But no, there's a boundary there and you go to

Agner if you live in Belvedere. Yeah, I get it. Ned and myself at the Planning Commission meetings have certainly expressed their concerns about funding from BDOT and the smart scale program. And to me it's really alarming that that's a two-year cycle

where you put in your applications on projects that you want to see. They're either approved or not approved, and the monies put the ones that are approved, the money comes through the next year. This last cycle, not the first county that's in the Culpepper District, with the Highway Department District, received any smart-scale money. It all went to Northern Virginia.

I remember when the six-year plan was up, and it was much harder during those days. Right. I'm not saying smart scales a bad program. I'm just saying that the money is not there for the rulers because of the way it's scored. But one of the items in scoring that they've added in the last probably four or five years is the amount of funding that the locality can do on the project. That brings me back to the data center money.

And, you know, to me, I see this is probably the only, hope that Louisiana County has to be able to make any major traffic improvements like roundabouts, that type of thing, seems to be in the vogue. We don't have the money right now to go out and fund these projects. And you guys, as we talked about from Lake Anna to now, you know, for a county of your size is really we position yourself financially in a pretty good spot, and you're still struggling. but not to spend $40, $50 million to put our money into one of these projects to be able to get the score up to where we need to do to get the funding from the state. So that is a huge problem, and it's going to get to be a larger problem, in my opinion, for the rule areas.

That's right. And I'm including now marling those rule areas. And when you go to a Beko situation, the context can change county to county, but the main point is there. there's it's not that they've sliced the pie up smaller and smaller you just stop getting pie that's exactly so you got to start you got to bake a second pie in that situation they're not doing that and if you don't mind doing slide one please so you know it's the real estate show at the end of today but i thought they believe that at the i just wanted to kind of point out a couple of things about what your market's doing right now in your county.

So this is by the numbers, this is from January 1 to the 17th of this year, right? We've got 53 active listings, 46 days on markets. That's how long those active listings have been on market. You've got 43 pending sales, and you're averaging about 34 days of contract. But take a look at that next one in red. You've got 121 homes of sold from beginning the year to now. you are over 23% ahead in volume. So you guys, as far as volume goes and transactions go,

are pretty much on the top of the pyramid on transactions. And look at that average price. You jumped 4.7%. Most of the jurisdictions, by the way, haven't done that. So you're looking at $505,000. I mean, outside of Albar County, no jurisdiction has done that. You are... Albaar County, Green and Louisiana.

You were really, you know, outside of the 10-ton elephant in the room, which is Alamore County, as far as housing goes, you guys are jumping back up. By the way, our county did a little bit better, but not much. But when you're looking at a 505 average and a 23% growth, people are coming. Manning. Manning, I know there might be some folks in the jurisdiction that don't want it, but it's coming. And so talk about what the importance of the data centers to that number. If that trend continues, why is that revenue so important from the data center?

Well, we as a board are currently going through the process of trying to cut down on this growth. I know that's crazy. You know, we cut the personal property tax and you think that's going to bring more growth. but 80, 85% of the county is either Ag 1 or Ag 2 zone. So by getting the money in from the data centers, it really cuts down on our need to add more housing. Because as we know, more housing means more children that we have to educate, more schools. Am I allowed to push back? Well, I like this guy.

All right. I understand that in the Lake Anna area originally, very much so, there weren't the average number of kids in a house. So I do need to disqualify my numbers real quick, Manny. So I use car MLS. Louisa is split with two different MLSs so that you know this is just the car side of it, right? So, you know, the Fredericksburg side of it and that kind of stuff, it's not. calculated. Okay, so Lake Anna wouldn't be in these numbers. That's not true. A portion of Lake Anna. I would think that would skew that 505 has to include

Lake Anna. So where we're sitting, so many million dollars homes down there being sold. Well, I think a lot of this is skewed by Spring Creek. Oh, certainly in Charlestville. Well, 757.9% of that number is in Spring Creek. But the data center money will allow us to cut back on. growth. We are discussing doing something about division rights. There's a debate upon, well, the purchasing division rights, leasing division rights, which is kind of a novel idea from what I'm told, or not doing it at all. But Falkir has been pretty successful with that and what we're told. But anyway, it allows us, it gives us that tax revenue that we don't

have to depend upon housing growth to bring that to us well i'm going to pick that a part a little bit okay but but um slide number two is flavana you got a lot of people watching the program here chip oil's front of the program is watching the show there you go there you know former what executive director of the planning commission there you go there you go i'm the sheriff's the planning commission got print radio and television watching the program um i've noticed that uh tammy percell has shared the show tammy appreciate the content you create i just want to highlight what uh what manning said here Louisiana County Board of Supervisors understand that incremental housing drives county infrastructure strain, and incremental housing puts tax burden on residents, is what he's saying.

So because of incremental revenue associated with data centers, they're throttling new rooftop development. Because they know new rooftop development does not necessarily mean incremental revenue growth for Louisiana County. This is where Keith, Keith Smith, the back of the neck of his, he's bristling right here. Well, he's a realtor. He's a realtor. I get it. I get it. I get it.

He's bristling right now. I thought I was awesome, man. You are awesome. You are awesome. That doesn't change. You are awesome. Yeah, well, that's the whole premise of the show, right? We can have a difference of opinion and have an honest conversation about it.

And what one feels about it will go out for a cocktail. I disagree. Does that happen soon? You notice there's a bar right there. I mean, we've done it in the past. We have in the past had drinks on the show. Really good. There's only three rules, right?

Drinking isn't one of them. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, yeah. Look, and I'll let, I'm going to let Tim chime in on that. This is the Chris Fairchild mindset right here. I get it. But housing, I'm going to have to pay a guy by name of Robert Liberty five bucks every time I say this.

Housing isn't. housing affordability or housing crisis, where in it, there's not a silver bullet fix. There's a buckshot fix to it, a silver buckshot to it. So all these things you're putting into place is helping that, and it could potentially keep it down. I can tell you, if you think you're doing all these data centers to set off all this stuff and you think housing is going to get cheaper

in your jurisdiction, that is not going to happen. No, I agree with that. And it is going to be more expensive. And we have growth areas in the county, and those are going to be allowed to continue to grow. We still have a couple hundred lots left in development, Creek. So about no, it's about 200, 300, 300.

Yeah, a couple hundred. Yeah. Around there. I'm sorry. I heard it take more than about a year and a half. That's going to take a while to get there. Yeah. I'm sorry, I heard, my hearing of here. But I want Tim to jump in from it, but before I do, I just want to kind of get this out. And now my

ADD kicked in, and I forgot what the heck I was going to say. So I'll let Tim jump in and it'll come back to me and we'll chime. I find it interesting that you say it's like a buckshot approach. And a lot of times when people think of affordable housing, the best way to explain it, sometimes you can build million-dollar homes and you're like, that's not helping affordable housing, but in a way it does,

because as people move up the property chain, it frees ones at the bottom. Statistically is accurate. Yeah. It's statistically accurate. But, you know, and then, you know, you build apartments or other ones, and then you have people come out, oh, my God, it's a monstrosity, it's horrible looking. but I think you're right. I think you need it at both ends. And talking about growth

or your economic development and the other stuff, it may not reduce the prices and you contend that it may increase them. I contend that it slows the rate of increase. Well, the market does that, right? So the market will stabilize that as we move along. And demand drives. Demand drives.

Look, you know, we're just, we're simply underbuilt. Yeah. Right. We just don't have enough houses to have. And as long as that, that's there, there'll be a pressure on housing pricing. Yep. And moving, but you want to jump in on this? Well, I mean, we see it in AlbaMah.

The cycle that you talk about theoretically is correct. And I'm sure it's happening in some places. But not when the reentry, the cycle can't happen because the base. Yeah, the base is too hot. face is too high. So all of the, all of the price increases that are happening, I mean, if studio apartments are going for $1,450, a studio apartment, right? And all of your back in the day, $300,000, $400,000 homes are now going for $800,900. So you cut off any ability for whoever those folks that would meet the theory, you just can't be in the county.

because they can't get on that bottom room or the housing ladder. Yeah, so, you know, I've seen it first hand. My son was looking at moving from England and he was looking at the prices. He's like, I got a better chance of getting on the property ladder over there than I do here. The wages are higher.

And so it's easier to get on that bottom rung. Yeah, so, I mean, this is an extremely complicated topic, right? And, you know, again, if it was one silver bullet to fix it, we'd fix it, right? It's a simple thing. It's very complicated. It's funny, on the way in, I was listening to NPR, and they were talking about 242 U.S. cities,

a starter home is $1 million. Wow. In 2020, that was 80. Now, Outmar County is a rock star in a million-in-up market, right? And all of our property values, like our average, if you look at the average property value increases past year, was 5.2, 5.5%. But for homes over $750,000, that value jumped over 9%. So most of the growth that drove that average number was at that high dollar mark. And I always have to remind myself,

when I'm talking about $900, a million homes, those were the $500,600,000, $400,000 homes when I started on this board. So the context has changed. And the fact that the rental pricing is so high. Yes. I mean, I was down in Nashville this past week, and I was, looking at rentals down in Nashville. Rent's more expensive here than Nashville for apartments. Wow. By a lot. It's not even by like the same. Studio apartments down there, 12, 13, $1,400, it looks like when I was looking. Now, some of the high-end luxury ones and prime locations were driving up closer to that $18, $1,900 amount. But I mean, they're downtown. They've got river views. They're overlooking a minor league baseball stadium. I mean, and if they're,

if they're charging what we're charging right now for our rio road studio apartment for $1900 that's a crazy to me that's crazy town so i'm i'm blessed to be able to sit down to do a bunch of panels around the country and i was doing a pre-panel zoom meeting yesterday a day before yesterday and we were talking about our area medium income of being 140 now meaning you're not part of that right you're on a whole different msa over on that but on our three counties two counties Excuse me. Over here, we're 140. And I had somebody from Miami go, no way. They didn't believe me.

Like theirs is like 90. I said, well, let's get online and let's take a look at the HUD. The HUD numbers. But don't you think, excuse me, what's going on with real estate prices in Almar, don't you think that's part of the reason that Spring Creek? Absolutely. 100%. It's completely late.

They're just fat right together. Lake Monticello's value ad is because Alamaro County has become extremely expensive. And the true impact, and this is a perfect handoff to Nag Galloway, wait until we see a six to 8,000 person incremental population growth

in the next 24 to 36 months tied to a biotechnology beltway. At high dollar salaries. Yeah, I mean, I learned this for him. What was the number with the AstraZeneca, the starting wage? The starting wage, $125 a year. Starting wage at Astrosanica. Well, what, two or three years from that?

Three years from that? Yeah. I mean... Well, I can tell you right now, we're showing executives housing right now. They're coming in. Wow. They're coming in. The theory you talked about, now when I stopped thinking of Albumerl's boundaries,

you guys are the where they're going to fill the theory. Yeah. And that's why, like, that whole regional... Regionalism is important for us to understand that. Now, you know, I'm not... We always talk about what we want our own, like our own employees or... our folks to be able to live in the community, and that's not the bad mouth our surrounding communities. But at this point in time, when you start having things creep up in like a

Louisa over 500, and Jesse, when he talks about what's going on in Nelson, he's over four. It's not now that most of our folks are even going to our neighbors. They're going to Stanton and they're going to cross the mountains, so they're going a couple counties away. And you guys see that too. I mean, Louisa goes both ways, right? You've got Richmond and Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. And Freddickburg. One of the exciting. One of the exciting, things about when we created the regional housing partnership was, you know, Fulvana, Louisiana, Albuhr County, this topic is not exclusive to you. What happens in Albuhr Mawr impacts Louisiana. What happens in Louisiana impacts Albuquer, what happens in

Fulvana impacts the city of Charlottesville, right? And it used to be for decades, and I've been around local politics for 40 years, it used to be, you know, you kind of really focused on your jurisdiction. You can't do that. anymore right you have to be thinking outside of that jurisdiction because the decision you guys make at the at the at the dioces impacts other people but that impacts is 230 or whatever number of people that live in live in the region yeah comments coming in comments coming in George Gilmer wants to talk data centers in the impact out of municipality water we knew this was going to

come up one of the there's there's a few knocks on the data centers obviously the water usage is the first not light pollution there's another knock on them not a ton of jobs associated with the data centers is a knock on them I got to be equal opportunity here they're incredible positives at the data centers I mean that's but they're negatives as well a hundred percent the tax revenue collection speaks for itself and What you guys are doing at Louisiana is absolutely amazing. I've been here 26 years.

I'm the guy like Ned who came here for UVA and never left. Your jurisdiction and the 26 years I've been here, I've been so impressed. I've been so impressed. And I've watched it from knowing Fitzgerald Barnes for most of that time. I watched Doug Strayley go from a principal at Louisiana County High School to the superintendent. I watched Mark Fisher, what he did with the football program, the late great Mark Fisher, and using football to galvanize the community. I saw Spring Creek come to fruition.

Saw Walmart and Lowe's come to fruition. I saw what's the... Divergent Diamond Interchange. That's right. That's right. Our friends, our friends, restaurant, Keith. Oh, oh, God. Al Mariah.

I mean, you guys are killing it. You guys are absolutely killing it. That's a unique story. When you finish with that, I'm going to tell you about that. I was Chris Henry doing that, right? At Stony Point? Chris Henry, but I'll let you answer the question. I want to tell you about the success of what Zion's crossroads can do in that area,

and I'll tell the story about that. When I got there, there was no Zion's crossroads. Yeah. Now you guys are. Well, it was there. It was just didn't see it. Exactly. You drove by it.

You didn't stop there. There's a crossroads. That's right. That's right. There's a reason it's called the crossroads. That's right. Anywhere you want to go on this time. There used to be a traffic circle there, by the way.

Oh, I remember. We were trying to get another one. Yeah, yeah. They took it out years ago. But anyway. So the water, absolutely. It's a concern. Amazon, thank goodness, keeps doing studies.

They keep making improvements to what they are putting in their data centers to be more efficient, to use less water. We are certain that the Northeast Creek Reservoir, which is where the water is going to be drawn from, which is also the water that's used the drinking water once it's treated for the towns of Louisiana Mineral, the high school, the middle school, a new elementary school that we're getting ready to build in the next three years. So we're definitely very concerned about that. But the numbers of what's in the reservoir, this tremendous drought wind right now, We put water restrictions or water warnings, restriction and warnings, the restrictions aren't actually in place yet, but for Zine Crossroads, because they use springs, and for the plant that we have at Lake Anna, because it also uses, not springs, it uses wells, also uses wells.

The reservoir is there. It uses surface water, and I believe there are maybe some springs also that help feed into it. But it has remained in good shape. So it's been a test on what the predictions have been on what we can do. But it is a concern. We are in discussions. I won't say that there are advanced discussions at its stage. in realizing that even without the data center situation,

it is not good to just have one water source for the central part of the county. So somewhere along the line, I can't say two years, five years. I would certainly think within 10 years. Not 40. Probably not 40, and I wouldn't have to worry about it at 40, but a lot of people would,

that we're going to probably wind up building another reservoir somewhere. And, you know, it takes time to get permission. Just the excretting and all that. So, and I definitely think this has brought that to light, that it's just not a good policy to depend upon one water source to be your. Can we just go back to basics? Exactly how many of your building, where are they located? Okay.

And are we having any more coming? Absolutely. The first campus for Amazon is being built down next to the North Antipower Station. They call that their North Anna campus. Seven data center buildings on that campus. One is completed. Second one's getting ready to come online probably by August. They don't come online all at one time.

They stage them. So, you know, I think they're split up in something like 12 divisions and three come on and another three or whatever. Those currently, because the raw water is not down to them yet, so that will be start. That will be by February of 27. that will be, so they're going to use well water to start. That's what they're using on the one that's already in operations.

But they only have to use water for cooling when it reaches 88 degrees or higher. So most days... That's air temperature or? That's ambient temperature. Yes. So that's kind of been another thing that's really changed since, two and a half three years ago when they first started talking. So getting back to the, they have two locations in the county, North Anna.

They also have Northeast Creek, which is next right across Route 33 from Northeast Creek Reservoir. That is a much larger campus. The one at the lake is 148 acres. Northeast Creek campus is 1,600, 1,700 acres. Of that, they're going to use about 800 acres. They're going to have, in the plans, they're building the first, what they call those four separate campuses, about 200 acres a piece. The first one's under construction now. It's designed to have 10 data center buildings.

So what the others will have, I don't know. They may not even build all of them. We don't know if Rich one has their way. We may only see the one that's completed and a couple of the others, but I think Richmond of the legislature, and I think they've gotten that straightened out now, but they were looking to take the tax break away from them. I believe that's been squared away for right now. But anyway, so, yes, the water, so the raw water is going to come out of Northeast Creek. They're going to pay the treated water price for raw water.

The Water Authority owns the water line. Amazon's paying for the water line. The Water Authority will own the water line. It's a pretty sweet deal for the Water Authority. So thank you for doing that because even though I've been attending meetings, never really had a clear picture of the who, when, and where on that? To finish it up, I don't mean to take up all the time. But to finish up, we have a third data center location,

which is the land at the county ball. called the Hopkins farm out at Shannon Hill. Edgecore is the data center company there. They have a different way that they run their data centers. They don't use primarily water to cool theirs. They use a closed loop system that has a coolant in it. And they also provide behind the meter power. So explain that?

They're going to build their own power facility. Correct. They're limited into the height there, so they can't put in a gas plant with huge stacks on it because the stacks would be too high. I don't know what they plan. We haven't seen any plans. I would assume that there'll maybe be smaller gas plants or something. Maybe small module reactors. I don't know. You'll find out. Those are way off. We haven't seen any plans from them yet, but they will be behind the meter. so they're going to produce their own. So Edge Corps, two of the main complaints about data centers, they don't do. Their business isn't run that way, their buildings.

So two out of three. That's correct. So water science crossroads, thank you for doing that. Absolutely. Water science crossroads, you're taking over my spot at the commission and a couple of years ago, I kind of brought up a discussion and made a motion and it kind of got a little pushed back

because water wasn't yet at Zion's crossroads. But one of the things I proposed and threw on the table was Louisa and Favanna creating some sort of joint economic development authority that would occur because on our side, we don't have a lot of property. Yeah. Right? Our growth area is rather small over in that area. So one of the concepts of an authority was as though we'd work together collectively to do that.

So one, what do you think about that idea? And then secondly, you know, we're going to have rural water to Ferncliffe sometime in October 2027. My assumption, very shortly after that, we're going to have water to Zion's crossroads. Those of us in the developer space are already planning for this that far out. So what would you like to see in Zion's crossroads? So authority? and what is your vision for Zanagan? I think, well, the people in and around the northern part of Fulvana County

would like to see another grocery store. We've got one. They want another one, and we thought we were going to get one in and around the lake, and that fell through, and then we thought we were going to get one where the Wawa's going. That fell through, but when the Wawa got announced, everyone got excited.

So, no, I think a grocery store, the biggest fear of my, constituents that live up along that 250 corridor is with the industrial development so the recycling firms the trash firms don't use a lot of water they don't use a lot of water however there's a lot of litter on the side of the road so they automatically assume it's the trash trucks and I've spent many a days parked near the county boundary following trash trucks waiting for trash to come out and nine times out of ten it falls out of the backup backup

pickup trucks unsecured trash loads going to those places. And in a recent meeting, we asked the sheriff if they could send a patrol up there occasionally watch and ticket people for unsecured loads. But, yeah, the people up there would rather see more restaurants. Things like you see on the Louisa side of the boundary. I know there was a talk one time. It wouldn't be great to have a bowling alley.

We got one bowling alley in this area. and quite often you go in there outside of league times, and it's not really that packed. Oh, not packed, yeah, outside of league time. Yeah. So whether it could survive out in Fluvana County. Not a chance in heck that Bullenelli would survive in Fleming. Not a chance at how I'm not so sure the one in Outman County.

Barely surviving. Yeah. I don't know that any bowling alley survives without the league. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so, but restaurants, commercial space, we've got some going in, less industrial. So back on this regional conversation, I can encourage, I think putting, there's an organization, you're about ready to sit down that's built to do this.

Yeah. Built to plan this and built to set it out. I can encourage you, you know, the two jurisdictions should try to figure out a way to build some sort of authority that makes sense or some sort of agreement that makes sense to do a joint planning for the development in that. Does Alma County do anything like that with Charles for any other jurisdictions? I mean, it's not a specific like organization that's set up, but the partnership between the two economic development offices is very strong. And it goes beyond just the two city jurisdictions too, of course.

The UVA would be involved with that with their economic development folks. There's stuff that, you know, like the Defense Affairs Committee, things like that that are there, that economic development is part of, even though it's under a different kind of umbrella. So there's a lot of, with private business, the jurisdictions, the educational community, even PVCCs would be involved with that. It's not formed like an authority or a larger group, but they're working together in a very... But I think the partnership that you guys put together with the JRWA, it took forever a great building block to go off of that. Because the reality manning, Zion's Crossroads, as far as it's... going to go north, right? Because it hits Green Springs.

That's true. Right. It potentially can go east, right? It's not going to go west because you're going to bump into Albuhr County pretty darn quickly over that way. We have the ability to grow that footprint on our side and capitalize on that, whatever that picture looks like. And that's the reason why I was pushing this idea so hard that, you know, working together, I can tell you're back on the water history. in 1990, you guys would be in a fist fight right now next to each other.

It was not a good relationship. So I would encourage you two guys or two organizations to take a look at that. I feel like that once the James River Water Authority got put in place, developed, I think the relationship is much better. Well, it started, right? You remember, and then it fell apart

because everybody got mad at each other, and then it got restarted. it again so it went for long time there's a valve up at zine crossroads in the waterline that would allow fluvanna and louisa to share water yep there's a fire hydrant right on that corner and my understanding is that it's really close to sign an agreement to sharing the water as needed like a fire situation well the jr w a is set up that we get 400 000 gallons of that four hundred thousand gallons of that four million. Anything above that is a whole different deal.

I mean, at the most recent board meeting, we approved a certain amount of the water in our tank to send to Louisa temporarily. And there's provisions that if the Wawa and more businesses go in and we need it, given notice,

it'll come back to us, but it helps us with the circulation issues inside the tank, and it allows them for the water they need right now, right here, right now. And it's surplus to us. And I'd raised it several times. You know, if we have surplus water, if we have to

discharge it to do whatever, I'd rather give it to, you know, pool filling companies, spa fill and sell it to Louisa. And there is a metered connection. We're not going to give that water. We're going to sell it to them. Yeah, that's right. Correct. That's right. That's right. At the going rate. It's a bit of a joke. And

also, I mean, we need to do some just just regular maintenance on our tank. Yep. And it's I don't understand how all that works, but it's something about the pressure, making sure everything is pressurized. Not necessarily that we need to use the water, but to make sure that it pressurizes, keeps our lines pressurized. And that came up in our mean. They have their water tank. We have our water tank. And when you have to service one, if you have a valve, they can cut their tank off, do maintenance, interior work, pump work, whatever.

And their side and our side still has water and vice versa when we have to do the maintenance on ours. Kind of basic water design. Yep. If you know, I live at the acres, when Lake Monticello loses water, we never do. Yeah. We have a loop system and we just, the awkward just valves it off and we never lose water. Well, as a firefighter, our chief has been trying to get looped water systems because in certain places when a pool company hooks to a hydrant or we hook to a hydrogen to fill an engine or a tanker, it'll drop the pressure in food line or in a daycare center. and then the alarms go off because it thinks the sprinklers have discharged.

I've built a $450,000 pump station that they should be connecting to, but that's a whole different issue. Comments are coming in. Can the panel talk about regional transportation solutions? That's one that's come in. Dad, you want to start with this one? This is how it specifically applies. As the middle class gets pushed out of Charlottesville, Nalmar County, we're going to be heading to Louisiana and Flavanna to live, and we're going to have to drive to Charlottesville.

now more than boy did that sting when gas was knocked on five dollars a gallon yeah i mean you know i've been on this soapbox for about 12 months 15 months it started at the commission and it goes to the points we made earlier if we don't have if the state doesn't figure out how to better fund transportation projects everything not just smart scale rural roads the six-year plan all of that funding starts at the state. And that's not budgets. That's the state's funding formula. And if folks want to learn about how things are funded, you could go to, I think it was the December, maybe 16th, 17th, Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting where VDOT did a whole presentation on how the state funds transportation. Because VDOT just gets the money. They don't determine the

amount. So it's the governor and the General Assembly that figures out how things are funded. and they are not funding projects at the level that is going to, it's, you know, they're doing the big projects that we all see, the tunnel project, the stuff that goes into D.C., which I appreciate because that's keeping the ports active, and that's important for the Commonwealth. But at some point, you have to look at the rest of the state and go, we're not keeping pace with maintenance,

we're not keeping pace with the new projects that are necessary because of the growth that we've experienced. Don't even think about doing something ahead of it. time. You just are trying to be caught up within 20 years after a problem surfaces. So in Alamara, we have 169 projects on our transportation priority list. 169. Smart scale, we're allowed to submit four projects as a jurisdiction. So in this state right now, over $30 billion in projects have been asked for, and there's limitations on what you can ask for. So these aren't fluff projects. These are big, critical projects of jurisdiction.

It took a billion dollars in match to get $8 billion of those applications done. So the state's funding at about a third of the level that's necessary statewide. And at that point, I hate to be the point in elsewhere, but constituents need to get after state delegates, state senators, and the governor, and they all have to basically step up and say, all right, and I know other states what they do when they don't like the word tax, other states like a Georgia, they call it a fee. So while they have no tax on sales for cars,

all of a sudden they got a 9% fee that you have to pay to register your car in their state. And that's how they get around the tax conversation, I suppose, in those particular places. But it is truly a funding conundrum that they have got to figure out. And I don't see them, I haven't seen in my eight years, any conversation of significance at the state level about it.

And then I'll finish with this one point. We go to Vaco, a lot of us go to Vaco, and we hear the Virginia Association of Counties, and I've been sitting on the Transportation Committee, steering committee at VACA. And two years ago, we had a gentleman from Southwest Virginia who happened to be a Republican, and he gave us his talking points on what we got to do

about road funding and what we should do and this, that, and the other. and I won't even get into the details. Well, last year, this past fall, when we went, it was a Democrat from Northern Virginia that came and spoke to our committee. And by God, he said the same exact things as the guy from South West Virginia. To the point where I was sitting there going, did they get a memo that they're supposed to just read from when they get this question? So that tells me, you know, Jerry, you've lodged the old two-step,

the dancing shoes with me once or twice. Well, that's not even dancing. That's just going, okay, here's our S-R-SV-P that we can't show up to the dance. And if they don't get serious about how to figure it out, that's going to start impacting. They just heard you can't dance, man. Right, right, right? Oh, he danced really good that day. This is going to mean that this impacts business, impacts economic development, this is quality of life for citizens.

I mean, these hit all the big things that are important to people, and they have to help figure it out. I mean, the fact that Louisa, you know, you guys are getting the night. revenue piece in and that's great. But if you have to start turning into road projects, when that should be local things that you should be doing when it's their responsibility to do that, that's not right. Go through the money pretty quickly. Yeah, heck yeah, especially road projects. Holy crap. The inflation that we've seen on projects that got priced out even just a year ago, what they turn into, it's bonkers. So I implore citizens who have the, I'm happy to have constituents, they're going to voice their frustrations and they should

to us and we need to be a conduit to the state representatives but they also have immense power and this was what i was hoping to do with the commission because what i think when the general assembly starts going wait a minute i think it's fair to say from a political party perspective our counties are very different alabomar on louisa or fluvana but at the end of the day if you're standing shoulder to shoulder on something oh wait a minute that's a different thing than it just being a political issue and the fact that all the counties say this when I hear them at Vaco at some point they have got to just step up and figure this out but I got to be honest right now I'm disappointed with what's going on with the budget they

should have had that damn budget passed the I mean the thing I find amazing is in Flavanna we're largely a bedroom community most people that live in Flavanna work in Alba Mar or Charlottesville at the university or other places And if you have a car and it breaks down, you don't have a lot of choices on how to get into work. And having lived half my life in Europe, you can survive without your car. You know, your car breaks down or asks to go in the shop. It's either the tram or the bus or the local rail. And if you're going on vacation and you need to get to the regional airport,

you take a bus to the local tram, take the tram to the train, take the train to the airport. And I find it amazing that here you've got to do Uber or a friend take you somewhere. So if we don't work the transportation piece out, then if there's businesses, employers in Charlottesville, Alamaro, but their workers live in Fluvana, and there's a fuel shortage or any number of things that on a mass scale could cut those employees getting to work, then the whole economic engine for the region stops. So it is a regional problem. Well, it's no question. And we've discussed it at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District. And there are some answers there that are there currently. Part of, I think, the problem, we as Americans are so used to just jumping in our car and driving when we want to, however we want to.

And so we don't have the European mentality here to support mass transit. We've got to change the way we think about. things to make it work. Well, I've seen the success with the Afton Express for the Stanton folks, and they've got the schedule that's set up around the hospital's hours and things like that. And what's interesting about it, if you're an employee at EVA, the way that it's set up, you might have to park. You know, just after you park your car in the designated parking spot, it could be another

20 to 40 minutes to get to your office. So the reason that Afton Express seems to be so successful is now it's become more convenient to get dropped off at the door, and that's what helps change the mentality. that's right because i think people are definitely creatures of convenience and that's why when like when i just said i was in national and national is not a particularly hard place to get around by car but once you're there it's just easier to be able to jump in the uber or to walk it's actually a very walkable city um and move around by other means because it's just more it's it's less convenient to have to deal with the car and the parking decks and stuff like that so how that

translates to a Lake Monticello Express. Yeah. Well, there is. Joy does rides. But it's very limited. Yeah, the alleyway is. Commuters, it is a commuter line. I mean, people, I'm sure, do it for retail and other reasons.

And now that they've opened up this one that's going to go from over there to the beach, that, that bus line that now people could actually leave Stanton and go to Richmond on the line that eventually gets to the beach or go to the beach. You have to want to take it. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yonah's home place, my wife's home place in Austria, has 33 houses in it.

The brewery in this little village celebrates its 750th year. It's been in operation for over 750 years. I can walk out of my mother-in-law's house, get on a bus, and take a train down to Vienna airport, and I can be in Leonardo da Vinci in Rome without ever having to get in a car. Right? But it's a mindset. Technically, it's a lot to do after the war, right? We built it up.

Part of the problem we have here is the rideaways are gone. All these rail rideaways are gone. And I had a client in the vehicle on yesterday that was from Britain. It was UK. And I was trying to explain that the rail system is actually owned by companies, freight companies. and Amtrak just gets to use them. It's a whole different thing. But I want to talk traffic in our county a little bit.

And I'm working on a slide for this. So we have in Tolvanda County, depending on who you talk to, somewhere between $10,000 to $10,500 rooftops. Let's just use that as a number. The census was sitting around that on the last one. And I'm working on a slide for this. In the last 10, that number's been pretty solid. it for the last 10 years.

Hold on a second. We've only had since the last 10 years between 2 to 300 new homes built. So our house density, our rooftop density, it's been pretty much where it's at for 10 years, a couple of hundred plus or minus

growth on it, but the traffic's increased. I was trying to figure out what is this all about, and I had a conversation with a VDOT engineer is back to where people are going to live. These are people going from Buckingham, right, and other parts of the driving through our county to get there. So it's not us building more houses that are causing this traffic problem.

It's this market getting pushed out to come through here. Oh, by the way, since 2019, we have 8% less kids in our school system. So people are having children on a much later date. They're buying their house. that buying a house average is at the age of 40 right now to go ahead and do this. But I found that interesting that everybody's complaining about the traffic. It's got nothing to do what we're building in our county. It's coming from other jurisdictions passing through our county.

So I thought that was interesting. And when I worked for Fulana, I seen a lot of the workers there could no longer afford to live in Fulvana either because of taxes or prices. And they were looking in Gutsland, Cumberland, and Buckingham, which meant they were then commuting in. Right. And Nelson's talked about that. Where their folks don't live in Nelson, they're coming from south and other places into there. But all the people that do are going somewhere else to work.

So it's this constant cycle that happens every day. Well, we've got Jesse coming in on the 17th. And though this is always a fun show when Jesse's here. But they just purchased about 700 acres in Lovingston. And I wouldn't be surprised if the whole data center question comes up over there, offset, they've lost 15% of their student population since then. They're down to 1,400

plus students in their school systems. We've got, I think, 1600 and some in our high school. You're on the plus side of students. You're the only jurisdiction. But it's really hurting Nelson. Walden Cooper's projecting

Elmore County's student population to diminish his wealth. Yeah. Well, it's just history. I mean, it's just across the nation. People just are not having children. Speaking of Jesse, he sent me a text that Congressman Gwire got you all a fire truck. And we were wondering like, well, wait a minute, of all the counties around here. We're not discussing that. We're not discussing that.

It's like, I think Louisiana County should be able to afford that. Hold it, man. What happened to transparency, man? Out the window. You can blame Congressman Guire for that. It was shared, so I guess it's public knowledge. One of his campaign managers briefed it in the Fluvana Library last night. That was one of the things he brought up.

I was like, interesting. Being a fire volunteer fire guy, I'd like a fire truck. Any hot questions? No, no, we covered it. You guys were great. We covered it. Absolutely. We're a little bit over time.

As I told you, Manning, these things go pretty quickly. That's awesome. Thank you for everybody doing it. Thank you finally to getting Louise at the table. Thank you for agreeing to do this. Thanks for the invite. For those out there watching, that was a big ass, so thank you for doing it. I know for you to sit here and do this,

meant a lot to me personally. Tim I think the world of you and unfortunately this guy I got to hang out with on a regular basis. Ned and I are anxious for Tim to come on. Yeah. It's going to be a huge upgrade. I think it's important and you know folks when we're talking

and having different conversations and it's it seems you know just I'm talking like album or all business. It's all it's helpful to have an understanding what's going on in these other counties because you know decisions we make in our respective jurisdictions do impact what's happening around us so it's It's, I appreciate, I learned great things today.

Of my 15 years on the commission, I think my number one, hey, good job, Keith, was instituting the roundtables. So that was you? That was my idea. It's a great idea. You know, I just felt this was a great opportunity for cross talk. And I'm glad it happened and it finds out that even what on our corporation meeting yesterday, those folks are doing it. By the way, generally you don't have public at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District of you might just have one and I'll be a heckler.

Oh, but anyway, I just want to thank everybody for doing it. Thank for everybody watching. I know folks at Louisa were asking a lot of questions about the data centers and water and stuff like that. I hope they got some of their answers for it and Tim, thanks for showing up man. Anytime. And doing this. Thank you. Appreciate the panel. For those that are asking, the show will be archived on real talk with keepsmith.com in its entirety and this right here is what the network and the

show is all about long form content and talking about information that's important to the community that's local to central virginia judah woodcower moves some mountains here amen with a five person said thank you to judah woodcower the i love seville shows up in 59 minutes thank you for kindly for joining us guys on real talk with keith well hold on a second i just realized it's father's day this weekend everybody all got anything interesting plans for Father's Day I'm running a rescue squad oh there you go that's awesome no I don't I don't know that it clicked that that was the case this session it's Sunday yeah you're right well I don't know I might I don't know well I'm doing a two-day ride from from my office down the row and up I need a

support vehicle so if anybody's looking to pick up it sounds like John McGuire can get you on that's right yeah there you go Contact the conference. Good closing comment. There you go. Key Smith's doing, riding a row to come back.

With a couple of 30-year-olds. For fun. For fun. That would be fun. Judah and Karen. The other F word. So long, everybody. Hope you have a good morning. Take care.

Thanks, gentlemen. He'll let us know when the mics are up. But thanks. Thanks.