The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Tony O'Brien And Chris Fairchild Joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller On “Real Talk With Keith Smith!”

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Tony O’Brien and Chris Fairchild of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! ��Real Talk” airs every 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. We are live in downtown Charlottesville on a show that airs on every social media platform known to mankind. Today's program, I think, is going to be a lot of fun. We have Chris Fairchild and Tony O'Brien in the house. These gentlemen, not only knowledgeable when it comes to politics, but they work hard and they play hard, the kind of lifestyle I personally enjoy living as well. Judah Wittkower is the director and producer. We cannot do these programs without him. Thank you, my friend. 13 years of working alongside each other. I say we have a love-hate relationship. I love this guy. From time to time, I think he hates me. Maybe that's what the employer-

employer-employee relationship should be. If we can go to the studio camera and welcome the panel, that would be fantastic. Keith, I've very much been looking forward to this show. It's always fun, right? You never know exactly what's going to happen. I'm trying to find the old Muppet quiz that we had, and I can't seem to find it, and I'm not quick enough on my fingers to pull it out. We can move past that one. Pardon?

We can move past that one. We can move past that one. I think we beat that one up to death. I think that's gone off the hog. I'm actually looking for the Sesame Street one, which is a step down, to see if we can go ahead and go there. But thank you for joining us, gentlemen. I enjoy this. This is talking about my home county, which I love.

And you are a chairperson, right, or a, or chairman, whatever we want to call it. So congratulations on that. Are you the vice now? No, no. Who's the vice? Mr. Sharon. Mr. Sharon. Oh.

He was like the chairperson forever. I think seven years, something like that. I think it was a little less. I think I feel like it was five. But that's okay. That's okay. Whatever it is, it is. Yeah. You know, the it is. We've been very

fortunate to have great chairs, so I'm sure Mr. Fairchild will fall on the same footsteps. That's as nice as I'm going to be today. And I'm okay with that. That's all right. Give us about 15 minutes, and then all rules will go. I've got to talk

into the microphone, Tony. People want to hear that velvet sexy voice. Very baritone. I like it. Sexy voice. Very Manilow over here. You have a voice for radio. I think he didn't get much sleep last night.

I don't have any. So, Mr. Chairman, what's going on in Flavena County? Let's kick it off that way. Give us some good news. What's going on there? And then we can kick it off from there. Well, the good news is in some ways not a lot, meaning there's no real hard-pressing issues. That's great news. Yeah.

Boring government in the background is great news. Amen, brother. Yeah. I would say, other than it being budget season, and it's not directly even in Fluvanna, probably the most pressing item is that there have been three bills in the legislature, two Senate bills and one House bill, that has threatened to, and the House bill got approved yesterday, I think it was? Out of the Senate committee. Went out of committee. Yep. I think it's going to the floor today. I thought it was going to be next week.

I think it's next week, yeah. All right. To take the rights of localities away to decide what solar they want and place it in the hands of the SEC. And so they would override your zoning ordinances? That was one of the bills. That was just one of the bills. All three in some version do that.

No, no. The SEC bill basically said that the SEC can go ahead and take away whatever plans or zoning that you put in place and do that. The 697 bill basically said that you can't create impediments. It still requires a special use permit in order to do that. So what they're basically saying was – So they defined impediment? They defined it, said, you know, you can't create unreasonable impediments in order to make that happen. So let me get this straight.

The legislature is giving language that's vague and nobody understands. Well, the reality is it's going to come down to their decisions. So VACO, Virginia Association of Counties, is against all three in the report. The report on the one that Tony is mentioning says the legislation effectively requires localities to permit any application regardless of the cumulative impact of such facilities so long as the requirements of local ordinances with reasonable criteria are met. It is anticipated that SB 697 will be heard in the Senate should not require facilities to permit these, should not require localities to permit these facilities regardless of the total amount, density, or size of such projects.

So to me it's saying that the state shouldn't, that's VACO, every county in the state of Virginia other than one, saying that the state should not be taking liberty to affect what we can do in our own municipalities. If you actually pull up the proposed bill, it's an amendment to an existing ordinance, and they basically took out or added in a section, you know, the current sections basically say if you're putting solar on your own property for your

own use, then, you know, these are the requirements that are involved. This particular entry, line G, I think, basically says if you're putting in solar for your own use, for the use of others at that point in time, then you can't create these unreasonable impediments, which, to be clear, some counties, because there's been a backlash of solar, have taken the position of saying, well, we're going to create artificial, or I don't want to call them artificial, we're going to create greater hurdles in order to get to this point. So some counties have said, well, you can only do this via industrial zoning, so you'd have to go through the industrial zoning process, which is problematic in itself because eventually after they've gone through that,

that land is zoned industrial, which means it could be used for other purposes, which might not be what you want. Likewise, if you wanted to limit the amount of acreage that you could put it in, so you say, oh, well, we can only put solar into about 3% of the county, as an example. So they're citing these kinds of impediments as a reason why the state would step in. And the background to all of this, which also at VACO I discovered,

was that, you know, Virginia is probably the world's capital of data centers. You said the world's capital? Yeah, probably the world's capital of data centers. Wow, I did not know that. Most people did not know that. Loudoun County has, I think, 137 data centers. The price of an acre of land because of all these data centers

went up to a million dollars an acre of land, basically. Now, the reason that happened was back in the day, way back in the day, remember AOL? Yeah. Okay. Loudoun County was sort of asked a question, well, you know, is a data center, and everybody was like, well, what's a data center? Sure. Nobody knew what a data center was. Still to this day, I don't think people know. Yeah, still to this day. Well, you drive all day long. There's one on 29 North, right up over by the move through, which is the ice cream place. If you drive past it, you'd think it's a prison. Yeah, yeah, it's just a big square building. You might hear a hum, and you'll see some high-tension wires off of it.

But anyhow, they passed in their ordinance, basically, that you could put it in general commercial zoning. So the developers all went out and started buying the land from that purposes for commercial zoning. You get it rezoned, and at that point in time, now you can put in a data center by right. Well, that is what drove it up. Now, the reason that they located there was because of AOL having brought all the fiber into that area, which, you know, today we think, oh, gosh, what does that actually mean? But let's remember the days of dial-up, DSL. That didn't exist.

When 9-11 happened, I used to have a client that worked with the FBI. The FBI came to them because they were running off of T1s. That's 1.5 megabytes. The FBI itself didn't even have that. You know a little bit about this. Dude, I know. This is fascinating. This is fascinating. So

that demand in terms of growth for the data centers is because so much of the fiber is located somewhere. The large data centers are already here. So the closer you get to it, the faster your transactions are, which can make a huge deal. So a great book called Flash Boys by Michael. It's not you and me, man. Yeah.

Anyhow, I can't remember his name, but it's a great book. It'll come back to me. No flashing. No flashing. Anyhow. No flashing. And I'll be quiet in a second and let Chris rebut man. Yeah, anyhow. I can't remember his name, but it's a great boy. It'll come back to me. No flashing. No flashing. Anyhow. And I'll be quiet in a second and let Chris rebut here. Oh, this is great. This is great.

I forgot what I was going to say. Go ahead. So anyhow, the component was that it's become so expensive to continue to put data centers in northern Virginia that now you're starting to see the expansion of data centers throughout the state. Is that 11 billion Amazon Louisa? That 11 billion Amazon Louisa is pretty fascinating. What we found out last night is even a little bit more fascinating. Well, just that 11 billion, to put it in perspective,

is I think $25 million of projected revenue for the county of Louisa. Per what? Per year? Per year. Wow. Yeah. That probably translates to i guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 cents on the dollar in your property rate you know that's significant it's huge yeah but get ready for this the last night at the tjpdc the new commissioner mr manning

he was a board supervisor i'm sorry but also commissioner also commissioner on the TJPC, but also the new board supervisor, mentioned that the data center plan is they're going to put seven of them up near... Cuco's in Minerals. In Minerals. In Minerals. Right? So seven are going in there, and they're putting in two substations, right? So we'll get to the power second here in a second.

How many acres they want to take? 284 acres they're going to put in two substations. It's going to take 204, just think about that, 250 acres to put two electrical substations in just to provide energy to that. For 10 data centers. Now they also have land further down, which is 1400 acres. They're putting in, I think what he said was, well, they're going to put in four data centers there, but they're also putting in substations. They're building the capacity for substations of up to 10 substations there. It's 1,400 acres. Which is telling you what? So it's telling you what? You hear that big sucking sound? That's Louisa bringing in data

centers into a 1,400 acre farm. Well, if they've got $25 million from 11, what are they going to get when they have 30 or 40 of these? And what's the cause and effect of that? Well, okay, data centers in general don't employ a lot of people. Okay. So you're saying they don't throttle county infrastructure? They don't really throttle county infrastructure. Or strain is a better word? Yeah, they don't strain it necessarily.

Schools, roads is what I'm highlighting here Schools roads is what I'm highlighting here. Water is what I'm highlighting here. Well, Amazon's bringing in their own pipeline to do things, and they're also going to build a road that goes through. So this is pretty much a checkbook for Louisa. And that was interesting, right? They're paying for treated water, but they're only using water. Yeah, they're paying for treated water.

So, I mean, it's incredible what is happening. But this is an example of, you know, how much growth is happening related to that. But I want to switch to the power side, because this is what Chris was talking about. The reason that this is becoming a bigger deal in terms of power is that they do require enormous amount of energy. Now, if you're Dominion or any other public utility that's delivering electricity, you know what the regulation process is to bring in new power. You know, if you're trying to build a traditional power plant, that's pretty difficult to do. It can take years, if not decades, to do that. So what they're looking for is as many alternative sources of power that they

can get. That's for their own needs. Second need is, of course, you know, we have both federal and state-based clean energy goals that we're trying to achieve. And so those clean energy goals require alternative energy in order to meet them. And so you have this tension, which is saying, hey, we're going to need more for the data centers. We're going to need more in order to meet the clean energy goals, and we're going to need more land. So it is not just a blank check, and I think Mr. Fairchild is correct in saying that, you know, counties should have general powers to regulate and say how we should do this, but it is, by the same token, a measure of saying, you know,

solar is going to be something that's important for the general well-being and economy. But is there enough solar to run those substations? No, of course not. There isn't. There isn't enough solar. But ultimately what's going to happen is… They suck some energy. Well, they suck some energy. Well, they suck some energy. They do. They're not going to – it's not enough. But what you're going to start seeing is other forms of energy coming in. It's like Kishchump in here. Packaged – let me just finish with this thought. Packaged power plants, nuclear power plants.

So those are basically like nuclear power plants. A couple of them are – a couple of the data centers going next to the Lake Anabas. Well, they're doing that. But I'm just saying in order of putting new energy, they're doing that. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy.

And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy.

And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new energy. And they're doing that in order of putting new couple of the data centers going next to Lake Annapurna. Well, they're doing that, but I'm just saying in order of putting new energy, they're starting to get close to being able to package nuclear power plants. And then just announced this week is that through fusion, they are now generating twice as much output as they put in. So I truly think we're going to see fusion be a power source. It's probably 40 years away, but that's the life cycle. You bring in the energy here, you replace it with something different,

and that energy is going to help power us. I remember Three Mile Island, and I was in Europe when Chernobyl blew up. Chris, go ahead and jump in. I'm kumbaya on all these data centers and so on. What's that mean? Meaning, you know, yeah, to some extent they help the Virginia economy. So I'm happy for that to be there and have that happen. I also don't want it, what they're doing in Northern Virginia or another locality completely changing mine. And so I'm not so much on that bus that I'm willing to give up what is a true gem that we have in a beautiful one-stop light county.

As far as the green goals of the state, you know, the fact that a bunch of lawmakers made some goals that are unobtainable and they've realized that and and i don't think they would have said when they made those goals and all of their great wisdom hey a part of this might be we're going to take the rights away from the localities and away from the people i don't think they would have told that right up front that wasn't a part of their presentation and so to step in now and say because of these goals we've created that we've created and Snyder who I was at the hearings who led the House bill said we created some goals and we've got to figure out how to get there and you don't get to do that

off my back in the and off the back of the people that I represent. And as far as green goes and those goals, I sat in Vaco two years ago and heard the State Secretary of Agriculture say, when asked what his thoughts were on solar, he said, well, first of all, I've never seen anything greener than a tree. Second of all, I've never seen anybody wipe out 6,000 acres of trees and plant them somewhere else. So as far as green goes, you can't get much greener than Fluvanna County. So if they made some goals up there that they can't reach, and kind of jokingly would say somewhere back in Europe in the early part of the 1900s, big governments started saying, if you don't, here's what we're going to do. And then you'd have little groups in the communities go, gosh, if we don't listen to what they say and do what they tell us to do, then it's going to be really worse. So which option do we want?

I don't need government coming in and taking rights that we've had since the existence of Fluvanna. MR. Dude, amen, brother. I mean, what – I'll throw – I'll get out of your way here. Richmond going to jurisdictions and neutering them of their autonomy and power is an absolute travesty. And I'll say this. There's a bill right now in the Virginia Senate where the Virginia Senate is discussing basically giving more authority and power to Airbnb where local jurisdictions will not be able to police Airbnbs like they want to. We can talk about that because that came up last. That is a travesty.

The local jurisdiction should be able to police their own jurisdiction and not politicians in Richmond. So we've talked – Richmond and Northern Virginia. And Northern Virginia, yeah. When you mention green, I'm looking at the vest, and I'm thinking of Kermit, and it's nice to be green. But anyway... I'm good with that.

And bald, like Kermit. I was trying to be nice to you. Neil Williamson says, Loudoun County alone takes in close to $600 million annually in tax revenue from data centers, enough to cover all the county's operating expenditures. A report by the Northern Virginia Technology Council estimates that the area's data centers were responsible for nearly $174 million in state revenue and $1 billion in local tax revenue.

So we've got two things going on here. We've got the data centers, but the conversation got kicked off on the solar bill. Well, it's power. You need the power. One goes with the other, but you know, and I'm learning more about this. I learned a lot about it last night at the Planning District Commission meeting.

But, you know, we've talked about this on the show for a while. We're a bill and rule state. Just the fact that the state is trying to take the little bit of control that you guys really have, because you really don't have a lot of control. Everything has to run by through, and if it's not dictated or

given to you by the state, it's pretty hard for you guys to create your own rules. So anything that's going to make that, from my perspective, anything that's going to make that harder to change from, I'm kind of not in favor of. Amber Kitt says if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. Yeah.

And if I could say that mile goes from the inches this. They'll tell us where we have to put these developments. And don't anybody be confused. It's not a farm. It's a development. It's an industrial development. Well, let's go back. There's nothing.

If I can, just one second. There's nothing growing there. It's steel and glass. It's a development. It's an industrial development. Well, let's go back. There's nothing. If I can, just one second. There's nothing growing there. It's steel and glass. That's industrial. Just look at 53 on the way in. But the mile, give it a minute, take a mile, you let the big developers, residential developers hear about this. Once this lid is off the jar, now who is, you you know what issue is bigger than housing during these times so suddenly developers are going to say dear legislature we've got to be sure we can

house all the people and places like northern virginia and richmond are going to go we're housing more than our share what about those guys and suddenly we're going to be putting up apartment buildings because the state told us we had to. So, I mean, that actually is a trend that's starting to happen in other states already. Washington and Oregon. Yeah, so that is a trend that's starting to happen. California. And I think we have to be careful in terms of when we say we're talking about rights. All right, so Mr. Fairchild alluded to the fact

that the state is taking away a right that we have. Keep in mind, they're not taking away anything. There is currently a process, and that is a special use permit process that is already in place where we still have the right. We're going to have two new solar public hearings coming up, I think maybe even three in the very near future, prior to these bills passing, and they have to go through the special use permit, and they may

or may not pass. I don't have an answer to that. But I'm just saying that process isn't changing. What they're saying is you can't put in artificial barriers that make the process even harder. The Virginia Association of Counties says it's taking rights away. I understand that, but I'm also saying that let's also be clear that when we, as Board of Supervisors, deny that process for an individual-owned property to ask and petition for that property to be used in a way that they see fit, i.e. their personal property rights, and we say no

because your neighbor's not going to like it. I don't allow industrial zoning in Scottsville. Just let me finish, please. Okay, so that's also personal property rights. Let's say you've owned a farm for 60, 70 years, right? You've got 100 acres. You used to farm it. You haven't farmed it in 20 years.

You want to pass it on to your kids, but you can't do it because it isn't generating money. Maybe the land's also not suitable any longer. Maybe climate change has made the land so you can't grow the crops that you used to have. Let's say that that's the case. So you are now being offered an opportunity to have your land leased by a solar company for the next 35 years, which allows you to keep that personal property. Is that a bad thing? Is it so bad to allow that individual who has worked for 60 years to maintain and keep their farm? I don't think so. I think that's really important.

Part of the debate that happened on 697 on the floor, I mean at the Senate yesterday, was about personal property rights. This is a big deal. Personal property rights matter. And so when you, quote, say the state has taken away our right, it's the right of a board of supervisors. When we say no to a petition, we're taking away that right from somewhere else. So there's a balance. Is it clear that a General Motors plant could not be placed out in Scottsville? I am not saying that there isn't a process by which we go through that.

There is a large process. There's planning. There's planning commission. There's the board of supervisors. There's public hearings. There's an extensive process that's already in place. But when you go in and you say, well, we're going to limit this to only 3% of the acreage of the county, you're taking away a lot of property rights from a lot of people who own, you know, potential use of that land. And keep in mind, solar can't go everywhere. They need to put it close to

transmission lines in order to be effective. They need to be close to power centers where they can bring that in. They need water. So it's not like they just go anywhere in the county. 1,400 acres. I'll ask you to Google this. How much is the square acreage of the county of Louisa? I'm guessing it's in the millions of acres.

I'm guessing. I don't know. I could be wrong. Maybe it's 800,000. I have no idea. I'm going to I don't know. I could be wrong. Maybe it's 800,000. I have no idea. I'm going to let Chris do that. But I'm guessing that that 1,400 acres is a very, very small percentage of the total

county of Louisa's acreage. I'll also say that part of your original point of you've now zoned industrial land out in the countryside. That would be spot zoning. So how could you zone 300 acres out in Scottsville?

I'm going to round it up. It's 320, excuse me, Chris, it's 329,000 acres. 320, so 1,400 acres is a half a percent of that. Is that correct? I think so. That's three, right? You're talking about the one solar farm, the big one that they're having issues with? No, no, no. I'm talking about the data centers that they're going to put in there.

Isn't this fun? I'm just saying that when we talk about acreage being taken away, let's keep in mind that in a lot of cases we're talking about a very small percentage of the total acreage of the county. So it's not as if tomorrow you're suddenly going to see overrun all of the trees being cut down in Fluvanna. That's not going to happen. So the people that may be tuning in, what they are experiencing is real local politics

and work. Two people, kind of a different opinion on it. You guys are friends. We are friends. You're debating a topic, and we get to hang around and listen. I love when you guys come on the show. Comments I'll throw to you guys, then we'll get out of your way. Neil wants to emphasize to the viewers and listeners,

many watching, it's important to recognize that VACO is an advocacy lobbying group funded by local governments. It's important to emphasize that, he says. John Blair's watching in Stanton. We love John Blair when he's watching the show. Kyle Miller, who hosts a show on this network on Thursdays, is giving Chris Fairchild some props right now. You're getting some props right now from Brian Krostik. This, Caroline Cook

Martin watching the program right now. A lot of Fluvanna on the show. Mary Garrison, Kevin Hinsley watching the program. I'll throw this to you guys. This is a fantastic question from Jennifer, who's watching in Lake Monticello. If Louisa County has the, quote, blank check on these data centers, end quote, how will this impact Fluvanna County if their tax revenues jump so dramatically?

Well, I have an opinion about it a lot, Chris. That's a great question. I didn't completely understand the question. So she's basically saying, and I'll paraphrase for her, and I hope I'm paraphrasing for her correctly, Louisa County is having a boatload of incremental tax revenue coming to them for very little infrastructure strain or throttling. How is that going to – what's the dichotomy with Fluvanna County? If the county right next to Fluvanna, who competes with Fluvanna in a lot of ways – That's an excellent question.

Competes with Fluvanna in a lot of ways. If they get this much tax revenue coming in that Fluvanna cannot match, how will that impact Fluvanna's future? I think that's a great question. I do, too. I have an opinion, but I actually think Keith should be the one to answer that question right now. Look at Tony hosting the show over here.

I was going to after he told me. I know, Fairchild. You said Fairchild first. So how's the family? Are the grandkids doing good? You guys go ahead and talk. Grandkids well? You're going to get a chance to see Ravenna today, hopefully.

At least he's giving somebody else a chance to talk. They do have a problem shutting me up. Really? Yeah. We should hear from Chris on this one. This is right up the chairperson. I'd like to hear from all three. This is right up the chairperson. I'd like to hear from all three of us.

I'm not excluding you. Do you want to sit here? There's nothing about Amazon or Louisa that I know of that specifically. So Amazon was never looking at Fluvanna for this opportunity. And the question is why? Right. It's a question of why on both, why did they and why didn't they and so

you know from talking to people in economic development including our economic development director again it just was never on the table and a part of the conversation did anybody ever ask why? I mean you and I are in the business world if you don't get a contractvena. Did anybody ever ask why? I mean, you and I are in the business world. If you don't get a

contract, what is the first thing you ask? Why did I lose it? Why wasn't it even in the room? No, I've just been busy working on other stuff. It's more of a rhetorical question. I don't know if it's relevant to the power generation or what. Well, part of it

also was the land mass. I just did a quick math, right? Fulvana County is 180 square 180,000. Louise is at 329, so that's roughly 150,000 acres difference, so there is a size difference. I need to be mindful of how I say this without saying too much, there's also opportunities Fluvanna has seen that maybe Louisa hasn't. In other words, there's some things in closed session I can't say.

MR. Okay. MR. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. We would never ask you to do that. MR. No, of course not. So I think that's an excellent question that she asked. And I think it's a really important question. Because as you put it, you know, first I would say, Louisa doesn't compete against us. We try to compete against Louisa. 100%. The reason why is Louisa's had a 20, 30 year vision in terms of how they wanted to grow. Let's face it, they have four highway stops, you know, running from almost Richmond to Charlottesville. Those are huge opportunities for them to do that.

They invested in Ferncliff. They invested in their industrial park out in the middle of the county. They have the nuclear power plants. They invested in Zion's Crossroads. They brought water in well before we even thought about bringing water. So they have had a 30-year plan. I'm going to push back on that. Okay, well, I mean, we thought about bringing water, but we turned it down.

That's a different story. That's different, okay. We were at the table because I was there. We were at the table several times, and the board of supervisors said no several times. I was there. And the people said no as well, too, because there was a referendum. That's exactly right. So, you know, they've had a long-term vision.

But the net effect, and when I first ran, this was a big deal. Everybody was talking about it, and I don't actually like to talk about this because I think Fluvanna County is an amazing place to live. And I also think that people totally misunderstand the relationship when we talk about property taxes. You know, what I say is, what's 8 times 9? 72, right? What's 9 times 8? 72. Well, if your house is worth $900,000 and you're paying, you know, eight cents on the dollar, you're still paying that 72. If your house is worth $800,000 and the tax rate is 9%, I'm not saying 9%, you're still paying 72. So there's always a relationship between the values of the property in the area and the tax rate. However, if you're able to bring

in $25 million. This is where I want to jump. This is where25 million, this is where you get in. Competition here. I'm not saying that they're going to do it. But, for example, if it's $500,000 per the penny on their side, they could, in theory, drop their taxes by 12 cents. And that's before the industrial park. That's before bringing in additional data centers. It is conceivable, and I was kind of joking with the Louisa County supervisor, that Louisa County will start paying its citizens because they're generating so much revenue. That's an exaggeration.

I think they'll just increase the budget. You mean like Loudoun has done? Loudoun isn't quite doing that. They have the lowest tax rate of all the counties in Virginia. And probably the lowest cost of living in Virginia, too? No. It's a million dollars an acre to live there. That was tongue-in-cheek by Fairchild, for those that did not pick that up. But I'm guessing those people who sold that piece of land for a million dollars are pretty happy. I want to unpack what O'Brien is saying here. If Louisa has $25 million a year in incremental tax revenue from data centers, what they can do is alleviate the tax burden on rooftops, which is real estate taxes, which could, in theory, take

Fluvanna Countians, where 90% plus of the budget is funded by rooftops, and entice them to move to Louisa, where affordability is potentially greater, which then could take rooftops off Fluvanna's budget, shifting them to Louisa very close in proximity, which could impact Fluvanna from a budget standpoint. That's what this man said. Not just budget standpoint, but your property value standpoint. That's what he is saying. I get that.

Is that what you're saying? That is what I'm saying. That is what he's saying. And you know I'm a housing, pro-housing. You're a realtor, aren't you? I'm a realtor. But besides that, I also build and develop. But besides that, I've always been a housing person,

but the reality of it is we're so behind the eight ball. So I want to give an example because I knew this was going to come up today. So I took a look at my house and how much cash I pay to my taxes. So I pay $4,045 a year for my house. There's a home that just sold in Glenmore. And the tax that the tax at that house is paying in Glenmore is $3,942. So I'm paying the same amount of cash as if my house was in Glenmore, I got a little bit more land, a lot more land, right? I'm on a I'm in a unique animal, I got two acres inside of Lake Monticello, which really doesn't exist on it. If you factor

in for that and factor in everything else I had, Woody Fincham come in. Oh, by the way, that thing sold for $165,000 more than I would be able to sell my house. I'm paying exactly the same amount of tax. I said, oh, maybe that's just me. And I went and looked at my father's house. My father is currently paying $2,683 a year. There's a house that's similar to his that just sold in Hollymead. He's paying $2,700. So this is a quick unscientific thing. And my question as a citizen, what the hell are we going to do so my taxes don't keep on going up? When are we going to get a data center? Can we get a data center? What are we going to go to offset it? I just emailed Judah, and hats off to Neil.

This is 2020 numbers, but looking at Albemarle, Charlottesville, Vanna, Green, Louisa, and Nelson, we have the lowest amount of business tax, business revenue coming in. So how are we going to switch that, guys? I'd first say there's a difference between talking about what you can do within your own realm and comparing yourself to others. A 5'10 guy is not going to be

a 6'5 on the basketball court. I agree. Nobody did anything to make that guy 6'5". He was born that way. When we compare Louisa and Fluvanna County, all four corners of Zion's crossroads are Louisa County. Without a doubt. Fluvanna doesn't start until 9 tenths of a mile,

which is on the Palmyra side of 250. We were never going to be that. So it's not like, oh, we didn't run the water line up there first and they beat us to it. We didn't have the four corners of Zions Crossroads and 15. So real estate, real estate, real estate. That's true throughout so much of that corridor. I don't know why Dominion went to Louisa to build the power plant,

North Ender Power Plant, back in, what, the 60s or whatever. I'm going to guess it wasn't because Fluvanna said no. What year was that, in the 60s? There was no zoning back in those days. Also, they had the lake there. No, no, the lake was built. So that you know land use and zoning didn't hit our county until about the early 70s. Yeah, but I'm just saying, where they picked to be, where then Virginia Power picked to be,

I've never heard it said that Fluvanna said no, so they went over to that side. I think what Tony's referring to is when they were trying to bring water to Zion's Crossroads and we had an opportunity to participate and we decided not to for whatever reason over multiple. If they were, no, I get that's what he's talking about. They weren't going to, we didn't have the real estate. They weren't going to build on Fluvanna. When I was chairman of the Economic Development Commission, I think I said it on here once, I think it was 2009, I had a citizen call me and say, hey, they put that Walmart over

on their side of 64. Why don't you call and Target to tell them about our side of 64? I said first of all we don't have a side of 64. Second of all I'm pretty sure Target knows that Walmart is located in Zions Crossroads. So Target wasn't going to go a mile off the interstate to compete with Walmart being at the corner of 64 and 15. It's just that retail doesn't work like that. So if I walked into the Board of Supervisors today and said, guys, we've got to grow the

growth area around Zion's Crushers, because to your point, it's tiny. It's microscopic. Really, it's not a lot. Would there be willingness to do that? I wouldn't right now. No. Let's get. We haven't started filling in what we have and we're doing it wrong. I don't think that there's

proper plan. You just said you don't want any growth in science crossroads. Is that what you just said? No, I didn't say that. I thought that's what you just said. Can we play that back? That was not the question. I didn't say it that way, Tony. What I said was if I came before you to go ahead and That was not the question. I didn't say it that way, Tony. Okay, what did you say?

What I said was, is if I came before you to go ahead and grow the growth area, is there an appetite on the board of supervisors to do that? And the answer was no. We've hardly touched the growth area this year. So you're a business guy, I'm a business guy. The reason why, and I meet with businesses that want to go between Louisa and Fulvana, and they tend to go to Louisa. And one of the two things you hear is, I don't have enough place to house my people, and we'll save that topic for a different debate. The second one is you don't have enough land.

The third one is the infrastructure on it. Well, we've got, however small you might call it, we've got tons of land there that's set up with the water. So what size facility are they building that we can't accommodate? These are mostly retail. A couple of things. No, retail is. A couple of things. Wawa is coming.

We'll talk about that. A couple of things. First of all, I'm pretty sure short pump is more than nine-tenths of a mile off the highway. So, yes, people will grow into other areas if you build the infrastructure and you allow that to happen. It's happening, yeah. So it will happen. I mean, short pump was nothing 25 years ago. Today it's a massive center with lots of homes. I'm going to give you a real world example. Let me finish here. So just the fact that we weren't nine tenths of a mile off

doesn't mean that we didn't have opportunities to grow. The reason that we couldn't grow is because on our side of the county line, on our side as opposed to the Louisa County line, we didn't have a water system. In order to build a building over 10,000 square feet, you need to have water pressure. In order to have water pressure, you need to have public water. We couldn't generate that. And not only that, we looked at wells.

We looked at alternatives. We couldn't do that. But Wawa's coming. So Wawa is coming. But why? Because after decades, finally we have one pipeline coming in, which is coming from the jail, down to us so that we actually can provide that. We built our water tower, beautiful water tower. Beautiful.

It's blue. It's really beautiful. Everybody wants to know if that's me up on the water tower. That's right. Exactly. Canoe in there? No, on the bike. On the bike. Yeah, on the bike.

So we now have a water pressurized system. And people don't even realize that that's live now. And now we're waiting for the JRWA. How much water do you have? About 200,000, roughly. How much water has Wawa taken? Not very much. Not very much. And that's important to get out.

That's important. Businesses like that do not use a lot of water. They need the water pressure for fire suppression and for the size of the building. But the second part is we have the JRWA coming in so in about three or four years we'll have a lot more water available to us. Which three or four years is that? Because it's been three or four years. It's been a long time. So I gotta say I'm glad you use short pump and I'm not I'm not sure why you would have used that because you're making my point for me. All the development that's happening down near 288, near the Wawa, they didn't start there. They started, they weren't going to build infrastructure down where the Wawa is when they first started developing Shore Pump.

That would have been insane because the growth was going to be up at broad and 64. So they intelligently waited and that's why you're just now seeing the hotels and other shops come in down near the Wawa it wasn't a competition because there was no competition those landowners down near the Wawa weren't in the position that the landowners were it is certainly possible

had we cooperated with Louisa County in bringing the pipeline in 15 years ago, that, you know, Louisa would have gotten all of it. I think that to be highly unlikely. I think that there would have been growth on the other side, and they do that because eventually the land becomes more expensive on one side, you look to do it on the other side.

We have seen revenue sharing agreements with multiple jurisdictions before. Outmore on the city of Charlottesville are perfect examples. And I was literally going to say that because on the commission, I've never seen the result of it, but I think I made a motion to see if Louise and Fulvana can work together to create a work together to grow the Zion's Crossroads area collectively and then do the revenue sharing. I don't know what happened to that report. I don't think they've ever actually finished it.

With the Ferncliff Park, I know when they were first promoting that, that they were looking at potential revenue sharing agreements. Preparation for today. By the county's investment. Pivot a little bit. There's a boatload of comments. Okay. And if I could add just one more quick comment on this.

And I said it on here before. Louisa, and I heard it on this show when somebody else was on the show. Louisa has had more than twice the residential development over the past 10 years of Fluvanna, which is a net negative in the state of Virginia for every dollar in revenue, on average $1.18. And then I think it was you, Keith, that asked, well, why is that? And somebody said, Zion's Crossroads. On top of that is slated to come somewhere around or near another 1,500 homes on the Louisa side of Zion's Crossroads. Yeah, they've got about 600 more to give. Spring Creek.

Spring Creek. Yeah. And there's a couple of the – And then behind the Walmart. There's actually more than that. So Chris stands by the statement that new housing is a net negative for the county, meaning housing creates budget strains or infrastructure strains when new housing is birthed. Cost of community services. Mr. Fairchild likes to bring a statement that was brought by a commission or a study, I think, by the Cooper Center.

I can't remember exactly who did it. And what it says is, you know, on average you get, you know, 1.8 or 1.18 or something like that per the dollar. But it also has a statement in there that says, but each county needs to look at their individual goals and their needs of the community. So to say it's a net negative is kind of problematic, because if every county had a net negative and had no growth, well, we wouldn't be able to live in our houses because counties wouldn't approve that.

And that is part of the problem, going back to what we talked about earlier in terms of housing. Because we keep on turning down housing, you end up with increased housing prices because there's a scarcity, which means the demand goes up, which means that people can't buy a piece of the American dream. Home ownership is one of the primary vehicles to getting wealth. And when you deny that for potential people, for hundreds of thousands of people, there's two million dollar homes. It's a generational impact.

Yeah. So you cannot just say, hey, we're going to stop building homes in Fluvanna County and put them all in Louisa County. You can't say, hey, we're going to stop building homes in Fluvanna County and put them all in Louisa County. You can't say that. But you're comparing dollars to soft goods, to soft responses, outcomes. But you're not arguing dollars. On the dollar side, it's absolutely right. Nobody's saying that we don't need homes for kids that graduate to move into. This is from Elliot Hardy watching the program.

His family owns and operates the Fork Union Tire business. I was there. Elliot also, I believe, ran for Virginia State Senate at one time, if memory serves correct. He's an attorney. He's fantastic. He says, growth in Louisa County just means

more people just moving into Fluvanna, more burdens on the infrastructure and public dime, more kids in the schools, more taxes on the rooftops. Business tax revenue is good. Fluvanna could use the money, whether it's for water, to cover the cost of the schools, law enforcement, et cetera. Amazon probably doesn't consider Fluvanna because of its water supply,

its history of being hesitant to growth. Louisa has I-64, and it's invested in the water. And he emphasizes with so many fixed incomes, such as retirees in Fluvanna County, alternatives to increased property tax revenue must be emphasized no matter what it looks like. Perfect segue. And for me to pass the baton to Keith Smith on this.

So two things, and these are old slides. So I look at stuff so the 2023 Louisa sales was 596 Flauvena sales was 272 so there are more people actually buying in Louisa than they are buying in homes yeah these are homes and the price is a. They're around $500,000 versus, not double, it's about a couple hundred thousand dollars more. But look. So you're saying it's good to be in Flavena? Well, I have not looked. So I looked at Albemarle County.

How much is my tax dollars going in Albemarle County? I haven't looked in Louisa. And I'm going to go ahead and do that. I bet you I'm paying more money for my house in Fulvana County than if it was in Louisa County. But I don't know that for a fact. I've got to look it up. So I don't care about rates. I don't care about anything. I care about how much I pay a year.

And more importantly, how much my mother will follow. But it's interesting. In preparation of the show, I looked at the budgets. This is last year's. I haven't seen this year's budget. And it just never dawned on me that on the personal property residential is a little less than half of what comes out of real estate. So the personal property residential, this is

the budget for 24, is $10 million for. The residential real estate is $26,500. So $26 million, just rounding it a little bit, versus 10. So it it a little bit, versus $10. So it's a little bit less than 50%. That shocked me. Why is that, gentlemen? Why is our personal property tax for residential? This is not business.

This is residential. Oh, by the way, the business is only $400,000. Why is $10 million, unless somebody tells me I'm looking at this wrong, and the residential real estate is 26 million? Well, I mean, your house is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your cars are worth $25,000, $30,000. That's a big number. I did not expect 10 million. I expected like 4 or 5 million. But to the callers or to the point that Elliot made,

absolutely, Fluvanna employs some of the fewest, quote, what we'd call levers. I mean, we have no meals tax. We have no business tax. We don't even have a business license requirement in Fluvanna County. Few businesses. We have businesses, and we have more and more growing. And you can argue that that makes it a very friendly place to be. But by the same token, you're leaving money on the table that other counties are

employing, which means that they can use that money that they're bringing in from those other localities to go ahead, I mean from those other revenue sources to go ahead and lower the property tax value. So, you know, getting competitive in terms of personal property, in terms of real estate taxes, is important. Being able to deliver core services is important. You know, it is always a balance between workforce, industry, and taxes. It's always a balance between all of those.

And that's the job of a board of supervisors, to find that healthy balance. And sure, we may not have all the assets that Louisa County has, and we may not be able to compete. Buckingham doesn't have all the assets that Fluvanna County has. But we as stewards need to do the best job possible, and we need to recognize these challenges across the board. And saying no just because your neighbors don't like it, okay, just because you don't like it, that's problematic.

That's not our job. Let's start off with the good news, right? So if the budget... Hold on. It's not our job to represent our taxpayers, our citizens that say they don't want that? You're always going to have people that come out and say, I don't want this here, put it somewhere else. The problem is somewhere else means someone else is going to come out and say,

I don't want this here. You have to say yes to opportunities. Not all opportunities, nor do you give up good governance for that. But you have to recognize that there is a balance. And just because 50 people show up in opposition to something doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of people behind there that are saying, hey, we need to do this. So, you know, there is a balance. So let's not talk about me because I'm blessed and I can afford to live in our county. But my father is getting to the point that they can't.

And we're blessed because they can move in with us. But they're paying $2,600, $2,700 a year in taxes. They could live in Hollymead and be right next to shopping and central water and sewer and paying for the same kind of tax, same square footage, same type of house. My concern and the question I get from people that we try to help either buy or sell in our county is, okay, when is that going to change, right? And the runway on that is pretty long. I mean, you know, this is going to be the way it's going to be for a very long time because we're either not going to get more houses and agree with it or disagree with it that's going to offset that we're not going to

get any real large commercial that I see and maybe you know I'm not privy to behind the door so I think that when you're done go back to how more houses offsets it it's just a math thing right I'm multiplying against I mean the more people I'm either I'm just looking at math right? I'm multiplying against, I'm either multiplying, I'm either, I'm just looking at math, brother. If I'm multiplying against the rooftop, I'm multiplying against the business. Neil pushes back on Chris's comment about housing is net negative. He says

housing generates so much more than just property taxes for what it's worth. The Board of Supervisors could raise the tax rate to make housing break even. They're in complete control. Woody Fincham, the appraiser who's watching the program, he lives in Lake Monticello. He has a comment on this. He said, why would any corporation consider Fluvanna County or a county that doesn't want houses for its workforce? And I'll add this and then get out of the way. If the real estate taxes go in the way that Fluvanna County is going,

it's just going to gentrify the old guard of Fluvanna County out of Fluvanna County and as the City of Charlottesville and Almar County become more expensive, City of Charlottesville and Almar County's old guard is going to come to Fluvanna and it's going to completely change the character of Fluvanna County. We brought this up, this came up in the commission meeting last night, which was a great service and

the name escapes me, you can probably help me out, where the folks like my parents or the Fulfords or people that we know that are homebound, my parents aren't quite there yet, but they're homebound, can call a number and somebody picks them up and takes them to doctor's appointment. Our county is getting older faster on it. It's actually not going the other direction based on the stats that I was looking at from last year. There are a lot of places to live that have the abilities that you're talking about.

Most of them are much more expensive to live in that you don't go to Richmond, you don't go to Hampton Roads, you don't go to Northern Virginia and go, wow, the cost of living is low, but I've got all these services. And look at how wonderful this is. The reality is, if somebody didn't know any of the facts and figures, if you just do 2 plus 2 equals 4, where is it that with all this growth and all these services you have a lower cost of living? Well, if you do that. Just about nowhere that I know of. If you do that, Chris, and we're just going to make math simple because you know I have a hard time above 3.

Yeah. So you had $26 million come in from residential taxes, right? You've got 10,000 houses. So anything that taxes says $260 million and above, in theory, is positive, right? Because I'm going to assume everything else you're still getting. You're still getting the million. You're still getting the million. You're still getting the $16 million from the Commonwealth and the feds and all that. The rest of the money is still coming in from other sources.

So anything that's valued over $260,000 is a net positive. Anything less than that is costing according to your operating revenue budget. I'm going to throw this out because I threw this out the regional housing partnership, and I'd love to hear what you two guys want to talk about. I know you don't agree with it. Government doesn't agree with it. It's not true. That would mean that

we're a net positive having residential, and that is not true. It's important to emphasize this. Chris's platform, and I agree with a lot of what Chris said, Chris's platform has been consistent since he's ran for the Board of Supervisors. He hasn't changed, and he was voted into office. So democracy-wise, people want what they voted him into office. And his district.

I mean, he's doing what his constituents want. I remember saying a little earlier, this is local politics at work, and it's a great thing, because three of us are very close friends. No, no, no, no. None of this is ever going to change our relationship. First of all, I think Neil raises a great point, which is that you have the ability to balance the tax rate. Second of all, I would say that if you looked at the inflation-adjusted tax rate for the county of Fluvanna, we are paying less than we used to pay in the past. That's the inflation-adjusted tax rate, which means that we really haven't kept up because we've tried to keep the tax rate quote-unquote lower,

but from that perspective. So yes, you can do that. But if you don't have other levers and you can't pull on those levers, and so yes, you put more burden on the homeowners, which yes, increases that negative. But to, I think it was your point, somebody said, why would a business bring,

why would a business come to Fluvanna County? Woody Fincham, I think, said this. Yeah, he lives in Lake Monticello. If there is no workforce there, if there is no housing for the workforce there, they're not going to do that. So it is a balance. Can you say that for Louisa County, housing is a net negative when they're bringing in $25 million because they thought about businesses? Can you really say that it is a net negative because would they have come into that area? Maybe, maybe not.

Can you say the same thing when we're looking at the growth of Zion's Crossroads and Ferncliff and Zion's Crossroads in our area? One of the reasons Wawa is coming is because they looked at the numbers in terms of the total density, including the lake, including Spring Creek, including all those areas. Otherwise, they'd never be there. There are lots of people who say, I don't want housing here. I'm not necessarily against it, but I would love to have a Wawa. I would love to have this. Richmond. I would love to have this. Richmond has a lot of Wawas. Well, drive to Richmond if that's what you want to do.

But, you know, Mr. Fairchild's point. I'm saying live in Richmond. Yeah, that's exactly right. From Mr. Fairchild's perspective, he would be happy if we had negative growth in the county. Negative growth would be something that you would be happy about. The way I always say it is if you have less trees and fields and that costs you more to live, what are you working for? And if it's not true, tell me the difference. Tell me in all this what's different about Richmond, Hampton Roads, and Northern Virginia.

And I've heard from one message that came in from you about our tax rate. We could raise taxes. Yes, that's exactly right. We could, like Richmond did, like Hampton taxes. Yes, that's exactly right. We could. Like Richmond did. Like Hampton Roads did. Like Northern Virginia. The balloon just keeps getting bigger. So I'll actually support what you're going to say for a second. So I can sell my house and buy this house in Glenmore. I can afford the extra $125,000 because I'm blessed to go ahead and do that. But I won't do it. And this is a debate between my wife and I.

I won't do it because I love where I live. I love everything about it. The point is for the people that aren't that blessed that have to make a decision. Yona's at a meeting right now with a 95-year-old woman who we have to figure out a way to get her out of that house and sell her house that she hasn't touched in 20 years. And we're figuring out a way to get her out of that house and sell her house that she hasn't touched in 20 years. And we're figuring out a way to help her because she's about ready to lose her house.

She can't afford to pay her taxes. She can't afford to pay all this stuff. And what can we do to help them move on? To us, that's one of the beautiful things that I get to do about my job is I get to help people with that kind of that kind of kind of movement. First of all, let me finish real quick. Here's a positive. What I heard yesterday, our budget's flat. We're not reassessing. So we've got side of the triangle is there. So if our budget stays flat, and our assessment stays the same, our tax rate should stay the same. And my mother and father are paying the same amount of cash for 2020, 2025.

Hopefully less. That's assuming you don't lower the rate or you don't lower the budget. So I'm hearing some good news that for Fulvana County, if it goes right, because there's politics involved in this, if it goes right, we're at a flat. If it goes really good, I'm going to be paying less money. It's good news today. It's also going to attract people from Charlottesville. I'll put Charlottesville in perspective right now because I'm getting taxed out of the wazoo here.

In the last four years, assessments have jumped north of 40%. And at the same time that the city of Charlottesville is talking about raising its real estate tax rate a nickel. It's advertising in a nickel increase, four to five cent nickel increase if memory serves correct. And my memory is very much on point. That's just going to attract Charlottesville gentrification individuals out of the city into Fluvanna. And it's, it's not, it may not sound a lot to a lot of folks,

but if you can get that 26 to 24 to 22, it's going to make a huge difference to a couple of 85-year-old folks. And I'm glad you got that out there because that helps to make one of the points I was going to make is I sort of want to raise taxes on the people like your parents who are already trying to stay in their home. Yeah. I mean, it's never a fun part of the job to have to raise taxes. You said my strategy is better at not raising their taxes. It's never a fun part of the job to have to raise taxes. I'm saying my strategy is better at not raising their taxes. It's never a fun part of the job to have to raise taxes. So I think as far as Flauvena County is concerned, this budget cycle is probably going to be one of the easiest ones. I know you guys are in the middle of it and don't quite see it that way.

But, you know, you're not dealing with an assessment right now, right, because your numbers are set. Next year, that's going to be a super challenging thing because I can tell you right now, I contested my tax assessment and won. I can tell you next year I won't be able to do it. There's a couple of homes around me that sold for way more than what my house is worth, and it's going to impact me big time. My $4,000 is probably going to jump substantially. And some important points, though.

And Flavena County has generally taken the equalization rate and not just stayed flat from that standpoint. So what can happen is, yes, your houses come in at reassessment. Maybe they're up 15%. You keep the tax rate the same, but you actually just increase the taxes on the people. A lot of counties actually keep their tax rate pretty flat. We actually do try to equalize from that standpoint as best as possible. We do. But when you say, oh, okay, the city of Charlottesville has an 89-cent tax rate or whatever it is. They're going from 96 to a buck.

96, okay, 96, to maybe a buck, but they're now dealing with the fire and the police and the school system, and I believe that they're facing anywhere between a $6 million to $10 million budget gap that they're trying to figure out with about a penny per the million. So that tells you it could be higher than that $0.04 or $0.05 that you're predicting from that standpoint. So these are challenges that you have to look at from that standpoint, but we compete against the surrounding areas for quality teachers, for quality fire and rescue people, for quality public servants, for quality sheriff's office, all of those things. We compete for that. And so, you know, we face those pressures, and sometimes those pressures, in order to stay competitive, have to be passed on. So the importance of finding alternative revenue sources, the importance of bringing in business so that we don't put

that burden on 92%, I think we've gone from 93% to 92%, on the homeowner, that's significant. Such as a meals tax, which is, we're not in a tourism county that is still going to go almost entirely to the homeowners. That's interesting. In Louisa County, right, did you hear what the Board of Supervisors said? They're actually creating a tourism department.

Yeah, they're creating a tourism department, which I don't think we've even talked about this, Chris, but this is interesting. We have the opportunity, but we have to do this through referendum, I believe, to take a penny from the sales tax rate and then use that specifically for schools, I think is what they said. Which I would think would pass. How much did they raise in that? I think they were saying that was going to be

like over $600,000. Because referendums tied to schools generally pass. Yeah, so that is a conversation that we're going to have to bring up in our next budget meeting. Maybe the county administrator's got that on his radar. I just don't know. I haven't heard.

That was the first time I'd heard about that conversation. And we often talk about Lake Monticello on the show, and it's purely because it's a simple place to go and look at. It's 4,300 homes, right? They're all the same. You're not dealing with different product types. And it's just an easy thing for a guy to go ahead and break down. But if you put up slide number one, we won't go into the numbers, but if you could just take a look at that from 2016, that's in front of you, Chris. From 2016 to 2023, your median value,

thank you, of your home went from 207 to 380. So on one hand, it's great, man. I bought a house in 2007. Look at all the equity that I made. The other hand of it is my tax base is also going up. It is a freaky economy after a freaky thing happened. You know, fire trucks that a few years ago we were paying $800,000 for, we're paying 1.2.

That's why I'm excited that Eric came in with a flat budget. I would have bet money he would have asked for more money. Again, going back to the whole concept is and you brought it up, if you're fortunate enough to be able to own a home and build equity, that really sets you for the future. If you create a system which makes that an impossible dream, which a lot of young people are facing right now, you know, when you have homes that are $500,000 and salaries that are $50,000, $60,000,

you know, you make that dream pretty challenging for them, and you can't build that equity. You know, that's a shortfall that is going to affect generations to come. When 25% of every new construction dollar for a house is regulatory reasons, if you could carve some of that out, so on a $400,000, the nationwide average for new construction is $400,000. That's a $100,000 of regulatory thing. Even if you just cut that in half, that makes the house that much more affordable.

That's regulatory. And oh, by the way, that doesn't count in time, right? Some projects take half a decade or a decade to go through. That's not carrying costs. That's not anything. That's purely regulatory expenses. I tell this story all the time. When I did the acres, I went ahead and submitted it, got it rezoned, went through the site plan process. That's a subdivision in Lake Monticello. Thank you. And put a bulldozer on the job site in six months.

Now, the lake held me up for 13 months, but that's a whole different story. But now it's six years. And all that is directly connected into what it costs on housing. So if we can figure out a way to drive that down, then that can help at least reduce the cost and try to get it in there. At $380,000 on a median sales price. And by the way, try to find something in Lake Monticello to buy. Forget about it. Well, tell them the inventory levels.

I'm sure they know. I have to take a look at it. I think as of yesterday, if you take a look at new construction, and if you don't mind asking a question or something real quick, I'll get on this. Multiple people have asked if there's, why is there not, or if there is tax relief for the elderly in Fluvanna. There is. There is. Okay. Yeah, so that's important. You might want to talk about that. And for that, I'll tell your commissioner of revenue.

That's important to highlight. And also you can get relief on your personal property if you have a vehicle that has over 150,000 miles. So you can get relief on that as well, too. Yeah. And I do think, by the way, one of the things I want to talk to the board about is after we finish the budget is doing some sort of advertisement that tells those things.

Like, so many people are unaware. And what's the cost to the county to do a one-pager? You have an opportunity to do that right now, right? You can talk about that right now and reach out to folks. How does that process work and what do you reply to? By the way, there's 12 houses we jumped up a little bit. I meant to kick this show off. We're up to,

believe it or not, Jerry, there's 73 houses that came on the last seven days. We haven't seen that number in a very long time. We're usually in the lake alone. No, no, no. This is all the car footprint. This is the car footprint. Thank you.

There's 12 at the lake out of 4,300. There's 12 at the lake. And you remember, Jerry, we were talking about some of those triple digit ones coming off the market. There's only two left. There was four or five at one point. And by triple digit, he means days on market. Days on market. And those were some of the homes that needed significant TLC, if you may.

So triple digit, you're talking 100 plus days. Right now you've got one that's 105 and 135. The next less one is 56. There was a bunch of, like a week or two ago, there was houses in the 90s and they're coming off the market. The median days on market right now is 8. And that includes the 105 and the 130. You can talk a little bit about this as well, too. But one of the things that we're looking at, too, is that, you know, because of the shortage of housing inventory in the area in general,

and no criticism just of Fluvanna, it's in the area in general. It's nationwide. It's nationwide. It's really 10. Excuse me to interrupt you. It's really 10 because I've got to drop out and act with a kick out in the coming soon. So right now there's roughly 10,000. The cost of rentals has skyrocketed, right,

because you can have investors that come in and buy properties that they can then actually rent out for more than the cost of a mortgage, which in essence denies the wealth even further, right? So there's that problem of know, there's that problem of scarcity, which is a, and I'll say this outright, this is a tax that we're putting on people. When you artificially increase the price of a home, when you artificially make people pay more in rent, you are taxing them, whether you realize it or not, okay? You're saying artificially through government regulation? I'm saying artificially through not meeting the needs of the community.

Again, back to that statement, that 1.18, that 1.18, when they say it's 1.18 cents in order to do that and it's a net negative, well, it's not a net negative if you don't have the housing stock, if the rental prices in your area are too high, if you don't have the right kind of housing inventory and mixture, that's not necessarily a net negative because you're looking at the fact that they're paying higher property taxes because their taxes have gone up because their property has gone up, which is good. We love that as homeowners. But they're also paying for higher rental rates. That's pretty significant. So nationwide rental rates are actually stabilizing and coming down. Not around here. Not around here.

Yeah, not around here. Population increase. Walden Cooper just released information. All the jurisdictions in the central Virginia footprint, population increase, except the city of Charlottesville, from 2020 to 2023 saw a loss of 343 people. All the other jurisdictions, increase in population. And I want to, like all these guys, I want to go to bat for my boy over here, Fairchild. He, again, was voted into office. So if Levana Countians are voting Chris into office, he is doing what his constituents are saying to do.

So when I was voted into office, people were concerned about the high property tax rate. They were concerned about the quality of the schools. They were concerned about the quality of the services. Everybody wants the perfect scenario. Low taxes, great quality services, great places to live. Everybody wants that. How about this question for both of you guys? How do you balance what your voters want today versus what

might be best for Fluvanna County tomorrow, years tomorrow? I'm going to add a different spin to that, guys, because I want to jump in on that because I asked this question of a couple of elected officials. Do you vote for your district or do you vote for the county? So your district... Do you represent your district or do you represent your county when voting? Both. All I can tell you is the way I think is I worry as much about something happening in another district as I do mine. I mean, I grew up in Fluvanna County.

I love Fluvanna County. I honestly almost never think of the borders of my district. Good answer. Yeah. Good answer. And that's, in my opinion, how it should be. And look, we're way over our time here together. I just want to get this out because I've said it a couple of times.

This is what local politics is supposed to be like. If you can't attend it personally, you guys are still doing Zoom meetings, right? You can't participate, but it's on live. Watch it. I don't think you can speak anymore. You can just do it on YouTube, but you can't

Zoom in because we kept having some low-lice pop-up porn films in the middle of it. Okay, I won't do it anymore, right? Yeah, it wasn't you. Really, when I saw it, it wasn't you. I'm that low, huh? Got it. But participate, watch.

Ned Galloway sat in your seat. If you really want to know how your elected officials are going to vote, watch this time of the year. Watch the budget season. Because as the money goes, so does the votes go. So please get involved. Please watch. Please support these guys. I know you're on a different opinion on stuff, but I really appreciate the honesty in being here. And I'll just add, my goal is first to preserve the quality of life in Flavanica County, first, beyond finances. People can, the next board can be elected, and it'll go up and down of what your budget is.

The one thing that the next board can't change is development. Once it's built, I can't take that apartment complex out of Colonial Circle. So I take that more seriously than anything that I do. Land use, at the local level, really land use is what it's all about. I also believe that my approach keeps the cost of living there lower. Colonial Circle, that we just gave 10 years of zero property tax on those buildings isn't bringing revenue in for

all that housing. Yes, we want business, but we also have to understand that bringing in business brings in residential, as Louisa has experienced, and it's a delicate balance. And so I am right on the heels as fiscally aware as I am concerned for the quality of life in County. And again I think that we all want the same goals we may have different visions of how we get to those goals you know preserving quality of life for you means one thing it means a different thing for somebody else, right?

You know, for the renter who is strapped and can't get out of it, you know, having an opportunity to rent in a place that is more affordable for them, that's preserving their quality of life. For the homeowner who, you know, wants to be able to lower their tax rates, you know, preserving quality of life is important. For the person who wants to make sure that they have good core services, good teachers, that's preserving quality of life. So there For the person who wants to make sure that they have good core services, good teachers, that's preserving quality of life. So there's a lot of ways to do that. And it doesn't just mean that, you know, we are just a flat-out rural county all the time.

There is a balance. And that's what border supervisors do. They measure that out. The political system, you know, votes people in and out based on what the tensions are within the public at that point in time. And, you know, you have that growth. But I think above it all that a county should have a long-term vision for how it sees itself going, how do they compete, and how do they look forward into the future in order to stay competitive and to attract people and quality services and businesses.

You have to have that balance. Do either one of you gentlemen know what 60% of AMI is in our county for one person? So that would be? 48,000. No, no. Excuse me? 48,000. 90-something.

No, no, it's 48,000. 48,000. 60% of AMI for Havana? Go AMI is 123,300, right? This is HUD numbers. Okay. Right? And it goes by single occupancy, double occupancy, and triple occupancy, right?

So for one person, the ceiling for one of those apartments, they can't make over $48,000. That's a big number, right? Two persons, it's 54. Three persons, it's 60. When you start getting to, you know, a husband, wife, and a kid, 60 grand, two people working. 60% of 123,300 is about 74K. Yeah, but it doesn't work that way. They prorate it by the number of the people in the house.

I know this because this is just right off of the HUD website for our county. So Tony nailed it. It's $48,000 if you round it up. One person, $48,000. Well, and you've got the mom who has two or three kids. Teacher doesn't make that much money. Healthcare is, I mean, childcare is $1, kids. Teacher doesn't make that. Child care is $1,200 per kid or something like that.

She's got a $15 an hour job, maybe. And she's got a $2,000 a month rent. Saving $300 or $400 because now you have inventory in our county that will allow you to be subsidized if you will from that standpoint because you

don't qualify from an income standpoint, that's important. Those kids get to stay in that school. She gets to improve the quality of life. But if you take a look at national standards, apartments and townhomes actually produce less kids. Single-family detached produces more kids. Hold it. Husband and wife produce kids.

When Colonial Circle opens up, we'll have 330 new homes. Did I just get myself in the trouble? Did I cross a line that I shouldn't have crossed? You probably did. I meant to look this up, but it was presented to us at the board. Chris, correct me, but I believe that last year, and again, this

doesn't count the homes that are townhomes and apartments, which we don't have yet and haven't been built. Our growth rate was 1.6. Into the school. No, no, no. No, 1.6 was the housing, the total population growth rate. And we're projecting an even lower growth rate this year from that standpoint.

So, you know, 1.6 growth rate means the county is not building. It's not doing anything. It's staying flat. Those 300 homes are going to allow some growth and some movement, you know. It's 200 homes. 200 or whatever it is. It's going to allow some growth and some movement from within our county. And, yes, it will bring some people in.

But I think at the same time, you'll have people that are moving out of a rental, going into that property. You're going to have single-family homes that are going to bring in other people and maybe raise a property. Mr. Supervisor, we were supposed to end at 1115. You guys did a great job. This gentleman is being very gracious. Fun show. It's why I'm chair. He runs efficient meetings. I should have stopped this already.

Keith Smith, Chris Fairchild, Tony O'Brien, the show is archived wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of people asking that. Wherever you get your social media or your podcast, Judah Wittkamp is the director of the program. I Love Seville Show is up in approximately 49 minutes. Thank you kindly for joining us. So long, everybody. Judah Wittkamp God bless. David Plylar Thanks, guys. Thank you, gentlemen.

David Plylar Yeah. David Plylar A lot of fun. David Plylar We can't, you can't.ご視聴ありがとうございました