This week in county gov; Supes roll through public business at Feb. 20 meeting; BOS plans to slash support for prominent nonprofit as funding for outside agencies takes center stage in budget process
Engage Louisa is a nonpartisan newsletter that keeps folks informed about Louisa County government. We believe our community is stronger and our government serves us better when we increase transparency, accessibility, and engagement.
This week in county government: public meetings, Feb. 26 through March 2
For the latest information on county meetings including public meetings of boards, commissions, authorities, work groups, and internal county committees, click here. (Note: Louisa County occasionally schedules internal committee/work group meetings after publication time. Check the county’s website for the most updated information).
Wednesday, Feb. 28
Ag/Forestal and Rural Preservation Committee, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 7 pm.
Additional information about Louisa County’s upcoming public meetings is available here.
Interested in taking your talents to one of the county’s numerous boards and commissions? Find out more here including which boards have vacancies and how to apply.
With little discussion, supervisors roll through public business at Feb. 20 meeting
The Louisa County Board of Supervisors found plenty to agree on Tuesday night.
With little discussion, the board voted unanimously to add a public facilities chapter to the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, appropriate $1 million in state funding to the Lake Anna Advisory Committee for Harmful Algal Bloom mitigation in the upper end Lake Anna and transfer responsibility for the Louisa County Airport from the Industrial Development Authority to the county. (meeting materials, video)
Board appropriates $1 million in state funding to LAAC for HAB mitigation: Supervisors voted unanimously to appropriate $1 million in state funding to the Lake Anna Advisory Committee for Harmful Algal Bloom mitigation and remediation treatments in the upper end of the lake. The funding was allocated to the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) last September in an amendment to the state budget.
LAAC is an interjurisdictional panel comprised of representatives from Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania counties, the three localities home to Lake Anna shoreline. It advises the counties on lake-related issues and oversees the placement of no-wake buoys on the lake’s public side as well as treatment for invasive hydrilla. The panel will add administering the state-funded HAB mitigation and remediation program to its duties. Louisa County will act as the program’s fiscal agent.
Composed of toxin-producing cyanobacteria that can be detrimental to human health and harmful to wildlife and pets, HAB has become a persistent problem at the lake in recent years, prompting the Virginia Department of Health to issue no swim advisories for parts of its upper reaches every summer since 2018. In 2022, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) named Lake Anna to its list of impaired waterways because of the blooms.
The HAB mitigation program aims to lessen the impact of the blooms in the short-term. Cuckoo District Supervisor Chris McCotter, who represents part of the lake and serves as LAAC’s chair, said that the committee had issued a request for proposals from companies interested in handling the treatment program, receiving two responses. He said that LAAC will soon begin negotiating with the companies.
As HAB advisories repeatedly disrupt the height of tourism season, county officials and grassroots activists have sounded the alarm and lobbied for the state’s help. Supervisors and activists with the Lake Anna Civic Association have argued that the blooms are an immediate threat to the local tourism industry and a long-term threat to the health of the lake.
Those arguments have led to some help from Richmond on both fronts. Beyond the $1 million for short-term mitigation, the current state budget appropriated $3.5 million to DEQ to study the blooms at the lake and in the Shenandoah River, where they’re also a persistent problem, and to craft long-term strategies to address the problem in both waterways.
While the exact cause of HAB at Lake Anna is complex, the blooms’ growth is generally attributed to excess nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, in warm, stagnant water. Those nutrients can come from runoff from development and agriculture, among other sources.
The three-year long DEQ study, which began last year, includes extensive data collection to determine exactly what sorts of algal species are present and to identify pollutants contributing to the blooms and other causal factors. The study will also focus on developing prediction models for early detection, identifying management approaches, and working with stakeholders to develop a watershed plan. (Read more here).
More state aid could be on the way in the state budget lawmakers are currently crafting. Budget bills introduced by the House of Delegates and Senate last week both include funding for near-term mitigation and remediation with the House version allotting $1 million to DCR in FY25 and the Senate version appropriating $250,000. Lawmakers will spend the next several weeks hammering out a compromise budget to send to Governor Glenn Youngkin for consideration.
Board adds public facilities chapter to Comp Plan: Supervisors voted unanimously to add a public facilities chapter to the 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Broadly, the 20-page section documents public facilities across most departments as well as Louisa County Public Schools and assesses future need. It also provides tools for measuring the impacts of development on county facilities and services and makes recommendations on how to offset those impacts.
The board held a public hearing on the chapter at their Feb. 5 meeting, but delayed action after two supervisors said they needed more time to review the document. No one spoke at the public hearing and supervisors adopted the chapter with no discussion Tuesday night.
After a decade of steady growth, Louisa County has emerged, in the last three years, as one of the commonwealth’s fastest growing localities, according to population estimates from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Burgeoning residential growth coupled with other types of development have increased the demand for county services and the need to expand facilities, making the public facilities chapter a timely addition.
In a memo to the board, Deputy County Administrator Chris Coon writes that the chapter provides the board with “a range of options to effectively mitigate the impacts of development.”
“As Louisa County grows, the pressure on public facilities and services intensifies. The county must expect and request developers to mitigate the impacts of their developments. This mitigation can take various forms, such as impact fees, infrastructure improvements, land dedication, and public-private partnerships, ensuring that the burden of growth does not disproportionately fall on existing residents and facilities,” Coon writes.
Adding the chapter brings county officials a step closer to completing the Comp Plan, a state-mandated planning document that requires periodic updates. Though supervisors adopted the plan in 2019, they left some sections unfinished.
County staff and members of the Planning Commission are in the process of completing a section focused on small area plans, namely the county’s vision for specific growth areas. Representatives from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission are working on housing and transportation chapters.
Read the public facilities chapter here.
Supes accept responsibility for airport: With no discussion, supervisors voted 7-0 to transfer responsibility for the Louisa County airport from the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) to the county.
While the IDA is tasked with promoting and facilitating economic development, it had also been charged with running the airport largely because the facility, known as Freeman Field, is located on property owned by the authority. Louisa’s IDA is the only industrial development authority in the state authorized to run an airport, receiving special permission from the General Assembly to operate in that capacity.
Supervisors have long toyed with the idea of bringing the airport under county control, occasionally debating the issue at public meetings. Late last year, they took a significant step toward making that happen, setting up an internal committee to explore the issue.
After establishing the committee, supervisors didn’t publicly bring up the matter again until quietly accepting responsibility for the airport on Tuesday night.
The IDA passed a resolution at its Feb. 15 meeting agreeing to relinquish its authority over the facility and to do “all that is necessary or required to convey, transfer, assign, or otherwise dedicate any and all of its interests in the ownership, operation, fiscal responsibility, and regulation” of the airport to the county.
TJPDC pitches board on Comprehensive Safety Action Plan: County officials could get another tool to improve safety on public roads.
Last year, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission (TJPDC) won an $857,600 federal grant from the Safe Streets and Roads for All project, an initiative established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that’s aimed at reducing fatalities and serious injuries on the nation’s roads.
TJPDC is using the funding to develop a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan for all six localities in the planning district including Louisa. The plan is a prerequisite to applying for additional funding to implement projects to improve roadway safety for all users. The projects could include anything from large-scale infrastructure upgrades like a new roundabout to educational programming like special training for first responders.
TJPDC’s Director of Planning and Transportation Sandy Shackleford and Planner Curtis Scarpignato briefed the board on the action plan during Tuesday’s meeting, noting that the commission intends to develop a plan that meets the needs of each locality, but is flexible enough to serve the region as whole.
The TJPDC plans to rely on transportation safety data, robust community engagement and communication with officials in each locality to create a plan that priorities local needs and develops specific projects aimed at resolving challenges that impede road safety.
After the commission completes the plan, Louisa County will be eligible to apply for federal funding to implement the projects. The BIL set aside $5 billion for the initiative, some of which has already been used for planning grants.
Shackleford and Scarpignato noted that the program could provide the county a way to access money for road improvements beyond Smart Scale, Virginia’s data-driven process that determines if local transportation projects receive state funding.
Shackleford and Scarpignato said that moving forward with the action plan requires a “leadership commitment” from the board to undertake efforts to significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries on the county’s roads. To that end, they’ll return next month to ask supervisors to pass a resolution formally setting a goal of reducing roadway deaths and serious injuries by 50 percent by 2040.
From 2018 to 2022, there were 249 serious injuries and 48 fatalities on public roadways in Louisa County, according to VDOT data.
Jackson District Supervisor Toni Williams said that while significantly reducing roadway deaths and serious injuries is an admirable goal, he doesn’t believe it’s realistic, especially considering the county’s burgeoning population growth.
“As the population increases—just by the fact that there are more people and more trips—would you not expect more serious injuries and fatalities?” Williams asked. “Because we are one of the fastest growing counties in the commonwealth at this point and time. You are asking us to commit to a percentage to reduce fatalities. That sounds really nice on a piece of paper, but it just doesn’t sound practical to me.”
Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams agreed and wondered if the county would be required to return grant funding if they didn’t achieve the goal.
Shackleford and Scarpignato said that the grant funding wasn’t contingent on reaching the goal, but the program requires the county to set it. They noted that the goal closely aligns with a goal included in the state’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan.
Gillespie briefs board on triathlon CUP: Community Development Director Josh Gillespie briefed the board on the upcoming Rumpus in Bumpass, a triathlon that combines swimming, cycling and running and takes place at Pleasants Landing on the eastern edge of Lake Anna each spring. The next Rumpus is set for April 20.
Gillespie said that the Rumpus and a fall triathlon run by the same organizers are permitted under a Conditional Use Permit first greenlighted by supervisors in 2016 and twice amended since then. Under the CUP, the county’s zoning administrator is required to periodically review the conditions and provide updates to the board on the events.
The CUP places a range of restrictions on the races including capping the number of participants at 750, prohibiting camping, requiring public notice to residents who may be impacted and setting limits on noise.
Gillespie said that the triathlons have led to a few problems through the years including disrupting mail delivery in the Bumpass area last year, and attendees illegally parking on the side of a public road in 2019.
Cuckoo District Supervisor Chris McCotter, who represents the area, said that he wants county officials to closely monitor the events and communicate with neighbors especially given the continued growth at the lake.
“As things grow at the lake, there will be more interest and this event may or may not be appropriate moving into the future,” McCotter said. “With that, I would encourage the board to ensure that [the organizers] come before us every year, so we can gauge the progress of what they are doing there as far as meeting the CUP or if that needs to be changed.”
Supes plan to slash support for prominent local nonprofit as funding for outside agencies takes center stage in budget process
Louisa County’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025 could easily exceed $230 million, but supervisors have spent the bulk of their first two budget work sessions pondering how they’ll spend a fraction of that money.
At a pair of work sessions in February, the board discussed funding for outside agencies, organizations that aren’t formally part of county government but partner with the locality to provide services. Collectively, 34 outside groups asked for $6.74 million for FY25, about $277,000 more than they received in the current fiscal year.
While allocations for outside agencies won’t be official until the board adopts the budget in late April, supervisors have tentatively decided how much taxpayer money they’ll give—or, in some cases, won’t give—most of the groups.
The board doesn’t have much wiggle room on whether they appropriate some of the funding—like $2.8 million for the Central Virginia Regional Jail—because the contributions are required by the state.
But funding for many outside groups is discretionary, so the board annually reviews the agencies’ requests and decides if doling out taxpayer dollars is justified. While the requests that come from most groups—especially small, local nonprofits—constitute only a sliver of the county’s budget, the board’s decision to grant or withhold funding can significantly impact an organization’s ability to carry out its work.
Such is the case of the Louisa County Historical Society.
Founded in 1966, the society runs the Sargeant Museum of Louisa County History, which acts as the county’s official welcome center. It preserves and archives historical artifacts and documents, offers educational programming, hosts community events, assists with research requests and more. At its Feb. 5 work session, the board voted to slash the society’s funding by nearly 90 percent.
In FY24, the board allotted $42,500 to the group, $35,000 more than it received in the previous fiscal year, and the society asked for the same amount this year. The funding comprises more than a third of the group’s operating budget, which is mostly used to keep the doors open at the museum. According to Executive Director Katelyn Coughlan, the county’s support plays an important role in the society’s ability to maintain its programs and community outreach.
“Any cut in funding would compromise our ability to continue to bring quality educational programs, living history interpretation, historic research requests, and genealogical services to the county,” Coughlan said in an email to Engage Louisa.
In recent years, the county has given the society about $7,500 annually before hiking funding for the current fiscal year after a pitch from the group for more support. The society’s leadership told the board at the time that, though the group relies on grants for a significant portion of its work, including its African American History Program and a digitalization project, the money doesn’t cover the cost of staffing the museum and maintaining the historic structures that serve as its living history component.
The society said that it was grappling with the impacts of inflation, an ageing population of members and donors, and the lingering effects of the pandemic. Without more support, it would have to tap emergency funding, and potentially cut staff and the museum’s operating hours.
“It is a bleak future when one contemplates staff reductions. How would we continue the 50-55 programs generated by the director and implemented by the volunteer coordinator? Clearly, we could not continue serving the public at this level,” the society said in a written request to the county.
After agreeing that the society was worthy of more public support just a year ago, the board has reversed course, casting a preliminary vote to cut its funding to $5,000.
That vote came after the board’s finance committee, which includes Board Chair and Mineral District Supervisor Duane Adams and Jackson District Toni Williams, recommended that supervisors defund the group, withholding county support entirely.
But Green Springs District Supervisor Rachel Jones and Cuckoo District Supervisor Chris McCotter pushed back with McCotter suggesting that the board appropriate $5,000. Supervisors subsequently voted 4-3 in favor of the $5,000 allocation with Williams, Adams and Patrick Henry District Supervisor Fitzgerald Barnes voting against the funding.
Neither Williams nor Adams provided any reasons for recommending that the county defund the group during the work session. In a follow up interview last week, Adams said that it’s “a tight budget year” and the board must carefully prioritize its spending, pointing to $63 million for school construction projects in the proposed FY25 capital budget.
“Our focus right now is economic development, public education and public safety. As you know, that eats up about 76 percent of the budget,” Adams said. “Everybody that comes to the table has great programs. It’s never a question of that. It’s what can we afford to do and where can we afford to do it. My recommendation is to take this money and focus it elsewhere.”
Jones, the board’s liaison to the society, said during the work session that she knew there had been “some controversy” surrounding the group, but she hoped the board would continue to provide funding given the work it does in the community.
“I think we need to look at this as a community and separate ourselves from other events that have happened,” Jones said.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Jones sought to clarify those remarks. She said she wasn’t referring to a specific controversy involving the society, but rather internal controversies within the board about how much money to give outside groups.
Jones and Adams portrayed the board’s decision as a routine part of a budget process full of difficult decisions and internal debate about how to spend taxpayer money. But, of the 32 outside groups that received county support last year and applied again this year, the society was the only group that the finance committee recommended defunding. Most of the groups are on track to either receive the same amount as FY24 or a small increase.
Coughlan said earlier this month that no one from the county had informed her of the board’s vote and that she’s hopeful supervisors will support the group at the same level they did last year.
Raising concerns about the Lake Anna Technology Campus
The finance committee’s recommendation and the board’s preliminary vote to cut the society’s funding comes on the heels of the organization publicly expressing concerns about Amazon Web Services’ plans to develop a data center campus on a historically significant property at the corner of Kentucky Springs Road and Haley Drive adjacent to the North Anna Nuclear Power Station.
According to a conceptual plan submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers last September, AWS plans to build more than 1.7 million square feet of data centers on the 150-acre site, dubbed the Lake Anna Technology Campus (LATC).
The campus is part of an at least $11 billion capital investment that the tech giant plans to make in Louisa, by far the biggest economic development deal in county history. AWS also plans to build data centers on a 1,444-acre tract off Mount Airy Road near the center of the county.
Coughlan and Brianna Patten, who coordinates the society’s African American History Program, both raised red flags about the site, which was once part of a plantation and is home to the ruins of Laurel Hill, a circa 1800 home that was owned and occupied by the Garland sisters. After the Civil War, the sisters gained notoriety for their work with the Freedmen’s Bureau to reunite Black families torn apart by slavery. The sisters donated land and money to formerly enslaved people, leading to the establishment of Garlandtown, a once prominent Black community in eastern Louisa County.
The data center site adjoins Laurel Hill Baptist Church, a historic Black church founded in 1868, with an adjacent cemetery. In the early 1970s, the remains of at least 100 residents were excavated and reinterred on the church’s property to make way for Lake Anna, according to documents obtained by the society. At least some of the graves were unmarked.
Coughlan and Patten voiced concern about the project’s impact on the county’s historic resources and the possibility that unmarked graves could be on the property, both from the reinterments in the ‘70s and the antebellum era when enslaved laborers were often buried in graves that weren’t marked.
In an email to Engage Louisa last September, Coughlan said that the society had communicated its concerns to Louisa County and a team conducting an archaeological assessment of the site. Patten said in an email that until a comprehensive archeological assessment was completed and ground penetrating radar was used to identify gravesites, the community wouldn’t know what lies beneath the soil.
Patten initially expressed her concerns about the campus in comments to the board at its September 18 meeting though she didn’t identify herself as an employee of the society and said she was representing Serenity Solidarity, a group focused on building collective living spaces and doing community service.
Patten told the board that she was saddened by the idea of data centers on the property, referencing its significance in the county’s African American history and the unmarked graves in the area.
“I really hope you don’t build this data center on the historically significant land in Laurel Hill,” she said.
In a subsequent email to Engage Louisa, Patten said that the opinions she expressed at the meeting were her own and didn’t “reflect any stance of the Historical Society.”
As part of AWS’s submission to the Army Corps of Engineers, R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates conducted a Phase I archeological assessment on the property and a Phase II evaluation on a portion of the site around the ruins of Laurel Hill. Neither study mentions the presence of graves.
McCotter, who represents the area, told Engage Louisa that while he doesn’t know the details of archeological work conducted on the property, he’s aware that “there was a search for historically significant material and human remains.”
“From what I understood, nothing was found that would change the project,” he said.
While the site’s history hasn’t halted AWS’s plans, the archeological team determined that the remnants of Laurel Hill could be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places because of their connection to the Garland sisters and antebellum history. The team recommended undertaking “Phase III archeological data recovery” to mitigate adverse effects. A Phase III data recovery generally refers to extensive archeological investigation including excavation, testing, mapping and analysis of materials found at the site.
A preliminary site plan submitted to the county in early February as part of the first phase of the campus’ development identifies a plot near the center of the property that appears to cover several acres as an “archeologically significant area.”
Jones said that the society’s decision to speak up about the Lake Anna site didn’t factor into her decision about its funding, but she said she couldn’t speak for other board members. She added that she’d like to see the society get more money and believes that it’s the group’s job to protect the county’s historic resources.
Adams didn’t directly answer when asked whether the society weighing in on the LATC played into he and Williams’ recommendation to defund the group. He instead emphasized the importance of economic development and said that there are safeguards in place to protect the community as AWS develops its campuses.
“I’m very pleased that we’ve gotten that investment. We want to make sure that those projects move forward, and those projects have the impact that we believe that they will have on the county. There are multiple regulations and safeguards in place [to protect historic resources],” Adams said. “These types of investments will drive revenue to the county [enabling us] to look at funding requests from outside agencies and, hopefully, in the future be able to fulfill the requests that we get.”
When asked if she thought the society’s public involvement in AWS’s plans factored into the board’s decision, Coughlan said she hoped not and noted that the society had provided information to all parties including the archeological team, AWS, Louisa County, the Army Corps, and Laurel Hill Baptist Church.
“Our hope was and still is to provide all parties with the most accurate and in-depth historical information to assist with development plans. We have urged the developers to take a cautious and considerate approach to further progress at the site,” Coughlan said. “We believe that any successful outcome will be reached through meaningful dialogue with the descendant community and other community organizations such as Laurel Hill Baptist Church.”
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