This week in county government; Supervisors set for busy Monday; Early voting underway for November 8 election
Engage Louisa is a community newsletter aimed at keeping folks informed about Louisa County government. It’s free, non-partisan, and powered by volunteers. 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, October 3 through October 8
Monday, October 3
Louisa County Board of Supervisors, budget work session, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., 4 pm. (livestream)
Louisa County Board of Supervisors, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., 6 pm. (meeting materials, livestream) The board will convene in closed session at 5 pm.
Wednesday, October 5
Comprehensive Plan Work Group, Executive Board Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 2:30 pm.
Louisa County School Board, Central Office Administration Building, 953 Davis Highway, Mineral, 7 pm. (agenda) A link to livestream the meeting is available on the agenda.
Thursday, October 6
Industrial Development Authority, Public Meeting Room, Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, 8:30 am.
Other meetings:
Thursday, October 6
Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, The Water Street Center, 407 E. Water Street, Charlottesville, 7 pm. (meeting materials) A link to watch/participate virtually is included in the meeting materials.
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.
Supervisors set for busy Monday
The Louisa County Board of Supervisors on Monday will convene for a pair of meetings. At 4 pm, supervisors will hold an hour-long budget work session focused on its Capital Improvement Plan. The preliminary CIP for FY24 and FY25 includes nearly $60 million in capital requests with much of that coming from Louisa County Public Schools. The division is requesting more than $15 million for an addition to Louisa County Middle School and more than $14 million for a Career and Technical Education Center.
Following the work session, the board will hold its regular bimonthly meeting with closed session starting at 5 pm and the public portion of the meeting kicking off at 6 pm. Check out the agenda highlights below.
Supervisors to hold public hearing on appropriation of second round of ARPA funds: Supervisors will appropriate $3.65 million in federal pandemic relief funds that the county received courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act. Because the appropriation exceeds one percent of the county budget, it requires a public hearing.
According to the proposed resolution, supervisors plan to spend the money on “building renovation projects.” The meeting materials don’t include any additional information about the expenditure.
The county received $7.3 million in Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery funding from ARPA in two tranches with the first arriving last year and the second arriving this year. Of the first $3.65 million payment, the county used about $2 million to purchase the former Virginia Community Bank headquarters in the Louisa County Industrial Air Park and a 4-acre adjoining lot. The county allocated the bulk of the remaining money to renovate the building and to remodel part of the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office.
The county’s Human Services Department, currently located in cramped quarters on McDonald Street in the Town of Louisa, plans to move to the former bank building once renovations are complete. Supervisors recently approved a contract with BlueScope Construction for initial renovations with Loudin Building Systems, a Louisa-based company, acting as the primary subcontractor. Enhancements are expected to include new carpet, paint, LED lights, security improvements, a camera system, and layout changes to create a lobby, interview rooms, and public restrooms, among other upgrades.
The county used federal funds from the CARES Act, a pandemic relief package passed in 2020, to move its Fire and EMS offices out of the County Office Building to a new home just down the street. That move freed up additional space for the Sheriff’s Office that also requires renovation.
Other county and state agencies, including the Louisa County Health Department and Registrar’s Office, are in need of new homes. The Louisa Medical Center, just across Woolfolk Avenue from the County Office Building, reverted to county ownership in 2019 and could provide space for those services. The health department has operated out of mobile units adjacent to the Betty Queen Center for about a decade while the registrar occupies a small space in the County Office Building.
Supervisors to consider 2023 legislative platform: Supervisors will adopt their legislative platform for the 2023 General Assembly session ahead of their annual meeting with Louisa County’s representatives in Richmond: Delegate John McGuire (R-56) and Senators Bryce Reeves (R-17) and Mark Peake (R-22). County officials haven’t formally announced a date for the meeting, but County Administrator Christian Goodwin said at the board’s September 6 meeting he expects it will take place later this month. The upcoming General Assembly session kicks off in early January and spans just 46 days.
According to a draft platform included in the meeting materials, supervisors’ priorities include some familiar issues as well as new legislative terrain related to nuclear energy and the resilience and reliability of the electric grid.
In early January, Winter Storm Frida dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of Louisa County, toppling trees that blocked roads and downed power lines. At the height of the storm, 98 percent the county’s electric meters lacked power and some residents didn’t see their electricity restored for more than a week. The fallout from Frida prompted supervisors to include in their legislative agenda a request for improvements to the power grid.
Specifically, the county asks lawmakers to advance legislation that supports “undergrounding,” meaning placing overhead power lines underground. The draft platforms notes that while undergrounding is expensive and can lead to higher bills for ratepayers, placing even a small portion of overhead lines underground could significantly increase grid resilience.
The draft points to Dominion Energy’s claim that undergrounding just 20 percent of electric lines would increase restoration speeds by 50 percent at 2 to 3 percent of the cost of full undergrounding.
Critics have argued that Dominion overestimates the benefits and underestimates the cost of undergrounding, noting that the monopoly utility reaps much of its profit from capital projects. The State Corporation Commission, which plays a key role in regulating the utility and protecting ratepayers, has pushed back against some of Dominion’s grid modernization plans in the past several years, specifically extensive undergrounding, questioning its cost and impact.
In a second priority related to the energy sector, supervisors express support for the study and promotion of small modular nuclear reactors (SMR), an emerging technology that some say could transform nuclear generation and bring new economic development opportunities to the commonwealth. Unlike traditional reactors, which are custom-built on-site and cost billions of dollars, SMRs are fabricated in factories and far cheaper to assemble.
The reactors, still years away from commercial viability, are designed to produce up to 300 MW of power, about a third of the production capacity of one of the twin reactors currently operating at Dominion’s North Anna Nuclear Power Station. Proponents tout the technology as safe, cost effective, and scalable, contending that SMRs could play a key role in Virginia’s transition to a carbon-free grid by 2050.
Last session, the General Assembly passed House Bill 894, carried by Republican Del. Terry Kilgore, which requires the Department of Energy, in cooperation with the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority, to convene a stakeholder group to identify strategies and public policies for promoting the development of advanced small modular reactors in the commonwealth.
The bill also requires the State Corporation Commission to develop a program to encourage and expedite infrastructure investments, by Dominion Energy Virginia or American Electric Power, in industrial sites determined to be relevant and in high demand by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. The supervisors’ draft platform states the county’s support for the legislation.
The draft platform hits on other policy goals included on previous legislative agendas. They include raising the state’s share of operating costs for regional jails, increasing investment in broadband, garnering state resources to address Harmful Algal Blooms at Lake Anna, providing counties the same opportunities to raise revenue as cities, and allowing flexibility in how localities use state funding to compensate employees.
During the biennial budget cycle last spring, the state enjoyed record revenue that translated into progress on a few of these priorities. The state increased from $12 to $15 the per diem rates for state-responsible inmates in regional jails and allotted $1 million to develop a Lake Anna-specific HAB mitigation plan.
This year, the county supports an additional hike in state support for regional jails “to offset future surprises and fairly share future cost increases” and requests ongoing support to address Harmful Algal Blooms.
The blooms, comprised of toxin-producing cyanobacteria that can be detrimental to human health, prompted the Virginia Department of Health to issue no swim advisories for parts of Lake Anna in each of the last five summers. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality recently included the lake on its list of impaired waterways because of the blooms.
Thanks to an influx of federal pandemic relief from the American Rescue Plan Act, the General Assembly, in 2021, made a historic investment in rural broadband, allocating about $700 million to the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative to provide grants for broadband expansion in unserved areas. Louisa County, via its partnership with Firefly Fiber Broadband, is directly benefiting from more than $20 million in VATI funds. Firefly has pledged to deliver fiber access to every unserved resident in Louisa by 2025. Supervisors committed $9 million in local funds toward the effort.
Per the draft platform, the county supports state and federal efforts to offset further funding requirements and to bolster cooperative efforts among utility providers and other entities associated with broadband deployment.
Supervisors to hold public hearing on building permit extension for utility-scale solar facility: A backlog of applications for renewable energy projects looking to connect to the power grid is slowing the development of utility-scale solar installations across the eastern United States including in Louisa County.
PJM, the entity that oversees the movement of wholesale electricity in Virginia and all or part of 12 other states, has been unable to keep pace with the crush of requests for interconnection agreements, particularly from the renewable energy sector. In early September, the organization had 2,500 generation projects in its interconnection queue with a total capacity of 225,000 MW, according to Virginia Mercury.
The application bottleneck is impacting at least two local projects already approved by the Louisa County Board of Supervisors. The delays prompted the projects’ developer to request revisions to their Conditional Use Permits to allow more time before construction begins.
Supervisors will hold a public hearing and consider Aura Power Development, LLC’s request to amend a CUP, approved in 2021, that cleared the way for an up to 94 MW solar array on parts of a 448-acre tract off Chopping Road (Route 623) near the Town of Mineral. The amendment would extend the deadline to obtain a building permit for the solar facility for five years, from November 22, 2026 to November 22, 2031, and provide the opportunity for future extensions. The tract is owned by Louisa District Supervisor Eric Purcell and his father, Charles, via Mine & Hemmer, LLC.
Charles Purcell told the Planning Commission that, due to the PJM backlog, Aura hasn’t entered into an interconnection agreement, impeding the project’s ability to move forward. He said that PJM recently reorganized the way it processes applications and it’s unclear when Mine & Hemmer will obtain the agreement.
In July, supervisors approved an amendment to a CUP for a companion project under development by Aura that also extended the building permit deadline by five years. That project, the up to 150 MW Fisher Chewning facility, is slated for construction on about 800 acres of a 1368-acre tract between Louisa and Mineral, also owned by the Purcells. Eric Purcell abstained from voting on the amendment request.
Board to hold public hearings on renewal of Shelton’s Mill AFD, addition to South Anna AFD: Supervisors will hold a pair of public hearings focused on agricultural/forestal districts, a conservation tool that allows landowners engaged in farming and forestry to voluntarily prohibit development on their property. The districts require review and renewal by the Board of Supervisors every 10 years. Adding land to or removing land from the districts also requires county approval.
In one hearing, supervisors will consider renewing the Shelton’s Mill AFD. Created in 1992, the district encompasses seven parcels covering about 277 acres along Holly Grove Drive (Route 610), Owens Creek Road (Route 663), and Gammon Town Road (Route 664) in southeastern Louisa County.
In the other hearing, the board will consider Anthony and Sarah McLoughlin’s request to add two parcels (56-73, 56-74), totaling 40 acres, to the South Anna AFD. The forested properties are located on the southeast side of Courthouse Road (Route 208) just south of Holly Springs Drive (Route 800).
The South Anna AFD currently covers more than 40 parcels and over 500 acres in south-central Louisa County.
Both the Planning Commission and the Ag/Forestal and Rural Preservation Committee unanimously recommended approving the renewal and addition.
Supervisors to discuss Hamilton Road bridge, buoy application fee: The board’s agenda includes two discussion items: “Hamilton Road Bridge” and “Buoy Application Fee.”
According to an email from VDOT Residency Administrator Scott Thornton to Green Springs District Supervisor Rachel Jones, an aging bridge on Hamilton Road in the Green Springs National Historic Landmark District has been maintained by VDOT “to keep it in a serviceable condition for the traveling public,” but “at some point in the future the rate of decay will outpace the maintenance.”
Thornton points to two potential paths forward for replacing the bridge or otherwise addressing its issues. He writes that the Culpeper District office could look at installing a one-lane pony truss bridge, noting that the structure would adequately accommodate the low traffic volume in the area and provide enough width for emergency vehicles and other uses. Acquiring the necessary funding to replace the bridge and completing its construction could take up to three years, according to Thornton.
Alternatively, Thornton writes that the county could apply for funding via VDOT’s State of Good Repair program, which rehabilitates, reconstructs, or replaces bridges in poor condition or otherwise structurally deficient.
Before moving forward, Thornton requests that county officials, residents, and VDOT “come to an agreement on the purpose and need for the area and have an idea of what would be acceptable for all parties.”
The meeting materials don’t include any information about the buoy application fee discussion.
Supervisors to consider Blue Ridge Shores MOA: Supervisors will consider approving a Memorandum of Understanding between Louisa County and the Blue Ridge Shores Property Owners Association in which the county agrees to apply for a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the POA’s behalf.
According to the proposed resolution, the Blue Ridge Shores POA is preparing to replace its dam, spillway, and a bridge at an estimated cost of $4.4 million. The POA could obtain 75 percent of the funding for the project via a FEMA grant, but the grant requires a local government entity to apply for the money.
Under the MOA, Louisa County would agree to co-sponsor the grant application on the condition that it does not incur any financial responsibility for the project.
Supervisors to hear four presentations: Supervisors will hear four presentations during Monday night’s meeting.
J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College President Paula Pando will update the board on activities at the college including Louisa County-specific information and the Louisa Arts Center will brief supervisors on its events, community outreach, and fundraising efforts. The county allotted about $27,500 to J. Sargeant Reynolds and $60,000 to the arts center in its Fiscal Year 2023 budget.
The board will also hear presentations from the Louisa County 4-H Program and BrightSuite, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dominion Energy that facilitates residential installation of solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations via a network of certified installers. The company also offers solar education and home assessments.
Early voting underway for Nov. 8 election
Early voting for the November 8 election began September 23 and, in Louisa County, it’s off to a brisk start.
In the first five days, 328 people cast ballots in person at the Louisa County Registrar’s Office, a 26 percent increase from 2021, according to Louisa County Electoral Board Chair Curtis Haymore. The 45-day early voting period runs through November 5.
“More people are taking advantage of the flexibility that early voting offers this year compared to last year,” Haymore said in an email Friday morning. “We are excited that both parties are encouraging this option for voters.”
Haymore said that the registrar’s office, in cooperation with Louisa County, has promoted early voting in several ways including via the county’s website, flyers inserted with real estate tax bills, and newspaper ads.
Aside from in-person voters, the registrar has received 384 mail-in ballots as of Friday morning, Haymore said.
“Together with early voting, the result is that over 140 voters a day are taking advantage of being able to vote at their convenience,” he said.
Most Louisa voters will see only one contest on their ballot this fall: the 5th District Congressional race between Republican incumbent Bob Good and his Democratic challenger Josh Throneburg. The once-a-decade redistricting process moved Louisa from the 7th Congressional District, its home for the past two decades, to the newly drawn 5th.
Beyond the congressional race, residents in the Mineral District will choose their representative on the Louisa County School Board in a special election and voters in the Towns of Louisa and Mineral will elect a mayor and members of town council. This year marks a shift for the towns’ general elections, which were previously held in May.
In another change, many voters will cast their ballots at new polling locations this November as local voting districts, like those at the state and federal level, were reconfigured as part of the redistricting process.
The Virginia Department of Elections sent mailers to every registered voter in the county notifying them of their legislative districts and polling locations.
The registrar’s office, located in the Louisa County Office Building, 1 Woolfolk Ave., Louisa, is open for early voting Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm and Saturdays, October 29 and November 5 from 9 am to 5 pm. The office is open until 7 pm on Wednesdays, October 26 and November 2. It’s closed on Monday, October 10 in observance of a federal holiday.
Voters can apply for a mail-in ballot on the Virginia Department of Elections website or get an application from the registrar. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Friday, October 28 at 5 pm. Ballots can be returned by mail, dropped off in a secure drop box at the County Office Building or at a polling location on Election Day.
For voters who choose to cast their ballot on Election Day—Tuesday, November 8—polling places across Louisa County are open from 6 am to 7 pm.
Read Engage Louisa’s election preview here. View Louisa County’s sample ballots here. Check out the county’s new precinct map here. Register to vote, check your registration status, find your polling location or request a mail-in ballot here. Questions about voting? Call the registrar’s office at 540-967-3427.
Click here for contact information for the Louisa County Board of Supervisors.
Find agendas and minutes from previous Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings as well as archived recordings here.
Click here for contact information for the Louisa County School Board.
Click here for minutes and agendas for School Board meetings.
Click here to access past editions of Engage Louisa.