By Heather Michon
Correspondent
Planning Director Todd Fortune told the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors that a new comprehensive plan would take between a year and 18 months to complete.
Often referred to simply as the “Comp Plan,” this detailed policy document guides growth and development within a locality by defining the community’s preferences on land use, housing, transportation, and other issues. Under Virginia law, the Comp Plan must be reviewed and approved every five years.
Fluvanna’s Comp Plan was scheduled for an update in 2020, and committees had completed significant amounts of work. However, COVID and other factors meant that the final product was never completed. To comply with state law, supervisors approved a partial update earlier this year.
The committees will soon be reconstituted, and work will begin on what will likely be the 2025—or perhaps 2026—Comprehensive Plan.
At their meeting on Wednesday evening (Nov. 6), Fortune assured supervisors that the public would have the opportunity to share their views on growth in Fluvanna County.
Dates have not yet been finalized, but he said five community meetings would be held from late January to early February, one in each voting district. At least two would be on Saturdays.
“You get a lot more bang for your buck if you do community meetings first and then use that input,” he said.
Surveys
To improve participation rates, the county is exploring third-party vendors to conduct the annual satisfaction survey of county staff.
The county has previously used a simple Google form for the survey, and while it is technically anonymous, many staff members have been reluctant to participate due to concerns that their superiors will be able to figure out who they are.
“The survey we’ve done in-house is anonymous, but we are a small group of people, and you can probably tell even when you’re just reading it on paper,” said Deputy Administrator Kelly Harris.
To remove this barrier, Harris has looked at several companies that conduct employee surveys, analyze and anonymize the data, and return it to the county with suggestions on improving employee satisfaction and retention.
While the price could run anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year, if it helps retain staff, it could save money over the long run by reducing the need to hire and train new employees.
Legislative agenda
With a new session of the General Assembly on the horizon, supervisors approved the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission’s 2025 Legislative Agenda.
David Blount, Director of Legislative Services for TJPDC, gave a presentation on what his organization would be lobbying for during the upcoming session.
Chief among the priorities for the five-county area within the TJPDC is funding for public education, land use, and growth management initiatives, and budget and funding for the localities.
Supervisor Tim Hodge (Palmyra) urged Blount to press for changes in protected funding under the Children’s Services Act (CSA), the state program designed to help at-risk children and their families navigate educational and social services programs.
Funding for the CSA comes from both the state and the locality, but Hodge argued that the funding rates “haven’t been updated in a long time, and in this locality, we tend to burn through the protected funding pretty quick.”
As a result, CSA staff is forced to decide whether the individual will lose services or if the locality can pick up the costs for the rest of the year. This can also impact if new cases are picked up once the funding runs low.
But in other localities, there might be a surplus of funds. “Why can’t that money be used in a locality with greater needs?” he asked. By creating a pool of funding, once a locality exhausts its money, it could request reimbursement from that pool.
Blount agreed to add the request to the agenda, and the motion passed 5-0.
Treasurer’s office
Treasurer Debbie Rittenhouse asked for approval to change the classifications of several of her employees to reflect new responsibilities or promotions within the department.
These changes would put the employees in new pay bands, and her request included retroactive pay increases for three employees going back to the start of the fiscal year in July. The lump-sum payments would range from $3,462 to $5,399 and would be taken from the supervisors’ Contingency Fund.
Chair Chris Fairchild (Cunningham) initially wanted to defer the decision. “I’m not saying I’m against it; I just feel like there’s more to this, and I haven’t had a chance in the last couple of days, with the election being yesterday, to dig into as much as I’d like to.”
However, most members agreed with Rittenhouse’s arguments, and each motion passed on a 5-0 vote.
