Albemarle Supervisors briefed on strategic plan report, county performance

Whereas a Comprehensive Plan is a locality’s general guide for policy, a strategic plan directs activities for staff. Albemarle County Supervisors adopted strategic plan goals in October 2022 and for the second time in a row the elected officials have received a yearly progress update.

“We want to make sure as a local government that we are measuring and that we are transparent and communicating our progress and performance,” said Kristy Shifflet, chief operating officer in Albemarle County.

Those measures culminate in the SPEAR report which stands for Strategic Plan Execution and Analysis Review. The full report is now available here for your review.

There are metrics for all six of the strategic plan goals. For instance, the first covers public safety.

• There is a target that 90 percent of fire and rescue calls in the rural area be responded to within 21 minutes. The result for FY2025 is 95 percent.
• There is a target that 90 percent of fire and rescue calls in the development area be responded to within 8 minutes. This has a “needs attention” flag because the FY2025 result is 72 percent.
• For police services, there is a target that 100 percent of priority one calls in the rural area be responded to within 10 minutes. The FY2025 result is 49 percent.
• The target for the development areas is for all police priority 1 calls to be within a five minute response. The result for FY2025 is 72 percent.

“In the urban areas, Priority one calls can be complex in nature and that means that a responding officer may need to come from another beat, thus increasing that travel time,” Shifflett said. “These results that are before you were not unexpected and we have begun laying the groundwork to strengthen these essential services.”

Shifflett pointed out that one reason Supervisors agreed to increase the real property tax rate in 2025 was to increase funding for public safety officers. A comprehensive staffing policy is being developed for both fire/rescue and the police department and will be presented to the Board in the fall.

Goal 2 is “Resilient, Equitable, and Engaged Community” and that includes climate action. The SPEAR report notes that staff has fallen “slightly behind” with 34 actions initiated and 75 actions completed.

Goal 3 is “Infrastructure and Placemaking” and staff are on track toward broadband deployment and on reporting transportation information to the Board of Supervisors. However, the county did not reach an FY2025 target to clean and assess 40 percent of the county’s urban drainage infrastructure. The actual result is 29 percent.

Goal 4 is “Quality of Life” and that covers housing, trails, and jobs.

• The FY2025 target was to have a total of 5,600 new affordable housing units built or added to the development pipeline since 2019 and the result as of June 30, 2025 is 5,353. That’s a “slightly behind.”
• Albemarle had a target to build eight miles of new multi-use trails and the result was 9.75 miles. That’s an “on track.”
• Albemarle also tracked a seven percent growth in jobs in the life sciences sector and a 1.6 percent growth in the defense sector. The target for both was each two percent growth.

Goal 5 is “Education and Learning” but no metrics were highlighted in the presentation but Shifflett hit some of the highlights.

“Albemarle County broke ground February 7, 2025 on the first new elementary school since 2002,” Shifflett said. “At 72,500 square feet, the new Mountain View Upper Elementary School will accommodate up to 500 students, alleviating current and future overcrowding.”

Albemarle County Public Schools broke ground a few weeks later on the Albemarle County Career Exploration Academy, the second of two high school centers. This is on the Lambs Lane campus near Albemarle High School.

Goal 6 is “Workforce and Customer Service” with items related to county management. One highlight this year was the transition to the new Civic Access system for anyone who wants to keep track on land use applications.

“As part of our five year system modernization effort, the county identified the need to replace this 20 year old community development system and it was launched in January of 2025,” Shifflett said. “It is cloud hosted to meet the changing needs of the department, integrating the areas of planning, zoning, engineering, building inspections and code enforcement.”

How likely are you to read the report? What most interests you?

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