Coraggio Consulting
Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors Meeting - May 28, 2025, Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Place: Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 4h 29m (video)
Official meeting video (CivicClerk): https://chesterfieldcova.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1231/media
Official agenda (CivicClerk): https://chesterfieldcova.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=2173,plainText=false)
Official minutes (CivicClerk): https://chesterfieldcova.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=3604,plainText=false)

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-24. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:02:50] - Good afternoon and welcome to the afternoon session of the May 28th Board of Supervisors meeting. Madam Clerk. - Mr. Chair, the first item on the agenda is approval of minutes for the April 23rd meeting. - Can we get a motion? - So moved. - Second.

[00:03:06] - All in favor? - Aye. - Item two, request to postpone agenda items and additions, deletions, or changes in the order of presentation. Staff has no requests. Item three, Everyday Excellence, Dr. Casey. - Good evening members of the board the public that's here and the public that is watching us. As we start every meeting with everyday excellence, today is no exception. The only exception is we're doing it a little bit later today and we're doing the public meeting room. But keep the tradition going. It is the Sheriff's annual budget, Sheriff's annual presentation to the board a little bit later.

[00:03:39] So we use that opportunity to have the Sheriff recognize one of his employees. So without further ado, I want to welcome Sheriff Leonard to the podium. Mr. Chairman, member of the board, Dr. Casey.

[00:03:57] Thank you. I'm proud today to introduce Mr. Alex Neese for the Everyday Excellence Award in recognition of his consistent dedication, reliability, and outstanding performance. As a part-time employee, Alex officially conducts numerous mail runs each day to multiple locations throughout the county complex, departments throughout the county, not just the sheriff's office, ensuring that all tasks are completed accurately and with a high degree of punctuality. Despite the demanding nature of his role, Alex consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic and exceptional organizational skills.

[00:04:32] He manages to navigate varying routes, meet tight schedules, and handle unexpected challenges, professionalism, and grace. When Alex is out of the office, even if it's just for a day, his processes, which he clearly has laid out in great detail, to any of all who dare pick up his mailbox, a mailbag, excuse me, enables them to execute his duties without question or concern.

[00:04:56] He executes his duties with precision. Alex's reliability, efficiency, and commitment to excellence truly sets him apart, and we are fortunate to have him here as part of our team, and he does represent us when he walks into all these various departments of the county every day collecting mail. While he may be the resident expert on Avengers and other assorted superheroes, he is certainly our hero. His hard work and dedication embody the spirit of Everyday Excellence Award, and we are thrilled to recognize him for his outstanding contributions.

[00:05:25] Thank you very much.

[00:05:43] Really don't know what to say. Just proud to be a part of the organization and just happy to come in every day and, you know, just help everything run smoother, just what I do.

[00:05:59] Board members, any comments? That's a sign of having a job you enjoy, and that's awesome, and we are so happy to have you and for you to add your smiling face and efficiency to our mail system.

[00:06:15] Lord knows we need one in the United States at Postal Service, but that's beside the point. I won't go off script there. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for choosing to come work for this organization.

[00:06:32] One of the things that I know, and I've known the sheriff for a long time, but it's important to him is customer service and how we provide services to the community, and we're all a big team here, and everybody has a role to play. I tell people I'm just a part-time county employee, truthfully.

[00:06:51] So thank you very much for what you do. Keep up the great work. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I want to say congratulations to you for a job you enjoy. The sheriff does run an outstanding outfit.

[00:07:07] He's certainly taught, I think, in not only the state but the country in what he does. And I want to thank him for all he does to make Chesapeake as special as it is. So thank you both for all you do, and the entire team, all of you all.

[00:07:23] Thank you all for what you do day in and day out. You all appreciate it and highly valued. Thank you. And I'll just, I was touched by what you were saying. I think you kind of have this sense that I'm just doing what is me, and that's what we aspire to, all of us do, to just be doing what just naturally comes.

[00:07:48] and you know that makes you that's that's your superpower and that makes you a superhero thank you wow he beat me to that i was going to ask you who your favorite superhero was and then um well i'm gonna ask you that anyway that's a trick question and anybody who knows anything about comics knows it well i was going to use that to lead into you the superhero for the mail for the sheriff's department so thank you for all that you do um but dr. miller got there first so

[00:08:20] kudos to you and kudos to you for all you do at work thank you uh supervisor schneider uh it's a item four work sessions a sheriff's office annual update no no there's something before that there is yes uh thank you for your segue because delegate coiner and i were just having a nice

[00:08:56] healthy discussion about the u.s postal service and an issue we're dealing with now but i did wanted to ask Delegate Coyner to come up and she has a presentation on behalf of the General Assembly for HARP and I would like the HARP members here to come up

[00:09:14] if it's all right with the board come up front good evening mr. chair members of

[00:09:51] the board it is an honor to be here with you tonight to share House Resolution 808 which was passed in the General Assembly this last session I'll read the Resolution honoring the work of the Chesterfield County Jail Helping Addicts Recover Progressively program. Whereas the Chesterfield County Jail Helping Addicts Recover Progressively program established in March 2016 by Sheriff Carl Leonard is an initiative that helps to address the public health concern of substance use disorder and provide essential resources and support to individuals within the Chesterfield County Jail. And whereas over the past eight years Chesterfield

[00:10:27] county jail having addicts recover progressively harp serve nearly 3 500 individuals providing rehabilitation and support for people struggling with substance use disorder significantly contributing to their long-term recovery and successful reintegration into the community and whereas harp uses a trauma component care approach incorporating evidence-based practices that emphasize the healing of trauma and the preparation of participants for re-entry into society recognizing the critical need for comprehensive support in the recovery process

[00:10:56] AND WHEREAS HARP UTILIZES INNOVATIVE TREATMENT METHODS SUCH AS TRAUMA TAPPING, ACUPUNCTURE, HAVENING, MEDITATION, MERIDIAN YOGA, AND OTHER HOLISTIC AND SOMATIC RECOVERY TOOLS, DEMONSTRATING A COMMITMENT TO CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE REHABILITATION APPROACHES THAT FOSTER LASTING RECOVERY AND STABILITY FOR PARTICIPANTS.

[00:11:12] And, whereas HARP ensures that individuals continue to receive post-reentry support, connecting them with recovery programs and resources, including assistance from HARP RVA, a nonprofit organization that helps participants successfully transition back into society.

[00:11:29] And, whereas, the success of HARP has been evident in the reduction of recidivism and the creation of a safer and healthier community, focusing on the trauma underlying substance use disorders and providing individuals with the necessary tools for recovery. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Delegates that the Chesterfield County Jail Helping Addicts Recover Progressively program hereby be commended for providing effective rehabilitation and recovery support to individuals with substance use disorders, and be it further resolved that the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to HAARP as an expression of the House of Delegates' admiration for the program's impact on the lives of its participants and the broader community.

[00:12:07] Congratulations to the entire program I wanted to share a few words though beyond this resolution about why the work you all do is so important I know all the members of the board will understand when I say that Most emails that we get are people who need something or something has gone wrong in government And we all as elected representatives try really hard to address those concerns and meet those needs That's our goal in service So it's not every day that we get emails thanking us for something that's gone well even though we know things go really well in our county all day every day so you know one of the programs that you all support is going into our schools

[00:12:46] and helping our young people and I will say especially our middle schoolers understand the things and choices that they make today and the impact they can have on their future and you know I reached out to one of my middle schools about you all going in and providing your program there and they were a little hesitant at first but they trusted me so they said yes and after your program the assistant principal said it was the most impactful powerful program she's ever seen and then that evening i had four separate parents sending me messages to say their children have never come home and shared so much about what was going on in their life and after listening to your

[00:13:25] presentation so kudos to you and i know you also don't get to hear from outside of the people you work with every day sometimes the great things that people respond like those parent phone calls and emails so i thought it was important for you to know the work that you do every day we can see it in the success of individuals who are our neighbors who are able to continue their recovery and receive the supports you provide even after they leave your program you never really leave you're always connected you're either serving or you come back when you need help and that's so important so thanks for what you all do each and every day to keep our community stronger congratulations

[00:14:03] Ms. Snyder, do you have a comment?

[00:14:50] I'd just like to say that Jim and I attended the I Never Thought It'd Be Me presentation that Carrie was talking about at the middle school the other day. And it's a very powerful presentation, and I was so happy to be able to attend it, Carrie.

[00:15:11] And the kids were obviously, I mean, it's hard to get a whole auditorium of kids to pay attention. I think most of them were. And they were engaged, and I don't think that they would ever think to see what they would consider to be prisoners outside of jail and come to talk to them and their normal people and talk about themselves in normal circumstances and how their lives have changed.

[00:15:40] And so if anyone ever gets a chance to go, it's an amazing, impactful program. And thank you so much, Carrie, for all that you put into this, because I know it's a very personal, personal thing. So thank you. And I just wanted to echo some of Ms. Snyder's comments.

[00:15:57] The two Kerry Corners statement that the middle school was hesitant, to be honest with you. A lot of the middle schools are hesitant to let the prisoners come into the school.

[00:16:14] But I can assure the schools that they are safe, that the Sheriff's Department is taking every precaution necessary to make sure that they're safe, but that the program is worth it and that you should open your doors to allow this to come into your middle school as well. I ask you to reach out if you're hesitant to talk to the schools that did allow it in so we can get this program in every middle school in Chesterfield County. And again, it's not like just because I think that's another lesson that it's not just because you're a prisoner doesn't mean that you're a danger. And so I think that's a really

[00:16:51] huge lesson also that some people end up in jail for you know circumstances that aren't always having to do with them being a violent or a dangerous person it's you know about mistakes that they've made and having to learn from them so thank you thank you thank you item four work sessions a sheriff's office annual update sheriff leonard mr chairman member of the board dr casey and citizens of chessville county thank you for having me today uh to give you a brief update of

[00:17:25] the Sheriff's Office, primarily the activities in 2024. As you see on the first slide, that's not a key sticking on my keyboard. That's the four C's that Chesterville County Sheriff's Office represents. Corrections, courts, civil process, and community. And I'll spend some time today talking about all three of those, or four of those, but primarily the community, which I think is the biggest, you know, sea we have in our operation. As far as the state of the sheriff's

[00:18:02] office, we maintain full staffing for a large part of 2024. A real envious position to be in with my colleagues and my peers across the Commonwealth. It's very hard to find anybody else who's even near full staffing yet alone at full staffing, which we did maintain for a while in 2024. However, we started to see the departure of deputies to retirement once again, which we were anticipating. While we work hard to get to and maintain full staffing, that full staffing number has always been an arbitrary target, but with the extensive study done by an outside company

[00:18:38] in 2024, the first time we've ever had somebody from the outside come in to see what our footprint really should be, we're able to find the real baseline for what our staffing levels should be today, which I've shared with you a few months ago in an email and a copy of the report. I am working diligently with the state to get the compensation we need, the positions we need through the state comp board. It's not an easy challenge when you go to the state and ask for additional funding or positions, but this primarily falls on them. We also had two major construction

[00:19:13] projects starting to 2024 at both the jail and the courthouses. The jail gate replacements were just completed two weeks ago, and the courthouse construction of the new Sally Port is well underway. Overall, I feel we're in a good position today to continue to deliver to the citizens of Chesterville County the quality customer service that we're accustomed to. Again, the four C's of the Sheriff's Office are correction, courts, civil process, and community. Those are the mainstays of what we do every day. That's our mission set. However, I would like to briefly go over those

[00:19:49] areas today as I feel you all have a pretty good grasp on the operations at the courts and the jail. And it's the fourth C, the community, that I want to really focus on today, which I think gives us the designation of being the Sheriff's Office Plus that Dr. Casey often refers to. I did provide each of you with a copy of our new annual report for 2024, which really goes into detail more about the corrections, civil process, and court aspects of our operations. But briefly on corrections, we had over 8,600 people come through our doors to the jail. That's primarily because of the good

[00:20:26] work of the Chesterfield Police Department, but also with our neighbors, state police, and some other agencies. HAARP continues to have an outstanding recidivism rate of 18% or 23% on two independent studies we've had done, while the national average remains around 70%.

[00:20:43] And again, I have to highlight that every time somebody does not come back into our jail, that's a savings of $68,000 a year to the citizens and results in millions of dollars of savings to the taxpayers year after year. We maintained a full capacity of 350 inmates at our jail, with the overflow going to Riverside, where we have anywhere from 400 to 500 every day.

[00:21:07] In 2024, almost 10,000 inmates were seen as sick call. 9,321 prescriptions were filled. 713 inmates were seen by mental health. And 700 patients received MAT or MOUD, medically-assisted treatment.

[00:21:23] Over 1,200 hours of nursing time in 2024. In 2024, we had over 337 visitors to our three campuses. This is still far below pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, we were running about 600,000 visitors to our three courthouses every year. This continues to increase, but nowhere near the pre-pandemic numbers we've seen.

[00:21:48] Civil process. The fastest growing service demand area and organization is civil process with the number of apartment complexes, multi-home units being built, the number of evictions we're seeing, the number of paper services we're seeing has really increased. As you can see up here, there were 83,000 papers served in 2024 and over a thousand evictions in Chesterfield County. I do work with social services and other areas of the county to minimize the impact on citizens where we do these evictions as much as we can.

[00:22:27] In addition to these primary duties, civil process also demonstrates the plus factor for our organization. In 2024, they stopped over 296 vehicles for traffic infractions and issued 54 tickets. It doesn't seem like a lot, but that's not their primary job function, but does add to the overall safety of our community.

[00:22:46] They handled 270 disabled vehicle incidents and took 264 calls for service where police units were otherwise unavailable because they were busy, and we were the primary responding officer to handle calls from ECC. Community is where we really stand apart, and that's our plus factor. Customer service, as you mentioned, Supervisor Carroll, is an important quality of Chessville Sheriff's Office, and in all areas, we try to surpass customer expectations for service. These next several slides will depict mission sets that we are not required to do, but we do to help stakeholders, community partners,

[00:23:22] and citizens with their everyday activities. This is a new initiative we just took late of 2024. I know you're out there, you listen to the police radio at times. One of the things we noticed was the wait time from our neighboring jurisdictions to pick up inmates or prisoners that only have warrants out of their jurisdiction has increased. In other words, Chesterfield police officers encounter somebody, they run them in a system, they see they have only a warrant out of Henrico or only a warrant out of Richmond, no local charges in Chesterfield. The normal process is to go to the county line, whatever jurisdiction that person has the warrants in,

[00:24:01] turn that person over to that jurisdiction. These waits have gone up to an hour to two hours of a police officer just waiting in a parking lot for another jurisdiction to come by and take their prisoner. So we decided in October we were going to change that process I got with Chief Carpenter and said legally we're allowed to bring those inmates to any jail in Virginia. Bring them to my jail, process them here, get your officers back on the road right away. So as you can see in just the first three months of doing this we had 31 non-Chestfield warrants brought to our jail, 25 in November and 16 in December. These are all cases where the police officer gets back on the

[00:24:38] road to serve the citizens of Chesfield much quicker than having to wait for those neighboring jurisdictions. We do a lot of mutual aid. Our biggest two mutual aids are with Powtan and with Colonial Heights as far as it comes to HAARP. We have an open relationship with both the Commonwealth Attorney and judges in both of these jurisdictions where they often call us and understand this when a Commonwealth Attorney or a judge calls you to ask you to put somebody in HAARP. It's not the defense attorney. It's somebody on the other side of the table, the prosecuting side. But they call us on a regular basis because they identify people who they think would best fit in HAARP

[00:25:14] and best benefit from it. We always accommodate them on those requests. We have a number of folks from Powtan or Amelia in our HAARP program today. We do this at no cost to those jurisdictions whatsoever. Safe Exchange Zone continues to be probably our biggest asset to our community.

[00:25:34] It could be used for many reasons, and the potential is really limitless. Child custody exchanges are the number one use we see today. But we also have the use of it for restitution payments, online purchases from Facebook, Marketplace, Craigslist, or other places, a meeting place for blind dates and online dating services, believe it or not, and any personal sales with unknown purchasers.

[00:25:58] During 2024, the Safe Exchange Zone was utilized 1,477 times for custody exchanges alone. to your discussion earlier. I know Chairman Ingle and Supervisor Schneider were at the school last Friday. The I Never Thought It Would Be Me program is an absolute incredible program that we take into middle and high schools in our county. It's an award-winning program itself. Heart program participants teach students about mental health stress, the teenage brain, substance use, addiction,

[00:26:34] the dangers of alcohol, marijuana, fentanyl, and what it is on the street, and the importance of Narcan and dopamine, for instance. We would like to get in more schools, as you mentioned. Quite honestly, we have the door shut on us at a lot of schools. Some schools can't have us enough. Some schools won't let us through the front door at all. Every time we do this, and I know Kerry can attest to this, the response from the students is overwhelming. And we've had a number of students come forward with their own issues, whether it's personal addiction or addiction in the family, Seeking resources and help, which we are able to provide.

[00:27:13] This is a unique one for us. Sheriff, have you talked with the school board members? Talk to them about encouraging the other schools within each district that may be hesitant to entertain? I've invited them to this event at various schools.

[00:27:32] We haven't had any attended yet. I haven't talked to them specifically about the program at hand. We can try to do better at the beginning of next school year, trying to get the word out. There is still a huge stigma with some schools of having a prisoner come through the front door or even back door.

[00:27:49] It's frustrating because the program is very well tailored. It's very safe. All the participants are handpicked for their ability to not only present the program, but because we know they're very low risk. But there's still a huge stigma at some schools to even let them through the front door.

[00:28:06] Anything I can do to help? Let me know. Mr. Chair, I learned about this from the sheriff just recently as well, And it is on my task list to, next time I sit down with Dr. Murray, you know, from a centralized perspective, there shouldn't be variabilities in many things the schools do amongst the principals.

[00:28:25] And this is one of them that's important to all of us. So I'll convey that message directly to him, and we'll see what goes from there. I was going to say the same thing. I think Mr. or Dr. Murray would probably be much more receptive to doing this than our past superintendent.

[00:28:45] It just is a, I think that that might, so that's a good in way. And I will talk to my member also for the school board. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. So again, talking about the plus factor for the sheriff's office, taking trauma tapping out of the jail over to Branden Mill Woods seems pretty strange, but you got to understand that older adults face significant mental health challenges, including chronic pain, depression, anxiety, grief, and stress related to aging and loss of independence.

[00:29:17] The residents were so excited to learn about the practical tools like tapping and havening that they could help sleep better the nights they had this. It reduced anxiety. It helped them manage pain without relying solely on medication that often come with unwanted side effects. Many of these participants continue to use these tools regularly and frequently ask when Carrie can come back for another session. We also offer a concealed carry and handgun safety course.

[00:29:48] The concealed carry course, we've had 182 people come through the concealed carry course in 1982. I don't know where I'm going with that. 2024, been around for a while. We do charge admission for this, and the admission is to bring canned goods in for the Chessville Food Bank.

[00:30:08] That's all we charge for this. On the outside, you can pay money to go to these courses to get the certificate, which gets you concealed carry permit. We did collect over 2,300 pounds of food for the Chessville Food Bank in 2024. We also offer hunter safety education.

[00:30:27] We've supported the Department of Wildlife Resources with their free in-person hunter safety course for 33 years now. This is a two-night, six-hour course on safety practices in the hunting woods and hunting in woods. The course is taught by deputy staff with assistance from citizen volunteers and local conservation police officers.

[00:30:50] CSO Summer Camp, which I think you're all familiar with, we already have it scheduled for 2025. In 2024, the Sheriff's Office hosted its 7th Annual Summer Camp. The law-themed Summer Day Camp offers young people a fun and healthy week, learning about Virginia's laws, building positive relationships with law enforcement.

[00:31:07] The CSO Summer Camp is a one-week-long event. It's totally free to the families, and it includes breakfast, lunch, and transportation daily to and from Pocahontas State Park. Participants have daily interactions with sworn deputy sheriffs who serve as team leaders and coordinators of the camp.

[00:31:26] Volunteer opportunities are available for past participants who may have aged out of eligibility for the camp. Another one we contribute to it a lot is the Christmas Mother Program. Each year, the Chesterfield County Sheriff's Office Jail workforce staff and inmates are excited to assist the Chesterfield Colonial Heights Christmas Mother Program in achieving their mission of providing assistance to our community in the form of new toys, books, clothing, food gift cards, and other things for qualifying children.

[00:31:55] Workforce inmates assist in the setup, delivery of gifts, and cleanup following the distribution events. This is an event they look forward to every year in helping their fellow citizens. And I know the Christmas Mother has always been very, very appreciative of our efforts with them. Chester County Fair is another one we're heavily involved with.

[00:32:14] Inmates from our workforce program as well as our weekender program help clean up the fairgrounds prior to the fair coming into town. And again, after it's over, as you can imagine, after the fair leaves, there is a lot of debris left behind. We also participate with the Ruler Law Program.

[00:32:32] We do this downtown at the Supreme Court of Virginia with Justice Cleo Powell and also locally at CTC on Hull Street with Judge Vanessa Jones of our juvenile court system. They both hold Ruler Law Programs. Each year, we participate with them to provide over 100 middle and high school students from Richmond and Enrico and Chesterville County.

[00:32:55] They hold mock trials where students are selected to sit as associate justices and help decide the outcome of cases. The students participate in small breakout sessions afterwards where case loss scenarios were given by legal professionals for the students to discuss. In addition to our concealed carry class, we are very active with the Chesville Food Bank.

[00:33:19] We're an average supporter of the food bank and the outreach center. Our family members and staff assist with food distribution on a regular basis and help them with their mission of feeding individuals and families with the Chesville community. We are too driven by the belief that no one should go hungry. Probably Dr. Casey's favorite event is the monthly bingo night at Lucy Core.

[00:33:41] Our role is to assist staff in rounding up residents who wish to play bingo with the sheriff's office. Once everybody is assembled in the mass auditorium at the Lucy Core nursing home, we start the game. We usually have about 20 residents participate, and our role is to pair up with residents, helping them to complete their bingo cards and retrieve their prizes.

[00:34:00] Everyone wins at Lucy Core Bingo. Once the games are complete, we assist staff in taking all residents back to their rooms. In 2024, we had 96 volunteers assist with a bingo for 240 residents who participated. Soccer program is probably one of my proudest programs we have.

[00:34:21] Soccer is the Sheriff's Office Community Connection and Education Representatives. The goal of this program is to create greater transparency and to increase engagement between the Sheriff's Office and the stakeholders in Chesterfield County, our citizens. by providing periodic education, review, and feedback opportunities about hiring, promotions, and policy changes.

[00:34:42] Our pool of candidates are graduates from the Police Citizens Academy and the Chessville Government Citizen Academy, where they actually sit on our processes to hire new deputies and our promotional processes when promoting current deputies, as well as any policy changes we have.

[00:35:00] We also hold youth jail tours at our jail. We do have a lot of participation from local schools for this as part of our community outreach program, and it's geared at keeping youth and young adults on the right path. Chester County deputies provide guided tours of the jail facilities for local youth.

[00:35:18] Tours are designed to expose participants to restrictions of life in the county jail and help dismiss rumors of life in a facility with personal experience designed to help them make the right behavioral and decision-making choices in their own lives. Participants are able to view inmate living conditions, visitation, kitchen, property storage, and daily life at the Chesville County.

[00:35:39] While we normally do this as a class visit, 15 schools in 2024, we also do them for individuals and families and civic groups. Read Across America is another program we proudly participate in every year. Sworn staff members join Salem Church Elementary School students by reading to first through fourth grade classes last year.

[00:36:00] Launched in 1998 by the National Educational Association, Read Across America is the nation's largest celebration of reading. This year's initiative encourages children and teens to read through engaging events, meaningful partnerships, and inclusive book selections that reflect diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

[00:36:22] Trunk Retreat, I probably don't have to say a lot about this. I know you're all familiar about this. I'll just say in 2024, over 3,000 people visited our setup at the fairgrounds, and we handed over 60 pounds of candy out to the youngsters. The Cultural Festival and Community Cup is also something we're very involved with from the onset the first year.

[00:36:47] While unity and having fun was the mission, winning the trophy was also on the line, which we never seem to get close to. But we're proud of the sheriff's office team for playing so hard every year. All done and fun, of course. The main goal is to build relationships and bridges in our communities.

[00:37:03] Hopefully, we'll see everybody out there for this year's event. And I know you're all familiar with our district enhancement workforce teams. This was what we launched, I think, in 2023. And this is where each district has their own workforce team to help you with any concerns you have in your specific areas.

[00:37:24] In 2024, our inmates collected 3,478 bags of litter, which equates to 86,950 pounds of trash. The Chester County Sheriff's Office Workforce Program saved the county $382,000 by supplying inmate labor crews to provide ground maintenance tasks normally completed by paid employees.

[00:37:48] Special Olympics Virginia, we're very involved with the Special Olympics Virginia, as you can imagine. I am the state chair this year for Virginia, and we continue to make this a priority for our fundraising efforts every year, led by Lakeisha Davis, who just received an award from the Special Olympics of Virginia for all the work she does for that cause.

[00:38:08] And we also have an extensive canine program, and behind me and pictured up there is one of them, and that's Harper. But we also have another therapy dog, Graham, and we have three canines for service. one is an EOD explosive gun tracking dog, the other two are for drugs. It's not just for Chesville County, by the way. Ember and Ammer, assisted Henrico PD, Virginia State Police, Richmond, Lynchburg PD, Campbell County Sheriff's Office, VCU PD, Surrey County Sheriff's Office, ATF, Northumberland Sheriff's Office, Petersburg PD, Defense Logistics Agency, and Charles City

[00:38:48] Sheriff's Office and Virginia Department of Corrections in 2024. Myra went to Goochland Sheriff's Office and helped find some weapons out there. Armor was specifically requested by detectives from the Chesterfield Police Department to search for a gun that could not be located after a search warrant was served. Armor found the gun, inserted into a full can of paint.

[00:39:13] On September 25th of last year, Myra, approximately 1240 hours, assisted Special Agent Steve Scully with the DEA in conducting a canine screening of three packages. The packages were located at the DEA office in Henrico County, in connection with an ongoing narcotics investigation with Henrico Police. The search resulted in over 50 pounds of seized contraband. So while the canine program is there for us and for our benefit, it is a very much a regional asset. Another asset that we offer statewide is our specifically trained search and rescue team, which is highly trained to search for

[00:39:51] missing persons, escaped inmates, lost children, dementia patients, suicidal subjects, and others as requested anywhere in Virginia. The team is trained and certified by the Piedmont Search and Rescue Group, which is a member of the Virginia Search and Rescue Council, and operates as a state resource under their memo of understanding with the Department of Emergency Management. It's another free service we offer up to all law enforcement agencies in Virginia. And we also have a UAS, a drone program with the sheriff's office. Running jails has become more complicated

[00:40:28] with the use of drones from the bad side of folks, dropping contraband into open air outdoor recreation areas, anything from drugs to weapons, not in Chesterfield County. And we're going to try to keep a stem on that. But they're an integral part of what we do every day in Chesterfield County, but also an asset to our region. In 2024, we were called out and assisted Chesterville County Police 17 times, as well as Chesterville Fire Department a number of times. We're also very involved with Triad. We partner with them to coordinate crime prevention and safety programs

[00:41:05] for senior citizens to include information on identifying possible scam attempts, which is increasing every day, as you can see. And as I wrap up here, I also want to mention Sandy and Bruce Kozlowski. Sandy and Bruce started this project several years ago. Though tedious at times, it's been rewarding for both of them. Working at the jail results in a lot of wear and tear on our uniforms, causing them to be replaced on a regular basis. With hundreds of deputies working at the jail, this results in a lot of worn and tattered clothing pieces being

[00:41:39] turned in. This is where Sandy and Bruce come in. They take the time to remove all the patches from all the clothing and then sew on just blank squares of cloth to make the items wearable but not identifiable as law enforcement. They then donate the items to the Healing Place and other services that operate in Chesterfield County. This not only extends the utility of clothing, but also ensures a better return on investment of the Chesterfield residents' tax dollars. To date, Bruce and Sandy have replaced and fixed 5,950 pieces of clothing

[00:42:15] that have been donated to special causes. We have a list of other things I could go over, but in the interest of time, I'm not going to go over those. But I will say the biggest plus factor in Chesco County is what you see right here, and that's our public safety organization.

[00:42:33] Sheriff, police, fire, and EMS, and also ECC. I've been in this business now, 1982 is a long time ago, 44 years, and I don't know anywhere in this state or beyond, quite honestly, where the public safety organization has a relationship we have here in Chesco County. And I believe that's probably the biggest plus factor we have, which really leads us to provide the best customer service to all the citizens of Chesterfield.

[00:43:01] Worked very closely with Chief Center, with Chief Carpenter, and with Tommy Tucker over at ECC, and we're all sharing the same mission, doing the same thing for the same reason, our citizens. And with that, I'll just open it up for any questions or comments.

[00:43:17] Board members, any questions or comments? Ms. Snyder. I've got a great team behind me and in the buildings. Thank you for all that you do for the county and all of us as well.

[00:43:36] Your men are always here to walk us out to the parking lot and take care of us and help out where they're needed, and we greatly appreciate it and all the other things that all of you in the front row are doing as well in the jail and helping out with the HART program.

[00:43:56] It's one of the things that sets us apart, I think, and shows that we care about our citizens no matter who they are and that we are trying to do the best we can to help people in the most difficult situations sometimes. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Sheriff I've said it before and I'll say it again you do a great job and your people do a great job and we are very blessed in Chesterfield County to have the leadership that we do in our public safety

[00:44:30] department and the people that we hire and train that are so dedicated to what they do and each person men and women take the opportunity and the time to do the put their best foot forward in whatever capacity they're serving and you know as you said and I you know I traveled all across the country in my capacity with the FOP and we're at best and and it's up to everybody else to try and knock us off because it's the relationship that your department has not just with the fire

[00:45:07] and police but with the community that's the biggest part of anything by far and that's what makes a difference. That's why Chesterwood County is one of the safest communities of its size in the United States of America. Absolutely. So thank you for everything that you do, and I'm always here to support you, and you know that.

[00:45:25] I do appreciate it. Thank you. Well, Sheriff, the work that you do, the work that Kerry does, it's all about when folks come under your charge, it's about dignity, it's about respect, and recognizing that there's an opportunity for growth, growth on all levels, not just psychological, but in ways that seeing themselves as folks that are more than who or what they are when they arrived in your charge.

[00:46:04] You guys do sacred work. We see it every day. Couldn't be more grateful, and just am honored, as we all are, just to be part of that process in supporting you. Thank you for the work you and your team do, because I know that you don't do all of this by yourself, but you do exhibit good leadership to the team that does a great job.

[00:46:30] They represent us well in the community, as all our public safety does. And again, we can't be, that picture says a lot, police, fire, and sheriff. Matter of fact, there was a situation today where the fire marshal helped with the situation that needed to be brought under control.

[00:46:50] So even the fire department helped with the police department in that case. Everybody working together is what keeps the community safe, and we're just so thankful to have you, your team, and all of our public safety. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, and I am fortunate to be on the front and receive all the accolades for all the work my folks do behind the scenes for me.

[00:47:10] But I have to say this as well. You're not just part of this. You're a reason for this. The support I get from this board and Dr. Casey and his staff is unparalleled in our community in Virginia. So as much as the accolades I receive, you all should stand up and receive them as well because you're part of the solution and you've always been very supportive and I'll always be very appreciative of that.

[00:47:33] So thank you to everybody. B, consent agenda highlights. Mr. Smith.

[00:48:05] Just a few things to point out on your agenda for this evening under the consent agenda. So first is setting a request to set a public hearing for June 25th for you all to consider a siting agreement with Herman Energy. This is a siting agreement for a battery storage facility in Midlothian.

[00:48:24] You may recall the property was rezoned earlier this year. This allows us to collect revenue, about $315,000 over the term of the agreement. So a nice add there. A few other financial items. We are this evening asking to appropriate another $230,000 to one of our first projects on the Fall Line Trail in your district, Mr. Engel.

[00:48:47] along Route 1 at Gettings to Dwight. So a nice story there. As well as $6.8 million in state bonus funds for standards of quality-funded instructional positions. That'll fund 6,800 positions, $1,000 bonus each.

[00:49:04] So a nice little add. A VDEM 911 grant in the amount of $358,000, mostly for bonuses for 85 employees over the ECC. And then finally, we are also asking you to award a contract of $2.9 million to rebuild the seven baseball fields out at Rockwood Park.

[00:49:28] So a nice one there. If you've driven to the park recently, you've seen those are currently underway. So that'll include turf, infields, bleachers, dugouts, and some concrete sidewalks. So a few nice projects on the agenda tonight. Mr. Chair, Jesse.

[00:49:51] Just to clarify for the community, because I don't necessarily know that they would understand it from the consent agenda. Number five, the appropriation of state bonus funds for standards of quality funded instructional positions. Those were school employees, correct? Yes. Yeah, I think we need to make that distinction that this was budget money that was set aside by the General Assembly to recognize teachers and other people that have been identified in that particular budget language. Is that correct?

[00:50:20] Yes, sir. Absolutely correct. I think it's important to make that distinction for the community to understand that this is, it's not the county side, it's the school side. Great point, yep, some nice $1,000 for those 6,800 instructional positions. And the ECC ones were from the state as well.

[00:50:35] Correct, correct, yep, VDEM, Department of Virtual Management and Grant. And Mr. Judges, for full disclosure, two of the 6,800 positions, we are the fiscal agent for the Appomattox Regional Governor's School, and I believe there's 100 positions there that are also eligible, so that's included in the 6,800.

[00:50:52] $6,700 for our school positions, $100 for the same eligible positions that are Appomattox Regional Governor's School. Mr. Chair, I just think it was important to make the distinction that these are funds that we are basically passed through from the state government to recognize these employees for what they did.

[00:51:11] They're not coming out of the county budget, but from state funding. Thank you. And I would just add, I come down on the state a lot for unfunded mandates and putting forward bonuses that have matches and in this particular case the state has fully funded this um including all of our support in the classroom so um this is one time that i think the state got it right and i appreciate that this motion approved the consent agenda second oh that's not i think we

[00:51:46] jumped i think did i jump ahead yes you did darn sorry i would turn my motion item five reports

[00:51:53] Good evening and welcome to the evening session of the May 28th Board of Supervisors meeting.

[00:53:17] I verified that all board members have received copies of the comments posted on the online comment portal for considerations on matters before us tonight. These comments are part of the public record and will be attached to the meeting minutes. At this time, I'll ask Dr. Miller to give the invocation.

[00:53:35] Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. for this invocation i'm going to be reading a poem and that poem is a prayer of saint francis and i want to mention that it is in memory of a close friend of ours mary connect who passed away yesterday the poem was a favorite of hers i know that she will be missed by those who love her i need to tell you she was quite a soul lord make me an instrument of your peace where there is hatred

[00:54:12] let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand. To be loved

[00:54:48] as to love for it is in giving that we receive it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life amen we would like to call forward deputy county administrator matt harris to lead the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god

[00:55:27] indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

[00:55:38] Item 9, County Administration Update, Dr. Casey. Good evening, Board. I just have two items under my update. One is for our County Treasurer's Office has once again achieved the Office Accreditation to the Treasurer's Association of Virginia, a program that began in 2012, and Chesterfield has qualified for this designation every year since its inception.

[00:56:04] This high achievement is awarded to those treasurers who follow a high standard in running their offices with regards to timely and monthly bank reconciliations, regular communications with the localities governing body, high customer services and feedback from citizens. In addition, written policies are reviewed during the audit to ensure the office is filing applicable laws, that the collection rates are for a 12-month period, no less than 95% for real estate and 90% for personal property. So I want to extend my congratulations to County Treasurer Rebecca Longacre and her entire staff and prior treasurers as well for their diligent work ethic and professionalism

[00:56:42] to achieve this award year after year. The second one, if Jake Elder is here, I'd like for him to come down to the podium. I just want to send an accolade to him on behalf of the Cheshire County Administration that Jake Elder was selected by Virginia Business Magazine and he's the deputy director for economic development in their inaugural 40 under 40 of recipient program 40 under 40 recognizes exceptional young professionals under 40 years old honorees were selected by the editorial team of Virginia business based upon their professional accomplishments

[00:57:19] community services and commitment to inspiring change and personally I think we've worked him hard enough that I think he's over 40 by now but that's just my personal opinion. But with that said, I know Mr. Carroll also wanted to add on to my accolade for you. Thank you, Dr. Casey. Jake, I have a letter here from you from the office of Governor Youngkin. Dear Mr. Elder, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, congratulations on being named to the Virginia Businesses inaugural 40 under 40 list. This prestigious recognition is a testament to your dedication to excellence in your respective field. Your resilient spirit and

[00:57:58] hard work are an inspiration to your team and peers and your mentorship leaves a lasting impact on emerging leaders. The business community is fortunate to learn from your innovation and expertise. You bring immense pride to the Commonwealth and your extraordinary legacy will be felt for generations to come. First Lady joins me in congratulating you on this well-deserved achievement and wishing you continued success in the future. We are grateful to you for making the Commonwealth a better place to live, work, and raise a family through your service. Thank you strengthening the spirit of Virginia sincerely Governor Glenn and I'm

[00:58:33] presenting on behalf chair members of the board dr. Casey thank you all when people have reached out to congratulate me on this honor the first thing I always say is thank you but I'm so glad and fortunate to be a part of team Chesterfield really look at this as a team award and thank you all for this

[00:59:05] very much nice to be recognized and still not 40 yes item 10 board member reports miss Snyder I believe you up first thank you so less but I think it was last weekend I intended or two weekends ago I attended the Maymont

[00:59:40] Foundation annual gala vintage on the green Maymont kind of holds a special place in my heart I used to be a docent at the house there and give tours of the house and I am now privileged to be on their board and the Maymont is 90% funded by individual donations and so this is their biggest fundraiser of the year and it was a lovely evening out on the green in the middle of Maymont so thank you so that was a great night we raised lots of money

[01:00:16] So yesterday afternoon, we cut the ribbon on the newest Thales Academy in Midlothian. So this is a private school, but it's meant to be more accessible.

[01:00:35] It's $6,000 a year tuition. Right now, they're just doing K through 5, but they also have opportunities for scholarships. They work really hard on raising money to make it accessible to a lot of kids. I think that any time that we can add capacity for K-5 kids, that's an awesome thing, and they seem to have a very progressive, and it's more, I think they call it more classical education system, but the kids were, they have school year-round, so they were kids already in class yesterday, so yeah.

[01:01:14] I went to the Chester, or Chesterfield was recognized at the 27th annual Asian American celebration last weekend for its outstanding and generous contributions to the Asian American community, as well as our dedication to diversity, inclusion, and leadership in Central Virginia.

[01:01:34] I had a great time enjoying wonderful food, cultural dances, and performances, as well as each of the countries represented there had a booth, and this year the theme was what their food their specialty food of their region was and they had amazing beautiful exhibits I wish I had some of the pictures here but they were there was a lady there carving fruits and vegetables and making decorative it was amazing but so it was a great and if you ever get a chance I strongly recommend this it's a great experience Dr. Casey was there with his mom enjoying themselves too

[01:02:16] This young lady here, I happen to have been out to dinner with my husband for my birthday, and the table across from us was celebrating a birthday also. And this young lady and her dad came up to me, and they said, you're Ms. Schneider, the supervisor, aren't you?

[01:02:33] And I said, yes, yes, I am. And she said, well, the dad said, well, she wanted to come over and say hi because she had to write a paper about a local or state elected official, And she wrote about you and she recognized you. And it was just, it was just, just made my heart.

[01:02:51] So I, I, I said, I would definitely, I gave her one of my cards and she's just like, oh my God, my teacher's going to be so happy to serve, so impressed that I actually met you. And so I, I took a picture with her and sent it to her as well. And her name is Catherine. She goes to St. Michael's school.

[01:03:11] So private school. So that was wonderful. Those are the things that make this all worthwhile. Next, everybody mark your calendars for this weekend. The Outdoor Fest is on Saturday, May 31st, noon until 5 at the fairgrounds here.

[01:03:32] It's a free and family-friendly event. We'll showcase a variety of outdoor activities you can experience within the county. The event is fun for all ages. We'll include live music, animal encounters, fun, food, and a kid's zone.

[01:03:47] So hope we can see there. Last year was our first one. So this is the second one. And hopefully it is, I think it's going to be even more exciting than last year. So, and hopefully not as windy. It was really windy last year. So we lost a lot of tents. So please come on out.

[01:04:04] I think that's it. Thank you, Ms. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I recently sat down for a podcast discussion about Chesterfield and the Dale District projects planned in 2025. We spoke about the key processes of the budget, the key processes of the budget, Commonwealth Fusion System, and a wonderful addition to the Beulah Recreation Scent Complex.

[01:04:33] Again, I thank this board for its wisdom. The podcast is available on demand platforms, including the YouTube channel. Next item, please. OK. In addition, I was always humbled and honored as a veteran of the U.S. Army, 18th Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, Fort Liberty, North Carolina,

[01:05:03] to honor our fallen heroes who paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect and defend our country and the freedoms we enjoy so wonderfully.

[01:05:18] We also highlighted Vietnam veteran memorial wall in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the war's conclusion from 1975 until now. And Mr. Chairman spoke about that in his address to the community and honored service members.

[01:05:41] And we also, as we do usually, honored service members from Chesterfield County. This event, special thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Powell, U.S. Army Corps retired, a 2024 veteran of the year award recipient for Virginia's 4th Congressional District for his powerful remarks regarding the history of war in our nation.

[01:06:13] I want to especially thank Chesterfield County and the Chesterfield Historical Society of Virginia for hosting this annual Memorial Day ceremony.

[01:06:25] Thank you. Next item. In addition, I was quite, I'm so excited, I really can't hide it. VCU Health Systems groundbreaking ceremony with my colleagues celebrate the groundbreaking of VCU's Health Systems Chesterfield Pavilion, a 100 square foot facility set to have a surgery center, I'm told for at least four, and a medical office building.

[01:07:02] As you can see, the president of VCU, Dr. Ryle, was here, along with other friends in the community. This has long been a goal and a desire to have medical facilities right here in the Dell District.

[01:07:19] For the area residents who live near here, we are honoring their requests. Thank God. Next item. Also, this morning, I was pleased to be at the groundbreaking Sheetz ribbon-cutting session with my planning commissioner, Dr. Hilton, as well, and the fellow board members.

[01:07:43] I think all board members were there. I see Kev, I see Jessica, I see Jim, and Mark. And, of course, I said to them this morning, if what I see this morning is any indication of how successful you'll be, you're going to make a lot of money right here.

[01:08:05] In the Dale District is what I shared, and I meant it. I mean, it was like standing room only, okay? And so I had to find a seat, of course. But this was just amazing. Everything we tend to bring in this corridor seems to be very, very successful.

[01:08:24] It's all about you, the people of Chesterfield County. It's always about you. Thank you. Anything else do I have? I think I may have one more. Do I have another? Okay, first one.

[01:08:40] Yeah. Yep, right here. Okay, here it is. I have it here. There it is. We also welcome the newest plant fitness at Chesterfield on Meadowdale Boulevard, state-of-the-art equipment and welcoming environments for all fitness enthusiasts.

[01:09:01] Special thanks to the Dale District Planning Commissioner, Dr. Hilton, who graciously stepped in to make remarks on my behalf at this wonderful event. So you can not only eat the great food at Sheetz, you can also exercise it off at Planet Fitness, okay?

[01:09:23] Also, Maledale Boulevard. Enjoy. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Next up, it's Mr. Carroll. And shortly after, in the future, if you have a heart attack, you'll be able to go to the new facility right here in Chesterfield County.

[01:09:41] Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. I have to say, Mr. Chair, I think it's not a hundred square feet. It's a hundred thousand square foot building. Did that say a hundred? Yeah. I missed a step. Yeah, a hundred thousand. Okay, thank you for correcting me, Dan.

[01:09:58] A hundred thousand. I appreciate you. Right here in the Dale District. Two, that's right. Thank you. For us, in our community, to be able to partner for this type of medical center coming, as someone who has benefited from BCU's expertise, it is so exciting, quite frankly, to have this coming to Chesfield.

[01:10:22] And I'm not trying to take away from any other medical facility, you have great medical facilities, but in the northern part of the county, Mark's district, we've got St. Francis and we've got Johnston-Willison on the east end, and we've got Chippenham. But when you get south of that, you don't have it. You have some nice ERs, don't get me wrong, and some small medical facilities, but this is amazing stuff, and so we're very grateful for them to looking at Chesterfield.

[01:10:46] Mr. Chair, I'm not sure why this particular picture was used for this. I'm not praying to anybody. I'm not doing my best Richard Nixon impersonation, but anyway, I had the opportunity. I mean, look at the picture.

[01:11:03] I had the opportunity, and if you can't laugh at yourself, you better not laugh at anybody else. This month, the County's Learning and Performance Center hosted its annual graduation ceremony, and we were there recognizing just a remarkable group of employees that take it of their time to get extra education.

[01:11:21] Each graduate engaged in classes designed to expand their knowledge and their skills and enhance their career. And we have career development programs, and these educational classes help our employees to not just provide better service, but have a more rewarding career and get their career development.

[01:11:38] And again, I was honored to attend as the guest speaker and congratulate our employees. I'm not sure that picture was used, but anyway. It's funny. We had a great event down at Ettrick Park.

[01:11:54] We kicked off the annual Echoes of Joy event by cutting a ribbon on the county's fourth Bourne Learning Trail. It's really amazing stuff. The trail, I think we have them in several of the other parks already. I think we have one in your park, and I think we have one in Rockwood as well.

[01:12:11] The paved trail located at Etrick Park winds through the wooded park, providing ten signs with expert-approved learning games that are fun and easy for children and adults, so as you're walking and getting exercise, you can get an education. The Eccles of Joy was a wonderful event that featured bouncy houses, community resources, vendors from the community, and again, Parks and Rec, it's just another one of these great things that we're trying to establish in the community to help our children.

[01:12:44] We had our annual, actually, we didn't do this last year. We had enough carp in the lake last year, we didn't have to do it. We did a carp release in the Swift Creek Reservoir. We restocked it with about 500 triploid grass carp. The Hydrilla Monitoring and Control Program was part of an ongoing effort to protect Swift Creek Reservoir as a long-term water supply.

[01:13:06] I know Jessica wanted to be there, but you had to travel. She would not have missed it. After an extensive study, triploid grass carp were identified as the most environmentally friendly and cost-effective means of controlling the invasive plant species in the reservoir and some of you may or may not remember a couple years ago we lost a lot of the carp in the flood of 2020 when in August when when the when we had a big flood and so we had to restock them but we you know I think it was that summer the summer after we had a tremendous amount of hydrilla in the lake and now we've got it under control the process again helps to keep the

[01:13:46] ecosystem balanced up there and keep the water clean. Next, please. Mr. Ingle, delegate chairing myself and we attended the Virginia State University spring commencement where 650 graduates were recognized down at Virginia State University with a multi-purpose building. It's always an honor to go there and see the excitement of these young people in our community that are getting their diplomas and ready to go out and hit the workforce. Next, Juneteenth 2025 celebration includes a series of activities and events during the month

[01:14:21] of June. You can see that events, soul of the community on June 3rd, storytelling, song and rhythm with the soul siblings on June 14th, and Juneteenth celebration at Etrick Park on June 14th. For more information, please visit Chesterfield.gov Juneteenth. Mr. Chair, this concludes my report. Thank you.

[01:14:41] Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Next up, Dr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a nice picture of the Airport Business Association meeting that I attended last week. It's our monthly networking event. This event provides an opportunity to connect with business professionals from across industries, share insights, build meaningful professional relationships. The turnout, as you can see in this photo, was fantastic and everyone was so welcoming. I appreciate Bill Lund for the invitation to come down there. As we all know, the small business community is the

[01:15:18] backbone of our economy. It is often that we talk about some of our larger companies in Chesterfield, but how important it is to support the Airport Business Association and also BNI or any of the organizations that support our small businesses. It's one of my favorite parts of the job is just hanging out and learning about what everyone does. If it's cleaning carpets or if it's delivering pipes and being a plumber, whatever it is, they just do a great job.

[01:15:43] Mr. Engle, myself, and Lisa Hudgens, a school board member, we were at Providence Middle hosting a mock board of supervisors meeting for students to participate in.

[01:15:58] Oh my gosh, what an enormous amount of fun. Students had great questions. It was a great opportunity to share insight as elected board members and school board and listened to the students express their understanding of local government. They were very, very interested in having a conversation about what processes do we use when we're going to put in a mall and what happens with the ecosystem what do we do with the watershed all those kind of things so they were super involved we actually brought a few folks up to sit with us up there and be part of the board so it was a nice it was a fun time we expanded the

[01:16:34] board yes we took a vote um virginia association of counties um hosted this was regions three and region five uh the conversation about federal and state legislators to discuss topics and issues impacting each of the counties. We don't get together that often with all just kind of with the regions three and five. It was just a great opportunity to kind of cross-pollinate and talk about what's going on in each of the different counties in the region. The Commonwealth Regional Council, one of Virginia's 21 planning districts, also shared initiatives, including grant writing,

[01:17:10] transportation planning, and development goals. And then finally, Chesterfield County Public Schools proudly celebrated the conclusion of the 2025 high school graduation season, highlighting the remarkable accomplishments of students across 11 schools.

[01:17:29] My board colleagues and I had the pleasure of speaking at the ceremonies to recognize the hard work of students and their achievements. I also had the pleasure of attending Bright Point Community College's commencement, and I think we were all there, I guess three of us were there.

[01:17:44] Mr. Carroll and Mr. Engel were there. Thank you for coming out for that. The guest speaker was Ms. Alicia Alvarez, wonderfully said, she wonderfully said, that's the beauty of community college. It's the beginning of something bigger.

[01:18:00] The board is so proud of the class of 2025. We can't wait to see what they achieve next. And I'm already writing my next year's commencement speech. Y'all get started yet? No, but it's one of those things I gotta tell you, As we know that we're gonna be, we're gonna be blessed to speak next year at commencement and it's almost as if I start a dialogue with this year's, you know, the folks that are juniors and kind of just watching the year and how it's unfolding and what to say in a commencement speech.

[01:18:32] And it's such an incredible honor to be up there and to do that. So congratulations high school graduates. At Bright Point, it's an incredible accomplishment. And that concludes my report, Mr. Chair. - Thank you, Dr. Miller.

[01:18:48] Before I go to, before I talk on my first slide, I would like to add that the commencements were wonderful to be a part of. They ended today, the reason why we started our board, our afternoon session late today was because we had our last graduation for Carver Academy this afternoon, which I got to speak at.

[01:19:09] So I'm thankful that we were able to hold off on the afternoon session to be able to get all of our commencement. and if you haven't had the opportunity to hear Dr. Murray's commencement speech, if you go to any of the graduation ceremonies, I believe he gave the same speech, but it was a home run, so it's worth listening to if you have a chance to do that.

[01:19:32] Next slide. My board colleagues and I attended the Chamber RVA's inner city visit, where we explored Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville offered rich insights into what's possible for the region. The panel discussions were invaluable and they provided information on housing, revitalization, economic growth, and workforce development.

[01:19:56] Next slide. So we marked a major milestone in construction of the new Bensley Elementary School with the topping off ceremony. And I believe this is actually the first topping off ceremony we've done for a new school in the county, but I hope that it's just the beginning of many.

[01:20:17] This tradition celebrates the placement of the final structural beam to be placed in the school, and it had signatures from the least important people, the dignitaries, to more important people, the staff, but most importantly, the children that the school will serve.

[01:20:34] This school is scheduled to open in 2026 and will have capacity for 1,000 students. Next slide. Law enforcement officers across the region join the county's police department and sheriff's office, along with Virginia State Police at the annual memorial wreath-laying ceremony honoring officers fallen in the line of duty.

[01:20:59] I'm thankful to those who attended the event and encourage all of you to visit the law enforcement memorials located adjacent to the 1917 Historic Courthouse, which you can see on your way out if you're going back to the parking lot by the five-story building.

[01:21:21] You can also watch the video of the ceremony on the county's YouTube page. And it's not on my slide, but one thing we are going to be doing in the county is some of the new roads in the county that are coming online that aren't in place today are going to be named after our fallen public safety.

[01:21:40] So I think it's important to mention that as well. Next slide. The Cheshfield Recovery Academy held its third completion ceremony to celebrate 27 students enrolled this year. Seven of those students have completed their diploma requirements and graduated with their home school.

[01:22:00] We want to congratulate all of them and let them know how proud we are of them being able to overcome a lot of adversity that they had to face to get to this point. Next slide. Yesterday, we celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony for a new animal services building.

[01:22:17] The facility will nearly triple the size of the current facility and will include a full veterinary clinic and surgical center, indoor meet-and-greet rooms, and outdoor spaces for animal exercise and adoption interactions.

[01:22:32] This project is scheduled to be completed in late 2026, and I'd add that it was first thought about and started in 2016, so we had a lot of time to put a lot of insight and thought, especially by the employees of the animal shelter, into what we would put into this animal shelter

[01:22:59] And they gave up office space to make sure that we had the right amount of space for the animals that we serve that hopefully will serve the community well as we ask you to consider going by, interacting with these animals and considering adopting one of them.

[01:23:16] This month, as Mr. Holland referred to the Beulah Complex, but he didn't refer to it by its actual name, this month, Mr. James M. Holland's Recreation Complex at Beulah was officially dedicated to my esteemed board colleague, Jim Holland.

[01:23:43] It's the first time since I've been on the board that we didn't discuss a topic with all five board members because we weren't sure if the humble Mr. Holland would vote for this name change.

[01:24:03] But we felt like it was the right thing to do. And we're just honored to be able to dedicate the property, which includes both the recreation center and Beulah Park. Additionally, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. planted a tree on the property to thank him for his service to the county.

[01:24:24] At this time, the board would like to present Mr. Holland with a photo frame of the unveiling event in a plaque from the Richmond Times-Dispatch article about the ceremony and Mr. Holland's years of service to the community. Mr. Holland, we just again want to thank you for the leadership that you've exhibited in the county.

[01:24:56] It's very rare that we name a building in the county after somebody is still here with us. But you've done so much over the past 18 years, and we know you have a lot more to do over the next two years. And we're very honored to be able to do this in your name, and we just want to thank you again for your leadership in the region.

[01:25:17] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it so very much. I'm honored because this is a facility that meets the needs of everyone in the community, organizations, children, seniors, and others.

[01:25:34] And so I'm so honored that you have done this in my honor. It's true, truly a great event in my life, and I thank you all so very much for that.

[01:25:50] Thank you.

[01:26:01] I just wanted to say that I did on, was it Monday?

[01:26:19] It was Monday. I went and attended the first tournament that they had there at the cricket pitch. They had a youth cricket tournament there, and I went on Monday and attended. There were people from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and they were all just like, we wish we had supervisors that would build us a cricket pitch, because this is very nice.

[01:26:42] So I just want you to know that they were enjoying themselves, and Mr. Kahn was there also. of you was there and he was so pleased that everybody was using it and having a great time so mr. Carroll did you have something you want to say I hear you made me cry that's enough dr. Miller I'm going to say what mr. Carroll's saying but I will add to that honor to be your

[01:27:16] vice chair and to learn from you so much over the over the time we've worked together so thank you for all the work you continue to do. And we'll work together and keep going.

[01:27:33] - All right, Mr. Chair, I will say ditto to everything Mark just said, 'cause it's absolutely true. It's been an honor to work alongside you. And I've said to this before, but you know, when you were chair, you really set the bar high. And it really, I think is why each time another person comes in as a chair, we go like, all right, now what are we gonna do?

[01:27:53] And so, you ain't going anywhere, just telling you. Okay, all right. - And this concludes my board report. - Item 11, resolutions and special recognitions.

[01:28:11] A, recognition of the 2025 Spring Government Citizens Academy graduates. Ms. Dale.

[01:28:29] - Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and Dr. Casey. On March 20th, the Spring session of Government Citizens Academy began, hosted by Community Engagement and Resources. The Academy provides a hands-on learning opportunity and is designed to enhance and grow the county's communication efforts and increase citizen engagement.

[01:28:49] Citizens learns about their local government interactive variety of departments and programs and most important provide us with feedback today marks the completion of the county's 10th academy since it began in 2017. to date we've graduated over 250 participants including the 16 graduating today i want to thank you all for your participation in the academy and thank the participants for their commitment to the class so patterson brown from our class is going to come up and talk a little bit about his experience the class's experience before

[01:29:18] give their certificates. Good evening, Dr. Casey, Board of Supervisors, and everyone. I am honored to be selected as a spokesperson for this 10th Chesterfield County Government Citizens Academy.

[01:29:37] Thank you for having such a thorough government, county, citizen academy. For the last nine weeks, it's been amazing how much we've learned from about 50 speakers and about every district of the county. So many eye-opening positive statistics by many departments were shared and the numerous county awards.

[01:29:56] I'm sure many county citizens have no idea we are in the top five in so many categories, not only in the state, the region, and nationally. Personally, like many that have relocated here, my family came to the region in March of 92. My first three months was resigning in Henrico, and six years in the Willow Subdivision of Richmond, and the last 27 years in Chesterfield County.

[01:30:18] In the first three years living in Chesterfield County, through my curiosity, I attended the Fifth Citizens Police Academy under former police chief Carl Baker. And I understand they're up to the 61st academy now. I've learned much about the county during these 27 years, but after seeing so much growth and change, I've decided to learn more about the county through its government assistance academy and the planning that goes along with this.

[01:30:44] What a positive insight and eye-opener it has been. It clearly has been informative and engaging. My 24 years in the Army, the last decade was working in division headquarters as a command retention sergeant.

[01:31:00] I say that because of the major importance of retention. What we learned through this class is the retention and longevity of Chesterfield County employees. It was great to have learned that the majority of the directors and key management decision makers have been employed with the county for one to three decades.

[01:31:18] There is much I can say of what that experience has been through this 10th Government Academy class, but since tonight time is of the essence, I've asked the class to share a few moments, a few comments rather, to the board so I can hear a few paragraphs of our 10th class that I will kind of rapid fire through. Starting off, one of our class members said, I think the main point of feedback regarding the class is how much I appreciated the ability to ask questions and engage in dialogue with county employees. I really appreciate the information and the encouragement to citizens to be included. Next, the county demonstrates the county's commitment, excuse me, the academy

[01:31:56] demonstrates the county's commitment to engage citizens and the presenters reinforced that. They were open and welcoming of feedback and questions. The presentations were thorough, interesting, and insightful. It was gratifying to see all the county offers and the willingness to be even more responsive to the needs and concerns of the citizens. Next, the participants in the county and the academy are amazing. The questions presented to each speaker were thought-provoking and led to the interesting conversations. It was nice to spend the time of like-minded individuals who care about the community and wanted to learn about the county government. As to be expected,

[01:32:33] each presenter was knowledgeable, but it was beneficial to see how passionate each presenter was. It gives faith that those in county government do care. That is more than just a job. Kelly is the best. My interactions with Kelly were our top notch. I've learned a great deal from the academy. I knew going in that it takes a lot to run the government, but the depths that the Chesapeake County goes into running in our government makes me proud to have chosen to live here. I also learned about programs that the county and citizens are offered. And through these programs, I've learned that what I've learned about, I would like to volunteer for some of

[01:33:11] these programs. It's the least I can do. These last two comments. Most of the speakers were very well prepared and enthusiastic and reassured me and hopefully everyone in attendance of the dedication that he slash she has in serving our county. It is somewhat comforting that the officials that represented the steadfast in upholding at least the local rules and laws. My sincere hope is that the next generation of young people are not inhibited to serve in local government by what goes on outside the county. The dedicated public servants from the county supervisor on down are

[01:33:45] doing their best in serving our local needs. Finally, I believe Judge Johnson summed up government and his role very well when he explained the meaning of both sides of the seal of Virginia, freedom and peace, and the responsibility of all the citizens in the county to ensure those rights. And then lastly, during the last few years, I haven't loved all of the development and new construction in our community. There are a lot of active updates happening now, very close to where I live. I appreciate the often quiet non-city feeling of living here. Although some of that has changed, I have a better understanding

[01:34:22] after this academy of why the community is growing so quickly and what Chesterfield strives to offer for a growing community. I hope to take advantage of more local resources available that we've learned about since March. I do feel lucky to be here. There's so much to say about this government county, this government academy class, but I'll just say this. Growth is inevitable. In closing, I've learned in my 72 years of life that we are not progressing. If we are not progressing, we're falling behind. If more county citizens attended this Government Citizens Academy class,

[01:35:01] they would have much greater appreciation for what Chesterfield County is truly doing for all of us. After traveling extensively throughout the state on mostly business and some personal and seeing the majority of other localities, Chesterfield County by far is the most easiest fun to live in.

[01:35:17] In our 67 parks, we had over 226,000 visitors. And think, and just think, our county is just shy 400,000. It's a lot of people attended our parks because of the fun. Kudos to whoever came up with the motive. Live, work, and play. Our county has it all. I perfectly saved this last comment because it was evident of the tremendous work of each of these nine weeks of coordinating the 50 speakers, presentations, PowerPoints, where there was not one glitch, the snacks, and set up all of

[01:35:50] our name tags, even the door signage. So class, if you will please help me applaud. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:36:09] There's another Academy starting in September, FYI. Okay, let's give them the certificates. First up is Kathy Brown. Patterson Brown.

[01:36:29] Kathy Catlett. Laura Foy. Jacqueline Griffin-Hammons. Stephanie Hamrick. Oh, Kim Graves.

[01:36:51] Thank you. Lynn Hayes. Melinda Lewis. Victor Medrano. Karen Moyers. Dana Newcomer. Kate Sheehan.

[01:37:09] Tanisha Spencer. Bernard Terry.

[01:37:25] get a couple pictures and then we can go before y'all run away we as they came up we gave each of

[01:38:33] them a county seal pin lapel pin because we believe that once you go through the citizens academy you're now an extension of the county and we ask you to go out and share the information that you've learned with others so that they can get that same type of understanding and experience that you did and then tell them to come to the academy themselves thank y'all

[01:38:53] I just want to point out that the academies that Chesterfield puts on both on the county

[01:39:51] side and the police side, that's not done all across the United States. It really should be. And the reason it should be is because it gives an opportunity for the community to not just interact with county staff, but all of their county leadership attends and speaks with the people who attend these classes.

[01:40:13] So it gives you an opportunity to have a one-on-one with a board of supervisors member or a county administrator. And coming from another part of the country originally, when I've told people about these different academies that we put on, they're like, why do you do that? Why? Because that's how you build community relations.

[01:40:35] And so our staff does a tremendous job on coordinating these academies, the lesson plans, the PowerPoints. And then the people from the community come to it. I mean, they're taking times out of their lives away from their jobs and away from their families to come here.

[01:40:52] It's just, I think it's just an amazing program, Mr. Chair. And I just wanted to make sure we pointed out the community. Thank you for that. Item 12, new business. A, claim of Branscombe operating LLC regarding contract number ADMN-21-000-141 for the Route 10, White Pine to Brith widening project.

[01:41:17] Mr. Minks. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, this is a claim that's been filed by the contractor on one of the three Route 10 projects, and actually the same contractor worked on all three projects. This is the first of those claims.

[01:41:33] Another claim has been filed, another one we believe will be. This is a, it's a lengthy claim as most of these are. Actually we sent this entire claim to the board, so the board had a chance to read all 800 plus pages of this claim it's it's broken down into 14 different items and the agenda item explains all those various items we've reviewed this claim with the with our own staff with the engineer on the project and they are recommending and we are recommending to you that this claim be denied now and

[01:42:10] that it be denied tonight the one of the issues as there always is on claims like this is we're not done being in discussion with the contractor but the contractor has to go through this process to be able to go to move forward in in the litigation so so we're asking you at this point to turn it down but with the understanding very similar to what we do on eminent domain is that we don't stop talking but we may not be able to reach an agreement on the entirety of the claim and there may be some parts that we can reach agreement

[01:42:49] on but that will it may take some time right before we start a representative the attorney for the for Branscombe said he is going to ask you to not make a decision tonight and to put off that decision I think it would be advisable for the board to actually deny this claim and that's what we'll be asking you to do is to deny it tonight and then we'll still move on and still have discussions with a contractor. And the representative is here. Thank you, board, and thank you to the

[01:43:26] county attorney. My name's Jim Harvey. I'm an attorney at Woods Rogers, and I have the proud pleasure to represent Branscombe Operating, Inc., and with us tonight is its president, Brian Birdsell. Branscombe values its long-term and long-standing relationship with the county and the improvements it's provided for its citizens, including this important project, which most of us traversed across just to get here tonight.

[01:43:56] Branscombe has been transparent and honest with the county and its staff throughout this project, throughout this process. We have never hit the ball or held back about the issues impacting performance on this project.

[01:44:14] And we've done everything required of us under the contract for relief for issues that are beyond our control. We only ask that the county treat us fairly. Branscom has not been treated fairly, and it has not been provided any time extensions for additional work or unforeseen circumstances that the county and its staff has admitted.

[01:44:40] In fact, they've ordered changes to the work after the completion date had already passed and provided no time for us to complete that work. We have not been paid for what they admit is that extra work.

[01:45:00] even when you hold back the disputed amounts related to liquidated damages. And that is just simply not fair. We've performed work that they agree was extra, was an additional cost, we reached a price for that direct work, and we were not paid for that work, simply because they have not also provided us a time extension for performing that work.

[01:45:28] This is a basic principle of construction law, That a contractor is entitled to rely upon the accuracy of plans and specifications when they bid the work so that the county does not pay extra prices on every project for contractors to build in unreasonable contingencies in their work.

[01:45:48] The contractor, this means that the contractor is not responsible for unknown situations like underground conflicts, design changes, or design assumptions about the existing conditions that prove not to be true, or adding unstated requirements as the project goes along.

[01:46:10] We've set forth in detail, and you have it, I know it's very extensive, 15 bases for different claims of very specific items with the particular correspondence and exchanges that justify each of them, and then an overall schedule analysis showing their impact on the completion.

[01:46:28] Importantly, we have not had any response from the county's staff on this. Our preference is to engage and work these issues out with accounting and not engage in litigation.

[01:46:44] Because the next step after this is litigation where both sides are responsible for the other's attorney's fees when delay damages are involved. So this will add to both sides' costs at the end of the day.

[01:46:59] We've attempted to resolve this. We've not had any response. We've not had any information to show that our claim and our analysis is not accurate. For this reason, our first request is that the county board suspend or postpone issuing a decision on this claim and instead direct the county staff to engage in mediation to see if the parties can reach resolution.

[01:47:27] I'll tell you, we are here because the statute requires a decision within 90 days of the submission of a claim, but that statute also provides that both parties can agree to extend that time period. We did that just for tonight because we had a conflict with the prior month and we have an agreement that runs through June 1st. The county, through you, and Branskin can agree to suspend this decision for another 120 days, 90 days, to see if we can work this out without incurring litigation costs that would be the great preference but if the county wishes to

[01:48:05] proceed we will do so it's important to note that this project came in under the county's budget this is not some circumstance where the county is way out over its skis this is the original bid price and accounting for paid quantities the county is under budget the contract reconciliation I've passed out a few exhibits, demonstrative exhibits, show that even when accounting for the liquidated damages that we dispute being assessed, there are still $187,849 that is

[01:48:44] owed right now to this contractor for work performed. That should be paid now. The claim items, I am not going to go through them here tonight, thankfully, but I will characterize them for you. put them in a few groups so that you can understand what they are there are design changes that both sides agree occurred design changes where we've worked out the direct cost for those those are the ones relating to an overhead sign conflict a gas line conflict ponding on uh on roadways

[01:49:19] in two different locations and an added drop inlet that the county added after the completion date had already occurred. There's eight different issues where the county directed work occurring after the project was scheduled for completion. That means this project has to be extended. We have to be able to resolve the additional time. We have set forth what those exact times were.

[01:49:48] We've had no response. And then the third category is underground conflicts in which neither party could have anticipated the conflicts but the contractor does not pay the price for that how the count how that is addressed is a differing site condition where the county the owner pays for those conditions as they arise so that the county only pays for costs as they arise and not unknown contingencies that every contractor builds into a bid this is only fair for both the county and the

[01:50:21] the contractor. And then the final issue is a basic issue of fairness here. There are several stormwater ponds that took over six months for the county to accept, even though the county was enjoying the full use of the traffic and those ponds during those periods. All the while, the county is accruing liquidated damages on the contractor. What I want to make clear is that we completed this project in July of 2023. We had already started the work for approval of taking

[01:51:00] the temporary construction ponds and making them permanent for the county's use. All we had to do was clear them out and get to a final grade, but that takes time. We did that. We had our first submission in August, and through no fault of the contractor, it took until January before the county accepted them. What is important for this board to understand is nothing changed on the ground. Now, the single shovel of dirt was turned differently during that time, and during that time, the county had the full enjoyment of the project, yet it was assessing liquidated damages against

[01:51:37] the contractor that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars that operates as an unenforceable penalty in Virginia. So, we simply think that when you take all of these conditions as a whole, our claims should be granted. But we ask again, let us work this out with the county staff. We're not eager to engage in litigation. We want to work for you. We want to provide you the good services that we've provided in the past, and we want to continue to do that in the future

[01:52:11] without the threat of litigation hanging over both sides. I'll just conclude by restating what Branscombe is seeking in its claim direct costs of $180,682 that have already been agreed with the county staff. Compensable time of 369 days. That includes field office overhead totaling $816,216.61 and home office overhead of $513,814.05 for a total of $1,510,713.34.

[01:52:51] sense. I want to provide two more things for you. We provided you with a schedule overview that shows each of the impacts over Lane and their impact on the overall project and in relation to the completion date, many of those that occurred afterwards. And a simple photograph is the last thing that I've provided to the board. And this just simply shows a trash rack that was not designed, not included in the original design, directed after the completion date to be performed, took months to procure something like that.

[01:53:26] We're happy to provide it, but we shouldn't be penalized by assessment of liquidated damages while we do that for the county. So we simply seek to be treated fairly. These are the items of our claim. We ask that the county either direct its staff to engage in mediation or approve our claim.

[01:53:45] Thank you. Board members, do any of you have a question for either the claimant or the county attorney? I do have a question.

[01:54:01] If we deny this motion today, as you stated before, it doesn't cause litigation to happen, right? It just allows them to file litigation if they want to. But at the same time, we're going to continue to work with them to try to come to it.

[01:54:19] All the way through it. There are time deadlines for them to have to file something, but we do not have to pursue that. We can still be talking. It's important to know that the reason why this is before you is because they filed this claim. So state law has deadlines once they file the claim.

[01:54:36] There is a deadline for you to make a decision. He's saying that we ought to mediate. We're not ready to mediate this claim. As you might imagine, we don't agree with virtually everything that was said. But in the same breath, we're talking about $180,000 of contract items.

[01:54:57] And the rest of this claim, which is a $1.5 million claim, all has to do with delay. This project was delayed, and there are liquidated damages in the claim. So once we get through all of this, we can figure out exactly what of those delay claims are valid.

[01:55:17] Right now, looking at it, we don't think that they are. And they are the bulk of what is before you right now. So I would say if the board denies this tonight, then we're still gonna be talking with them. We're still gonna try to see if it can be resolved. But we're not in any position to force this into some sort of a formal mediation process.

[01:55:36] - Well, I'd say the statute requires us to file suit within 30 days. And of course, we will have to do that. But these issues have not been hidden from the county. And it is surprising that we've never had a response the county on any of these issues that we've provided and so we think there is that time for that to happen if the parties were willing to do so and again they made the choice to go ahead and get this on the board's agenda so it's before you and so with with that in mind we'll ask you just didn't deny it tonight and then we'll we'll continue the discussions are there any other

[01:56:16] discussion mr. chairman at the advice of our attorney move we denied his claim Do we need to read the full statement?

[01:56:31] That's close enough. That's sufficient. Do I have a second? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Thank you.

[01:56:46] B, Appointments. Mr. Chair, we have one appointment to the Community Services Board. We can get a motion. Motion is approved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Next, we have one appointment to the Airport Advisory Board.

[01:57:02] Second. All in favor? Aye. And last, we have one appointment to the Preservation Committee. Approved. Move to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. C. Consent items. Mr. Chair, there have been no requests to remove items from the consent agenda for public comment.

[01:57:21] Do any board members have any items they wish to remove? I need a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right. I will make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. 13.

[01:57:40] 15-minute citizen comment period on unscheduled matters. We have no speakers. Item 14, deferred items from previous meetings. We have none. Item 15, Zoning Requests. Mr. Chair, you have five cases on your consent agenda this evening.

[01:57:56] For the benefit of the public, consent cases are those cases where the applicant accepts staff's recommendation and there is no previous opposition. For each case on the consent agenda, staff has received written confirmation from the applicants that they agree with the conditions being imposed and that all proffers are offered in compliance with state law.

[01:58:17] First is 24 SN1284 in Dale Magisterial District. Stevenson Fence Height Exception is a request for conditional use plan development to permit an exception to the height limitation for a fence in a corner side yard in a residential R7 district on 0.23 acres known as 5200 Goldburn Drive.

[01:58:42] The applicant is requesting a two-foot exception to the four-foot height limitation for a fence in a corner side yard in a residential R7 district. Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 24, SN1284, Stevenson Fence Height Exception.

[01:59:08] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'll close this public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Dale District. Mr. Chairman, I move approval of case 24SN1284 as presented with the associated conditions with it.

[01:59:33] Second. All in favor? Aye. Next is 24SN1299 in Bermuda Magisterial District. Silver Dust Lane Family Daycare Home is a request for conditional use to permit a family daycare home for up to 12 children in a residential R-15 district on 0.34 of an acre known as 13507 Silverdust Lane.

[01:59:58] The applicant currently operates a daycare for the care of four children, which is permitted by right. The applicant proposes to increase the number of children to 12 and begin operating a state-licensed family daycare home. Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report.

[02:00:16] Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 24SN 1299, Silverdust Lane, Family Daycare Home. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[02:00:34] Seeing no one, I'll close this public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Bermuda District, and I make the motion to approve case 24SN 1299, subject to the conditions in the staff report. Second. All in favor?

[02:00:50] Aye. Next is 24SN 1319 in Dale Magisterial District. Pollo Compero at Hopkins Road Exceptions is a request for conditional use plan development to permit exceptions to ordinance requirements in a community business C3 district on 0.52 acre known as 5610 Hopkins Road.

[02:01:13] Redevelopment of the property from an automobile service and gas station into a fast food restaurant is proposed. The existing gasoline station and gas canopy structure will be demolished, and the site will be redeveloped with a new 2,600-square-foot restaurant with a drive-through and parking areas to serve the fast-food restaurant use.

[02:01:34] The Planning Commission and staff recommend approvals subject to the conditions in your staff report. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on Case 24-SN-1319, Hulo Campero at Hopkins Road Exceptions.

[02:01:52] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Hello, my name is Renee Eldred. I'm not against the case, but I want to point out something that this might be a good example that maybe we can start doing if we can do it legally.

[02:02:16] This is the Meadowdale Shopping Center, and that place is a mess. They're parking around there. Everybody parks in every which direction. when you come in and out of it nobody knows which way you're going if we have a developer that or a shopping center we have tons of these in the county that the markings are not kept up some of them have potholes but you have a new development going in on a corner if we could somehow get this

[02:02:52] to trigger a site plan for the parking striping only or if it has potholes maybe repair that but with this i've seen it a couple of different ways with the one building being gone and the parking coming out and then there's another um a wendy's on the corner here it's like nobody knows which direction to go in this parking lot so this would be a perfect example to use to get older shopping centers when you have something new going in it and it's still all under one ownership

[02:03:32] to get them to fix the parking and so people know which direction they're supposed to go maybe put some islands in to delineate where you're supposed to park whose parking belongs to what business but this is going to be a nice little addition to the corner but it still could be a whole lot better shopping center any other speakers seeing none i'm going to close this public hearing and this case is back before the board this case is in the dale district

[02:04:10] Very good point, Renee. I think you have a point that we should consider, and I've asked our staff to look into that as well, planning staff. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve case 24SN 1319 with the associated conditions as shown today.

[02:04:34] Second. All in favor? Aye. Next is 25SN1010 in Matoaka Magisterial District. Her long tree service renewal is a request for a conditional use to permit a business from the home, tree service, in an agricultural aid district on 1.19 acres known as 10630 Koala Road.

[02:05:03] The original zoning case received support from surrounding neighbors and subsequently received approval from the Board of Supervisors 10 years ago. However, that approval expired in February 2025. The applicants have operated this business during this time period without any reported violations or issues.

[02:05:20] Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 25SN1010, Hurlong Tree Service Renewal.

[02:05:36] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'll close this public hearing. It's back before the board, and this case is in the Matoka District. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[02:05:54] I've actually received several phone calls from community members in support of this case, so I'd like to make a motion to approve 25 SN1010, subjects and conditions in the staff report. I'll second. All in favor? Aye.

[02:06:10] Last on your consent agenda is 24 SN1356 in Clover Hill Magisterial District, Park West Circle Communications Tower is a request for a conditional use to permit a communications tower facility in a corporate office O2 district on 3.5 acres, fronting approximately 500 feet on the north side of Lux Lane, 200 feet east of Charter Colony Parkway.

[02:06:37] A 199-foot communications tower with a monopole design and sector array antennas with associated compound improvements is proposed. The tower will be designed and constructed to accommodate up to three carriers to co-locate on the tower in addition to the applicant's initial sector array installation.

[02:06:57] The Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on Case 24, SN1356, Park West Circle Communications Tower. Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this case?

[02:07:14] If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'll close this public hearing. It's back before the board, in this case, in the Clover Hill District. Thank you. We did have a couple people come forward with some issues, and I think we discussed with them.

[02:07:36] I feel very comfortable with the fact that I have more complaints about lack of cell service in the Brandermill area that this fills a need for, and so I believe it's for the better good and it's in an appropriate spot across from St. Francis Hospital.

[02:07:59] It's along 288, not in the very residential area. So I recommend approval of case number 24 SN1356, subject to the conditions of the staff report.

[02:08:16] I second. All in favor? Aye. Mr. Chair, that concludes your consent items for this evening. have four discussion items the first of which is 24 sn 1114 retreat at rivers bend rezoning and exceptions mr saunders good evening dr casey chairman engel and supervisors case 24 sn 1114 in the bermuda district retreat at rivers bend rezoning and exceptions is a request to rezone from neighborhood business and residential r15 to residential multifamily plus conditional use

[02:08:55] plan development to permit exceptions to development standards on 10.87 acres. The applicant desires to develop the property with an age-restricted multifamily development containing a maximum of 206 units. Here is a zoning map that shows that the majority of the property is currently zoned C2. This slide shows an aerial map on the left and a land use plan map on the right. Neighborhood business is the land use designation for the subject property. As detailed on this concept plan, the development of the site is comprised of three separate buildings that would in total contain 206 units with a density of 18.9 units per acre. The buildings

[02:09:35] are proposed to be three stories in height, and surface parking will be provided at a ratio of 1.4 spaces per unit, or 290 spaces, which exceeds the zoning ordinance requirement of 1.2 spaces per unit, or 247 spaces. The proffered conditions limit occupancy of units to housing for older persons as defined in the Virginia Fair Housing Law. This slide covers some of the site design features. This slide shows the proffered conceptual rendering that was provided with the case and this

[02:10:12] table provides an overview of the exceptions to the RMF district standards that's being requested by the applicant. Staff is supportive of these exceptions. Planning Commission and staff both recommend approval of the request. The proposed age-restricted apartment community will provide a low-maintenance housing option for aging residents in the county, a high level of site design, architecture, building materials, pedestrian connectivity, and amenities are proposed with this request.

[02:10:41] That concludes my presentation. Questions? Board members, are there any questions for staff? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 24, SN 1114, retreat at Rivers Bend, rezoning and exceptions.

[02:10:59] Is the applicant present? Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Casey.

[02:11:20] My name is Kim Lacey of Roth Jackson. I'm here tonight on behalf of the applicant. I have John Mason with Lingerfeld Development here with me, and also Malachi Mills, who's the project engineer from RKNK. As Mr. Saunders already described very well, this is a rezoning case to rezone to residential and multifamily district, RMF, for an age-restricted community.

[02:11:45] It has extensive amenities, including a community garden, two pocket parks, a pet park, ample sidewalks, internal and external to the site, tree-save areas, a clubhouse, a swimming pool, and many more. And the applicant has worked for over two years with the Rivers Bend Homeowners Association and with area residents just to ensure that this community complements the well-established neighborhoods in the area. We also have high quality building materials that'll ensure a

[02:12:20] relief, like I said, high quality development that'll complement the area. And this age-restricted use will generate much less traffic than what would be generated if a commercial developer came and built on the site today, as it is zoned currently for C2 commercial use.

[02:12:39] At this time, I'd like to give the citizens a chance to speak, and I'd ask for time reserved to respond and answer questions. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to come to speak to this case? Please come forward and state your name. Good evening, board.

[02:13:00] My name is Pat Bockford, and I live in Rivers Bend, which joins the subject parcel. I've been involved in this project for a considerable amount of time. I think right now, going over two years, I could probably state that I'm probably going about 200 hours of volunteer time towards trying to figure out what's going to be best for residents like myself and owners of property that are really close to that and trying to get this project into a more agreeable form.

[02:13:28] I stated in the commissioner's use case hearing that I was not crazy about the development coming into that piece of land. I also stated that the planned project from Lingerville with the modifications that the applicant has made, the county planner's assistant, like Rich back here, and the community input from my fellow neighbors have brought are more palatable than we first started two years ago.

[02:13:55] Over the course of my involvement, I've had the opportunity to participate in small groups, community sessions, one-on-one discussions with residents of Rivers Bend, and it's fair to say that there are concerns. Those are range from water runoff, increased traffic to residents, and especially children's safety.

[02:14:17] We're also aware that if left zone is commercial, there are tens of possible businesses that could be built, half of which are undesirable and all possible with no input from the community. I wish to highlight a couple of those.

[02:14:35] One could be a gas station. We already have three gas stations within proximity to Rivers Bend. And Rivers Bend is actually split by this property here, which would mean children coming to use our amenities from the south side of Rivers Bend Boulevard would have to cross through a regular commercial property.

[02:14:57] And that's, frankly, a risk for safety for our children without getting into details of those risks. In fact, no community member has ever suggested or communicated to me that a gas station be better off than what the current version of the Lingerfield plan is.

[02:15:12] Further, something like a restaurant would also be undesirable. Again, we know we can't control what goes in there if it's commercial because of noise, traffic, safety for the same reasons as the gas station, but also smell. The smell from a restaurant wafts, and I can't imagine that my fellow neighbors are going to want to smell restaurant smells that close to their housing.

[02:15:37] There's restaurants available up at the corner of 10 and Rivers Bend Boulevard. In summary, I feel that the zoning case to allow for this change to a senior living should be approved without further debate. Thank you. Thank you.

[02:15:54] Any other speakers? Good evening.

[02:16:11] I'm Jerry Turner. I'm not against this project, but what I am concerned about is lack of parking. You've got 1.6 parking places per apartment.

[02:16:29] What if you've got visitors? Where are they going to park? There's a lot of amenities around here that to me is called open space. I'm not sure they need all those open spaces, but I guess this goes back to the ZOMOD that's going through the process right now where the county is not requiring enough parking places for these places that are being built, especially when you want to hold a get-together there.

[02:16:58] Where are all these other people going to park? Because you only have 1.4 places per apartment. You're not allowing enough parking places for these people. Maybe you want everybody to walk, I guess, the way y'all keep consolidating everything.

[02:17:17] But you're allowing the developer to shorten the people on where they're going to park their cars. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? Before I close this public hearing, I'm going to ask the applicant if they'd like to come back up.

[02:17:46] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are just a couple of things that I would like to respond to. The case does include road cash proffers, which are dollars that will go into the local transportation shed.

[02:18:05] The total value is $600,284. Regarding parking, we have 290 spaces proffered, which is over the requirement. The required number of spaces is 247, so we are over parks.

[02:18:22] We are addressing the parking needs. And we do have, for environmental engineering, a resource protection area designation is required prior to site plans inmiddled, and the property is located within the Johnson Creek watershed, so the two 10- and 100-year post-developed flows will need to be detained to, or less than, the two 10- and 100-year pre-development flows at the time of plans review.

[02:18:52] And those are the comments that I would like to respond to. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'll go ahead and close this public hearing, and it's back before the board. This case is in the Bermuda District. This case, the first time I heard about it was approximately two years ago, and honestly I wasn't sure how it would be received with the community.

[02:19:20] Some of the people in the community originally reached out and they were concerned about allowing apartments to go in there. I told the HOA and the developer that they needed to talk, work together. If they came to an outcome that the citizens in the HOA were willing to support the case, I would approve it.

[02:19:44] And if they said no, I wouldn't. The HOA can't officially make a stance on this case as their lawyer advised them not to make that case officially. But we have heard from an individual who also happens to be on the HOA and had a lot to do with the HOA.

[02:20:09] I've met with the HOA multiple times and at this point the HOA has come back and said we're okay with this case and we would rather have this case than commercial development so we want you to approve it. That's what I asked the HOA to do is to give me a recommendation and based on that recommendation, I make the motion to approve case 24 SN 1114 subject to the conditions in the staff

[02:20:48] report. No second. All in favor. Aye. Next is 25 SN 1040, Watkins Center South, Mr. Saunders. Good evening again, Dr. Casey and supervisors. Case 25 SN 1040 in the Midlothian District, Watkins Center South is a request to rezone 349.97 acres from Agricultural A and General Industrial I-2 to General Industrial I-2. The property is proposed to be developed with data

[02:21:25] centers and accessory uses. This slide shows the conceptual layout. The proper conditions require that the property conform to this plan with respect to the buffers. The conceptual plan illustrates the developable areas in yellow, which is identified as tract A or approximately 261 acres. Buffers in green are approximately 89 acres and the property that was not included in the application, which is approximately 25 acres. The proper conditions require that the buffer be provided as shown on this conceptual plan and requires that existing forested vegetation within

[02:22:00] the buffers be preserved and incorporated into the buffer. Areas of the buffer that do not have the forested vegetation are required to meet the standards for two and a half times perimeter landscaping C in the zoning ordinance. No exceptions are requested with this rezoning request. So, unless further restricted by the proffered conditions, development will be required to comply with the Employment Center Design District standards. Proffers have been provided to address a variety of impacts that are associated with the proposed rezoning request and use.

[02:22:36] Subsequent to the Planning Commission meeting, the applicant amended the proffered conditions to require all exterior light fixtures be full cut off with light directed downward and away from the sky. Both planning commission and staff recommend approval. The proposed data center use aligns with the corporate office research and development light industrial land use designation in a comprehensive plan. Zoning ordinance requirements and proper conditions limit the impact of the proposed use on nearby properties. And that concludes my presentation.

[02:23:07] Any questions? Board members, are there any questions for staff? Ladies and gentlemen, This is a public hearing on case 25SN1040, Watkins Center South.

[02:23:25] Is the applicant present?

[02:23:35] Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Casey. My name is Kim Lacey of Roth-Jackson. I'm here tonight on behalf of the applicant, and I have Jake Elder of Economic Development with me.

[02:23:53] As Mr. Saunders already described very well, this is a case to reason approximately 349 acres in the midlothian district from a and i2 to i2 for data center data center use on the property approximately 200 acres is currently zoned i2 with data center use permitted and manufacturing uses permitted and also mass transportation use permitted we have no exception requests in the case and have numerous proffered conditions including the most extensive water use and wastewater discharge proffers I've seen in Chesterfield.

[02:24:32] At this time, I'd like to give the citizens an opportunity to speak, and I ask for time reserved to respond to comments and answer questions. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[02:24:47] Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Charles Skelly. I'm the business manager of IBEW Local 666 in Richmond, Virginia.

[02:25:03] I represent 1,700 members in Central Virginia, hundreds of which live in Chesterfield County. these projects provide work for my members these projects provide opportunities for us to train apprentices and create the next generation of trades workers for Central Virginia we were in 2018 around 200 apprentices in our program we're now around 400 it's located here in Chesterfield County projects like this give us an opportunity to train the next generations of craft workers and we firmly support this project thank you

[02:25:37] good evening board it's very nice to see all of you mr. Holland I'd like to commend you for your years of service. I've been here in this county for 20 years. The last 15 or so have been Dale District and I really appreciate your service and I'd like to acknowledge that the naming of the building for you. My nephew attended Beulah and I think that's really wonderful that we're doing this. I'm also a friend of Maymont and I really appreciate your service to the Maymont

[02:26:10] group. I'm a third generation union electrician. I am very much in favor of this redevelopment not because of being a union electrician but because i am also a resident of render mill i would very much like to see this go to big business big business is low impact on our communities they do not bring in hundreds of new residents they don't bog down schools they don't overload our classrooms they come they build they put tremendous amounts of money in our coffers and they're pretty low impact generally speaking i'd like you all to consider approving this thank

[02:26:49] Next speaker. John Martin: Thank you. I'm John Martin.

[02:27:05] I'm the president and CEO of RVA 757 Connects, and we're a nonprofit business group that's working at Hampton Roads in Richmond together to build a better economy and better quality of life for everyone. One of our projects is building a global internet hub, really to be one of the world's major interconnection points.

[02:27:25] I've got a handout here, but I just invite you to look at this map because it really depicts what a digital infrastructure ecosystem is. It's not just a data center. It's terrestrial networks and internet exchanges and network rings, and in this case, the subsea cables that come in at Virginia Beach.

[02:27:45] But I share that with you because I want you to consider these two data centers. This is really about a whole ecosystem that has three big benefits. The first is business. Business, you have built a world-class business location. And businesses today really want to work at the speed of light, digital infrastructure, optical digital infrastructure.

[02:28:08] And so putting that in place is so important. And for it to really work for local businesses is being able to have local data storage. And so you need local data centers to really complete a digital ecosystem on a countywide scale, working on a mega region scale.

[02:28:26] But we think that the businesses and the research we've done, that businesses really look for this. Those that are here benefit because every business now is a digital business, whether you're a pizza parlor or whether you're an international concern. So business being supportive of the data center supports businesses and will help you attract even more businesses tomorrow.

[02:28:46] But also with residents, residents benefit from data centers. All of us carry around phones and computers and we've got to store our data somewhere. And so being able to store it locally is another big advantage. So it helps healthcare services and doctor office services and all kinds of, helps schools, it helps libraries and everything.

[02:29:09] Be able to have that data locally. And the third, my last point, having a data center or data centers here in Chesterfield County will future-proof the county. We're going to, we're seeing, we're just seeing a little bit of how AI helps us learn, But in the future, AI is going to shift to doing everything and making our life a lot easier on so many levels.

[02:29:30] But running businesses, running our households, helping out to make everything more efficient. And the way AI works, real-time AI is having a robust local infrastructure where you have reliable terrestrial networks and local data centers.

[02:29:47] So that information can go back and forth when you're driving your autonomous vehicle or your robotic factory is welding. and so having these local data centers is going to give you this tremendous advantage to be part of the 21st century and really make this place great for generations to come thank you very much thank you next speaker thank you so much my name is solomon sandira i'm a member of the local i of

[02:30:24] ibu local 666 and i'm also a resident of chesterfields i am proposing that you support this project because of the various reasons which have already been said by the members i have been working on a data center since 2022 and i have benefited as a source of income on a data center so i understand how this supports people economically and then on the other hand

[02:30:58] having more data centers will also give more members a source of income on the other hand I understand that the biggest thing right now is artificial intelligence, AI.

[02:31:15] So everybody would like to be associated with the big things. Me too, I would like to be associated with big things. I'm not a tech savvy. Even using my cell phone, I refer to my children because I can't use, I'm not a savvy in technology.

[02:31:32] But if I'm involved in building a data center, that will give me that satisfaction of being associated with the big things current. And on the other hand, I understand a lot of members are concerned about a number of issues like the use of water.

[02:31:50] But as technology is improving in all areas, it is also improving in the construction of data centers. There are technologies which are being developed which uses less water for the cooling, which is an advantage.

[02:32:07] And then we are also concerned about emissions. We have some emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide. There is also improvement in that area. They are improving technology known as STAX engineering, which works like the catalytic converter.

[02:32:32] It can absorb those emissions, purify them, and then release them in the atmosphere with less harm. So a lot of things are happening in that area to make sure that data centers are safe to the community. So I urge you to consider this seriously and you approve it.

[02:32:52] Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, my name is John Easter. I'm a resident of the Midlothian District.

[02:33:08] I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of Chamber RBA, the Regional Chamber of Commerce. You don't typically see our regional chamber here on your zoning cases, But when there are ones that we think are of extraordinary economic importance to the region, then I do come.

[02:33:24] And this is just such a case, this case and the one that you're going to hear in a little while relating to the Magnolia Green area. First of all, data centers are an outstanding economic development opportunity. I paid a lot of attention in my work lobbying at the General Assembly this past year to what was being discussed relative to data centers there at the General Assembly.

[02:33:48] And I just wanted to note for you, there was a major report done by the General Assembly's Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission back in December that talked statewide about the need for data centers and the pros and the cons. And I thought two statistics would be relevant from that report.

[02:34:07] One is there is so much demand for data centers, they are generating 74,000 jobs a year statewide in providing and developing and providing data centers. And they provide 9.1 billion, with a B, dollars of GDP annually also.

[02:34:30] So this is a big deal statewide, and it's a big deal for Chesterfield and our region. The major benefit to localities is the tax revenues that are generated in Loudoun County in particular, which is a fairly extreme example relative to data centers.

[02:34:50] But data centers actually provide 31% of the total tax revenue for Loudoun County. I'm not suggesting that Chesterfield should be at that level, needs that number, or needs to be taxing at that rate, but in extreme cases, you can generate a lot of dollars there.

[02:35:09] Prince William, which is next, generates 7% of its dollars from data centers. So this can be a big deal economically, and the great thing is it's at really relatively little cost because there's little demand for services.

[02:35:25] There are some good-paying jobs, and you've heard some people talk about the professions are involved, but there are jobs, and so the economic benefits are great. The key is to have them located where they fit well, and this site is that.

[02:35:41] I would just note that historically the existing zoning was approved by this board, the applicant. This board was the applicant. I was actually the zoning lawyer for the board when that case was approved. And as we dealt with Watkins Center, we were trying to decide what to do with the southern part of the property which drained to the south and the sewer was three miles away and so we put in a very broad sort of set of categories because we didn't really know what was going to happen so the north up near midlothian turn bike and north midlothian you've seen what's developed and that was envisioned pretty quickly but we have the question what should happen to the south and so

[02:36:19] this use i think is a perfect example and it fills the spot very well and i hope you will support it thank you thank you next speaker howdy folks uh dave stritzinger here and the last time i was at any meeting about this data center complex you still didn't know if it was air cooled or water cooled you didn't know much about the construction i understand according from dr casey here that

[02:36:56] you can't put any demands on the um data centers how they were built just want to make sure you know what you're buying and there's a lot of discussion about the noise that will be created up by these guys and i've been living and working in data centers most of my life and really not that noisy unless you're inside that's why i can't hear too good anymore but um i gotta assume these are going to have ups's in their own generators how many diesel i gotta assume again it's going

[02:37:35] to be diesel generators how many diesel generators will they have for backup power in case the power goes out how many times a year do they plan on testing them how much diesel will they store on site i don't know if you have those numbers or not i know i haven't seen them again i'm not against them but uh just make sure you know what you're buying thank you any other speakers saying

[02:38:12] none i'm going to ask the applicant if they want to come back up for anything thank you mr chairman i would just like to again say that we have numerous proffered conditions very extensive of proffers on water usage and wastewater discharge to address water, and we also have noise limit proffers that actually limit the maximum noise that can be produced, and then

[02:38:51] also generator testing limits, time of day limits for generator testing, and I can also say that they're only tested once a month, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Board members, are there any questions for the applicant or anybody on staff?

[02:39:11] Kim, do you have the usage or the amount of gallons of diesel and stuff like that in there, or how many tanks that you'll be having? I do not. I do not have that information for generators. Okay. Yes. I have one question for staff for utilities.

[02:39:37] Chair. As you know, water is very important to the region, even in the news again this week. Thank you for all that your department's done to keep Chesterfield flowing with good water.

[02:40:00] I know when these cases started coming up and that the citizens have concerns about water, and rightly so this year, water keeps coming up over and over in our area. What is your opinion on the proffers that are put in, and do you feel they're adequate to ensure the water supply to the citizens in Chesterfield County?

[02:40:30] Yes, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, the utility department does support this case with the extensive proffers, as Ms. Lacey referred to. There's actually four pages of utility proffers for this case and for your next case. Some may argue that's extensive.

[02:40:46] I think it's appropriate, especially for this type of customer class, to make sure we're protective of not only utilities, but the customers we serve. Just to take one minute, you know, these are probably the most extensive utility proffers I've seen in my career.

[02:41:01] and some of the profitors are very creative and they protect the utility and go to some of the points the applicant made about large water use. This is one of the only cases in my career. We actually have a usage cap on both water and wastewater. The usage cap was developed based on the current zoning and the current land use designation in the comprehensive plan multiplied by what we see those categories as typical water use and that's existing that's not the proposed I to zoning and so for each of these

[02:41:39] cases it limits how much water the case can use for the Watkins case it's two thousand four hundred and twenty eight gallons per day per acre for this size project that comes out to zero point eight five million gallons a day and that if the if the applicant wants to change that usage cap it has to be approved by utilities and there's special conditions I can get into if the board wants me to but again there's oversight to make sure that we're protective of the department utilities and the customers reserve the other detail is that this

[02:42:15] case also requires an extensive and detailed utility operations plan that operations plan is required to be submitted to the department utilities improved by utilities and it focuses on information like contact person so if we have any kind of operational issues we can contact the person on site so that we can coordinate our operations there requires a coordination of peak hourly demands seasonal changes in demand infrastructure needs and it addresses infrastructure needs so that it doesn't adversely affect how we operate the war utility and as you mentioned water utilities have been in the news and we've been successful

[02:42:54] on traversing that and keeping all our customers in safer and reliable water service so we take that very seriously and the third and most important thing is to ensure that the burden of a customer class like this doesn't fall on the backs of our customer base and for that we have a proffer that requires all the infrastructure improvement costs to be be paid by the applicant, so they actually have to design and construct any on-site, but also off-site improvements for the utility.

[02:43:25] So again, very extensive set of proffers, but I would argue that they're appropriate for this type of user. Thank you. I just thought it was very important that we, because that's such a huge topic in the news, that we addressed that, and the overall water capacity for Chesterfield County is?

[02:43:47] So we are fortunate to have three safe and reliable sources, the James River, the Swiftwick Reservoir, and Lake Chesden. All those sources added together, we have 110.5 million gallons of a day. On average, we use about 39 million gallons a day, with our peak day ever in the county being 70 million gallons a day.

[02:44:07] So this is less than 1% of capacity and 2.5% max on the lowest end water usage. Is that correct? Yes, sir. And as you know, the utility department is very progressive in ensuring that we have adequate wastewater and water capacity.

[02:44:28] We also have a fourth water plant currently under design. That project is going to initially be a 40 million gallon per day withdrawal from the James River. And we've got a very favorable Virginia Water Protection Permit to operate that plant at a peak capacity of 29.8.

[02:44:48] We're probably about a decade away from drawing water from that facility, but we are proactive in making sure that we plan ahead because water supplies take an extended period to design and construct, and we're well on our way to move forward with that project and have it completed within eight to ten years.

[02:45:09] I want to thank you and your team for all the work that you've done on these proffers with the applicant to ensure our citizens that we are not going to do anything that will be detrimental to our water supply, and that the additional cost that could be occurred if they choose to want to have a greater water supply be incurred by the applicant, not by the citizens in the county.

[02:45:34] Thank you for your work on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With that, is there any other questions? Mr. Chair, I just wanted one more question for George before he makes it back to his chair. - Yes, Mr. Carroll.

[02:45:54] - Along the discussions on these proffers for water capacity, there's also been discussions that because there's a cap, if they say, well, we need this and we can't give it to them, they can't get it, right? - That is correct.

[02:46:10] Any additional capacity, there's basically three categories they could fall into. I'll be more than happy to get into those, but basically it has to come through the Department of Utilities and have approval for that. So we will not give away water that we don't have the capacity. And part of what you just said a minute ago is that if additional capacity needs to be created, then the applicant can essentially help the county with that, with money to fix some of those issues.

[02:46:39] That's exactly right. And, you know, one of the concepts we're discussing right now is it doesn't have to be necessarily potable water capacity. We're having discussions right now. It could be a purple line. It could be a purple line with water reuse from our, the effluent from our wastewater plant. So we're having those conversations.

[02:46:55] We're thinking out of the box. And we're doing everything we can to protect the water supply, protect our customers, but also, you know, ensure that we treat the customer class fairly, but make sure that they're responsible for all the costs and the costs don't fall on the backs of our, say, residential customers.

[02:47:13] Right, because we have good rates and we don't want this to drive our rates up. Yes, sir. We have one of the most competitive rates in the region. And we are a AAA, AAA bonded utilities, one of only nine in the United States, correct? Last time I checked, there was 11 water and wastewater utilities in the United States.

[02:47:30] I have a AAA bond rating. And Chester was one of them. Thank you. I just want to add that my son appreciates that because he came and got water from me because he lives in the city. Sorry. We appreciate it.

[02:47:47] We're working very closely with the city. You know, water is really a regional issue. Good news. I spoke to the director of the city of Richmond this afternoon. Their second sample was taken today, their second compliance sample. We're hoping that by tomorrow afternoon around 2 o'clock, if all the samples come back clear, they can lift the boil water notice.

[02:48:08] So, again, water is a regional issue, and we're working hand-in-hand with the city of Richard to make sure they get stood back up and able to lift their boil water notice. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to close this public hearing.

[02:48:26] It's back before the board. This case is in the Midlothian District. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Where to begin? Let's begin where Ms. Schneider left off. We are never, ever going to put at risk our water as a result of a data center.

[02:48:48] We are capable of learning from other people's mistakes. And that is why, as Mr. Hayes said, we have one of the most extensive water proffers in place to ensure that we are walking into this with our eyes wide open.

[02:49:13] So I want folks to take solace in that. It is very telling to me, which is not true for other counties, that when a data center is coming into the community, that no one who is against it showed up.

[02:49:31] I say that because what that means is that we as a board and Kim Lacy as the attorney of the applicant has done an excellent job of answering every single question and being as open and transparent as we possibly could be.

[02:49:52] That is what we worked as a board, that's why we worked as a county, and that's why we have worked as a team to pull this all together. I also think it's important to recognize that we appreciated and welcomed all of the input.

[02:50:07] Mr. Saunders went through and made a list of all the different proffers that are there. A lot of those proffers are there because of input from the community. If it's downward lights or if it's a certain kind of a back where we needed to put extra space between the buffers, we put them into place.

[02:50:29] Those conversations occurred every step of the way, and that's the reason why no one is here this evening asking to vote against this. The Watkins property is unique. When I was elected, the first question that I was asked by Mr. Minx was, "What are we going to do about the FedEx facility that was going to go on those 349 acres?

[02:50:55] My answer to that, to be quite honest, was what FedEx facility, because I wasn't even aware of what was going on, and I had just won as supervisor, so it provided an opportunity for me to learn about the possibility of putting a FedEx facility there.

[02:51:10] The contract was in place. We as a county said, "No, we don't want that there." We went in front of the BZA, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and you know what? Chesterfield County lost, which meant that what Mr. Minx was asking me was, are we going to take this to circuit court?

[02:51:33] And the answer to that was absolutely. I don't want 3,000 trucks 24/7 up in the Midlothian District, and I definitely know already about the traffic that's going on up there. So now we have a choice.

[02:51:49] The choice was to put in place a very smart process when it came to the data center and or we were going to put in a FedEx facility that was going to clog our roads and was going to create the kind of congestion we don't want.

[02:52:04] So this was a win-win as long as we could put the profits into place that made sense for a data center. That is, we've gone through the process. We have talked, we have worked on this, and it went all the way to last night with Mr. Carroll and I.

[02:52:23] Mr. Carroll put forward a very important idea which I hadn't considered, and I'm glad you did. And with that was the idea that maybe the height of the data center was a little bit too high. Maybe we needed to lower it a little bit. So we've lowered it from 150 to 111 feet, I think is the day where we say 110 feet, was going to be the height of it.

[02:52:49] Ms. Lacy, the question I have for you is, I know that we can't put it in as a proffer right now, but I'd like to make an agreement and put it into the minutes that this is something that the applicant would be amenable to.

[02:53:05] - Yes, thank you, Dr. Merler. I do have authorization from the applicant to agree to that restricted building height of 110 feet. So yes, we do agree to that. - Great, thank you. - The maximum building, yes, thank you.

[02:53:22] - Now, so that should tell you something about the applicant, that the end user that we are going to be using in the county that's gonna put in that data center, on the night before has said, you know what? That's fine, let's do that.

[02:53:37] That's the kind of flexibility they have, and that's the way they've been through this entire process. So with that idea in mind, I'd like to move approve case 25 sn1040 with the proper conditions in the staff report except for the proper condition 11 which was the building height which we've just agreed upon as opposed condition is it not no that is an understanding with the applicant so it is dead so it does not have the the force of the proper but it's great okay very good but they but they have agreed to it so i'm looking for a

[02:54:14] a second i'm sorry second all in favor all right all right next is next is 25 sn1038 upper magnolia green west tract a and tract b rezoning mr ramsey good evening mr chair members of the board and dr casey case 25 sn 1038 matoka magisterial district upper magnolia green west tract a and tract b rezoning is a request for rezoning from agricultural and general industrial i2 districts to general

[02:54:54] industrial i2 this request represents an expansion of the upper magnolia green west plan technology village to the north with employment generating uses such as data centers advanced manufacturing research and development and office uses being planned the applicant's proposal includes two use tracks for the property these tracks are shown on the conceptual plan in the current slide tract a in the pink shading will be limited to the development of data center uses as well as accessory uses needed to serve these facilities. Tract B, and that's going to be in a hatched

[02:55:30] yellow seating, will serve as an expansion of the original Upper Magnolia Green West Technology Village. Uses in Tract B will be limited to specific industrial uses that were approved in Case 21 SN0676, which were limited to, again, advanced manufacturing uses, data center, research, and development office uses. Proffers have been provided to address a variety of impacts associated with the rezoning request and the proposed use.

[02:55:59] Subsequent slides will cover a few of these proffers in more detail. The applicants have restricted the uses in tract data data centers as the only principal use, with several accessory uses that would support and be secondary to the data center use.

[02:56:15] These accessory uses are outlined in the current slide. The proffered conditions require a 200-foot buffer to be provided around the perimeter of tract A, which is generally shown on the conceptual plan. For the portion of track day near Moseley Road, a 750-foot setback from existing single-family dwellings shall be required.

[02:56:38] Existing forested vegetation within these required buffer areas shall be preserved and incorporated into the buffer. Any areas of a buffer without a forested vegetation are also required to meet the standard for two times the planting requirement for 100-foot buffers in the zoning ordinance.

[02:56:54] These plantings will be focused next to the public roads or boundaries of properties that are residentially zoned. The proper conditions limit the noise generation associated with any use on track day, excluding emergency generators, backup power equipment, alarms, or beepers required by law, ordinances, rules, and regulations.

[02:57:15] Other than noise generated from the exempted use, the maximum sound level at any boundary line of the property that adjoins a residentially zoned or occupied property at time of zoning approval is 75 decibels between the hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and 65 decibels between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

[02:57:32] Emergency backup generators are only permitted for emergency use, and testing of emergency backup generators is limited to the hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Since the Planning Commission hearing, the applicant provides staff with the following updates to the proper conditions to address concerns with lighting and architecture for data center uses within the boundary of track day.

[02:57:54] Proper condition 14 was revised to require any data center buildings within 250 feet of the property that is residentially zoned or residentially developed at time of zoning approval to have the side of the building facing adjacent residential to have the same or similar architectural features as the front or entrance side of the building.

[02:58:16] Proper condition 17 was added to specify maximum light levels at property lines and require full cutoff lighting fixtures. The Planning Commission with the unanimous vote recommended approval of the request. Staff also continues to recommend approval. The proposed rezoning allows for the continued development and expansion of Upper Magnolia Green West Technology Village that's located to the south of the property.

[02:58:40] The proffers limit the use of track A to data center uses only, with track B limited to the original seven primary uses that consist of advanced manufacturing and research and development and office uses. Citizen concerns have been addressed in relation to the establishment of enhanced buffer areas required between existing residential properties and potential development of the site.

[02:59:02] Lastly, the request supports the comprehensive plans, policies, and goals to support proposals that foster growth and create opportunities for economic investment in the county. And as of today, we received eight letters or comments of support from the citizen comment portal.

[02:59:18] And at this point, I'd be happy to take any questions from the board. Board members, are there any questions for staff? Just a quick one, Mr. Chair. I'll have more later, but what type of zoning case is this? Is this a straight zoning or is it conditional use? Yes, sir. It is a straight rezoning. There's no conditions.

[02:59:33] Straight rezoning, not a conditional use, right? Correct. Isn't it true that the majority of cases that come before the board are conditional use that you see? I would say a fair majority of our cases do involve a conditional use or a conditional use. But they're not asking for any exemptions in this particular case?

[02:59:52] Yes, sir. That's correct. I have more questions later, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 25SN1038, Upper Magnolia Green West Tract A and B, rezoning.

[03:00:08] Is the applicant present?

[03:00:20] Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Casey, this is Kim Lacey, still here, of Roth Jackson, and Jay Gilder is here with me again for this case.

[03:00:36] As Mr. Ramsey already described, this is 979 total acres. That is split between a tract A, which is approximately 880 acres, and a tract B, which is approximately 99 acres. We're rezoning from A and I-2 to I-2.

[03:00:55] The tract A, which is the pink portion, is for data center use only, as one primary is permitted on the property. and the tract B portion, which is to the south with the hash marks, is going to be, let's say, rolled into assumed, it becomes a part of the original upper Magnolia Green West case 21 SN.

[03:01:19] I think it's 0676. This use is supported by numerous provisions in the county's comprehensive plan, as Mr. Ramsey stated. There are sections in the plan that encourage employment generating uses and uses that promote economic development in the county and we have zero exception requests in numerous proffered conditions so at a minimum we have to comply with all of the required conditions and development standards of standing ordinance plus all of our proffered conditions that go above and beyond the requirements of the ordinance we also have two conditions

[03:01:56] that were added since the planning commission one new condition on lighting that was mentioned and one there was an additional provision added to our architectural standards that stated for any data center building located within 250 feet of property that's residentially zoned or residentially developed as of the date of approval of this case the side of the building facing such adjacent residential property shall to the extent possible have the same or similar architectural features as the front entrance side of the building and i would like to once again give

[03:02:33] the citizens the chance to speak, and I would ask for time reserved to respond and answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to come forward and speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, good evening.

[03:03:04] Charles Skelly, IVEW Local 666, 115 years old today. Before I was elected in my office, I built careers. My career on projects like this, my members build careers on projects like this. We support this project and hope you will as well.

[03:03:22] Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Supervisors, Dr. Casey.

[03:03:41] Thank you all for letting me speak this evening. My name is Brady Deal. I'm representing Main Street Homes. I'm one of the 85 employees that own Dogwood Creek, which is a residential development that has 290 residential lots. If you see on the screen here on your screens, we're going to have a significant number, approximately 60 homes that are going to be within 550 feet of the edge of the buffer.

[03:04:09] We're going to have about 30 homes that will only have a 25-foot setback, so they'll be 225 feet from the edge of the buffer. We are slightly concerned still with where the proffers stand. We're not unsupportive of the project.

[03:04:26] We're very thankful to the EDA, the work that Garrett and Jake and Kim have done, and the work that you all have done to help foster job growth and promote economic development in the community. As we've talked with Kim and Jake and Garrett, and as we've talked with Mr. Carroll, we've really voiced that we feel like the distance that's proffered is just not suitable or is not acceptable based on what we're seeing currently in the state as it pertains to other localities.

[03:04:55] We know that Loudoun has changed their zoning ordinance to require a 500-foot setback from residential dwellings. We know they're also requiring that the noise decibels not go above 55 decibels. In this case, there's a 200-foot buffer. However, the buffer is inclusive of the setback, so technically the structure could go right there at the edge of that buffer.

[03:05:17] We know there's going to be parking. We've been told that it's going to be 365 feet, but that's not proffered. We'd like to maybe see that proffered. We've been told they would face the building's front, but the building's, that's only proffered for anything within 250 feet. But we were told publicly at the Planning Commission that the building was going to be 365 feet.

[03:05:36] So that proffer is a proffer, but it doesn't really apply because supposedly there's no building within 250 feet from our property. So it's a mute proffer. So we're really concerned right now. We don't feel like there's language that's protecting.

[03:05:52] We just like to ask. We're not asking that the decibels we reduce to 55. We think that we'd like to see it reduced to 65 just for our shared property line, that the testing on that shared 2,200 linear feet be 65 during the day and 55 at night, which is the same proffer that the lower MAG case had, the industrial case.

[03:06:12] We'd like to see that there be a specific distance proffered from our property line, that it just be, hey, if it's 365, just proffer. No building would be closer than 365 feet. We'd just like to see some of that in writing, because we know that the proffers are the legislative language that will dictate how this case is developed.

[03:06:33] And one day, if I'm moved on in my career and are no longer an employee owner, or if you guys are moved on, one day this will be developed and it'll be those proffers that guide that development. We know that very well at Main Street Homes. So we would just like a little bit more security and understanding of really what we're getting, particularly as it pertains to the noise and the location of this building in relation to the development, the property that I'm one of the employee owners of.

[03:06:59] So I appreciate your time. Thank you all, and again, thank you for your work. We're not unsupportive, and we really appreciate the work that the EDA has done for this. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Mr. Chairman.

[03:07:15] My name is Max Wiegard with Miles and Stockbridge. I'm an attorney representing Main Street Homes. As Mr. Deal expressed to you, we are mindful of the opportunity that data centers present to Chesterfield County, to the region, to our state, and the benefits they've provided to certain counties throughout this Commonwealth.

[03:07:41] We're also mindful that in appropriate locations and under appropriate conditions, they're a very desirable use for certain property. However, we're also concerned that, as Mr. Deal explained, that certain of the profit conditions, certainly as they relate to the property owned by an affiliate of Main Street Homes, that we anticipate will be residentially developed, just about the time when the data

[03:08:13] centers ultimately are built on this contract day may not, unless appropriate conditions are imposed in the proffers, be harmonious with the residences that will be built within, as he said 500 feet of the proposed data center buildings to that end we've submitted certain proposed changes to the proffers to council for the applicant those changes include and are focused on buffer yards on noise and on

[03:08:48] the architectural design standards specifically what we're proposing is to treat the residentially zoned, the R12 zoned parcel noted here, that shares a portion of the northern boundary line similar to the existing residences along Moseley Road.

[03:09:09] That is a buffer yard more in the range of 500 feet, certainly in excess of the 200 feet that's contemplated, which is less than the football field's distance between the closest residents and the nearest data center building. Moreover, we note that backup generators and emergency electrical equipment is accepted from the decibel level limits in the proffers and that there are not established limitations other than certain times of day on the testing of those

[03:09:43] backup generators. The point being that although there are established limitations in the proffers or proposed limitations and decibel levels in the proffers, if we accept from them some of the noisiest equipment supporting the data center, you're going to have on your hands in the not-too-distant future some residents that are going to be pretty frustrated about their current, their living conditions and the noises emanating from this data center development from time to time.

[03:10:10] We hope that you would carefully consider the proper conditions that are proposed by the applicant and ask the applicant to make appropriate modifications to them. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? Good evening.

[03:10:33] Board members, my name is Vernon McCaw, President of Main Street Homes. I've been an occupant or resident of Chesterfield for 40 years. I'm proud to be here. I haven't been in front of you and spoken in many years, but I appreciate the opportunity.

[03:10:50] I, like Brady and Maxwell, have concerns. We bought this Dogwood Creek development in January. It was an interesting timing when this, I guess, was announced in February, I've been on a crash course on data center education, which I know you have, too.

[03:11:09] I actually went to the data centers in Henrico and just trying to stay out of the way of the guards running around, watching me, wondering why I was looking at their buildings. The closest building to residence that I could find was 1,250 feet.

[03:11:29] So we do have real concerns over 200 feet. We bought this property already zoned, Dogwood. We spent $30 million on it. Main Street Homes, as of the last couple of years, is the second largest builder in Richmond. Not many people really know that.

[03:11:46] We've sold over $1 billion in homes in the last four years, which when I added it up today, that was even shocking for me. But, you know, we are a good company in the area.

[03:12:03] We support the area. We're holding out as one of the last private companies in the area. We are an ESOP. were employee-owned, so our 90 employees own these lots. This is owned by these employees, and I don't really have an ownership in these particular lots anymore, but as part of the board, I feel a real responsibility for them, and also for our future homeowners, and I know that, again, this crash course, we've learned what, we've tried to understand

[03:12:43] what Loudon has learned with their 55 decibels somebody said gosh you know 65 decibels it's a HVAC unit running but if you have an HVAC unit running beside you beside you 24 hours a day everywhere you go that could get pretty annoying so I do appreciate Kevin Carroll he's met with us twice we've met with the EDA a couple times talked to people I don't feel like we've gotten a lot of help really i mean kevin has brought up some good points um basically it's sound why can't it be

[03:13:22] 55 and 65 like the lower the upper mag section and uh can the generators be on the south side of the property away from our property i think those are the big requests we're not against it we just don't want it to hurt our employees and our homeowners so appreciate your um your listening Thank you.

[03:13:44] Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Jerry Turner. I'm not sure George is going to have to wait 10 years to develop that other source of water.

[03:14:05] Y'all may have to come up for more money to get that thing online if y'all keep approving all these data centers. I'm not against it, but it's a lot of data centers that are coming into the county that's going to take up a lot of resources.

[03:14:22] At least you're not building 1,000 apartments there. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, again, I'm John Easter with Chamber RVA.

[03:14:38] I'm not going to repeat the economic argument I made on the last case. You heard that. Let me just say, as I ran out of time on the last case, I was starting to say the important thing is you need to have a place where these things fit well. And I do believe that this site is a good location for this.

[03:14:57] When you consider the fact that on the east, you have Poet extended as a boundary. On the north, you have the 200-foot buffer and the south, a 200-foot buffer. And on the west, you, in addition to the buffer, have the 750-foot setback from the existing residences on that side.

[03:15:15] I think, in my experience, both as a zoning lawyer and when I was a planning commissioner here in the county, 200-foot buffer is a very substantial buffer, and I think it is a reasonable accommodation for this. Obviously, I have not been in the middle of the specific discussions between the applicant and Main Street Homes, But as a general matter, I think this is a pretty ample buffer, and I think this is a good site, and I hope you'll support it.

[03:15:42] Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? Would the applicant like to come up?

[03:16:04] Mr. Chairman, I would like to state that our proffered conditions do, as has been mentioned, require a minimum of a 200-foot buffer, and that the zoning ordinance, our county zoning ordinance, requires a 100-foot buffer.

[03:16:22] So we have exceeded that by 100 feet. We also have conditions in our case that require existing forested vegetation located within the areas shown as the buffers to be preserved and incorporated in a landscape plan.

[03:16:37] So we are going to retain this buffer, and there's also supplemental planning requirements as well for any buffer areas that are without forested vegetation. So there will be replanting done. And that's, I believe it's a two and a half time, it's two times the planting standard for a 100 foot buffer.

[03:16:59] So not only is the buffer 200 feet, it's two times the requirement for just 100 feet. So it's a substantial replanting requirement. And I would also like to say there was one gentleman who made a comment about that the use was better than all the residential uses.

[03:17:20] I note that this comprehensive plan designation falls for, it would be two dwelling units per acre. So on track day, with 880 acres, it would be 1,760 residences that could be developed on the property.

[03:17:37] And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Board members, any questions for the applicant? We'll keep it open for the applicant, and then when the applicant's done, we'll close it.

[03:17:54] A couple questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to touch base on a couple of things. You just, we'll take the last one. You just pointed out that it could be about 1,700 homes could be utilized on this if a different development plan was brought forward. Transportation Department estimates about 10 trips per day. Chessa, is that right? When you look at, that's about 17,000 trips a day in a sense that they could be added to the roads out there, which would also require substantial improvements. Something that's not shown in the buffer is there's also a 90-foot right-of-way against that 200-foot buffer for a road, a proposed road that would be an extension of Mount

[03:18:34] Herman Road all the way over to Mosley Road, is that correct? That's correct. It is a proper condition for a 90-foot right-of-way dedication. However, the proper condition, there's no requirement for the applicant to build the road, correct? Correct. So again, that would be another section of land on the property. If the county didn't come in to build it, that would remain with another 90-foot buffer. Earlier today, we had a conversation about the 250-foot setback. Now,

[03:19:04] The truth of the matter is if you have a 200-foot buffer and a 90-foot right-of-way, the county also has a minimum setback of 75 feet, correct, from the roadway for the building? There are setbacks. So that would be about 365 feet, correct?

[03:19:21] Yes. So you probably have more of a buffer just from the road and with the 200-foot buffer unless the county comes in and builds the road. Yes, I would agree with that.

[03:19:39] I'm going to ask Mr. Minx a question. Any other questions for the applicant? I probably have some more, but I can come back to that. I'm just going to go ahead and close the public hearing. It's back for the board, Mr. Carroll. I'm sorry.

[03:19:54] It's going to take a little bit for this one. Mr. Minx, this is a straight-up zoning case, correct? That's right. And if this was a conditional use case, I could impose conditions. But in a straight zoning case, I cannot. Is that correct? That's correct. The only way we'd be able to do that is if for some reason we suspended the rules of the board, correct?

[03:20:14] You could have done that if there were proffered conditions that had been submitted before the case was called. So we can't do it now? You can't do it. State law, actually, you can't even consider them right now. But the applicant could agree to certain things, and that would become part of the minutes of the meeting, similar to the height restriction, for example, that the applicant just agreed to in the Watkins Center case.

[03:20:41] Yeah, they would become the same minutes of the meeting. They're not proffers in the case, but they would be recorded as an agreement by the applicant. And the county staff can hold the applicant accountable to agreements that are made in that fashion.

[03:20:58] It would be a way that we would work with them and make sure that they live up to their agreements. It doesn't have the same legal weight that a proffer has. Ms. Lacey, I talked earlier to you about some of these issues, and one of them had to do with the 250-foot proffer that was put in for a limitation on building structures closest to the property line, correct?

[03:21:37] Yes, in the architectural standards proffer. In discussions with the applicant, have they indicated they could be agreeable to further distance than that? Yes, they have. I have personally discussed with them 350 feet.

[03:21:55] 350 feet. And in that discussion, it wasn't 350 feet necessarily for the actual data center building. It was something else, wasn't it? So that is if an actual data center building was located within 350 feet of property that was zoned residential or residentially developed as of the date of approval of this case, then the face of the building or the side of the data center building that was facing such residential development would have to have the same or similar architectural features as the front entrance side of the data center building.

[03:22:31] So as an applicant, would they be amenable to 350 feet instead of 250? Yes, I do have authorization to agree to 350 feet. Would the applicant be amenable to a restriction of building height to 110 feet? Because in the proffered condition 12 and the building height, it talks about 150 feet for any property that is west of Mount Hermon Road. Anything that is east of Mount Hermon Road is 100 feet, and that's already established in proffered number 12. Would they be amenable to reducing the west property height to 110?

[03:23:08] Yes, Mr. Carroll. The applicant has agreed to that 110 foot building height restriction, and maximum building height of 110 feet. One of the other concerns had to do with noise.

[03:23:29] And in discussions with the applicant, I believe that it's their intention to actually put these buildings further away from the property line, one, to try and make them forward-facing to the road, if the road gets built, and certainly to the neighborhood.

[03:23:47] It's also one of the things that is in the zoning case talks about screening on the top of the building can you speak to that a little bit yes it does there is a proper condition to screening for any rooftop mechanical equipment should be screened and it speaks of either an extension of the same building material as the actual building i can read the exact language if you like it has this exterior rooftop equipment any mechanical equipment which is visible from a public road except for polite parkway or any property that's

[03:24:24] that's residentially zoned as the date of approval of this case or residentially developed as the date of approval of this case shall, to the extent possible, be screened from public view generally by the incorporation into the roof form through the use of materials similar to those employed in the construction of the principal structure.

[03:24:44] So when we talk about shall, to the extent, possibly be screened by the public view, I'll be honest with you when I read that I actually had some concern until it was kind of explained to me. means is you know if an airplane flies over or a drone flies over there's no way you can screen it so someone can't see it right unless you completely enclose it which most time in HVAC systems they don't do that but depending on the elevation of depending on the elevation of the building in relation to buildings that are under proximity to it we'll say where the neighborhood is if

[03:25:18] the elevation of the building is below for example in Watkins Center where those buildings are going to be, they're going to be below grade because it's actually lower. So potentially someone driving by on 288, for example, might be able to actually see the top of the building.

[03:25:35] I don't know. We won't know until we put it up, but you would be able to see HVAC systems on the top of that building. And for this, again, in talking with the applicant, the one, they would like their buildings to be forward-facing to the road with screening in the front and have the generators in the the back. In looking at other data centers that this particular applicant has put forward, they've also put the HVAC systems in the back and protected by screens, which is even further

[03:26:09] away from the property line. So I'm going to ask Mr. Minx, so in having this discussion With the applicant now, I think that all of this is going into the record and staff, when they're considering this case in the future, can consider these items when they're talking about a site plan.

[03:26:38] I think that they would remind the applicant of promises that were made today. Again, it doesn't carry the same forces as a proffer does, but they would be reminding them of agreements that were made. One of the other things that we talked about earlier is about tree preservation.

[03:26:57] Because one of the things that bothers me about some of the zoning cases, quite frankly, when they get passed and the developers are required to do it because of runoff restrictions, they have to go in and wipe out all the trees in order to regrade the property.

[03:27:13] We've seen it on several developments in the area. I won't throw anybody under the bus, but you see it where they go in and they have to in order to regrade to meet Chesapeake Bay Act conditions. We actually have in Chesterfield County, actually have a tree preservation requirement, specifically up in the Upper Swift Creek, and that's actually one of our codes.

[03:27:35] Is it not? Yes, that's correct. And so, would the applicant be amenable to agree to absolutely try and retain as much of the tree buffer as possible in relation to what is required in our statute? And I believe they are, I think they love trees like I do, and they'd rather have more trees that have to cut them down.

[03:27:56] And what I would like, so would they be amenable to that? Yes, they would. They actually. There is. We do. In our profit, it speaks specifically to preserving trees within the buffer areas.

[03:28:13] But this could be beyond the buffer. Carol is asking just across the entire site that they will work to, one, I think you're asking me to comply with the minimum tree canopy requirement of the upper Swift Creek watershed tree canopy.

[03:28:30] Is that the question? Because they are willing to do that. Mr. Chair, I think that covers all of the questions and asks that I had. I'm not sure if any other board members have any questions. Any other questions? This case is in the Matoka District.

[03:28:49] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am thankful for Main Street Homes for the conversations that we've had with them. You know, we held community meetings. This is for the board's, for the community's information.

[03:29:08] This is a, this land is owned by private people. It's not owned by the county. It's a different case compared to when we had the Upper Mag case last time, which was actually county-owned land. This land is owned by private individuals who have chosen to enter an agreement to sell the land to a particular company.

[03:29:26] And it's just been facilitated through the EDA because of an NDA, which is pretty standard practice when you're talking about a case like this. I would like to see if the applicant does what they said they were going to do, these buildings will be well off the property line.

[03:29:46] They will be forward-facing to the road, and all of the heavy-duty equipment that would make the noise would be facing south, away from the neighborhood, towards the lower, what we now call lower mag industrial site, which would help with the noise that we're talking about.

[03:30:07] So, Mr. Chair, with that in mind, with the applicant's ability to make these other concessions, make a motion to approve. Case number 25SN1038, subject to the conditions in the staff report.

[03:30:22] Second. All in favor? Aye. The last discussion item is 25SN1039, Upper Magnolia Green East Amendment.

[03:30:40] Mr. Ramsey. Good evening again. Case 25SN1039 is a request to amend zoning approval, and it's case 21SN0675 on 524.3 acres to modify the conceptual plan uses, cash proffers, and development standards relative to residential uses, plus rezone 219.64 acres from agricultural and residential R-12 to residential R-15 to incorporate this acreage into the overall Upper Magnolia Green Yeast Development Plan.

[03:31:15] The applicants' revised conceptual plan will remove residential uses from the entire property, provide a preserved forested land, and incorporate utility and public facility uses that are either planned or under construction. The first part of this request is an amendment of zoning approval, again that's case 21 SN 0675, to modify the conceptual planned uses, cash proffers, and development standards relative to residential uses. This area is highlighted in blue on the current slide and composes approximately two-thirds of the property. The portion colored blue was rezoned in 2022 to permit up to 600 single-family units, as well as significant acreage to develop

[03:31:55] public facilities, such as public schools and a library site. The second portion of this request is to rezone approximately 220 acres from agricultural and R-12 to residential R-15 to be incorporated into the overall Upper Magnolia Green East development plan, and this is denoted by the area in red. A modified conceptual plan for most of the original Upper Magnolia Green East development areas proposed. The revised conceptual plan includes a new high school, middle school, and elementary school sites. Additionally, an approximately 20-acre site for

[03:32:29] an electrical transforming substation and an approximate 13-acre site will be set aside for a future elevated water tank, a communications tower, and a location of a VDOT lay-down yard. Finally, a minimum of 350 acres will be set aside for the Swift Creek Preserve, and that's in the area denoted in green, the lighter green shade. The Planning Commission with the unanimous vote recommended approval of the request. Staff continues to also recommend approval. The proposed development represents an elimination of residential density to instead provide for a significant area of roughly 350 acres to be dedicated as permanent preserve for

[03:33:07] the purpose of conservation and passive use that would include nature trails. The revised development plan for Upper Magnolia Green East continues to provide necessary public facilities, remove residential development opportunities, and improve utility infrastructure for existing and future residents, and businesses in this area.

[03:33:29] At this point, I'd be happy to take any questions from the board. Do any board members have questions for staff? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider the proposed FY2025.

[03:33:48] I'm sorry. I went to the wrong. I'm trying to get ahead of myself. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing on case 25SN1039, Upper Magnolia Green East Amendment. Is the applicant present? Good evening, Mr. Chairman.

[03:34:17] members of the board and Dr. Casey, my name is Kim Lacey of Roth Jackson, and I am here tonight for this case with Jake Elder of Economic Development. Mr. Ramsey already described the case extremely well with all of the details. The only part I'd really like to add is how exciting it is to see the Swift Creek Preserve created and a part of this case, and there are also 15,000 linear feet of stream restoration projects that are included with this case, with this area, with Upper Magnolia Green East.

[03:34:53] And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Any questions at this time? Okay. Yeah. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[03:35:14] Seeing none, I'm going to close this public hearing. This case is back before the board. It's in the Matoka district. I would actually like to. - I would actually like to make a comment. I concur and feel very, I think that's an amazing opportunity for us to have the preserved land, conservation land, and thinking about all the opportunities of scientific studies for the kids in the science classes and opportunities for just nature

[03:35:53] and have that preserved and maintained and not be able to touch it. So that makes me very excited as a tree hugger, so thank you. Chair. How many homes that were zoned are eliminated with this preserve?

[03:36:10] 911. 911 homes that were zoned to go in will no longer be being built. When we passed the Upper Mag West case, several board members that are on this board today voted against that case, and one of the biggest reasons we voted against the case is we wanted to ensure the reservoir had proper care taken for it.

[03:36:38] That this preserve that we would be putting in and all the stream restoration will actually go back and fix what I believe should have been a proffer in the original case for Upper Mag West.

[03:36:54] So I'm very happy to see this. For everybody that says all we do is add more, more, more, taking out over 900 homes that were zoned definitely shows that we are trying to preserve our water supply, as we've talked about extensively tonight, and I think this is a great step forward in this area.

[03:37:18] So, again, I agree with Ms. Snyder. This is a wonderful way to preserve the area, to give opportunities for the schools, and to have a location for the schools. And people remember, we, as a county, paid about $13 million up front for these properties.

[03:37:37] Just with an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, that would have cost significantly more than the $13 million to obtain those locations. So this property has paid off already more over than we could ever imagine just in those school sites, as well as the economic development that it will bring.

[03:38:02] So still need to get that Poite extension to come in from the Poite, but this is a great step in moving forward, and I'm glad that we're able to do it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[03:38:18] I'll make a couple of comments, and then I'll probably make a motion. So the one comment you brought up about stream restoration is extremely important. What people don't realize, and I've walked these properties, when we get heavy rains, Blackman Creek, Horse Bend Creek, and Outerdale Branch Creek are three finger creeks that feed into Swift Creek.

[03:38:43] You may remember we actually had to fix all the bridges on Outerdale Road because when the heavy rains came in, those bridges would flood and people were trapped in their homes and the board was gracious enough to let us take action to fix those bridges and now when it rains, it doesn't flood anymore.

[03:38:58] But what does happen is as that water flows through those properties out there and picks up speed it pulls debris and sand out of those creek beds and washes it into the upper end of swift creek which is why it's been filling in some people want to believe and say that it's only because of all the development out there and and that the silt fences failed and that's what's filling the lake in no it's coming from those streams so for us to put something in place that can control that we will be able to be much more successful in keeping um the upper end of the

[03:39:36] from filling in by wash coming off these properties and you know again on those the West sites are going to be held to a strict standard on you know adhering to the 100 year floodplain restrictions that they have to put in place on BMP ponds and and to maintain and control the flow of water off of those properties and putting this preserve in and I thank the board tremendously for supporting me on this we're doing what we said we were going to do. We promised to do this, and we're doing it. It took a while to get it done, but there

[03:40:14] will be walking trails that already exist on these properties for the families that live out there. They're the schools, the people who live in these neighborhoods. We've built neighborhood schools. Kids can walk to school in elementary school. They'll walk to school in middle school. They might have to ride a bike in high school because it's a little further down. They can walk, but from age, from first grade all the way through, those people who live out in that area will have school campus. They'll have a public library.

[03:40:43] And some of the other additions that are going on here to help us with the power grid, you know, Dominion Virginia Power's got to run a main line down and we're going to put a substation in there that's going to be tucked in off the, in the woods. And there's also going to be a cell tower going in out there, which, you know, a lot of people live out there have very poor cell service or internet service for that matter. And this will help them with that as well. And so again, I want to thank the board for supporting this for the Matoka District.

[03:41:13] I think it's going to be fantastic, and it's an honor to make a motion to approve case number 25SN1039, subject to the conditions in the staff report. Second. I think she beat you by that much. All in favor?

[03:41:29] Aye. Item 16, public hearings. A, to consider proposed FY 2025 budget amendments. Mr. Harris.

[03:41:40] Chair members of the board, this is a pretty simple item given the rest of your evening, but what's before you tonight is a public hearing that we advertised last month to amend your FY25 capital improvement program.

[03:42:19] So this is not anything to do with your budget that kicks in here in about 30 days on July 1st. These are capital existing capital priorities that we've had around for some time. Conversation related dates all the way back to December when we dealt with your year in from fiscal 24.

[03:42:38] We split that surplus at that time half and half, half for the rebate that's getting credited to the June 5 bill. And the rest set aside for capital priorities, again, that we knew existed that needed some additional funding, that the bid environment's still challenging in many, many spaces.

[03:42:56] So we flagged that then, and we said, well, we don't know all of the final numbers on these projects at that time, but we knew that we were going to have to come back and add some funding to these priorities. So you designated those funds at that time, but you did not appropriate them.

[03:43:13] And so that's what you're doing in this public hearing. The balance of the funding is coming from other one-time sources that we typically use and in some cases have to use for capital priorities, interest income being the dominant source there, interest income on bonds that we have sold.

[03:43:32] We can invest those proceeds until they are spent out on the projects, and then you reinvest those proceeds back into capital initiatives, capital projects. Same thing on, we'd see FY25 revenue line here on the source side of this slide.

[03:43:47] That, again, is interest income from the current year, from investments that the treasurer holds, yields continue to be far above what we would have expected them to be. And when those cases arise, again, it's a one-time source, so it's a perfect source to help out with these capital priorities.

[03:44:05] On the youth side, again, these are existing things. This is the final piece of funding for our ERP modernization replacement project. This is the conversion to workday. This is a joint effort with the school division. You see two more drops of funding for some park projects, completes the phase work at the Diamonds and Iron Bridge, and then completes the big first phase for Rockwood for its 50th anniversary.

[03:44:34] Sheriff's HVAC project, we've been talking to you about that for some time. We've gone back out to bed numerous times to try to get that in the best place we can. From a cost perspective, it is now ready to go. The animal shelter project has been before you. We've approved that contract.

[03:44:50] This puts in the final piece of that, again, the HVAC system associated with that building. And you see the school debt service. That is setting aside some of these one-time dollars in the debt service fund itself to deal with future mortgage payments on school bonds.

[03:45:07] Again, that's a one-time source. We know we have those spikes coming up. We'll be in the marketplace in the next 45 days to sell first bonds for the high school that you have just been talking about for the last several minutes. So this helps smooth out those spikes in the debt service curve to make sure that we can not put undue pressure on the rest of the school operating budget.

[03:45:28] And then the last item that is up here, which has been discussed at Audit Finance and other places, is the weapon detection system in the school division. That's a one-time cost. There's no personnel associated with that. This is literally just the system that would go in.

[03:45:43] It's a portable, battery-powered system that would be implemented this fall at the middle and high school level to assist with school safety. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions you might have. Any questions for staff? Thank you.

[03:46:01] Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider proposed FY 2025 budget amendments. Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing none, I'll close this public hearing.

[03:46:19] It's back before the board. Is there any discussion? Can I get a motion? I second. All in favor? Aye. B, to consider amending the county code relative to illegal activities in county parks.

[03:46:39] Mr. Bowles. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Casey. This is a public hearing to consider enacting ordinances regarding illegal activities in county parks. These recommendations were developed by a team including representatives from county administration, parks and recreation, police, and county attorney.

[03:46:59] And in preparing this draft, staff has paid particular attention to focusing on areas that are existing challenges in our parks. The Commonwealth's Attorney has also reviewed this proposal and has no concerns. Unfortunately, at times we have users of our parks whose behavior negatively impacts the enjoyment of these facilities by everyone.

[03:47:20] These additional ordinances, which currently only exist as rules, will provide the police department with greater ability to enforce problem behaviors in county parks as a class four misdemeanor with a $250 fine.

[03:47:35] Areas covered in the ordinance include hours of operation and access, amplified sound that can be heard beyond the immediate area of the device, no projectiles such as darts or slingshots, setting fires except in areas specifically designated for that purpose, use of and access to water in non-designated areas, parking, maintenance, and use of vehicles outside of designated areas, and protection of property, wildlife, and habitats.

[03:48:07] If approved, the ordinances would become effective September 1st, 2025. A copy of the proposed ordinance is attached to the agenda item, and Mr. Luther and I are here to answer any questions you may have.

[03:48:23] Board members, are there any questions of staff? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider amending the county code relative to illegal activities in county parks. Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[03:48:43] Good evening. My name is Linda Kidd Fleshman. I've lived at my home in South Chesterfield for the last 52 years. In the last three and a half years, my husband, my neighbors, and I have endured multiple mass gatherings, mostly college-age individuals, involving large quantities of alcohol and marijuana at Matoika Park.

[03:49:06] So far this calendar year, there have been five such events in four and a half weeks' time, including two of the largest ones ever held. These parties include loud music and a DJ, which are audible inside our home, which is at least 300 yards away from the source.

[03:49:22] The noise and crowd increases as the afternoon wears on. The stench of marijuana consumed at these events is nauseating. We can smell it in our backyard and under the park pavilion the next morning. Park grounds and parking lots are left littered with empty alcohol bottles, hand-labeled drink pouches, indicating that alcoholic beverages are indeed being consumed in the park and likely being sold there.

[03:49:47] When they finally leave, many intoxicated young drivers are simply funneled out onto our winding two-lane country roads, potentially putting many innocent lives at risk. In the days following such events, we notice an uptick in cars just cruising through the park looking for another party.

[03:50:04] These likely non-taxpayers arrive and essentially take over Matulka Park, making it extremely uncomfortable, if not impossible, for local families, individuals, ball players, dog walkers, et cetera, to appropriately utilize the park during that time.

[03:50:21] Police personnel monitor these events, yet prohibited activities continue to go on. Extra police are brought in to break up these parties. Park staff have to clean up large amounts of their trash, vomitus, and broken glass left littered throughout the park and neighboring school grounds.

[03:50:40] These massive party attendees show blatant disrespect for park property, rules, and staff, and disrespect our police officers since there are no consequences for their inappropriate behavior. Chesterfield County Park policy and signage clearly state use of illegal drugs, marijuana, or alcohol are prohibited, yet we continue to see evidence that it is indeed occurring on a large scale.

[03:51:05] During multiple conversations with both police and park personnel, We've heard each department say that the other department needs to be involved, has more latitude, or is responsible for, etc. With all due respect, I don't think you want these massive unruly parties happening across the street from your home or in other areas of the county.

[03:51:27] I'm only asking for the same consideration. Please untie the hands of our police officers. make these park rules and ordinances with criminal penalties and provide our police officers with greater enforcement authority. Thank you.

[03:51:42] - Thank you. Any other speakers? - I'm gonna close this public hearing. It's back before the board. Are there any discussion? Is there any discussion? - Mr. Chair, I wanna thank the police department and staff for moving these measures forward.

[03:52:03] As you can see, there are some people in my district who have been very frustrated, and it's not just this year, This has happened in previous years, and we have these parties that pop up in other parks around the county, and this will give our officers the ability to enforce rules.

[03:52:22] Unfortunately, when it comes to the marijuana, the General Assembly tied the officer's hands and said you can't use the smell of marijuana for probable cause to even search. That was done by the General Assembly. That was a limitation that they put on our police officers. When I was an officer, if you smell marijuana, it's probable cause to search, and then you finding marijuana and now it's legal for them to possess marijuana not in the parks it's not legal for them to smoke in the parks so it's just like the same thing with alcohol so what having disability I think is going to be important to make a motion to approve mr. chair second oh any other discussion

[03:52:58] I'm just a quick comment is you've had the challenges in Matoka we've had the problems in the Lothian especially a Robius landing so what's happening is is that these parties are kind of bebopping around the county, and this is a reasonable solution on how to kind of get a hold of this.

[03:53:19] So this is something I'm going to be supporting. I'd like to thank the citizen that came forward and really made a strong case for why this should happen. So thank you for your motion. All in favor? Aye. C, to consider amending the zoning ordinance relative to signage at County Public Facilities, Mr. Jenkins.

[03:53:51] Good evening, Mr. Chair, board members, Dr. Casey. I'm presenting tonight on a zoning ordinance amendment regarding signage. In February, the Planning Commission initiated an application to amend the zoning ordinance regarding signage at public facilities and EMC sign regulations.

[03:54:15] The purpose of the amendment was to increase sign flexibility for schools by increasing the number of freestanding signs allowed on a site and shortening the copy change time for an EMC sign. First, we'll tackle the number of freestanding signs. Currently, in the ordinance, the project is limited to one freestanding sign.

[03:54:33] In the sign ordinance, there are some bonuses available to properties that front on one or more thoroughfare plan road or properties in non-residential districts with extensive road frontage. Due to the unique layout of schools and other public facilities, they cannot often make use of these bonuses, and as such, they're stuck with one freestanding sign.

[03:54:51] In order to increase the ability of schools and other public facilities to communicate messages to the public, Staff proposes an exemption to the freestanding sign limitation for such facilities. The exemption reads as follows. Property developed with or used for a county governmental facility should not be subject to a maximum number of freestanding signs, and these signs may be placed in a location that best allows for communication of information to the public based on the unique layout of the property.

[03:55:17] It's important to note that these signs would still be subject to applicable height, area, and setback regulations otherwise listed in the zoning ordinance. Now I'll move to the second part of this zoning ordinance amendment. An electronic message center sign or an EMC sign is a restricted use in all zoning districts.

[03:55:36] And among the restrictions within agricultural, residential, and manufactured home districts is a limitation on how quickly an EMC sign may change to a different screen. Currently, it's set at five minutes in those areas. Most schools in the county are in an agricultural or residential zoning district, meaning they're held to this five-minute copy change time.

[03:55:58] This long time between message changes impairs the ability of schools and other similar facilities to convey information to the public. So reducing that interval to 30 seconds allows for more frequent message turnover and increased ability to convey information. The interval is still slow enough that it shouldn't be a distraction for passing drivers.

[03:56:17] And this new time would be applicable to any EMC sign within agricultural, residential, or manufactured home districts. And in these areas, such signs are restricted only to religious institutions, parks, and schools. That's really all I have.

[03:56:33] It's a pretty simple amendment. I'll take any questions you have. Board members, any questions for staff? Mr. Chair, just so I'm clear on this, we're not putting anything into place here where someone's going to be able to put up electric signs by right, correct?

[03:56:49] No, it doesn't change that ability. No, it's just the timing. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider amending the zoning ordinance relative to signage at county public facilities.

[03:57:04] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name. Good evening. My name is Renee Eldred. As somebody who used to have to change the signs at the school, it's good that they now get to have electronic signs.

[03:57:24] But I will have to say, signs are kind of one of my pet peeves, not for this right here, but how they might look 10, 20, 30 years down the road and how they are used that far down the road.

[03:57:40] And as I came in tonight, in the county, flags or signs that are considered like a flag that flap in the breeze are prohibited. And the first thing I saw when I came in is the new sign beside the kiosk to tell everybody that's where they put their tax payment.

[03:58:08] It is a prohibited sign. So, I really, my whole thing was to like, okay, maybe we should start notifying the departments what is illegal and what isn't illegal in the county. So, you know, this is a good thing.

[03:58:28] Nice looking signs, lower to the ground, as opposed to what I see up and down Route 1. So, thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? I'm going to go ahead and close this public hearing. It's back before the board.

[03:58:45] Is there any discussion? Seeing none, can I get a motion? Mr. Chairman, I have a question. Yes, sir. How did we arrive at 30 seconds, from five minutes to 30 seconds? I believe 30 seconds is in commercial districts.

[03:59:00] Commercial districts? Yes, sir. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Can I get a motion? So, vote. Second. All in favor? Aye. D, to consider amending the comprehensive plan relative to Chapter 9, Environment.

[03:59:20] Ms. Hobson. Hello. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and Dr. Casey. I'll be giving you an overview of the proposed amendment to the environment chapter of the comprehensive plan. The changes made in this update include data updates since many of the statistics were from 2012 to 2017, continuing compliance with the Code of Virginia for what's required to be in a comprehensive plan, some minor text changes, and a new section focused on showcasing county environmental stewardship. Chapter 9 is based on a green infrastructure

[03:59:56] approach which is focused on preserving and protecting the county's natural resources as development occurs. Natural resources can be incorporated into developments as passive or active open space, while also providing important functions such as improving air quality, flood control, and providing wildlife habitat. The chapter is broken down into these main sections, and two new sections have been added, county commitment to environmental stewardship, and grants, programs, and funding opportunities. The types of county commitments are broken down to three categories, participation in regional efforts, awards and accomplishments, and programming and partnerships. This new section of the chapter highlights how different departments are involved.

[04:00:35] Parks and Recreation operates and partners with over 300 programs focused on environmental stewardship and they're looking to increase their offerings for youth, adults, and families and groups that provide opportunities for quality experiences of outdoor-based activities, environmental education, and access to natural areas. In partnership with neighborhood leaders and associations, Community Enhancement provides multiple programs all with the goal of a healthy and vibrant community. These programs are funded locally and with state grants. The Utilities Department manages the county's water and wastewater infrastructure. There's more detailed information on the Utilities Department in Chapter 12 of the Planned Water and Wastewater. Utilities projects related to environmental stewardship include phosphorus removal projects, nitrogen

[04:01:15] removal projects, and advanced metering. Risk management touches several aspects of the county's overall environmental stewardship program, including procurement support, hazardous waste and materials management, reporting and regulatory compliance monitoring, and environmental health and safety training. Environmental engineering worked with residents, businesses, and the development community to protect the natural resources and to enhance communities while accommodating growth and development. General services provides the county government with services including capital projects management, emergency community systems, communication system maintenance, energy management, facilities maintenance, fleet services division, and security

[04:01:53] management. Two general services projects that are shown here are installing solar panels on county buildings and installing EV charging sites on county property. Information was added to Chapter 9 on grants and funding opportunities for landowners. The Virginia Department of Forestry offers several grants for projects of varying scales. Information about EV charging infrastructure was also added and includes opportunities for individuals and businesses, as well as more sources for additional EV information. For regional efforts, Plan RVA was awarded $1 million from the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant by the EPA to support efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants the priority climate action

[04:02:32] plan was completed in march 2024 it included a greenhouse gas inventory and recommendations for emissions reductions and transportation waste management and building operations the comprehensive climate action plan which is a follow-up to the priority climate action plan is expected to be done by the end of 2025 and will include emissions reductions goals and strategies for 2030 and 2050 as well as an impact assessment and workforce development analysis.

[04:02:58] Chesterfield is a participant in the development and implementation of both these plans. Both Planning Commission and staff recommend approval of this amendment. I'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. Go ahead. Can you go back to the slide where we're talking about UV?

[04:03:17] The one right after that. There you go. I just want to make sure, because I'm going to get this question, is that when someone is coming to charge their vehicle who is that cost gonna be incurred by at the county site yes I am not able to answer that question that might be a good question for general perfect wish I had eyes in the back of my head sorry to put you on that someone will answer your question thank you so much they're

[04:03:57] John Strauss, we'll see. - All right, the music's stopped, one of you gotta. - Good evening, members of the board. To answer that question, it would be the citizen would be paying for that electricity.

[04:04:15] - Thank you. - Probably pay via credit card, I'll match. - Yes, sir, yes, sir, it'd be a credit card. - Clarity on that upfront, thank you, sir. - All right.

[04:04:32] - So also on this page, I'm just, so is there anywhere mentioned in this about, any of the James River Soil and Water or VCAP grants and stuff like that? I'm looking at the page right now. That grant isn't mentioned specifically, no.

[04:04:52] Should they not be? I'm just asking. I just simply think that it's a good option for some people. I know that it's a grant that the people have to pay up front, but then they get reimbursed for some of it.

[04:05:09] I just think that it's a good opportunity for us to add that. We could certainly reference that. I know we linked to some of their information on our webpage. from a comprehensive planning standpoint where this is a chapter of that. I don't know if it's the best fit, but we'll take a look at that.

[04:05:27] - Could you look at the next slide, please? Thank you. Oh yeah, there it is. Comprehensive Action Plan, I think, which is great. And I'm aware of the TPO receiving that million dollar grant.

[04:05:43] Thank you for any help you had in that regard. I think it's so important that impact assessment on low income and disadvantaged communities certainly should be considered. I heard of a case in Alabama where there was an $8 million grant removed, and they were in desperate need of environmental impact.

[04:06:06] And so I had no idea what they would do as a result of that, but that fell directly on a low-income community. I happened to see that Sunday on CNN, and so I hope that there's something to be cognizant of as we move forward.

[04:06:26] Any other questions for staff? All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing. to consider amending the comprehensive plan relative to Chapter 9 environment. Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[04:06:46] Seeing none, I'll close this public hearing. It's back before the board. Is there any other discussion? I move approval, Mr. Chairman. Second. All in favor? Aye. E, to consider FY26 through FY31 Secondary Road Six-Year Plan and FY26 Secondary Road Improvement Budget appropriation of funds and authorization to proceed Ms. Walker thank you good evening mr. chair members of the board and dr. Casey mr. minks before I jump into the item I do want to acknowledge there she is Rebecca Worley here in the

[04:07:23] front row the VDOT residency engineer I'm wonderful to work with her and her team and every year they help us develop this item so I appreciate her being here to support. So at a minimum, you are required to update the secondary six-year plan every other year and adopt a budget annually. This is a small source of money, but a very important one. We get about a million dollars a year through this source, and then there's about $10,000 per

[04:07:55] year that we receive that goes specifically towards paving state-maintained roads. You can see this, Sorry, you can see now the eligible project types that this funding can go to support, usually smaller, obviously given the amount of money, smaller projects, spot safety improvements, drainage improvements, bike ped, like I said, paving, gravel roads, rural additions, and then miscellaneous projects like weight-restricted bridges permitting some of our fire vehicles to pass over some of our weight-restricted bridges.

[04:08:34] we use a lot of it for bus turnarounds and then we always include our revenue sharing projects in the plan this has been a good source to bridge the gap if we are at a ward and we need bids come in and we need a little bit extra money we like to use this source to get those projects homes if necessary so in terms of the plan there are these are the new projects that we're proposing to add to the six-year plan, Kelmarby Road turnaround.

[04:09:05] This actually was a request through schools to create a turnaround at the dead end of Kelmarby Road, obviously to help buses be able to pick up kids along that stretch of road. The request actually came in September of last year, and we had the gravel turnaround in by October, and the buses were using it.

[04:09:27] But it's still in the plan because VDOT will schedule to hard surface it ultimately. So that is new to the plan. Otterdale Road at Hampton Mill and Hampton Park roundabouts, pedestrian crossings.

[04:09:43] This was a request from citizens. There's actually an existing funded, secondary road funded project to add lighting as well to these roundabout locations, but folks wanted to be able to cross Otterdale Road. And so we are adding this to the plan.

[04:10:01] We will be putting in rectangular rapid flashing beacons that are actuated by pedestrians. You see the $2 million estimate there. That's because we actually have to do a fair amount of constructing concrete islands to anchor the RRFBs in and narrow up the crossing.

[04:10:20] And then you see in here VDOT plan review. So we thought this would, we coordinated with Rebecca, and this is actually an eligible source for this funding. You see the three projects here that are pretty high-priority projects. We're on an accelerated schedule, advancing these through the process and be using some secondary funds to cover the VDOT review time to support moving those projects along.

[04:10:47] And then most importantly, you have to also adopt the FY26 budget, annual budget, which is highlighted in the blue column. And again, you see here specific dollars for FY26, Belcherwood, unpaved road to be paved, bellwood turnaround.

[04:11:08] We can continue to work on advancing that. Like I mentioned, weight-restricted bridges, and then I mentioned some plan reviews. So those are specific dollars in FY26. And then questions, quick presentation. Board members, any questions for staff?

[04:11:26] I have one request. Yes, sir. I remember when John McCracken was here, am I remember that name? John McCracken, he used to be the transportation director. I know Jesse does, John McCracken. He told me one year we were receiving $10 million on secondary roads.

[04:11:46] And all of a sudden somebody had the wisdom to move us to $1 million a year. You can imagine that kind of change a few years ago during my tenure, which was amazing. But what I would like for us to do is have a schedule

[04:11:59] Where we look at a lot of our older neighborhoods and have a tiered schedule, maybe five to ten neighborhoods, and look at not just repairing, but in some sense looking at resources to repave those neighborhoods, especially those that may be 30 to 40 years or more old in regards to how we can help improve overall.

[04:12:32] because eventually it's going to catch up with us if we don't have a tenured schedule for moving toward improving of our elderly neighborhoods. So I would like to make that request for your consideration, if you would so kindly receive it.

[04:12:50] Receive. Thank you. With 10 million, you could do a lot more. But thank you, Chelsea. We'll take a look. Yeah, thank you much. Any other questions? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider FY 26 through FY 31 secondary road six-year plan and FY 26 secondary road improvement budget, appropriation of funds, and authorization to proceed.

[04:13:19] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[04:13:34] Good evening, Mr. Turner. I want to talk about the power height partway. Every time I go to a budget meeting, and this has been going on for at least four or five years, y'all appropriating money for it.

[04:13:57] Everybody's doing studies. I want to know when y'all are going to start digging dirt. It doesn't seem to be, I hope it's not going to be another $460 where you spend a half a billion dollars and then put the first shovel in the ground. You need to quit talking about power height and let's do something.

[04:14:20] Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? I'm going to close this public hearing. It's back before the board. Is there any discussion? Yeah, Mr. Chair. Chessa, so maybe you can shed some light on the question that was just asked Sure. So in terms of where we are with Powhat, we have phase one fully funded. County was able to sell some bonds last year and 200 million of those proceeds are moving Powhat phase one forward, which is extending Powhat from Charter Colony to Woolridge Road.

[04:14:59] We will be having and putting out advertisements soon for a public meeting on June 18th to talk about the plan, the schedule, where we are with that $200 million project. The first phase of that broad project that we've chopped up into five projects will start construction early next year, the first phase of that, which will be Woolridge at Polite Extension.

[04:15:28] So that's phase one. but we have we haven't put out the bid yet no when do you anticipate that so the first project will be the po white extension over tomahawk creek and then over to woolridge and the intersection with woolridge that'll be the first project and we're going to start to we're planning to put that advertisement out end of this year beginning of next it's really really fast so thank you yep Any other discussion?

[04:16:06] We can get a motion. Motion approved. All in favor? Aye. F, to consider the FY2027 and FY2028 transportation alternative projects. Ms. Walker. So this is a public hearing.

[04:16:23] It's that time again every other year to consider transportation alternative projects. This is for fiscal year 27 and 20 applications. We'll be asking for you guys to approve the applications that we'll plan to submit. We did do some briefings with you guys two by twos on these projects.

[04:16:42] Just as a reminder, another small scale source of funding aimed at pedestrian and bike facilities to provide alternate modes of transportation for folks. We found that projects that are in the $1 million range that support regional bike ped corridors tend to be successful.

[04:17:03] So we right size our projects with that in mind and been successful doing that. We've been working on pre-applications, which are due Friday. The full applications are due September, and this requires a 20% match. The rest is federally funded and comes through VDOT.

[04:17:19] And the MPO and VDOT work together to score the projects. And ultimately, the CTV weighs in on which projects are selected. So this year, we're proposing five projects, three signalized pedestrian crossings.

[04:17:34] we've been focusing on improving safe crossings of our primary roads so you can see route 10 is on here courthouse and route one and then we have a couple linear facilities on old buckingham road and woodpecker road and just really quick beach road to route 10 right here at the county main intersection to the county complex this intersection already has two existing cross two of two of the four lakes are already have crosswalks we'll be adding in the other two lakes and some sidewalk to get to the retail on the southwest quadrant of the intersection courthouse

[04:18:14] road at tabor lanes you have rockwood park on the east you have old courthouse road on the west with some apartments kind of south and west of the screen here this will modify the existing signal to get peds across courthouse road over to rockwood park and then this will fit into the long-term plan that's called for bike bed network with the special area plan so this is a little spot improvement but there'll be more to come out here route one at sherburne mr engel this is the one i think barb updated you that we were planning to submit route one at redwater signalized crossing

[04:18:50] but vdat wind up funding that through some other sources so we're swapping out another route one project. This is to provide, it's actually between Sherbourne and Swineford, a pedestrian hybrid beacon, which will help facilitate crossing of Route 1. On the east side Fall Line Trail is actually bid openings were today, so I've got to check in to see how the bids came in. But it'll tie in the Fall Line Trail on the east side and then a community connectivity funded project on the west side, and this will be a mid-block crossing, pedactuated, stops traffic just for

[04:19:28] pedestrians to cross mid-block. And this is the linear project, so Dr. Miller, this is the one where we were going to be proposing to add a shared use path on Old Buckingham Road to get from the retail at 60 and head north. We may have to right-size this one. We're working on that estimate right now. We wanted to go to Southwick, but we may need to go to Oldbury as a phase one of this bigger section if the estimate comes in too high and then lastly we have woodpecker road this is a

[04:20:03] really good project this connects up sidewalk ties in at jay mitchell jones drive and takes it over to etrick park so this will connect up residential uses kind of along south lawn drive over to etrick park and those are our proposed projects no guarantees that we will get all of them we're usually pretty successful in getting a few, though.

[04:20:27] So, any questions? Any questions for staff? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider FY27 and FY28 transportation alternatives, alternative projects. Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this issue?

[04:20:45] If so, please come forward and state your name. Any kind of sidewalks is good, but with all the fatalities that we had on Route 1 in the last what's eight, ten months. I kind of have worries about putting a pedestrian crossing where there's not a stoplight. People just, the pedestrians and the drivers, they're not paying attention.

[04:21:22] And I just have this fear of somebody on this side paying attention, the next side isn't. But that's, you got to do something, you got to start somewhere. But I think it needs to be taken into consideration as well and also on the other side of that pedestrian crossing there is a historical mile marker that I want to make sure that it doesn't get disturbed as well and if there's any money in that budget I know they've got a sidewalk to go back down to the to the Dollar General which is this from the

[04:21:58] picture it's directly in front of the dollars or the Dallas store whatever it is it's a hill right there they're not gonna walk around if there's any money in the budget to put some steps down there so people aren't falling going down the hill because they literally will not walk down the sidewalk and around the corner so thank you thank you any other

[04:22:23] speakers good evening jerry turner talking about sidewalks they're trying to build a sidewalk on fordham road because all the neighborhood kids have to walk to jacobs elementary school they finally did about 200 yards and they said they run out of money they can't build it anymore They're supposed to build it all the way down to Hull Street.

[04:22:59] There are a lot of kids that are still having to walk to school in the middle of the road. You need to start looking at your priorities as to when you start building these sidewalks, especially when you're in these subdivisions. You can't let these developers talk you all out of putting in sidewalks.

[04:23:17] Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? I'm going to close this public hearing. It's back before the board. Is there any other discussion? Mr. Chair, I want to thank you, Ms. Walker.

[04:23:32] But such an outstanding job. You've really been doing a great job with a huge area of transportation that Chesterfield has longed for. And, of course, I move that we approve the secondary road maintenance program as presented.

[04:23:52] And Mr. Turner, we hopefully will make sure we'll check on the money to see where we are. So thank you for your comments as well. Second. Did we get that right? It's the only matter before you, so it's the alternatives project.

[04:24:11] Okay. All in favor? Aye. G, to consider the conveyance of county property at 8801 Ram Circle, Mr. Smith. I don't have a presentation for you tonight, but I think I do have the entire C-suite from Habitat Humanity Richmond who have stuck with us until 930 at night.

[04:24:36] So with us tonight are Dave Neary and Matt Warrig, CEO, I think it's COO, of Habitat for Humanity Richmond. So I really appreciate them sticking with us. This item is simply to allow us to convey the property over to them so they can do wonderful things with it, rebuild it, and then convey it to a qualifying new homeowner.

[04:24:59] And we have a nice ribbon cutting out there. So that's what this one's about. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm sure they would be, too. Any questions for staff? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider the conveyance of county property at 8801 Ram Circle.

[04:25:17] Is there anyone who'd like to speak to this issue? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing none, I'm going to close this public hearing. It's back before the board. Is there any discussion? Just a quick comment.

[04:25:35] Thank you for hanging out this evening. It shows your commitment to the work that y'all are doing and hanging in with us. So thank you. I just wanted to say, and Jesse knows how excited I am about this project. This actually started before I became a supervisor, and it's in my own neighborhood.

[04:25:56] And I kind of helped to get the ladies that were living there that shouldn't have been living there by themselves, you know, the help that they needed. And so this is a full circle kind of moment. And I'm hoping that we could possibly do a community neighborhood volunteer day to help out at the project also.

[04:26:16] So we'll be in contact. So thank you so much. Can I get a motion? Second. All in favor? Aye. H, to consider the conveyance of an underground easement to Verizon, Virginia, LLC at the Northern Area Convenience Center.

[04:26:35] Ms. Snow. Good evening. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Casey, this is a public hearing to consider the conveyance of a 15-foot underground easement to Virginia Electric and Power Company at the Northern Area Convenience Center.

[04:26:56] The easement is needed for the installation of fiber optic cable to the sill tower site. The request has been approved by staff and approval is recommended after the public hearing. Any questions? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public hearing to consider the conveyance of an underground easement to Verizon, Virginia, LLC at the Northern Area Convenience Center.

[04:27:20] Is there anyone like to speak to this issue? If so, come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'm closing this public hearing. It is back before the board. Is there any discussion? Can I get a motion? Motion approved. All in favor?

[04:27:36] Aye. 17, 15-minute citizen comment period on unscheduled matters. We have no speakers. Before we make a motion to adjourn, is there any comments any other board members like to make tonight?

[04:27:57] Well, I do have one. I want to take a little bit of liberty on it. I want to thank my wife for her love and support as tonight is our anniversary and I'm here instead of at home. So, thank you to my wife. I'm ready now.

[04:28:14] Mr. Chair, we need a motion to adjourn to the Poway Parkway public meeting on June 18th at 6 p.m. at Clover Hill High School to then adjourn to the regularly scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting on June 25th at 2 p.m. in room 502 of the county administration building.

[04:28:31] We have a motion, but can you second it? I'll second. Alright, we got a second. Discussion? I want to make a point that I think that maybe the public doesn't always recognize, is it's not just the work that we're doing, but it is a commitment and it's compromised for the families and with the wives. We do this but it is a whole family kind of experience.

[04:28:56] So I thank you and love to Jen for appreciating. And husbands. And husbands, yes, and of course, and husbands, yes. All in favor? Aye.

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