Coraggio Consulting
Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors Meeting - September 23, 2026, Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Place: Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 51m (video)
Official meeting video (CivicClerk): https://chesterfieldcova.portal.civicclerk.com/event/2030/media
Official agenda (CivicClerk): https://chesterfieldcova.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=5268,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 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:12] Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the afternoon session of the September 23rd Board of Supervisors meeting. It feels kind of out of the ordinary to be down here, I know, because I went upstairs to 502 first. We then remembered very quickly, man, it's quiet up here. Oh yeah, that's right.

[00:00:34] So I'm glad that we're down here. I also want to welcome Mr. Minks, Dr. Catlin to the dais, making some changes for that so that it provides an opportunity for space as we go through this afternoon into this evening's festivities that we can have folks that can sit where you all were.

[00:00:54] So thank you for that. All right, Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, the first item on the agenda is approval of minutes for the August 26th Board of Supervisors meeting. Board members, is there a motion to approve the April 26th minutes? So moved. I hear a motion. I hear a second. All in favor?

[00:01:10] Aye. Madam Clerk. 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. Catlin. All right. Thank you, everyone. Today, I think we have a treat for you. So, good afternoon. As we do at every board meeting, we like to take a moment to recognize our Everyday Excellence recipients, employees, consistently going above and beyond. Today, we are pleased to recognize employees of Chesterfield Employment Services and the important work they do each day to help individuals find greater independence, opportunity, and stability.

[00:01:47] And they've been doing this for nearly a half century. Their work can have a lasting impact, not only on the individual receiving services, but also on their families and the broader community. Executive Director of Mental Health Support Services, Kelly Freed, joins us to share more about this dedicated and compassionate team.

[00:02:07] Director Freed. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Catlin, Chesterfield Employment Services held their 50th anniversary celebration on September the 13th at Beulah Recreation Center. Chesterfield Employment Services began as Chesterfield Occupational Center in 1976 on Hull Street Road by parents looking to provide employment opportunities for their children with disabilities initially serving four individuals.

[00:02:33] Over the next decade, CES expanded to serve more than 70 individuals becoming Chesterfield vocational services and relocating to White Pine Road, where the program still exists today. CES began placing individuals in the community businesses in 1987, implemented a transition plan in 1991 to move out of the sheltered workshop and solely into community businesses, and in 1996 became Chesterfield Employment Services. CES has been a leader in the field of supported employment, being one of five sites in Virginia to participate in the original

[00:03:09] person-centered planning grant that introduced the supported employment concept to the state and was the first organization in Virginia to implement the Project SEARCH transition model. CES has won awards from the Association of People Supporting Employment First and the National Association of Counties and has maintained continuous CARF accreditation since 1997.

[00:03:33] CES has maintained long-term positive relationships with over 60 businesses in Chesterfield, Colonial Heights, Disputana, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Richmond, which currently provide employment opportunities for 230 individuals with developmental disabilities.

[00:03:50] With us today are staff from CES, and I would like to name Kim McCarthy, the services manager, James Holdren, who is the services supervisor, David McGowan, services supervisor, Anitria Saunders, the transit manager, Kristen Kerr, the employment supervisor, Monique Stewart, employment supervisor, and Aaron Cross, employment supervisor.

[00:04:14] Thank you. Check in with my board. Ms. Schneider. I just wanted to say thank you so much for all you do.

[00:04:30] I know we've heard about this. Was it at the awards thing? you guys had something about two years ago and they did some awards. I think it's just amazing to see how they can find purpose in a job and make their life so much more full. Thank you for all that you do to do that and make sure that they find the right place. I greatly appreciate all of you. Thanks so much. Other comments? Mr. Carroll. I just want to say thank you. I think it's

[00:05:09] extremely important what you did there are there are um it helps bring meaning to people's lives quite frankly so thank you for all your hard work appreciate it dr hilton just want to echo that thank you from my colleagues um really heartfelt so thank you all so much jingle i know the work that you do to serve the citizens in the county is actually extremely meaningful so i'm sure that uh it touches each of your hearts each day as i'm sure it does those that

[00:05:46] you serve. So thank you for all that you did. Any other comments? As someone who has gotten to see you guys work every day, it's been a long time. James Holdren, I love the beard, man. It looks good.

[00:06:02] I like that. The, you know, what folks don't recognize, I think, is that these, the folks that you work with show up with such a desire to be part of. And at the same time, behaviors, all the can really get challenging and for what you all do to be able to step in and to model and to be able to assist means so much and you mentioned that you know 230 individuals 60 businesses this is a community effort and being able to take folks out of the shelter workshop and bring them to the

[00:06:39] community and to help with all of that what you guys do is just really terrific work I remember with me being over at service coordination and seeing what you all do it's like man I could never do that kind of work but you guys do it with the kind of energy the kind of love the kind of flair that is just lovely to watch day in and day out so thank you all for the work that you do this everyday excellence is you know this kind of award dr catlin is really really not they all

[00:07:05] aren't but this one i really get on a very personal level so thank you thank you item four Special Recognitions, A, recognizing 2026 Virginia Association of Counties Achievement Award winners, Mr.

[00:07:32] Lynch. Mr. Lynch, it's good to see you. Good to be here. Good afternoon.

[00:07:48] I'm Dean Lynch, executive director of the Virginia Association of Counties, and it's a pleasure to present some awards in my home county, so it's always good to come back home. We've been across the state presenting awards, but, again, you know, it's always good to come home.

[00:08:04] For the benefit of your constituents who may not be familiar with the Virginia Association of Counties, VACO has existed since 1934 to serve and support county officials in many ways. First is through our advocacy efforts at the state level and in Washington.

[00:08:20] Second is through our education programs. Third is through our communications. And fourth is through our business development services. In 2003, we established our Achievement Award program to recognize counties that have adopted innovative approaches to providing public services and identifying programs that could serve as models for other counties to emulate. And again, today I'm proud to present three Achievement Awards to Chesterfield County. A little bit about the program. This is our 24th Achievement Awards program. This year we received 103 entries. So this program is truly a competitive

[00:08:56] program. Chesterfield County continues to be a leader in the Achievement Awards program. Chesterfield County has won every year of the Achievement Awards program, which started in 2003. No other county holds that distinction. With three Achievement Awards this year, Chesterfield County has won 63 times, which is the most of all time.

[00:09:20] Henrico is second, Prince William, and Loudon are third, third and fourth. There were several criteria that the judges used in deciding the winners this year. To begin, number one is, does the program offer an innovative solution to a problem?

[00:09:37] Number two, does the program promote intergovernmental cooperation? Three, does the program provide a model that other counties can emulate? And fourth, is the program an innovative approach to a problem or a solution that county government can deal with?

[00:09:55] This year, if you don't mind, I'll read the winners real quick. The first winner is the Internal Audit Continuous Monitoring Program. Chesterfield County's internal audits mission is to provide objective analysis and information to management, and those charged with governance to support the county, benefiting the community.

[00:10:16] The continuous monitoring helps all employees implement the county strategic plan, specifically everyday excellence. So congratulations on that program. And does anybody here? You want me to go ahead and read all the winners first?

[00:10:33] Yeah. Okay. We would like to get a photo for the annual conference. Okay.

[00:11:01] All right. All right.

[00:11:17] Congratulations.

[00:11:33] All right. The second program is the ZOMOD Conversion Map Innovative Viewer Program. The ZOMOD Conversion Map Interactive Viewer transformed complex zoning modernization into a clear, accessible experience for both staff and the public.

[00:11:50] By unifying parcel data, current zoning, future zoning classifications, and conditional use plan development case layers, and maintaining monthly updates, the county delivered a transparent, user-friendly tool that improved operation efficiency and strengthen the public trust so congratulations on that program and finally the third winner is

[00:12:20] the zomod zoning ordinance modernization project and subdivision ordinance amendment in 2025 chesterfield county completed two landmark modernization initiatives the zoning ordinance modernization which is zomod project and the subdivision ordinance amendment to streamline its land development framework zomod provides a modern user-friendly zoning code effective January the 1st, 2026, to align with the comprehensive plan, while the subdivision ordinance amendment updates procedures for plat submittal and processing. Both initiatives offer

[00:12:57] clarity, consistency, and predictability for residents, developers, and decision makers across the county. So congratulations on that award. Congratulations, Chesterfield County. We look to see you at our annual conference so we can recognize you all again. Thank you.

[00:13:22] Back to you. Can you explain a little bit to community about how, when these are submitted, who actually makes a decision on what gets chosen? Yes, like I said, this is a very, very competitive program.

[00:13:39] We had over 100 entries this year. I think I said 103 entries. We have a three-judge panel from all around the state. They meet together, they look at all the proposals that are submitted, and they determine the winners based on the innovative projects and what kind of project can be emulated elsewhere in the state.

[00:14:02] So, I mean, this is truly a competitive program, unlike many other programs that are out there, such as our NACO programs. I mean, NACO, they do a great job and they have a lot of awards, but these awards right here are these special awards, at least from our standpoint.

[00:14:24] Remember right here. It was six years of hard work from ZOMOD, so I was a part of that process.

[00:14:46] Staff did an amazing job, so I'm glad you all have won this award. I think you all have won a few others, if I'm not mistaken, but great job, and I'm hoping that it will continue to benefit our community for many years to come so thank you so much thank you also for everything you've done uh for our county too so just a bunch of gratitude i just want to mention i mean uh dean you said something really important which is that since this award was given from the very very beginning justfield county has won every single year which says a lot

[00:15:23] about consistency it says a lot about how important it is to continue to get better at what we're doing. And not only that, leaders in the state or leaders in the Commonwealth. I mean, when I go to a VACO conference, invariably the question comes up over and over again. Well, we're confused about something. Well, what is Chesterfield doing? And that's how it typically happens. And so then we're able to step in and say, well, if it's about audit or if it's about plan mod, whatever it's about, how are we doing things digitally? All those things are happening. So I'm so grateful for all

[00:15:59] your hard work. We continue to work hard and so proud of what you all have done. I think the other thing that's consistent about that is the quality of county employees that work in Chesterfield County, right? And the fact in leadership, not us, but leadership throughout all the departments, as you go down through the ranks, encourages people within the organization be creative and innovative, think outside the box, and come up with solutions that work for

[00:16:35] the community and so the fact that we've been getting this done for 63 years really speaks to the people who've worked here for 63 years all the people who are before them and they were out in those bricks out there who've been recognized and all those people come before us every month who are retiring who've set these standards who've been working for all of this and I give all the credit to them because they're the ones who come up with all these ideas whether it's at Vaco or NACO they're the ones who do it and then they come to us and go we want to do this I go okay let's do that, so thank you very much. As both of us worked for Chesterfield for a long time, okay, able to go

[00:17:14] to our supervisors and say, I have an idea, and for it not to get dismissed, but to say, tell me more about the idea, and then see if it makes sense, and that is what is so amazing about the culture here, is just, it starts with, I have an idea, so thank you all. Thanks, Steve.

[00:17:58] Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Madam Clerk.

[00:18:21] B, recognizing other retirees and special guests. Mr. Chair, at your direction, we are going to do a retirement resolution at this time. We are doing item 14D, and that is a resolution recognizing firefighter Matthew Perkins upon his retirement.

[00:18:41] And will Firefighter Perkins and his guests please join the board on the stage?

[00:18:53] Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I'm proud to introduce to you Firefighter Matt Perkins, who is retiring after 30 years of dedicated service to the citizens of Chesterfield County.

[00:19:14] You'll hear about his resolution in a minute. He's got quite a few unit citations and Lifesave awards, but I think what he'll be remembered most for is his ability to have a very common-sense approach to issues, very calm demeanor and somebody that could be relied upon at all times. And if you had an emergency at your home, Matt's the guy you'd want coming to help you and your family out. So we're going to miss him and we wish him the best in retirement. Madam Clerk. Whereas firefighter Matthew F. Perkins retired from the Chesterfield Fire and EMS Department on September 1st, 2026,

[00:19:53] and whereas firefighter Perkins attended recruit school number 26 in 1996 and has faithfully served the county of Chesterfield and its citizens for 30 years in various assignments as a firefighter at the Ettrick, Chester, Dale, Manchester, Courthouse, Buford, and Midlothian Fire and EMS stations. And whereas Firefighter Perkins served as a mask repair technician for over 20 years, and whereas Firefighter Perkins served as a member of the peer support team for the past three years. And whereas Firefighter Perkins was awarded an EMS unit citation for his role in

[00:20:33] saving the life of a three-pound premature infant on September 4, 2004. And whereas Firefighter Perkins was awarded a unit citation for his involvement in a structure fire with a trapped child on March 2, 2007. And whereas Firefighter Perkins was awarded a unit citation for his contribution at the scene of a hazardous incident, which resulted from an attempted chemical suicide on June 14th, 2014. And whereas Firefighter Perkins was recognized with a unit citation for his teamwork while providing care for a patient suffering from respiratory arrest from choking on

[00:21:10] April 4th, 2019. And whereas Firefighter Perkins received a unit life save award for his involvement in rescuing multiple residents at a structure fire on October 22nd, 2023. And whereas Firefighter Perkins received a unit life-save award for supporting the team in providing life-saving measures to multiple gunshot wound patients on January 26, 2025, and whereas Chesterfield County and the Board of Supervisors will miss Firefighter Perkins' diligent service.

[00:21:42] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors this 23rd day of September, 2026, publicly recognizes the contributions of Firefighter Matthew F. Perkins and expresses the appreciation of all residents for his service to the county and extends their appreciation for his dedicated service and their congratulations upon his retirement.

[00:22:03] And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be presented to Firefighter Perkins and that this resolution be permanently recorded among the papers of this Board of Supervisors. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Can I get a motion? Can I hear a motion and a second? All in favor say aye.

[00:22:19] Aye. All right, thank you. So before I start with my thoughts, let me just turn it over to my board. So I just want to say thank you so much after listening to all that.

[00:22:40] I know my mom yelled at my dad several times when he'd come home from a fire that he put himself in danger. And I know that was just a spouse thing to do. So thank you for all the years of dealing with, you know, wondering if he was okay. And I know it's hard, but it's so important to the community.

[00:22:59] and thank you so much for all that you do. We will greatly miss you, but I'm sure that you have all sorts of wonderful plans for your retirement. Dr. Catlin, do you want to present him with the brick? Well, thank you very much, Vice Chair Carroll.

[00:23:16] I have the distinct honor and privilege of presenting this brick. Matthew, I have to say, I did not get a chance to meet you yet, and we're sorry to see you go, but happy for your retirement. Folks don't realize it is very difficult to become a firefighter, and you've done it for 33 years, And that's a very dedicated years of service.

[00:23:37] You're very compassionate. We can really glean that through the resolution that we've all just heard. And so we are extremely excited for you for your next chapter. Just know, and as you heard the clerk say, your years of service will be cemented not only in history through writing, but also through that brick.

[00:23:57] So we're looking forward to seeing your name on the pavement as we walk past it every day. so thank you so much for your years of service and we look forward to what's next for your future thank you and in case you don't know this there's a sign next to the bricks out there with a QR code and so someone from the community can scan that QR code bring it up bring your name up and be able to read your resolution and understand what your contribution was to Chesterwood County while you're here that's something that was recently added and I think it really makes a big difference because before you just look at it, it goes, it has a brick, right? Whatever. But now you actually

[00:24:37] at the meaning of that brick, besides being there, besides you having one, is everything that's on that paper. And so thank you very much for everything you've done for the community to keep us safe, save everybody's lives that you have. And there's so much more that's not on that paper because you don't like it fit so much. But you know where it is. It's right here. And you remember it too. So hopefully your life will be a lot less stressful now.

[00:25:00] So congratulations. I can say one of the things that stuck out to me most is during my time of touring the fire stations, understanding that we maintain our own equipment and how much money that saves the county and having our firefighters trained to do that.

[00:25:17] And hearing that you did it for 20 years, saving us money, also operating as a firefighter and everything that you've done, just want to say thank you. I know we get a lot of emails telling us that we need to cut this part of the meeting, but it's very important especially when people like you have done so much for our county saving lives saving money saving time we need to bring you before the board with your family and to just say publicly thank you so I know we're going to get a ton of emails about it later but I think it's well worth it and thank you so much for everything you've done. Well clearly from your

[00:25:56] resolution there are people in this county today that wouldn't be here if you hadn't responded and And that you can take with you in your retirement in a way that most retirees won't be able to say. They could say they did a job well done, but they won't be able to say somebody else's life is able to do a job well done because you saved them.

[00:26:20] Thank you for your work. And we see a lot of folks that come up here, of course, are retiring. And the folks that are in public safety and fire, EMS, police, you know, sheriff. Listening to that resolution, what really was coming through for me is that we're in the presence of a hero.

[00:26:40] And so thank you for being a hero, being heroic for our community. This is about people, and I never forget that. And when folks are coming up here and they're retiring, we know that they put their life into this.

[00:26:57] But for you also, it was about showing up every day and being ready to be that hero. So thank you. Thank you, everybody.

[00:27:13] appreciate it. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate it. I'm not used to talking one of these things. But yes, I have truly enjoyed being involved with Chesterfield County for 30 years. It's a great organization. Thank you, Chief Senator, Chief McKay, and of course, all the board here. Appreciate all you've done to support us and give us things that are, you know, to do our job and, you know, apparatus and all the other stuff that goes along with it. So I appreciate that. And thank you,

[00:27:43] oh yeah it's my wife Angie she's my new management under retirement yes lovely wife 34 yeah yeah lovely for 34 years she's been managing me but she she has a 100% reign of me now so so thank you very much for everybody I appreciate the resolution thank you yeah oh yeah I think I think she's gonna get a t-shirt with that on there right right so thank you I appreciate Thank you.

[00:28:17] Good job. Thank you. Thank you for your service.

[00:28:33] Thank you very much.

[00:29:11] Mr. Goode, want to come forward? We can announce our September Consent Agenda retirees. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, fellow board members, Dr. Catlin. In addition to Mr. Perkins, retiring tonight from Chesterfield County are collectively 304 years of combined service.

[00:29:30] I'd like to read the names of those who are on consent tonight. have Jeffrey Henson with the police department, 35 years. James Trice with the fire and EMS department, 32 years. Scott Wright, police department, 28 years. Kevin Lee with the police department, 27 years. Gerald Hobbs with the police department, 25 years. Aaron Quinnen with the police department, 25 years. Dana Davis with accounting, 22 years. Matthew Wilkinson with the police department, 21 years, and John Heffel with general services, 19 years.

[00:30:05] We wish all of these folks a long, healthy, and happy retirement. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Mr. Carroll.

[00:30:22] You saw that a lot of senior police officers in this department have retired this year, and there's more coming. We hired a lot of people 30 years ago that grow Chesterfield County, and those people are now rotating into where they're old enough and have their years of service to retire.

[00:30:43] So if you're out there and you're wondering whether or not you should come and be a Chesford County police officer or a firefighter, we're hiring. We have openings. So if you're watching, come and apply. And it's a great organization. You should certainly try and come work for it. But the information, the intellectual property that just walked out the door is absolutely unbelievable.

[00:31:04] I knew those people. They all did a tremendous job for us. So they're going to be sorely missed. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Madam Clerk. Item 5, Work Sessions A, Mental Health Support Services Annual Update, Ms. Krajewski and Ms. Freed.

[00:31:21] Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, and Dr. Catlin. In accordance with the county charter, thank you for the opportunity to present an annual update on the activities of the Chesterfield County Community Services Board.

[00:31:38] I'm Jen Krieski, the chair of the CSB, and it's my privilege to bring you greetings on behalf of our board. We continue to have a very active and dedicated members on the CSB board, and we appreciate their service. So at this time, I'd like to ask members of the CSB board who are able to join us today to stand and be recognized.

[00:32:09] I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank the Board of Supervisors and County Administration for your ongoing support and advocacy for the services the CSB provides. And I will now turn it over to Kelly Freed, our Executive Director, for our annual update.

[00:32:28] Thanks, Jennifer. Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, Dr. Catlin, it is a privilege to present our annual report this afternoon. Our mission is to promote good health outcomes and recovery for those with mental health, substance use, and developmental disabilities.

[00:32:44] And this picture is one success story that we have. This is a recent graduate from our Families First program who has now transitioned on to kindergarten, and it's always great to see such positive outcomes with our children. Looking at those served over FY26, we served about 8,600 residents, which is an increase over FY25.

[00:33:06] We served about 1,000 more individuals with developmental disabilities than those with mental health. However, they were pretty much equal. We had 1,600 new individuals come through same-day access. Now, that does not mean that they have not received services in previous years.

[00:33:22] However, those were new intakes that we did over the past year. In addition, prevention services served another 14,000 individuals through classes, groups, consultations, community events that I'll touch on a little bit later. And we continue to have strong social media presence with a reach of over $3.3 million.

[00:33:41] And that's through Facebook, billboards, videos, websites, different things like that. Looking at our FY27 budgeted revenue, of the $64 million, the majority is from Medicaid, Medicare, and insurance. And insurances at $30.3 million, followed by Chesterfield County's contribution of $17.3 million, and then state and federal funds at $11.2 million.

[00:34:07] Other payments are fee-based, and client charges are based always on their ability to pay. Of the $64 million expenditures, the highest expenditures are for individuals with developmental disabilities, followed by mental health services and substance use disorders. We spend approximately 11% of our budget in administrative support, which has been consistent with prior years.

[00:34:28] And any of our FY27 additional funding requests were covered with revenue generated from these positions and also opioid abatement funds were used to cover some substance use opioid response grant reductions. But what's important to know is there was no charge to the county's general fund.

[00:34:54] In the field of work that we do, we have crisis clinicians, psychiatrists, nursing personnel, licensed clinical social workers, direct support professionals, and various other staff who experience secondary traumatic stress given the support they provide to the community every day. We value employee wellness, and we have committees within the agency who focus on specific areas and plan events throughout the year. I'll just call attention to the graphic that we have, which is the Chesterfield Mental Health Wellness Model. We have a trauma-informed leadership team, which is a committee that focuses on secondary traumatic stress.

[00:35:28] And we're rolling out a new model this year called the Wisdom, Wellbeing, and Peer Support Model, which balances the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual elements of wellness. But we have so many other activities or, I guess, programs throughout our program.

[00:35:45] We have resilience buddies where staff can team up to support each other. We do acu-wellness, so that's acupuncture not only for our clients, but we offer those opportunities for our staff as well. We do wellness Wednesday tips, and then we have a strong diversity awareness and inclusion team that does all types of events throughout the year. Just some of our FY26 key highlights. Chesterfield Recovery Academy has served over 100 students since we started the program in 2022, with the highest census being 31 students.

[00:36:18] 23 students have graduated in the past four years, with many others being served in grades 9 through 11. Students are representative of schools throughout the region, and this school year we started with 12 students, but that quickly grows once the school year begins. Other outcomes include over 400 months combined of sobriety, over 800 groups have been held, and over 1,000 individual sessions have been provided to the students. A key highlight that I want to really, you know, I guess really congratulate is that the full, the school was fully accredited by the

[00:36:54] National Association of Recovery High Schools making Chesterfield the first in the state and they're only 12 in the whole nation so that really is an accomplishment. This program has been a model across the state and there are currently four other recovery academies operating in other regions in the state Virginia Beach, Waynesboro, Winchester, and Loudoun and all of these places as well as I can't tell you how many others have come to tour Chesterfield recovery Academy and using that as as the model for what they develop how highlights around mental health housing housing has been a key part of our

[00:37:31] service delivery system for many years we started with enduring state spaces which was formerly Chesterfield alternatives incorporated who have provided homes to those with intellectual disabilities for years they also provide a subset or a few homes for those with mental health because challenges because we know those with mental health challenges do not have the dedicated funding stream or opportunities that those with developmental disabilities are afforded.

[00:37:57] So we've been very fortunate through the support of the board to be able to have partnerships with some apartment complexes because we know that individual apartments are a better housing arrangement for individuals with serious mental illness than those with developmental disabilities.

[00:38:15] And so we currently have 10 individuals living in eight different apartments at Horner Run and five residents living in three different apartments in Lambert's Landing. This is in addition to the 24 individuals living in the seven mental health group homes that we currently operate.

[00:38:33] These opportunities for individuals, or these are the opportunities for individuals that don't qualify for permanent supportive housing. We do have a strong permanent supportive housing program, which does come with a dedicated funding stream from the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, and so we continue to see great outcomes with this program. We've served 46 individuals with behavioral health needs who would otherwise be homeless. We have had 15 that have earned income since admission to the program. 76% of the individuals were able to exit homelessness that they

[00:39:10] were currently living in. 100% now have health insurance. 92% have a primary care physician, which is huge for this population, and 80 percent are self-reporting that they are making progress towards their goal. We have not had a fidelity review since 2024, but at that time, Chesterfield CSB was number one statewide in housing stability. As you may recall, the July Everyday Excellence presentation was recognizing Lindsay and Melody Forrest, two peers who are sisters, one working in mental health and the other in community corrections. Peer support is

[00:39:49] an evidence-based practice built on something simple but powerful, human connection. It helps individuals discover resilience, strength, and hope while developing and maintaining a path to recovery and wellness. Working with someone who understands what you are going through brings a different level of trust, and that's where we're seeing such success with our peers, not only in Chesterfield Mental Health, but across a number of county departments. While the cornerstone of peer services is lived experience, there are a lot of education and training requirements, And, you know, it's things like having to pass the Board of Certification for Peer Recovery Specialists.

[00:40:25] There's an exam every two years. There's required recertification. They have to do over 500 hours of documented peer recovery specialist work, and it requires 72 hours of peer recovery training mandated through the Department of Behavioral Health. But just as an example, we have peers in the mental health department on our peer outreach team, in treatment courts, in substance use case management, in our assertive community treatment program, in the recovery academy, in our permanent supportive housing program, Chester House, our psychosocial day program. We have a youth support partner with our child and family team.

[00:41:01] We have created an NGRI that's not guilty by reason of insanity, forensic peer position, and then of course we have peers, as I mentioned, in all of our other county departments. So we are really trying to spread and ensure that these supports are available to those we serve.

[00:41:19] I've talked a lot about mental health, so I did want to touch on developmental disabilities. You just saw in the everyday excellence of Chesterfield Employment Services being highlighted, but, you know, our infant program, it gets publicized every year in partnership with Families First. They hold an annual diaper drive, which is really supported by NBC12 and anchor Sarah Bloom, who continues to be our ambassador for that.

[00:41:44] The event this year yielded 38,000 diapers, which will be provided to families who receive our services. We are seeing an increase, those in receiving services with developmental disabilities. It's been about a 6% increase in both those receiving our service coordination as well as our infant programs.

[00:42:05] CES that we recognized earlier, they did begin a new service called Pre-Employment Transition Services, which involves staff members spending time in our Chesterfield County high schools to introduce employment options to students to prepare them for their future. So individuals are able to go to school until age 21, but they start working well before that so that they come out of school and have seamless opportunities or not left with a gap there with no supports.

[00:42:33] I will say there in the morning, In the middle of there is a flyer. I know it's hard to see, but it's called Your Voice, Your Choice. This is a fiscal year 27 initiative that our service coordination program planned. It's a community event to promote self-advocacy, communication access, and informed choice.

[00:42:52] And there will be presenters from the Department of Behavioral Health, Department of Medicaid Services, community advocates, and the Virginia Board for People with Disabilities. This event is going to be held tomorrow night from 3 to 7 p.m. at CTC Hull, so the event is free, and we would encourage anybody in the community who can attend to attend this fair.

[00:43:16] Moving into some of the mental health trends and community response, in 2025, 46 people lost their lives in Chesterfield for a drug poisoning event, which represents a decrease from 2024, which is positive. This does not mean, though, that drug use has decreased or that the drug supply is safer. This is a combination of reasons, or there is a combination of reasons for this decline. Availability of naloxone, easier access to treatment, increased access to medications that treat addiction, and community tolerance levels. Opioid-related deaths accounted for 72% of the

[00:43:54] total overdose deaths in the county, and 32% of our deaths had cocaine as a causing or contributing factor. The drug supply continues to be contaminated with other substances, for example, fentanyl contaminated with xylazine, and then now there is another meta, I'm going to say it wrong, but metatomidine. Both of these substances are used in veterinary medicine. These can be complicated or result in complicated overdose response. This consistent and contaminated drug supply directly

[00:44:29] impacts fatality rates as people do not know do not always realize what they are consuming poly substance use is not uncommon among people who use drugs and we are seeing with the population that we're serving that gas station and vape store substances such as kratom and 70h continue to have impacts these substances appear safe but can often have misleading packaging 70h was recently banned but remains easily accessible as this product is phased off the shelves stopping these substances can cause people to have withdrawal symptoms which could potentially lead them to the street

[00:45:06] drug supply which is fentanyl so that is something that our team is trying to watch and pay attention to the csb is seeing people coming in with these substance use disorders related to these products but i'll start moving in now to our outreach efforts because we have strong harm reduction efforts in the community, in high-risk neighborhoods, and various other places to try to combat and assist with this issue. Funded by an opioid abatement collaborative grant, we have an opioid abatement mobile outreach team. This team is comprised of an outreach coordinator and a peer recovery specialist. Their primary focus is on people who are currently using drugs in our

[00:45:45] community, minimizing the harm of the drug for both individuals and our community. They aim to build a relationship with each individual hoping that when the person is ready for recovery they can support that transition away from drug use and toward the path of recovery. And just as an example of the impact that these teams are having, this past year they distributed over 6,000 naloxone, 7,500 fentanyl testing strips, actually a little more than that. They helped over 250 individuals enter or continue to live in recovery housing, distributed 2,200 plus wound care kits,

[00:46:23] which are often needed for those using xylazine, and over 13,000 safer sex supplies, and really had an interaction with over 3,000 people in the community. They continued vape shop partnerships, maintaining the four life-saving stations on the county complex, so we have, we call them like vending machines, but basically they're boxes that are located in strategic places, so that on the weekends or anywhere else. Individuals can drive by, help themselves to what they need, and then we refill those boxes at the start of the week. But we do, they also provide weather safety and hygiene

[00:46:57] items as well as food to our unhoused community members. Recently, we assisted a mother and her two children in becoming housed. They have been sleeping on couches and in motels since March. We were able to assist with the rent and with a trip to the Caritas Furniture Bank. The person was prior heart participant who was employed and active in a recovery but struggled with saving enough to get her own place while paying for a motel room so we were able to assist with those efforts. The other team that we have is what we call the peer recovery outreach team. This is funded by the we call it the SOAR grant

[00:47:34] statewide opioid response grant and also some funding from the county. This team is comprised of two peer recovery specialists whose primary focus is in helping people who are ready for recovery struggling with recovery or in need for other supports to stay in recovery. This past year, they do a lot of work in the jail setting and also in the community. And so just some outcomes from what they're doing. They serve 350 individuals outside of a jail setting. This past year, they facilitated groups for both the men and women's harp groups that are occurring in the jail. They went to countless community

[00:48:12] outreach efforts, trainings, community events. They started a virtual peer group in November and over a hundred unique individuals have attended the peer group. They spoke to over 400 individuals at the Riverside Regional Jail and they held a food drive during the holiday season. September is recovery month and so you know this year the CSB is celebrating with a hygiene supply drive, a Pizza and Peers event, and also artwork-themed event called Sky's the Limit on your recovery, trying to encourage our clients to participate in some of these events.

[00:48:47] There's also the upcoming Regional Recovery Day with Chesterfield, Hanover, Henrico, and Richmond at Monroe Park, which will occur on October the 3rd. Touching a little bit on youth mental health for the first time, we're able to obtain data from another provider to help us gauge the needs of youth struggling with mental health.

[00:49:06] challenges in Chesterfield aside from those that we serve. So, we were able to obtain data for the first six months of Hazel Health, providing behavioral health services in the school. This provided us the ability to review the types of services being provided by Hazel Health and also by the CSB to determine if there are any gaps between the two programs. Overall, more Chesterfield youth are being served as it does not appear that we are seeing any overlap between the students served by either program except for perhaps those that may need crisis services because Hazel Health

[00:49:41] does not provide crisis services. Our team provides the crisis services should that be a need. In December FY or in FY26, this was December through May, so this was the first six months prior to this school year beginning. Hazel Health had 558 students opt into the program receiving 171 referrals and ultimately serving 134 students by providing 476 sessions or visits and these were all through the school. Chesterfield Mental Health served 405 youth last year with 327 receiving mental health services and

[00:50:16] 88 receiving substance use services. And just to touch on just a few of the differences, Hazel Health serves youth in middle and high schools. We start as early as age four because, believe it or not, there are children that young that are in need of services, but the majority of youth being seen are between the ages of 11 and 12. Hazel Health serves about 8 to 13 percent of the Latino population, where Chesterfield is serving about 33 percent. The predominant race being served by Hazel Health appears to be Caucasian, whereas mental health support services is serving a high percentage of minorities. The top reasons for

[00:50:55] referrals for Hazel Health include feeling sad, anxious, or withdrawn, difficulty expressing oneself, struggling in school, difficulty socializing, and challenging behavior. 95% of the youth served by mental health have to meet criteria of serious emotional disturbance. So we are seeing some much larger chronic conditions that we can see for a longer term. The schools try to see folks hopefully within about six to eight sessions, and if they're not able to really stabilize the individual or meet their needs, then it may be a longer-term issue that would be better served

[00:51:33] by our department. But again, overall, I sum up this to say that I see Hazel Health is sort of being equivalent to 988 in the sense of they're filling a need in the schools for those who are struggling at a much, you know, lower need level of supports. But once those supports become more intense, the level of supports needed are in line with the various programs that we're providing. So I see the two programs really working in tandem, which has been very positive. September is Suicide Awareness Month. It's also, as I mentioned, Recovery Month, but it's Suicide Awareness Month. So staff

[00:52:08] have been busy and participating in community events throughout the month. This slide contains the number of countywide suicide-related police calls and then a breakdown versus attempted versus completed. And that teal bar at the very end is the percentage of calls that are involving juveniles.

[00:52:27] The Suicide Awareness and Prevention Coalition, in partnership with our prevention program, have been analyzing trends for some time and developing responses as it results to this. So between 2019, the graph is small, but I did this on purpose so that we could show more of the years that they actually analyzed when they did their report. Between 2019 and 2024, there were 325 suicide deaths in Chesterfield County, with annual totals ranges from a high of 58 in 2019 to a low of 42 in 2024. Males accounted for over three and a half times more suicide deaths

[00:53:05] than females, and the highest number of suicide deaths, which was 102, occurred among individual aged 25 to 44, followed closely by 98 deaths in the age group of 45 to 64. Caucasians accounted for the highest number of suicide deaths, that was 258 out of the total, followed by 49 of black individuals, 12 among the Asian individuals, and then four Middle Eastern individuals. Firearms were by far the leading method of death by suicide, accounting for 187 of the 325. And of

[00:53:43] the youth population, the trends for attempts seems to be in the youth around the age of about 14 to 15 years old. As you compare 2025, the numbers remained about the same with the percentage of juveniles actually increasing about 6%. I'll talk about a number of prevention efforts taking place, but want to reference the Be a Lifesaver poster to the right of the slide. During the month of June, which was Men's Mental Health Month, the Chesterfield Suicide Awareness and Prevention Coalition held the Life Preserver Campaign, focusing on men who know men. Information was

[00:54:19] disseminated through VALPAC mailings, including the highest impact zip codes in the county, veterans organizations, barbershops, firearm retailers, and during community events. A workshop called self-care and community resources was provided at bright for bright point students in health care programs in April and will be held again in the fall let's save lives this was an introduction to the suicide prevention for black and african-american communities program was scheduled as part of the county's black history month programming and due to the enrollment it was a little low enrollment than we had hoped so this program was again held this

[00:54:58] month. There's a raise your voice about suicide training that's been occurring. Prevention staff taught 115 signs of suicide lessons to seventh and tenth graders in the schools. And then two workshops for parents and teens were also scheduled, as well as the recent social media campaign talk, listen, call 988-TLC. It was the TLC campaign. I went through all that just to show we know that it's affecting all populations. We're trying to reach all populations, but But heavily there are prevention efforts that occur with the schools.

[00:55:34] So moving to that, a number of things we've done in prevention. We expanded our Chesterfield Preschool Partnership from consultations to only 11 Head Start classrooms to consultations to 35 Virginia Preschool Initiative classrooms, so focusing much greater in that area.

[00:55:54] In addition to the signs of suicide classes in the schools, prevention facilitated an additional 77 groups or classroom lessons for students on topics such as anxiety, grief, anger management, conflict resolution, healthy friendships, managing emotions, just a number of different topics.

[00:56:12] Staff led 12 parent workshops, five dedicated to a single school, and seven delivered system wide in partnership with the school's FACE office. And then staff also launched a monthly newsletter for school helping professionals and a quarterly newsletter for Virginia Preschool Initiative Parents and Guardians.

[00:56:31] Other efforts that we continued this past year included our lock and talk and 988 awareness campaigns, including partner with communications and media for an expanded billboard reach. We distributed 3,190 medication disposal pouches, 836 locking bags and boxes, and 167 cable gun locks.

[00:56:53] And we provided merchant education to 238 tobacco retailers, included problem gambling education to 161 of those, and alcohol merchant education to another 160. We provided three applied suicide intervention trainings and four mental health first aid trainings.

[00:57:12] And because of seeing the impact in older adults, they expanded the older adult mental health programming through the Lifelong Learning Institute, Parks and Rec community-based older adult facilities as well. So lots of things going on trying to address areas around suicide. Real quick, last week was National Co-Responder Week. We are pleased to discuss the outcomes for our co-response teams.

[00:57:39] This is now our third year. We're still continuing to see excellent results. In July of 2023, as we know the protocols went into effect and co-response teams were launched in Chesterfield. So we have completed, I think this is our full second year of operations. There was a large statewide 988 marketing campaign last year. So when you look at the graph and you look at the number of calls, in FY25 we were around 11,000 and then all of a sudden it jumps up to 25,000. We really think that was because of the 988 campaign effort really had people call, you know,

[00:58:16] learning about it and calling in. But when you look over on the other side and you start seeing the co-response, in FY25, our crisis team and the police responded to 484 calls, and the second year it jumped up to 577 calls. And then when you look at the hospital diversions, 307 and 319. So we're somewhere around 61 percent or a little bit higher in being able to divert individuals from hospitalization. Also, in that same vein, of the number that we served, we were able to, let's see,

[00:58:54] 16% were juveniles, but of the total population, those leading to arrest was less than 0.1%, so it wasn't, they didn't go into the hospital, they were arrested, neither occurred, and so that's what we wanted to see. I will point this out just as a little plug. Chesterfield continues to lead the region in co-response calls. We handled 577 compared to 531 in Richmond and 522 in Henrico.

[00:59:20] The biggest success story here is that the patrol hours saved was 2,275 hours, which doubled from the patrol hours that were saved. Now, when we say patrol hours saved, those are individuals sitting in hospitals with individuals under a temporary detention order. And so now through the co-response teams being able to serve individuals in the community. There were enough hours saved from police officers not being, having to sit in emergency rooms that they could actually put another whole officer back on the streets. We do currently operate three co-response teams Monday

[00:59:57] through Friday, expanding the hours into the evening. They've been working on a fourth co-response team, so this is just continuing to be something that's needed and very successful overall. Just touch on this. We always like to talk about a success story, but I would just say these are some of the individuals that Chesterfield Employment Services served. They're in all types of professions, and I'll highlight the individual in the end. This is a married couple that have been in services forever, and they have worked forever, and they work because they like to take trips, and so this is their recent trip to Hawaii. That's one of their favorite places to go,

[01:00:36] but they work hard. They save their money, and they're able to do this from time to time. As I'm finishing up, I just want to say the regulatory oversight and compliance of our department is unbelievable. And so we are regularly audited this past year. Just to give you a sample, we had DMAS, Department of Medicaid Services, come in and audit all of our developmental disability programs. Now, the challenge with the audits we're having recently is since COVID, they don't really want to come on site. They want us to upload documents to them. So just in that

[01:01:10] one audit we were were required to upload over a thousand and sixty two medical records to them so that they could order our programs but the good news of that was they found one little minor thing and so that gives you the the picture there the department of behavioral health they audited our substance use programs and also our child and adolescent programs we had the department of behavioral health come in and audit the service coordination and residential programs we have had the health services advisory group come in and audited a bunch of our services. We had our Healthy Families Virginia audit this year. We had the Department of Health come in and review.

[01:01:51] And I say all of that to say that there were no major deficiencies in any of these areas. And so that's a testament to the staff. Looking forward or looking toward the future, there are several initiatives planned for 2027 and beyond. We have the Department of Behavioral, I mean of Medicaid services, has a behavioral health redesign initiative, which could potentially impact some of our Medicaid-covered services, but we currently have project teams getting ahead of that.

[01:02:20] Our next accreditation survey will be scheduled in October of 27, so we're already planning for that important site visit, but we have been accredited for the past 29 years, so we've done really well there. And we have the, you know, looking forward to seeing how HR1 is going to impact if individuals start losing Medicaid.

[01:02:42] Then we're going to have to really be wrapping around services there for those individuals. As I close, you know, I would just like to thank the many partners in our community and within the county government. We work with every department within Chesterfield.

[01:02:59] And we have the best relationships with fire, police, community corrections, the sheriff's office, just so juvenile attention. so many different departments, and so we are only as successful because of the strong partnerships that we have, not only with those departments, but everybody listed here who are out in the community. I would also like to personally thank the senior team of our department. They are with us here today. I would like to ask them to stand as I call their names. We have Danielle Sayre, who is our Director of Finance, Ty Parr, our Director for Administration and Planning, Doug Bilsky, Director for Clinical Services.

[01:03:34] Dr. Angela Catalico, our Medical Director. Deidre Mills, our Director for Developmental Disabilities. Nicole Carter, our Human Resources Director. And Brooke Cook is not present. She's our Administrative Assistant, but she does so much for all of us.

[01:03:51] But it's the staff here that are really the glue to our organization. They are leading all of these initiatives, and overall we have over 624 staff, So that's a lot of folks that we are working with. So I will now turn it over to questions.

[01:04:08] Thank you. Aboard, Mr. Carroll. Chair, I'm going back a few slides. It shows the suicide attempts. Yeah. And those are numbers that you get from the police department?

[01:04:25] Is that where they come from? Yes. So that's a significant drop from 2019 even to 2025. So obviously, what you're doing is working. Unless you have some other explanation as to why.

[01:04:41] Now, I remember reading those reports before I retired. And on a weekly basis, we had these type of calls for service coming in multiple times during the week. And so to see that numbers drop like that, that's, I think, a good sign.

[01:04:57] I think just in all transparency, so this does not necessarily mean that all of these individuals were served by the CSB. So these are police numbers. So their attempted suicides and suicides, we do see a fair number of the individuals.

[01:05:15] They may be in our services, but I think it's a number of efforts. I think it's a lot of the outreach that's going on in the 988 and the co-response team. So I think it's a whole community effort, but we are pleased to see that these numbers are- There's a thing to consider, too. In that same time frame, the county grew by over 30,000 people, right?

[01:05:34] So we saw the county grow by over 31,000 people, actually, from 2020 to 2026. and according to Weldon Cooper numbers and even with that growth usually comes more calls for service and so I just I just thought that was an interesting number to see and I granted 2026 is only halfway through with the numbers that you have a little past that but that's a significant decrease and I hope it can I hope that trend continues that means we have a healthier community so thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from our board? Ms. Schneider. Just want to echo thank

[01:06:13] you so much for all that you guys do. It's such a vast, I mean, there's fingers in lots and lots of things and I'll be interested to see the effects of the HR1 when it goes into effect because I think that there's going to be a lot of, I've already been talking to legislators about hospitals in other locations, especially in maternity wards that have been enclosed and what that's going to view for young mothers that aren't going to have routine care and so I just worry about those things so we'll have to keep an eye on that but thank you so much. Dr. Hilton.

[01:06:54] Kelly just want to say thank you to you and your staff for everything that you all are doing you know for the community. I had a pleasure attending one of your meetings it's a lot of hard work going on in the meeting so I want to thank your board for all the volunteer work that they put in um and so we have one of one of your board members is from my district and i know we we've had him on there a few times but um you know very grateful for just your board and everything that you all are doing the the mobile unit that we um cut the ribbon on uh it's a great tool that

[01:07:31] we hope that will be utilized uh and just want to say thank you you know if it's anything that can do to as things change in our community we want to make sure i know me as a board member i want to make sure that i'm reactive to those changes and and if i can be proactive to those changes so anything we can do as a as a as a board member anything i can do um to help you out you and your staff out just wanted to let you all know that we stand ready to do that thank you mr rinkle um on sundays i actually have the pleasure of taking um one of the people that you

[01:08:10] serve in the community to church each week. And it never stops to amaze me how many times he's talking about his staff that came to took him to watch a movie or to go grocery shopping or to just go get a haircut and how much that means to him. So thank you for all that you do for our citizens.

[01:08:34] Thank you, Mr. Engel. I may start there because I actually had you on my list to talk about the work that you do with that one individual every Sunday and me joining you at church and and seeing him and what he does it just what you all do for him is terrific which really gets at the heart of what really we're talking about here a true measure of our community true measure of our community is how we take care of our most vulnerable and so what's happening here is that you're seeing everybody this long list of what's happening but you know you go through this list so quickly and it's kind of like an ice skater you see them out there on the ice and you go oh it looks easy

[01:09:12] until you're actually out on the ice and so what you're doing and what your staff is doing is such heroic work but um i wanted to talk about one a couple of things one is just you you touched on housing stability and those are just words for some people but what that means is housing stability is about relationship and how able to build those kind of relationships so people feel safe, and not only feel safe, but that they can thrive, but sometimes they can get lost in all of that.

[01:09:45] The other thing I want to call attention is, you know, our folks that have intellectual and developmental disabilities, they can stay in school until 21, but what happens after they turn 22, and what happens when do they graduate, and how important it is to have those services in place to be able to help them make that transition from what was school into whatever's next what folks don't understand is that when you don't have anyone who's able to take care of your kid any longer than L21 is that somebody you know has to often quit their job to stay home to take care of that individual so having those kind of services in place how

[01:10:24] important that is to be able to help with that transition and how we do that I mean one of the things that bugs me is that you know folks will say in the community we need to cut taxes we need all these kind of things, but they don't realize that when that's happening, they think that it's quote-unquote waste, but it's not.

[01:10:43] What it is, it's actually taking care of our most vulnerable, and at that point, it feels very, like they don't have a sense of what it really is to truly means to people. Connected with that also, the work with Hazel Health, thank you for all the work.

[01:10:59] I want to appreciate this board for supporting Hazel Health and that initiative. When I brought it, it was so important and I'm so grateful that it's working and that it is not duplicative. It's adding to and how important that is. And it looks like it's meeting a whole different population from them who is the CSB.

[01:11:20] So that just shows how much we are able to kind of put together this quilt to be able to have these services to be able to serve our community. I think that really where things begin is when someone says, I need help.

[01:11:39] And it's a moment of vulnerability. It's a moment of recognizing our humanity. And then that's what happens is our folks step in through the CSB in so many other ways and to say, I need help. I want to appreciate you, Kelly, for your leadership.

[01:11:57] You've been in this role for a while and you do it with grace. you do it with patience and you do it with love and it shows every day and so I want to thank you for everything that you do connected with that I also see Dr. Worsley hanging out back there hiding you weren't going to get away with this in that thank you for the work that you do as the liaison to the CSB the work that you do to help us kind of stay up to date on what's going on Dr. Worsley the partnership you have with Kelly, with Kiva, and with everyone as our Deputy County Administrator for Human Services, man, you do it with grace too. So I just wanted to thank you for

[01:12:37] the work that you all do. It's quite an honor to sit here and watch and see what you all do. So thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk. B Fire and Emergency Medical Services Annual Update, Chief center before you get away kelly i just want to mention also your staff your your leadership staff thank you you know you all stood um worthy of a round of applause for all the work that you all do

[01:13:13] thank you you weren't going to get away that easily thank you good afternoon mr chairman members of the board and dr catlin i'm joined uh this afternoon with uh by deputy chief tim mckay and captain uh cecil sellhorst uh are sitting back there behind me for moral support um this annual this year's annual presentation comes at a pivotal time when the combined effects of increasing

[01:13:47] emergency incidents, extensive training demands, and long hours on duty are running head-on into decades-old federal rules governing work schedules for firefighters. You may have seen news stories recently about various localities in Virginia that are implementing or actively considering reducing the average work week for firefighters. The debate and commentary on social media have, at times, reached a fever pitch, creating a great deal of interest in this topic among our own firefighters. In Hampton Roads, the race is on as to which fire department can get out of the gate fastest in reducing the average firefighter workweek by adding a fourth shift

[01:14:23] and implementing a 24-hour on, 72-hour off schedule, averaging 42 hours of work each week. This rush to make such a transformational change is expected to pull many firefighters from neighboring fire departments with a traditional 56-hour work week. This in turn will place significant pressure on other localities to quickly make expensive unplanned investments in adding a fourth shift that may come at the expense of needed emergency service improvements in their own communities or may even result in service level reductions. To be clear, this is a complicated issue and compulsory legislation with a one-size-fits-all strategy regarding firefighter

[01:15:00] work schedules is expected to be considered in the upcoming General Assembly session. Unfortunately, this legislative action is likely to drown out conversations on this topic that are needed at the local level. There is a legitimate question for each locality to consider. Is the expectation for our firefighters to provide the array and volume of services needed in our community today in alignment with shift schedules that are over 50 years old? If the answer is no,

[01:15:29] The next question must probe how to achieve reasonable alignment between expectations and work schedules in a planned, deliberate manner within the constructs of available funding streams and not at the expense of needed emergency service improvements in the community.

[01:15:46] My intent today is to provide the board with a broader perspective as to our community's risks, increases in service demands, and gaps in coverage. Along the way, I will point out the committed work of our firefighters who do more with less than their colleagues in many similar-sized localities.

[01:16:03] Finally, I'll provide an overview of the likely cost and complexities that would make a transition to a 42-hour workweek very difficult in Chesterfield, especially if forced upon us by law and with very little lead time provided. I'll start this afternoon on two topics that have generated interest among board members recently by posts on social media, and that is retention and recruitment. The turnover rate among uniformed employees ticked up to 6% during FY2026 after averaging 5.5% over the previous five years. Normal service retirements

[01:16:38] increased significantly over previous years, while separations due to career change and discipline and performance remained below average. The number of individuals leaving to join other fire departments increased, with three firefighters moving to the Richmond Fire Department, one firefighter to Henrico Fire and another to the newly formed Amelia EMS Department. We are now watching carefully the trends during the first quarter of FY 2027, where employment separations have increased significantly, coming close to the average number of separations in a single year.

[01:17:09] Should that trend continue, we'll be on track for an over 18% turnover rate for the fiscal year, the highest it's ever been. Among the separations so far in FY 2027, the majority have been retirements, with the second highest number being those who have joined other fire and EMS departments, including Mecklenburg County and as far away as North Carolina, in coastal North Carolina.

[01:17:33] Discipline and performance, career change, and family obligations round out the balance of separations this quarter. A risk that we will continue to face is the loss of members to new EMS systems that are being stood up in rural counties in response to the continued collapse of volunteer rescue squads across Virginia. We have a number of firefighters who live an hour or more away, and new EMS systems in places like Mecklenburg County are becoming attractive as they are closer to home and offer a much slower pace and better work schedule.

[01:18:02] As we've said for some time, a significant primer for high turnover rates in the coming years will be retirements. Over the next five years, 99 individuals will become eligible for retirement, and with over one-half being in positions of leadership. Firefighter recruitment efforts have remained stable over the past five years, though we no longer received the high number of applications of previous years. With a few exceptions, we have received enough qualified applicants over the past five calendar years to fill all open positions for each recruit school, including actual vacancies and approved over higher positions.

[01:18:39] Our interview panels are currently interviewing up to 189 applicants for a January recruit school that is expected to be between 25 and 30 students. The best tool that we have in our arsenal for achieving a high-performing workforce is the public safety pay plan approved by the board of supervisors and implemented in FY 2021. The biggest immediate risk that we have to our recruitment and retention efforts is that both our police department and fire and EMS department are 9.7 percent behind Henrico County in starting salary, the largest spread to date since our

[01:19:13] public safety pay plan was implemented. Over three successive years, the board of supervisors approved a total of 48 new firefighter positions to increase the department's relief factor to 1.32 and help reduce the instances of mandatory overtime that had plagued our department for some time. Measurable improvements in both mandatory overtime and overtime costs were clearly evident by FY 2024 and continued through FY 2025. Dr. Casey said on many occasions that a 1.32 relief factor may not be sufficient as enhanced leave benefits were offered to employees in the years

[01:19:49] following COVID. By FY2026, we began experiencing an uptick in the instances of mandatory overtime due to various staffing pressures. First, 70% of our uniformed members are now covered by PTO with higher accrual rates and more flexible options for use. Second, paid parental leave has been a big hit with our firefighters, many of whom are under 35 years of age. Over 16,000 hours of PPL has been used by firefighters in each of the past two years. Currently, we have seven firefighters on extended PPL, with more to come very soon. Third, long-term absences due to

[01:20:26] extended sick leave, light duty for workers' comp injuries, and military deployments hover consistently at or above 20 personnel at any given time. Finally, the decline in participation by our volunteer rescue squads left coverage gaps in busy areas last fiscal year that had to be filled by firefighters, many of whom are working overtime. Last fiscal year, firefighters handled 57,498 incidents, representing a 3.9% increase year-over-year. It is worth noting that 4.5% of all incidents last year were generated by 10 locations combined, all of which were nursing

[01:21:02] homes or assisted living facilities. As a newly accredited agency, you will notice changes in the way that our data is organized and reported. In the past, incident types were reported as fire, EMS, or other, but are now organized by four distinct program areas of fire suppression, EMS, technical rescue, and hazardous materials.

[01:21:22] All previous year's data has been realigned according to these programs for consistency. Accordingly, many of the incidents that were previously carried in the other category are now included under the fire suppression program. Wires down and other hazardous conditions are examples of those calls that are included in the fire program.

[01:21:40] While year-over-year increases in incidents slowed this year, total incidents grew nearly three times the rate of population growth over the past five years. At this rate, volume is expected to surpass 70,000 incidents by the end of this decade. The top three busiest response districts last year included Buford, Chester, and Midlothian.

[01:22:03] Response districts throughout the county experienced an average 8% increase in incident volume last year, consistent with the previous year's increase, but over three times higher than FY 2024. The busiest medic unit and engine company in the county were based at the Dale Fire and EMS Station near the intersection of the busy Route 10 and Chippenham Parkway corridors.

[01:22:24] The top three incidents last year included nonspecific illnesses, falls, and fire alarm activations. Data standards and accreditation require the analysis of compliance with the department's stated performance goals based on the 90th percentile of incidents for each category of risk within each major program. Due to time limitations today, the slide before you includes the performance for all risks within our two largest service programs rolled up into a single dashboard to show the extent of compliance with the first unit on scene and arrival of an effective

[01:22:58] response force goals from the time of a 911 call. As you can see from the dashboards, we have a long way to go to reach compliance with our response time goals. These results were not surprising to us considering the size of our county and the current distribution and concentration of fire and EMS stations. We are required to submit annual compliance reports to maintain accreditation and for this first year in our accreditation cycle, we'll be focusing efforts on identifying and making improvements in both call processing and turnout times. Significant improvements in travel times are unlikely until such time that additional fire stations recommended in our

[01:23:35] standards of cover document can be added to the system. Last year, our firefighters responded to over 300 incidents involving fires within structures and safely handled 123 working fires. 29 of those incidents involved significant losses in excess of $100,000. Sadly, eight civilians lost their lives last year due to fires, representing a 33% increase of such tragedies over five years and a spike of such incidents year over year. Two of these deaths were homicides and three deaths occurred in separate vehicle incidents. The leading cause of structure fires

[01:24:14] countywide remained cooking, with the kitchen being the primary area of origin. Picture here are the most recent deliveries of new fire apparatus with the Buford, Chester, and Midlothian Fire and EMS stations, each receiving a new fire engine, and the Clover Hill Fire and EMS station receiving a ladder truck. With the board's support, the department is receiving an additional $3 million in funding for apparatus replacement over two years. $4.6 million in orders have been placed in FY 2027 to include two engines and one ladder truck, and another order totaling $5.4 million

[01:24:49] dollar is planned for FY 2028. Unfortunately, the cost of fire apparatus continues to climb and annual price increases of between five and seven percent are to be expected. Moreover, production delays continue to plague the industry. After we receive a new ladder truck later this fiscal year, we will not receive another new fire apparatus until FY 2029. And the units we ordered this year are not expected to arrive until FY2031. Many thanks go out to the members of the county's Fleet Services Division who continue to work hard in keeping our older vehicles in service for longer

[01:25:27] periods of time. Progress continues on three 2022 bond referendum projects related to fire and EMS. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 17th for the new Chester Fire and EMS station with an expected completion by late calendar year 2027.

[01:25:46] A contract has been awarded for the construction of the new Ettrick Fire Neema Station, and efforts are underway to clear all the necessary hurdles to issue a notice to proceed. Finally, architects have begun their assessment of the Clover Hill Fire Neema Station and will provide options for consideration in the planned renovation of this key facility.

[01:26:04] Mr. Chair. Mr. Carroll. Do you have a question? Yes. I'm sure we're scheduling it, but when are we going to have the groundbreaking for the Company 12? We will let you know as soon as possible. We're working on that notice to proceed, and then I'm sure that general services will have that date locked in for the ground rate.

[01:26:21] Understanding is the one last hurdle we had has been fixed. It sounds that way, yes. I'm very encouraged, and thank you for your help. Thanks. Yes. It wasn't a fire marshalist, no. Okay.

[01:26:37] We'll move on to some discussion here about the public protection classification rating. So last year, the Insurance Service Office, or ISO, updated the county's public protection classification rating, or PPC. For the benefit of citizens who may be watching at home, ISO evaluates and scores the fire protection capabilities of communities, which many insurance carriers take into consideration in assessing risk and establishing insurance premiums.

[01:27:03] ISO evaluates three areas of a community's fire protection system, including its emergency communication center, its public water supply system, and the fire department's capabilities to respond promptly and control structure fires when they occur. Properties located within an area that receive the highest PPC rating of Class 1 are considered to have the best fire protection and present a lower risk for insurance carriers.

[01:27:27] Only two communities in central Virginia are rated Class 1, and that includes Richmond and Henrico. Properties located in an area that receive the lowest PPC rating of 10 are beyond 5 miles from the closest fire station and more than 1,000 feet from the closest fire hydrant.

[01:27:44] Insurance carriers consider these areas to be higher risk and residents may find it difficult to find a carrier and should expect higher insurance premiums. ISO has rated Chesterfield County as a Class 2-2Y, which is unchanged from the last rating update in 2016. While the fire department scored relatively well in equipment and training, there is insufficient distribution and concentration of fire stations to achieve a Class 1 rating. Since the county's last ISO evaluation, development projects added over 2,000 new fire hydrants, while the fire department added only one new fire station. ISO takes into consideration that a community must have both

[01:28:22] an adequate water supply and a responsive fire department to provide the best fire protection, and when those two elements are out of alignment, a divergence factor is applied that reduces overall points in the PPC calculation. Properties in class 2 areas that are shaded in green on the map before you are within 1,000 feet of the closest fire hydrant and within five miles of the closest fire station. Properties in class 2 areas shaded in yellow are within five miles of a fire station but beyond 1,000 feet from the closest fire hydrant. All other properties in the county are generally in class 10 areas. We have looked at this at length and given the size and complexity

[01:29:02] of the county, it's probably not worth the significant cost to achieve a class 1 rating. To be clear, Class 2 rating is not a bad score. We should continue doing what we can to maintain a Class 2 rating and then focus efforts on improving the scores in those areas where development has or is occurring that are rated as Class 10W, meaning they are within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant but are between 5 and 7 miles from the closest fire station.

[01:29:28] By adding fire stations in the areas circled in red, we will not only be improving response times in emerging growth areas, but will achieve a Class 2 rating where many residents could see substantial reductions in their insurance premiums. We already have sites secured for future fire stations on Woodpecker Road, at Courthouse Road and 288, and next door to the old 100 Elementary School.

[01:29:50] We are currently working with transportation for a future fire station site on property that will be needed to accommodate the extension of the Poway Parkway. There has been much discussion over the years about the challenges firefighters face when operating in the new types of construction throughout the county and only having three firefighters on an engine company upon arrival.

[01:30:11] Dr. Hilton, you and I have had some good discussions about this topic at a recent fire in your district. A staffing and deployment study several years ago recommended that the fire department work toward the industry standard of four firefighters on each fire engine and latter company. Much of that effort in recent years has been focused on the engine companies, and we've been able to sustain three engine companies at four-person staffing.

[01:30:34] An additional 71 firefighters would be needed to upstaff the remaining 18 engines in the system, and with Dr. Casey's support, we applied unsuccessfully in two different FEMA grant cycles for a staffing for adequate fire and emergency response or SAFER grant to hire additional firefighters.

[01:30:51] We will consider these grant opportunities again in the future, and we'll continue advocating for changes in the pre-scoring process for grant applications that often knock large growing communities like Chesterfield out of consideration. Last year, firefighters and our volunteer rescue squads collectively transported over 28,000 patients to area hospitals, representing 68% of all patients encountered. Over half of those patients were transported to HCA facilities, though Bon Secours has experienced a noticeable increase in their patient population over the past few years, due in large part to the opening of the Chester Emergency Center on Route 1.

[01:31:28] It's worth noting that 46% of our patient transports last year went to facilities outside Chesterfield County. This fact has driven my advocacy for additional hospital capacity in the county. Thanks also to the efforts of the board and Dr. Casey, 2026 produced historic results and the health commissioner approving two new hospitals, an expansion of St. Francis Medical Center, and a new freestanding emergency department at Chippenham Crossing, all in a single COPN process. That's unheard of. I'm very happy about the new facilities that will be coming to this

[01:32:05] county by the end of the decade. 65% of all our patients last year required only basic care, presenting a continued opportunity for innovative strategies to better address the needs of low acuity patients. Mr. Carroll, thank you for that acknowledgement of the importance of innovation, and our folks are really working hard to come up with new and innovative strategies for dealing with unique patient populations. For over three years, our peak demand ambulance program has successfully reduced the number of patients handled by our 24-hour medic units by adding up to three additional ambulances to the system during busy weekday periods focused solely

[01:32:43] on low-acuity patients. Moreover, the department's award-winning Mobile Integrated Health Program continues to prove successful in managing complex patients suffering from chronic health problems, mental illness, or substance abuse, patients who would otherwise turn to the 911 system.

[01:33:00] Both programs are excellent candidates for expansion in the future to help manage the inevitable increase in patients over the coming years. Underlying all risks in the EMS program is the fact that 48.6% of all patients last year were 65 years of age or older. We have enjoyed a long, proud history of volunteerism in our emergency services portfolio in Chesterfield County. Unfortunately, with the combined effects of increasing training demands, growing call volume, and challenges of work-life balance, volunteer rescue squads across the country are unable to provide 24-7 coverage in growing

[01:33:35] communities like Chesterfield. Our rescue squads have experienced steady declines in membership over the last five years, with some being propped up by a small number of very active members. Last year, each of our rescue squads negotiated reduced staffing commitments, and some of that coverage is provided in short, inconsistent segments with little advance notice of availability.

[01:33:56] With the support of the board, we moved Medic 224 to 24-hour operations in July, and we continue to staff Medic 209 whenever Forest View Volunteer Rescue Squad is void of coverage, which often requires overtime assignments. And Dr. Miller, I always appreciate you asking during these presentations what is needed and how the board can help.

[01:34:16] And so I'll get out in front of that question today. You may recall that last year we filed our department strategic plan with the board, which serves as a five-year roadmap for initiatives that are needed to address well-documented needs in the fire and EMS department in service to the citizens.

[01:34:33] Over the remaining four years of the strategic plan, we'll be focused on initiatives in three primary areas. The initiatives that will most likely require the board's engagement include maintaining market competitiveness in the public safety pay plan and the advanced life support supplement for our paramedics, construction of the Highlands Fire and EMS Station, and the anticipated need for additional funds in the future to counter increasing fire apparatus costs.

[01:34:59] Also, the addition of 24-hour career medics at the Buford and Ettrick Fire and EMS Stations, and the future expansion of the Peak Demand Ambulance Program. As I wrap up my presentation, I want to spend a few minutes discussing the trend towards a reduced work week for firefighters.

[01:35:18] Since the introduction of career firefighters in the late 1960s, Chesterfield Fire and EMS has followed a three-platoon system where firefighters work 24 hours on, 48 hours off, averaging 56 hours of scheduled work per week. To this day, this is a very common schedule across the Southeast.

[01:35:34] Reducing firefighter work schedules to 42 hours per week has been very common in the Northeast and Midwest for decades, with most reductions fostered through collective bargaining agreements. Discussion about a 42-hour workweek were not prevalent in Virginia until collective bargaining agreements took effect in many northern Virginia localities beginning in 2023.

[01:35:53] Last year, Delegate Figgins from Virginia Beach sponsored House Bill 1333, which was patterned after a 2025 Florida law and was intended to encourage fire departments in Virginia to adopt a 42-hour workweek. This bill passed the House and Senate without opposition because it was non-compulsory and provided no funding to assist localities in making the change.

[01:36:14] Several large fire departments in Hampton Roads have moved to reduce firefighter work weeks, which has set off a race to capture the most candidates from other fire departments through lateral hiring processes. The Virginia Professional Firefighters Association recently announced that it plans to ask Delegate Fagans to sponsor a bill in the upcoming session that would make the 42-hour work week mandatory. As I'm sure Ms. Spillman will mention in her report out, Vaco has already reached out to understand what impact such a bill would have on Chesterfield. While we do not yet know the details of this bill, we have analyzed what it would take to transition from a three-platoon

[01:36:50] system to a four-platoon system. The steep pressures on our firefighters today are real, and I fully understand their concerns and respect the push for change. There is ample scientific research that suggests a relationship between long hours of shift work and poor sleep with a number of chronic health conditions. The move to a 42-hour work week on a 24-72 schedule provides an additional day for recovery between shifts and promotes better work-life balance for firefighters.

[01:37:20] While fire departments that have transitioned to this schedule have reported improvements in recruitment and retention, this often comes at the expense of fire departments that have been unable to shift away from the traditional 56-hour work week. So what would it take for Chesterfield fire and EMS to add a fourth shift. Our initial analysis is that it would be a substantial effort both financially and logistically. To add a fourth shift, we would need to hire 164 new positions including firefighters, company officers, and chief officers. Because our department would be transitioning from a 600-member department to a 760-member department, we would need additional

[01:37:56] command and support staff to lead, manage, and support such a much larger department. Altogether, we would need to hire 180 new positions at an initial cost estimate of $25.4 million, and it would take three to five years to reach full implementation. There are many unknown costs that are yet to be determined, including the need to modify fire stations, add office and training space, increases in other budget line items, and the need for other county departments to grow even to provide the necessary support to a larger fire department. There are still many unknown costs in all of the future service level improvements would be more costly as well. There are other

[01:38:36] concerns about the depth and quality of firefighter and officer candidate pools and a limited number of specialized practitioners that would be available to support a force shift. If all fire departments are forced to add a force shift at the same time, where would we find the candidates to fill those positions? Furthermore, this change could occur when we will also need to replace up 100 retiring members from our service. If funding was unlimited, I would be sitting here before you today recommending that we move ahead without delay in reducing firefighters' work hours. This would be a good thing for our firefighters. But this board knows all too well that this is not

[01:39:15] the environment we live in, and this graphic illustrates the perpetual challenge in balancing investments in public safety. Dr. Miller, I've heard you say many times that if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority, and that is a very true statement. We must have priorities in considering the limited funding that is available for improvements in our system and services provided to our citizens. Over the past five years, the board has invested heavily on the right side of this fulcrum with pay raises and additional staff to reduce mandatory overtime. This has often come at the expense of needed service level improvements in the community. Additional investment will be necessary on the right side of the fulcrum on matters related to pay and the

[01:39:52] relief factor, but we cannot ignore the growing number of issues on the left side of the fulcrum, including inflationary pressures, capital replacement needs of very expensive equipment and systems, and well-documented needs for service level improvements in the community.

[01:40:08] So where do we go from here? We will continue to work with Mr. Harris and his team in refining the cost estimates for a 42-hour work week and providing information to VACO for the upcoming general assembly session. We have detailed briefings scheduled with the board in several weeks, and we stand ready to provide other briefings as requested. This topic is certainly worth discussion at the regional level to include the CAOs and mayors and chairs. This sort of engagement will be important in avoiding the type of firefighter hunger games that are likely to play out over the next months and years in Hampton Roads. We should consider that changes in

[01:40:45] firefighters' work schedules may be inevitable in future years, especially if driven by market forces or successful legislation at the state and federal levels. In closing, I'm reminded that our fire and EMS department exists for only one reason, and that is to serve the needs of the citizens and visitors of Chesterfield County. The citizens must have a voice in these discussions, especially if work schedule changes threaten the maintenance or improvement of emergency service levels in the county. Mr. Chairman, that completes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions that the

[01:41:19] board may have at this time thank you chief center excuse me schneider and then dr hilton ladies first well that was a lot of i think i was making a lot of faces because that's a lot of overwhelming stuff um and i think last night well at a meeting we went to last night um with the naacp um talking about what we could possibly use data center tax dollars for instead of what is being proposed right now. This was one of the things that was brought up in our group was, you know, extra fire

[01:41:55] and EMS and police officers because we know what the strain is. And so I'm just thinking myself that, you know, maybe we need to get a little more creative on things that will help the whole community, which I definitely think that more fire and EMS and police are definitely a necessity in our county. I mean, I still go back to the fact that I read that 350-page thing when I first ran for office, and it was talked about the report about we need, back then, that was in 22 or 23, they needed eight new houses were recommended in that report. And I think we've added, what,

[01:42:32] two since then? Since that report was done, we've added one new station. We've replaced some. We added the Magnolia Green Station. Yeah. So it's definitely a need, and I mean, we just have to keep trying to find a way to make some of this happen because the rate that the county is growing, we can't continue to ask our firefighters to work and be in multiple places at once when it just is not feasible. And to that point, Ms. Snyder, our firefighters, their regular work schedule

[01:43:07] averages out to 56 hours a week. And so one out of the three weeks in that work period, they're actually working 72 hours and many also work overtime or if they work mandatory overtime they can easily be working 96 hours in a week and so it's it's a real issue it is definitely and i i greatly appreciate all the hard work you guys do but we have to do better on our half as well i think sometimes so thank you thank you dr hillary hey chief thank you so much for this presentation one of the things i like to highlight is something that you didn't speak about but i

[01:43:44] I think is very important, is the mobile integrated health piece that you do. Would you like to share a little bit about what that unit does and the impact that it has to the community? Absolutely. The mobile integrated health program has been in place since probably 2012, I believe.

[01:43:59] So we have our own operational medical director, Dr. Alan Yee, and he was a big proponent in getting that program going, and we were really out front in leading in that effort. And we looked at the fact that we were having a number of incidents where we had patients who were calling, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 times a year.

[01:44:21] And we found that many of them, you know, suffered from chronic health issues, substance abuse, mental health. Many of them were just, you know, older and they were alone and aging in place in their homes. And so we said there's got to be a better way of dealing with these patients. And so, you know, we set aside a team of firefighter medics that work Monday through Friday, and they take on these caseloads, and they'll deal with thousands of patients throughout the year.

[01:44:48] And they go and deal with them where they are and make sure that they're navigated to the appropriate services. You know, Ms. Freed was here a minute ago talking about the partnerships. They are a big partner in the NIH program, as are many other departments here in the county.

[01:45:05] And so it's sort of an off-ramp to the 911 system for those, you know, frequent callers that request our service. And so it's been a very successful program. And it's poised to grow. I think if we can ever get the federal government to change their reimbursement model in Medicare, that we could actually generate some revenue where we might be able to hire some more folks.

[01:45:28] But right now there is no payment for these types of alternative services. If we put them in an ambulance and take them to the hospital, we'll probably get reimbursed for that. but not with these new and innovative strategies. Yeah. If you could, next time you come, I'd like to have some numbers on that program.

[01:45:44] I did, I think I did provide some. Let me see if I can go back here real quick. I don't know if it was... It was showing incoming patients and patients that sort of graduated from the program. Getting closer here.

[01:46:01] It's a little slow. I'll provide you with some numbers. I know it's here somewhere, but just moving a little slow now. I just think it should, I think it deserves its own slide. Yes. with its own numbers because it really shows the interconnection that happens between departments yeah and i and i i want to highlight it because our family had to use this program my uncle um was very serious you know very sick ended up passing away a few weeks ago but it was great

[01:46:36] to get a call from the chesterfield county fire department and the um just the knowledge that your department had in terms of services that could help. So I just want to highlight that. And a lot of times you don't really know what the county is doing until something happens and you get linked up with the services that you really need and you see everything come together. So I just wanted to say one thank you for that. I wanted to kind of turn the attention to the 42-hour work week.

[01:47:10] You know, I've run calls with you all a few times. You can barely put your food in the microwave and take a spoonful before you're off to the next phone, the next call for service. You know, firefighters are saying they're not able to sleep in terms of they're working a 24-hour shift and they're running calls a lot of times.

[01:47:34] You all have linked me up on my phone with, you know, I can see the calls for service as they're going on. I can listen to certain calls as they're happening. We're experiencing about 20,000 calls for service, more than we were the previous year.

[01:47:52] And that's on an annual basis. And so it's really important that we build one to 42-hour workweek so we can alleviate, hopefully, the stresses on our firefighters. But also growing at the same time the locations where we have to have fire stations because I know my insurance folks have told me that our rates are almost double what they really should be because we're so far away.

[01:48:24] And so that has an impact to affordability for families because if they're paying double for their homeowner's policy, then that makes life even more unaffordable for them. So I wanted to point that out. And that's why building those fire stations are so important. I need two of them in my district. One of those fire stations will border three of our districts, which is the Highlands, Woodland Pond area there.

[01:48:53] So we really need to build that out when we can. But we also have to balance proper planning because it takes, I think, five years or so from the time you put in an order for apparatus to the time that it usually shows up at the fire station.

[01:49:10] And so, you know, it's not something that you can just snap your fingers and it happens. You know, so I just encourage my colleagues to help out with building the fire station in my district, the two that we really need. One of them I can definitely say is very timely, and the other is right behind it.

[01:49:29] So definitely need to make sure that happens alongside of growing the 42-hour work week. So those are two very important public safety things that we have to do right away. And, you know, the pay, you know, staying competitive, that is the number one issue right now that we've got to really keep our eye on.

[01:49:46] And I know that you all are in tune to that. But, yeah, those are all important issues. It's the balance, right? of how much funding is available and how can we work that all out. But I look forward to having more discussions with you on those topics. Yeah, and I want to be long-winded about it because it's very important.

[01:50:05] I want people to understand that it's a necessity that we have it. You know, and I appreciate going on calls with you all, understanding just some of the equipment that you have and why you all need some of the equipment that you have. You only have one truck that can fill up air tanks.

[01:50:24] So when they're on site and firefighters need more air, we only have one. If that truck goes down, you know, it's some alternatives that can happen. It's a pickup truck with air bottles in it. That's what we end up doing, yes. But then at the same time, you all are doing a great job as we just retire one firefighter working on your own equipment, making sure that you're doing everything to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, which is very important.

[01:50:50] So I want to commend you on that and just hopefully give some support to you in those other areas between a 42-hour work week, building two fire stations, and any other equipment that you ask us for, I'm willing to take a hard look at it and make sure that we try to fund it, because it's definitely needed in order to ensure we have a clean, safe community.

[01:51:12] So I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hilton. Sir Carol, Sir Engel. Yeah, Dr. Catlin. I appreciate it, Mr. Chair, and thank you. I'll use some privilege here. If everyone, you know, I'll add some friendly banter to this.

[01:51:28] I mean, I think that, you know, everyone knows that public safety, especially fire EMS, with police, fire, sheriff's office, and just folks, they do an incredible job. If you, you know, and they're just dedicated, if you draw your attention to this photo on the screen, on the questions, you see incredible men and women out there performing in the elements, and where I come from, I don't know if I would necessarily call this, snow. I see it melting as it's hitting the ground at the moment, but that would be a blizzard in Southern Virginia. That's a blizzard. So, so I, I, I'm just, I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to that. And, uh, you know, I don't want to be out in those elements, but we really

[01:52:06] appreciate the solid work you all do and the commitment you have to this community. So thank you, Chief. Thank you. Mr. Carroll. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I do appreciate the comments of my colleagues, um, having worked here more than anybody else. I know what it was like when we didn't have a pay plan. And it was what I want to look for here, courage of the board to put a pay plan forward because no one else would do it prior to us. We did a pay study in 2001. Board of

[01:52:43] supervisors didn't fund it. We did a pay study in 2008. Board of supervisors didn't fund it. We did one in 2018 when the new chief of police got hired. Board of supervisors didn't fund it. It wasn't until COVID hit when we could make the argument that everybody else was not working or working remotely or working from home, our public safety people had to go out and continue to do the job.

[01:53:09] Fire, police, and sheriff. They didn't get the phone that ended and get to work remotely. Still don't. But you did make a point earlier that we're about 9.7% behind Henrico on starting pay. But people need to understand that the pay plan we put in place, you can't just raise starting pay.

[01:53:28] If you just raise starting pay, you do what the county did for years, which is compress the pay scale where you have new employees coming in making the same of employees that have worked four and five years for the organization and that is demoralizing for the organization so we can't do that so when we look at doing a pay increase it's across the board what people also don't know which a lot of people just really don't pay attention to the details i don't blame they have a life they have something better to do is that when we put the pay plan in place there is multiple tiers of that pay plan that we did not put employees in the level of the pay plan for

[01:54:06] that was countermeasure to the years of service, and it was mostly our senior employees, and we did it a couple of years ago, and what that did, if people don't understand, in the older retirement system, employees who work for the government in Chesterfield, and we'll talk to Chesterfield specifically for the fire and police, their retirement's based on a multiplier, based on how many years of service they work, based on the average final compensation for the older employee of 36 months. The new hires are now average final compensation of 60 months. That was the change that they made in the General Assembly. So we put the pay plan in place. A lot of the firefighters

[01:54:45] that we're now seeing retire at 30 years, 31 years, 32 years, 35 years, some of the police officers, they stayed because of those increases because it meant a lot to them in their long-term retirement benefit. The reason we're having to look at this again now is because we have another, you just said it a minute ago, another group of county employees that are all eligible to retire.

[01:55:10] And unless there's an incentive put in place for them to stay, they're going to leave. And you said, as you said a minute ago, it's hard enough even to hire now to fill the vacancies. Last academy you ran, I think you started out with 14 and ended up with six. Is that right? It was about a 50% washout rate. Because for multiple reasons, right? But they couldn't all stay. That's just the way it is. Even with the amount of people that put in, sometimes it's very hard to recruit.

[01:55:43] This board is working towards trying to find a way to fund a pay plan so we can move it forward to help, number one, compensate our employees the way they should be, which they should have been. Again, previous years, boards didn't do it. That was their choice. We said we needed to do it.

[01:56:02] just as the police department as an example, in a 10-year period, we hired 600 police officers to staff a 500-person department. 600 to staff a department at that time, which was less than 500 people. It's more now. At over $100,000 apiece, and I'm sure you've done the numbers based on what you just showed us, what it costs to hire one firefighter and train them. People don't realize the cost. It's also the souring compensation part of that for that whole six months or more that they're in the academy.

[01:56:34] I think your number was $25 million minus $5 million for the initial training cost. Was that what I saw on the screen? Yes, and I think it's $121,000 to hire and cover benefits and salary for a new firefighter. So there are a lot of pressures coming in the future for the board, not just for the community, for the citizens because they're the ones who pay the taxes.

[01:57:00] And so we get the pressure of cut my taxes, cut my taxes, cut my taxes, and we all want to do that, and then we get the pressure of, I don't want data centers in Chesterfield County because we don't want data centers, but we don't want the revenue that we could actually use to pay for some of these things. And so there are future pressures that are coming for the county that the community needs to be aware of.

[01:57:21] I'm very thankful that you brought those things forward today. I think it's important that the community sees these needs because in the past, previous boards didn't want additional funding requests and things to be brought forward.

[01:57:41] They weren't brought forward, so the community didn't know. It's extremely important for the community to understand that we don't fund every single thing that gets asked every year, not just for the fire, not just police, not just sheriff, but for the whole county. If we did, our budget would be a lot bigger than what it actually is, and our tax rate wouldn't be where it is.

[01:57:58] It would be a lot greater. So, yes, we have some challenges coming, and that's why we're trying to bring companies like Lego here and other big companies here that will be big taxpayers that will help grow the pot to be able to do this so that the burden doesn't have to just be on residential development, which is what we've been trying to do for years.

[01:58:22] So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Mr. Engel. So I know there's talk about 42-hour work weeks. Has there been any talk about a different shift model?

[01:58:38] Like, I'm probably going to mess some firefighter up somewhere, and I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to understand it. But, like, if you did 16 on 32 off, you would still have three shifts, and you would work a 48-hour work week with one week.

[01:58:57] One every couple weeks, you would end up with a longer work shift. Why do we do 24-hour shifts? Because that's the way it's always been, and that is probably the most popular shift schedule in any fire department.

[01:59:13] In the Northeast, you'll see some departments, I believe New York City uses a 9-15 schedule, so they work nine hours one day, 15 another, like a night shift or whatever. But they do, you know, traded time, and so they end up getting into a 24-hour shift.

[01:59:31] I am not seeing any other department pursuing anything other than a 24-hour shift. And it's a fair discussion, you know, comparing the efficiency of a 24-hour shift versus a 10 and 14 or a 9 and 15. But if we change to that, we would have a lot of people go to other fire departments where there's 24-hour shifts.

[01:59:52] A lot of our folks, we attract a lot of folks from the rural areas that work here, that came here to work. They have long drives, and so if you're back and forth over three days, you're only going to be more tired because you have to leave earlier. I just don't think it would be sustainable if we tried to look at any other shift than a 24-hour shift.

[02:00:14] Now, within the 24-hour shift, I do believe we're going to have to make some decisions in the not-too-distant future about whether we're going to be able to keep individuals assigned to an ambulance for 24 hours straight. And so we may have to go back to the model that we used in Norfolk, where you would rotate in 12-hour increments, you would swap out crews, and that's going to have to happen, I think, at some point.

[02:00:35] But changing the 24-hour shift, I think, we would lose a lot of people if we did that because no other fire department is doing it. Well, I appreciate you, Mr. Ego, that getting creative on what possibly could be.

[02:00:55] But we have the experience, Chief, of you knowing your folks and what will work and what won't work. As you are having conversations with your folks, I'd be curious to know what creative ideas they may have. that we're not thinking of um i mean mr carroll and i we were talking on the phone on the way here and um i mean what i think is occurring to us is that there's kind of like this storm out on the horizon and if it's going to be collective bargaining we're talking fire ems

[02:01:31] police but we're not even having a conversation about the teachers and so what we have is the what is, on many levels, are folks that are providing these kind of services to our community. And frankly, they're underappreciated, and I would make the argument underpaid.

[02:01:51] And so Mr. Carroll makes a good point in that, well, we see emails, phone calls about taxes being too high. But there's always this cynicism that, well, there must be wasted money there somewhere. And that's what we should be using to pay for this.

[02:02:07] And, I mean, we just had someone who won a VACO award who is an auditor, who audits everything that we're doing, paying attention to whether we're wasting money, not wasting money. There is a reason why that we are AAA rated on four rating agencies is we're being very, very careful on how we do this.

[02:02:27] And at the same time, I do think we are arriving at a point of a day of reckoning that is, if it comes down to us from the state and unfunded mandate, then we're going to have to make some very tough decisions.

[02:02:43] And it's going to come down to us doing our job as opposed to trying to keep our job. And that means it's going to be tough decisions that we're going to have to make. And it's going to challenge a community to say, look, they're doing the best they can. I would make that argument on the fact that there's $850 million that's out there for our schools that need CIP, that we need schools that are built, and the community is going to need to make a decision when it comes to the one for schools revenue referendum and what we're going to do about that.

[02:03:16] And I agree with you, Ms. Schneider. I think you're absolutely correct in that, yeah, there's dollars that are going to be coming in with regard to Google. They're already starting to come in a little bit. But honestly, what we're talking about is something that could be 10 years out. And that is a challenge.

[02:03:33] We don't know. Yes, Peanuts being built right now, but we don't know about Sky and Locke and when they're going to get built. So we're not going to necessarily be able to depend on that money. There's a lot of things that are changing on the state level with our governor and what they're trying to do as far as the data centers and all those.

[02:03:53] that it is a moving slope. We don't know what's going to happen with it. But bottom line, you're right in that we have to decide what our priorities are. And the priorities are fire, EMS police and quality schools.

[02:04:09] Those are our priorities. And besides that and drinking water, clean drinking water, right? That those are the priorities and we'll have to work with it. I think what I've learned over the last four years is, you know, ignorance is bliss. I didn't know what was, what is involved, what needs to go into running a county effectively, efficiently, and in a way that's balanced.

[02:04:33] And so our fire, EMS police, you presented it to me. We also had just with the community services board, we do have all these things that we need to be paying attention to. So here we are. I want to put a plug out there for the Government Citizens Academy.

[02:04:52] please participate and get involved with that so you get a better sense of what is involved with running a county so please there are a bunch of different government citizens academies that are out there that way you will have a better sense of what's involved when it comes to running an entire county and trying to figure that all out um yeah one just one other point in that you know um those folks that are retiring and all the wisdom that's walking out that door is as mr Carol was saying, is going to take a hit also in its own right.

[02:05:27] It's going to mean training. It's going to mean all those things that we need to do to figure out how to keep our citizens safe. So, all right, with that, Mr. Carol. And if I may, real quickly, Dr. Miller, one of your points you made a minute or so ago, I'll go back to the graphic here.

[02:05:42] And some of the investments that, many of the investments that are made on the left-hand side, particularly in the level of service level improvements. They also have a positive impact on fatigue for our firefighters, the workload for our firefighters. Again, if we add, you know, we expand that peak demand ambulance program, that takes a lot of that call load off of those individuals that are assigned to those 24-hour ambulances.

[02:06:07] So that's a big win. And then, obviously, if we can stand up more of the 24-hour medic units, that balances the workload so that we don't have people running, you know, over 3,000 incidents a year. So just wanted to bring that back to the center.

[02:06:22] Thank you. Chief, if you could, when we have the meetings coming forward, when you're doing your briefings, can you have staff do some research on like-size communities like us that have similar services, fire, police, and sheriff, what their staffing levels look like, right, what type of shifts they are, are they looking at going to different shifts?

[02:06:43] Because one of the things we've made an argument for years is that we are understaffed on fire and police and sheriff based on population for our community. We just, that's fact. I mean, I know definitely from the police department side that we're nowhere near the numbers we should be.

[02:07:01] As a matter of fact, Richmond Police Department was actually allocated years ago for 700 positions, but they cut 150 positions because they couldn't staff them. And they were budgeting for them every year. They couldn't staff them, so they just took them out of the budget because they couldn't fill them.

[02:07:17] But years ago, that's how many police they had in the city of Richmond. Richmond's tax rate's $1.24. Colonial Heights is $1.20. Those are cities. Petersburg's $1.23. Those are cities around us, a lot smaller.

[02:07:35] I say that because there are communities around us with a lot higher tax rate than Chesterfield County. So I think it will be important when you come forward to let us know what those staffing levels look like. And the reason is, if we have to move forward to do this, one of the things that the community needs to understand is, you know, we've been working understaffed for a long time, period.

[02:07:58] One of the things that I've said in the past, which no one does, is that when these zoning cases come forward for new zoning in Chesterfield County, public safety needs to put in the cases future growth. How many new police officers are we going to need? How many more firefighters are we going to need based on the growth?

[02:08:15] We don't see it in the zoning cases. And so I'm not trying to be mean, but I've been saying it for years since I got on the board. And then others previously didn't want that in the zoning cases because they didn't want to get tied to it. But it's important to understand that that's part of the growth piece, right?

[02:08:33] You look at the section that Dr. Hilton talked about earlier where the Highlands is. Well, the Highlands has been a big growing community in central Chesterwood County. And Lake Margaret, which is on the southern side of Matoka Road in my district, I drove through there a couple of months ago, and I couldn't believe how many more houses had been built in there.

[02:08:53] But that was approved years ago, a long time ago. But yet, you know, we've been sitting, I know, sitting on that land for a long time. So also bring forward, when you meet with us, if you don't mind, proposals for these other stations.

[02:09:10] Thank you. Okay. One thing I'll mention, and I'll step aside, but we've had a lot of discussions, you and I, about the pipeline, right? and we'll spend a little more time with you showing you this, but our planning division has come up with a product now that not only looks at incident trends, but also factors in the development that's in the pipeline.

[02:09:31] And so you can see many of those areas that I talked about that are busy today are going to get busier over the next 10 years. And so this will be a very helpful product for making those projections in the future, and we'll look for including some of that into the zoning case reports.

[02:09:48] What has to be in your budget moving forward for every one of these years moving forward with the stuff coming out of the pipeline is how many firefighters you need increased in staff. It's got to be asked for. And then we've got to find a way to fund it if we can. But you've got to make the ask. So I'm just telling you, don't be bashful.

[02:10:07] Very good. All right. Well, thank you very much. We're going to move on. We are running probably a little bit behind schedule, but what we're discussing is extremely important. And the discussion is going to continue.

[02:10:23] So thank you so much, Chief. Thank you for your time. Madam Clerk. See unfunded mandates and draft 2027 legislative program. Ms. Spillman, Ms. Walker, and Ms. LaCroix.

[02:10:46] Good afternoon, everyone. Mr. Chair, members of the board, Dr. Catlin, Mr. Minks. It's the time of year again. We're back before you. Legislative update, working through the draft program this afternoon, as well as the unfunded mandates.

[02:11:03] conversations that you've just had, I think set you up very well for the conversation that we're about to have. Ms. LaCroix here was with us over the last six-ish plus months as the Stegmaier Fellow supporting the work that we've been doing in intergovernmental relations. And so she got to see the happenings down at the General Assembly during session and has carried that work on through the summer and has dived into the funded, excuse me, the mandates catalog, which majority are unfunded, and so with that has provided a wealth of information that we will go through this afternoon. Following her presentation, myself and Ms. Walker will give an overview

[02:11:42] of what's proposed in the draft legislative program as well as some additional updates following that. Awesome. Good afternoon, everyone. Mr. Chair, the board, Dr. Catlin, very grateful to be here today. As Ms. Philman said, I'm going to start off by just giving us a general overview of what our obligation looks like as it pertains to unfunded mandates. So unfunded mandates are state or federal requirements where the cost to comply is either partially or fully funded by the locality. I think the chief said it best, the problem with unfunded mandates is not necessarily the content of the mandates. It's the administrative burden and the financial burden they place on the locality, especially when that share is not funded equally by the state

[02:12:21] and the locality. So the state currently lists 840 mandates as part of their mandates on local government catalog. So we'll just be going through a couple of the heaviest hitters today. We'll talk about costs throughout the presentation. Unfunded mandates cost money, they reduce revenues, but they also have hidden costs that add up over time, having to hire more staff, just more work for our staff in general, and then increased digital and physical infrastructure also on there. Our largest and most expensive mandates are historical requirements that have increased cost pressures over time, but every year the General Assembly passes new bills, so we do receive mandates that we have to comply with annually. These are some of our newest mandates

[02:12:58] in the 2026 legislative session. Some are entirely new requirements. Some modify existing mandates. Some have delayed implementations or sunset dates, and this ever-changing landscape might require us to implement something one year and then change it or modify it the next. So before we talk about ways that Chesterfield spends money, first I want to talk a little bit about how we make money.

[02:13:18] Virginia is a deal-and-rule state, which means that we're heavily constrained by the parameters the state puts in place. We can only do things that they allow us to, and we have to do things they require us to. And making money, receiving revenue, is one of those main ways that we're really constrained. So property taxes are our main source of revenue. They currently make up about 70% of the general fund. In order to alleviate some of the tax burden on residents while also adequately funding our public services, because they do make up a large percent of our budget, the state passed the Personal Property Tax Relief Act in 1998. So the original goal of the act was that by 2002 localities no one would have to pay any personal property tax on the first $20,000

[02:13:56] of their assessed vehicle. Instead we received that revenue directly from the state. The program quickly became expensive and the General Assembly changed the program several times. First 2001 relief was capped at 70 percent and then again in 2007 where relief was capped at 950 commonwealth wide. 950 million commonwealth wide our share in Chesterfield was set to 41 million annually. So basically, localities that were originally told that by 2002 we would have 100% of this money from the state were actually receiving far less, and this requires the residents to pay more. What was 70% in 2001 has dropped down to 40% in 2025. So the PPTRA is a

[02:14:33] really unique example of an unfunded mandate, but this theme of rising costs and unmet promises is something that you're going to hear throughout this presentation. The Veterans Tax Relief Program is a different method but another example of some of the large-scale revenue reductions that we've seen in local budgets. Chesterville provides property tax relief to several groups of people.

[02:14:52] So we have tax exemptions for the elderly, disabled, and surviving spouses of emergency services providers. Those are all voluntary programs that we choose to provide for our residents. We're able to set those exemptions to provide relief while also managing our budget. However, tax exemptions for 100% service-disabled veterans are mandated by the state, and we don't control how that program is administered.

[02:15:12] In 2001, when the tax relief was originally introduced, it cost the county about half a million dollars. And the total cost of the program, including those voluntary exemptions, was about $4.8 million. In this most recent budget, we allocated $29.2 million to this program. The growth is directly related to an increase in applications for veterans tax relief, partially because we've seen increased veterans move to the county, but also partially because there's numerous mandates that have happened since 2011 to increase the amount of eligibility that there is for the program.

[02:15:43] Shusterfield is also home to a really fast-growing group of senior residents, so residents over the age of 65, and those are another group that could really benefit from increased tax exemptions and relief in that area. So having these mandated fast-growing revenue reductions like the veterans tax relief makes it financially difficult to assess relief for other groups. Moving out of the revenue reduction world into mandates that just cost us money, Virginia's constitutional officers are locally elected, but many of their duties and funding structures are established by state law. When it comes to salaries, the high-level split is that the county pays for salaries and pays for the entire office up front,

[02:16:23] and then the state reimburses us a fair and reasonable amount. And this is based on workload-based staffing standards developed by a group called the State Compensation Board. Historically, there's been a substantial gap between what the state projects we need and what our constitutional officers actually need to perform their state-mandated duties to the level that our constituents deserve.

[02:16:41] You can see that that gap on the screen between the number of employees the state recognizes and how many people actually work in these offices, The county covers the salaries for that gap. The workload-based staffing standards that are utilized by the compensation board are not updated regularly. In fact, the only publicly available update that I could find was the Commonwealth Attorney's workload-based staffing standards from 2023.

[02:17:02] The report found that the compensation board was using solely the amount of felony defendants and sentencing events to determine how many employees a local office would need. This was problematic for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that we do a lot more than prosecute just felonies, including misdemeanors in civil cases. those weren't factored in at all.

[02:17:20] And then additionally, all felonies were weighted equally despite the different crimes taking place that had different levels of time to prosecute. So the report proposed a new model that factored in the time spent prosecuting misdemeanors, civil cases, and other responsibilities our Commonwealth's attorneys have to perform, and then also weighted all of the cases so that the offices received enough staff to deal with the types of cases they were seeing, not just the amount of cases.

[02:17:41] All in all, the report found that to meet the 2023 demand in the Commonwealth, the state should have funded 134 more positions Commonwealth-wide, 13 of those positions were found to be needed here in Chesterfield. As crazy as that sounds, that's not the only part of the problem. We've received additional positions since, but we don't receive any funding for supplies, office supports, or support staff costs. This year, we received two additional judgeships, which we need to keep up with the increased caseload in the circuit court clerk's office. And while the judge's salaries will be covered by the state, we haven't received additional sheriff's positions necessary to legally hold court or funding to build additional courtrooms and judges' chambers to support the positions, or the staff and office supplies required to effectively hold court.

[02:18:21] K through 12... Just getting back to that, that same funding change, did they look at that for the Public Defender's Office? I'm not sure, but the only publicly available report is for the Commonwealth's attorneys.

[02:18:37] So if they have looked at it, it's not available. This last session, though, just for clarification, Mr. Carroll, there was legislation presented, an item in the budget, but it was not funded to provide additional salary support for public defenders. I just think that if they've looked at the Commonwealth attorneys and they've said, well, this is what your caseload is, those Commonwealth attorneys that are prosecuted in those cases, now the public defender's office, they don't get them all. There are some people who hire their own attorneys, but certainly they're doing a lot of them. So it's just, obviously we need to make sure we're looking at that when we're asking for them to fund things

[02:19:13] correctly at the state level. Yeah. Ms. Schneider. I think too that Michelle actually has some numbers that she's pulled also so i don't know if you want to talk to her but um she definitely has done the studies of what their compensation and how they're losing people because of it because other localities are supplementing and we're not and and i get it we're a larger locality and so it's a lot more difficult but yeah absolutely a lot of these mandates because we're so large and so fast growing they affect us more than smaller localities or slower growing growing localities we're not seeing any increase in state funding due to our size changing. And so when it comes

[02:19:52] to workloads, we're really left behind. Mr. Ingle. We're not even talking about the clerks in the juvenile and domestic and general district. We're looking at circuit court clerk. I mean, we have unfunded mandates in all of those areas. And believe me, we are hearing from all of those departments, asking us to make up the gap. And it's hard to explain why.

[02:20:20] I know it might seem totally different, but when you have an employee of the state versus an employee of the county, it's almost like saying you want to get Lego to pay for Hasbro's employees. I mean, really, that's what's going on. They're two different entities. They're employees of two different entities they work for the state not for the county they answer to the state not to the county but they want the county to fund the gap because the state's not given enough money to fund

[02:20:54] their positions and it's extremely frustrating this is very timely and sharing especially right after all the information that we see on the firefighters and then when we take that and we weigh it against the citizens that are asking for the burden to be lowered on them at the same time that the state's putting more and more on the localities. And if the localities continue to take that burden, then the state's going to continue to do it until it breaks. And I would

[02:21:32] say it's broken. We need help. Absolutely. Yeah. As I mentioned at the beginning, we have 840 unfunded mandates that the state currently logs you know whether that's reliable or not that's what they say we're looking at less than 10 today so imagine this this is a much larger problem than what we'll just cover right now right I just want to add Brielle in that you said it pretty quickly but you know it's great that we have additional judges where are we going to put them and so all of a sudden we got to be thinking about well we can try to renovate we already have which we've done as far as courtrooms are concerned that costs money to be able to pull of that then you need to the staff and everything else so it's like yeah we have judges but what's happening is the state

[02:22:12] acknowledges on a very deep level that we need the additional judges because of the just basic workload but what they are not acknowledging ironically is how are we going to house them how are we going to support them to do the work that they're clearly stating needs to be done mr ingle just one more point the judges the um all of these state employees again the The Chesterfield County, a lot of people say, what's going on with the judges in Chesterfield County?

[02:22:43] They don't work for Chesterfield County. The judges work for the state Supreme Court. That's who they answer to, not the Chesterfield County. Even the health department in Chesterfield that people think are Chesterfield employees are actually the state health department that operates in Chesterfield County, and their employees are state employees.

[02:23:04] And if we keep funding these other things, we'll probably have to start funding the health department and everything else because they'll they'll continue to shift the burden at the state level they'll say well there's no impact to the budget not to the state's budget but there's absolutely an impact to the local budget and my position is if you decide to do it if it's a great idea fund it so if the state decides to do it, the state should fund it. If the county decides to do it, then the county should fund it.

[02:23:37] But whoever makes the mandate should pay for the mandate. And same for the federal level. If there's a federal mandate, then the federal government should pay for that as well. I think that wherever the good idea comes from, that's who should pay for it. And they should also have sunset clauses in it that if the funding goes away, the mandate goes away, which is going to be really hard if you put some good programs in place and then you have to lose the programs, but they'll have to figure out how to fund them or maybe they won't put so many unfunded mandates out there in the first

[02:24:11] place because they'll not like getting dinged for having to put a program out there that they pulled away from people. And again, none of these are bad things. When you talked about the veterans relief. We're not against veterans relief, but it's a state program, and the state's not funding any of it, so they have no impact. So they can just keep on passing it down, but that impact affects our citizens and the cost to our citizens of all of these mandates. So it's just frustrating,

[02:24:46] but thank you for highlighting this today. Dr. Hilton. So thank you so much, Mr. Chair. The Commonwealth's attorney, I think when they did the law, they didn't mandate for every locality to have a Commonwealth's attorney. Is that true? Or they did it all across the state?

[02:25:07] Was across the state. OK, so we are kind of all probably facing the same issue, all the localities across the state.

[02:25:17] And so I think that, you know, coming together with VACO and others, you know, as we did last year to advocate for it, this funding, as I look at it, and I just left the juvenile detention home before coming to this meeting, and I look at it and say, how can the scales of justice really be balanced if one attorney is paid likely more than the other?

[02:25:50] And so a more skilled attorney that's concerned about pay is going to go, you know, to one entity and another attorney that maybe their heart and passion is in it is going to another entity.

[02:26:06] And so the scales of I just don't see the scales of justice being equal. And I see it as a quality issue in terms of the representation that is given. And that's really sad that we're kind of in that equality, I would say that equality issue in the state has put us there.

[02:26:38] I'm pretty passionate about it, as I've shared my comments about it before. The Commonwealth's attorney does a great job, you know, defending what they need to defend and ensuring the safety of our citizens.

[02:26:54] But at the same time, we need to make sure that people have the right representation when they go to court. And that's very impactful. And also just the pay structure is not right. So if an attorney that's more experienced wants to come and work for the public defender's office, they have to start at a lower salary.

[02:27:17] They're not able to be adjusted based on their experience. And so that deters a lot of good attorneys from working in the public defender's office. So it's just, I have some heartburn with this. And it's not, you know, with the county, it's really with the state and being an advocate for people that need quality representation.

[02:27:40] And I would say equality in our court system is important. So that's where I am on this subject. So I just hope that we can get some help here with this. Dr. Hiltz, thank you.

[02:27:56] Paying attention to time. So, Brielle, why don't you continue? Awesome. So, K-12 funding is another place we're going to see a funding formula that really underestimates the amount of people necessary to meet the requirements the state sets in place. Here, we use something called the SOQ or the Standards of Quality.

[02:28:11] It's essentially the state's method of determining how much money it costs to provide a high-quality public education for each school division. Basic aid is going to be our largest component of the SOQ. Funds a little bit above 50%. So similar to how we talked about Commonwealth's attorneys, the Joint Legislative Review Committee, or JLARC, have made a report that outlined a really large gap between what the state says it will cost to fund a school division and what it actually does.

[02:28:34] So simply put, the SOQ formula that the state puts together underestimates the amount it costs to fully fund schools across the Commonwealth by about $6.6 billion. A large portion of this gap is the salaries of around 60,000 staff that are not recognized by the state. Furthermore, the funding formula underestimates the salaries of the staff that are recognized by the state, and very large school divisions, which is what Chesterfield falls under, are extra affected by this.

[02:28:59] So we're breaking that down to Chesterfield specifically. In 2023, the state determined it would cost a little over $619 million to operate Chesterfield County public schools. The plan was that 70% of that would be funded by the state, and 30% would be funded by the county. In reality, though, it actually cost $209 million more than forecasted to operate CCPS, and that cost was covered entirely by local dollars.

[02:29:23] So fixing this gap is complicated. The report lists multiple recommendations and a work group was convened to address the report. Several of the suggestions were implemented. The most notable was an increase in the cap for support staff positions, so increasing the amount of employees that the state recognizes. And the state also changed the funding formula for their at-risk add-on, which is another portion of the SOQ that supports low-income students.

[02:29:45] So while the changes have been significant, they've yet to address the full scope of this funding gap, which has increased since 2023, and the other major recommendations have not been taken into account. The Children's Services Act is another unfunded mandate, so this was enacted in 1993 to coordinate otherwise separate services to support children and, by extension, their families with significant behavioral, emotional, developmental, or educational needs.

[02:30:10] The Community Policy and Management Team oversees CSA. They receive referrals from school divisions and foster care, and then they utilize the child's IEP if they have one and various assessments to place a child where they can be best served. There's kind of two options. The first is going to be a community-based service.

[02:30:26] This allows children to return home at the end of the day. And then there's also residential services, which require a child to fully relocate outside of their community to receive services. This cost was originally split based on the locality's ability to pay. So regardless of the service that was being administered to the student, the state would split the same cost every time.

[02:30:45] In 2009, they switched to a three-tiered incentive model to incentivize community-based services. So localities paid less if the child went to community-based service, more if they went to a residential service. However, this year, the funding model has been changed back to that base match rate to give the state a little bit less of a foot in the game.

[02:31:06] So as you can see, the number of children served has remained relatively stable. We're not necessarily serving more children year over year. There's also Colonial Heights numbers on there. It should be switched. Chesterfield is the blue. Colonial Heights is the top green. because we do provide administrative support for Chesterville or for Colonial Heights students.

[02:31:24] So that number of students served has remained relatively the same. But on the other hand, the average cost for Chesterville students has grown dramatically. The largest reason for these cost increases has been the limited number of options for children that they need. So program staff are committed to placing children in the best program for them and high quality options are becoming more and more limited, therefore more and more expensive.

[02:31:45] Additionally, some students can only be served by providers that are out of state, which then further increases the cost. The last mandate that we'll cover today is going to be our elections administration. Recent unfunded mandates have drastically changed elections administration and basically tripled costs for the county over the past 10 years.

[02:32:03] The first kind of big one was the fiscal year 21 mandate to expand absentee voting during COVID-19. It still remains a large administrative burden today. Prior to this mandate, voting registrars were receiving a limited number of absentee ballots prior to election day as voters had to meet a pretty strict statutory guideline in order to vote absentee.

[02:32:22] Now, all voters can vote absentee with no reason, up to 45 days before Election Day, which significantly expands the amount of work required to both man polling stations and receive mail-in ballots. Following this, same-day registration was enacted, which allowed voters to register to vote at any point, including up to and on Election Day.

[02:32:40] Previously, voter registration ended 21 days prior to Election Day. So now elections employees that were already handling increased absentee ballots are also managing voter registrations right up to election day. And these mandates have really turned voting into a year-round operation rather than just a massive one-day effort.

[02:32:56] Despite these cost increases that you can see, state funding, that little blue at the bottom there, has remained relatively stable. It's limited to salaries for specific employees and administrative costs for presidential primaries. So as the additional administrative burdens increase, that's all funded by the county. None of that comes through from the state.

[02:33:11] This is where I'm going to end for this afternoon. I really hope this presentation has been helpful in providing a background for some of our largest unfunded mandates and the history behind their funding structures. So thank you for your time. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Mr. Ingle. In the sake of time, I'll try to be quick. But back to school unfunded mandates, we have over 600 teachers and over 900 teachers with teacher aides combined in the classroom that the state says we don't need at all to run our school system.

[02:33:41] So they pay zero dollars and zero cents towards those salaries. I don't know about you, but I think if we had 600 plus teachers and over 900 total staff in the classroom removed from the classrooms in Chesterfield County schools, that we would see workloads and teachers just deciding to leave.

[02:34:07] Some of them may be thinking about that now, but the rate would be a lot higher. The classroom size would be a lot higher, and quite frankly, when the classroom sizes get a lot higher, the learning environment lessens, and again, the state is saying that we don't need any of those people.

[02:34:29] So when they offer a 5% increase to teachers, it's really a 2.5% increase if the locality matches it, But in Chesterfield, for us to match because of all the teachers that we have that they don't pay anything towards, we have to put up 3% of the 5% increase that the state gives them.

[02:34:49] And then our teachers come to us and say, hey, the state loves us. They just gave us 5%. What are you going to do for us? And we just gave them three of the 5%. But the state takes credit for all of it. It's just maddening. And it goes on and on and on.

[02:35:07] Thank you. Ms. Billman. Thank you. And I just want to make a point that, you know, we're not disputing the merit of these programs because they're critical services and programs that the county provides to ensure that we're taking care of the members of our community.

[02:35:25] So it's just that this is, we have no control over how these programs are administered. And the ability to do that would give us some more flexibility, possibly. All right. So we're going to go pretty quickly through this. Just want to give you a little bit of a legislative backdrop heading into this next session. So just as Ms. LaCroix mentioned, every year in Virginia is an election year.

[02:35:43] And we are looking at November of next year for all 100 seats in the House and all 40 seats in the Senate to be up for election. So expecting that, you know, hopefully they will be moving expeditiously through this next session to be able to get back out on the street. And I expect that there will be some campaigning going on.

[02:36:00] It is a short session year next year, 45 days. It's the second year of the biennium budget. And so there's a more prominent focus on budget amendments. There were just over 440 bills that were continued from last session. And so they have until November 16th to take them to committee.

[02:36:15] If the bills do not go to committee, then they fail. And then as of now, the Senate has set a limit of 20 bills per member, and the House currently has no limit. We expect to see some similar themes from last year, focusing on housing, public safety, safety, excuse me, FOIA, transportation, technology, AI, data centers, procurement, and collective bargaining.

[02:36:40] Chesterfield's Guiding Principles have really set us up for much success during the legislative process, and so we are requesting that as part of the legislative program you will adopt in October, that this set the base. These Guiding Principles give us the ability to really adapt and react quickly during session, and so again, as we're proposing with the program that will be in front of you to adopt in October, these principles are included.

[02:37:05] The draft legislative program and priorities diving into this afternoon, I'll go through them rather quickly, and we can stop if you have questions, just let me know. With K-12 education, focusing on that priority regarding the J-LARC recommendation and implementing those, as it was mentioned earlier, moderate progress has been made, but there's still other significant recommendations to implement.

[02:37:29] In public safety, the first item there is to support the use of innovative strategies that will enhance safety and security in our communities. Next up is to continue supporting options that enhance Chesterfield's jail operations. And then as we heard from Ms. Freed this afternoon, you know, supporting expanded state hospital bed capacity, helping those in crisis.

[02:37:52] Even with the progress that we've made with our co-response team, there still continues to be a critical need to address this topic. And then last in this section, continue to support fully funding our 599 state aid to localities with police departments. Oops, moving too quickly.

[02:38:09] Within local authority, I think it's important reflecting on the conversation that we just had with Chief Center here, you know, first and foremost, supporting strategies that really preserve and strengthen our local decision-making authority, maintaining community voice and representation from you all as an elected board serving the community, and that point regarding the 42-hour work week as a, you know, prominent figure there where you maintain the ability and flexibility to make the decisions that's best for Chesterfield and best for our community. Another long-standing priority that we've had in the local authority space regarding offering enhanced VRS benefits for other critical public safety workers like 9-1-1 dispatchers,

[02:38:48] juvenile detention officers, animal service officers. This topic continues to present itself at the General Assembly but has yet to make progress to actually be signed into law. I just want to also mention regarding local authority, it really extends into our ability to assess and collect the local revenues and so we're continuing to also further advocate for funding to flip the methodology regarding the excess clerk fees and push it back to state code versus what's in the budget. Regarding infrastructure, these needs continue to be a high priority to address within our county. We're recommending for continued support for state funding on secondary road maintenance, funding for the fall line trail as we prioritize the southern section, funding and

[02:39:28] then project prioritization for major road projects in the county, highlighting Poe White Parkway extension, the 95 Willis Road interchange, and the 295 Meadowville Bridge. So the support funding for secondary road maintenance for BDOT, is there any way of us including some kind of, I don't know, they obviously can't keep up on the lawn mowing situation.

[02:39:53] I've received more complaints about the medians not being mowed this year, and I know Jesse said that they lost their contractor, but, I mean, the trees are getting buried under three-foot grass.

[02:40:09] I mean, I just think that there's got to be some kind of additional, and our locality has not increased their funding in, I think it's, what, four years now from the state for VDOT, so I just think that there's an opportunity there to work on. Yes, thank you.

[02:40:26] I'm moving too quickly. And then within the last item in that section, looking for support for alternative options that could address infrastructure funding for schools, roads, and other public facilities. Within the section for state responsible services and local cost shifts, and this is where we're going to see some of the unfunded mandate topics emerge during session, we do spend the majority of our time playing defense, and that includes safeguarding against those cost shifts and imposing unfunded mandates.

[02:40:54] And those can come by way, as you've heard this afternoon, sometimes in the regulatory space, too, for additional burdens on staff regarding extra reporting requirements or changes in that environment as well. We recommend your support to include advocating on behalf of state-responsible local positions with the focus on having the state take a look at providing market-based salaries for state employees that work in Chesterfield, including those clerks within JDNR and General District, as well as the individuals working within the Public Defender's Office.

[02:41:24] Next is support for modernizing staffing standards and analyzing the compensation across the constitutional offices. And then following that is item to support the alternative funding and policy strategies that could address high-need students in CSA, as you've heard this afternoon.

[02:41:41] We're continuing to see the cost climb for offering that service while the localities are bearing the burden of that cost shift as the state's capping their ability to pay there. And then similarly, same with the state-mandated Veterans Tax Relief Program. The state is providing $0 to offset the cost of what that is for the county to provide that. And so, again, critically important to our community, serving the members that live here and ensuring that we're taking care of those folks. But we have very little, if any, state resources coming to help support this. The land use and environment category is new this year to the legislative program, but it just reorganizes some of the topics that we had

[02:42:21] previously in other areas. And so the first there is support for local option land use and zoning authority. This is really speaking to giving and, you know, hope, ensuring that you all as a board that represent the members of our community have the ability to analyze land use decisions and work through those complex housing problems with tools in your toolkit to be most effective and not being mandated by the state to tell you what to do and how it's going to be done. The next piece there is supporting enhanced state oversight and accountability for landfills. And so this is

[02:42:57] specifically as it relates to what we've experienced with Shoesmith. And we're waiting further information from Secretary Bulova regarding what that proposed legislation will look like. And then finally within this section, supporting expanded local authority to preserve and protect our water and wastewater facilities and resources in Chesterfield. Moving on to economic development, recommending support for business study right initiatives, site readiness initiatives, support for programs and funding that provide for business growth, new business development, continued investment, and support for programs and funding that invest and promote tourism

[02:43:33] in the county. The technology landscape is ever changing and just as rapidly within that space is risk and potential exposure and so recommending support for policy and funding to advance cybersecurity protections and risk mitigation measures across the Commonwealth. This also includes state-level oversight and accountability for regulatory concerns related to technology.

[02:43:56] And then certainly not least in the health and human services category, recommending support for additional funding and programmatic resources that address the health, well-being, and recovery services here in the county, and then including mental health, behavioral health system resources, and breakthrough therapies for veterans. Just a couple more slides, and we'll get through that very quickly. I'm going to turn over to Ms. Walker, run through a couple of federal updates. Good afternoon. I believe most of you are already aware that we are rapidly approaching our deadline for the ARPA funds. That is December 31st of this year. I'm happy to report that we have less than 1% of those funds remaining to pay out. Just to put that in context, that's less than

[02:44:35] half a million remaining out of the 68.5 million that we were awarded by the federal government. The largest project that remains outstanding is a parks project, the Winter Park Park Project, which is still currently in flight, but they are targeting completion a full month ahead of the deadline we're facing, so we're in good shape there. I also wanted to share with you a few examples of recent federal grants that we have supported the Transportation Department in advocating for this year. The first one being the Curtis Street and West Street rail crossing improvements we were successful in being awarded 2.3 million in project

[02:45:12] development funds for that one thing I will note is that we did apply for three separate grant programs and just to be awarded one for this one project we were unsuccessful with the build grant for a poet Parkway this year we applied for 25 million there and did not receive it although the project was scored as recommended it was not scored as highly recommended which gets it put on the secretary's desk. And the Safe Streets for All program is still pending application, so we may hear good news on that one as well. And as projects like Poe White and 95 Willis remain a high priority for us, as Ms. Spillman mentioned in our legislative program, we're going to continue to advocate for

[02:45:50] these as federal opportunities arise. Thank you. Closing out our presentation, we want to encourage folks to get involved and stay engaged on what's going on. This is the Legislative Information system website it's a great resource great tool folks and they're in the community can register for lobbies in a box profile you can set reminders on when meetings are going to occur during session the schedule is kept up to date to know when those committees are meeting so if anyone has questions wants to know how to use this or navigate or how to reach their legislators contact our office we're happy to help you get involved and then just again closing out calendar getting us through session

[02:46:29] We've got a couple of items happening in the fall, conferences, and getting geared up and ready. As I mentioned, the 16th is the last day for committee action, pre-filing deadlines on November 30th. We're hosting a joint legislative breakfast on the 1st. Governor's proposed budget with amendments will come out on the 17th.

[02:46:48] General Assembly session for next year starts on January the 13th. And as a 45-day session, expect to adjourn around the end of February. So, with that, we're happy to take any questions. Any questions from the board? Thank you so much.

[02:47:04] Appreciate it. You've covered a lot of territory. Thank you for that. Thank you. Madam Clerk. D, Chapter 16 Amendment, Street Naming. Mr. Wright. Welcome.

[02:47:26] Hello, members of the board. Dr. Catlin, thank you for allowing me time to present some proposed changes to Chapter 16, the streets, sidewalks, public places. Before I really get rolling into these slides, I just want to say that there is a red line copy of the actual draft changes further in the agenda packet for the evening session.

[02:47:47] So for the uninitiated, the first article in Chapter 16 is defining the public right of way and the requirements to do work within it. It is untouched by these changes. The second article contains most of the changes that we're proposing pertains to establishing the system for naming streets and numbering buildings within the county.

[02:48:05] In the third article, we're only revising to update the name of the real property office from the right way of office. So the rationale for making these changes ultimately drills down to the desire to continue our work on clarifying, modernizing, and simplifying the address assignment process within the county.

[02:48:25] Additionally, the changes will correct references to the proper department with the responsibility for the mandates in the chapter. Ideally, the outcome will help us set a standard to have more unique and intuitive address assignments moving forward.

[02:48:37] So as I said, to reflect the responsibility, the geospatial services team has a responsibility for assigning addresses and approving street names within the county, and we're currently housed within the planning departments, we need to revise references from the director of environmental engineering to the director of planning, so the responsibility is properly assigned, while environmental engineering will still retain responsibility for the physical street signs and the fees and regulations for those signs.

[02:49:06] The next two slides cover the street name standards laid out in the article. They sort of balance each other out. The first slide is more of the restrictions that are imposed, and the second slide will broaden the possibilities that are allowed for street names and addressing.

[02:49:23] So first, we want to clarify that a plan RVA reservation of a street name does not necessarily equate to the county approving that name. That isn't clear in the code currently, so we revise it to say that the appropriate regional planning district commission can provide that reservation that approval against their standards but the county still needs to be able to weigh it against the standards that we have laid out in chapter 16 before a street name can be used an example on the slide is a product that they provide to us called the street name clearinghouse where developers can apply for street names the commit or plan rva will then mark whether it's reserved or existing status throughout the region and the

[02:50:02] locality that has that marked. This really helps with next-gen 911 assignment, preventing duplication of street names, things of that nature. Additionally, we want to cut down on duplication that occurs in street names. So the current code is not clear in when street types necessitate a duplication.

[02:50:23] So the example I have up there is Apple Drive and Apple Place. Right now that can be allowed under certain circumstances, but the goal to have unique and intuitive addresses is that we don't reuse this street name portion of that frequently unless it's really necessary. There are some examples in the county where we could have a name for this example, Apple, that has six, seven, or eight uses of the same type. So we've got Apple Drive, Apple Lane, Apple Place, Court Road, and it becomes a complex process to properly assign addresses, making sure that we're not reusing numbers, making sure that people are abbreviating those terms properly. So we want to cut down on that. And

[02:50:59] lastly we don't want the reserved types later in this article to be used within the name that also helps with that abbreviation issue that can lead to delivery or response issues later down the road so something like court which is a reserve type that is used frequently within the county shouldn't necessarily be used as part of the name so after working with the environmental engineering sign shop their modern processes and the technology that they're using to produce signs we can increase the characters allowed in street names from 16 to 20 that conveniently brings

[02:51:34] 43 names already within use in the county to compliance with the article there's only a couple more names hanging out there 22 or 23 characters but we're not intended to change those we also simplify the street type list so the current code has a list that takes almost two pages to scroll through the types that are allowed and where they're applied and we turn that into into a chart that provides the types that the county preserve preserves and the abbreviation that the post office prefers for those street types. It also provides sort of a guideline of when those types

[02:52:10] are appropriate for the function or the geometry of the street so that we can start to have intuitive connections between a court being something that is like a cul-de-sac or a dead-end street and an avenue being more of an arterial collector type of street. So through this process of making this chart and reducing the names and the types, 20 types are kept and 18 are dropped from the current code the 20 reserve types account for 98.8 percent of the 190,000 addresses within the county so it's really not affecting a huge percentage of the existing addresses by dropping those types

[02:52:47] out and it also returns those types to be able to be used as part of the name so something like crossing is a reserve type right now it doesn't have an intuitive abbreviation necessarily so allowing that to be used in part of the name something like apple crossing lane is is a benefit that we find from doing that. The next slide is codifying the numbering baselines within the county. So the code mentions that there are baselines and it doesn't really give a description textually or any representation of what they are or what they do. So we propose adding a textual

[02:53:26] description of those that guides the baselines. On the screen you can see the Midlothian Turnpike baseline and basically what this does is it sets a guideline for where numbers begin radiating out from zero in the county so we have one for north south roads which is the meadowthian turnpike baseline and we have one for east west roads which is the meadowville road baseline out in the bermuda district and you can see on this slide as the colors change it's it's about a thousand range of addresses so each color red orange tan yellow at the very top there's some light green colors that's when you start to get to like the 5,000 range of addresses. So each of those blocks are

[02:54:04] a couple mile wide and it helps you define a grid that the street numbers that people associate with their addresses are defined by and how we produce them and come up with them. The concept was originally used when the county started readdressing in the 1960s and at the time it was just a line drawn on a paper map that we actually still have in our office today.

[02:54:26] And it just radiated out from what the city of Richmond did. We drew that line to where the development pattern in the county was at the time. And as you can see, it appears that even without the technology of GIS that we have today, we were able to do a relatively good job of keeping that pattern and that standard moving.

[02:54:45] So we want to make sure that we include this in the code moving forward so people have context for how the numbers got to where they are. So during Everyday Excellence last month, there were a couple questions about ClusterBox units and how the team collaborates with the United States Postal Service, so I wanted to go into that as well.

[02:55:03] This isn't necessarily tied to Chapter 16, but it's relevant to the work that we do. So my team coordinates with the post office and their address management system unit and the local post office manager to make sure that addresses are activated. I was actually doing that earlier today with the zip code assignment where a new subdivision was going in on the boundary of an existing zip code, and we want to make sure before we start sending those out to people that we have the right one in place.

[02:55:29] And cluster box units, they're required for subdivisions with four or more lots. The equipment and the installation of that hardware is heavily guided by the United States Postal Service. They have regulations and standards about what those can look like, why they're required, where they can go. On the planning side, during the subdivision review process, the location of those cluster box units is determined in the construction plat and requires the United States Postal Service to sign off on that location before the county will move ahead.

[02:55:58] So we know that there will be something in place to be able to provide that delivery. And we additionally work with the applicants for these developments to coordinate with the post office in the final plat stage to make sure that if that isn't set up, that there's some other process set up for folks to be able to get the deliveries that they expect.

[02:56:16] Finally, the Chapter 17, the subdivision ordinance, does require a minor amendment to reflect these changes. It currently references environmental engineering when the processes take place within the planning department. So we want to revise that in Chapter 17 as well. And lastly, I just want to note that all of these changes are to continue the improvement and refining the address assignment process as highlighted by the metrics that were shared last month, while pushing us towards more unique and intuitive address assignments moving forward.

[02:56:46] I think that will better improve outcomes all around for delivery, for public safety response, things of that nature. And with that, I can take any questions. Ms. Snyder. Okay, so I just want to say that this is something that I never thought we'd talk about, and it's very interesting.

[02:57:03] I really, it's fascinating to see. I mean, I guess you don't ever think about that and how they, yeah, you eliminate, you know, duplications and it's, I'm sorry, it's just fascinating, sorry. Any other comments from the board?

[02:57:21] Thank you so much. Appreciate it and all the work you do. Thank you. E, consent agenda highlights, Mr. Harris. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Chair, members of the board, it'll be very brief. Holly, four items on your consent agenda for this evening.

[02:57:39] First, harking back to a topic we brought up last month, you have an item on there for the board to approve the health care rates for 2027, calendar year 2027. As we talked about, I think, in Audit Finance and a few other places, the initial renewal came in quite high, almost 20%.

[02:57:59] Embedded in the rate schedule that we're asking you to prove tonight is the full removal of GLP-1 medication for weight loss coverage. We would still continue to offer those medicines for those with diabetic conditions, as we have always done, so no change there.

[02:58:15] And the other big savings here comes from a change in our pharmaceutical approach where we really are pushing people to generic medication. If it's available, there are some avenues. If they need to have a brand name for a medical reason, there is a process to do that.

[02:58:33] Otherwise, it would choose the generic medication. So those two steps, plus utilization of a little bit of retained earnings in the fund, gets it down under a 10% renewal, so still higher than what the budgeted number was, but a far cry from where we were before.

[02:58:49] And we will continue to work with our new consultant and our school partners to continue to look at the overall benefit program. No change on the dental side and no real changes to the co-pay schedule. You made some big swings there this year, so trying to remain competitive in this space. But two big changes on the pharmaceutical side are expected to save significant funds for county and schools together. The second one is you've got FY27 budget amendments in your consent agenda. This is really the bulk of this is the appropriation of some bond premium

[02:59:24] from two recent sales. We'll go to the benefit of the Grange Hall Replacement Elementary and the Westridge High School. The only operating topic as part of that paper is $13,000 change for Caritas, the emergency shelter. They have a process by which they go through and true up based on utilization and cost. So this is governor community contracts process. So it would add $13,000 to that only operating amendment that the staff is asking for. And then you have a construction contract worth noting for the IST building. This is something that Mr. Bowles and

[03:00:01] his team have been working on for several years. We've been able to create some space in that building will bring the employee medical center as well as a 9-1-1 training center or the emergency communication center training space into that building in the existing footprint but there is construction contract for about 6.4 million dollars to facilitate the sort of renewal of that space to allow those two other groups to come in there getting the medical center out of lease space over at lucy core and then finally you have the consideration of a change in ownership at the

[03:00:33] Colonial Ridge Apartments as governed by a 2017 agreement that is in place relative to that particular community. The board has, or they have to approach the board if there is to be a change in ownership. I think Mr. Smith's team did go through and look at the facility, gave them a long list of maintenance items that needed to be cleaned up before ownership would be approved. So I think staff is recommending approval. Nothing else changes in terms of the responsibilities that

[03:01:07] the new owner has, and again, the whole checklist of items that was uncovered has been dealt with, so that also in your consent agenda, and I'm happy to take any questions you might have. Move aboard. Nope, we're good. Thank you, Mr. Harris.

[03:01:25] Item 6, 15-minute citizen comment period on unscheduled matters. This time is designated for citizens to talk to the Board of Supervisors. It is not a time for dialogue with board members and it is not a question-answer period. Those conversations can easily occur with individual board members outside of the board meeting.

[03:01:41] As a reminder, the board's procedures state, no citizen shall speak on any matter of business that is a subject on the board's agenda for that day, and each speaker shall have three minutes to address the board. We have two speakers. If they'll please come forward and speak in this order, Phil Lohr and Terry Adams.

[03:01:58] Thank you, Madam Clerk. Dr. Catlin, members of the board, Phil Lohr, Permuda District, I'd like to share some comments tonight with you on behalf of Justville Citizens and Responsible Government relative to the Communications Department transparency.

[03:02:23] The first issue that we have is we have critical concerns regarding administrations, communications, budget expansion, and political neutrality. Under the former administrator's leadership, the Communications Department was expanded dramatically to 21 employees and looks like a $3 million budget. Unfortunately, this expanded capacity has been used to push pro-county propaganda rather than transparent factual information. The county's recent One for the Schools campaign demonstrates clear political manipulation and violates the state neutrality laws. Placing campaign inserts promising tax

[03:03:01] reductions for passage of the tax in all utility bills this month is an unacceptable use of public resources. I've got this handout in my bill, and I'd like to read you one section of it that illustrates why I say that neutrality has been violated. If approved by voters, the Board of Supervisors will reduce the real estate tax rate by two cents and personal property tax rate by 10 cents, sort of quid pro quo. If you pass this $70 1% tax now, this coming year, We're going to give you, at the budget time, a reduction of your taxes.

[03:03:41] And the neutrality law says you can't say you will do something. You will consider it. And in other literature, you have done that. You didn't do that in this literature, and I feel like it violated the neutrality law. And we're approaching the appropriate legal representatives with that information.

[03:04:00] Additionally, distributing the pro-one-for-schools letters through students to present to their parents crosses the line beyond educational communication and constitute an inappropriate manipulation of students to influence voters. While the county has aggressively promoted pro-tax advertisements all across communication channels, it has completely failed to address how it intends to spend the $70 million it will retain in its general fund budget. The intense push for school funding appears to mask a broader effort to increase the county overall spending.

[03:04:41] To restore public trust, the budget for this communication operation should be significantly reduced. All outgoing information from the county must reflect a reasonable, honest, and transparent summary of the facts rather than a political spin.

[03:05:00] The other comment I have relative to transparency of communications is regarding the Timmins lease. And I sent each of you an email that was sent out by the communications department to Tom Curl relative to the, we call it the Timmins lease fiasco.

[03:05:17] And I need to briefly explain to the audience. Mr. Lohr, your three minutes are up. Okay. I guess we'll have that conversation tonight, Dr. Miller. Look forward to that. Only three percent. Yeah, thank you. Terry Adams. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board and the county administrator, Caitlin.

[03:05:42] My name is Terry Adams, and I live at 4425 Carmel Drive in Chester in the Greenbrier subdivision in the Bermuda District. And I am here today on behalf of my family and neighbors to urgently demand that Chesterfield County extend public sewer hookups to our community.

[03:05:58] Our neighborhood is facing a critical failure of infrastructure. Private septic tanks across Greenbrier are failing systemically because of our area's dense, clay-heavy soil. Basic maintenance and repairs are no longer working. We are dealing with pooling sewage, persistent odors, and an ongoing threat to our properties.

[03:06:18] This is not just an inconvenience or an isolated home repair issue. It is an active public health hazard and an environmental crisis. Every failing septic system in Greenbrier leaks directly into our local soil and groundwater.

[03:06:34] Our entire subdivision sits squarely within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The county collects stormwater utility fees specifically to protect our waterways from pollutants, yet untreated household waste from failing private systems is threatening the local ecosystem right under your jurisdiction.

[03:06:52] This compromises the very environmental standards this board is mandated to protect. We are long-time Chesterfield residents and taxpayers, and we contribute to the county's growth, yet our neighborhood is being left behind with outdated hazardous systems, while newer developments receive modern, reliable infrastructure.

[03:07:11] Failing septic systems trap homeowners. We cannot safely live like this, and we cannot sell our homes under these conditions. The only permanent responsible solution to protect public health and stabilize our property values is a public sewer extension managed by Chesterfield Utilities.

[03:07:29] Private repairs are an expensive band-aid on a systemic community-wide problem. We urge the board to direct the Department of Utilities to conduct a feasibility study for a public sewer extension in the Greenbrier subdivision. We need a concrete plan, a clear timeline, and a commitment from our community leadership to bring our infrastructure into the modern area.

[03:07:50] Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your prompt action on this urgent matter. And just Susan, by the way, thank you, Susan, did reach out already to Matt Rimbold, the director of utilities for Chesterfield. And he did tell me, I had been told previously that there was nothing that Chesterfield could do by someone in the utilities department.

[03:08:12] But Matt said that there is things that can be done. He said that there's like an assessment district process that can be done. He actually said he's going to get his team started on that. But I had already collected a, I've got a petition of names from my neighbors, and I had told them that I was coming here tonight, or this afternoon rather, and so I didn't want to, you know, not come.

[03:08:38] I believe in trust, so I wanted them to know that I did come speak, but he also mentioned the amount of money that it could cost, just like a projection of, and it's like, it's unrealistic, so I would again urge you to maybe try to help us in some way with this solution.

[03:09:00] I mean, I was told by a private company that it could cost me anywhere from $25,000 to 65,000 just to fix mine, but they couldn't guarantee me it would work. I don't know about you, but I can't afford to fork out 65,000 on something that may not work. Whereas I know I could, you know, if they, if the county did it, I could pay the money and it would be guaranteed to work, I would assume. But if my time's, is that my time? Thank you.

[03:09:25] Thank you. Appreciate it. Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, is there any desire to make adjustments to the agenda based on the time. Thank you very much. I'd like to make a motion that as far as the board member reports are concerned that we bypass them, if I can get the motion.

[03:09:45] Can I get a second? Any discussion? Second. Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, we'll skip over that. Would you like to also skip county administration update? No, I think we should have the county administration update. Okay, item seven, county administration update. Dr. Catlin. Thank you, board.

[03:10:01] and I will attempt to be brief. We have two topics. One, I recognize I had the privilege of recognizing the Department of General Services Fleet Services Division, led by Fleet Manager David Cottingham. They have ranked number 36 best green fleet in North America for 2026 by the National Association of Fleet Administrators, NAFA.

[03:10:21] This honor marks the seventh time in eight years that Chesterfield has earned a place among NAFA's top 50 green fleets, underscoring the county's ongoing commitment to sustainable fleet management and environmental stewardship. The Green Fleet Awards highlight leading fleet operations that excel in areas such as fleet composition, fuel and emissions reduction, policy and planning, utilization, efficiency, staff education, executive and employee engagement, and supporting sustainability programs.

[03:10:46] In addition to this recognition, Fleet Services was named among the top 50 leading fleets earlier this year at the Government Fleet Expo. This division also earned a spot in the top 100 fleets for the eighth consecutive year of NAFTA's Institute and Expo held in April.

[03:11:03] These accolades reflect the county's sustained investment in innovative technologies, environmentally responsible practices, and operational excellence. So congratulations to our fleets division. They do a great job. I just also want to comment on my first 30 days as I approach that.

[03:11:19] That would be tomorrow, actually. I want to share how I'm approaching the first 100 days my tenure. My priority has been to listen, learn, and build relationships needed to carry out the board's vision for Chesterfield. I'm spending time with board members, county co-workers, and community partners to understand what matters most to them. Conversations about our schools, public safety, economic development, and proposed data centers have reinforced the value of hearing concerns directly, explaining our processes clearly, and keeping the board informed as decisions develop. I also have joined community sessions and worked with our team to create public forums where residents can ask questions about matters impacting them inside the organization

[03:11:57] i'm getting to know the people who deliver our services and the challenges and opportunities they see at the same time i'm working with our leadership team to understand the budget the board's priorities and commitments already underway those conversations will help me align our work with the board's direction and make sure we follow through on it over the remainder of my first 100 days i will deepen those relationships with the board co-workers and community strengthen how we translate the board's vision into action across departments and prepare for the upcoming legislative session. That means staying ahead of our proposals affecting Chesterfield and working with the board and our partners to advance the county's legislative priorities and commitments

[03:12:36] that we have around the county. So, I appreciate the work and welcome that I've received and look forward to continuing this work together. That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Dr. Catlin. Item nine, reports. Are there any questions regarding reports?

[03:12:53] Seeing none, the reports have been approved. All right. And you still want to go forward with the closed session? Yes, please. All right. Mr. Chair, we need a motion to go into closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3711A1, Code of Virginia, 1950, as amended relating to the performance of the clerk to the board and the county attorney.

[03:13:15] All right. Make it a motion? So moved. I got a motion of a second. Any discussion? All right. Yes, sir. To the amount of time we have, we may want to push coming back at 6.30 instead of 6 o'clock. I'm willing to meet up with Mr. Minks, please.

[03:13:34] Either that or we'll have to skip. Either that or push closed session to the next session. I'd rather push this closed session than start the evening session. Yes, sir. We do have the centenarians tonight. Yeah. Right. That's why I'm bringing this up.

[03:13:50] I think maybe we should defer this to the next meeting. Okay, so we're, yeah, I mean, my sense is it just, do you see it can wait? Okay, does the board feel that way? It can wait? Aye. Yeah, that's fine. Just don't take a vote on the motion that was made, so. Okay, well, I'll take that vote, so we'll go ahead and resend that motion, and we will adjourn now.

[03:14:12] So may I have a motion to recess to dinner in room 502? So moved. Second. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. All right, we stand adjourned.

[03:14:57] Well, good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming. You're always welcome to the evening session of the September 23rd Board of Supervisors meeting. I have verified that all board members have received copies of the comments posted to the online comment portal for consideration on the matters before us tonight.

[03:15:17] These comments are part of the public record and will be attached to the meeting minutes. In addition, for those members of the public here for zoning portion of the meeting, we have two deferral requests. the district supervisor for cases 26 sn 2144 round tray phase five lot cover coverage modification and amendment and 26 sn 2080 charleston landing rezoning have requested deferral of these cases to the board's october 28th meeting at this time i'm going to go ahead and give the invocation i

[03:15:52] just need to grab it real quick luckily i knew exactly where it was um so just a little bit of background on this. I mean, we've just entered into autumn, and if you haven't noticed, it's nice outside. You've got that coolness. And so I have on the wall of our living room a prayer by Tom Whitecloud from the Ojibwe tribe, and I was just so called to share it with you all for this

[03:16:30] invocation. It goes like this. Great Spirit, whose voice we hear in the wind and whose breath gives life to all the worlds. Hear us. We are one of your many children. We are small and weak. We need your strength and wisdom. Let us walk in beauty and make our eyes ever to behold the red and purple

[03:17:00] sunset. Make our hands respect the things you made, our ears sharp to hear your voice. Make us wise So we may know the things you taught our people, the lessons you've hidden in every leaf and every rock. We seek strength, though great spirit, not for the superior to others, but to be able to fight our greatest enemy ourselves. Make us ever ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes

[03:17:36] so that when life fades as the fading sunset, our spirit may come to you without shame. May it be so. We would like to call forward Eagle Scout Chris Edwards to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

[03:17:54] Thank you, Madam Clerk.

[03:18:13] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[03:18:32] Item 14, resolutions and special recognitions. A, recognition of Chesterfield County centenarians in honor of National Centenarian Day. Ms. Graves. Chairman, honorable members of the board, and Dr. Catlin, good evening.

[03:18:58] It is truly an honor to be here once again to recognize a very special group of Chesterfield County residents, those who have reached the remarkable milestone of 100 years of age and beyond. Reaching 100 is about so much more than a number. It represents a lifetime of experiences, memories, accomplishments, challenges, overcome, and relationships that have shaped families in our community.

[03:19:23] Our centenarians are living connections to our history, and their stories offer wisdom and inspiration to generations that follow. There are approximately 100,000 centenarians living in the United States. Here in Chesterfield County, we are fortunate to celebrate 114 residents who have reached the age of 100 or older. Tonight, we have the privilege of recognizing nine new centenarians and welcoming back 12 centenarian alumni for a total of 21 remarkable individuals.

[03:19:58] Several honorees are with us this evening, and we are delighted to celebrate them in person. Each of these individuals was born in 1926 or earlier. Think about all that has happened during their lifetimes, the changes in our communities, advances in technology and medicine, historic events, and the growth of Chesterfield County.

[03:20:22] Through it all, they have built families, careers, friendships, and legacies that continue today. Tonight is an opportunity to pause and recognize not simply how long they've lived, but how much life they have lived and the lasting impact they have made along the way.

[03:20:39] So let's begin by giving a very special Chesterfield County welcome to our new centenarians. As I call each honoree's name, please raise your hand so we can recognize and celebrate you. Inez Armstrong, age 100, her Christian faith, commitment to a healthy lifestyle, and her love of family has guided her throughout her life. She has faithfully served her church and community, always finding ways to help others. As the last survivor of 10 siblings, she continues to be a

[03:21:12] role model and inspiration to generations of her family. Next, we have Gene Blanton, age 101. He credits his family for shaping the man he became and considers living a long, good life as one of his greatest achievements. Known for his commitment to helping others, he has served as a spokesman for his community. His simple philosophy is to smile often, love everyone, and keep enjoying life with goals of living forever. Next, we have Thelma Brooks, age 99. She credits her longevity to a

[03:21:49] healthy, active lifestyle, daily prayer, avoiding smoking and alcohol. A proud graduate of Maggie L. Walker High School, she devoted her life to family, teaching, service to her church, and volunteering. She enjoys spending time with loved ones, arts and crafts, and attending music and outdoor concerts. We have Carrie Mae Clark, age 100. Growing up on a farm taught Carrie the values of hard work, saving, and perseverance. She enjoyed a long career in nursing, caring for

[03:22:23] others at St. Elizabeth's, John Randolph, Lucy Core, and through private duty nursing. She was married for 53 years and takes great pride in her family and grandchildren. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, playing games, redecorating, and reading. Next, we have Paul Darby, age 99.

[03:22:45] He proudly served his country after being drafted at age 18, serving during the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War. He enjoyed a distinguished 43 career as a maintenance supervisor and dedicated himself to serving his community through civic and civic rights organizations.

[03:23:07] Family and faith remain central to his life, and he enjoys celebrating special moments with his growing family. Next, we have L.A. Morberry Parker, age 101. She credits her longevity to living a healthy, clean life and giving back to others. As a military spouse, she enjoyed traveling with her husband and remained active in her church and community. She's an active member of several bridge clubs, an active member of her church. Her life has been defined by faith, family, friendship, service, and caring for others. We have Dorothy Spencer, age 100. She believes

[03:23:46] her longevity comes from healthy habits and avoiding smoking and alcohol. Retired after a successful 20-year career with the General Defense Supply Center, she credits her German grandfather for teaching her perseverance, hard work, and determination. She's a proud VCU graduate with a degree in retail, enjoys caring for her family, still driving, and traveling with her family.

[03:24:12] cherishes a memorable three-week European trip with her children, visiting 10 countries. Velma Meter, age 101, she credits her longevity to healthy habits, staying active, and a lifetime of helping others. Raising her family is her greatest achievement, and she takes pride in the life she has built through hard work, service, and perseverance. She enjoys quilting and crafts and lives by her simple advice. As you get older, you need to keep going. Catherine Williams,

[03:24:46] age 100, she credits her longevity to her Christian faith, kindness, compassion, and staying active. She answered the call to ministry in her 40s and has devoted her life to singing, prayer, and serving others. After a 30-year career at Johnston Willis Hospital, she continues to enjoy reading, sewing, and her daily sweet potato. Her caring spirit and love for others continue to inspire those around her. We are now celebrating, we are also celebrating the alumni of our

[03:25:23] centenarian program, some of which are here with us tonight. Please raise your hand when you hear your name. Lee Beal, 105 years young. Anita D. Giacomo, 101 years young. Rosa Lee Ford, 101 years

[03:25:52] young. Mary Dunn Gaskell, 102 years young. Julia Mayfield, 102 years young. She will be celebrating her birthday, 103rd birthday on Sunday. Mildred Parham, 100 years young.

[03:26:19] Frances Rogers, 101 years young. Norma Schott, 104 years young. Anna Marie Snelling, 103 years young. Maddie Stansbury, 101 years young. Arlene Stanton, 103 years young. Unfortunately, she passed

[03:26:53] away recently. Maria Rodriguez-Thomas, our oldest centenarian, at 106 years young. Let's take a moment to recognize these centenarians that have recently passed, many of whom have joined us in previous centenarian celebrations. Dorothy Bell, 101 years old. Dorothy Lee Broadnecks, 101 years old.

[03:27:28] Sancho Leonardo, 101 years old. Maxine Warner, 100 years old. Philip White, 104 years old. And Margaret Whiteman, 100 years old. I want to thank the centenarians and their families for sharing these remarkable life stories and advice. I'd also like to give a special thank you to Jackie Weiss-Gerber, public affairs specialist with the Social Security Administration.

[03:27:59] Thank you and have a good evening.

[03:29:08] Just leave her in there.

[03:32:57] They know where they had it in.

[03:33:07] Excuse me, Dr. Hilton?

[03:33:11] Thank you.

[03:35:37] All right, Madam Clerk. B, resolution recognizing Boy Scout upon attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. Mr. Goode. Mr. Chair, fellow board members, Dr. Catlin, I think we can see by the number of uniforms that are getting ready to walk up on stage that the scouting tradition is alive and well in Chesterfield.

[03:35:58] At this time, I'd like to invite Mr. Chris Edwards of Troop 2860 to please come up onto the stage with his family to be recognized for the outstanding achievement of Eagle Scout. Thank you. All right. that's awesome this is a scouting family that's awesome i had the same all right come on in come on in yeah that's amazing yeah

[03:36:31] all right wow all right so madam clerk if you would please yes ma'am i'm going to read your resolution for you whereas the boy scouts of america was incorporated by mr william d boyce on February 8th, 1910, and was chartered by Congress in 1916, and whereas the Boy Scouts of America was founded to build character, provide citizenship training, and promote physical fitness, and whereas after earning at least 21 merit badges and a wide variety

[03:37:07] of skills, including leadership, service, and outdoor life, serving in a leadership position in a troop, carrying out a service project beneficial to their community, being active in the troop, demonstrating scout spirit, and living up to the scout oath and law, Mr. Chris Edwards of Troop 2860, sponsored by Friends of Pocahontas State Park, has accomplished those high standards of commitment and has reached the long-sought goal of Eagle Scout, which is received by only 4% of those individuals entering the scouting movement. And whereas growing through his experiences in scouting, learning the lessons of responsible citizenship, and endeavoring to

[03:37:46] prepare himself for a role as a leader in society. Chris has distinguished himself as a member of a new generation of prepared young citizens of whom we can all be very proud. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, this 23rd day of September, 2026, publicly recognizes Mr. Chris Edwards, extends congratulations on his attainment of Eagle Scout, and acknowledges the good fortune of the county to have such an outstanding young man as its citizen.

[03:38:14] thank you thank you this is a challenge oh a motion so uh so moved sir and a second please okay okay all right all right all right all right so you are you are official now

[03:38:36] so so would you like to tell us about your your project that you did yeah so i am a student at Clover Hill High School, and I'm in the marching band there. So we have a tower, which our director and our staff stand on to watch and be able to comment. So for my project, I refurbished the tower. It was built in 2011, and it was the recipient of an Eagle project in 2018. So I was

[03:39:13] pretty much updating it. I replaced all the stairs on the tower. I replaced the shelves. I replaced uh any of the balusters that were broken and we painted the entire thing yeah well i greatly appreciate seeing this whole so these are your siblings here that's awesome so i came from a scouting family also my parents were both scout masters um my dad was a scout master for 35 years and he threatened my brothers they had they couldn't get their license until they finished

[03:39:51] their eagle their eagle and i i well i got my gold badge before all that so for girl scouts but they didn't have the cool thing where girls could go be scouts back then so I had to be a Girl Scout but so thank you so much for supporting your kids and and and teaching them so much through scouting there's it's such an amazing opportunity to learn and grow and explore things that you never would if you weren't a scout so did you have any comments that you'd like to make or did you want to introduce your family to us or I can sure

[03:40:30] - This is my dad and also my scoutmaster, I guess I'll say your full name, Jordan Edwards. These are my three siblings, Drew Edwards, Natalie Edwards, and Alex Edwards, and this is my mom, Jennifer Edwards.

[03:40:49] - Any other comments, board members? - Thank you. - Yeah, that's amazing, thank you. We appreciate your hard work. Congratulations. - Thank you.

[03:41:14] - Hi, Madam Clerk. C, resolution recognizing Mrs. Kimberly Pulley, Utilities Department, upon her retirement. Will Mrs. Pulley and her guests please join the board on the stage?

[03:41:42] Madam Clerk, if you will go ahead and read the resolution, please. Yes, sir. Whereas Mrs. Kimberly I. Pulley retired from Chesterfield County on September 1st, 2026 after 40 years of dedicated service to the residents of Chesterfield County.

[03:41:59] And whereas Mrs. Pulley began her career with the Chesterfield County on August 11th, 1986 as a technician in the Department of Building Inspections. And whereas Mrs. Pulley was hired in the Circuit Court Record Room and Recording Desk in July of 1987.

[03:42:15] And whereas Mrs. Pulley began her tenure with the Department of Utilities in December of 1992 as a technician in the real property office, reviewing easement plats and preparing easement agreements. And whereas Mrs. Pulley was promoted to engineering assistant and joined the subdivision and site plan team, where she reviewed subdivision plats and parcel line modification plats, while still continuing to review the easement plats and prepare easement agreements for all residential projects.

[03:42:45] And whereas Mrs. Pulley's strong work ethic and high standards have set an example for the office, and whereas Ms. Pulley's approachable demeanor and exemplary customer service skills have ensured that countless members of the public received outstanding assistance, further enhancing the image and service of the county.

[03:43:03] And whereas Mrs. Pulley has always rendered invaluable service with a high degree of productiveness and professionalism and will be sorely missed by all who wish her the best. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, this 23rd day of September, 2026, publicly recognizes Mrs. Kimberly I. Pulley and extends on behalf of its members and the residents of Chesterfield County, appreciation for 40 years of exceptional service to the county.

[03:43:31] And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be presented to Mrs. Pulley and that this resolution be permanently recorded among the papers of the Board of Supervisors of Chesterfield County, Virginia. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Can I get a motion? I got a second. Any discussion on that 40 years at all? All right, we'll just stand and all. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye and opposed. Okay, thank you so much.

[03:43:59] Kim, I just want to say congratulations on a well-deserved retirement. 40 years of dedicated service in Chesterfield County is remarkable, a remarkable career. 34 of those were dedicated to the Utilities Department.

[03:44:14] Since 1992, I dare say there was probably not a single residential development in Chesterfield County that didn't cross your desk, and you looked after the county's interest, but also the residents' interest in making sure the land record was accurate and well-recorded to make sure that your legacy with Chesterfield County is going to live on, not just in that brick in the courtyard, but everything, the product of your work is going to live on a land record forever and from an appreciative department just want to say thank you you create a big hole for us to fill um lynn in the back's got her her got her work ahead of her trying to fill the the vacancy you've left but we've got a good team behind um you left good notes and

[03:44:54] set a standard for us to try to keep going forward so thank you and speaking about bricks Do you want to hand it to her? Yeah, I absolutely can. Let me take the rest of this.

[03:45:10] Go ahead. Yeah, I can say it. Real bread. I'm going to tell you what it means. So I apologize. We didn't get the chance to meet you. You left six days after I started.

[03:45:26] So there's just in time, I guess. No, but really, we really appreciate your commitment to this organization. And as Director Rimbold said, you know, folks don't realize the amount of jobs that we have here at the county and the amount of work that folks do behind the scenes.

[03:45:41] And you're one of the behind the scenes individuals that actually make a lasting impression on the services that we provide to Chesterfield County residents. And so we're so appreciative of your assistance and your commitment, your dedication to this organization. And to further cement that, that brick will be placed in the courtyard so that your legacy lives on forever in Chesterfield County.

[03:46:02] Because we're so appreciative of you. And just a pleasure to be here with you today and honor your success and commitment to this organization. We wish you well in your retirement. Absolutely. No worries. Is that what?

[03:46:19] Oh, you're going to get to talk, yeah. This is yours. This one's yours. so so all right he missed out on one thing so we put a replica of this brick in in front of the historic courthouse with your name and years of service on it and next to that there's um a little plaque that whoever visits can scan it with their phone the qr code comes up and allows them to put your name in and when they do that they'll be able to read your resolution which is your career here in chessville county so mary romanella who's was here earlier was our j stegmeyer fellow and she worked on that it was a great project uh and because one of the things we looked at is we

[03:46:59] have all these bricks in the ground with all the people who worked here but how do you know what they did and so we we had this put in place so now so that when it comes up they can put your name in and read it and read about you so thank you for everything that you did for Chesterfield County and I'm going to pass this over to Jessica now well everything that they've said is yeah I don't know we're we're losing a lot of good people here tonight this is this is always the bad part about these but thank you so much for all that you've done and we will try to forge forward i know miss snow is going to do a great she she already does a great job she's she sticks here

[03:47:36] every she's always the last person here because so thank you so much for all you're doing get to say something if you want to no no so uh we've known each other a long time so i can give her a hard time so having uh the centurions here tonight and um some 105 106 year old people um you still got plenty of time to go in Chesterfield County are you sure that this is your time to leave well thank you you've earned it thank you for your service to the county

[03:48:14] I'm gonna steal the mic from him and just say thank you I mean what is I I know that you want to run off but I just want to mention I mean 40 years and I when I listen to the resolution being read is, for me, it's kind of like these images going in my head of what was your career and how powerful that is. And I mean, Mr. Humboldt is the one who I think who's involved with writing it, correct? And so that's the legacy that you've given to Chesterfield County. And I just want

[03:48:48] to mention to you that it didn't go unnoticed, that we've really noticed what kind of work you've done heart, soul, and in love that went into this. So thank you so very much. Yeah. Thank you.

[03:49:05] Item 15, new business.

[03:49:54] A, appointments. First, we have two appointments to the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Next, we have three appointments to the GRTC Transit System Board of Directors.

[03:50:15] Motion approved. I got a motion. I got a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Last, we have one appointment to the Committee on the Future. So moved. Do I get a motion? Can I get a second? Aye. All right, got that. All in favor, say aye.

[03:50:31] Aye. Okay, thank you. B, consent items. Mr. Chair, there have been no requests from board members to remove items from the consent agenda. Board members, are there any requests to remove anything? We just check in items for the consent agenda. If not, may I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved.

[03:50:47] Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right, Madam Clerk. Item 16, 15-minute citizen comment period on unscheduled matters. This time is designated for citizens to talk to the Board of Supervisors. It is not a time for dialogue with Board members, and it is not a question-answer period.

[03:51:05] Those conversations can easily occur with individual Board members outside of the Board meeting. As a reminder, the Board's procedures state no citizen shall speak on any matter of business that is a subject on the Board's agenda for that day, and each speaker shall have three minutes to address the Board. We have five speakers, if they'll please come forward and speak in this order.

[03:51:24] Douglas Bradham, Ben Nelson, Thomas Carroll, Amy Beth Mullen, and Wendy Little. First is Douglas Bradham. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Welcome. Good evening. My name is Doug Bradham, and I'm a founding member of Chesterfield Citizens and Responsible Government, or CCRG.

[03:51:45] First, Dr. Catlin, congratulations. Welcome to Chesterfield County. we've got a lot of work to do here as you know and ccrg looks forward to working with you to address the issues facing the county as all of you on the board of supervisors aware ccrg has been involved in analyzing county spending for over two and a half years the results of their findings have been communicated to you in face-to-face meetings as well as through data submissions using approved county communication channels this data is also posted on our website

[03:52:19] ccrg-va.org and is available to everyone at no cost. County real estate property tax has been increasing at a rate significant in excess to the CPI inflation rate for over five years. The county has been spending all this windfall revenue. Taxpayers have been hit very hard.

[03:52:37] Tonight, I'd like to focus on lack of spending oversight by you, the Board of Supervisors. Based on the investigative work done by CCRG, it appears the Board of Supervisors is not looking out for county taxpayers the people who elected you to these positions. Taxpayers are viewed by boards of supervisors as county management and county management just as source of revenue.

[03:52:58] Evidence of this is as follows. The county spent at a rate of excess of two times the CPI inflation rate 2019 through 2025. The county does not have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. You and the board of supervisors were elected by the people of Chesterfield County to make sure the tax revenue is spent in an efficient manner. That does not appear to be happening. Starting July 2, 2024, CCRG requested the county implement a continuous improvement program to reduce county spending. Reports have been provided to you regarding why this is important, how to implement such a program in specific areas that should be investigated for spending reductions.

[03:53:37] Here we are over two years later, and the counties refuse to make any serious attempt to address the excessive spending issue. The Board of Supervisors and County Management refuse to endorse any attempt to reduce spending. Members of the Board of Supervisors have stated the county cannot reduce spending.

[03:53:52] Anyone who says spending can be reduced is irresponsible. That's one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard in my 60-plus years of work. I've never heard any manager say they can't reduce spending. Spending can always be reduced if one has the will, education, experience, and knowledge to accomplish spending reductions without impacting critical services.

[03:54:13] As a matter of fact, in the July 2, 24 meeting with Mark Miller, Matt Harris, Tom Carroll, and myself, Matt stated that during the COVID pandemic, the county had to make dramatic cuts in spending. Bottom line, the county should be managed like you are dealing with COVID every day in support of the taxpayers of this county.

[03:54:31] The fact that the Board of Supervisors refused to implement a serious supported continuous improvement program just confirms your lack of concern for county taxpayers. Mr. Braden, your three minutes are up. I have a few more comments. CCRG also met with Garrett Hart, the head of Economic Development Department of 26, on two occasions in an attempt to obtain financial data for economic development projects to make a return on investment, economic value added, or payback period calculation.

[03:55:00] Note, at a meeting conducted at the Midlothian Library in March 24, revised by Joe Casey, the county did not do ROI calculations for economic development projects. This is an unbelievable statement. proposed expenditure of taxpayer money for economic development must require an ROI calculation.

[03:55:20] The only data that was provided by Garrett Hart was for the Meadowbell development, which includes Lego, the Amazon Distribution Center, and the Niagara Water Bottling Facility. We made payback calculations that resulted in a payback of 41 years. That's 41 years just to get back the $191 million of taxpayer money that was invested in this development.

[03:55:43] A copy of this calculation was sent to you. Board of Supervisors based on this calculation. Mr. Branham, I'm going to ask you to please wrap it up. I'm wrapping it up right here. I've got one more paragraph to go. I don't know how long that paragraph is. Just the next couple of minutes you've got. Well, the bottom line is the taxpayers of the county, the residential real estate taxpayers, still pay 80% over 20 years.

[03:56:09] So all this economic development spending hasn't resulted in any more commercial revenue for the county relative to the residential taxpayers. We're asking the Board of Supervisors and county management to make a serious effort to reduce county spending and do a better job of oversight for economic development projects and support taxpayers.

[03:56:30] Tax burden on county taxpayers can be reduced if you do the job you were elected to do. Thank you so much. Thank you for your attention. You're very welcome. Ben Nelson. Good evening.

[03:56:55] Thank you for letting me speak for a few minutes tonight about data center development. Before I begin, can I just say, as a public servant myself, I really appreciate all the time y'all spent today to recognize other public servants and the work they've done over their careers. I think it's really wonderful.

[03:57:11] Can you say your name just for? Ben Nelson. Great, thank you. Yeah. Sorry. I'm a lifelong Richmond resident, and for the past four years, I've resided in the Crestwood Farms neighborhood in Bon Air in Chesterfield County. I was here last month for the county's presentation on data center development.

[03:57:30] And from what I can tell, it seems like you all are taking steps to have more meaningful engagement with your constituents on this issue. And I appreciate that. I also appreciate that some of you have said publicly that Chesterfield doesn't need any more data centers. I could not agree more with that.

[03:57:47] I am pretty concerned, however, as are a lot of folks that I've talked to in the last few weeks, that Chesterfield zoning ordinance doesn't do enough to limit data center development. all across the country local officials and state officials officials at every level of state local and county government are engaging with their publics to update zoning ordinances with tough meaningful enforceable data center restrictions that protect their communities we should be doing that here as well i'm sure we can all agree that eliminated eliminating the by right the by right

[03:58:26] development for data centers was the right thing to do and i applaud you for that but that can't be the end of the story here i think it has to be the beginning of of the journey that we all need to take as a community to do what makes sense for us to protect our residents to protect our communities and to protect our environment and our quality of life here so in the coming weeks and months i'll be working with members of my community in chesterfield to explore what kind of specific proposals make sense for us in our context here locally, and I hope the board will be

[03:58:59] part of that conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Carroll. Good evening. I'm Thomas Carroll with the Chesterfield Citizens for Responsible Government. Two and one-half years ago, we brought forward our concerns to you regarding the lack of reporting and oversight with the Chesterfield EDA. You took no action. Tonight, I'm speaking about the Timmons Cita lease fiasco at Springline. I emailed my concerns to Matt Harris, the de facto CFO of the county,

[03:59:36] but he has not responded. What I did get was an email from David Gude that provided no details or specific answers. The Timmons Springline lease is not simply a disagreement over a rent calculation. It raises serious questions about financial controls, accountability, and oversight of the Chesterfield EDA. The board approved the lease in 2023, but according to the records we've reviewed, the lease commencement certificate, Exhibit D, intended to establish critical final final lease terms was never completed and executed. Yet the county and schools occupied the building,

[04:00:12] invoices were paid in full for more than the stated rates, and this situation continued for approximately 17 months. This is highly unusual from a financial control standpoint. Let me be crystal clear and repeat that again. This is highly unusual from a financial control standpoint.

[04:00:31] Chesterfield County itself says reliable internal control should protect public assets and promote financial integrity. Internal audit exists independently to evaluate controls, risk, and compliance. Where was the internal audit team?

[04:00:48] Why did Matt approve invoices more than the stated rent for a year and a half? Where are the controls? So the fundamental question is simple. Were those standards applied here? Because this was not corrected in a few weeks or even a few months, it stayed unresolved.

[04:01:04] well over a year while taxpayer money continued to be paid. Our review of county payment records showed a potential discrepancy exceeding $725,000 through August, although later credits appear to reduce that amount. This is exactly why the public deserves a complete reconciliation showing what was owed, what was paid, what was credited, and what is still unresolved. There's another important warning sign. In June of 2025, staff drafted a detailed memorandum of understanding specifically to strengthen financial controls and reporting between the county and CETA. It called for stronger

[04:01:43] financial reporting, project-level accounting, regular financial statements, independent audits, and better internal controls. But the agreement was never executed. Taken together, an incomplete lease document, payments continuing for more than a year, a substantial financial discrepancy, and a proposed control agreement that was never implemented is more than a lease problem, folks.

[04:02:05] It raises legitimate questions about whether adequate financial controls existed within CETA. We're asking the board to do four things. First, release the complete timeline, naming who knew about the unresolved lease terms, when they knew it, and what actions were taken.

[04:02:21] Mr. Carroll, your three minutes are up. Mr. Carroll, finish the four comments. That works for me. Thank you. Second, provide a complete public reconciliation of every payment, credit, and adjustment associated with this lease. Third, commission an independent forensic and performance audit of the CETA covering the previous 10 years, conducted by a firm independent of county management and CETA.

[04:02:44] That audit should examine project-level accounting, payment controls, contracts, compliance with board authorizations, and the financial analysis supporting major economic development projects. Fourth, sign the MOU proposed by Gerard Durkin and staff to ensure stronger financial controls and reporting around CETA.

[04:03:05] We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, and I heard you at your 2 o'clock meeting talking about how financially constrained you are. Guys, this is responsible. You're all responsible for this. This is bigger than one lease. The county already says strong internal controls and independent oversight are necessary to protect public assets.

[04:03:24] the Timmins lease raises a straightforward question. Were these controls working? Okay. Thank you so much, sir. The taxpayers need an independent review, and this is your job. Don't sweep this under the rug. Thank you, sir. Welcome, Dr. Catlin. Amy Beth Mullen.

[04:03:51] Welcome, Amy. I'm Amy Beth Mullen. I live on Oakton Road, and I come here, and now my book is growing. Obviously, I can't share with you the things that I have found out in the past few weeks because I have three minutes to do so.

[04:04:09] So I'm going to touch on a few points. First, I want to thank you for even giving me the opportunity to speak because with regulations like EPA trying to get public comment removed and things like that, I'm not sure that we'll have those, what are you going to call them, I guess. It's a privilege, right, to be able to come up here and share what I think.

[04:04:27] So this fight is so important to us, right? I'm fighting because the road that got us here was paved with deception. And everybody that signed those NDAs is part of that deception. So now we're in a position where everything you tell us, we second guess. We're not going to just believe you.

[04:04:43] We're not just going to take you on your word because we're the ones that are in the building areas of these data centers. So we'll start with that. And I certainly didn't think that at 63 years old I'd have to get a law degree, an environmental degree, an electrical degree, an HVAC degree, construction degree, and then public law degrees to be able to have a say in what's going on in my community.

[04:05:06] But every time I bring something up that's disparaging, I'm asked for proof. You want me to go find the paperwork for you? I'll ask you a question. What is the amount for a FOIA? What is the deposit requirement for a FOIA? And how much can you guys ask? Last time I checked, it was $2,000 you can ask me for.

[04:05:23] I don't have that kind of money. I'm a blue-collar worker. I work my butt off 40 to 60 hours a week, and I take care of two people in my home. So I'm very irritated, and I'm angry with you guys. March 2022, you guys shifted up our magnolia green zoning from basically commercial and residential to heavy industrial.

[04:05:45] And then we have 2,400 acres that were designated for the technology part. The project's so large that you had to split it between two counties because it goes into Palatine. Words matter. Selectly choosing your words as proposal to make us think that it's minimal.

[04:06:01] Or profit. Well, what? And metrics. Don't even hit me with a metric anymore. All right? Because when the human metrics are not considered, I don't really give a crap because money cannot buy human metrics. And our Centinurians showed that today, right? Because they're still here. What chances are you giving us with the pollution you're about to unleash in Chesterfield County?

[04:06:20] All right. So I wrote a letter. I write lots of letters, right? Send lots of emails. I get an email and I send it to the Pocahontas State Park and let them know that these tributaries, every single one of them cross into Pocahontas State Park. From Tomahawk Creek, every single tributary to 20% of our drinking water still has not been addressed.

[04:06:39] Then I sent it to the community comments only to have my public information, my email, exposed on the website. All of us who commented are now exposed. To what? So not fair, right? Especially with the NDAs that were used to protect things like ghost LLCs named Peanut and Sky and what they were hiding.

[04:07:01] Ms. Mullett, your three minutes are up. I'll just close with one thing. I would like you to remember there's two different things about these data centers. Regular data centers are megawatts, okay? These centers are gigawatts. Do you know the difference? A thousand megawatts to make one gigawatt.

[04:07:17] And while Google has not disclosed how many they plan on releasing, you know, the information about that, your regulatory filings show it will be 1.5 to 2.5 plus gigawatts.

[04:07:34] then we're going to introduce the fusion center, more land destruction, more pollution. I'm curious since, you know, I'm curious. I don't understand what y'all were thinking. Three schools in a one mile radius. It's baffling my mind and it really shakes me up hard. I've invested my life here.

[04:07:51] Thank you so much. Thank you for your time.

[04:07:57] Wendy Little. Hello, my name is Wendy Little. I'm known across the United States as Erin's mom.

[04:08:42] I come before you tonight to be sure that people are aware that the Board of Supervisors and the County Manager is responsible for the appropriations for the school division, school board budget. That is something that was done years ago. Virginia is different than other states in that all of the funding for the school division comes through you for approval and appropriations.

[04:09:03] Very important. Different from where you're from, sir. Thank you. And so what I had hoped to have before you is, so I prevailed on a state complaint and appeal, okay, which that's the school division thing with BDOE.

[04:09:22] My son has been deprived of education that I pay taxes for in this county, and so does everybody else, for 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. IDEA is a civil rights law that was enacted over 50 years ago to guarantee children access in public education and a pathway to graduation.

[04:09:41] so several of you you don't know i mean some of you we've talked more often some of you have seen me at different places when i could go to beg okay so this has been a problem for a long time that i've been begging for so the reason i bring it up again is although you do not um own or like control the school board but you do are responsible for the funding so what i'd hope to have before you is a fraudulent lawsuit so i prevail on a educational complaint i prevail on the appeal

[04:10:15] the school division through dirty underhanded lawyers files a lawsuit to cover up their grants fraud i'm gonna call it what it is it's grants fraud years of it this is why i've been through hell and my son has no life and no future from public education at this point although he's still entitled so what you have in your packets is the first page of what was filed um it was a lawsuit it was filed outside of regulations non-compliant with supreme virginia supreme court rule three colon two you must put full names in the captions you must put that in the case that was um in

[04:10:52] violation also it does require a school board vote never happened requires board of supervisors authorization or vote never happened also specifically requires funding appropriations to initiate a lawsuit from a school division in virginia to the vdoe they sued vdoe and me because VDOE sat with my son and we sat in this horrific terroristic lawsuit leaving him with nothing with between the school division and VDOE and the OAG's office of Mieres is directly implicated

[04:11:28] over a million dollars to keep a kid without attendance intervention without tutoring compensatory education is what was federally required and owed to him to get him back on track to graduation may 21st 2026 miss little your three minutes are up and and i appreciate that and i will do as others did the um one of the last things in your packet is um it's a hit file two full-time school board attorneys with others including the named superintendent and

[04:12:02] third-party law firms are all behind this it is a hit file it's absolutely criminal i am demanding also a complete deep forensic audit especially with attorney fees because we cannot have public education not leaving children who are disabled who are entitled to education with the future without a future at all and um so i do i am demanding on behalf of all the special education children i call them the special education mafia now um deep in dives into attorney fees how do spend about a million over a million dollars to keep a kid without tutoring and attendance

[04:12:40] intervention support in a pathway to get back on path to graduation this is insane it's unreal it's abusive and i can't even tell you how i get treated by these people who are actually like pulling the strings so um i bring this to your attention to get again and i look forward to a very deep forensic audit and something's got to happen with this white collar crime problem in the in the public school division wendy little thank you thank you miss little item 17 deferred

[04:13:18] items from previous meetings a consideration of an amendment to county code chapter nine relative to annual allocation of data center derived tax revenue mr chair um for the benefit of the public public hearing on this matter was held on august 26 the public hearing was closed and the matter was deferred to the state board members is there any discussion before i make a a motion? I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that we're going to defer this matter to November 18th Board of Supervisors meeting. Can I please get a second on that? Second.

[04:13:54] All right. Before I move on, I just want to get some discussion on that. Yeah, Mr. Carroll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would hope that in the future, this is a consideration that the Board will take. There are different opinions on this, not just on this board, but in the community. We have roughly

[04:14:27] 147,000 households in Chesterfield County and about 341,000 vehicles that are assigned or could be assigned to those households, average of about 2.3 vehicles per household. When we agreed to do data centers in Chesterfield County. Part of the reason why I agreed to do that was so that we could bring corporate growth to Chesterfield County so that we could bring tax relief to the

[04:15:00] community, to the citizens who are paying real estate taxes. Some people believe that the tax rate for data centers is only 24 cents a hundred. It's 24 cents a hundred for the machine tax. The tax on the buildings is 89 cents a hundred. Now we could lower the regular tax rate in the future do it by budget from 89 cents to lower um you know part of what was proposed showed earlier was the fact that some of the other jurisdictions around us have lower tax rates some have higher richmond has a hundred and a dollar 24 and uh colonial heights has a dollar 20 um but if you

[04:15:39] lower the residential tax rate if you lower the property tax rate you also lower the tax rate for those corporations for the big corporations like lego building a 1.7 million square foot building which was worth a lot of money they would pay less uh into the and towards the tax rate google data centers would pay less towards the tax rate the reason we had discussed doing a discount or trying to buy the rate down for personal properties because that's something everybody has to write a check for um i spoke before several groups since this last meeting and every not one person said yeah i like the property tax rate i should i should pay that personal property tax not one

[04:16:18] they basically said we would like to see if you can make that go down or go away something you brought up earlier um and someone else brought up who spoke uh when you talk about watkins center and um and sky which is matoka those data centers are not going to come out of the ground for a long time because dominia doesn't have the energy to power them they have to approve other uh electrical generation plants before they'll even have enough energy to to power those data centers so some people say, well, why not use that money to, you know, for the data centers for schools? Wish I

[04:16:56] could. It's not going to come for a while. It's down the road. But is there some money that's going to come in that could be used to buy down the rate for the car tax? Yes, there will be some money that will come in from the five data centers that are going to be in Mr. Engel's district in the Mediville Technology Center. So I hope we can continue to have the conversation. But there's another side of that coin that was brought up earlier too. The county is looking at some big expenditures in the future if the fire department decides to, for example, to petition for collective bargaining or if the state makes it mandatory that there will be a 42-hour work week and we

[04:17:35] have to hire up to 160 firefighters to make that work. That's a huge expense added to the county budget. So there are a lot of discussions that are going to continue, I hope, in the next couple of months on this issue, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight, Mr. Chair.

[04:17:52] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be a little briefer since you covered most of it, but I just wanted to reiterate that my vote for approving data centers in Chesterfield County came with a commitment to lower the costs on our citizens through the revenue that comes in from the data center.

[04:18:15] There's still discussions going on about that and how we best do that. I'm still committed to the original thought process, but I am listening and talking to other people. Ultimately, though, what I am committed to is making sure that we give some relief to our citizens with that revenue.

[04:18:36] And I just want to make that clear that even though I'm voting for a deferral tonight, I am committed to offsetting some costs for our citizens. Thank you. Dr. Hilder. Mr. Chair, I appreciated the time.

[04:18:53] I want to focus on the idea of just being more responsible in our spending so we can try to lessen the burden on citizens. But at the same time, we have to look at the housing affordability in our district, in our county.

[04:19:13] We have to look at investing and ensuring that we have a high quality of life for citizens, making sure we have parks and trails and libraries, recreation centers, sidewalks, other amenities in our communities. And it's trying to balance public safety at the same time.

[04:19:33] As my colleague spoke about, the 42-hour work week with our firefighters, that's likely going to require another shift of firefighters to come in to help. You know, we have to balance all of that in affordability.

[04:19:48] I think spending the money in those areas provides more fruitful benefit for the community. I also think that we need to put in a general fund at this moment. We don't know what the future is going to look like with inflation and other concerns going on globally and in our country.

[04:20:10] And so we just have to be responsible. And I think that's what most of the citizens are trying to do is be responsible with the money that they have. So I think that those are some of the things that we should take into consideration as we look at the tax revenue from data centers.

[04:20:26] Thank you, Dr. Hohn. Ms. Schneider. So, Mr. Engel, I think I agree with what you said as far as, you know, taking off some of the burden on people. But I think for me, it's more about we have a responsibility to improve the lives of the people that live here in the county and i think that there are um things that taxes don't i mean a hundred dollars off here they're twenty dollars off i don't know is going to be as impactful as

[04:21:04] having um more parks for people to enjoy time and or sidewalks to be able to walk or ride their bikes with their kids or um extra firefighters or things that keep us safe in our communities a homeless shelter for the unhoused people in our community I just think that there are so many other things that we might do that would improve the lives of people in our community that to be fair I don't know that the personal property tax most people that are less fortunate being someone

[04:21:42] that was a single mom I know the car I had when I was a single mom wouldn't have been charged any tax at all. And so sometimes I think that, you know, the people that have three cars and an RV or a boat, I mean, are the ones that are going to benefit most from that and not the ones that need it the most. And so that's just where I'm at. And so I appreciate this time for us to revisit that and look at what best suits the whole county. Thank you, Ms. Schneider. Any other comments?

[04:22:09] I mean, the role of the chair is to take a temperature of my board. And it's so important that when i'm speaking with each of you that i get a feel for where we are and um the truth is is that we don't have to get forced into a decision immediately um as tempting as that may be um i think mr carroll said it right on which is that yeah there's some monies that are coming in um but the other two uh sky and lock you know that that's kind of in the mystery as to

[04:22:45] if and when they ever get built and so to force a decision when the board was still in process didn't feel clean to me and so I'm grateful that after speaking with the board there's one thing that we can all agree on which is that we're in process and that process needs to be honored and that process needs to be sometimes we need to slow down just a moment catch our breath and then we'll revisit. So with that motion, we've agreed to second to defer until November 18th. Board Supervisor Meeting. All in favor say aye.

[04:23:25] Aye. Anyone opposed? I'm an aye, but I look forward to further discussion in November. Me too. Thank you. Item 18, Zoning Requests. Mr. Chair, you have two deferral requests. The first is 26SN2080 in Matoaka Magisterial District, Charleston Landing rezoning is a request to rezone from Suburban Community SC to Semi-Urban Neighborhood SU for a property known as 6700 Magnolia Green Parkway.

[04:23:58] The 60.2-acre property is proposed for a maximum of 90 single-family dwellings with neighborhood amenity space being proposed. The district supervisor is requesting deferral to the board's October 28th public hearing. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Everyone, this is a public hearing on the deferral of case 26 sn 2080 charleston landing rezoning is your name would like to speak to this deferral of this case if so please come forward and state your name i don't think i see anyone

[04:24:35] in the back is there someone in the back i don't want to move on are we good i'm talking 26 sn 2080 okay so there are a couple people that were standing in the back okay um with that i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing on the deferral it's back before the board the case is the Motoka District, Mr. Carroll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it's worth informing the community that before Mr. Engel and I got on the Board of Supervisors, if there was a change in the zoning

[04:25:15] case between when it was advertised and when it was going to be heard, the Board of Supervisors would suspend the rules to hear the case. We don't do that anymore, meaning that if there's a change either from when it comes from the Planning Commission to the Board or from one meeting to the next because we deferred it at the last meeting if there's a change that's made in that case prior to it being advertised um then we're going to do a deferral after it's advertised we're going to do a deferral after it's advertised so in this case um still working with the developer

[04:25:50] there are some other amenity proffers that they are preparing to add to the case um which we've we've talked to them about and so because of that uh there was a change that is being proposed which necessitates us to defer it as opposed to suspend the rules.

[04:26:08] We don't like to suspend the rules. So that being the case, Mr. Chair, I make a motion to defer to the October meeting on case number 26, SN 2080. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. Can I get a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor for the deferral?

[04:26:27] Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Madam Clerk, thank you, sir. Your second deferral request is 26 SN 2144 in Clover Hill Magisterial District. Round tray phase five lot coverage modification and amendment is a request for zoning deviation to modify an existing development, case 22 SN 0032, relative to ordinance requirements and amend zoning approval, also case 22 SN 0032, relative to roadway dedication in a semi-urban neighborhood SU district on 51.11 acres, fronting approximately 1,400 feet on the east side of Otterdale Road,

[04:27:07] 3,300 feet north of Genito Road, property known as 3101 Otterdale Road. The district supervisor is requesting deferral to the board's October 28th public hearing. Thank you, Madam Clerk. everyone. This is a public hearing on the deferral of case 26 SN 2144 round tray phase five lot coverage modification and amendment. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this deferral

[04:27:33] of this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. As Mr. Carroll noted, there are rules that we have to follow here.

[04:27:58] This was an instance where a request came in after the advertisement occurred. We are happy to work through the process to amend the case in a way that reflects that request. Would like to just let the board know we remain committed to providing the land that is needed for the new bridge over Swift Creek so that Otterdale doesn't go through the floodplain anymore free of charge.

[04:28:25] That will occur once the request before you is hopefully approved in October and hopefully not necessitate a formal take by the county of that land. So appreciate your time and appreciate the deferral request this evening.

[04:28:46] Thank you, Ms. Carter. Anyone else would like to speak to this case? With that, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing on the deferral. It's back before the board. This case is in the Clover Hill District. Ms. Schneider. Thank you.

[04:29:02] So, yeah, this was something, there were some conversations that happened after it was posted. It kind of worked concurrently with a post for eminent domain also for that land that Mr. Geiger just mentioned.

[04:29:21] And so we had to, we thought we might be able to just impose the changes, but as Mr. Carroll just said, that they would have to suspend the rules. So that is why we are postponing this and putting a deferral until next month.

[04:29:39] So given that, I would like to ask that we defer case 26 SN 2144 until October 28th. Second.

[04:29:55] Okay, I got a second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, you have four zoning cases on your consent agenda for this evening for the benefit of the public. Consent items are those cases where the applicant accepts staff's recommendation and there is no previous opposition.

[04:30:13] With all the consent cases tonight, 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. First is 24SN 1194 in Bermuda Magisterial District. West Hundred Road rezoning and adjustments is a request to rezone from semi-urban neighborhood SU to neighborhood business NB plus adjustments to ordinance requirements on 0.46 acre known as 3740 West Hundred Road.

[04:30:43] An existing office building with an associated parking area is located on the property. The owner has leased a portion of this building to a tenant who operates a massage clinic which requires zoning approval to permit this use. As proposed, uses for the property will be limited to office and massage clinic uses only.

[04:31:01] The adjustments in this request would provide relief to buffer and village overlay district requirements. Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Everyone, this is a public hearing on case 24SN 1194, West 100 Road rezoning and adjustments.

[04:31:20] Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'm going to go ahead and close this public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Bermuda District. Mr. Engel. Make the motion to approve case 24-SN-1194, subject to conditions in the staff report.

[04:31:40] Do I have a second? I hear a second. Any discussion? I have a quick question. Yes, sir. Does, if they pull out of this property, I think that the zoning... It's conditional for that particular use. I just think it's important to make that distinction to the community that it is a conditional use for them.

[04:32:01] If they pull out of it, then someone else can't come in and do the same thing without having to go through the process again. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Madam Clerk. Next is 25 SN1238 in Matulka Magisterial District, Swift Creek Reserve.

[04:32:20] Rezoning is a request to rezone from Agricultural A to semi-rural neighborhood SR on property fronting approximately 550 feet on the west side of Cedar Springs Road, approximately 1,400 feet west of Clay Point Road, known as 6010 Cedar Springs Road.

[04:32:39] The 37.2-acre property is proposed for a maximum development of 18 dwelling units. The applicant proposes that homes within the development be served by private, well, and septic systems, and will be on lots having a minimum size of two acres.

[04:32:55] Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Everyone, this is a public hearing on case 25 SN1238, Swift Creek Reserve rezoning. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[04:33:14] Good evening, Jerry Turner. This is one of the cases that we ought to be doing it all over the county.

[04:33:34] Everything should be a two-acre lot, no less than a one-acre lot. You ought to be putting too many units in this county already. This is a good example of what the county should be doing, not hoping we'll do it.

[04:33:54] Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Renee Eldred.

[04:34:10] My comment doesn't necessarily have to do so much this particular plot, but I was just sitting here thinking with Shoesmith and the possible contaminants now or in the future going into the creek.

[04:34:26] Should the county maybe think about not letting subdivisions go in on wells within the watershed of Swift Creek?

[04:34:42] Just, you never know. I mean, the landfill could leak. It could not leak. But if there's any, if water is available, make it mandatory to use just in case if they're downstream of the landfill.

[04:35:05] Just a thought. Anyone else would like to speak to this case?

[04:35:30] I'm Brian Marks. I grew up in that area. I own this property down there. Don't really have any problem with the houses. I do have a problem with some concerns in the community of the wells, that we're going to have 18 new wells.

[04:35:46] People have had some issues with their water already, and the shallow wells have dug some deep wells and had some issues. My real concern is the wells and also the runoff from septic near the creek is a little concerning to me as well.

[04:36:04] Water exists, by my estimate, 3,000 or so feet from the property, depending on how you go. But I've not seen a full report that anybody ever really looked at the feasibility or the cost of bringing that in there from the county and having some situation where this is a case where ultimately we could head off a potential problem of people having water issues or things of that sort.

[04:36:30] So that's my only take. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else would like to speak to this case? With that, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Matoka District.

[04:36:46] Mr. Carroll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. a couple of things. This is upstream, very far upstream from Shoesmith. Water flows from Swift Creek Reservoir through the creek south by here all the way down to Shoesmith. So Shoesmith wouldn't, I don't know, I didn't stay at a Hawaiian Express last night, but I would tell you that it'd be very hard for the water to push upstream to contaminate this part of Swift Creek. Now, that doesn't mean that something could happen upstream in Swift Creek itself or some other

[04:37:22] part of the feeder creeks relation to to that. I did ask staff about the water line. There's an 8 inch water line within the Clay Point subdivision however it's not large enough line to be extended. It would require a 12 inch line which is over 3,700 feet measuring down Clay Point across 288 and turning down Cedar Spring. Considering construction requirements this line would not be allowed within the VDOT embankment of Clay Point Road so it's a reasonable route outside of that would end up about 4,000 feet it's outside of our mandatory connection

[04:37:58] but way outside of the mandatory connection for water and then the county really doesn't like and utilities can speak to this but they don't like long extensions of water lines with minimal users on it if this was for example a large lot subdivision even though it's still outside of the mandatory connection range not even close um it would still be at least if you had more flow it would lead to less stagnant water in the pipes as explained to me by the utilities department um and so then the next thing to say is we'll make the developer pay well

[04:38:37] obviously 18 homes with the cost of running a water line for over 4 000 feet which again is outside of the mandatory connection anyway would make it um not feasible for them to develop this property at all um it is by ordinance outside of the mandatory connection zone um and it meets the comprehensive plan and it's a lot less density quite frankly then if water was available you wouldn't be you would not see them coming with this if water and sewer was available they'd be coming in for a much higher number um so mr chair with that in mind um i'll make a motion to approve

[04:39:15] case number 25 sn1238 subject to the conditions in the staff report thank you can i get a second i'll second um with a comment yeah we'll go ahead and any discussion just to put the people at ease that may have wells that are um beyond shoesmith shoesmith um swift creek in that area beyond shoesmith there's two ways that um water can flow it can walk it can flow from the groundwater

[04:39:48] into the creek or it can flow from the creek into the groundwater if it flowed from the creek into the groundwater, and contaminants were in Swift Creek. That could affect people's wells. Fortunately, in this area, beyond the Shoesmith, the water flows from the ground into Swift Creek, so Swift Creek actually takes in the water.

[04:40:13] It doesn't push the water out. Therefore, anything that was coming from Swift Creek or anything that may make it to Swift Creek from a contamination area upstream of it would not actually make it into the groundwater at any of those wells that are downstream.

[04:40:32] So I want to put people that live downstream of Shoesmith at ease that that's not the way the water flows in that area. So I think that's important. I was just trying to illustrate it doesn't flow upstream. It doesn't flow upstream, and in that area, it also doesn't – it goes to the creek, not from the creek.

[04:40:51] and I think that's a very important distinction for people to understand because I don't want to cause panic for people that live down. I don't want to say, well, this is not a problem because it's upstream. I want to relieve concerns for people that are downstream because there are people that have wells downstream, and we have looked into that, and that was the response that we got.

[04:41:12] So I just want to put people at ease with that. Thank you. Although I don't know. This is actually for county attorney. Is there any language that we could, is this a straight zoning or CUPD?

[04:41:28] This is a straight zoning. It's a straight zoning, so we can't, never mind. I was just, I think that it would be good just so people that are on well and septic or on septic or on a well, that it get recorded somewhere in the deed so that if they're buying something, They understand what they're buying and they don't come back and ask for the county to run water or wastewater in the future because the way everybody that has a connection to

[04:42:02] the county system paid for that connection because the developer runs the line to the development, through the development, and to your home and pays for all of that. then you pay for that in the form of the cost of your home. If you're not connected, you never paid to have those lines run, nor did any other taxpayer pay for that outside of the person that lives in the home that it runs to. So I think it's really important for citizens to understand

[04:42:36] that although there's many homes in the county that are on wells and on septic that are perfectly fine um i think it's important for people to understand up front before they buy something so that they don't come back later and ask when's the county going to finish its job and connect to our house when the county's job is not to connect to any house um and i think that's a pretty important distinction so i i was going to ask if we could put language in but if it's a straight zoning we cannot even ask you're not even asking we can't even ask for that so um but i do think

[04:43:14] that that's something that we need to have you work with planning in the future so that we, if we have that situation, it's very clear to the people buying the home and they don't, they don't buy it without that understanding. Yeah, we'll take a look at that. And that's my second. Thank you. Any other discussion? I just want to add, I mean, one of the things that Jessica and I are going through and someone mentioned already this evening is that you fast forward 40 years, the septic is now failing in the community, and they're like, well, I want to get hooked up now.

[04:43:54] And so the kind woman, and we've heard it over and over again, Jessica and I have heard it, it's like, it's going to cost a lot of money. She said $65,000, depending upon where you are. Folks don't understand initially that if you want to get it hooked up, you've got to have everybody agree, or otherwise, because you can't leapfrog over your neighbor, and everybody's timeline. The person who is replacing their septic now, their next door neighbor already replaced their septic two years ago. So now they're in a situation where they're like,

[04:44:29] well, why would I want to pay for it? I went ahead and spent the $65,000 to replace it. And then you're kind of caught in this special tax district kind of situation, which people don't understand as to what exactly are the implications and what that means so Jeff I don't know if there's anything that can be put in there to inform just exactly your question to make sure that that when someone is purchasing this and making that decision that they're informed yeah it is an educational process to explain what you just said because I'm not sure everybody does

[04:45:07] understand that the county doesn't come in and just start installing your utilities for you, that that is something that has been paid for well in advance of you buying your home when you buy a home that's connected. But if you buy a home that is well as septic, that hasn't been paid.

[04:45:25] It's not part of the utility system. Nothing's been paid into the utility system. But it's an educational process, but we'll take a look at a way to do that with utilities. I mean, I kind of feel like we're setting them up, and that's my concern.

[04:45:42] I'm going to defer to Mr. Carroll. You know your district and what makes the most sense, so this is something that I will vote for. That being said, I'm just hoping that when folks, when they walk into this, I know when I purchased my home here in Chesterfield County, that was one of my key questions.

[04:46:02] Was I hooked up to sewer? Was I hooked up to water? Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. I'm simply, and again, I know that we've had this situation in Stonehenge, and I continue to say to them, I am also on septic.

[04:46:20] I bought my house knowing it was on septic, and if you take care of your septic, I mean, I just, I know not everybody has the opportunity to hook up to it, but, I mean, it's one of those things that you do your due diligence when you buy your home, And it's just, there's just a lot of things.

[04:46:39] That's one of the things about maintaining your home. And so if you take care of it, it should maintain itself pretty well. I would say also most house listings actually have that information in it. Not everyone, but most of them have that information on it. If you go to Zillow, go whatever and take a look at a house, they will have that information in there.

[04:46:58] Mr. Carroll. Yes. If you remember earlier tonight, and a lot of the people in here now were not here earlier when the fire chief did his presentation, He really missed a good presentation, by the way. But one of the things he showed was where we have county water and where we don't.

[04:47:15] And where we don't have fire departments and need them. And if you looked at my district, there was a gray section there. And that gray section is where there is no fire hydrants. There's no water. Everybody's on well and everybody's on septic.

[04:47:31] And everybody who owns land there made a conscious decision when they bought there to do that. I agree with Mr. Engel that there should be some provision when a neighborhood gets approved and they're on a well and septic that everybody understands they're buying a house, that they're buying a house that's on a well and septic.

[04:47:49] The other thing is, many people don't know this, but if they can't hit a well on any of these lots, they can't build a house because you can't build a house without a well, period. And so there is a possibility that when they do this, there are lots that they may not hit a well on, period.

[04:48:10] We had a lot out off of Beaver Bridge, I'm sorry, Baldwin Creek, about a year ago. The guy dug around 600 feet down, never hit water, and it cost him a lot of money. And we ended up having to make a provision that he's able to tie into the water line in Harper's Mill, which would have cost him less money to run the water line all the way to Harper's Mill than it would have been if he tried to hit another well.

[04:48:35] So I think the buyer always needs to understand not just that, but many other things. But for this particular topic, I'm fine with this and with the understanding that they may not hit wells. And so they may not have 18 units in here.

[04:48:52] You may have less. Fair enough. Any other discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Madam Clerk. Next is 25SN1332 in Matoaka Magisterial District.

[04:49:08] The reserve rezoning and adjustments is a request to rezone from Agricultural A to Suburban Community SC with adjustments to ordinance requirements on property fronting approximately 850 feet on the north side of Beach Road, approximately 1,600 feet east of Copperland Drive, known as 16200 Beach Road.

[04:49:28] The 19.52-acre property is proposed for a maximum development of 32 dwelling units. As proposed, the minimum lot size will be 10,000 square feet. The applicant requests an adjustment to ordinance requirements to reduce the width of the required buffer along Beach Road to assist in accommodating a county utility line project.

[04:49:49] Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Everyone, this is a public hearing on case 25 SN1332, the reserve rezoning and adjustments. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[04:50:06] Jerry Turner, this is one of those cases where you need to lower the number of houses to have a second entrance. I know they're going to say, well, we're under 50, so we don't have to have one entrance. You shouldn't allow anybody, any development in here that doesn't have at least two ways to get in there.

[04:50:49] If something happens right in that section right there and somebody needs to get in there and do something, the fire truck or whatever, then they're just going to have to sit back and watch. They'll auto, any time you do a development, you should have 200 entrances.

[04:51:07] I don't care how many houses you build. If it's a one house, yeah, okay. This is, other than the two entrances, I have no problem because you got one, I guess, it's got one house per acre.

[04:51:25] That's what I'm going for, one house per acre. Getting back to the water and the sewer, I'm not sure what they're doing on these. When I bought my house, I knew it was on a well. I knew it was on sewer. I am now on county water.

[04:51:42] I had to pay for it. But at the time that they built that subdivision, the county, the developer didn't do it. The county later on ran the water line, ran the sewer line. Sooner or later, you're going to have to look at doing some of these subdivisions that are not having it put in there now.

[04:52:04] Because that's going to be part of amenity that the county needs to say, well, all our houses on county are not water and sewer. I was fortunate that it was already done in my neighborhood. All I had to do was pay to hook up for it.

[04:52:21] And it's not cheap, but it was available for me, and I took advantage of it. This is, I don't have a real problem with this other than there's only one entrance. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Anyone else would like to speak to this case?

[04:52:38] That being said, and seeing no other one, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. It's back before the board. This is a case in the Matoa district. Mr. Carroll. Mr. Chair, this, first of all, this proposed small neighborhood is on, will be on county water and sewer.

[04:52:59] It is available for hookup. It is within the mandatory connection zone. It comes in below what the comprehensive plan calls for in this area, which is at least a minimum of two units, no more than two units per acre.

[04:53:16] This is coming in at 1.64 units per acre. I will tell you that there was a proposal for this land a few years back that had a lot more density on it than that. And the developer has worked with people in the community around there to address some of the needs because there was an expression by, I think, one of the neighbors on this issue.

[04:53:40] And so, you know, based on the fact that it meets a comprehensive plan, Mr. Chair, I make a motion to approve case number 25, SN1332, subject to conditions in the staff report. Thank you. Can I get a second?

[04:53:59] Second. All right, I hear a second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Anyone opposed? Madam Clerk. Last on your consent agenda is 26 SN2055 in Midlothian Magisterial District. Gallimore Accessory Buildings Rezoning and Adjustments is a request to rezone from Suburban Community SC to Suburban Community SC with adjustments to ordinance requirements on a 0.45 acre property known as 12101 Old Buckingham Road.

[04:54:32] The applicant proposes to construct a new detached garage on the property to store personal vehicles within the corner side yard. The applicants are requesting a setback reduction from the corner side property line for the proposed garage. Additionally, two existing frame sheds in the rear yard do not meet required side and rear yard setbacks, and the applicant is requesting relief for these structures to remain in place.

[04:54:58] Planning Commission and staff recommend approval subject to the conditions in your staff report. Thank you. Everyone, this is a public hearing on case 26 SN 2055, Gallimore Accessory Building Rezoning and Adjustments. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name. Seeing no one, I'm going to go ahead and close this public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Midlothian District. I'm just going to go ahead and approve or make the motion to approve this particular 26 SN 2055, subject to conditions in the staff report.

[04:55:37] Can I get a second? I get a second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, you have one discussion case, which is 23SN0072, Midlothian Microtel. Mr. Saunders. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and Dr. Catlin.

[04:56:00] Case 23SN0072 in the Midlothian District, Midlothian Microtel has a request to rezone about two and a half acres from Agricultural A to Corridor Commercial, and the applicant proposes to construct a four-story hotel with 81 guest rooms. The first image on the left shows an aerial of the property outlined in white. The second image on the right shows the comprehensive plan's land use designation, which is regional mixed use. A new hotel is proposed for the property.

[04:56:33] A conceptual plan proffered by the applicant conceptually shows the location of the building, access points, parking areas, pedestrian accommodations, amenities, and an area reserved for stormwater management. The proffered conditions limit the use of the building to a hotel.

[04:56:51] The height of the hotel would be four stories with approximately 81 guest rooms. No adjustments to ordinance requirements are requested as part of this request. The applicant has proffered this plan, which is shown on the slide. It will guide the site design of the property. Two vehicular access points are shown a ride-in ride-out access at Robius Road and a shared full access to Mall Drive through the adjoining property. Parking would be located on the opposite side of the building from Robius Road and an amenity area containing a fire pit is located adjacent to the main building entrance. Pedestrian sidewalks are shown surrounding the building

[04:57:29] with the sidewalk connecting the building entrance to the Robius Road sidewalk. Additionally a four foot wide direct pedestrian connection from the parking area to Mall Drive is shown. This slide shows how the architecture of the proposed hotel has evolved from initial concept on the top two images to what is currently proposed on the bottom two images. Based on guidance provided by staff for compatibility with nearby residential uses, the applicant has updated the architecture from a contemporary flat roof design to a more traditional residential design with a pitched

[04:58:06] roof and the predominant use of brick on the elevations that are most visible to Robius Road. Additionally, with staff and community input, the applicant has provided the sidewalk connections directly from the hotel to Robius Road and Mall Drive. To help address concerns about potential use of the hotel as an extended stay hotel, the applicant has proffered the prohibition of kitchens within rooms, the prohibition of advertisements for weekly or longer-term rates, and the requirement that the applicant use a dynamic daily rate for each room.

[04:58:39] The Planning Commission, with the unanimous vote, recommended approval of the request at its May meeting. Staff also recommends approval. The proposed hotel development represents a destination commercial use that will support regional attractions and employment uses in the area and is supported by the regional mixed-use land use designation in the comprehensive plan.

[04:59:00] As conditioned, the building's roof form and architectural treatment will complement residential uses in the area. On-site pedestrian accommodations will integrate the development into the pedestrian network of this regional commercial hub. With the use limitation and design elements proffered by the applicant staff is supportive of this request happy to answer any questions thank you any questions for staff is the applicant present evening mr. chair members of the board dr.

[04:59:38] Catlin I'm Jack Wilson here on behalf of the applicant mr. Sanford I really don't have much to say other than thank the staff mr. Saunders for his excellent work director Donahoe with his direct input on making this a much better case as you can see from the change in the elevations to make it fit within the Robius community also like to thank you dr. Miller for your direct personal involvement in making this a stronger case to make sure that it is the type of quality development you're looking for in the Midlothian District, generally and specifically in Robia.

[05:00:07] So, I just want to state my appreciation. And I know, Dr. Miller, you wanted to allow Mr. Sanford to introduce himself to the board as a local businessman and express his intents for this site. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Sanford.

[05:00:23] Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chair, board members. My name is Mike Sanford. I live in Chesterfield County. My holding company owns several business entities in the county, including Sanford Insurance, Chester Hand and Stone, and other real estate projects.

[05:00:41] We run these business ventures at a high-quality level, and it's my sincere commitment to the Board of Supervisors and the Chesterfield County citizens that this Microtel by Wyndham Hotel will be owned and operated with the same pride of ownership. At this point, I would welcome any questions. Thank you.

[05:00:57] Any questions for the applicant? No questions. Sanford, I just want to thank you for this process. One of the things I initially, well, let's do this. Let's go ahead and we'll open up the public hearing, and then we'll talk from there.

[05:01:14] So any other questions? Do you have any questions for the applicant? Okay. Thank you, sir. Everyone, this is a public hearing on case 23 SN 0072, Midlothian Microtel. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this case? If so, please come forward and state your name.

[05:01:30] That just made me feel so short. Renee Eldred, and quite frankly, I'm not a big fan of where this is going.

[05:01:52] I just don't think it's a good fit. But that aside, one of the problems I have with it is going from one business owner's driveway to theirs. And I say this because going through the Walmart parking lot on 10 with all the potholes and going through the parking lot getting to other businesses there's a storage unit on the other

[05:02:22] side of 10 that has ruts and quite frankly I think the motel will get more traffic than the storage unit people but the storage unit is the one who owns the driveway and I'm more hoping that maybe there's some kind of language we can start using in all zoning cases going forward about when you have a project that has one entrance with three or four different businesses in there

[05:02:55] about maintaining the road because the maintenance of the road stops at VDOT and then you have to just go through the potholes and potholes and potholes to get in. So if that something good could come out of this, that would be great. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Craig Watt.

[05:03:34] Thank you, Dr. Miller and board. I appreciate y'all's attention to this and to the other cases tonight and to the other work that you do throughout the week and as you do. I'm in opposition to this Microtel.

[05:03:52] Earlier, I thought you said, Dr. Miller, that there was no opposition to any of the cases following that one or whatever at the beginning. I may have misunderstood, but you and I had done some research into the traffic on the intersection that's I think about 200 feet, not very far from the entrances proposed. And I have questions about merge lanes or turn lanes because there were some of those in the original proposal and I didn't see those in the one that Rick proposed or showed a minute ago. But the intersection

[05:04:29] being so close, backing up to turn into that, and that intersection has way too many accidents and They've been increasing over the years. You and I looked at that. I think you had Jesse do some work. Jesse Smith from Chesterfield DOT did some work and pulled some information for you and I about that.

[05:04:51] And that particular intersection, safety, several of y'all had talked tonight about safety and our neighborhoods and pedestrian traffic. We've just gotten a great pedestrian crossing installed at that intersection, but I have been involved, not involved, but I've been a witness or have observed that there have been multiple accidents even since the pedestrian crossing.

[05:05:18] I think none of them that I know of were pedestrians. But anyway, that particular intersection being so close to that Cranbeck Road, Mall Drive intersection with Robius from that entrance is, to me, not a really, it's a horrible decision, and I think that we should not do that.

[05:05:39] The other two things that I am concerned about are changing the nature and character of our neighborhood and putting a roof on it and a little brick on the face doesn't change the fact that it's a micro-tel next to my neighborhood. I'm a block away from there, and the residential areas that I'm in, we have some apartments around us, But I think that's appropriate, and I wouldn't mind to see the apartments that are adjacent to this and the extra storage expand.

[05:06:06] But I do not want a motel there. I don't think that's appropriate for that land use. And it's small. It's two and a half acres. Putting a 90-room or something like that hotel or 80-room hotel with 90 parking spaces in that small footprint, it just does not make sense to me.

[05:06:22] And I think they're also underestimating the expectations on the impacts to the local infrastructure, including the stormwater for that area. And I just think we need to plan better and make the most use of our space as appropriate instead of changing and paving over everything in our residential areas that are adjacent to them.

[05:06:45] Thank you. Thank you, Craig. Anyone else would like to speak to this case? With that, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. It's back before the board. This case is in the Midlothian District.

[05:07:03] I'm sorry? Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to give an opportunity for the applicant to respond. Thank you, Dr. Miller. I'll be very brief. First, regarding the access off of Mall Drive, when the storage facility was approved several years ago, that easement was required so that it could ultimately serve this particular property and its development.

[05:07:28] So that was planned years ago to be in access to this property. And, of course, there'll be collaboration between the self-storage facility and Mr. Sanford to make sure that that dry vial is adequate for access to his property.

[05:07:44] Obviously, he'll be doing all he needs to do to maintain it so his guests can get in and out. As to the questions regarding transportation, there is a Prophets 5 and 6 in the case provide for the one access off of Robius with a right in, right out, turn lanes, tapers, and a hotel use is, frankly, a very low traffic generator compared to a retail site that could be there or other multifamily that could be on that site, which is what was originally proposed.

[05:08:13] In the stormwater issue, it will be, of course, addressed on site, as Mr. Al Saunders showed on his slide. So I'd be happy to answer any questions that have come up in the meantime. Thank you. Well, folks, I need to let you know this is a very interesting case.

[05:08:34] And we've gone through a process around and around with it. The apartments that were, I'm sorry, the townhomes that were approved that I was being considered across the street, essentially.

[05:08:51] I didn't feel comfortable approving those kind of, to Mr. Turner's point, one way in, one way out was a problem with it. But it was shoehorned in there in a way that folks could only make a right hand turn out of those townhomes.

[05:09:08] And then you'd have to make a U-turn on that particular corner, which I knew would be a challenge. This is interesting in that you can only get in if you are able to make a right-hand turn off of Robius Road.

[05:09:29] If you want to get out, you have to go out on the Mall Drive. And that feels a lot safer to me than doing it the way the townhomes across the street work. I'm not super crazy about a micro towel branding.

[05:09:47] I need to tell you that. I'm going to ask an applicant a question, if I could, sir. How did you come to the thought, why a Microtel? I'm kind of curious what your processes were. One of the main reasons for the Microtel is because of the fact that we're going to be looking at the business traveler Monday through Friday, and we're also looking at the sports teams' travel for the parents.

[05:10:13] We've got the Microtel done correctly could easily be a better fit and a more quality hotel than the La Quinta that's right there at the Chesterfield Town Center. So, especially with it being a newer property. And as I have mentioned earlier in my statements, I don't have non-quality businesses.

[05:10:34] We're going to make sure that it's clean, that it's well represented. It's going to be a good property. You can have a, the leeway on how quality a property is, is the ownership, and the ownership here is going to insist on quality, and we're not going to settle for anything less.

[05:10:51] The Microtel brand may be at the lower spectrum, but at the same time, when you run at quality, it's going to be a good property. The interesting thing to me is that some of the people that are questioning the brand, their families will probably be staying there when they're coming to visit.

[05:11:10] So I think that when done properly, a Microtel brand could serve the community very well. Thank you. It's a Wyndham product. Did you want to add anything? No, I didn't know if you had any other questions. No, no, no.

[05:11:25] Thank you. No, that was my only question. Thank you for that. It's a Wyndham product. I did spend some time down at a Microtel down by the airport. And to be honest with you, I was less than impressed. And then I went ahead and did some searches, you know, of others in the area.

[05:11:45] And then I sat down with you, Mr. Sanford, and it's easy to go through life cynical. And you are local. You are part of this community. It's not as if someone was coming from outside of.

[05:12:02] And that brings to me great or less concern. Budget hotel, yes. But there are going to be folks that are coming in for sports that are going to need a property like this.

[05:12:24] La Quinta is right around the corner. We know that Chesterfield Town Center is going to go through an incredible transformation. It's commercial, that area. I was not going to support apartments. Just wasn't straight up. It wasn't going to work.

[05:12:41] And I wanted to limit how many hotel rooms would be there. But I want to let you know, it did not come with a great deal of thought and research. And honestly, faith in you to run a quality establishment.

[05:13:03] And I think it'll probably be in the same, I think you mentioned in the same price range as La Quinta right around the corner. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and make the motion to approve case number 23-SN-0072 subject to conditions in the staff report.

[05:13:25] Could I get a second, please? Second. Okay, I hear a second. Any discussion? Yeah, Ms. Snyder. So I guess my biggest concern about this is what you talked about is that you didn't, And I understand there's a cut across onto Mall Drive, but you didn't approve 27 townhomes on the one side, and now you're going to...

[05:13:59] I've tried to cross Mall Drive. It's not good, especially that close to that intersection, and it's just really a very scary proposition sometimes. And so I don't know. I just really, this feels...

[05:14:15] You said shoehorned into that space before. on the other side, and I think that this is shoehorned just as much. Well, Ms. Schneider, just so you may not know, where Cranbeck, Robius, Mall Drive, that has now improved walking.

[05:14:34] Ms. Walker may be able to speak to that, to Chessa. But, I mean, there was a great deal of improvement that has gone into walking on that corner for someone who wants to walk into the Aldi's. But I want to be really clear. This has two entrances, and I think that that is really important.

[05:14:54] By having the two entrances and making it where there is plenty of space there for parking, it's not a massive hotel, it's a very reasonably sized hotel, but I do appreciate what you're saying. I don't consider both of them to be connected.

[05:15:14] I mean, really, honestly, the townhomes on the other side would have generated a great deal more traffic. um than the hotel will um so but did you have a question or any other comments any other comments all right with that i'm going to go ahead i got a second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed aye motion passes madam clerk item 19 public hearings a to consider the exercise of eminent domain for

[05:15:50] the otterdale road at swift creek drainage improvement project ms walker thank you good Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the board, Dr. Catlin. This is a public hearing to consider the exercise of eminent domain for the right-of-way and easements needed for the Otterdale Road at Swift Creek Drainage Improvement Project.

[05:16:14] Michael's getting to get me together. As the board is aware, we've had four streams crossing Otterdale Road in this area and have historically been prone to flooding.

[05:16:36] We have completed improvements to three of those four crossings. The image on the top left, the blue dots are the three crossings that we've improved, and we have the one big one to the north in red, the fourth and last crossing. It actually has two crossings of Swift Creek along Otterdale Road.

[05:16:56] This section continues to experience frequent flooding. It's actually been closed eight times over the past two years due to high water. So our project purpose, obviously, is to alleviate the flooding. The board allowed us to proceed with the project in September of 24.

[05:17:17] We've since awarded a design-build construction contract to Cocosin-Rinker Design and Associates team. The project cost over $40 million, and we need to start construction next month in order to stay on a September 28th completion date.

[05:17:36] This project is regionally important that we stay on this schedule. We have over $150 million of improvements that are gonna be kicking off to the east. We have, with Polite phase one, Woolridge extension is under construction, Centerpoint Parkway is under construction.

[05:17:53] All of those projects have been set up in a dominoes, in series, we're trying to be conscious of detours and timing of overlapping construction work zones and such. So the September 28th, in order to stay on that schedule, we're recommending that we move forward gain access um to to be able to start construction so here is a little detail on the project scope we're reconstructing otterdale road from genito which is left of screen and north is to the right to just north of swift creek to the north the majority component obviously is a bridge it's

[05:18:30] 1800 feet of new bridge supported by 15 piers that will allow otterdale road to travel across the floodplain um the project will also include sidewalk um so that we can think long term and future connections can be made then we have some relatively minor utility impacts water and sewer relocations as well as private utility relocations that are going to be serving the homes on that west and south side of the project limits so right away we began right away acquisition process in march we had 12 total parcels that were impacted by the project six of those parcels we've been

[05:19:10] able to clear the right of way we have six remaining parcels across five property owners that are outstanding for parcels 105 and 106 the learys and boaz we have come to terms with the property owners and we're working to finalize the final document the documents for those acquisitions both property owners have have agreed to provide a right of entry which will allow comcast and Verizon to begin their utility relocations while we complete the acquisition process.

[05:19:45] For parcels 105 and 106, we are still waiting on the mortgage lenders to release the sale of the right-of-way and the easements before we can finalize the acquisition. For parcel 107, the owners have not accepted our offer nor provided a counter.

[05:20:05] They've retained legal counsel, so our communications has trailed off a bit, but we have the next two years to continue to work through their council to get to a resolution. Parcel 117, that was the round tray phase five that was deferred till October. The parcels to the north, 117, 118, and 126 goes with 118. But those parcels are needed to be able to move forward with the bridge work, which is the critical path. So we won't be able to, with the round tray five

[05:20:43] case being deferred we'll move forward with the filing and then depending how the zoning case goes next month we can revisit if we get the right-of-way clear we can revisit the the right-of-way process or the acquisition then so we can still move forward with the project with tonight's vote on the eminent domain did you want to ask a question i'm okay with that i'm okay with it i'm looking at mr geiger in the back because i know that he was so stop it okay parcels 118 and 126 that's Tambria Cove, located on the east side of the work, the limits of the project.

[05:21:22] We have been in good conversation with them. We've met with the community four or five times. They are working on, talks have been very productive. They're working on their counteroffer, and we'll be submitting that soon. So we're confident we'll work towards solutions with them.

[05:21:39] So again, we're working toward voluntary agreements on all the properties that are outstanding. Your action tonight would give us authority to file on the six parcels that are remaining. Again, we don't intend to file, though, on all six immediately. The bridge work, like I said, is to the north.

[05:21:56] That's critical path. So for 117, 118, 126, we're going to file so we can move forward. But parcels 105 and 106, we have a few months that we can wait to see if the mortgage lenders will release the mortgage review, and then we don't have to file.

[05:22:14] so we're not going to move forward with filing the actual certificate right away. We're going to see if we can... But they're willing sellers. Yes, we've already got the terms on it. If their lender says no, then I'm not worried about eminent domain with the lender.

[05:22:30] I'm worried about it with the property owner. So can you go back one slide? Yes, this way. So it says you have six out of 12, and then I see six more lots, but it says unable to reach an agreement with five.

[05:22:50] Owners. Then the math isn't math-in for me. It's not math-in. One, two, three, four, five, six parcels. Property owners. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry. There's more people. We haven't reached an agreement really truthfully with three, and two of them are a homeowner's association, right?

[05:23:12] I don't show the six parcels that we have cleared. These are all the outstanding parcels. You got one, two, and then on the next page. Same map. Oh, yes. Three, four, five, six.

[05:23:28] And you say you don't have an agreement with five out of the six. Owners. Owners. But you have an agreement with two of the six owners. Well, very many. And you pretty much have one for three out of six owners. Yeah, I just technically, they're not all signed up.

[05:23:45] They haven't signed everything. Okay. So I'm saying. I mean, we technically have an agreement with three out of the six. Correct. And two out of the six are Homeowners Association. Correct. So we really have one property that we really have possibly it could end up truthfully going to eminent domain.

[05:24:07] The other ones, even if it went to eminent domain, it's not going to be unwilling people. It's just the time. So we really have 107 is the tough one. You got it. That's correct. 107. There's no way to get the project in without 107?

[05:24:26] Let's see. No. 107. No, it's basically the bridge work is in orange. That's the bridge. Thank you.

[05:24:42] And south of the bridge to the left, all those parcels on the west side, north of screen, we need to be able to align the road and to approach the bridge. And so 107 is smack in the middle, I believe.

[05:24:59] Somewhere in there. How much of their property do you need? So 105, 106, 107. So the right-of-way that we need is in the red box.

[05:25:16] The permanent drainage and slope easement is the green. Their property line is this line. The back side of the red line.

[05:25:34] Yeah, the other line is the prescriptive right-of-way line. this line here to the green that's permanent drainage slope drainage and slope easement and then pink is the utility easements comcast and verizon and then yellow is construction it looks does that yellow go back up all the way up in there that's significant right there it's about what is that for it's the temporary construction easement for room to see to get around it almost looks like the lay down area or something but the last thing i want to do is put the lay down area

[05:26:14] on the one lot that we're having it juts out to rebuild their driveway uh-huh it juts out to rebuild their driveway that goes back into the property that temporary construction easement is room to work so we can rebuild their driveway i believe that juts to the back and all that's a temporary easement so everything in yellow is temporary yep everything in the green to the red is permanent, okay. That's right. I understand wanting to rebuild their driveway for them because

[05:26:50] I think that that is absolutely something that should be done if we need to use their property, but it just, it looks. It looks, yeah, and this is the right away sheet. And I understand the difference between temporary and permanent, but it still looks significant. I just know when we open up the public hearing, Mr. Turner is going to come up and share our concerns about eminent domain.

[05:27:21] You see that's where the jet out is. You see where he's pointing? Oh, you probably can't see it. The driveway extends into the property and that temporary construction goes up and around to rebuild it to tie in their driveway back in. Because right where they are, the road starts to realign. I understand the importance of the road. I just, if there was a way to reduce that impact, but if if the whole impact is really it looked like a lay down yard to me and that's what i was really worried about when i saw it even if it was a temporary lay down yard that we're going to

[05:27:58] bring back it just seemed like that would be the worst possible place you could put it but if it's to rebuild their driveway i feel a little better because there's a great change um that's the only one that gives me pause um but obviously you can't do the rest of the project unless you that's why asked it sometimes you can get a slight adjustment and i was just checking to see if we could this as mr tourney will come up and tell us um we all hate eminent domain and we want to um avoid it at all costs but we also need to get this project done so i understand i just thank

[05:28:33] you for the explanation no you're welcome and that's it unless anyone else has any questions So this is, because this is flooded like what, three or four times in the last two years? It was eight times in the last two years is what we were tracked down in the last two-year window.

[05:28:53] Well, because I know that Newmarket was supposed to be putting down those drop things to keep people from going through high water. So I mean, that will eliminate this as well. The need for that, yeah. Anyhow, did they reduce the number of piers?

[05:29:10] I would have sworn you said there were 19 originally when we talked about this. They may have. I'm not sure. I would have to check. Okay, sorry. I've got a weird brain about those things. Any other questions for Seth? Thank you. Oh, Mr. Carroll. Just a comment.

[05:29:28] You know, I generally don't want to do, I'm in a domain if we don't have to, as Mr. Engler said. This has been a problem, part of the county for a long time. As you made aware, back in 2020, in August of 2020, we had major floods.

[05:29:46] we fixed the other three that flooded but we didn't fix this one right and this one continues to flood now the difference between truthfully between the priority is when the others flooded people got trapped in those neighborhoods we couldn't get public safety to them no one gets trapped here you just can't get you can't go north to get to melothian because there's a major travel through here yes a lot of people who don't want to go on hull street go this way to get to melothian to go to westchester to avoid going out the whole street because they'd rather go up there and then fight the traffic on Hall Street. So it's an important part of the network

[05:30:24] that we're fixing. So I appreciate your efforts to get this done. So that's it, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Thank you, Chessa. Everyone, this is a public hearing to consider an exercise of eminent domain for the Otterdale Road at Swift Creek drainage improvement project. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this issue? If so, Please come forward and state your name.

[05:31:00] Mr. Chairman, members of the board, my name is Jeff Geiger here on behalf of Danny and Aspen Sowers. The Sowers support and want to see this bridge built. I heard Ms. Walker mention that she needs to file the take quickly in order to get that done.

[05:31:20] I have one request. I have a short window of time to get my zoning case correctly situated before it's advertised. If I could get your county attorney, staff, the director of planning, Ms. Walker, whoever needs to look at it to make sure it's advertised correctly, and I don't have to then come back again and ask for or have another delay because we didn't get the proffers right because the take occurred, and now the proffers aren't right or the advertisement wasn't right.

[05:31:56] So we've got a short window to make sure we get it right so that I don't then have to come back and wait another 30 days. Am I correct in assuming that this is in the Clover Hill District? It is. Then I would make the suggestion you speak with the Clover Hill Supervisor to ensure that it's done correctly.

[05:32:13] Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. We will make sure that happens. Hello, Wendy Little, Clover Hill District.

[05:32:29] Being that I'm here, so I think this Otterdale thing has been going on for a very long time, keeping kids from getting to school and school buses. So, glad to see it on the map. But, you know, my Board of— I call you all my Board of Supervisors. I hope you don't mind because y'all have helped me with some critical other things that have been very helpful, and I want to make sure that I thank you for that.

[05:32:51] We had a drainage situation in my area that I didn't come talk about, wasn't able to. There was a drainage underneath a neighbor's house that went under the road and then cut off, and all that water was just going down into the end of the neighborhood. So while I do have legitimate grievances with fraudulent lawsuits with the school division and the funding, I want to thank whoever was involved in doing that because a massive, just a few weeks ago, Clover Hill, massive drainage project was completed, and I was not a part of that.

[05:33:24] I didn't get to mention that, but I feel like that they did a great job, and I just do want to thank you for that because it was necessary in my area, too. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Little. See what happens when you get a reputation.

[05:33:49] Jerry Turner. Y'all knew I was going to get up. Of course. Let's go back to 107. made a comment. Offer was made. They turned it down. No numbers came up. How much money are we talking about? Y'all going to take eminent domain, then if you have to go to court, it probably costs you several thousand dollars if you get it that far. To me, it's a waste of

[05:34:23] county money to try to take property like that because you got to pay that lawyer to go to that court. I'm not sure who's doing y'all's negotiation, but somebody needs to do something because eminent domain, y'all already know how I feel about that.

[05:34:45] That should never have come up. Whoever's negotiating needs to do a little bit of a job. I know he's going to try to save county money because y'all don't get beat up all the time because y'all don't spend the money right. But there comes a time when you've got to spend the money.

[05:35:06] Whether you want to or not, you're going to have to spend it. And trying to save it because, well, we don't want to pay him extra $1,000 an acre, like I said, I'm hoping it's more than that because she didn't ever say what the numbers were. I want to hear some numbers. What's this going to cost the county? Thank you.

[05:35:34] Thank you. Anyone else would like to speak to this case? Yeah, yeah. Bob, let me go ahead and close the public hearing if I can. Are you okay with that? All right. Let me go ahead and close the public hearing. It's back before the board. Is there any discussion? It sounds like there is can you see the screen now that's that's the proposals that have been put forward uh in this

[05:36:10] case you asked for the numbers there was we just didn't get to that slide yet but those are the offers chessa correctly speak to let me know so these are the original offer amounts this is not where we where we've come to verbal agreement on okay so we've received some counter offers that we've negotiated higher than what the original. Did they bring a higher counteroffer on 107?

[05:36:38] 107 will not provide the counteroffer. Not talking at all. They've gone silenced. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Any other discussion? Mr. Chair. Yes, Dr. Hilton. I think it's important to talk about how we negotiate for the properties.

[05:37:02] And I think that that insight will be useful in the conversation i can also say in my district we want to do sidewalks and you know that case very well we've been trying to get a quorum from hoa for probably the last three years so we really want to make sure that we negotiate and communicate with the landowners but a lot of times they they just don't want to do it and so we ended up after about what about three or about three or four years of negotiating we we filed a case in court for it

[05:37:40] um but we just we didn't want to do that but that's the only way it's holding up the project for sidewalks and it's an it's important to pedestrian safety um so i mean i think it's important if you could just talk a little bit about what you all do the people that you work with and some of the processes that you uh have ongoing yeah so we have right away consultants that do the due diligence up front to form an initial offer, which is informed by a valuation process.

[05:38:12] Typically, an appraisal will be done, which compares like properties in the market, how much, you know, those have been sold for property and land, and then that formulates the basis for the impacts that we would need in either right-of-way or easements.

[05:38:31] And then we work with them specifically on impacts. So for example, where we've reached verbal agreements, to use a couple of folks here who we have verbal agreements with, they've asked, we provide the initial offer, meet with them in the field, mark off the impacts to the project so they can see all those lines that were on the map, they can see how far into the property the right-of-way is, the temporary construction easement, et cetera.

[05:38:59] And then they've countered with increased land values, so they do some due diligence on their end and provide a counteroff for how much they feel the land value is worth. We've negotiated to construct a wider driveway for one of the property owners.

[05:39:17] We're paying for some landscaping that has been impacted or line of sight issues that if we took down some trees, et cetera, we can pay them to replace trees of their choice. we've got some landscaping that's been negotiated. Fencing, another typical item that we work through negotiations. Sometimes it's a combination of we do the work or we get quotes from them or pay them to hire who they want to do to do the work. So we work to start with initial offer and then through conversation, we work with them to understand what concerns and impacts we're having

[05:39:57] And then how do we mitigate that through redesign of the project, additional funds to offset impacts, or doing some work like widening their driveway for them as part of the project. So we try to work to something that they could live with and we can live with.

[05:40:16] Yeah, I appreciate that explanation. Hopefully that would bring just some insight into what you all do. And, I mean, you've even had the National Extension. You had a gentleman there that was disabled. You had to find him another place, another home that would accommodate his disability.

[05:40:35] He had other occupants. You helped them find housing. And so could you elaborate a little bit more on to what extent you've gone through to some of those extreme cases? Yeah, and we don't have, thank goodness, that level of impact on this project.

[05:40:51] but we have had total relocations where we've needed to purchase complete properties for Nash Road Extension. So we were required to purchase their property and then relocate them into a like facility to what they have, like in size bedrooms. He was disabled. He had certain requirements. So we couldn't find a house that was ready made for him. And we pay for all of the realtor fees, you know, the closing fees, connection fees, then there's even a compensation

[05:41:28] due to folks that were relocating to help them transition into the new space. But because we could not find ADA, disabled, you know, already ready home, we worked with him, he selected a home, and then we paid a contractor to modify the countertops, the ramps the bathrooms the bars to make it so that he would be able to um live comfortably and that we hired a contractor and had all that work done for him so we handled the whole process yeah that's an extreme case yeah but that's just to what extent you go it's not like we just go in and just

[05:42:06] order people out and you know take over their property it's a really compassionate process and that's really what i wanted you to point out and also and also to thank you and celebrate you your staff what you all do in those situations um in the compassion that you do it with so thank you and i would just add and thank you guys for working with us because we are trying to strike that balance of delivering critical infrastructure in a more timely manner we understand the growth and everything that's needed so we're trying to move the projects along otherwise we could normally take more time to work on some of these negotiations but we're

[05:42:45] just overlapping it while we do the construction we we continue yeah thank you any other discussion thank you dr hilton can i get a motion so moved all right here a motion can i get a second second all in favor aye anyone opposed madam clerk be to consider the vacation of a 10-foot easement

[05:43:09] crossing lot 14 antler ridge section 9 miss snow good evening good evening mr chairman members of of the board, Dr. Catlin. This is a public hearing to consider the vacation of a 10-foot easement across lot 14, Andler Ridge, section 9. Edward and Tammy Skrzinski have requested the vacation of the easement, which is no longer needed. A public hearing is required to vacate the easement. The request has been reviewed by county staff, and approval is

[05:43:47] recommended after the public hearing. Thank you. Board members, are there any questions for staff? What was the original purpose of the easement? The original purpose of the This, I believe, was just a general easement originally, like our general can be used for anything.

[05:44:13] Anything easement. I'm sorry. Usually, yeah, usually water, sewer, drainage, things like that. I mean, wow. Not just anything, anything. Yeah. Whatever. Have a party. No. Water, sewer, drainage. County improvements.

[05:44:29] Anything easement. Yes. We usually call them general easements. utility easements. And we generally don't need them. So there is a sewer drainage easement next to it. We're not vacating that. No, sir. Okay. So this is just an extra wide easement that they put there way back in the day when this was created. We do that. Well, we used to do a lot in subdivisions. Okay. Any other questions for Ms. Snow? You can ask anything you want.

[05:45:02] That's only what I'll say. All right. Well, thank you. Everyone, this is a public hearing to consider the vacation of a 10-foot anything easement crossing lot 14 and the ridge section 9 is there anyone who would like to speak to this case if so please come forward and state your name seeing no one i'm going to go ahead and close this public hearing it's back before the board is there any discussion mr chair it's in my district so i vote to approve vacating the anything easement okay

[05:45:39] i got a motion can i get a second second all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed madam clerk Item 20, 15-minute citizen comment period on unscheduled matters. This time is designated for citizens to talk to the Board of Supervisors. It is not a time for dialogue with board members, and it is not a question-answer period.

[05:45:59] Those conversations can easily occur with individual board members outside of the board meeting. As a reminder, the board's procedures state, no citizen shall speak on any matter of business that is a subject on the board's agenda for that day, and each speaker shall have three minutes to address the board.

[05:46:15] We have one speaker. Gail Christy.

[05:46:27] Welcome. Good evening. I'm Gail Christy. I'm a long-term resident of Chesterfield County in the Clover Hill District. I'm here to address the board tonight. Hold those down. It says do not touch.

[05:46:42] Oh. Except for you. You're the last speaker. I'm here to address the board tonight about an issue that concerns adequate representation of our county's residents. When I moved to Chesterfield County in 1984, the population of the county was about 163.

[05:47:01] and we had five supervisors. Now the population of the county is nearly 400,000 and we still have just five supervisors. Chesterfield is the fourth largest county in Virginia. The three larger counties, Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun, have 10, 8, and 8 supervisors, respectively. And let's take a look at some of our neighboring counties. Powhatan, population about 32,000, five supervisors. Goochland, population about 27,000, five supervisors. Even little tiny Amelia

[05:47:40] County, population about 13,500, has five supervisors. Hanover County, with a population of about 113,000, 28% the size of Chesterfield, has seven supervisors. I think it is long past time to expand the number of seats on our Board of Supervisors to at least seven to better represent our residents and to better address the increasingly complex needs of our growing county. And I ask the board to seriously consider such an

[05:48:14] expansion. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, before we adjourn, are there any closing announcements? Yeah, thank you for that. Tonight we're going to be adjourning to a meeting at Bright Point Community College's Chester campus for October 27th from 6 to 8 p.m. We are going to be hosting a forum that evening to discuss data centers. The Board of Supervisors and the county staff have received numerous

[05:48:49] questions and comments about data center development in Chesterfield. Though we are making efforts to respond to those, the volume of input signaled that it is time to hold a forum To address the topic, the meeting will include a panel discussion among subject matter experts, as well as a question and answer time.

[05:49:14] Joining board members will be representatives from Google, Carissa, and Dominion Energy, among others. We encourage attendance. For more information, please visit chesterfield.gov data centers. Board members, are there any other announcements?

[05:49:31] Mr. Chair. Go ahead. Yeah. I'd just like to say that outside of the normals, we still have two citizens here tonight. And that's, well, do you live in Chesterfield, Geiger? No. All right. We still have, we have two other citizens from Chesterfield County here tonight at the end of the meeting. And, you know, it's two more than we usually have at the end of the meeting. So thank you all. I know you stayed for public comment, but you stayed till the end and you stuck it out, and sir, I'm glad to see you as well because I don't know why you're here,

[05:50:09] but I'm glad you're here because we don't see a lot of citizens stick around to this point, so I just wanted to thank you. Thank you. And for the regulars, you know, it's always a thank you for being here. Yeah. Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Mr. Carroll. I'm glad that Mr. Engel rephrased that from the normals to the regulars, I think.

[05:50:30] I'm glad everybody's normal and a lot of people are regular. Yeah. So, but I do would like to speak to the last speaker when we're done, so I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. Any other comments from my board? Madam Clerk. Mr. Chair, we need a motion to adjourn to the Chesterfield Recovery Academy Legislative Day on October 14th at 10 a.m. at CTC Hall, to then adjourn to a community forum on October 27th at 6 p.m. at Bright Point Community College in Chester, to then adjourn to the Board of Supervisors meeting on October 28th at 2 p.m. here in the public meeting room.

[05:51:06] Thank you. Can I get a motion? So moved. And a second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned.

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