Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Business Meeting, Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 4h 25m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7191
Agenda (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=73&clip_id=7191

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 2026-10-20. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:09:43] All right, we'd like to call to order the February 21st, 2023 Loudoun County Board of Supervisors business meeting to order. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, switch your hearing aids to teleco mode. If you need a headset, we have those available as well.

[00:09:59] Please see the clerk to request one. Pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3708.2 and the Board's Rules of Order. Supervisor Glass requested to participate in this meeting by electronic communication.

[00:10:18] Chair Randall will not be joining us this evening. A physical quorum of the Board of Supervisors is present in the boardroom, and the board has made arrangements for Supervisor Glass to be heard by all persons in the boardroom. Supervisor Glass made this request within the required time frame, and the county attorney determined that that Supervisor Glass request met the qualifications to participate remotely.

[00:10:42] The board will record in its minutes that Chair Randall will be absent. Supervisor Glass has participated remotely from a private location in Richmond, Virginia, for personal reasons. For our Pledge of Allegiance, we'll go to Supervisor Brisbane.

[00:11:00] Thank you. Are we still doing words of inspiration as well? Okay, great. I just wanted to remind us that the public school is the best defense of a democratic nation. And in the words of Malala Yousafzai, she is quoted as saying, I truly believe the only way we can create global peace is through not only educating our minds, but our hearts and our souls.

[00:11:25] Please join me for the pledge. To the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice for all.

[00:11:44] All right. Thank you, Supervisor Brisbane. All right. We have a proposed consent agenda is as follows. Item R1, Resolution to Recognize Rockridge Performing Arts. This is for approval and presentation.

[00:11:59] We'll do that after 5.30 hits. We have Item 1A, Appointments and Confirmations. We have Item 2, Administrative Items Report of February 21, 2023.

[00:12:17] Item 5, Proposed Establishment of Temporary Pooling Places. Item six, waiver to administrate split precincts for June 20th, 2023 primary election and November 7th, 2023 general election.

[00:12:36] Item eight, special exception 2021-0047 and SPMI-2021-0007 Novak North Star substation. Item nine A, review of affordable multifamily housing loan application Avonlea Senior Apartments. Item 9B award authority increase heavy construction equipment with related accessories attachments and supplies. 9C contract renewal and engineering services for Loudoun County stormwater and management

[00:13:14] program. Item 9D award authority increase companion services. Item 9E Hogan Kent Green Bradrick Braddock Road off-site resolution. Item 9F Loudoun County Combined Fire and Rescue System Strategic Work Plan. Item 9G, Waterford Feasibility Study.

[00:13:39] Item 9H, Loudoun Hunger Relief Proposed Lease. Item 9I, Proposed Amendments to Chapter 252-02 Bonus of the Codified Ordinance of Loudoun County HR Handbook. Item 9J, American Rescue Plan Act Update Recommendations for ARPA Reserve Funding. Item 9L, New Sister Cities Approval.

[00:14:04] Item 9M, update on Town of Percival projects. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Second. Motion by Supervisor Umstead. Seconded by, well, yep, seconded by Supervisor Briskman.

[00:14:22] Anybody have any questions or want to speak into the consent agenda before we approve it? I do. Go ahead, Ms. Briskman. Thank you. I just wanted to remind Algonquian residents about the changes in polling places because we will have at least two primaries right now happening on June 20th that will be in Algonquian District.

[00:14:46] Also, I don't want it to be lost that in the finance committee, when we approved the $7. 5 million of ARPA funds, the combination of the countywide child care needs assessment that will hopefully be approved on the nonprofit side tonight and then the $2 million set aside in the ARPA funding that we just approved on consent will be used to assess the countywide needs on child care.

[00:15:14] set aside a million dollars to lower costs for our residents on child care and then another million dollars will be used to respond to the unmet child care needs assessment. COVID exposed the long simmering issue in our nation that we rely on our public school system for child care and two-thirds of the people that lost jobs during the global pandemic were women that were kicked out of the labor force. Many of them were kicked out of the labor force because they had to stay home with their children. We also lost 81,000 child care workers during the pandemic. So our

[00:15:52] nation's child care system is really broken, and we run the risk of really hurting ourselves economically if we don't fix it. Loudoun County has several child care deserts, especially in Leesburg and the Cascades and Sterling area, according to an interactive map by the Center for American Progress. Also, according to the Bipartisan Policy Institute, we are short 2,700 seats for children under the age of six. So that reduces our revenue intake in the county by $1.3 million a year. Lastly, a recent article in Forbes stated that our broken child care system

[00:16:27] poses $122 billion cliff and risk for our nation because our parents can't work because of our child care system, the expense of our child care system, and the lack of workers in our child care system. All of these factors speak to a need for local solutions. I received letters from all sides when it came to starting this child care needs assessment initiative. It included the Chamber of Commerce, Laws, YMCA, Women Giving Back, NMED, and the Northern Virginia Community College who all agree we need to work on child care access and affordable quality

[00:17:02] child care in our county. I am grateful for staff's work on that, the survey that they did that you can see in the item that went through finance last week, and I really look forward to the results of the countywide needs assessment. Thank you. All right, thank you, Supervisor Briskman.

[00:17:20] Anybody else speak in the consent agenda? Go ahead, Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Vice Chair. I just want to thank my colleagues for supporting item number 9G on consent here, the Waterford feasibility study findings. This was talked about at Fairmount and Finance last week. It is a tremendous possibility for a solution for both the Paonium Springs and Waterford for their ongoing water and sewer issues.

[00:17:45] I think they have a great plan here. I'm excited to see what actually comes back. It's been an ongoing problem for, as I mentioned there, a town named Paonium Springs and Waterford having water problems, so hopefully a long time. This is a solution long-term coming, so I'm really glad that we're getting the ball rolling on this and that we're taking the first of many very important steps for these villages.

[00:18:07] Thank you. All right, thank you. Anybody else? Okay. We have a motion made by Supervisor Olmstead, second by Supervisor Bristman. All those in favor of the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, we've got Ms. Glass remote. Any opposed?

[00:18:24] Okay, that motion will pass. What is it? It's 7-0-2 with, oh, yeah, Supervisor Buffington not here at the moment. He's running a little bit late, and Chair Randall will be not attending at all this evening.

[00:18:44] And Ms. Glass is remote, but with us. All right. So next we have closed session items one and two. We had two items for closed session, but they are going to be deferred to future business meetings from tonight's agenda.

[00:19:01] So for supervisors, no closed sessions tonight. All right. Next, Mr. Hemstreet, do you have any comments this evening for us? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have four comments for this evening. The first is that, as you know, small businesses are integral drivers of economic activity in Loudoun County.

[00:19:19] To better understand the needs and priorities of Loudoun businesses, the Department of Economic Development is asking small and minority-owned businesses to fill out a short survey. There's also been used to develop educational opportunities and events while guiding future efforts of the department. The survey is online at biz.loudoun.gov.

[00:19:37] Second, Loudoun County fire officials are reminding residents that the 4 p.m. law is in effect through April 30th. which means that open-air fires are prohibited between the hours of midnight and 4 p.m. The restrictions are in place due to the potential for rapid fire spread across woodland and grassland areas as a result of dry outdoor fuels, high winds, and temperature increases that are normally present in late winter and early spring.

[00:20:01] Officials encourage residents to consider chipping or composting as an alternative to burning yard debris, which is the number one cause of wildfires. Third, local farms and other rural businesses that would like to participate in the county's spring farm tour have until March 6th to indicate their interest in being part of this signature event.

[00:20:20] The tour, which is scheduled for May 20th and 21st, gives local businesses the opportunity to promote themselves to thousands of potential customers. There is no cause to participate. More information is available at loudonfarms.org. And then finally, love them or hate them, snakes play an important role in maintaining the balance and diversity of native species.

[00:20:40] They keep rodent and insect populations in check and in turn are preyed upon by larger species. Anyone interested in learning more about these reptiles is invited to attend an upcoming virtual program, An Introduction to the Snakes of Loudoun County, on March 2nd at 7 p.m.

[00:20:56] The event is sponsored by Virginia Cooperative Extension in Loudoun and the Loudoun County Public Library. Details are online at loudoun.gov forward slash extension. Those are my comments this evening, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you. We have no informational items this evening, and we can't do our public speaking as of yet.

[00:21:19] And Mr. Letourneau, we have Rock Ridge coming at 530-ish, correct? All right. Well, if they arrive a little bit early, let me know, please. Okay. With that, let's do our legislative report.

[00:21:40] That's next on the agenda.

[00:21:50] That'll be item number three. We have Mr. Freeman and Mr. Yudd with us this evening.

[00:22:17] Give us our legislative update from the General Assembly. They've been very active these last few weeks, and you're winding down. You say we have one more or two more weeks? Absolutely. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the board.

[00:22:37] We would like to start with the confirmation of the straw poll. That's okay? Yes, go ahead. So first up, we have the Animal Care Seizure of Animals Zoos, adds animals located at a zoo or petting zoo defined in the bill with agricultural animals as exemptions to the standards of seizure or empowerment of companion animals.

[00:23:11] We were unfortunately not able to get a majority back on our votes for the straw poll. Who do you still need votes from? Well, we still need votes. How many, let me rephrase that, how many folks do you need votes from still?

[00:23:28] We just need one more vote for that one. All right. For opposed. Yeah, Mr. Chair, go ahead. So we use the straw poll vote process outside of the board meeting to give direction to staff, and then it's ratified typically in this forum.

[00:23:45] Since the board is in open session, if there's a position that the staff would like the board to vote on, staff should present that, and then the board, if it's your pleasure, can move to accept that recommendation or move for something else. - Can you resend me that in the packet?

[00:24:05] - It should be in the packet, Mr. Freeman, if you can walk the board to the motion of the packet. - Absolutely, so for-- - H2 of the packet. - Yes, and for HB 2331, staff was recommending to oppose.

[00:24:22] - All right, all right, I'll make the motion. Now I move that the board support staff's recommendation To oppose HB 2331, this is Animal Care and Seizure of Animals in Zoos.

[00:24:38] Do I have a second? Second. Second by Supervisor Umstead. Anybody want to speak on it? I have questions. You have questions? I'm sorry, but... Okay, go ahead. One reason you don't have my vote in the straw poll is because this item was confusing to me. I deal with this on a regular basis.

[00:24:54] So my question is, right now we have, you can seize companion animals more easily than you can seize, or there are different standards, is that how I understand? And this has come in and said, okay, right now zoo animals or petting zoo animals under the USDA, et cetera, fall under the companion animals, but we're going to, or fall under the agriculture animals, but we're going to bring them under the companion animals, or am I misunderstanding that?

[00:25:21] We have Ms. Stively from Animal Services with us, I believe. Okay. Ms. Stively, are you on the line? Ms. Stively, is she on the line?

[00:25:43] Ms. Stively, are you there? Supervisor Kirk. Yes. Your assessment of the bill is correct. So does this make it, so what is the process, this bill would make it, would restrain law enforcement to some degree saying, hey, you have to confine the animals at the property and give the property owner notice, whereas it wouldn't just be able to immediately seize them, which is currently how they handle agricultural animals, correct?

[00:26:14] That is how we see the bill as defined, yes. Okay, and so in a staff, you're opposing the bill because it makes it more difficult for law enforcement to seize animals? And is that only in a criminal investigation? Do we know?

[00:26:35] And why you're- I believe so. Okay. And why are we, could I have some understanding on why we would not treat zoo animals the same as we would treat agricultural animals? Because I think that's ultimately what this bill would do. To be helpful to your inquiry, I think the analysis that we included from animal services is on page three of the staff report. It says the if this bill was to proceed the investigative processes and limits of law enforcement's ability to protect

[00:27:13] animals in a zoo setting would be compromised. A zoo animals typically require specialized housing that require temporary seizure in place while the locality evaluated a secure location to transfer them to pending court outcome. Mr. Chairman. But I think that requires, and I'm sorry, go ahead.

[00:27:37] Go ahead. I was just going to save my 30 seconds. Now online, if you want to ask her some questions. Okay. Give Mr. Kushner a minute back. Mr. Stively, do you want to chime in? Ms. Stively, did you hear my question earlier? I'm sorry, Mr. Kushner, could you just repeat that?

[00:27:53] So my question essentially is, right now, under this bill, animals at zoos would be required to be held in place until a vet gave an opinion. Is that correct? That is correct.

[00:28:09] But under the law currently, law enforcement can just go take the animal, impound the animal, based upon some level of probable cause. Is that fair to say? That is correct. So the primary modification for the situation would be that it puts some obstacles in the way in terms of the impound.

[00:28:31] The issue is with the impounding animals requires a substantial burden of proof. So adding the step of seeking a recommendation for the state veterinarian's office is already in place. But adding that means the agency has already stated that they have no expertise in zoological medicine.

[00:28:49] And we would also have to ask for the zoo's permission to impound animals on their property, which is not typical when you are dealing with animals for a seizure situation. Typically somebody who is having their animals. Can you tell me what gave rise to this legislation?

[00:29:06] And I'm trying not to get too deep, but I may abstain from this because it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. Can you tell me what gave rise to this legislation? I can actually, I cannot give origins to this particular legislation. This was something that was brought up elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

[00:29:22] And the nature of the situation in which knowing that we would have to seek permission from somebody from which we were impounding their animals seems counterproductive to an investigation. Whereas currently, if we were, say, to seize livestock animals for any sort of investigation, we would go ahead and impound those animals on the property.

[00:29:41] Because if somebody had, say, 200 horses and had the land for them but wasn't feeding them, they have that land in place. We could go to that land and provide those animals with adequate care. Having to go through a different process for zoo animals would be quite counterproductive because we're not able to address those animals anyplace other than the facility that they are in without going through some pretty substantial measures to ensure their safety.

[00:30:08] Thanks. I'm out of time. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? All right, we have a motion on the table by myself, second by Super Armstead, to support staff's motion to oppose, excuse me, HB 2331. All in favor, please say aye.

[00:30:24] - Aye. - Any opposed? - Aye. - Was that a yes or no to the vote, Ms. Glass? - That was an aye. - Aye, okay, gotcha. Any abstentions? Okay, we have, what is that, 8011.

[00:30:43] Supervisor Kushner abstaining, Chair Randolph, the dice. All right, the motion passes, thank you. All right, we'll go to another motion here from the straw poll. Staff recommends that we oppose Senate Bill 1495 local enforcement action. I motion that we follow staff's recommendation and oppose HB 1495. Is there a second? Second by Supervisor Umstead. Any questions for staff? Supervisor Kushner? I do have questions on this. So if I could direct

[00:31:19] some of my questions either to staff or the county attorney, this legislation ultimately uses the word willful. So it's my understanding that if our staff willfully disobeyed a statute or a requirement that they have with willfully disregard for applicable law and they did it with willful intent that this legislation would allow them to recover attorney's fees. Is that correct? But by opposing it, we're saying even if we as a

[00:31:55] locality willfully disregard the law and you have to sue and get it turned around, you don't get attorney's fees. Is that correct? It really mentions for the staff action. The staff action on an enforcement, if it's a willful disregard of a ordinance, then there could be attorney's fees in that enforcement case. Can you give me an example of that? I really can't where it's willfully done, but an employee would, the county would be bringing an action, let's say, for taking down of trees. And then we find out that they were dead, diseased, or dying trees, which is permitted

[00:32:29] to have the trees removed, and the property owner gave us notice of that. We continued with the enforcement action despite that knowledge, and that would be something where they'd collect their attorney's fees for the enforcement action. Because of our actions? Correct. Okay, well, my thought on, my concern, I think, on this is if we, I mean, basically we're voting, by supporting this, we're voting a level of sovereign immunity. Correct. The other problem I have with this legislation is it's willful disregard for the law, so it could be that we don't bring an enforcement action. And there's lots of reasons why we wouldn't bring one. We could be working

[00:33:09] with the property owner, could be solutions that are being brought. Neighbors may want the county to bring an enforcement action, and the law says you should, and that we, for reasons, use prosecutorial discretion and don't do it. So I think that's another concern that I have.

[00:33:25] But wouldn't the word willful mean you basically act with a form of gross negligence? wouldn't that suggest that willfulness shows intent it doesn't show it's not going to the item of negligence so willfulness shows intent the intent would be for us not to bring an enforcement action when we could have so i think that doesn't mean gross negligence okay my only concern with this is i have seen many many situations where the government actor acts in such a way and it leaves the you know the single individual has really little money they can't hire lawyer no lawyer is going to take on their case pro bono and so therefore they have to eat whatever

[00:34:02] happens that's my only concern ongoing in this if and that's way a lot of virginia works is you can't collect attorney's fees in a lot of ways so this is kind of just kind of continuing the status quo that is my concern okay thank you uh supervisor briskman does this apply to law enforcement at all you are you looking for staffers mr whoever whoever can answer the question i was initially reading this as it could be a case where someone's suing law enforcement.

[00:34:43] Is that, am I misreading that? There's protections in law enforcement that aren't identified in this bill for a motorist who's bringing, you're bringing the suit. But I think it would apply to law enforcement where they're acting outside the scope of their duties.

[00:35:00] So probably the same immunities are there that are there before with law enforcement. You would either get them under negligence, gross negligence, or willful conduct. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Laterno. So I note that this bill seems to be flying through, although there is a substitute.

[00:35:16] So one of my questions is going to be what the substitute is. But just to get into the broader issue first, does this – so is – what's staff concerned about a scenario? Let's just say, like, let's take the noise ordinance. We have folks who email us almost every day about airplanes flying overhead and believe that we should be taking some type of enforcement action.

[00:35:37] Is the ultimate concern that putting this provision in law will encourage those people to seek legal action against the county? Yes. I mean, I'll respond from staff. Our first view of it was that if you focus on the words willful disregard for applicable law, if you think about the enforcement actions that we've been involved in, we do not demonstrate willful disregard for applicable law.

[00:36:07] We are very measured in our approach. That was our first review, that we're not going to disregard the very law that gives us the ability to take the enforcement action that we would. But a resident could say, because we're not pursuing an action, we are willfully choosing not to.

[00:36:24] And I think that is what Mr. Rogers is raising in his comments as well. We may have reasons for that, but it's really, it's not so much about whether we did or we didn't, but whether we would encourage. And it gives rise to claims made against the county's actions. If you suddenly introduce the prospect of getting attorney's fees and something like that, then you're going to encourage people to actually sue.

[00:36:46] Okay, what's the deal with the substitutes? Do you know? It doesn't say what in LIS. So in LIS it says on line 18, strike shall and insert may, and on line 19, introduced after practical, nothing in this section shall be construed to abrogate a claim of qualified immunity oh so that gets the law enforcement piece but it says we're may instead of shall so maybe entitled to a word

[00:37:23] of compensatory damage i'm kind of surprised there hasn't been more discussion about this in the general assembly i mean most of these votes are unanimous so clearly has like vaco or anybody not weighed in at all or maybe maybe we should talk to them if we have a concern i would double check that but um to your point this has flown through the general assembly yeah so if we have a concern and we really are serious about it then we need to start talking to our you know

[00:38:01] others pretty quickly to try to slow this down because it looks like it's you know about to become law so okay um mr rogers your lights on oh okay all right um then we have direction for you guys to follow up with the vaco and the other folks and your your colleagues down there to see what's going on with this one a motion on the table to oppose as staff was recommending a second by supervisor umstead all in favor of the motion please say aye aye can i hear miss glass miss

[00:38:38] glass are you there did you vote aye oh can she hear us miss glass did you vote aye aye yes all All right. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Motion passes. Oh, sorry about that. Yes.

[00:38:55] All right. So 7-1-1. Vice Chair Sains, I will abstain on that one. And abstain. Okay. All right. So 6-1-1-1. Six in favor, one opposed, one abstention, and one missing off the dais.

[00:39:10] Okay. Anything else in the legislative report? Absolutely. So on... John, before you go there, I'm sorry. When you were asking about, Supervisor Letourneau was asking about VML and VACO, we have Ms. Aboye, who was checking that as you spoke.

[00:39:31] VML has registered opposition to that bill, so has VACO, and Fairfax County has opposed it as well. Okay. All right. Go ahead, Mr. Freeman. So a couple of things that staff has spent a tremendous time on.

[00:39:47] Senate Bill 1014 that Senator Bell put in to lift a restrictive covenant on the Sterling Neighborhood Park was labeled special legislation, meaning that it needed two-thirds from the General Assembly to pass it.

[00:40:05] We got two-thirds out of the Senate. And in the House, I'm happy to report that that bill reported yesterday from the floor 71 to 29. So that restrictive covenant, upon signage of the governor, will be lifted off of the park, and Loudoun County will be able to purchase that park, upgrade the facilities, and make it state-of-the-art.

[00:40:29] Yes, we can go ahead and give jazz hands to that. Thank you so much to staff and definitely Mr. Freeman for all your efforts, not just on that bill, but your efforts in this General Assembly has been remarkable, but you definitely helped a lot with that bill.

[00:40:48] That'd be, well, I know I cared about, but I think all my other colleagues cared about a lot as well. I'm hoping, do you know the vote count, did all of our Loudoun delegation vote in favor of that motion? I would have to double check the vote count. Okay. If you can get back to me, let me know.

[00:41:03] But thank you. Yeah, I watched it. There were members of the delegation that did not support the bill. One in particular. One in particular, yes. All right. All right. Any questions? Supervisor Turner, you have your motion, your light on?

[00:41:21] Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. um i asked staff to track all the gun bills going through this session you did that it i'm sure it was a science project and i apologize but i did have a method to my madness and i'd just like to review now that we're winding up the session where we are a bill to outlaw devices that convert a weapon into a machine gun tabled in the republican house a bill to prohibit the transfer of a weapon by a person prohibited from owning one to a minor under age 21 living in the same home tabled in the

[00:41:55] the Republican House. A bill to prohibit the sale or transfer after 2025 if any weapon not micro-stamped to facilitate tracking each weapon tabled in the Republican House. A bill to establish a gun buy pack program tabled in the Republican House. A bill making it against the law for someone convicted of assault and battery in a dating relationship to buy or own a gun tabled in the Republican House. A bill to require either firearm locks for the sale of handguns or a clear printed warning in the gun packaging stating that handguns accessible to children

[00:42:30] should be locked or the owner could face criminal penalties if it's not, tabled in the Republican House. A bill making it a misdemeanor for an owner to allow a minor access to a gun that the minor then uses to commit a crime, tabled in the Republican House. A bill to allow civil action against a parent or guardian who enables a minor to possess a gun used to commit a crime or wrongful death, tabled in the Republican House. A bill to ban assault weapons, tabled in the Republican House.

[00:43:01] A bill to establish a waiting period for any gun purchase tabled in the Republican House. Mr. Turner, do you have a question for staff? No, I don't. I don't have a question. I'll add a question at the end of this so I'm kosher. A bill to prohibit anyone under 21 from buying an assault weapon tabled in the Republican House.

[00:43:20] That's all I have for now, but I think the trend is pretty obvious. So my question is to the staff, did any gun bills make it through at all in this session? that in any way establish some semblance of rational gun safety?

[00:43:40] And that's a loaded question, I admit. We could provide more information. No, I don't want to add to the science project. It's just off the top of your head. Did anything restricting in any way, shape, or form gun ownership or possession pass it, make it through the House? Not to my knowledge.

[00:43:59] There was one bipartisan effort that Delegate Coyner carried in the House, and it's concealed handgun permits demonstration of competence. Yeah, I saw that one really quick in my last 10 seconds. When people who are concerned about gun violence in America go to vote, think about this.

[00:44:19] This is the practical effect of your vote at every level of government. Thank you. All right, thank you, Supervisor Turner. Anybody else? Supervisor Letourneau. Well, I guess it's pretty clear it wasn't a science project, it was a political project, and I get pretty tired of using staff to do the bidding of members of the board for their political agendas.

[00:44:35] It's not what they're here for. Now, let me thank you for what you are here for, which is to help the county with its legislative agenda, and that includes 1858, the Greenway Bill, because, Jonathan, you in particular did a phenomenal job. You know, there were some predictions at the beginning of the session we would have difficulty killing that bill.

[00:44:56] We have done so, so far, twice in the Senate Finance Committee on 10 to 6 votes. But I did want to ask if there's been any additional discussion about the budget amendment that exists. And I know that that budget amendment is not exactly the language that's in the Senate bill or the House bill and therefore not as concerning.

[00:45:18] But still, you know, legislating on the budget is never a good idea and certainly legislating on this topic. So do you have any update on anything related to that? Until we have a final budget, which we'll see if we have one this Saturday, there's no further update other than staff is currently working that bill, as you just said, to say, hey, listen, you know, we, you know, Senate Finance passed by indefinitely both bills, the Senate and the House version, which were uphill battles.

[00:45:52] But we, you know, we succeeded in making sure that those bills did not make it. And so we, you know, shouldn't be legislating through the budget. The General Assembly likes to make sure that they don't do. So, you know, that's something that we're definitely talking to the budget conferees about.

[00:46:12] Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor Kushner. Thank you, Chair Sains. And I agree with Mr. Letourneau. I find it disappointing that Mr. Turner said there was a method to his madness here and then used the opportunity to attack the other party in our political process by pointing out all of these various gun bills.

[00:46:35] I think that is an abuse of staff's time. We should never be using that for simple political purposes. We have a job to do here in this county that is to run this county. So I find it incredibly disappointing that that just happened. I do have questions of staff as follow-up.

[00:46:52] I'm assuming there were gun bills in the Senate that died and that some of these gun bills included some Democrat votes. Am I correct? I would have to double-check that. I'd like to hear about that. If you could get back to my office on that, or I can probably look it up. I just didn't have time to go. But I'm pretty confident that a number of them died with Democrat votes.

[00:47:11] Thank you. Okay, Supervisor Briskman. Thank you. Could you, well, first of all, on the reproductive rights issue, It's my understanding that we neither had bills. We didn't have bills passed to further restrict, and we didn't have any bills passed to expand reproductive rights.

[00:47:30] That's correct. All of the bills that the board requested information on, none of them made it. Okay, great. So we're status quo. I guess I'll take that. And then I don't know if you were planning to do this, but the budget, could you give us maybe an update on what's going on with the budget?

[00:47:52] Because we have to, if there's going to be a special session, we have to pass our budget before we learn what the state is going to do about the gap from the grocery tax mishap. And then we have to figure out what we're going to do if there's further cuts in the way of cutting taxes to corporations or anything like that.

[00:48:15] And that will have a real impact on our taxpayers if we want to fully fund the schools and we don't know the full picture from the state. So as it pertains to the amount in the budget that the Senate had to hold localities harmless for the error that the Virginia Department of Education had, that was a $200 million error and $58 million impact for this current school year.

[00:48:41] staff as requested by the board is still pushing for that 58 million uh to make it to the final budget uh as to whether it makes it in the final budget or not we won't necessarily know until the end of this week uh when general assembly is supposed to adjourn and have the budget um figured out but have do we know if the um do we know if they're actually going to pass the budget or do We think it's going to be a special session.

[00:49:17] So, you know, and I would answer that to say we won't know until Saturday. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Glass, you have any questions for staff on the legislative item? I have no questions.

[00:49:34] Thank you. Okay. I don't see any more lights on. I don't believe we have any other motions in front of us from our legislative team. Is that correct? The only thing that I would like to add is that our incident reporting timelines bill that was in our package that passed the general assembly today okay all right very good anything else we are continuing to work the budget conferees and make sure everything that the board wants is included in the final budget all right well thank you again so much for all your efforts these past weeks i'm sure the team will keep us updated in regards to the the special

[00:50:11] session how the budget's going to shake out who the coffers will be all that good stuff so thank you again team for all your work really do truly appreciate it thank you okay that was item number four let's go down to uh well three excuse me you know three we have the county energy strategy but we have 15 minutes uh all right let's go ahead and start that one yes so item number four please

[00:50:40] the county energy strategy good evening vice chair sayings members of the board thank you for this opportunity that you've given us to present to you the draft energy strategy this has been about a year in the making as you all may recall the original energy strategy that the board had in place was well over a decade old, and this board commissioned an overhaul of that and updating to ensure that we had measurable and actionable goals that conformed with the

[00:51:19] Virginia vision for the greenhouse gas emissions at the regional level and as well as the state level. So tonight's presentation will be mostly handled by our Assistant Director for Public Works and Environmental Services, Marcovini. And further down the line here is Kira Moore, our program manager under the Environmental Services. Also online with us, we have two members of our consulting team with ICF. And should the questions need or go in that direction, we can ensure that they are available for those. So real quickly, the energy strategy, next slide.

[00:51:56] The energy strategy highlights three broad goal areas, 10 general strategies, and 35 or 31 specific actions. It has a public dashboard and we're going to kind of highlight and overview the sample report. I will note that the report is not in its final compilated state because once we have this discussion, any comments or recommendations that you bring to us, we would then incorporate that into the final report and publish if the board does in fact approve it this evening. It takes into a number of important considerations including the Inflation Reduction Act and other state and federal funding opportunities that may exist.

[00:52:29] And then the final steps of implementation and funding for the strategy would be discussed. As we mentioned, the board approved this direction on July 27, 2022 in the Environmental Summit. This does particularly target Loudoun's contributions to the Virginia goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and a carbon-free grid by 2050.

[00:52:53] It ensures that we're able to meet those goals of clean, reliable, and affordable energy. in both a quantitative and qualitative manner. It also provides us the ability to pivot to any updates that may happen with the Virginia Clean Economy Act or changes to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the RGTI, and allows us to have that flexibility.

[00:53:13] I would say that the team has worked very, very diligently to provide you a product that was measurable, achievable, and a reasonable effort that could actually be achieved. So I have been told to stop at that slide, and I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Avini to present the energy strategy.

[00:53:35] Thank you. Vice Chair Sains, members of the board, Mark Avini, Assistant Director, General Services. The timeline you see before you illustrates that this has been a very public process. There has been involvement from the board, from the Environmental Commission, and from the public for many meetings.

[00:53:51] So we're actually very happy about that, that the public has had a lot of involvement. The slide that you see before you is the latest information from the Council of Governments. The Council of Governments tracks greenhouse gas emissions from all localities in the COG region.

[00:54:07] It is a standard that is used. If you look at the slide on the left, you see the relative amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from Loudoun County over time. You will notice the orange bar, which is the largest, and that includes buildings of all types, residential, commercial, retail, data centers, they're all in there.

[00:54:28] This reflects that Loudoun is a growing community, and we use a lot of energy. If you look at the slide on the right, it shows where we were in 2005, the tiny little gray line, and where we are in 2020, the larger gray line, all the way to the right.

[00:54:45] The waterfalls or bars in between in red and blue show what is contributing and what is decreasing. So no surprise, we're adding people, we're adding businesses, and those are all contributing to our energy needs. The reductions, although some may say from COVID, we've done a better job of getting cars off the road, we've cleaned up our grid, and we've done some other things.

[00:55:09] So in balance, if you take the red and the blue, that's how we get to the orange. The good news in this slide is we know what we need to do if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Loudoun County. We need to work with our residents, we need to work with our businesses, we need to work with our data centers, we need to work with the Chamber of Commerce so that we all have a role to play.

[00:55:30] And that leads to the next slide, which shows the relative contributions if we were to do nothing. You'll notice that our largest percentage going out to 2050 would be commercial buildings, residential at 15, and transportation at 24.

[00:55:46] So, again, those are the three sectors that you'll see this energy plan focus on. You've seen the next slide before, and that shows the three-part framework, government by example, supporting clean energy development in the county, and stimulating community-wide action.

[00:56:02] We think this is a winning strategy to affect greenhouse gas emission reduction in Loudoun County. If we do these things by 2050, you will see a reduction of more than half in our greenhouse gas emissions. Now, of course, this assumes a lot of things.

[00:56:19] This is a strategy only. The strategy would have to be implemented. The area there to the bottom of the slide in white shows what new technologies, new funding perhaps from the government might do as well. So overall, we're pretty excited that by doing these things, we will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2050.

[00:56:40] To get into the specifics of the energy strategy, as Mr. Brown mentioned, we have goals, we have strategies, and we have actions. You see for goal area one, leading by example in county government operations, the different strategies and the different actions that we can implement to get at those reductions.

[00:56:57] The thing that we like about this approach, if you go to the next slide, is you can pull out any one of those action items in a template, and you can see who the lead implementer is, in this case, Department of General Services. You can see who the stakeholders are, and you can see what the next steps are.

[00:57:14] This allows us to implement the strategy in different phases, by different actions, whatever the pleasure of the board might be, whatever the funding situation or grants might be. we can pull out any one of these individual actions and literally start tomorrow on implementing them. And so we've done this for a couple of actions. This is on-site solar at select facilities in the county. The next one is another item I know of interest to this board, zero emission vehicles.

[00:57:41] And you can see how we can focus on that and pilot that very quickly, again, depending on resources and board directions. When we go to the second goal area, although it looks small, it's actually rather big. This is facilitating access to development of clean energy in the county. This is where we find things like green zones, virtual purchase, power purchase agreements, CPACE. These are all higher level efforts to reduce energy usage in the county. This is a place where many data centers are actually procuring their renewable energy outside of the county

[00:58:21] and actually using it within the county. So this is actually a good thing, and we want to explore this and use this further. The third and final goal area, well, actually, here's just an example of the template, but we can go to the third one. The third area is arguably also important, community-wide action.

[00:58:42] In transportation, from our residential and commercial, this is where we find education to residents, outreach. If you look at the first goal there or first action template, this is where we find the good work that the Environmental Commission is doing.

[00:58:59] They're hosting an awards program, which is currently ongoing right now. They're hosting a public forum in May at the Academies of Loudoun. This is all the work that they're doing with the community to get them on board with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And if you look at the stakeholders there in that particular one, everybody's in there.

[00:59:18] Everybody's in there, which is what we like, because that's how we're going to make this happen. If you go to the next action template, which is energy equity, which I know is of interest to this board, this begins that process with our stakeholders at the Department of Housing, the equity office, nonprofits where we can work with lower income residents so that they're not spending as much money on their energy bills and they're getting better insulation in their houses and so forth.

[00:59:46] So we're very excited to also start this process as part of your energy strategy. Mr. Brown mentioned a public dashboard, and this came out a lot in our public input sessions as well as from the Environmental Commission. This gets at the desire for the community to be able to go on a website and see how much energy we're using, to see how our greenhouse gases are being reduced.

[01:00:11] And we've already been meeting with the Office of Mapping to look at some possibilities so that we can get perhaps an energy hub on our website where folks can go on at any time and see how we're doing. And we're very pleased to start this process as part of your energy strategy.

[01:00:29] Of course, we're going to make it look nice. We're going to put a nice cover on it and give each of you a personal copy. We're going to put it on the website so that the residents can find it. Everybody can find it and see the action steps that I've shown you. Pending your approval, hopefully this evening, we should have this ready in about a month or so, and it'll be on the web, and everyone can see the good work that we're starting with this energy strategy.

[01:00:55] I do want to touch on a few important considerations before Mr. Brown finishes things. It is a very positive report. It is about energy sustainability. It can be adjusted as needed up to 2050. There is a lot of time to do more, hopefully not less.

[01:01:12] It is implemented over decades. It is a strategy. it is not an implementation plan so there will be fiscal impacts we're very proud of the fact that it involves multiple departments and i want to complement not only general services but transportation housing economic development i'm sure i'm leaving somebody out as well as the non-profits and the chamber of commerce who've worked with us on this report a lot of feedback as i said from the commission and the public and we believe that having this strategy in place puts us in a very good position to receive some grants from the federal government on energy.

[01:01:49] And now I think Mr. Brown will finish up for us. Thank you, Mr. Avini. Now, I know that was a very high-level overview, and we only showed a few of the examples that are in Attachment 1. Attachment 1 is the meat and potatoes of the actual strategy, so as we move into questions, if there are any particular specifics you want to go through, it is in that Attachment 1.

[01:02:11] every single strategy and goal area is broken down and has those representative details in there. As Mr. Vini mentioned, this is designed to be a strategy, not an implementation plan. There are subtle differences. Implementation happens primarily through the budget process, and it is dependent upon the prioritization of resources.

[01:02:30] To that end, we recognize this is a very challenging budget year, and the implementation tools for this particular strategy for fiscal year 2024 are not in the in the proposed funded budget so staff has been working very diligently to find grant opportunities that can close that gap for us as we move into FY 24 so that that doesn't create a significant impediment on how we move forward in 2024 on the this particular strategy so that is a big goal of our of our team is to find those opportunities for grants

[01:03:08] And we have identified several that through consulting services and certainly funding of priority projects that would be available through state and federal grant opportunities. I would also say that Mr. Vini mentioned a viable and implementable and achievable and measurable energy strategy is necessary to be competitive for those state and federal energy grants.

[01:03:31] And this will provide that opportunity for us. So our goal is to, as we make progress on this strategy, is to update the board on a yearly basis and adjust based on the direction that the board has. So instead of it sitting for a decade plus on the shelf, we anticipate this coming back and being tweaked and modified as the board directs and as progress either accelerates or decelerates depending on the circumstances.

[01:03:54] So I would like to compliment staff and our consulting team in building this achievable, measurable strategy that is flexible enough to be adjusted every year as those needs do modify. So with that, I believe we'll open ourselves up for any questions.

[01:04:11] All right. Well, thank you for the presentation. Anybody have questions for staff? All right. Supervisor Turner. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. To clarify, the graph that shows emissions and the principal contributor to emissions is commercial buildings.

[01:04:26] that includes data centers. And those emissions presuppose that massive uses of fossil fuel automatically equals emissions. But that's a misnomer, isn't it? The data centers are not pumping out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It simply includes their usage of fossil fuels, correct? Yes, sir. It's based on square footage. And so as you mentioned, many data centers and others as well are procuring their energy from sources that are 100% renewable, but just not in Loudoun County. So that's actually one of the issues that's in the energy strategy is to work with the data center coalition, perhaps COG, to determine what percent of that is actually just

[01:05:06] what you said. And that was my follow-up question, which is those emissions don't discriminate if there's a data center that's using 100% renewable energy. That's not going to reflect in that emissions graph. It's going to be invisible, correct? Correct. Okay, that's what I thought.

[01:05:25] Virtual PPA, I want just to save time, a virtual PPA is where an organization or a company or a business goes out and shops on the open PJM grid, sustainable energy, and brings it into Loudoun County. That doesn't mean they directly use it, but it means we have brought our amount of sustainable energy into Loudoun County, correct?

[01:05:45] Absolutely, yes, sir. So it's a mini community choice aggregation, mini municipal aggregation. It could be thought of it. just what we just talked about we were at a company today that was saying they were procuring uh 100 of their energy from renewable sources outside of loudon and as you said it goes into the grid and it's a little hard to account for but yes that's what a virtual ppa would allow us so if we established a green business zone and made if we established a green business zone and made the criteria to be in the green business zone that you have to operate off of a virtual ppa that would be a valid criteria for being in the green business zone correct we would love to look at something like that, Supervisor Turner. Yeah. With tax incentives to be able to do that. Okay.

[01:06:25] I was going to say, how can the board implement these actions? But I think we really, the last energy strategy was 2009 and won a national award. And then it sat on, and I don't want to be pejorative at all, but it seemed to sit on the shelf until we just updated it.

[01:06:42] I really want to avoid that with this one. One of the ways we're going to avoid this, as painful as it is, is to dedicate funding out of the budget every year, much like we do with affordable housing to say this amount, this half penny, this quarter penny will go towards implementing the clean energy strategy moving forward. It's painful, but we have to commit resources or this will also sit on the shelf for the next 20 years. So I think that's an implementing task. It would be interesting if we could get the funding, even the grant funding for the board to weigh in and say, these are our priorities of these actions. You've listed these 31 actions. These are our top five priorities. That would be an interesting exercise. Thank you.

[01:07:19] Thank you, Supervisor Turner. Supervisor Brisbane. Thank you. I was also interested in Slides 5 and 6, specifically that orange bar on Slide 5. And have we done any comparisons as to what other jurisdictions look like with the orange section?

[01:07:37] I would be very curious to learn. In general, they're all on the COG website. In general, you'll see that other locations, we are high, we are high in that area. Other locations that have beltways and so forth are higher in transportation, where we're lower in transportation.

[01:07:54] I see. So it all depends. Look at Maryland. You'll see that a fair amount. But we are high in this area, yes. Okay, and mainly because of all the data centers, probably. It's all mixed together, so it's hard to—we are a growing community. There is a lot of business, retail, data centers, residential.

[01:08:14] They're all in that orange line. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'll go on the COG website and kind of make a comparison along those lines. Supervisor Turner was kind of getting to my concern as well. When do we think we'll see an implementation plan? So what we'll do with this on the annual updates, just like we do with the Environmental Commission, we bring back to the board implementation topics based on the approved strategy for consideration through the budget process.

[01:08:44] And that, much like the Environmental Commission's battle rhythm, it'll be presented to you in a timely enough manner to be able to appropriately evaluate it for, like in this case, the fiscal year 25 budget cycle would be the next cycle that we would bring it to you.

[01:09:02] In this particular case, if this gets approved by the board, there are a lot of implementable actions that we can move on through existing grants. As you know, staff doesn't act upon pursuing grants that are outside the scope of board's directed authority. for us so if if this is if this gives us approval to you've already given us approval for ev charging stations grant i'm just going to use that as hypothetical uh we would actively pursue grants in that area to accomplish that particular strategy okay okay right so i i sit on the national association of counties healthy healthy counties advisory board and we had a whole

[01:09:35] discussion last week or last weekend about um social determinants of health and one of the main things we talked about as localities is, you know, clean air and clean water can be a big factor. But if we don't have policy that addresses those sorts of things, then we really don't get anywhere on the health side. So what I would be looking for in an implementation plan was what sort of policies and ordinances can we establish as a county to make sure that we're fulfilling

[01:10:10] our goals. So that I'm hoping that will be part of the implementation strategy. The other thing I'm really concerned about is organizations tend to, we had a data center in here last week saying that they're going to be 100% renewable, but they were buying offsets. So I'd like to see us measuring those sorts of things. So we have a clear picture. I'm sorry, I'm out of time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brixman, Supervisor LeTurneau. Thank you. So I think this is a really good document. If I were to contrast it a little bit, perhaps the Supervisor Turner's point to the 2009

[01:10:44] plan, this is a lot more implementable than that was. That was, you know, well, it was something that I think didn't give the county government a whole lot to do. This one, I think, does. You know, there's things here. And when I was thinking about the implementation, reading it, I was assuming that a lot of these things are actually really on the capital side initially as far as the county government's concerned.

[01:11:11] So we may start seeing those things showing up in a CIP discussion or even more of the cap discussion when we talk about our asset replacement. Because some of this is just a matter of, you know, we're going to do an update anyway on a building or on a, you know, we always were doing landfill work, things like that.

[01:11:28] So as we're doing those things, we're now doing it a different way, and we're implementing newer technology, better technology, and we're being very intentional with that. I did want to just comment, and I've made this point before about the data center discussion, because I think one of the problems with approaching this issue as a locality with the lens of only a locality is that you miss the bigger picture.

[01:11:53] Greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to the globe, right? So whether they're emitted here or they're emitted somewhere else, it's the same impact. So with data centers, if data centers were not here, it's not as if they wouldn't exist.

[01:12:09] They would just exist somewhere else. This board wouldn't be talking about it. And we could point to our numbers and say, hey, aren't we great? But, you know, the reality is they are here. And if they weren't here, they would be somewhere else. And so we just have to have that context of this discussion because the cloud is exploding.

[01:12:28] The cloud's exploding everywhere. I think we're fortunate here in that we've had somewhat of a focused discussion with that industry about ways to mitigate their impact. And I think that, frankly, that discussion here is probably more advanced than it is in some other places.

[01:12:44] And I think certainly we can provide support to that. And we're seeing more and more operators come in and want to do that and talk about how they can do it. But, you know, the problem is, in a lot of cases, they don't have any options but to buy offsets because we don't have enough clean power available to them.

[01:13:01] And there's a lot of reasons for that, and we can get into that. But, you know, there's tremendous demand for that, and, you know, the economics discussion of it is an entirely different one. So just wanted to make that kind of general observation every time we talk about these kind of things.

[01:13:19] Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Umston. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In relation to data centers and Supervisor Letourneau's good observations, according to Dominion, data centers drive their clean energy investments more than any other industry, more than residential development.

[01:13:43] So I just want to get that on the record again. They are probably the cleanest industry we have in the county or in the country at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Glass, do you have any questions for staff on this item?

[01:13:59] I don't have any questions, but I just wanted to thank staff for this presentation. And it's really good to see that we have actions that we can, that we will be able to pursue in our county.

[01:14:17] Thank you. All right. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just say, yeah, this is definitely Supervisor Letourneau and Supervisor Turner mentioned more implemental than and realistic than what was done before. And, you know, to be honest, we are starting to actually bring some of these initiatives or strategies, as they're called in the item, to reality.

[01:14:40] For example, reducing the county fleet and employee travel emissions. We had that discussion in regards moving towards hybrid or eventually to 100% electric vehicles. We're putting in the plug-in stations. We gave direction to staff to do an RFI to see about green energy, hydrogen, and possibly using that over at the landfill, building cleaner buildings.

[01:15:07] All of the rooms have the motion detectors for the lights, so if somebody's not in the room for a period of time, the lights go out. We're looking at putting solar panels on county buildings. We're trying to have the school system doing that already. So we're doing a lot of initiatives that are already highlighted on here, if you look at it, already working and putting these things into reality here in the county.

[01:15:31] So we're already taking steps in the right direction. And then to Supervisor Brisbane's point about the offsets, that is technically what majority of the corporations do is, yes, they build cleaner, more energy-efficient buildings, but then they do the offsets.

[01:15:49] As they say, if you go to a conference or a forum, they buy offsets for the travel, for traveling in your car to the forum or the other conference. So that is what companies do, and that's how they get their numbers and everything. But until a lot of other things take hold, that's what most companies are going to be doing.

[01:16:09] So with that, well, one question to staff. Are we aware of any other jurisdictions in the region working on any initiatives on low-carbon fuels like the hydrogen that we're working on? Montgomery County, Maryland, in particular, received a large grant to work on that.

[01:16:25] And actually, one of the things we're going to do is go and visit them and see what they're doing. Okay, good. And then to strategy 10, which I know you mentioned is under development for energy equity. Can you list some of the organizations that we're partnering with and where are we at with that?

[01:16:41] We have just begun the process, vice chair. We've met with the equity officer and we've had initial conversations with the NAACP. and we expect to have further conversations in the near future. Good. All right. Well, thank you.

[01:16:56] Did we have a motion on this? All right. Nobody's making it put their light on, so I'll do it. I move the Board of Supervisors adopt the draft Loudoun County Energy Strategy as provided in Attachment 1 to the February 21st, 2023 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item and direct staff to finalize the associated report.

[01:17:22] Second. Motion was made and seconded by Supervisor Brisbane. All those in favor, please say aye. aye aye any opposed aye any opposed any abstentions okay that motion passes 9-0-1 with chair Randolph the dice thank you staff thank you next item we have oh nope it's time

[01:17:48] for public comment is my list okay it's time for public comment here at five o'clock the first one all right we have eight speakers signed up to speak for our five o'clock p.m. public input portion of the meeting members of the public who have signed up to speak will be allotted two and a half minutes when your name is called come to the podium closest to you and state your name for the public record the timer on the podium will indicate your remaining time when your time has expired please yield the floor to the next speaker so first one we have is robert anderson followed

[01:18:28] by deborah gilmore followed by matthew o'donnell robert anderson not here okay do we have a deborah Mr. Chair, members of the board, my name is Debra Gilmore, and I am the CEO of Laws, Domestic Violence, and Sexual Assault Services.

[01:19:02] We're asking you to adopt the FGOEDC recommendation for Item 9K, ARPA Tranche 2 funding. However, Laws is humbled to serve this community as part of a strong and needed network of human services nonprofit partners.

[01:19:17] As Loudoun County's designated provider of services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, we offer safety, hope, and empowerment through legal, advocacy, shelter, hotline, and therapeutic services to more than 1,100 survivors every year.

[01:19:34] Our current trauma therapist consistently has a full caseload, and we recently capped our wait list for therapy services at 40 survivors, meaning we've stopped taking referrals. This is because we do not want to send a message of false hope. If survivors cannot be seen when they reach out for help, we find that they disengage or they become non-responsive to follow-up calls.

[01:19:58] We often find ourselves lifting the voices of survivors into systems-level conversations. Those are guided by our daily interactions, by research, and by data we collect for reporting compliance. In a standard state-mandated survey that we distribute to survivors we've served, one open-ended question asks, What would you have done if our services didn't exist?

[01:20:22] Many simply write, I don't know, unable to put words to that dark vision. Other recent responses include, I would be so depressed and nothing would exist for me, continue in the abuse and violence or maybe dead, been in an even darker place.

[01:20:41] I probably would have struggled to find a therapist who understands slash helps as much as loss, continued with trauma and repressed memories. I would still be living in the dark. I think I wouldn't keep going with it because I would feel lonely.

[01:20:59] slept in my car, stayed with abuser, or committed suicide. This is how we know our services are life-sustaining. Thank you for letting me lift the voices of survivors, and thank you for hearing their voices.

[01:21:15] Thank you. Next, we have Matt O'Donnell, defined by Carol Smith, followed by Ann Donahue. Good evening, board. Matt O'Donnell, town of Leesburg. Probably going to be one of the first of many that you're going to hear about from Mobile Hope tonight.

[01:21:35] Mobile Hope's ultimate concern is an unsatisfactory explanation as to how one staff member can award a very high score on their application, and a second staff member on the exact same application can award a score that's so low to remove them from consideration, right? And to be clear, anything short of a complete, thorough, and satisfactory answer is unacceptable. We need to know what happened here for Mobile Hope. If upon further review, Mobile's hopes of the

[01:22:11] application, it turns out an error was made, and then the board votes to not fund them, that's a grievous error at that point. I understand to interrupt the process at this point would certainly cause upheaval. Unprecedented, it'd be extraordinary. It may seem that you're even painted into a corner and have no choice but to go forward, but that's just not true. There are satisfactory outcomes for everyone. We just might have to work a little bit harder for it this time.

[01:22:43] Ultimately, we expect our elected officials to be our best advocates, not our critics. To advocate for the best interest of our community, it is in our community's best interest to have Mobile Hope expand its offerings and fulfill its mission to the people of Loudoun County.

[01:23:00] I ask for your unreasonableness. I ask for something extraordinary. I ask for the board to do what is necessary to make sure it is making the correct choice. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, we have Carol Smith, followed by Anne Donahue, followed by Walter Velasquez.

[01:23:22] Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Carol Smith, and I'm the founder and executive director of Crossroads Jobs, a free employment service in Leesburg and Sterling Park for individuals experiencing barriers to employment. I was hoping that I would not have to stand up here tonight, but the events of the past seven days have made it essential to restore the good name of Crossroads Jobs. At the February 14th Finance Committee meeting, two funding scenarios were recommended by staff for ARPA funding. The first included eight non-profits,

[01:23:57] the second 13. During their presentation and subsequent Q&A, staff recommended scenario number one. They created a narrative that the additional five non-profits in scenario two, including Crossroads Jobs posed a risk to the county due to their lack of capacity to perform these duties.

[01:24:17] This narrative was not supported by evidence. Immediately following the meeting, I contacted Board of Supervisors members and the three staff members who participated in the February 14th committee and met with staff on February 17th. During our meeting, staff emphatically stated that Crossroads Jobs' performance reporting was above reproach. This included our seven-year successive history of being a sub-recipient of a federal community development block grant. They went on to say we submitted accurate and timely financial and program reports which contrasted with the

[01:24:54] narrative provided to the Finance Committee on February 14th. Interestingly, the ARPA Trance 2 application did not ask applicants to describe their organization's ability to manage grants and programs. Nonprofits were not scored on this question. So what was the actual argument in support of scenario one over scenario two. After meeting with staff, I'm really not sure. As a non-profit, funding is not automatic. Our reputation stands as a non-profit that can set targets, report on results, manage funds, and produce accurate financial records. We have built this

[01:25:30] reputation serving the Loudoun County community for more than 10 years. The February 14th meeting had an audience both in-person and live streaming, and the document for that item is still available online. Our reputation was challenged. I respectfully urge you to ensure that a clear, unambiguous correction to the record is made during tonight's meeting, both from the dais and in writing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next we have Ann Donahue, followed by Walter Velasquez, followed by Sandra Vigil. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ann Donahue. I

[01:26:09] have been a resident of Loudoun County since 2014, and I'm here tonight to ask you to support the funding for Mobile Hope. As I'm sure you're all aware, Loudoun County is routinely listed by many sources and judged under many rubrics as the richest county in the United States.

[01:26:25] Because of this, many people, some within our county and some without, are often surprised to learn that there are people, there are residents in our communities, in our county, who struggle with having access to safe housing, to food, and to other necessities of life. And a shocking number of those residents who struggle are, unfortunately, youth, which is why Mobile Hope services are of such critical importance to our county. Since its founding over 10 years ago, Mobile Hope has provided services for disadvantaged youth up to the age of 24 in our communities, providing food, shelter, transportation, clothing, life skills, and job and educational opportunities.

[01:27:05] Dealing with, on average, 50 to 100 clients per month, Mobile Hope over the years has changed, improved, or saved thousands of, tens of thousands of lives in our county. In fact, last November, Mobile Hope was identified by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 20 charitable organizations in the DMV that provides the greatest impact to their community, and in fact was the only organization in Loudoun County to be honored with such recognition.

[01:27:34] The Middleburg Life magazine reported in the spring of 2022 that Mobile Hope, during the year of March 2021 to March of 2022, had provided food for 158,000 youth in our county in one year.

[01:27:50] I found this number appalling, and I hope all of you do as well. If we are indeed the richest county in the richest country in the world, we should be able to do better than this. And while Mobile Hope is rightly and appropriately supported by a number of charitable donations, it is incumbent on this board also to do its part to support Mobile Hope and support the disadvantaged youth in our community.

[01:28:15] Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Walter Velasquez, followed by Sandra Vigil, followed by Eman Toney. Bueno, mi nombre es Walter Velázquez y estoy acá representando, bueno, trabajo para la compañía Keolis, pero también estoy representado por la union.

[01:28:41] Y vine acá para nada más saber qué está pasando con la negociación. Otra pregunta también es, ¿por qué no ha sido fair la negociación, si ha habido negociaciones? And at the same time, I feel that we don't care about the county or the same clients that use our service.

[01:29:13] We just need to listen to the situation that is happening in the company and we really want the support of you. So I'll just interpret real quick.

[01:29:44] My name is Walter Velasquez. I work for Keolis at Loudoun County Transit, and I'm here representing the union. We just want to let you guys know about what is happening with negotiations. There have been some negotiations that have happened, but it's been far from fair, and we haven't made progress.

[01:30:04] We don't believe that Keolis values the county or the public. We want you to know that we're trying to get back to work, but they are not collaborating with us. And I see that as unacceptable as a resident because I work at this company, but it's also my taxes that are going to pay them.

[01:30:22] And we need a solution to this, so please get involved. Thank you. Sandra Vigil, and followed by Eamon Tony. Good evening again.

[01:30:39] My name is Sandra Vigil. I'm a London County Transit employee and work for Keolis, this famous company that's been destroying their employees. When you guys gave this company the bid, I'm sure you did it with great intentions.

[01:30:56] Intentions that they would provide service to this county. They have not. They would treat their employees well. They have not. I don't understand what's keeping you from finding these people. You guys say that, or some of your people have said that it's because your contract with them does not allow you to do it.

[01:31:18] Well, somebody needs to reread that contract. Because the contract that we all have been reading, that you guys gave them, says you can find them. I don't see what the excuse that you guys have or you can give us it. We're not providing a service to this county. They should be fined for not providing that service.

[01:31:36] We should be working right now. These people, you guys have allowed them to have the money that we need to get this contract. Yet these people refuse to contact us back, even though we have contacted them, saying, hey, we need to negotiate. We found the money that you could not get.

[01:31:52] And what is their answer? They're dealing with PRTC first. Tomorrow and the day after, they're negotiating with PRTC. We've been on strike for over 42 days, and we're still on strike. Tomorrow morning at 3 o'clock, the majority of us will be there again.

[01:32:07] Where would they be negotiating with Prince William County? When are you guys going to stand up for this county and make them negotiate with us? Stand by the contract that you gave them. Find them. They have not been providing the service that they promised they would.

[01:32:25] Reread that contract that you created with them. There is a clause. We were just reading it right now. You can find them. You choose not to. But you choose for us to be paying the price for that. For not reading that in between the lines.

[01:32:42] Because you believe them, yet you're not supporting your taxpayers. Because that's who we are. The employees that they have out in the streets, it's the taxpayers of this county. The people who are not getting transportation is the taxpayers of this county.

[01:32:58] I am very disappointed. You know, you guys are a party of people, okay? It's not two different parties. You're one party. The party who's supposed to defend this county. And you're allowing a French company to take over us. Well, thank you.

[01:33:15] Next, we have Eamon Tony. Hello. My name is Amal Tony. I live in Loudoun County from 12 years ago, and I work with Loudoun County from 2014. I come here, I ask for fair contracts. I'm standing with the union from 42 days. The

[01:33:50] cold, the snow, the rain, nobody come help. Everybody come watch, but nobody help. I come here, ask for help. Don't leave us to freeze like someone say that. We're not asking for something extra. We ask for fair contract.

[01:34:12] We ask for fair wage. We ask for health care. We not ask for something extra. I live here. I live in this Loudoun. I pay taxes for Loudoun. I'm drive with this Loudoun.

[01:34:31] I need this Loudoun help me too. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anybody else for the 5 o'clock? No? Okay. Thank you for signing up and speaking during the 5 o'clock speaking time.

[01:34:48] It's 529. I do believe we have our Rockridge students in attendance. So if anybody's here for the Rockridge resolution, please come on down to the front. Mr. Laterno, if you want to take it away.

[01:35:17] Come on down over here for being with us here at the Board of Supervisors.

[01:36:03] As you can see, we don't always get to do fun things here, but right now this is one of them because we're celebrating the Rockridge High School Performing Arts program, which has really had some extraordinary accomplishments. So I'm going to go ahead and read a resolution that the Board of Supervisors passed, and it's actually co-sponsored by several of my colleagues up here, Supervisor Sainz, Supervisor Buffington, because we all represent areas that contain students that go to Rockridge.

[01:36:31] The Rockridge High School Performing Arts Team won the 2022 Virginia High School League Region 4C State Championship for the first time in your history, and the Virginia Thespian Festival for their production of The Trench by Oliver Lansley.

[01:36:47] And whereas, the team also won first place in district and super regional tournaments leading up to their state successes and will compete this June at the International Thespian Festival in Indiana. And whereas, at the Virginia Thespian Festival, the team completed for and achieved 33 superior rankings for solo and ensemble events and were selected for eight final showcase performances in front of an audience of over 1,000 people.

[01:37:14] And individual awards were given to, I apologize if I don't get all these names exactly right, there's a lot of names, AJ Runke for Best Actor, Olivia McMahon for Best Actor, Hannah Adnan and Chiara Figuera for Best Puppeteers, Rebecca Hess for Theater Teacher of the Year, and the Technical Production Team and Design Crew for Best Technical Merit, Outstanding Technical Execution, and Outstanding Physical Work.

[01:37:41] And whereas, theater director Tony Cimino-Johnson, assistant director Rebecca Hess, technical director and designer Peter Johnson, and Rockridge High School principal John Duhlman all contributed to the team's success and worked hard on the trench. And the production was produced in part with a dual enrollment theater class sponsored by Richard Bland College, represented by Dr. Debbie L. Sidno.

[01:38:02] And, whereas, the team's ethos embodies the leave-no-one-behind mentality of the trench and seeks to give all students and teachers a place to create meaningful art and be part of a family. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors recognizes the Rockridge High School Performing Arts Team for their victory in the Virginia High School League Region 4C competition in the Virginia Thespian Festival and wishes them the best for their competition in the upcoming International Thespian Festival.

[01:38:29] Congratulations! Do you want to say a few words? I just want to thank the board. My name is Mr. Simona Johnson. The students call me Mr. CJ for recognizing not only Rockridge Performing Arts, but the arts theater because it truly does save lives.

[01:38:49] Nine years ago, Mr. Duhlman and I set out to create one of the best theater programs in the country, and we are pioneering dual enrollment classes. Our students can graduate with up to 15 college credits in theater, English, or humanities. Several of our students go into their sophomore year of college. Over the last four years, we've given away $8 million in scholarship monies.

[01:39:10] Our students have been awarded $8 million in scholarship monies in nine years. One is standing here today, A.J. Runke, who was awarded Best Actor at every festival we attended this year, will be going to Long Island University, Brooklyn campus, and was awarded $128,000 in scholarship money, which almost covers the entire tuition.

[01:39:33] So, again, thank you all so much, and we really appreciate you taking the time today to recognize the arts. I bet your parents are pretty happy about that, too. Okay, we'll go ahead and pose for a picture.

[01:39:49] A couple of my colleagues were not here today and didn't get to sign this, so we'll go ahead and send you a copy with everybody's signature.

[01:40:19] Okay, time check is 535.

[01:40:47] All right, let's go ahead and do item number seven, Department of Planning and Zoning Work Plan. Staff, are you in the room for that one? Do we have staff for that one?

[01:41:21] I will track them down. I believe the item 9K staff is here if you want to go to that one, sir. I will find out what's happening with the DPZ staff. Okay. Are they coming?

[01:41:37] All right. While we wait for them, let's do, do anybody have any nominations? Okay. If you've got a nomination, put your light on. Mr. Locheno. I nominate current alternate Sherrod Tandale to serve as an at-large representative on the Board of Equalization.

[01:41:57] Okay. Ms. Glass, do you have any nominations? No, I do not. Okay. All right.

[01:42:13] Now I'll nominate alternate member on the Board of Equalization, Sherada. Oh, that's the one you just did. Okay, perfect. All right, perfect. All right, is staff here for item seven? Hello.

[01:42:41] Ready when you are. Give me one moment to pull up the presentation. I must have caught you during break time. Good evening, supervisors.

[01:43:14] I am Dan Galindo, the Director of Planning and Zoning. To my left, I have Assistant Director and Zoning Administrator Mark Stoltz and Assistant Director Jackie Marsh. We are here to cover the latest update to the Department of Planning and Zoning work plan.

[01:43:30] The purpose of this item is to provide an update on zoning ordinance amendments, or ZOAMs, community planning initiatives, and to request that the Board of Supervisors affirm or reprioritize the work plan and the different things that are listed within it.

[01:43:46] The most recent updates that we provided you were in May of 2022, as well as in September. Our recommendation is that the board approve the current list listed in tables one, two and three of the item and The respective staff recommended project prioritizations that are outlined in the DPZ work plan So our first item first set of items up is the ZOAM work plan and I'll cover the first if you don't mind mark And then you can jump in if you'd like So our top department priority in this work plan and just across the board is the zoning order to rewrite

[01:44:25] For anyone listening at home who somehow has not heard of that project yet. This is a comprehensive revision and replacement of the zoning ordinance to implement the Loudoun County 2019 General Plan. And it's also going to include other updates that will modernize and simplify the ordinance, streamline processes, leverage opportunities, and address challenges. The Planning Commission, or for the purposes of the Planning Commission's public hearing, we broke the document into two sets of public hearings. The most recent occurred on January 24th. In part two, address chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, nine, a remaining

[01:45:03] portion of chapter seven, and a portion of chapter 11. The commission has forwarded those to a number of work sessions that have already begun, and they have also created a parking subcommittee, which is met twice now, once in November and once just last week, primarily to discuss residential parking requirements. At this time, our staff is essentially expending significant effort to address all sorts of revisions based on public input, planning commission guidance received a date, and the overall need for clarification of the draft document as it moves through the review process.

[01:45:38] This Saturday, we will be holding a work session that will discuss districts, uses, use-specific standards, and a portion of the draft chapter dealing with signed regulations. The next item on the work plan that will be coming to you shortly as well is the short-term residential rentals.

[01:45:56] This is OM to establish regulations and standards for short-term rental accessory use. and a short-term rental principal use. The public hearing was held before the board back in January, and tomorrow night we will be working on the item with TLUC.

[01:46:15] The third item on the work plan is the Prime Agricultural Soil and Cluster Subdivisions OM. This proposes to amend the cluster subdivision option in the AR1 and AR2 zoning districts to prioritize the preservation of prime agricultural soils to support the long-term viability of farming as outlined in the general plan's rural policy area.

[01:46:36] The commission's currently in work sessions on this item. However, at the board's previous business meeting on February 7th, the board also appointed a group of four individuals to a work group that will be trying to address the final outstanding issues from that ZOAM.

[01:46:55] So we are currently working to set up those initial meetings, hold them. Once they bring their recommendation back to staff, we will take it to the commission and hold their next work session on that item. Those are the three active items on this current work plan. The next two, the board has taken action on to direct us to proceed with, but we have not started them actively.

[01:47:18] And essentially, for anything that's not currently active, I am not proposing activating anything at least until the zoning ordinance rewrite is complete on this and all future work plans. So I'll just say that now. The data center design standards and locations will be both a ZOAM and a comprehensive plan amendment.

[01:47:36] TELUC held a series of discussions on data centers from April to July of last year. And back in September of 2022, the board directed staff to move forward with a CPAM and a ZOAM that is in support of TELUC's recommendations.

[01:47:51] We're currently assuming that this would be the first project that's initiated after the rewrite is complete. So if we were to bring this back, say, in the fall of this year, the estimated completion date is shown on there would be winter of next year. So a little over a year, and it all depends on exactly when it's initiated and the timing of various meetings.

[01:48:11] But roughly a year, we think, would be what would be necessary to start and complete that process. There's also a source water protection ZOAM, and this would also be a dual ZOAM comprehensive plan amendment. It's expected to include revisions that include but aren't limited to establishing a permanent 500-foot protection buffer along Goose Creek, Catoctin Creek, Goose Creek Reservoir, Beaver Dam Reservoir, Broad Run.

[01:48:39] Bull Run, and the Potomac River shoreline. We've added it to the work plan because the board had taken previous action on it, but this is not something that we've developed a project plan or scheduled for at this point because it's just not high enough on the priority list. The last I'll note on the zoning amendment work plan is that we want to make the board aware that we do anticipate needing a ZOAM for the floodplain overlay district at some point in the not-too-distant future. The Department of Building and Development has initiated a third-party review of the county's floodplain program. And that review is expected to deliver a set of recommendations, including

[01:49:17] ordinance revisions, roughly in April of this year. That will not be sufficient time to incorporate those ordinance changes into the zoning ordinance rewrite. So that will ultimately be a new ZOAM and more than likely will have time to bring back, bring more details back on this and a future work plan for the board review. The second table in the item are some of our community planning initiatives, and these are non-historic. The next table will be our historic programs. Our current

[01:49:52] top priority is the St. Louis Village Plan. The purpose of this project is to develop a community plan for the rural historic village of St. Louis that will support the community's goals and address issues related to land use and zoning, economic development, the environment, community facilities, water and wastewater issues, as well as any transportation issues, all in hopes of trying to maintain the character of the village. The board has appointed a St. Louis village plan task force that started meeting in July of last year. And most recently on January 31st,

[01:50:29] they actually held a community meeting to report out to the community a lot of what they've been talking about. I know some board members and some of your aides attended that meeting. So based on the feedback received and what the task force has been working through, they will ultimately prepare a draft village plan that we will bring forward at some point in the future, and potentially, depending on the outcome of that plan, also produce a ZOAM if it's warranted.

[01:50:55] The next item on the work plan is the Purchase of Development Rights Program. This is an initiative that would revive a program the county had in the early 2000s to purchase development rights related to a piece of property that would be purchased from a voluntary and willing private landowner for land conservation purposes. This was one of the items that was deferred by the board back in a review of the work plan in June of 2021, and it was recently reinitiated in our last visit to you with the work plan back in September of 2022. We also took a brief item to

[01:51:31] the Finance, Government Operations, and Economic Development Committee to discuss it for considerations for the FY 2024 budget. Ultimately, it's not quite well-baked enough to proceed with that now. However, staff is working in conjunction with numerous departments to try to address issues, including the property evaluation matrix that would be part of the program.

[01:51:53] We're trying to map some of those potentially eligible properties based on different variations of what that matrix would include, research the potential value of a development right, provide an analysis of staffing needs, and discuss some related legal and policy issues. So as it stands right now, we would anticipate bringing a draft of that program back to the Finance, Government Operations, and Economic Development Committee in the fall of this year.

[01:52:18] Our third item is the Data Center Series CPAM, or CPAM coming out of that, which I discussed previously. The fourth is a Suburban Compact Neighborhood Criteria CPAM, which was something that was also spearheaded by TELUC initially. Back in April of 2022, TELUC endorsed a number of revisions, including some draft language that was brought to the board.

[01:52:42] And in June of last year, the board endorsed those revisions and directed us as staff to bring a project plan forward to incorporate those revisions at a future time. At this point, that is yet another item that we recommend the board defer, at least until we can get through the zoning ordinance rewrite.

[01:53:00] The fifth item on the work plan is related to solar arrays. And originally, it has a slightly cumbersome name, input process and policy. Because back in April of 2021, this was started as a board member initiative for the study of solar arrays and some interim policies until the rewrite could be adopted.

[01:53:23] This was one of the items that was deferred by the board back in June of 2021. And at the moment, the rewrite includes new terms, definitions, and performance standards for solar arrays that will be addressing utility scale, the biggest kind of sets of arrays, and site-specific or residential accessory uses of solar facilities.

[01:53:45] There's an area in the middle that we're calling community-scale facilities that we have discussed with the commission, and in a work session last month, staff recommended that a CPAM be initiated for those community-scale facilities, as we feel like further guidance is needed to really flesh out what the expectations are from a policy perspective before we add those to the zoning ordinance rewrite.

[01:54:10] That being said, we'll see what the commission ultimately decides and then what the board, how the board would prefer to handle that moving forward. If we do reinitiate this as a separate project, that would need further board action at a future date.

[01:54:25] The sixth item was also on the ZOAM work plan, and that is the source water protection again. The other potential initiative that has been discussed by the board, at least generally, was a small area plan for the village of Luckett's.

[01:54:45] It may ultimately be a village plan. It may not be, but it's for the area around Luckett. And this came up when we were discussing the CPAM for Route 15 North. When we were last before you in September, Supervisor Kirshner requested that staff provide a recommendation at this presentation regarding DPZ staff's capacity to initiate this project.

[01:55:05] And to be honest, we are currently devoting every available resource that we have to the zoning ordinance rewrite. So we just our capacity is really significantly limited by that and a number of vacant positions we have. So, as I mentioned before, we don't feel that we have the capacity to initiate anything at this point.

[01:55:23] I'll also point out that although this has appeared on a previous work plan, the board as a whole has never really taken formal action on this. So if the board would like us to keep it reoccurring and add it to the work plan in the future, you are welcome to make a motion to that effect tonight. We can also just keep it there and to bring it back in this sort of same manner on a future work plan for you to take action at that point.

[01:55:47] There's really not any reason to do one or the other. It's completely at the board's discretion. The last section of the work plan are the historic community planning initiatives.

[01:56:02] We have the preservation equity initiative that's been broken into two phases. The first is to provide an update, expansion, and reformat of the 2004 African American Resource Survey.

[01:56:21] We do have a contractor that's been contracted to provide the services to do that. Phase two has kind of only generally been discussed by the people involved in this initiative, but it's anticipated that work will focus on specific historic resources and communities that need and merit a deeper level of documentation and or preservation.

[01:56:44] The second item on this portion of the work plan is the courthouse National Historic Landmark designation, and we've worked to prepare and submit an application to the National Park Service requesting that landmark designation of the Historic Courthouse as recommended by the Heritage Commission. We are currently planning to submit that for the National Park Service's Landmarks Commission's next meeting, which would be November 2023.

[01:57:10] We have heard that there may be a meeting that occurs sooner, and if so, we will happily submit our application for consideration at that earlier meeting. As it stands right now, the end of the year is when we would anticipate hopefully wrapping that up. The last item on the work plan is the Courthouse Grounds Path to Freedom, and this was originally conceived as an effort to engage the community in a dialogue regarding the design and placement of memorials on the grounds of the Loudoun County Courthouse Complex. This was also an item that was deferred

[01:57:43] by the board back in June of 2021 due to staffing constraints, and it remains there until we reinitiate it. The last thing I will mention before we're happy to take any questions, the department overall currently has 78 authorized full-time equivalent positions. I noted in your staff report that we have 10 vacancies and did not realize until this morning that we actually have 11, which is unfortunate. Hopefully, the number went down instead of up, but we had someone leave earlier this month that I was not counting. While we have successfully filled all of our

[01:58:20] division manager positions that were vacant, all of our director positions, the current vacancies we have right now are the department's principal planners and senior planners. And that's the level at which typically these kinds of projects are led. They're the project managers for those positions or for those projects. We have three principal planner positions currently vacant and four senior planner positions across all of our various divisions.

[01:58:45] So as I mentioned before, that is a significant constraint on our capacity to not only complete what we have initiated but to potentially include anything else that we might start before or after the zoning ordinance rewrite.

[01:59:02] Okay. So if I heard you right, you're saying you're down some staff and things are a little constrained. Yes, sir. To say it nicely. So I know we have two motions in the packet, motion one, and then we have a motion two, then we have a possible third motion up here.

[01:59:26] Before I open it up to my colleagues for motions, so for motion two, number two, when it says to add in the floodplain overlay district in the village of Luckett small area plan, say if that was that somebody made that motion and passed it, so is that directing you guys to add that to your list and see where you can fit it in, Or is that just going to add it to a list and put TBD by it?

[01:59:50] So if you were to make that motion at the next work plan update, we would come back with some estimated project timeframes and staff's recommended priority level for where it would fit in the appropriate table. Oh, either table one, two, or three? Correct.

[02:00:05] And then depending which table, then you might put a date, but most likely it'll probably be a TBD, possibly? Possibly. Okay. All right. So just wanted to get that clarified before we have some motions flying around. I'll go to Supervisor Letourneau and Brisbane first for questions before I go to Supervisor Turner and Kushner for motions.

[02:00:27] Thank you. We all get questions. Can we get questions too? Well, I know you guys are going to make your motions too. So just go in that order. All right. So thank you for the update. I will say I do worry about this department more than any other in the county.

[02:00:44] A lot of it not for anything that you're responsible for, but the lack of staff in this department really is impacting a lot of things. We are routinely contacted by applicants who are seeking zoning determinations and don't get them quickly, those kinds of things, which I'm sure is just a product of staffing.

[02:01:04] So that's far and away the biggest issue. And certainly if you have any creative ideas on how to handle that, I think they would be welcome at this point. So I hesitate to even bring this up, but when the board passed the 2019 Comprehensive Plan, we talked about how we wanted to update the Comprehensive Plan every five years.

[02:01:26] I know. It's 2023. Now, I've been thinking a little bit about this, and I wondered if, I mean, to me, given that we haven't even gotten through the zoning ordinance, it's not going to be feasible to be in that kind of timeline. But I wonder if a way to approach this would be through looking at different areas of the county through small area plans or just review updates, geographic review updates, and going sort of piece by piece through the county every couple of years so that we don't have one document that is completely out of date and hasn't been looked at in, you know, 20 years. Do you have any thoughts

[02:02:04] on that? I mean, obviously, I don't, I'm not going to make a motion tonight to put this in the work plan, but I think we could use some analysis around this. Absolutely. The state code requirement is just to review there's there's not necessarily a need to do a formal amendment and also I think some of the deficiencies that the staff has seen as well as the board has seen we have started to address in amendments that we've taken action on as well as some that are listed in the work plan I think is a good sort of medium step in between formally going into an amendment right

[02:02:38] now would be is once the rewrite is is completed and adopted we have staff go and try to do a sort of holistic assessment to see what other items might be out there that we have not brought forward to the board yet, at least not in an organized manner, and present that to you to see what else might be out there.

[02:02:56] Sorry to interrupt, I only have 40 seconds. Or, let's be honest, there are some things that are in the comprehensive plan that we already sort of know are issues, you know, because the board has started deviating from our own guidance routinely, for instance. And maybe there's been something where there's been like four applications that we've already...

[02:03:14] So could you look at those sort of things, too, maybe as part of that? Absolutely. Okay. But I still do think that trying to tackle this by planning area or something like that, you know, is a good approach longer term. Maybe after we get through the initial stuff we have to fix right away type of thing once we get to that point.

[02:03:34] Because, you know, I don't want to see us just let this go because we don't have the time and attention for it. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Brisbane. Thank you. And thank you for all your work. uh on these sorts of things um the uh it's my understanding then that with the um the data center design standards and locations we have one a cpam and two is zoam so is that remapping like

[02:04:06] we i thought that we had directed staff to do is that the remapping so i will say at this point i would leave that to be determined for whenever we bring something back when we were first working with TLUC we had we were working in the rewrite as a whole towards a certain kind of design and orientation about how districts were going to work what what districts are going to be in there and we have shifted from that since then so I personally think that ultimately some remapping has to occur or else you're not really implementing what TLUC and the board endorsed but I would like to kind of withhold reservation until we can bring a more fleshed out item to you to detail that

[02:04:45] Okay, and we're certain that this can't happen within the zoning ordinance rewrite. We currently have a number of design standards that are being included. I think whenever we start work on the comprehensive plan amendment, we might want to reopen that and discuss even more, but we do have some.

[02:05:05] But since we are not remapping as part of the rewrite process at this time, it's not something being considered. And it would add a significant extra workload to determine where that would need to go. Okay. On the number six, source water protection CPAM, did I hear you correctly in that the full board has not endorsed yet putting that into the plan?

[02:05:30] The full board originally endorsed a board member initiative related to that. So there has been a formal board action. We just have not, it's not been something we've been actively working toward at this point. So you need a motion then at some point to put it into the work plan formally?

[02:05:46] That or we need some of the other items above it to just naturally fall off the list and then we will bring something back to you to get it started. I see. Okay. And then if I might ask County Minister Hemstreet a question. So I believe it was finance and then maybe it was on consent tonight about the bonuses for hiring.

[02:06:10] Will those apply to our Department of Planning and Zoning and do you think it'll help staffing? So now that the board has given the approval to change the ordinance, Human Resources and the team will go back and identify our hardest to fill positions and then come back with a plan to apply bonuses for those hard to fill positions.

[02:06:32] So to the extent any of the planning positions fall into that category, we would potentially use hiring bonuses for them as well. But it would depend on where they are compared to the rest of our market and the other departments. So one more step of analysis.

[02:06:49] Okay, thank you. Okay, who did I say next? Was it Kushner or Turner? It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter? All right. Kushner. All right, thank you. So the obvious issue here is a staffing issue. What is confusing to me, and perhaps Mr. Hemstreet, with this new money, can fill these spots.

[02:07:09] Six months ago we were at 12, now we're at 11. I think we had a net gain of one in the last six months, which obviously is problematic and obviously creates a lot of issues for the projects that we as a board want to get done. I'm not upset. I understand this is just a staffing issue that hopefully, and listen, I share Mr. Letourneau's sentiment.

[02:07:30] This department is the one I'm most concerned about. As conservative fiscally as I am, I'm willing to put money towards this department to make sure that we fill these spots because these projects, to all of us, some more than others, are incredibly important to us. I want to just touch on the small area.

[02:07:46] I'm going to offer a motion today to include the small area plan to get it on the list. I thought it was actually on your list, kind of the TBA before in September. And I said, that's fine. We're good with that. But now I see you have it, oh, to be announced. So I'm not sure if it got moved or maybe my memory fails me. Does my memory fail me on the small area plan?

[02:08:04] It was listed in a similar manner in the last work session when I was going back to review what to move into the tables. That was just the one that did not have a formal motion associated with it. So I didn't want to presume the entire board was ready to make that decision. We discussed it.

[02:08:19] It just wasn't a motion. In terms of putting it on the plan, because we have made a motion to move forward with the small area plan is my understanding. I remember doing that in the past, so not in terms of the priority, but maybe I'm incorrect, but I'm pretty sure we did. The other thing I just want to stress is, you know, we are really, quite frankly, in a race in the western part of this county, which makes up, you know, maybe half of the landmass, which is our rural policy area.

[02:08:47] And that is, you know, there's a competition between really those who are developers trying to develop by right, those who are trying to conserve by conservation easements, and we're looking at other policy issues to help try to preserve open space. But this PDR program is incredibly important.

[02:09:03] I know I made a motion not some time ago to try to get this in this budget season. Obviously, we are not there. My question is, do we not have a PDR program that existed 15, 20 years ago?

[02:09:19] And can we not just resurrect that and maybe tweak it a little bit so that we can move this along faster? Could you answer that question? We did have one, and that has been one of the underlying bases of what we're working from. But it's roughly 20 years old at this point from when it was last used.

[02:09:36] And so there's just a lot of stuff to verify and update within it. Okay, that makes sense. I understand, along with Mr. Turner's point, I think we ought to try to do every couple of years, visit a policy area, whether it's rural policy, suburban policy, and just work on our comp plan that way.

[02:09:54] I think that would be extremely a good way to kind of approach that. Maybe the staff might want to tweak that, but I've said from the beginning that may be the best amount of time. All right, Supervisor Turner. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I have some questions on the TLUC series, and Mr. Yud, if you're available, if you want to come forward.

[02:10:13] I don't know that, I think Mr. Glindo answered my question. Just to recap, so out of TLUC came a recommendation that we, and this is when we were going to map, we were going to remap. The recommendation came out, no data centers and suburban place types, and that would be covered by a CPAM.

[02:10:29] We would then need a separate ZOAM to back up that CPAM. It was a change, so it couldn't take place within the zoning ordinance rewrite, but we thought we could fit the data center performance standards into the rewrite, but we weren't sure. Based on what I'm seeing now, data center performance standards have come out as a separate process.

[02:10:47] We decided not to remap, so effectively, we're back to almost square one. Now, to your point, we're going to have to do some remapping in there somewhere to implement the recommendations out of TLUC, but I just want to be clear. Do I have that right, that history?

[02:11:03] Are we about where I suggested we just are? The one correction I would make is that we will have data center design standards, performance standards in the rewrite document that you ultimately see. That is the one part we've been able to implement. My anticipation, partly from discussions with the data center coalition, is that there will be some things that we are not comfortable including now that with some more work we may be able to bring back to you at a later date.

[02:11:26] Okay. So the reason I bring this up is right now in Ashburn District, I have four data centers along Route 7 that have submitted site plans. And what I'm really concerned about is by the time we get to a CPAM and a ZOAM associated with it that carries out the intent of the TLUC meetings, it'll be far too late.

[02:11:48] We will have data centers on Route 7 with associated power lines. So I'm just throwing this out. I'm sure you don't have an answer. I'm just throwing out. Time is of the essence here, and I don't know how we get there from here. I am really in a quandary. You're clearly bandwidth limited. I totally get that, but TELUC had some pretty clear intent to say we don't want data centers in suburban place types, and right now, that's exactly what we're getting, and I don't see any mechanism in our near-term future that can prevent that, and so I am open to staff suggestions or the board's suggestions, but just be aware, we are headed full speed towards data centers up and down Route 7 within the next three years.

[02:12:27] That's where we're headed, and so I just wanted to clarify that, and Mr. Yot, I'm sorry had come up because I think, I don't think there's, unless you want to add something that I've mischaracterized what came out of TELUC. No, I think Dan's clarification that there are still some data center performance standards being added to the zoning ordinance rewrite. The ones that will take more time are those dealing with sustainability and energy demand. The word remapping, the term remapping for the purposes of the plan amendment is to change the boundaries of the place types, but that can also be interpreted to others who hear that word

[02:13:05] as the board proactively remapping zoning districts. And upon the plan amendment change, the zoning ordinance amendment would occur to remove permitted uses in a district. That's the extent of the project.

[02:13:21] Proactive remapping on behalf of a property owner is not anticipated to be a board action. If you want that to happen sooner, then now is the time to reckon with it. Okay, I'm out of time.

[02:13:37] Thank you very much. All right, thank you. All right, put your light on it if you have a motion. All right, but before that, Supervisor Glass, do you have any questions for staff on this item? Supervisor Glass?

[02:13:58] I'm going to take that as a no. All right, go ahead. If anybody has a motion, please put your light on. Supervisor Kushner. I move the Board of Supervisors approve the current list of projects listed in Tables 1, 2, and 3 and respective project prioritization on the Department of Planning and Zoning work plan as identified in the February 21, 2023 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item, and I move the Board of Supervisors add the following ZOMC PAM projects to the Department of Planning and Zoning work plan and that the next update of the work plan include estimated project timeframes

[02:14:33] and staff recommended priority level for the projects added, and that is, and I would, because of the constraints, I'm just going to ask that the CPAM for the Village of Luckett small area plan be added. Okay, we have a motion made by Supervisor Kirshner, seconded by Supervisor Umstead to clarify.

[02:14:52] He read motion number one, which is to accept staff's recommendation for tables one, two, and three. And then the second motion is on page 10. And he's making that motion. That's listed motion number two. Number two, adding the CPAM for Village of Luckett small area plan only.

[02:15:10] Let's split that motion. You want to split the motion? yeah luck it's as a separate motion no it's or it's an and it's an and or or we're just adding we could split it all right so we'll take up motion number one i moved that the motion number one in your packet on page number nine that's the first one supervisor kushner mr vice chair appointed parliamentary inquiry i also have an amendment i'd like to offer i'll offer it any time i can add it now as if i further move as a third motion uh or we can wait until this is done Yeah, let's take them all separately then.

[02:15:44] So, yeah, we've got motion one, which is in your packet on page number nine. Then we'll do, after that vote, then we'll do motion number two on page 10, which is only including the CPAM for Village of Luckett small area plan. And then our third motion will be Supervisor's Turner motions, which is on the yellow page, okay?

[02:16:03] All right, so go to motion number one, Supervisor Kushner. Yes, I don't really have a lot to say. I think this is pretty straightforward. I think staff has explained it well. I appreciate it. I think the issues of getting things done really in a reasonable and timely manner really boil down to the staff that you have and the staff issues that are arising, and, you know, we as a board are here to help in any way, obviously working with Mr. Hemstreet and to try to fill those positions, especially as we approach the upcoming budget session.

[02:16:30] So hopefully we can speed these up with some additional staff. But I would say that the PDR program, obviously for me individually, which was part of the plan, I think it has a future completion date.

[02:16:46] I think, as Mr. Turner said, in terms of the Route 7 issue with the data centers, it's really, really important in terms of just a race. And I think this is just one of those extra tools in the toolbox that we really need to kind of speed up and gin up. Obviously, the rewrite is incredibly important and critical, and we have a July deadline for that.

[02:17:04] So I wish you the best. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor Bressman. Thank you. Please excuse my ignorance. I don't see the luckets. Oh, CPAM for the Luckett's area plan. Page 10. Yeah, I'm looking at page 9.

[02:17:21] That's the motion we're on right now. Okay. Motion. So we're only just doing motion 1 on page 9. Right, okay. So let me just ask this question. At this chart that we're looking at right now, if we were to decide as a board that we wanted the data center design standards and location to, if we wanted to flip some of these to make it happen earlier, Is it even conceivable that we could do that and get it done by the end of this term?

[02:18:01] It's March. I mean, it's the end of February, so it's March. And the ability to do all of that work would be severely constrained just in terms of the calendar. Dan has laid out all of the resource constraints from a personnel point of view.

[02:18:20] I would say it's impossible to complete by the end of the term. The time frame at this point is winter 2024. So if you're still interested in beating that time frame, then the staff could examine alternatives.

[02:18:37] But the time to complete by this fall is severely constrained. Okay. So in other words, if we were to flip three and four, you still don't think you could get four done by the fall? I do not.

[02:18:55] Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Yeah, so I have not traditionally supported the PDR program generally, which is a planning initiative in the work plan.

[02:19:12] So I'm noting that because I'm not sure if I'll vote against the whole work plan, but I just did want to say, and I've had some discussion with a few of my colleagues about this, I believe I did not support putting that in in the first place. And we can have that debate elsewhere, or maybe on the next motion, I don't know.

[02:19:34] But so I do agree with what Supervisor Turner said about the timing of the data center initiative, though. And just to clarify further what Supervisor Brisbane was saying was, you know, there's nothing we can flip to actually accelerate that is what you're saying, basically.

[02:19:52] You know, we can't, because we haven't really started that and we're already midstream and the other stuff, It's just, you know, there's nothing that's a higher priority than it that's in the way, right? Correct. There's nothing, everything that is active, I think it will be better to go ahead and complete just to get them off the list and then start up the next thing.

[02:20:15] The only thing that would potentially make that quicker, and I still don't think it would be by the end of the year, would be if we want to proactively go and try to find some additional consulting help. But management of consultants takes staff time, too. Yeah, and then the other thing is we have to really keep your plate clear if we want you to work on that.

[02:20:35] Like, we can't give you lots of other things to do in the meantime, and that's probably the hardest part for us. But I think what I would ask is that you be vocal about the workload issues, particularly on this initiative, and be clear with us about implications of anything that comes and kind of what it may mean for timeline on this.

[02:21:00] because I think the board gets it in theory, but then in practice, everybody's got their things that are important to them that they want to try to get done. And, you know, we say staff get it done. Well, you know, obviously we're going to talk about budget. And one of the reasons I said, I think you're one of the departments that is not, does not have an enhancement and may not be part of our budget work sessions. And I made that comment the other day at the meeting, because I wanted some time to talk to some of these departments that were having some of these staffing issues is part of our budget process and so this was one i may i haven't discussed it with

[02:21:36] the chair yet but i if you're not coming to us i may ask that you do so that we can have a deeper dive not in the middle of your work plan about how to sort of help you and whether there's anything we can do so i'll just put that out there thank you we are coming we uh but at the moment our top priority is a oh you do have one a zoning inspector that would implement um so i haven't looked at so okay good thank you yes we'll talk broader about the just that one position at least for me though so real quick before can you clarify mr chemistry are they one of the the top uh what

[02:22:07] was it five to eleven i had thought there was a zoning position related to the board's um zoning the zoning changes at the last meeting dealing with uh i'm drawing a blank short-term rental is the one that we've talked about the most i thought that position was in that list it is it's yeah 9 or 10 on the priority list that's what I thought so they are coming to you as part of that discussion on the second night of budget work sessions okay all

[02:22:45] right okay thank you supervisor Emstead oh thank you mr. chair I've said this to Charles directly and I've said it to Dan directly so I'm gonna say it here I am fine if we do not complete the zoning ordinance rewrite before the end of this board's term i would rather you have the time to be comfortable with your work on it and the time and staff to do a good job on it so i'm not speaking for anybody else but me but that's where i am on it and i appreciate all your hard work all your scrambling all your attempt to get

[02:23:22] it done in a pretty short time frame so thank you okay thank you all right we have a motion on the table, which Supervisor Kushner made, Supervisor Umstead second. All those in favor of motion number one on page nine, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, and the motion will pass.

[02:23:45] Nine. Supervisor Glass, are you there? No. You're going to vote no? All right, you're voting no. All right, we have eight in favor, I mean, excuse me, seven in favor, one opposed, one abstaining, or one not on the dice. Okay, that motion passes. All right, Mr. Kushner, you want to make the second motion? Sure, I move the Board of Supervisors add the following ZOMC PAM and CPAM projects to Department of Planning and Zoning Work Plan and that the next update of the work planning include

[02:24:22] estimated project time frames and staff recommended priority levels for the projects added and subsection B, the CPAM for Village of Luckett Small Area Plan. Motion made by Supervisor Kushner, second by Supervisor Umstead, Mr. Kushner. Thank you. When we passed the CPAM and the ZOM, obviously this was brought to us by the village of luck it's the the residents there i think it's also critical to kind of get it into the work plan and get it moving simply because we've now got money in for the bypass up there that is actually in the in the cap capital budget and i think it's really critical

[02:24:59] that we begin some of the things that we were looking at you know the some of the fire the old firehouse the community center the elementary school and others and how those tie in for that community specifically especially since we are in the process of widening 15 and bringing it up there this is all going to tie together and I just want to make sure this gets on the plan I think it's pretty critical for that area that's a major corridor people are going through that small village and this was brought to us by the rural tans and other people within the village and so again I'm just simply asking it get get some level of priority I'm not asking that it get completely you know bumped up ahead of anything else at all from my colleagues and i will reiterate

[02:25:39] what miss umstead said too i am fine if we don't get the uh the rewrite uh zoning rewrite done before the end of the year as well i know there's been a lot of pressure but i personally kind of feel the same way i'd far rather get it correct than than um and and work on each portion a little more slowly that is my personal opinion um and i we're not taking a vote on that but maybe that's something we as colleagues should talk about because I have received many comments from the industries out there with a lot of concerns about some of this is going down so obviously the planning commission is working through all of that but I'd much rather get it right and have

[02:26:16] a very good than have to deal with that over the next you know whoever's on this dais and whoever's in your position have to deal with a product that may be not as as well vetted as it needs to be Thanks, thank you supervisor Buffington. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I'll support the motion and I just wanted to comment on the The overall plan as well. I also would be fine if it's not finished during this term Simply because I'd rather get it done right the first time then just hurry up and complete it just to complete it during this board's term And then you all during the next term have to fix it and fix all of these different problems that we created so

[02:26:55] Quality over quantity. Thank you supervisor Brisbane. I thank you. Vice Chair Sains I'm gonna vote against this motion I don't want anything added to the work plan right now at all I don't even want staff to spend the time to type it into a chart like I want I want staff to be working on the zoning ordinance rewrite so we can get it done before the end of the term I don't have a problem reconsidering it I don't have a problem with doing a Luckett small area plan at all I'm I will support it when the time comes I'd rather see a motion come the

[02:27:32] next time staff comes back to us with an update because right now we have a lot of moving parts and i want i i do in fact want us to pass the zoning ordinance rewrite before the end of this term i think that as supervisor turner has said any number of times i think that work will expand to fill the space and you know if we don't have set goals and if we keep moving the goal posts The work will just expand to fill that space.

[02:28:05] So, and again, I will support anything that helps us get staff for you guys and or consultants to help with these projects, but I don't want to see anything added at this point in time. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

[02:28:22] Before I continue on to Mr. Heming Street, Mr. Turner, Supervisor Glass, real quick that you wanted to correct her vote if that's allowed. Supervisor Glass, are you there? Yes, I'm here. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to leave, but I wanted to correct the vote before.

[02:28:44] I meant yes. I'm having difficulty hearing, so I meant no on this portion now. Okay, so to clarify for the record, Supervisor Glass is a yes for the previous vote, and if you stay on, give us a few more minutes. Your intention is to vote no for the motion that's on the table now.

[02:29:08] Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Mr. Chairman, do we need a motion to... Oh, do we have to reconsider that vote? I think we do, by our rules. Mr. Rogers? The note is that you have a correction to a prior vote, so there's no motion to reconsider. You're just taking a correction. All right, perfect. All right, Mr. Hemstreet.

[02:29:29] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to clarify a couple things with the board. The staff, particularly the planning and zoning staff, are working an inordinate amount of hours right now.

[02:29:47] The number one cause of work is the fact that the zoning ordinance and the comprehensive plan are not aligned. And so that creates a lot of work. So to prolong that inconsistency between the comp plan and the zoning ordinance will continue to complicate the work that comes before the planning staff, comes before the planning commission, complicate the applications that people bring to us, and complicate the work that you receive when those things come here.

[02:30:21] I'm very concerned that we're sending mixed messages to that team that's overworked. I just want to ask, if completing that zoning ordinance rewrite is not a priority of the board, then I think we need to tell the staff that because we can take the pressure off.

[02:30:40] We can let a long-term employee who has delayed a life event for himself to do the work of the zoning ordinance rewrite. But if it is a priority of the board, then we need to say that as well because their work needs to have meaning. And they have been doing everything they can to try to bring those two documents into compliance with each other, which, once it's done, will take a good portion of the workload off their plate.

[02:31:08] So that's one issue. The second issue that we get involved with when we talk about the zoning ordinance is the zoning ordinance is a living document. You're always going to have zoning ordinance amendments that come before you because there are rezonings that the community and the development professionals out there and landowners are going to want to bring because they want to bring you something different.

[02:31:35] So you're always going to have a zoning ordinance that is in flux. We just talked about the fact that several of you want to see us review portions of the comprehensive plan on a more periodic basis. Whenever we do that, we will be coming behind that with modifications to the zoning ordinance.

[02:31:55] So the zoning ordinance is not this creature that the board approves, we bring to you the board approves, and then it's set in stone. It's something that will continue to evolve over the course of the government being here because it's land use and it's land use in the community.

[02:32:12] And so I just want to clarify where we are on this and the fact that the number one source of pressure on that staff right now is because the current zoning ordinance as a whole and the comprehensive plan are not in sync.

[02:32:28] And so it's a very important issue, but if the board's not behind it, then we need to go back to the drawing board and figure out something else and let my friend over there go on with his life as opposed to doing what we're doing.

[02:32:45] So I just wanted to provide that perspective. The only other thing I will offer is part of the reason for the consistency in vacancies is because a lot of the positions that Mr. Galindo was talking about were all filled through internal hires, through internal promotions.

[02:33:03] And so while we filled our leadership positions relatively quickly, which I think says a lot for the quality of the staff that are before you, it didn't help us overall because we filled our vacancies internally. But I will do everything I can working with Mr. Galindo and his team to get those positions filled.

[02:33:20] But I do think that the work that they're doing right now really will be simplified once the zoning ordinance rewrite is completed. Thank you for allowing me to speak to that. Well, thank you, Mr. Hemstreet. So I'll tell my colleagues yes to heed the word of our county administrator.

[02:33:36] And if you have other feelings, then you need to bring a motion to change course, which as far as I know, nobody's ever talked about doing such a thing. supervisor Turner than supervisor Buffington thing mr. vice-chair and thank you mr. hamstreet I knew there was a really important organic reason why we wanted to get the zoning ordinance rewrite done and it that clarified it for me so thank you for that I totally agree with you I'm happy to support the motion this just adds another item to the out years of the list and I'm not concerned it doesn't take a whole lot of staff time to do that it just adds another item to the list for the for the far distant future and that's fine

[02:34:10] Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given Mr. Hemstreet's comments, I just wanted to clarify that the purpose of my comments regarding the zoning ordinance rewrite was not to say that it's not important. It's to say that I don't want you guys absolutely killing yourselves and working every day of the week, Saturday and Sunday, and working doubles and all of that to accomplish it.

[02:34:37] Because I don't know what's happening. You might be doing that. And if you're doing that, I don't think it's that important. that you be doing that. I think you're having a work-life balance is just as important. So if you all having a work-life balance and not continuing to lose folks at the rate that we've been losing folks in this, in your department, which I think is because of the workload, then I would rather see us take more time to complete it and you all have a work-life balance.

[02:35:08] But if it needs to be another way where you continue to kill yourselves just to get it done and that's better for you, then I support that, too. I just want to stop seeing losses in this office that I think are because of us killing you. I want you to have a work-life balance, so that's where I'm coming from.

[02:35:28] Well, as has been said numerous times, we are a very active board, so we've got a lot of work to do. Mr. Luterno. Yeah, just on this motion specifically, can we just clarify what exactly it does with the Luckett's plan? I think it's as Supervisor Turner said. It just puts it in the list, but it doesn't assign a completion date or even a priority, right?

[02:35:47] It will be added to this table ultimately. The next time we bring this back to you, it will be added at where we recommend it gets slotted in here. And time permitting, there may be a completion date associated with it, or we may bring it back TBD. Okay. All right. So I'm fine with that.

[02:36:04] On the other issue, I think we needed that Tim talk. So thank you for that. I think what you're hearing a little bit from the board, though, is more coming from a place that Mr. Buffington was, which is just concern that we have this kind of artificial deadline around our electoral schedule which is creating issues for staff so I think what the board was trying to express I think was we don't want you know us to go to such extremes that it's causing those kind of problems and then also candidly I think we're hearing here and there issues with the zoning ordinance and I know Mr. Yacht has really been trying to put out those fires and bring you know bring forward and we're hearing from our planning commissioners that they think

[02:36:42] they need more time and things like that so I think we're just kind of reacting to that but I don't think it means it's not our number one priority because it is it's just a question of whether the deadlines can be me um and then finally I don't want Mr. Yod to ever go anywhere so if that means that you know we need to keep this going forever appreciate that I'm just saying um anyway thank you all right thank you Mr. Kushner you're closing yeah thank you um this appears as we have the votes for this and thank you I appreciate it it's just really important to the to the people of luck it's to make sure this kind of gets on the list and as moving along, and again, I understand you guys are constrained by time, so I don't expect

[02:37:21] a time, but just to follow up with Mr. Hemstreet's comments, I agree that, and I think I probably would preface my previous comments or amend those previous comments I made with, our electoral schedule and those who are running for office should not take precedent over, as Mr. Buffington and said, your work-life balance.

[02:37:46] And so I say that, Mr. Hemstreet, and that's why I think that if we need to delay this further to allow more time to not only make sure it's right, but also to make sure you guys have lives, then I'm happy to do it.

[02:38:03] So I hope that maybe internally within staff we can hear back on maybe those recommendations at some point. I'll certainly talk to the chair and we'll see where we are further after this discussion. But thank you to my colleagues for supporting us. All right, motion on the table, on the floor, excuse me, made by Supervisor Kushner, seconded by Supervisor Umstead.

[02:38:22] All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, motion will pass. Where is that? Seven. She, Supervisor Glass. Oh, Supervisor Glass, are you still there? Well, her intent was to vote now, but yeah.

[02:38:40] Aye. Oh. All right, so are you voting yes for Supervisor Kushner's motion or no, Supervisor Glass? well I changed it because since we're just putting on the on the list we're just adding it to the list okay all right perfect thank you all right that motion passes seven one one with Supervisor Brickman running no chair Randolph the dais surprise attorney of emotion I do thank you I'm with the Board of Supervisors direct staff to report to the Transportation and Land

[02:39:18] Use Committee regarding the feasibility of including the development of a Transfer Development Rights TDR program as part of staff's work to reconstitute the purchase of development rights PDR program. Staff's analysis should include the feasibility of a potential options for using a TDR and or a PDR program to incentivize diverse commercial development in the eastern part of the county. Second. Motion made by Supervisor Turner, seconded by Supervisor Cushner.

[02:39:50] Supervisor Turner. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. This shouldn't take too long. It's not too controversial, but let me just explain really quick. I want to get on the TLUC docket just a discussion with staff to examine a TDR program, and I'll tell you the genesis of this. I originally thought of this three years ago when I was trying to get a TDR program developed, and normally a TDR program buys density in one area to purchase developer rights in another area.

[02:40:15] That didn't work, and I was principally looking at the data center industry because the data center industry was simply buying land. Fast forward three years and I had lunch a few months ago with Mayor Bridge Littleton from Middleburg and he suggested why don't we do a TDR program trading development rights for FAR which reminded me that I'd had that idea three years ago and it wasn't really applicable because they were buying land. What this would do and it's and Mr. Glendo's explanation as part of the PDR process correct me if I'm wrong you have to map parcels that you would buy development rights from as to what the development rights are valued at for each parcel.

[02:40:52] Is that correct? Yes. So that process would apply to a PDR program and a TDR program. I don't want to put words in Supervisor Letourneau's mouth, but my bet is the reason you don't like a PDR program is because we're using county tax dollars to buy development rights. A TDR program lets a private commercial developer buy FAR at a fixed rate from development right parcels that are available for purchase. So rather than those data centers coming to the board, which they have been doing increasingly, and saying, I want to increase my FAR from 0.4 to 1.0, they would simply buy development rights in the West to be able to purchase that FAR. I don't know if it's feasible.

[02:41:31] I would like the staff, as they begin to develop the PDR process, to keep that in the back of their mind, bring it back to TLUC, and let's talk about it to see if that's not a coincidental program. We're going to do most of the work anyway, and if we can just have the TDR as a tool in the toolbox, that might be worthwhile. That's the motivation behind this. It's not intended to add work. It's just when we get to the PDR program, let's discuss TDRs and see if there's a viability for an FAR TDR program. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Brisbane. Okay, so this, I believe, would add more work than the previous motion, which was just adding something to a list.

[02:42:11] So I don't want staff to have to come to a TLUC meeting with an analysis of TDR programs right now in my opinion staff should be working on the zoning ordinance rewrite so for those reasons i'll be voting no on this thank you thanks supervisor kushner thank you chair um i um i think i support this my only concern i have and i i don't know who to direct this question to whether mr turner or staff i don't i don't want to slow down any any i guess momentum that we have in the PDR program.

[02:42:45] So is what you envision as part of this motion to kind of as part of the PDR program bring this as an item, but not necessarily to slow that down? I think within the staff, there was some discussion that might slow it down. And that's the last thing I want to see happen.

[02:43:02] Mr. Vice Chair, if I go ahead, thank you. Yeah, it should not add any workload. By the time they get to the PDR discussion to even consider this, the zoning ordinance will have been long rewritten. It'll be done. The PDR process is not even teed up, I don't think, until spring of 2024.

[02:43:19] It's at least a year out. So all I'm saying is when we start talking about PDRs, let's also talk about TDRs. You don't have to do anything until then. Yeah, and again, I agree with Mr. Turner. And I hope that's the case. I just wanted to make sure that it was made clear that we don't want to slow that process down just to kind of include this.

[02:43:38] So hopefully that doesn't happen. And I agree with the TDR program. If it can work, I think it's a little more complex. But I like Mr. Turner's thinking here, thinking outside the box to add a tool to the toolbox, boxes here, as long as I don't box myself in. But I will support it.

[02:43:54] Thanks. Using your remaining time. Staff, if you want to answer the question, is what Mr. Turner said, is that accurate or how you interpret this? So our previous plan was to go to the Finance Committee in the fall, but the date listed is to bring it to the full board, potentially for full adoption by the spring.

[02:44:11] We did do some work on this previously with TELUC that we can revisit. My recollection is that we ended with a recommendation to essentially hire someone to do further study on it, which might be where we start from when we do go back to TLUC. But if there's no desire or expectation for that to go back before the rewrite is adopted, then it should be okay from the work plan perspective.

[02:44:32] Okay. Still have 28 seconds if you want to. So you were planning on bringing PDR earlier, but now because of this, you'll delay it? No, we will bring the item forward. If we're not going to finance until the fall, as things stand now and we're proposing, the rewrite will be done in the summer.

[02:44:51] So we can just bring them potentially simultaneously. Okay, great. Thanks. Mr. Letourneau. Yeah, so I won't support the motion because I don't support the TDR program either. I think what we're talking about here are higher FAR means higher density, bigger data center buildings.

[02:45:07] So what this conceptually would be is trading non-development of parcels in the West in order to develop bigger data centers in the East. Now, we do get those applications coming in, but my concern is if we are giving away the floor area ratio increases as part of a TDR program, then the board loses the leverage with the zoning applications.

[02:45:32] And I think one of the conversations we really need to have is around the proffers and how we're handling those going forward so I would not want to be in a scenario where we are trading those two things because that's essentially what we would be doing here so for that reason I won't support this my concern with the PDR in addition to the fact that we're paying we're using county money to pay people not to develop is that I actually just don't think it's very effective I think we've had this program in the past we had some financial accounting issues with it a lot of people got well some people got somewhat wealthy from it and i don't think at the end of

[02:46:10] the day it necessarily does what i i don't question anybody's intentions i know why folks support it and they think that if we can buy that development out somebody won't develop but in reality i'm not so sure that equation for the landowners is exactly what what we think it is um and so i'm just not convinced it's very effective so that that's another but that's again that's a different discussion i think for this i'm just not interested in the tdr thing i also get i mean we get a little frustrated sometimes with the constant discussion about how to increase density in the east in order to make up for the lack of density in the west

[02:46:46] and we're seeing a lot of pushback from people in the east about some of these trade-offs that have been made and you know the data data center discussion is real and happening every single day and at some point you know i'm we all have to figure out how to coexist but you know um i'm not sure this is the right answer also you said it wouldn't necessarily delay the pdr program but it is more work right it is i have to revisit what we previously took to tluck as i said we came to sort of a conclusion that we would contract out for someone else to do additional study

[02:47:26] that may be bringing back to tluck and that's where we start from so there's a lot of moving parts it could be more work it could be more work in the same time we could be able to adopt a purchase development rights program and do a TDR program separately if that's the route that we ultimately find work best yeah to say right but again we're competing with other things I mean I'd rather you hire another consultant to get something else done on that list that's already there if you're going to start hiring more consultants so I mean that's the issue right we keep adding things all right all right thank you supervisor Buffington thank you I don't

[02:48:01] personally look at it as an east versus west thing. I think it's a way to maintain open space for all of Loudoners, everybody who lives in Loudon. So I see it as a good thing for everyone who lives in Loudon, not east versus west. So my understanding, if you were to bring it forward, basically you'd take information that you probably already have from the not too distant past conversations about it and just bring that back to TLUC and just brief us on that. When you brief us on PDRs and we would go from there so is that accurate that would be my intention right now unless we find that there's a gap we can is it fair to say that it wouldn't be a lot of extra work you just

[02:48:40] have to find the old work and include it i believe so at this the extra work i guess is to brief it but okay thanks all right thank you correct me if i'm wrong didn't we already have this discussion about pdrs and tdrs and if to move forward not to move forward and which ones from the previous board and then even I think even earlier on in this board tournament we voted not to move forward with one of them correct we did supervisor Turner brought this item up at T luck and as I said we we got to a point of making a recommendation for more work essentially and it was table and we kept

[02:49:17] focusing on the remainder of the project at that point okay and then correct me if I'm wrong and I'm just going to use a an application that's kind of in front of us I don't know if it's the same scenario not but hypothetically the application that's currently in front of us now that we just had the the public hearing on um that application is a data center asking to do a special exception and you know how to get a higher far if we were to do the tdr program pretty much essentially that legislative legislative item would not come in front of us anymore would just be a administrative

[02:49:51] process is that accurate to say if the if what they were proposing would only take um the additional if they are offered by a TDR program and nothing more, then yes, it would not come before the board. It would not come in front of the board on special exception or whatever the case may be. Correct. I cannot support this.

[02:50:09] So, all right, that's it. We have a closing for Mr. Turner? No closing. Thank you. All right, motion on the table to motion made by Supervisor Turner, seconded by Supervisor Kushner. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed?

[02:50:24] Nay. All the ayes, please raise your hand. Four. And nays. Ms. Glass is off the, out of the meeting now, unfortunately. So that motion will pass, was that 4-3 with two off the dice.

[02:50:48] Thank you. Right. That was the last action that we could take up. We're going to go into now the 6 o'clock speaking hour of the meeting. So we'll now begin the public input portion of the meeting.

[02:51:07] Members of the public who have signed up to speak will be allotted two and a half minutes. Speakers will be called in the order of which they sign up to speak. If you are in the boardroom or lobby, please come to the podium closest to you and state your name for the record. The timer on the podium will indicate your remaining time. When your time has expired, please yield the floor to the next speaker.

[02:51:24] If you're speaking remotely, I will call on the moderator, Lisa Kenes, first to ensure you are ready to speak. Please note that there is a slight delay between the broadcast and the boardroom. First up to speak with us, we have Julia Jarvis, followed by Judy Hanley, followed by Lori Wayne. Hi, it's nice to be back. See you all again. I'm Julia Jarvis. Last November,

[02:52:02] Washingtonian Magazine identified 20 D.C. area charities recommended by the Catalog for Philanthropy of Greater Washington. In the category for supporting anti-hunger programs, basic needs, and housing security, they listed Mobile Hope. Mobile Hope assists young people up to the age of 24, both at the emergency level and with long-term support. They also provide help with apprenticeships and with people who are working towards trade certification, which is

[02:52:36] what we all want, jobs and stability for these young people. You might not know that up to 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ. It's how young people wind up homeless. And youth in that group who have support, who have friends, are significantly less likely to consider suicide.

[02:53:01] The facts are there. So we know that Mobile Hope can help vulnerable young people in our community, our neighbors, our children. So why would we fail to help Mobile Hope to keep helping those youth?

[02:53:18] We are the richest county in the nation. According to a study which came out the same month, The Washingtonian Magazine recommended Mobile Hope as a philanthropy which makes good use of donations. The board should vote for scenario two so that Mobile Hope can continue to be supported. To whom much is given, much will be required. Thanks very much.

[02:53:44] Okay, thank you. Next we have Judy Hanley followed by Lori Wayne followed by Julie Culpepper. Good evening. My name is Dr. Judy Hanley. I am the Executive Director of A Place to be. Thank you for your service to the residents of Loudoun County. I have two quick topics.

[02:54:07] Number one is when we attended the Finance Committee meeting last week, I believe there was a misunderstanding or a miscommunication between county staff and the Finance Committee members about the ability of all nonprofits in scenario two to comply with grant reporting requirements. We are requesting that staff clarify to the public that a place to be has demonstrated a history of compliance with grant reporting requirements. Nonprofits rely on their reputations to provide critical safety net services to Loudoun residents. Loudoun's or A Place to Be's

[02:54:45] positive reputation has helped us raise almost 1.4 million dollars for the renovation of our second location at Village at Leesburg. We have been able to raise this funding primarily through the generosity of individual donors, and we have not requested any funding from Loudoun County for this construction. Our second location at Village at Leesburg will be more accessible because 70% of our current clients are Leesburg residents, so we're moving our services to them. So please

[02:55:19] ensure the public knows a place to be as compliant with grant requirements. The second thing is we requested ARPA funding to help us provide music therapy and creative arts therapy to an ever-growing number of clients who are seeking our services. It is important to stress that the population we serve is disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. A significant number of our clients have special needs. They were not in school. They were socially isolated. They were not able to fully benefit from in their IEPs.

[02:55:54] They have struggled immensely from the constant changes, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and confusion in their lives. We have seen real setbacks for these children and young adults as well as for neurotypical youth we serve. We respectfully request that you vote to a fund Scenario 2.

[02:56:13] Nonprofits are known for their strong ability to leverage funds and thus we believe that funding Scenario 2 will have a greater impact on Loudoun residents. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, we have Lori Wayne, followed by Julie Culpepper, followed by Gabriella Murillo.

[02:56:35] We have Lori Wayne. Lori Wayne in the building? Nope. Okay, moving on. Next, we have Julia Culpepper.

[02:56:55] Hi, my name is Julie Culpepper. I have a master's in human relations, and I run the corporate social responsibility program at Mobile Hope. I would love to share a glimpse into a typical day at Mobile Hope. The phones are never quiet, the campus is never empty, and there is always an air of love, acceptance, and hope.

[02:57:16] Last week, here are some of the things I've witnessed. Phone rings, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. A client has been kicked out of his grandmother's house and has nowhere to go. Phone rings again, LCPS. An 18-year-old will be kicked out of their family home on Friday. Leesburg police calls.

[02:57:32] There's a homeless man. Can we go see if we can help him? A phone call from the jail. A client called to let us know he passed his GED while there. A staff member walks in. She has a referral from someone at the gas station who noticed her Mobile Hope bumper sticker and asked what we could do for a homeless youth she is aware of. Staff then helps take a client to CIT. LCPS calls again. They have a family of Afghan refugees that need resources and bikes for their kids. A client walks onto Mobile Hope's campus yelling, he's in crisis.

[02:58:02] Within minutes of walking in, his shoulders relax, a caseworker is supporting him, and he has calmed down enough to explain what upset him. Parker, Mobile Hope's emotional support dog, has inserted himself into the chair with the client. Staff then visits a client at the hospital. A previously homeless youth calls and a loved client of Mobile Hope. He is a deployed Marine and he calls to let us know he is safe. A hot meal is made and served by volunteers and staff for our homeless youth to enjoy with us. A pregnant 18-year-old shows up with no support, no resources, and a due date within this month. Staff then calls all hands on deck to prep for a sterling bus run to provide over 100

[02:58:41] families with not only fresh and non-perishable food, but clothing, hygiene items, diapers, shoes, toys, household goods, and a sense of community and conversation with clients, volunteers, and staff. Staff then arrives back on campus after completing the third bus run of that day. There is a crisis client waiting at the door. He has been kicked out of the cold weather shelter and has nowhere to sleep tonight. What I haven't mentioned is the constant stream of donations, pickups, drop-offs, operations, community outreach, emails, daily stressors, as well as bringing volunteers of all ages and representing many companies into Loudoun County. If Mobile Hope were not here, who would help these kids?

[02:59:20] I'm asking you tonight to vote for Scenario 2 to fund 13 worthy, life-sustaining nonprofits. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Next, we have Gabriela Murillo, followed by Sheila Hines and Nick Roach. Buenas noches.

[02:59:39] Mi nombre es Gabriela Murillo. Me siento muy orgullosa de ser parte de la familia de Mobile Hub y así poder ayudar a la comunidad más necesitada. Cada día recibo numerosas llamadas de personas

[02:59:53] Thank you.

[03:00:27] Solamente me pudo decir su nombre. Yo le pregunté dónde estaba y ella me dijo en Lisburg. Le pregunté si ella podía venir a Mobile Hub y ella dijo que sí. Cuando ella llegó a Mobile Hub y yo le abrí la puerta, ella solamente me dijo, me fui de mi casa, necesito ayuda.

[03:00:55] Yo la vi y la abracé y le dije, todo va a estar bien. Y pienso, como madre, en ese momento se me rompió el corazón de pensar que hay gente que no tienen dónde ir, qué hacer.

[03:01:18] Después de un tiempo, yo estaba pasando por un supermercado, voy a hacer mis compras, y la vi a ella trabajando con una sonrisa. Cuando yo la vi, la saludé y ella me sonrió.

[03:01:36] Entonces, en ese momento yo pensé, eso es lo que hace Mobile Hub, cambia la vida de las personas, da una esperanza y ayuda a los jóvenes a tener un nuevo rumbo.

[03:01:56] Mi deseo es que Mobile Hub pueda contar con recursos necesarios para poder ayudar a estas personas, pero no lo podemos hacer solos, necesitamos su ayuda. Ma'am, I'm sorry, you're only supposed to get two and a half and then your translator gets two and a half.

[03:02:13] Good evening. My name is Gabriela Murillo. I am very proud to be part of Mobile Hope and thus be able to help the most needy community. Every day, I receive numerous calls from people who do not have enough to feed their families. Many of these calls are from young mothers who do not have the resources to buy milk, diapers, clothes for their babies, even some who do not have a safe roof where to live. One day, I called a very distressed young woman who cried so much that she could only say her name. I asked her if she needed help at home, and she started crying.

[03:02:46] I hugged her and told her everything will be fine. As a mother, my heart broke. It is very sad to realize that there are people who lack the basics to be able to live. A few days ago, when I was going to the supermarket, I found the young woman working, and with a smile on her face, I greeted her and I thought, there was a result of Mobile Hope's work.

[03:03:02] My wish is that Mobile Hope can count on resources to help many more families and young people to be self-sufficient and thus build a better future for all. In order to achieve this, we need your help. Thank you. Right next, we have Sheila Hines, followed by Nick Roach, followed by Tom Corral.

[03:03:23] Good evening. My name is Sheila Hines, and I serve on the board of directors of Mobile Hope. I've come here today to share some concerns I have with the solicitation, the scenarios that were created, the recommendations that were made, and the conclusions that were outlined by staff.

[03:03:40] I have five of them, in fact. First of all, at the outset of the solicitation, there were no parameters for success identified. There was no you need to score an 85% in order to be considered. No, we're going to select eight people to be the winners. There was no definition. At some point, staff decided on the number of awardees and cut them and divided them up by scenario.

[03:04:01] This seems very capricious and arbitrary to me. Number two, staff suggests only those in scenario one provide life-sustaining service. How can anyone argue that providing assistance to homeless use is not life-sustaining? In 2022, it was reported that 46% of homeless teams had seriously considered suicide.

[03:04:21] 46 percent. For us, that would mean about 200 kids at Mobile Hope. Further, if food is considered life-sustaining in scenario one, then how is food provided by applicants in scenario two not life-sustaining? Not sure how that works out. Number three, staff also suggests that only applicants in scenario one have demonstrated adequate performance related to ARPA. This is not true. Staff acknowledged in my meeting with them that all 13 applicants identified in scenario 2 were deemed satisfactory. Despite this, staff's implication section, as they wrote it up, focuses

[03:04:57] solely on the risk to the county if Scenario 2 is approved and unqualified applicants are approved. Yet as previously stated, all 13 applicants in Scenario 2 were deemed satisfactory. Number five, the scoring discrepancy on Mobile Hope's application. Two reviewers, one scores Mobile hope, 94%. Another scores us 69%. How is that possible? The objective of ARPA funds provided by the federal government is to help those who suffer because of COVID. Federal legislators

[03:05:31] wanted these funds spread across communities. How is it reasonable to limit the number of awardees, the number of recipients who are going to receive these funds? I'm not here to dish any of the other applicants. We are all worthy. We all deserve funding. And I'm asking the board to support scenario two, which provides funding to the most applicants possible. Thank you.

[03:05:51] Thank you. Next, we have Nick Roach, followed by Tom Correll, followed by Kim Tapper. Good evening. My name is Nicholas Roach, and I'm just speaking on behalf of a client of Mobile Hope.

[03:06:09] And me personally, I can say that Mobile Hope has benefited the community all around. I've seen peers of mine come into the program, and they have benefited from the program with jobs, trade schools, and other good stuff. and I know they also help out with food for the community.

[03:06:25] And I just wanted to come to say that I hope you guys were able to help fund for the program to help out with the community and help out with the others that are in need. That's all I have to say. Okay. Thank you. All right, next we have Tom Carrell, followed by Kim Tapper, followed by Omar, forgive me if I pronounced your name incorrectly, Kuglia, Kuglia, I guess.

[03:06:49] My name is Tom Carrell. I'm a 33-year resident of Western Loudoun County. I serve on the board of directors of Mobile Hope, but more importantly, serve as a mentor for two formerly homeless young men and as a caring adult presence for many others.

[03:07:06] Nearing retirement a couple of years ago, my wife Liz and I were looking for an opportunity to help out in the community. We're appointed by friends to Mobile Hope. After a brief meeting with Donna Fortier, Allison, and Casey, a tour of the Leesburg Complex, and introductions to some of the young clients, we were ready to commit.

[03:07:24] I'm a beneficiary of this beautiful, well-served, and affluent county. As a former Major League Baseball player with a long career with a systems engineering firm in McLean, and as an adjunct professor at Georgetown, I felt I had some strengths to bring to the table as a volunteer.

[03:07:41] I recall fondly many evenings driving home from work in McLean and how there was a noticeable lessening of workday tension when I went through the Greenway Tollbooth heading out to this beautiful county. It truly is an oasis and justifiably described by major publications as one of the best places to live in the country.

[03:08:02] Mobile Hope serves a robust, healthy lunch each day, an anchor meal for many of the young people. I decided that one of the best ways to get to know them was to show up for lunch. It was awkward at first. I could picture them thinking, who's this old guy? Is he with the police?

[03:08:18] Over time, on-campus lunches extended to playing hoops together, getting out in the baseball field, going fishing, attending their sporting events, and eventually off-campus lunches. Through these interactions, I began to see a side of Loudoun County that I didn't know existed.

[03:08:34] I met teenagers and 20-somethings, not unlike my own kids, except that they were unwanted, abandoned, and or abused, and or had made bad choices. They all shared one need in common, a loving, nonjudgmental safety net that would give them time to heal, to reset, to learn to trust again.

[03:08:54] Mobile Hope provides that safety net, counseling, mentoring, training, and job opportunities for the most vulnerable youth in our community. Upon arrival, Mobile Hope youth are immediately set on a path of helping others by delivering food to needy families.

[03:09:10] This is really a brilliant step to help to begin the healing process. I ask each of you to visit Mobile Hope and to meet these young people. We've seen some remarkable turnarounds and success stories at Mobile Hope, and I ask for funding for a scenario, too.

[03:09:25] Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Kim Tapper, followed by Omar Kuljuli, followed by Carlos Arizzi. Forgive me if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly. Great. Thank you, Board of Supervisors, for your time.

[03:09:41] My name is Kim Tapper, and I'm the co-founder of A Place to Be. As you prepare to vote on Scenario 1 or 2 for the ARPA funding, it is clearly critical to those of us in Scenario 2, as you've heard, to make it abundantly clear that if we made it that far, we were deemed as qualified to responsibly and properly use the funds should they be awarded and remain in complete compliance with all reporting requirements.

[03:10:04] A Place to Be has gratefully been a previous recipient of ARPA tranche 1 funding and of other federal grants with a record of complete and successful compliance. We ask... Excuse me, we ask that you all recognize that tonight and realize that though this appeared to be a significant question at the last finance meeting, it is not the matter at hand to determine scenario one versus scenario two. We support our non-profit partners in both scenarios who are working on the front lines every day to make a difference for Loudoun residents. We know the impact of COVID on the people that we are serving firsthand, and the toll that it has taken on

[03:10:39] mental health vies for one of the top spots in the overall fallout of the crisis. Recent studies are finding that loneliness has two times the mortality rate than obesity, and that loneliness is as toxic for our bodies as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Since COVID, young people have had the highest reported increases in loneliness, loss of hope, anxiety, and lack of resilience and coping skills, all of which compound mental health problems and can lead to further complex physical health problems that just continue to deepen the crisis. ARPA funds were meant to address the

[03:11:16] critical needs in the recovery from COVID, and so we hope you will vote for Scenario 2 so that more of Loudoun's community members can get the critical needs met and making it a better and ultimately a healthier community for all of Loudoun. Thank you for your consideration. Okay, thank you. Next we have Omar Kajili. Is Omar online?

[03:11:39] Yes, hi. My name is Omar Kajili. I live here in Ashburn. I'm working as a driver at Keolis. Today, it's a 42-day on strike because we are asking for the fair wages and better health insurance and better retirement.

[03:12:07] What we ask, we would like to ask you for your support and put some pressure on the company to sit with us in the negotiation and finish this strike. We have been here at 42 days a day, which is starting from 3 a.m. in the cold, in the rain.

[03:12:29] And we will stay until we get what we want because we think that we believe that we ask for a fair wage. It's fair, not something extra.

[03:12:46] So we are looking for your support to finish this. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, we have Carlos Rezzi, followed by Christina Kimmel, followed by Hugo Gardano.

[03:13:09] Good night, Boa. Ladies and gentlemen, second for the time. Let me try to explain for the situation for the London County Transit Transportation Driver Employer, for the subcontractor Keolis, Como es de conocimiento, el costo de vida ha aumentado drásticamente y nuestro seguro de salud ofrecido por Keolis tiene un deducible de alto costo para el empleado.

[03:13:39] Intentamos negociar en todo con Keolis, pero no aceptaron nuestro reclamo. Nos vimos obligados a hacer una huelga con la intención de que el público y el condado de London estén al tanto de lo que necesitamos. El público que paga impuestos en el condado de London necesita y debe tener servicio de transporte.

[03:14:03] Son 42 días esperando por Keolis, pero no tienen intención de negociar porque el condado de London no los multa ni los obliga a que brinden el servicio de transporte al público. Si nos pueden ayudar, gracias.

[03:14:22] It's well known that the cost of living is extremely high and it's risen drastically. Meanwhile, the health insurance plan that Keolis offers leaves employees with extremely high out-of-pocket costs. We have tried to negotiate these issues with Keolis, but they have refused to meet our demands, and we felt it was necessary to go on strike so that the public and the county would understand what we need.

[03:14:44] Loudoun County and the taxpayers deserve transportation services. We've been on strike for 42 days waiting for Keolis to come back to the table and get back to work. Keolis isn't interested in working with us. Because the county hasn't fined them, they don't feel pressure to bring service back. Please help us.

[03:14:59] We know you can. Okay, thank you. Next, we have Christina Kimmel, followed by Hugo Gardona, followed by David Painter. Well, sitting here, I had everything planned out on my phone.

[03:15:18] I was ready to tell you everything, but it just sounds redundant. It seems here that everybody has a fight, and our fight seems to help everybody's fight. Mobile Hope has fight, your funding for your park and ride and your transportation, we all have fight.

[03:15:34] And what ATU has taught me over the last 42 days of us being on strike is one day longer, one day stronger. We need to do everything we can do as a group to help everyone. We can't put aside certain things.

[03:15:51] Keolis doesn't understand that. It is what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. And that's why we're still on strike 42 days later in the cold, in the rain, you know, with our families at home, not being, we're going to be begging because we can't afford the bills.

[03:16:09] We don't get what we should get. Everybody is fighting for the same thing. It's one day longer, one day stronger. And we all come to you as the board of supervisors to help us, to let us figure out the right way to do it so that we can get everybody what they need.

[03:16:30] So thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Hugo Gardano, followed by David Painter. It's Hugo here. Thank you. David Painter. And after David Painter, I have Daniel Bailey, followed by Robert Guerrero.

[03:16:53] Good evening. My name is David Painter. I work for Keolis. I was going to say something, but after I heard all this empathy you all have for this work-life balance, we need a work-life balance. I'm almost 60 years old. I'm on that line 3 o'clock in the morning until 11 in the afternoon. Then I work from noon, 12 hours to midnight.

[03:17:13] chronic arthritis i've been working two jobs since i started with keola actually since i've started with leon county this company is dirty i mean the biggest contract they had in nevada fired two in raleigh fired they're on strike in prince william they're on strike here we didn't hire them but we need you all to clean them up i mean we have a choice we're gonna stay in united we have people all over the world every color black white doesn't matter we're one family we're not gonna quit we're not asking for anything above board we just want what's fair everybody else in the region gets.

[03:17:50] We're $13 an hour underpaid. I mean, how much longer can I keep a schedule like this up at my age? It's killing me. So if you're sincere about this work-life balance and the empathy you had for the people sitting here, could we have that empathy? Could you show that empathy to us?

[03:18:06] You know, fine this company. In one week of fines, that we would probably have this over with. They're not feeling any penalties. They're not feeling any pressure. We need you on our side. I came to you all way before the strike happened, said the silver line's coming.

[03:18:24] We need your help now. Talk to Ms. Randall. She understood, said we're going to get the help. Time went on. I'm one of the lead negotiators. I sit on the board. They don't come and negotiate seriously. They came with a 1, 1.5, and 1%.

[03:18:39] 1%, 1.5, and 1% for three years. That was the raise they wanted to give us. Every $100 we take home, we get $1. Then next year, $1.50. Then next year, after that, another dollar. I can't live on that. I live in Loudoun County. And as far as all these databases, if you did a survey and asked what would they rather have, public transportation, or more databases.

[03:19:01] I'm pretty sure they'd say more public transportation. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they would, you know, if you asked everybody in the county. So I know you all concentrate, you got a lot on your plate, but you're going to have to find some time for us because, I mean, we can't live like this anymore. You know, we're not asking for anything more than everybody else in the region gets.

[03:19:20] The same thing. Why is it so hard for us to be treated fairly? It's an issue of fairness. That's all it is. You know, show the same empathy to us. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, we have Daniel Bailey, followed by Robert Guerrero, followed by Tripp Hook.

[03:19:37] Good evening. Here we are again. Yeah, but his arm was tighter. His arm was tighter like that? Tighter. Tighter. See one of them. Same tighter. Yeah, but his arm was tighter.

[03:19:55] His arm was tighter like that? Tighter. Tighter. See one of them. Same tighter. Here we are again, board. I was here December 6th for the same issue. July 12th, 2022, my son was a victim of mishandling at the Luggins Community Center.

[03:20:18] That was my daughter. She was a witness to this. So were other children. We met with PRCS leadership on July 29th. Our daughter was there. That was her speaking to what she witnessed against her son.

[03:20:36] PRCS leadership was there. They heard that. None of you have asked me to come to your office. I've made that offer. There's 106 PRCS programs for child care in this county. They operate in all of your districts. This is not an isolated incident.

[03:20:56] Our children's case was investigated on various capacities by multiple agencies, including the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, where they look for simple assault and battery. To this end, the Loudoun County government should take note that a criminal complaint can be filed by anyone. A criminal complaint was filed for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

[03:21:12] The individual in this case was charged by the Commonwealth for that crime, not the complainant, by a magistrate of the Commonwealth. these charges are not insignificant. It is a class one misdemeanor against an employee. A child care provider of the Loudoun County government was charged with crimes against a child. The child protective services determined this case to be unfounded. CPS doesn't say that there wasn't

[03:21:49] child abuse. They just say there wasn't enough evidence. Virginia Department of Education found multiple things. Whoever from the Loudoun County government that wrote these disgusting responses to the VDOE report should be ashamed. These are children. They are victims. They are not the ones that brought this upon themselves. As long as my children are suffering, I will be coming to this board every time there's an open meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Robert Guerrero,

[03:22:26] followed by Trip Hook, followed by Marlene Chavez. My name, excuse me, my name is Rob Guerra.

[03:22:43] For 20 years, my efforts in community involvement here in Loudoun County have been primarily focused on young people. My wife and I worked on the board of directors at a Loudoun Abused Women's Shelter. My wife, Ruth, was the chairman of the board at the time.

[03:22:58] I also served as the chairman of the board of AFLO, of Farm Less Ordinary, where we helped developmentally disadvantaged people to learn how to get and keep a job. When I went on to work at the Backpack Buddies Foundation of Loudoun, we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to pass through the school system so the Backpack Buddies programs had the money that they need to finance the food provisioning for weekend meals.

[03:23:26] I also served for St. James Church. I managed their Grace to Go program. Every Sunday, we would cook meals at Deli South. Mondays, we would distribute those meals to up to 150 people.

[03:23:42] You know what it was? It wasn't until I joined the board of Mobile Hope that I started to understand the importance of the integrated solution and provisioning they give these kids that allows them to move out of the programs of homelessness.

[03:23:59] It's food, it's shelter, it's clothing, it's empowerment. We empower these kids, if they'll get through the programs that we require them to get through, we empower these kids to break free of the $7.25 an hour work world and be able to get themselves either trade school training, educational training, something to help them to break free.

[03:24:22] Now, if we don't do that, if we don't have the funding to do that, homelessness is not going to decrease. We're going to leave kids in the street. You know, the military has their mantra of no soldier left behind. ours is no kid left behind. We will leave kids behind. We will have to. They'll be living on the streets. Now, who is going to take care of them? If we're not providing them that service, it's going to fall to the county. So your decision tonight really isn't whether or not to fund this programs that we run. Your decision tonight to me is, do you fund it using ARPA money from

[03:24:59] the government to organizations like Mobile Hope through Scenario 2, or does the county pick these costs up. Will we increase the police department? Will we increase all the other organizations that need money to handle these kids? I don't know. So scenario two is where we'd like. Thank you for your attention tonight. Thank you. Next we have Trip Hook followed by Marlene Chavez followed by S.P. Gutham. Well good evening Vice Chair Sames, members of the board, county staff, and citizens

[03:25:34] of Loudoun. My name is Trip Hook and I continue to represent our family's interest in the area designated as the best place for data center expansion in Loudoun County, Dulles Cloud South. What does Dulles Cloud South do for Loudoun? It provides the data center industry space for growth in an area that already has overhead 500 kilovolt lines running north-south, east-west, through the property. There's room for 56 million square feet of data centers there.

[03:26:03] It's taken 30 years to reach 30 million square feet so far in Loudoun County, so that gives us plenty of room for growth. Dominion and Novak have 194 acres down there. They're using about half of that, so they have room to expand as well. Power is available now at Dulles Cloud South.

[03:26:22] Tax revenue for Loudoun County is projected to be $1 billion per year. It could help the transportation problem and a lot of other issues have been brought up here tonight, so I think it's a good reason for folks to get behind it. The other thing it does, it'll provide a generation of high-paying jobs for the National Electoral Contractors Association, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and all the other trades.

[03:26:50] Buddy Reiser and his team at Economic Development commissioned the data center study, and the results are clear. Dulles Cloud South is the best place in Loudoun to build data centers and reap the economic reward for the entire county. Prince William has already approved data centers just south of our property, so they're ruling ahead.

[03:27:10] I encourage the board to move forward with a comprehensive plan amendment that allows development of world-class data centers in Dulles Cloud South. I encourage the citizens of Loudoun to support this CPAM so you can benefit from the revenue to support parks, roads, schools, transportation, public safety, and the community at large.

[03:27:32] Let's get it done. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Marlene Chavez, followed by S.P. Gutem, followed by Pamela Schmidt. Hello, everybody. My name is Berlin Chavez. I'm not going to repeat it again.

[03:27:48] We have all these days being in the straight lane and the cold and the freezing, wind, everything, rain. Because you guys know already, I've been living right here in Latin County for 21 years. I pay my taxes. I pay my house, my everything, my taxes.

[03:28:07] And if I don't pay my taxes, you guys put a lock on my license. So my question is, if you lock my license, why you cannot put penalized to Keolis? It's going to be almost two months without me making my money for paying my mortgage, my car payments, my insurance.

[03:28:26] I cannot use my insurance because it's too high for me to pay. And if you guys don't do anything about it, I will end up like the people who mobile help helps. But they're not even going to help me because I'm not young enough. I have five kids and I have a grandkid.

[03:28:43] Mobile help will not give me help because there's too many people. So we ask the county because I'm assuming you are the people who trust right here. We believe you guys are the ones who are supposed to have to support the families for London County. But honestly, I don't see the support from you guys.

[03:29:01] We've been trying to come every Tuesday right here to see if you guys can do something about it. But basically, we don't see the support. I mean, you guys know already everything. I don't think it's fair for us to repeat it every Tuesday.

[03:29:18] I don't think it's fair for my kids to come with me, too, because my kids are part of this. Nobody's working at my house. My husband works with me, so he's not making any income either. We have two families right here. He have to pay child support to.

[03:29:35] He's not making the money either. Just because Keole doesn't want to work with us. I've been on the table with them, and I feel like it was a slap on my face with the contract they offering me. So that's not fair for my family, my kids, and everybody else right here.

[03:29:52] When it's time for me to pay my taxes, I pay it. But why you guys don't put any penalties to Keole? Why are they running free with that? I think you have to be equalized with everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have S.P. Gunnam, followed by Pamela Schmidt.

[03:30:10] And our last speaker that I have is Muka Benjamin Nama Hindu. Yeah, good evening, board members. My name is Seth Parvartik Singerman, and I'm living in London County since 1998 and started CDL driver since 2006. With Viloya, then it was Transdev, and now it's Keolis. All drivers are safe

[03:30:44] and hardworking since I'm driving with them. We drivers peacefully fighting for basic retirement and health. Since Keolis took over, company cut sick leave vacations half. Lost negotiation between careless and union driver face-to-face, visas, vacation, and insurance.

[03:31:13] My personal view and most drivers, we are accepting it. Riders suffering, careless, don't care it. We all driver request county need to take action to resolve some issues which are left.

[03:31:37] So we all driver ready to work. Thank you for listening for your long day. Thank you. Next, we have Pamela Schmidt, followed by Mocha Benjamin Namahindi. Hi, good evening.

[03:31:55] I am Pamela Schmidt. My husband and I have lived in Loudoun County and raised three wonderful children. Being able to be a parent is one of the greatest gifts I've ever had. Community is very important to me. For the last year, I've been mentoring a young person at Mobile Hope, and I've also been involved with the Graffiti and Silk Program, which is a thrift store in Percival where we are teaching sewing, we are teaching upscaling, upcycling things, all of which comes to be sold for Mobile Hope.

[03:32:29] I didn't know about the Arba Vote before because we had had 12 students from Foxcroft with us who were learning how and what Mobile Hope did and how they too could help. And we were learning about Mobile Hope's mission to shelter, empower, feed, clothe, and give love to these young people.

[03:32:52] My mentor, my mentee, was homeless for several months after fleeing an abusive father. They went to the police and they went to several other shelter areas until they were directed by laws to Mobile Hope. Through them, they were able to find a job.

[03:33:09] They were able to sign a two-year lease, which was very important to them because they'd been homeless in a room in a townhouse. They were given a bike, which they ride all over town in rain and snow to get to their work, sometimes leaving at 2 a.m. in the morning to ride from behind Costco to their job.

[03:33:29] I understand that the funding for these grants is for crisis intervention and diversion, for improved quality of human services, for long-term support, and for prevention and self-sufficiency. I work as a volunteer. Mobile Hope has made it possible for me to connect to my mentee and to help her to do these things.

[03:33:53] I taught her how to drive. My fourth child, not even my child driving with them, that was a lot. We went to do the test using my car, but they found out that their license would be public knowledge, and their father had recently hired a PI to find them.

[03:34:11] So after all that, they didn't go and get their test until much later after we found a way to keep their information private. Their lease is coming up, and they're really afraid that they're going to be homeless again. Sometimes they tell me, I didn't do homeless long enough because I haven't learned how to do these things right.

[03:34:30] They don't recognize their own value as a quiet, responsible person. Thank you for your time. I hope that you will continue and support Mobile Hope. All right, last speaker for the evening is Mooka Benjamin Nami Hindium. Forgive me if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly. Good evening. How are we doing today?

[03:34:51] My name is Mooka Benjamin Nami Hindium. I came here today to first and foremost offer my gratitude. I know that doesn't happen often. Last year, right at the end of the year, I brought up the idea of West Loudon Aquatic and Recreational Center. And I recently read a newsletter online that we have found the land for that, and we're working through that.

[03:35:12] So I do want to offer Supervisor Buffington my gratitude. i wasn't sure how long this process would be previously working with other boards it's usually a long time so just seeing that i'm very thankful like my favorite basketball player said the job's not finished so i do want to encourage you for whatever obstacles may come to just continue moving forward i am very grateful also i noticed while i was reading that that article that the idea of a library has been brought up this was literally the second thing i was going to bring up after. I have spoken with the branch manager for years, Mr. De Plissey, and the previous branch

[03:35:48] manager. I've also spoken with a number of librarians there to compare idly. I mean, Rust Library has like 15 meeting rooms. So does Sterling, so does Gum Springs and Brambleton. They also offer like 3D printers, sewing machines, teen centers. These are all not offered to Percival Library. And another thing, the staff doesn't even have like a place where they go on break. They used to have one room, but it got used up for another program. So these are things that definitely would help us in Percival. I know compared to Idalee, you have found a similar amount of land, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to be able to add this to the plan. I just want to

[03:36:27] encourage you to think about it. I'm very grateful of all the progress we've made, so I'm not saying I want more, I want more. I'm saying it is something that I noticed was brought up, and it could possibly be another addition. So thank you very much for everything you have done. I know you don't hear it often. I do show a lot of gratitude for everything, and I'm appreciative of what you've done. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, that was our last speaker of the evening. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to sign up and speak with us in regards to an issue that was near and dear to your heart. We truly appreciate it. We're going to go into our last item of the

[03:37:01] night, which would be, oh yes, board comments just before then. Thank you. All right, board comments, put your light on if you have any board comments. I'm just going to go left to right. So, Mr. Mr. Turner, you go first and we go down the line. - Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair.

[03:37:18] Let me change glasses here. On 5/7, I want to make a note and disclose I received an event ticket that exceeded $100 for a seat at the Life of Cancer Lobster Extravaganza charity event from Peterson Family Trust. The reason I'm disclosing the gift is because the Peterson companies are bringing an application for University Center Lakeview ZMAP 2021-0022 to the March 15 Board of Supervisors public hearing.

[03:37:43] gift that will not affect my vote and based on a legal opinion from the county attorney this will not prevent me from participating in discussion or voting on this application as the process moves forward on friday february 10th my stamp met with aaron swissholm from walsh kalushi to discuss the application for lansdowne boulevard and i should disclose going into this next discussion that i am a volunteer member of the development committee for a place to be and uh they i've received no financial remuneration for that um and i believe maybe i should check with the county attorney i I can vote on this process, right?

[03:38:15] Yes, Mr. Turner, and you check with me on that. Okay, thank you. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Ms. Brisbane. Thank you, Vice Chair Sains. On February 16th, I met with the Cascades Marketplace Revitalization Team.

[03:38:31] On March, it wouldn't have been March 10th, it would have been February 10th, I met with Cooley and the applicants for the Vantage Data Center application in Sterling. On Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Senior Center in Sterling, I will be hosting a town hall with Willard Retail on their proposed revitalization of Cascades Marketplace.

[03:38:54] The weekend before last weekend, many of us attended the NACO conference, and we learned a lot of great stuff about the ARPA funding, IIJA, and the CHIPS Act. As I mentioned earlier, I'm on the Healthy Counties Advisory Board, and so we had a lovely discussion about the social determinants of health.

[03:39:15] This weekend, actually, for Black History Month, I went to the Claude Moore Farm Park Museum, and they have refurbished the Noakes Farm Manure Spreader. And it is a fantastic piece of farm machinery that I strongly recommend that you go see.

[03:39:36] I know it's a manure spreader, but honestly, it's really cool. And they really worked hard, and they raised a lot of money to do it. But my point is the Eads, the Noakes, and I'm going to forget one of them, Supervisor Sainz. There were three black-owned farms over there in Cascades, countryside area.

[03:39:54] And all of that history of those farms is in the Farm Museum, and it's really fascinating to visit. Also, I attended the dedication of an interpretive sign for Louis A. Bell, who was believed to be the first African-American to take up arms against the Confederacy over at Balls Bluff Battlefield.

[03:40:14] The sign tells his story and includes now that history in the history of Balls Bluff Battlefield, which hadn't been happening before. I also attended a COG presentation, Council of Governance presentation on anti-Semitism by the Anti-Defamation League.

[03:40:34] And I'll just say the statistics that we are seeing now for hate in our nation are alarming. And we've had some incidents in our county as well, anti-Semitic and racist tropes scrawled on our infrastructure and flyers around the region being dropped onto cars at shopping centers.

[03:40:56] These sorts of actions, if we don't call them out, turn to violence eventually. So I strongly recommend doing some research on those things before it gets too late and strongly recommend attending any of those seminars if you have the opportunity.

[03:41:13] I did want to bring forward the important issue of essential county services and our public servants who have filled this room several times recently and want to get back to work to transport our residents across the county.

[03:41:30] I want to acknowledge these transit employees are not direct employees of the county, but they are employees of a contractor named Keolis from France, and they have been trying to negotiate with this contractor now for, I believe you said, 42 days.

[03:41:48] It is time that we resolve this issue. It is time that we honor them with respect and the dignity of work. And I encourage both parties to get back to the table to make sure that our drivers in Loudoun County have access to health care, that they have a reasonable pay rate.

[03:42:11] And you know what? If it ends up being a little bit more than it is across the region, I don't have a problem with that. We could set the standard here in Loudoun County. And these workers also deserve to have retirement, not just matching, but they deserve to have automatic retirement put into their accounts for the work that they do for our county.

[03:42:32] I am getting messages from people who are very union friendly, wanting their long haul buses back. They want their fixed route buses back. And so I hope we can get this resolved very quickly. Today is the 52nd day of the year. We've had 81 mass shootings in our country.

[03:42:49] Since we last met, we had yet another shooting at a college campus in Michigan where three innocent students lost their lives. Two students at the MSU event survived Sandy Hook and the Oxford-Michigan high school shooting, respectively. We are re-traumatizing our kids in this nation over and over and over again because we apparently love our guns more than we love our children.

[03:43:12] Of the deaths this year, 3,432 were suicide, 2,591 were homicide. This includes 31 children under the age of 11 and 222 between the ages of 12 and 17. That's more than four teenagers a day this year.

[03:43:30] Thank you. All right, thank you. And then the family's names are the Eads, Ewings, and Noakes. Okay, Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Regarding item 9M, the future of the Purcellville Park and Ride lot, Is now completely in the hands of the Purcellville Town Council this board has done everything we can to approve everything That's necessary to move forward with building that park and ride lot Tonight on consent we passed an item that says if they don't decide by the end of this month Then we will withdraw our application to do that and the reason we're doing that is because it's been so difficult to work

[03:44:09] with the Purcellville Town Council and because they've delayed project after project for so long it puts our Our credit basically at risk with the funding agencies where a lot of the funding for these projects that have come from So we can only sit on this funding for so long without making any progress And if it wasn't for the Percival Town Council, we will have already been Completely approved on this and this wouldn't be in question So again the future of the Percival Park and Ride lot now rests solely in the hands and decision-making authority of the Percival Town Council And they have until the end of this month to do so.

[03:44:48] I want to thank the last speaker who came up and thanked me personally for the Western Loud and Rec Center. I'll just say that I can't do anything by myself. I look to my left and right, and I share that thanks with my colleagues. So thank you for your support. And that is an awesome thing that we're doing out there.

[03:45:07] Item number eight, NOVAC North Star Substation. I just want to thank the Willowsford HOA and NOVAC for working together in order to come to an agreement with all of the different things that they did agree on in relation to that application.

[03:45:24] And I also want to thank my staff going back for a long time, even back to when Rachel was working with me. We've done a lot of work over the years trying to get those two groups of folks to talk and to come to some sort of agreement on that.

[03:45:39] And they actually came to a written agreement, so we very much appreciate that. And by way of disclosure, on February 8th, I had a conversation with Mr. Kuhn, Chuck Kuhn, on the Western Loudon Rec Center land acquisition, and he had a question regarding prime ag soils, which we got back to him on.

[03:45:56] Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ms. Umstead. All right, Mr. Kushner. Thank you. No disclosures. Just a couple observations of mail I'm getting from my office. I'm getting a lot of feedback on the assessments that recently came out on people's homes.

[03:46:12] We know townhomes, I think, have gone up approximately 5% or 6%, single-family detached nearly 8%. I actually had one call from a constituent who had a 48% increase. Obviously, I would certainly suggest to him to check that out, but we are seeing tremendous increases.

[03:46:32] And so I just say that to remind my colleagues as we enter into the budget season to keep these high assessments that many people are facing in mind as we decide on the ultimate tax rate that we're going to be approaching. Just a couple of events coming up in Catoctin.

[03:46:49] A little news from there. We have on Thursday, February 23rd, Loudoun County Sheriff's Office is returning back to Street Brew Coffee and Tea House in Lovettsville for their coffee with a cop. You can come between 8.30 and 10.30 to meet with Lovettsville's newest community resource officer, Deputy Southward.

[03:47:08] He actually stopped me in the hall at the court today and gave me his card and said he was and told me his new position. I congratulated him. Lovitzville is also preparing for their 2023 Mayfest and Oktoberfest celebration. For Mayfest, they are going to sign up vendors and sponsors right now.

[03:47:24] And for Oktoberfest, they have details, list volunteer roles that they would love to fill. Also, on Saturday, February 25th, the Morvan Park International Equestrian Center will hold the next event in its summer show series. This event is going to be a full day of jump arounds in their Swiss American indoor arena.

[03:47:45] Participants can try out for the course for fun without judges, or they can compete for first through six prizes at each level. The registration window closes on February 24th. Most of the registration spots are already full, but I believe there are still some openings for the 3-foot-9-inch course.

[03:48:03] And that is the news from Catoctin. Enjoy it. All right. Thank you, Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. I have two disclosures. On February 8th, I met with representatives of Westbrook Partners to discuss transportation projects in the Arcola Center area and Arcola Town Center Residentials, ACPA 2022-0001.

[03:48:20] And on February 17th, I met with Colleen Gillis of Cooley and representatives of NFD to discuss Defender Drive proposals, the MAP 2021-0023. A few notes from the Dulles districts. We are very pleased, actually, the Dulles and current Blue Ridge districts, to open Arcola Boulevard up to Dulles West Boulevard last week.

[03:48:44] This was really an incredible effort and a sign of the power of proffers. The Board of Supervisors approved an increase in some density for a data center. It was a buy-right data center, and they got about 25% more than they could buy-right.

[03:49:02] And in exchange, we got the entire Arcola Boulevard project built with proffers. Now, Phases 2 and 3 are not open yet, but Phase 1 just opened at no taxpayer expense. The developer so far, I think, has spent somewhere around $15 million on that project.

[03:49:18] And so very exciting. It finally provides a back way out for the Dulles Landing Shopping Center. So a big thank you to Westbrook, to VDOT, to our staff at the Department of Transportation, and to Van Meter, who did a lot of work on acquiring right-of-way. They had some land in here as well to get across the finish line.

[03:49:35] We started this project in 2015, so it takes a long time. I also wanted to note that this Thursday, February 23rd, is the 10th birthday for the Gumspring Library. They're having an event at the library from 4 to 6 o'clock to include some fun for the family, a dance party, some treats, games.

[03:49:55] It's hard for me to believe it's been 10 years. I can remember standing at the grand opening, the very first budget that I dealt with on the board did not fund the opening of the library initially, so we had to get funding for that. But that was a public-private partnership with Van Meter, actually, also fulfilling a proffer, and it was the first of its kind that we did.

[03:50:15] We later followed the same model at Brambleton, and that's been a really important piece of our community. I want to thank all the speakers that came out tonight on a variety of topics. I'm not going to opine on all of them. I do just want to say we're in a very difficult position when it comes to nonprofit funding.

[03:50:33] And the one thing I do want to just make sure everybody who's here to advocate for Mobile Hope does understand is the board has actually provided Mobile Hope $1.38 million this term, including $270,000 in upper round one funding.

[03:50:50] So it's not as if the county has not supported Mobile Hope, and I feel like some of the communication maybe did not present that complete picture, even though this particular recommendation on this particular process, which will not even be the only one this year, did not recommend funding.

[03:51:10] But overall, this board has provided almost $1.4 million. That's more than almost every other nonprofit in the county, save for just a few. So that's a pretty significant investment from the board. Finally, when it comes to assessments, they do vary widely. I will note from my colleagues' interest, you may have the Fairfax County executive presented their budget today with a proposed tax rate of $1.11 per hundred assessed.

[03:51:36] Mr. Hepstreet presented our budget last week at 87 cents, and I believe that the average assessment in Fairfax County is significantly higher than Loudoun County. So that gap has only widened from year to year. And so as much as we're feeling pressures, I do like to remind folks to look around the region because of data centers and other management decisions we've made, we've done a pretty good job here.

[03:52:01] When I got on the board in 2012, the tax rate was $1.28.5. So we have been able to lower it pretty significantly to keep pace with those rising assessments. But this year, it's going to be really difficult to do that for sure. Thank you. All right, thank you.

[03:52:17] Mandatory disclosures. My staff and I met with the Vantage Data Center applicants on February 10th. As always, traditionally I like to say, like I said a little bit earlier, thank you again for everybody that took the time to sign up to speak with us today. You could have been anywhere else, but you chose to be with us to speak about an issue that was near and dear to your hearts.

[03:52:34] We appreciate that. One thing that I've noticed tonight and other times, when people mention Loudoun County, they always mention this stat that we are the richest county in America. Please stop saying that stat. Because it's not true.

[03:52:49] Because if we were truly the richest county in America, we wouldn't need Loudon Hunger Relief. We wouldn't need Tree of Life. We wouldn't need Della South. We wouldn't need Loudon Volunteer Caregivers. We wouldn't need Mobile Hope. We wouldn't need Loudon Education Foundation. We wouldn't need NMED and Crossroad Jobs and so many others, great nonprofits and the work that you guys do every single day.

[03:53:09] Because if we were truly the richest county in America, everybody would not need these type of services. The reason why we're the richest, quote unquote, and again, I hate that statement, is because when you take mom and dad's income and they're doing pretty well for themselves, working in various opportunities in their lives, you get the average median income.

[03:53:36] Again, that's not everybody's story. Not everybody's mom and dad is making $120K or $195K plus or whatever, living in McMansions. There are some folks that are working two or three jobs. We heard about that earlier today. So stop saying that, because that stat is not accurate.

[03:54:01] So anyway, with that, we have one last item, and that is item 9K. Staff, if you're in the room, please come on down.

[03:54:19] Good evening. Good evening, Vice Chairman Sains and members of the board. I'd like to open by clarifying some comments and responding to some questions that came up both in the finance and finance committee meeting and since that time.

[03:54:45] First, staff was asked, why didn't we use the regular nonprofit grant program methodology with the recommendations? And we have several reasons. Number one, the ARPA process this round, we did not have a limit to the requests that nonprofits could ask for, whereas in the regular nonprofit process, we do.

[03:55:09] This funding was earmarked for life-sustaining service, and staff did not want to limit the request if the nonprofit had the ability to show the need. Also, if we follow the regular nonprofit grant process relative to funding recommendations, the higher the score, the higher the funding recommendation would have been.

[03:55:32] And in this instance, only four nonprofits would have been able to be recommended because the highest score was about 95 and the top score would have received 95 percent of their requests and in this particular scenario it would have been close to a million dollars just for one so that was why we did not use the normal process secondly staff provided two funding recommendation scenarios the first recommending eight non-profits with larger awards and the

[03:56:10] second recommending 13 non-profits. The non-profits in both scenarios met the qualifications to be considered for funding. Staff articulated that the non-profits would move from a sub-grantee status to a sub-recipient status, which would require greater compliance requirements. This is the case for both scenarios or all the non-profits that are recommended. Secondly, we received comments from several nonprofits and board members about Scenario 2 and the five additional nonprofits that were added.

[03:56:49] To be clear, all nonprofits, including the five nonprofits added to Scenario 2, met the qualifications to be recommended for funding. We also received some questions today relative to our reviewer process, so I wanted to go over those with you quickly.

[03:57:10] We had one reviewer that looked at all the applications for eligibility. That's to make sure that they were a 501c3, that their application was complete, et cetera. Then we had two separate reviewers that actually scored each application independently.

[03:57:33] We also had one reviewer that scored the applications relative to the financial health. And that reviewer did it for all 27. So the two reviewers that I mentioned for each of the nonprofits, we actually had 10 for all, we had 27 applications total.

[03:57:53] So we had 10 what we call subject matter experts that reviewed the applications, but we assigned two for each application. So some of them reviewed like five or, had a total of five or six applications that they reviewed, but it was only two per application.

[03:58:11] And that was for all of the applications. Lastly, we had another facilitator that met with the two to have a consensus meeting to talk about their scores, so they can either defend their scores relative to what they had down and so forth.

[03:58:33] So it was a very deliberate process. Again, we had one reviewer that reviewed for eligibility. We had two reviewers that actually scored the application. We had one reviewer for all 27 that scored the applications only for financial health.

[03:58:50] And then we had a consensus meeting with a facilitator. So staff does have a presentation. We are happy to provide the presentation, or we can go right to questions.

[03:59:08] Does everybody want to see the presentation, or do you want to go jump into the questions? You want the presentation, or do you want to go straight to questions? All right, questions. All right, put your light on if you have questions. Mr. Letourneau.

[03:59:24] Okay, so I know we're not going to have a public discussion about every individual application, and I don't want to do that. But there's obviously a case where perhaps there were two scores that were different, and then there was a facilitator seeking to provide consensus. So is it possible that in some cases there just simply couldn't be consensus?

[03:59:45] That's correct. Okay. And staff reviewed the decisions made by each of those independent scorers, and found them both to be valid in terms of their process, methodology, qualifications, those kinds of things?

[04:00:03] Correct. They just reached a different conclusion? Correct. Okay. I'm not going to get into the reasons for that conclusion, but were they valid reasons, in your opinion? In my opinion, yes. Okay. Mr. Turner.

[04:00:19] Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. When I was at Military Officers Association, I was charged with the responsibility for five years to stand up the foundation, and I had to design the grant program. The first time we sent out the grant program, we used, I believe, seven judges to judge each application.

[04:00:38] And we did that specifically. And when we got our first results back, there was a clear line of demarcation between the people who qualified for the grant and the people who didn't. It happened to fall. 75% was a clear dividing line. And then we divided the ones above the line into quartiles, and bottom quartile got 25% of what they asked for.

[04:00:57] Top quartile got 100% of what they asked for, and we divided the money up that way. When you only have two evaluators scoring an application, the results of that evaluation, in my judgment, based on my statistics training and everything else about nonprofit grant, that is an invalid conclusion.

[04:01:14] And I don't mean that in any way pejoratively. A sample size of two is not enough to arrive at the kind of implied detail that we have to say, these eight get funding and these other five do not. It's not that the variation about the mean with a 25-point spread between one evaluator and another evaluator is plus or minus 12.5%.

[04:01:36] That is huge variation about the mean, and all it means is they're eligible for funding. To then go from this one's more eligible than this one, this one got 88 and shouldn't get funding, this one got 92 and should get funding, is a jump in specificity of the data that is way not justified.

[04:01:54] It's just not justified. In my judgment, you can't arrive at an objective determination with only two evaluators for each application. You simply can't. The downside of this is not just the fact that it implies a specificity in the judgment between Group A and Group B, but it sets up exactly the dynamic that we saw here tonight with our speakers and exactly the dynamic we're seeing in the community.

[04:02:23] We're inadvertently setting up our nonprofit community for the A team and the B team. And I think we are creating real insidious damage in the nonprofit community in Loudoun by saying, these nonprofits are the A team and these are the B team. Especially when I think the underlying way that we evaluated these proposals doesn't support that kind of a conclusion.

[04:02:46] So I'm pretty strongly in favor of option two for no other reason than the fact that I don't think the data, that we can imply the granularity of data to say, these eight get funding and these five don't get any funding. I just don't think we can do it based on the matter of the way we evaluate it.

[04:03:03] I know we're still growing on this. I don't know if this is the way we do our normal grant process, but I think we have to come up with an objective process where you draw the line and everybody above the line gets some kind of proportional funding. I know there's a risk with some of them, presumably for reporting for the federal grants, but I think we can work with them and still make it work under option two.

[04:03:23] Thank you. Okay. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Vice Chair Sains. I want to start off by saying that I have faith in the process as you described it. I want to thank you for all of your hard work, and I want to apologize for some of the slings and arrows that have happened since last week's vote.

[04:03:46] I want to specifically apologize because I think my line of questioning might have brought out some of those doubts in the process, and I will apologize for that. I was very, very concerned about having some direct grantees that might have a higher threshold of reporting data to the U.S. Department of Treasury.

[04:04:10] Okay, this is not the Loudoun County government. This is, I mean, not that we're not great and all that, but this was the U.S. Department of Treasury, and I needed to know what the risk was. You know, I didn't know if the risk was, you know, $26,000 that might go to Crossroads Jobs, or was it the $1 million that we were thinking about sending to somebody else?

[04:04:31] How much would the county be on the hook for? Staff answered that question for me very satisfactorily in my follow-up conversations with staff. So I want to defend our staff right now because you guys do an excellent job at everything that you do, in my opinion.

[04:04:48] So thank you for that. My one question is, and something that did come up that I'm a little bit concerned about in some of the conversations I've had with our nonprofits, when we're doing our grant funding application, and I know this is wholly separate, but when we're doing our grant funding application and analysis, is there a consideration for other, how do I want to put this, other, concessions isn't the right word.

[04:05:14] Do they have to report other things they're getting from the county other than the grant funding? For example, are there other fees that they don't have to pay to the county, and is that reported in this project? In other words, that they actually have a relief from some of their financial burdens, whereas some of the other nonprofits don't.

[04:05:37] Is that considered? Not in the scoring, it's not. We do look at how much funding that the particular nonprofit has received, whether it's from the Community Development Block Grant Program.

[04:05:56] Because that helps legitimize the organization. That's correct. Right. Okay. All right. I might want to have another conversation about that because we are, as a county, providing relief in other areas to some of our nonprofits and in some ways makes it a little bit less fair to then also give them more money, in my opinion, in our grant process, if that makes sense.

[04:06:18] So I do want to explore that a little bit. I'll have a few other comments during the motion. Thank you, Vice Chair Sains. Thank you, Madam Chair. Excuse me. Thank you, Ms. Bricksman. You missed it. Don't worry. All right.

[04:06:40] So nobody else has anything? Okay. Yes. Is there a motion? I will. Well, yes. We're probably going to have, well, yes, depending on how that motion goes. All right. We'll go to the finance chair for a motion.

[04:06:57] I move the recommendation of the Finance, Government Operations, and Economic Development committee that the Board of Supervisors funds Scenario 1 for nonprofit organizations. This provides larger awards to fewer organizations that have demonstrated adequate performance related to ARPA outcomes, are in compliance with federal reporting requirements, and support

[04:07:36] emergency services for residents disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, as outlined in Table one of the February 21, 2023 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item. Motion made by Supervisor Umstead, seconded by Supervisor Letourneau.

[04:07:56] Ms. Umstead, you're opening. Thank you. There is no doubt that Mobile Hope does a tremendous amount of good work, but in order to fund Mobile Hope, we have to take $135,000 from Loudoun Cares, $80,000 from Laws, Loudoun Abused Women's Center, $149,000 from InMed, $13,000 from the Dulles South Food Pantry,

[04:08:31] $9,000 from Seven Loaves, and $200,000 from Northern Virginia Family Services. i'm not willing to take that much money from all of those very very worthy non-profits even to help out an equally worthy non-profit so i will be supporting scenario one thank you okay thank you miss i'm studying uh miss brixman uh thank you vice chair saynes um i i won't be supporting this motion as i said in finance i have always pretty much been okay with scenario number two um and i

[04:09:10] said that on the dais on tuesday night i just had to have a couple questions answered from staff i have i am satisfied with those answers i don't like framing this as if we would be taking a piece of pie off one non-profit's plate and putting a piece of pie on another non-profit's plate if we vote for scenario number two the non-profits have not been budgeting to this money this is this is money that we happen to have that we can distribute and I would rather distribute it to more nonprofits and help more people so I'll be voting no on

[04:09:47] this motion thank you mr. Turner thank mr. vice-chair first of all let me let me clarify I know how hard this is for staff so I truly did not intend my comments to be in any way pejorative I hope you didn't take it that way I I disagree on the methodology that you use.

[04:10:03] That's all it is. When my colleague, Supervisor Letourneau, my colleague, Supervisor Umstadt, quote, how much we've given Mobile Hope in the past, or cite the individual nonprofits we've been taking money away from, we are playing favorites. The instant the name of a nonprofit in your personal consideration enters the discussion, you are playing favorites.

[04:10:25] You are taking it out of the system. The system is set up. What I'm challenging here is not favorite A or B. What I'm challenging is the efficacy of the methodology that was used in this case. So I'm saying because I believe the efficacy in this methodology is suspect, the only fair way to do it is to give a little bit of money to every nonprofit that qualified.

[04:10:49] But then to selectively say, so no, no, no, I don't want to hurt this nonprofit, but I'm willing to hurt this nonprofit. it. Now you're injecting subjective personality decisions into the discussion that I think are completely inappropriate. Understand, I absolutely believe you have to stick to the objectivity of the process, but I question the efficacy of this methodology in this case, and that's why I really support Option 2. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Letourneau. Thank you. Well, actually, Mr. Turner, so I made a point of saying what I said about the mobile health funding and my board member comments

[04:11:23] for exactly that reason because i didn't want to comment specifically on any of the individual organizations in this item for that reason because i agree with you you can't get into this and play favorites and that's that's that's the problem for me and that's why i have always supported the staff recommendation as long as we conduct some oversight of it and it's it's it's valid from a process standpoint. Now, I understand there are those who disagree with the outcome of it, but I can't judge that because I'm not in the room. I'm not a professional. I don't know how

[04:12:00] to judge that. That's why we have the process set up the way that we do. So I have just been super reluctant to subjugate my own opinion on top of what staff is recommending to us in this topic, because I was here for those days on the board of supervisors and nobody else was, thankfully, that you had to experience that, and it was not a fun place to be.

[04:12:22] So I totally respect that Supervisor Turner is coming at this from the point where he thinks that the process is not right. I haven't gotten to that point yet where I believe that. There were 27 applications that we received, so there are the majority of those in Scenario 1 and over half even in Scenario 2 are going to walk away without any funding at all.

[04:12:47] And so that's why this is so difficult. But I will stick with the staff recommendation, as I always have, and also understanding that this is not the only opportunity for funding. And one thing I think that we've been good about, and correct me if I'm wrong, is working with applicants every time we go through one of these processes to do sort of an after action on it and understanding why the scores were where they were and what can change for future applications.

[04:13:16] And that's what we should do. So that's why I would support Supervisor Umstead's motion. All right, Mr. Kushner. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm going to not support this motion. I'll tell you why my thinking process is. I agree with a lot of what has been said.

[04:13:33] I don't think we should take any one particular organization into consideration. I don't think that is really the process. But remember, I have to go back and think, what are these funds for? And these funds are ARPA funds that have come into our county. I appreciate the staff prefers one option over the other. but they've given us two options by which to choose from.

[04:13:51] And based upon that, my analysis is when we include more organizations within that funding. Now, I think if staff had come and said, look, this is the only one and here's why, it would have been harder for me to make this argument or consideration. But we do have a second one here, which is a valid one.

[04:14:08] Otherwise, you wouldn't have made that as an option. And ARPA, this money is really to spread throughout the community. And I think it's going to reach more people and benefit more people if it's spread throughout more organizations in this particular situation. And so I'm going to support scenario two if this fails and another motion is made.

[04:14:27] I do understand all the arguments. I do appreciate those who came out from, well, specifically other organizations. I don't see this as taking it from other organizations because nobody's gotten it yet. It's just a matter of how we're going to distribute it. I don't think we're not picking winners and losers.

[04:14:43] We're simply saying, how is this money best spent? And I think it's best spent through a broader group, which was one of the scenarios that we were given to by staff. And so, therefore, I support scenario two. Okay, Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For a lot of the same reasons, Mr. Kirshner just mentioned I'm going to support this motion.

[04:15:03] I almost always go with staff on this. You guys are in a no-win situation. Since I've been here, every time we do this, some group comes and says we did it wrong and they're getting nothing and they need funding, too. And I generally go with staff, and I understand.

[04:15:18] We try each time that that happens, what I just explained, we try and change it a little bit here or there to make it for the better. And then all I've seen is that it just changes which group comes at the end and says we didn't get any funding, what about us? And the reason I'm going to vote for number two this time is because Supervisor Turner brought out the fact, which I believe is a fact, that there was only two people who actually scored.

[04:15:46] for the main part of the score and with those two scores being so different it's it just makes it hard for me I know at my agency outside of here we recently updated our process for the promotional process and there's about 10 people who do the scoring for each person that is considered and part of the reason there's the number 10 is because they throw out the top score and the bottom score so in the way we're currently doing it I guess we don't and correct me if I'm wrong staff but it seems like we don't have a real opportunity from those from the

[04:16:21] standpoint of those two folks who took a look at it and scored it to throw out the top and bottom score and so I know it's probably more work if we add more people to review each of these and you don't have enough people to do all of that and we're overworking you but in this case I just wanted to explain why I'm voting differently I appreciate you all's work as always and again I feel like we are in a no-win situation you all are in a no-win situation and we just try and keep trying to fix it to get it right and we never get it right but anyway that explains why i'm voting for

[04:17:00] two thanks okay thank you tony yes all right i want to support whose motion is yours correct i'm voting no yeah you because i support scenario too mr buffington i love our staff and you did nothing wrong and thank you all all right so yeah i'm going to well first i'll just say It's not fun.

[04:17:29] Plain and simple, it's not fun. I wish the public didn't see the staff report and if we could do a close-up, but we can't do a closed session on this. But for folks to see scenario one, then you see scenario two, and then you look and you see, oh, okay, if we vote for scenario one, these many folks get it.

[04:17:45] If you vote for scenario two, these many folks get it. But then if I'm on scenario one, and I'm just going to use arbitrary numbers here, if I was awarded $1,000, but then with scenario two, my $1,000 went down to $600, if you're in scenario one you're not going to be happy about scenario two so then what happens we have one organization that will rally send emails saying vote for us thankfully there's some other organizations who don't do that and then they rally and get their supporters and flood our inboxes

[04:18:21] phone calls and the like then we are having a fight between the non-profits which essentially is happening but you're just not hearing from the other folks for whatever reason they're choosing not to speak up but you have other folks who decide to and I'll be honest with you the way it's handled is not appropriate the displays are not appropriate you all do a great job every single

[04:18:57] non-profit that we have in Loudoun County does a great job I do not put any above anybody else you guys are on an equal footing with me my eyes you all do a great job we appreciate the work that you do day in and day out to our to our community work that you guys do make our community better so please stop with the attacks the displays because all you're doing is fighting against

[04:19:31] your sibling so when and this is a different process than what we're going to be having down in a few months but when that time comes for our normal non-profit grant funding process when I have some conversations with staff and I'll be making a motion to direct staff to do things just a little bit different because I can't take this fighting anymore really can't So I'll be supporting Scenario 2, and the only reason why is because this is just, again, different than our nonprofit grant funding process.

[04:20:05] This is money that was not expected. It does pay me that we are, and people saw the report, that we are taking some numbers away from others, but I guess somebody mentioned earlier, technically the money has not been given out, but I'll be supporting Scenario 2 when the time comes.

[04:20:21] Thank you. All right, we all, oh, wait, I'm still getting to closing. I would simply, in closing, like to thank staff very much for all your hard work. And I know you put a lot of thought and a lot of expertise in, and I appreciate it.

[04:20:40] Thank you. Okay, we have a motion on the table made by Supervisor Umstead, seconded by Supervisor Letourneau. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. That motion would fail with a vote of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 2, and 2 off the dice.

[04:20:57] Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move the Board of Supervisors fund Scenario 2 for nonprofit organizations. This provides awards to organizations that have demonstrated adequate performance related to ARPA outcomes, are in compliance with federal reporting requirements, and support emergency services for residents disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

[04:21:22] Motion made by Supervisor Turner for Scenario 2, seconded by Supervisor Brisbane. Mr. Turner, your opening. I have no opening. I think we've talked at all. all right anybody else i have a few comments yes um i just want to say guys staff told us their process it wasn't just two people scoring they had one person review the applications for the details to make sure they were all put together correctly then they had two people score it then they had a third person review again and then they had a consensus meeting with a facilitator

[04:21:57] an outside facilitator so i just want to erase that misnomer that this was just two people scoring it there was a process and it wasn't just two people i do agree that maybe we should work out some of the finer details i don't love two scenarios but i i want to make sure that we are all in in understanding that um and i also vice chair saynes if you'll just give me a moment I want to also comment on this wealthiest county thing that people keep saying.

[04:22:31] We are not the wealthiest county. Wealth is determined by your assets, your savings, your IRAs, your land. The rating is for our area median income.

[04:22:50] Just because we have the highest area median income does not mean we have the wealthiest population in the country. Wealth is something different than your salary. We have a very, very high, high cost of living here.

[04:23:07] So what's left over after you pay all your bills, your mortgage, buy all your food, get your kids in sports or whatever, that's what you have left. And that may not mean that you're wealthy. So I have to agree with Vice Chair Sains that I would really like it if people would stop calling us the wealthiest county.

[04:23:27] You can't be the wealthiest county if your salary doesn't cover all of your expenses. And clearly in our county, the salaries aren't covering all the expenses because we have all these nonprofits with so much work to do. Thank you, Vice Chair Sainz.

[04:23:43] Okay, thank you. Ms. Umset. Thank you to both Vice Chair Sainz and Supervisor Briskman because I think those words were necessary, and I agree with them. I will be voting for this as House Scenario 1 lost.

[04:24:03] I do regret that some of the nonprofits who scored highly will not be getting as much in funding under Scenario 2. But we need to give money to the worthy nonprofits who applied, so I will support this motion.

[04:24:24] Okay, thank you. All right, Mr. Kearney, do you have a closing? No closing, thank you. All right, all in favor of the motion for scenario two, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion will pass 7-02 with Chair Rannell and Supervisor Glass off the dais.

[04:24:41] And do we have any other business? Anybody have any regional updates they'd like to provide? No. All right, well, that's it. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com