Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Finance/Government Operations and Economic Development Committee Capital Improvement Program Work Session, Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 1h 49m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7200
Agenda (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=73&clip_id=7200

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:06:50] I would like to call to order the February 28, 2023 Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Finance Government Operations and Economic Development Committee CIP work session. The room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, switch your hearing aids to telecoil mode.

[00:07:07] If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one. The focus of tonight's meeting will be our first work session on the FY2023 to FY2028 amended capital improvement program.

[00:07:22] Each committee member will have three minutes for questions each round with as many rounds as we need. We received a packet last night that included responses to most of our questions submitted to finance and budget staff. The intent of tonight's work session is to provide staff direction on any funding scenarios to produce for the next CIP work session on March 8th.

[00:07:45] So I want to make a couple comments before we get into this. First of all, thank you to our committee members for being here. We made quorum. Second, thank you to Supervisor Glass for attending as well.

[00:08:04] It's always great to see you. We're going to go a little bit out of order. We're going to take the schools first, and then we'll move on to the CIP and then Waterford. But I am going to turn this over to Tim Hempstreet shortly.

[00:08:23] I just want to say I think all of you are aware that we really, really need tonight to be the last time to bring up any new ideas or projects in the capital projects area. Because staff needs time to research and prepare.

[00:08:40] And if we wait to bring anything up at the next meeting in March, it is going to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for staff to deal with it. I'm going to turn this over now to Tim Hemstreet and staff before we go to Kevin Lewis and just clarify for us the schedule we're on.

[00:09:02] Thank you, Chair Umstott, and thank you for that lead in. Just to remind the committee, Chair Randall has set a very aggressive budget work session schedule, which has us actually concluding the budget on March 16th, which is Thursday.

[00:09:23] We start budget work sessions next Monday, which is March the 6th. So that allows for two weeks of work sessions, which is four work sessions. The CIP is scheduled to come to the Monday, March 13th work session for consideration and approval by the Board of Supervisors.

[00:09:44] And so where we are on the schedule is to get any proposed changes to the CIP or scenarios that you would like staff to run so that we could put those scenarios together and bring it to your finance work session on March the 8th, where you would consider any changes or consider the scenarios and decide whether to adopt any of the scenarios or leave the CIP as it was proposed or modify it in accordance with the scenarios I just referred to.

[00:10:17] If we get additional scenarios on March 8th, we will not be able to conclude the CIP that evening, which means the next available Finance Committee meeting will be your regular meeting on March 14th, which is obviously a day after the date where the board is supposed to consider the CIP.

[00:10:37] So that would require us then to work with Chair Randall to extend the March work sessions unless we can conclude the CIP on the 14th and then potentially bring it to your March 16th work session, which is supposed to be for wrap-up on the budget. So the schedule is very constrained this year.

[00:10:56] My understanding is there are a number of proposals coming into this evening for proposed changes to the CIP. So we would really want to get those tonight as much as possible. Coming to March 8th with additional changes just, I think, would require you to extend your schedule.

[00:11:15] Thank you. We know that Mr. Lewis needs to get down to the school board meeting that is going on right now, I believe. So, Kevin, if you would like to present on the public schools capital facility planning guidance that we are proposed to recommend for approval tonight.

[00:11:41] Sure. Thank you, Supervisor Armstead. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I promised Mr. Hemstreet I would keep it to 10 minutes. So I'm going to go through these fairly quickly if you can move to the next slide. I will say that in addition to the capital facility standards, which I've had the opportunity to meet with a couple of you about, I did want to touch on a couple of things that came up at the November 16th joint committee meeting or joint meeting with the school board, because I know there were some questions that were left there.

[00:12:10] We have some written questions and those things. It was February, right? Yes, thank you. It was February 16th. We had all of our meetings in November, and that's what I'm sorry about that. So thank you for that. It was February 16th. So you'll just see there are a couple of things I'll touch on as the slides go.

[00:12:26] If we could go ahead and go to the next slide. I just have a really quick reminder. I know there have been a lot of questions about how much things cost and how expensive things have become. And I know the county staff is dealing with that as well. And I just have a quote there about the ridiculous amount of inflation that's happening in the construction market right now.

[00:12:45] And so some of the things that you're seeing and some of the pressures that were put on our CIP in general were greatly influenced by that. and the county staff has been wonderful to work with to try to help us figure out how we fit all those things in. So just keep that in mind as we go through and some of the questions that have come up about the cost of things. In the next slide, I also have a chart that has a lot of information on there that we use to try to illustrate exactly how impactful the inflation has been. And you see those blue bars dating all the way back to 1997, which was Potomac Falls High School, which was our first what we call the prototype high school and generally there's a trend line

[00:13:22] the yellow gold whatever you want to call that line that goes all the way across through Independence and Light Ridge High School shows a gradual increase in construction cross construction crop costs across that period just in that area between 2016 and 2019 you see a blue dot there it says the Brambleton middle school costs and so you'll see that was about I'm I'm trying to zoom in on that myself, $50-some million, and then Willard was a little bit increased from that in the $60 million range.

[00:13:56] And then over in, where is it now, the middle school 14, sorry, you can see that mark there. Middle school 14 was a $117 million bid. And so the little triangle you see there with the red trend line is how quickly that the construction costs have come up just with the inflation on the middle school numbers.

[00:14:22] and then what we try to do is is put that over top of our cost for our high schools and show that why that cost has gone up so so greatly it's just in between uh 20 2020 and 2023 we saw actual bid prices go up 39 percent of our cost which is unprecedented probably since 2006 and 7 that we have seen those kind of numbers and then from projecting that out until 2027 which is the The midpoint of the construction of the high school is we're expecting another 19 to 20 more percent increase on that.

[00:14:56] So some of that, these numbers you'll see are based on those. And we're guessing, like everyone else in the industry, we're hoping they'll come down when pressure's released a little bit. But we also have a full construction market. Contractors are busy, and that means we have less competition, which raises the prices. So just keep that in mind as we go through this process.

[00:15:14] Inflation has a great deal to deal with that. So if you go to the next slide, we'll also show some of the things we crosswalked between the FY23 and the FY24 project. You'll see that ES32, we expedited a year with the help of the supervisors and the county staff to find a way to open that school year early.

[00:15:32] That piled a bunch more money into the first couple of years. And then to try to help work with that, we deferred ES36 and MS19 a year out. And then the Eastern Transportation Facility as well. So trying to work with county staff on how much money was going to be available over the six-year period, we slid those projects out, and then that made room for the Parkview High School, changing it from an addition to a renovation or a replacement.

[00:16:02] So as you pile all that inflationary numbers on there and then the new projects, that's how we were able to work through and develop the CIP you're seeing today. So moving on from this slide, we have some of those values.

[00:16:18] I know that some of those questions have come up. Parkview High School went from $38 million to $222 million. High School 14 went from $212 million to $271 million. I know, Mr. Letourneau, you asked a question specifically about that. And we were working on the answer to that. I know one of them was how much we had on that campus a field house, an indoor track.

[00:16:39] That project has been taken out. And what we did was take the gymnasium of the HS-14 and made it large enough to circle that with an indoor track and raise the seating capacity up to 3,000, same with the outdoor stadium. That equated to about $10 million of that.

[00:16:55] But the rest of that is inflation. And I have a summary of that coming in the written answer. Banneker moved from a smaller addition to a historical renovation and expansion for capacity. Those numbers went up. Waterford went up a little bit.

[00:17:12] Security projects, that's a project that we have greatly appreciated the supervisor's support on that. That's been over $100 million over the last five years. And we saw inflation raise that price up another $19 million in this year's CIP. So just for context, I know we had a lot of questions about is the reason some of these other projects were deferred all solely about Parkview, but it's certainly not.

[00:17:36] It is all these other things involved. So I wanted to be able to share some of that information with you. And then the last line you see there is we reduced the capital renewal and alterations program significantly to try to find room. And that's where we have the projects that have been deferred. And I know there's been a lot of conversations about that.

[00:17:53] So then the next slide, we continue our crosswalk about projects that have been deferred. And it's not just the press boxes and the wait rooms. You see energy projects, critical system renewal, unified communication system, a couple additions on schools. So there were a number of things that were deferred in that to make room for the inflation and the other project pressures.

[00:18:15] Next slide is a continuation of that as well that shows more of the different things like the music programming improvements. You'll see that if you've been to any of our schools and see the strings program alone, we'll explain how badly we need to expand our music programs in our schools and that the school programs that we had 10, 15 years ago don't hold all that.

[00:18:39] And so that's a project that we want to expand in all middle schools and high schools. We've deferred that as well, trying to make room for the things that are going on. And you'll see there the weight rooms and press boxes, which have been part of the conversation, that they were deferred weight rooms past the six-year period and then the press boxes to FY27.

[00:18:59] And tennis court lights also went out to the past the six years. And then the next slide, a lot of questions about how did we get here, why Parkview, And just so, you know, we are working with our standards to have a school replacement program.

[00:19:17] Parkview is a special situation where the building was built differently. In the 70s, a lot of those of you who are old enough to remember we had open schools built in the 70s and what a terrible idea that was of these big open rooms. Well, Parkview was built in that same era. There are no windows in classrooms.

[00:19:33] It's got a low ceiling. There's no central HVAC plant. So it causes us a lot of problems. and if we were to go in and completely renovate that building to bring it up to standards it would outweigh the cost of the new new facility so um i can get a lot more detailed than that but i want to just share why that's different we believe we're you know we're doing it we did a study at banneker and had a different answer because we feel that that building is important to keep that historical significance very similar to the douglas program that we're doing right now so parkview was a different answer we think as we talked i think supervisor ronstein you asked a question about loudon county high school we don't believe that the answer to that will be to replace

[00:20:11] that building that will and it's got a lot better structure to it uh than parkview does so happy to have questions take questions about that but i just wanted to give that background okay so then i think we move to the standards um on the next slide going to the guidelines that we build schools by in 2010 the supervisors and the school board agreed on a very lengthy document that was very specific that is also addressed in other ways and you see here the Department of Education has a guideline for school construction a lot of that is specific

[00:20:49] to the standards of quality what we need to have you know if you have to have certain number of administrative offices certain number of classrooms those types of things but it is a guideline and it recommends right in the first page that school department or school divisions create their own standards so we have that we have the educational specifications and guidelines specifications that tell us what's in the building you know in every classroom you have certain features casework chalkboards projection boards those types of things and then some of that was duplicated in the 2010 standards that the school board and the board supervisor did so what we

[00:21:25] wanted to do was simplify that process and that's what's included in your cip and in the next couple of slides if you go to the next one we have just a summary in 2017 those standards were revised to to show the number of students in a building in the square footages of the buildings themselves but in 2010 the capital guidelines were done and that's what we want to replace and we felt it was important to have the supervisors in the school board take action on that since they took action before so that these effectively become replaced essentially as we submit a set of plans now to building a development they're reviewing it by the old documents which

[00:22:04] are out of date so that's what we wanted to do is to try to find a way to to establish those bases and also give some flexibility. An example is Elaine Thompson Elementary School. We could not fit our school prototype on there because it was too small of a site, so we built a three-story school.

[00:22:21] Technically, that does not comply with our specifications, so we need to be able to have the flexibility to make adjustments to that. In this particular case set up now, we would review these every year, and we have an opportunity for both boards to weigh in and talk about those details. So the next slide gets in a little bit more specifics about, you know, just a reminder that the instructional philosophy changes quite a bit, and special ed is the easiest place to give a summary or an analogy of, you know, every year our special education population is growing.

[00:22:55] So, you know, typically a regular classroom may hold 23 kids, where a special education classroom will only hold 10. So it's easy to see we need more classrooms as that group grows. We also need more support staff, more counselors, those types of things that require more administrative space.

[00:23:11] So those in the 2010 document, those were set, said you can only have two of these, three of these, and they have to be this exact size. And so we want to get away from that descriptive specification and be able to adjust to that. I've already talked about the changes in school design, but the new standards also has a sectional school replacement program where we talk about the exact thing we're going through right now with the park view as an example so the specification or the new standards as well as school board policy talks about looking at the

[00:23:47] building at its half-life if the full life of a building is 75 years in the 37 and a half year range we're going to go and do a study and say how is this working and that's where park view falls in you know counties at the end of its 75 years but we believe we can make that work and a lot of this is two different questions one is from a facilities perspective in many cases we can make a building last for a really long time but if it's not capable of allowing the instructional folks to deliver instruction then we need to make some changes and that's where we find ourselves in the difference between

[00:24:20] Parkview and County is we're struggling to be able to do that so and we also the old or then we also have a policy on high performance building and also design design kind of say construction management and design bill that's also allowed in our specs that was touched on lightly in the others and so that's a quick comparison and I think the next slide has another little chart about you know in 2010 we had three different versions of an elementary school and two versions of a middle school and three versions of a high school we've simplified that to have ranges of square footage and student enrollment in

[00:25:00] those spaces and you can see there's a you know we had in zoning requirements covered in that which are covered in many other places and so lots of things that really were in that document that were duplicative from other places and also out of date and then the next slide just talked about and I've already mentioned that we have a life cycle planning in both policy and in that document that talks about replacement process and how we evaluate buildings and then you see there that you know we also have ways to maintain our building through the CAP and the CRP that we have many projects provided.

[00:25:39] And then I think the next slide is just a graphic to show that the average age of our building is 29.8 years old. And generally speaking, our systems in a building are going to last 30. And so we did a great thing in the early 2000s by building a whole bunch of schools, and now the bill is coming due to maintain those buildings.

[00:26:03] And you probably have that same issue here at the county. I've been here 23 years and built 58 schools. So all those buildings are, you know, part of our inventory. Now they're our responsibility to maintain, and so we're trying our very best to find a way to manage that inventory and continue to grow as possible.

[00:26:22] But that's a stark reminder that there's a big bill coming for maintaining these buildings as we go forth. And I think that might be my last slide. It is, and then so hopefully, I know that was a very fast thing, But I know you all are very busy, and I wanted to get through that, and happy to take any questions you may have.

[00:26:40] Thank you very much. I'm going to go first to our committee members and then to our two supervisors. Vice Chair Sains, any questions? Thank you. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Lewis, and thank you for your presentation. I just have one question that Ms. Brisbane sent over to me.

[00:26:59] She's out of the country right now for visiting our sister city. And the question is, if funding is made available for Dominion High School weight room, for the Dominion High School weight room project, how quickly can that project be completed? And just to make sure I understand, you were specifically only talking about the Dominion High School weight room.

[00:27:22] Correct. I will take the opportunity to ask that if I can get back to you in writing of that, but I can tell you that it's going to be at least a year. I mean, the projects, we don't have the site plan designed. The site plan is designed, but it's not been approved yet, so it's in the building and development for approval.

[00:27:40] The project documents for the construction have been drawn, but they need to be put out the bid and solicited and then get awarded. And so, you know, if we were to do that pretty quickly, we're going to end up in the fall season. If we have a winner like we have this year, no problem. But if we have a winner and it's a little harder, then it's a little while.

[00:27:57] So the other thing we do with every project like that, especially with a project that's associated with the athletic seasons, we go meet with the athletic director and talk about when is the best time to have that space offline, and so sometimes we end up delaying a project for that.

[00:28:14] So I will take that back and put together some thought, and we'll take that as a written question, and we'll provide that answer. Okay. Thank you. And to my colleagues, you should have two papers on your desk. One is in yellow, which will be the first motion when it comes time for motions, and the second is if that first one doesn't go through, then there will be a SEC motion.

[00:28:34] Again, these are via Supervisor Bristman, and I volunteer to make these motions for her since she's not available. Thank you. of Supervisor Letourneau. Thank you. I have several questions. Thank you, Kevin, for that presentation as always. So going back to kind of the cost escalation issue, the HS14 program we have at $271 million, and the price that I have for HS15 is $226. So I was sort of drawing the conclusion

[00:29:07] that the expansion of the extra square feet for athletic capacity was perhaps responsible for that delta, but that's only about $10 million. So is it because of all the water and sewer and stuff that has to go in there, or what's making that one so expensive?

[00:29:27] So it is a lot of factors, one of which, if you've driven by to watch the construction of MS-14, We have 300,000 cubic yards of rock in that. That site is completely full of sites. So we have expanded that estimate.

[00:29:44] I think we put maybe as much as $6 million or $8 million in that project to deal with the rock and the excavation. It is a site that is, you know, and sometimes when the CIP, the projects are on the CIP, we don't know where they're going to be. In case we do know that. That site has some grade change, as you can see.

[00:30:01] We have a four-story middle school, and it will be at least a four-story high school. and so the excavation will be extensive and and then we have to finish out the infrastructure of the roadways traffic impacts to evergreen mill and so we think there's a number of things in there okay um still you know we went from 125 million with light ridge to 270 so obviously that's a heck of a increase um overall you can't help but notice we went through a period of time where we basically built the same high school um i think the last one to be built with that design was probably rock ridge i want to say but you know it started with freedom and briar woods and stone

[00:30:41] bridge and heritage and then we kind of went to the newer design which is light ridge and independence it certainly seems like that design is a lot more luxurious perhaps we'll say maybe a little less utilitarian a little more i don't know that it truly makes it more expensive but is there anything in the design process that could help value engineer some of these things you know it also i mean i'll just tell you and you know this already it definitely leads to some of the equity conversations that we have because people walk into lightridge and it's nice nicer than what a lot of college campuses have and then they go to even schools that are 10 years old and it's sort

[00:31:20] of like you know whoa so i have to ask the question you know do we have to build quite as extravagantly if if that's the right word it may not be or is there some design discussion we should have about that and i do have some more questions so i know i'm gonna be out of time here but hopefully we can have another round. So it's an excellent question. So I'll first address the prototype that we built a number of times. And you've been here a while, and you recognize that it wasn't until recently that we asked for and the supervisors were able to grant us a year earlier on the design. And so there was a period of time where we got money on

[00:31:57] July 1, and we had to bid the project that spring. And so nine months later, we had to have site plan design, site plan approval, construction plan. There was not time to change the project. And so as we were able to get the design period, we were able to do more work and construct a facility that better suits that instructional program that we talked about.

[00:32:17] There are always opportunities to look for value engineering, and I can assure you that I've provided that guidance to our team for this because we see these prices going on. That's the first thing they're doing is we know we need to look for efficiencies for all of our projects. And that is an exercise we do with every project, but we're going to – we have more time to do that.

[00:32:36] And usually – it used to be where you had to do that. You got the bids in. They were too high, so you go find a way to cut costs. That's no way to do value engineering. So we're doing it up front this year – or not this year, but in the last three or four years, and we will continue to do that. So we recognize we need to continue to whittle away and bring that down and try to offset some of this inflation.

[00:32:58] Supervisor Glass, any questions for Mr. Lewis? There you go. Thank you. So, Chair Emstock, Ms. Lewis, thank you for this presentation.

[00:33:14] I don't have any questions, but I do want to say that I appreciate the design guideline changes that you all have. Working at one of the older schools, one of my classes was in a hallway where I taught like six students.

[00:33:34] And the hallway, actually it was a hallway heading outdoors, so they had turned that into a classroom. I also was in a classroom with four other teachers. One half was for the EL teachers and the other half was for special education.

[00:33:54] So it's great to see that changes are being made. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Turner. Supervisor Letourneau. So, I get what you're saying about value engineering, but I guess maybe what I should have said was sort of value design, you know, because I'm just, you know, you can value engineer things, but is the design itself kind of where we should be?

[00:34:16] Is there anything that can be done on the actual designs of these up front? Maybe if I can ask to clarify, are you talking about the configuration of the building itself or the finishes, those types?

[00:34:32] Finishes, all those kinds of things, yeah. Or would you consider that just part of the value engineering? it all is and i know that the the configuration in particular um with any school it's really important that we learn from our instructional folks so every year when we open a new school we wait about three to four months and invite the principal and his or her staff into our we call it a 360 review and we come in and sit down and talk about okay how does this work you know are these adjacencies right is it is it you know working from a from a flow perspective you You know, we find in the multi-story buildings that one elevator wasn't really cutting it

[00:35:10] when you had to get folks in and around, so we look for ways to do that. So there are certainly things that we can do to do that, and that has started with HS14. We will start July 1 and, you know, get input from our principals.

[00:35:26] Can I give you one on HS14? Sure, absolutely. I've raised it to you before, actually. The theater components of the new design schools, theaters get used all the time for community events besides the school events. And obviously the primary purpose is the school events.

[00:35:42] But the bathroom facilities are completely inadequate around those. So a lot of community theaters, dance studios, they rent out these facilities for an evening performance or something like that. And what usually happens is the corridors on the left become for the performers.

[00:35:59] So there is a bathroom back there, but it's not accessible to the public. So, somewhat notoriously now, whenever one of these community productions goes on, the bathroom lines at intermission, because the only ones that are accessible are very, very small, there's like two stalls in them, they go out forever.

[00:36:16] And, you know, as opposed to the old design where you had a pretty large bathroom pretty much adjacent to the gym area and the theater area. So, that's a piece of feedback that everybody talks about, whoever goes to one of these things. last question so the high school building design itself i think went from 280 000 square feet to 345 is that right i'm also i'm basically just asking did is part of this cost escalation also

[00:36:50] just that the buildings themselves got bigger they have gained size over time and in particular this one is the high school range is probably a little wider than that because we knew hs14 we were expanding for that so we wanted to make sure it was in the compliance as soon as you know we didn't want to get some standards adopted then propose over than that okay thank you the only the only other thing I would add Mr. Lewis and I appreciate your being here and and then we we can

[00:37:22] let you go is in addition to Supervisor Letourneau's questions about bathroom design is if there is a way going forward to make restrooms safer for students in the in the school system that would be of great interest I think so I appreciate any work you could do on that yes and thank you for that comment we have been working a lot on that question and so I have met with we created a principal safety task force and then support services my department created a

[00:38:01] principals advisory group the superintendent has a principals advisory group I met with some students at Heritage High School within the last couple months we're trying to get as much feedback as we can. You know, we're going through and creating as many private spaces for folks that require privacy and restrooms and locker rooms and those types of things. So it's a project that we are, we do have some funding in the CIP for 23 and 24. There's $10 million total for us to make some revisions to that. And just within the last couple of weeks, we've identified some technology that we're exploring. Not sure if it's going to work. There's lots of technology folks out there

[00:38:40] that say they can do some things we want to try to find a way to help the school administration monitor those spaces as well as make it accessible to everyone and it's a it's a real challenge getting enough restrooms for 2 000 kids in the building and to manage the weekend events too so it's something we're looking at very closely i appreciate that thank you very much i'm going to go to a motion we'll take up the main motion if that's all right and then supervisor sayings has a couple of alternatives so i moved the finance government operations and economic development committee recommend that the board of supervisors direct staff to include the loudon

[00:39:20] county public schools capital facility planning guidelines in the fy 2024 appropriations resolution for approvals there second second by supervisor letourneau i don't have any comments any member of the committee have any comments supervisor letourneau um one thing i didn't get to mr lewis is just when we're talking about the athletic field development um could would you be willing to engage with a bit of a discussion with prcs on any kind of configuration on future site

[00:39:56] that would allow for cricket pitches we're getting quite a few requests on that the county is trying of accommodated on our side but as you know we we use a lot of your facilities so you know it may not work on certain sites but if there's a way to look at that in the future that would be great otherwise i appreciate the motion and all the work on this the explanations i know that the school board had to make some difficult discussion decisions about balancing things but i agree with the core philosophy, which is that finding seats for kids has to be the most important thing.

[00:40:35] You know, having been through a period of real overcrowding in the Dulles South area, we still have it a little bit in the Braddock Road corridor, hence the acceleration of the elementary school. That causes just so many layered impacts on the teachers, on the students, on the families. And a lot of times, a lot of the community members get frustrated because it requires you know in this situation we're actually putting two elementary schools next to each other um i don't know there's another situation like that in the county but you know on the site of lightridge high school we will have we already have one elementary school and

[00:41:12] now we'll have another one next door um and i think they're going to split those k through two and three three through five um and there is some community pushback about that but the alternative would be to send those students further away from where they live. And so, you know, the targeted growth that happens in certain parts of the county require flexibility and require, you know, some of these solutions that are a little bit outside the box.

[00:41:38] So I appreciate the work that went into that discussion around that, and I agree with that philosophy to prioritize that. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Saints. So hearing Supervisor Letour mention the cricket fields, Do you off chance know which school facilities are available now for use for cricket play?

[00:42:01] I am not an expert on cricket. I know it's a very large field. So we have a great relationship with Parks and Rec, and they use our campuses after school at all of our elementaries and middle school. And so those are open to that. I do think what would be required is to try to place two fields closer together so they can be done like that.

[00:42:22] that is a challenge with some grade like the high school 14 and middle school 14 site is very steep and so that may be a challenge but most certainly we will um get in touch with mr torpe and have those conversations okay because if memory serves me well i thought guilford like their play area in the back uh was retrofitted for for cricket play is that i see mr torpe i don't know if mr torpe can come and answer that question certainly yeah is there any other school facilities that that uh can accommodate uh cricket play like Guilford Guilford is the

[00:43:01] only one that we have retrofitted that was set up that way Mercer Middle we looked at that at one time but it was a little bit tight and as Mr. Lewis had mentioned there was some changes in grade from field to field so really having the ability to plan from uh initial design so that those grades can be correct and and at our park sites it's usually two large soccer fields side By side is what you need for a typical cricket pitch. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right We're gonna go to the draft motion motion made by myself seconded by Supervisor Letourneau

[00:43:40] All in favor, please say aye and I'll vote aye So that will be 3-0-2 with chair Randall and Supervisor Briskman out of the room. Mr. Lewis, you can hang around for these two motions on if you want or you're free to leave. Supervisor Saines, you have two alternatives. Yes, thank you. So like I said, the first one, I'll just read it and go from my commentary period. I move the Finance, Government, Operations, and Economic

[00:44:17] Development Committee recommend the Board of Supervisors accelerate the dominion high school weight room expansion project by allocating county cip contingency funds in the amount of 1.6 million to the lcps renewal and alter nations project in fiscal year 2023 and send consideration of funding for the press boxes and tennis court lighting at dominion high school and press box and tennis court lighting at potomac falls high school in the amount of 2.79 million to the fiscal year 2023 fund balance discussion it is not out of lack of respect but

[00:44:53] don't think we've got a second mr. Sains would you like to go on to the green sheet all right since it died on the lack of second I'll make the second attempt here I move the finance government operations and economic development committee recommend the Board of Supervisors send consideration of funding for the weight room expansion press boxes and tennis courts lighting at Dominion High School and press boxes and tennis court lighting at Potomac Falls High School in the amount of 4.39 million to the fiscal year 2023 fund balanced discussion. Second by Supervisor Letourneau. Mr. Saints. Thank you for getting a second on this

[00:45:28] one. So yeah, so this motion will pretty much direct us to have the conversations and see if we can allocate the set amount $4.339 million to the construction of the press boxes and tennis courts for Dominion and Potomac Falls. So I thank my colleagues and hopefully we can vote to support this and we'll have ultimately that bigger discussion when fun and balanced time comes around. Supervisor Letourneau. Yeah, just so I understand, you were, Supervisor Staines asked this question earlier, so you were saying that even if the money was immediately available,

[00:46:02] it would be at least a year before that weight room project could be done anyway, right? Yes, sir, and based on the assumption that this may pass this committee, what I would do is go back and work on, take it as a written question and work through a timeline so that supervisors had an opportunity to know what the timeline would be once okay because I think one of the arguments to use contingency was was a an understanding that if we gave you contingency and you could start right away you could get it done by the spring but I didn't hear that really definitively from what you said no and I won't say that we can't do that but I'm not confident sitting here

[00:46:42] that we could okay um I would not I really would not want to allocate contingency anyway it's really not a good practice. We have, and as I understand it, we are your contingency because you don't have your own contingency account. So on any of these other projects that, you know, if, if they do go overbid for whatever reason, you're going to, you know, we're going to have to fund that. And we use our, we use this contingency account both for school and county projects. But given the uncertainty in the market, the cost escalation, I think it would be much smarter to just try to rely on fund

[00:47:18] balance through these projects and not put the contingency funding at risk and I would be more than happy to consider this during fund balance. I definitely understand and heard from my colleagues and from the community that they're concerned and disappointed that some of these projects are not moving forward on the timeline that they thought they would and we should try to fix that if we can but we have to do it responsibly. Thank you. Very good and I'll simply say that everything that Supervisor Letourneau said I would agree with Supervisor Sainz closing thank you and again thank you for the second and it sounds like we have support for this

[00:47:54] motion so yes fund balance would be a good opportunity to allocate this funding and yes it is a little disappointing that you know yes it was in in the books and you know things had to be moved around to make way from some other projects but you know we can't can't do it all so but hopefully we can get it done during our discussion in December and get these projects funded. So thank you. Very good. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. I'll vote aye. So that passes 3-0-2 with Chair Randall and Supervisor Briskman

[00:48:30] not in the room. Mr. Lewis, you are free to go. So thank you so much for coming out. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Sure. All right. We're going to now take up the Capital Improvements Program, the FY 2023 to FY 2028 Amended Capital Improvements

[00:48:55] Program. All right, Nikki. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. We have a brief presentation to go over. The first few slides of the presentation include new and accelerated projects as well as some changes to existing projects and the accommodated town projects so we can go to the first slide these first three projects here we

[00:49:35] have the bus shelter additions and the bus stop installation for new routes these projects were discussed and requested during last year's work sessions to be forwarded to the FY 24 budget process so they have been accommodated in the CIP proposal also the route 15 luck it's bypass this project while not new was in a prior CIP had been moved out of the six-year period as the phasing of the various route 15 projects were better aligned so funding for this project is just for the preliminary planning so it's funded with scoping and preliminary engineering funds you move to the next slide the

[00:50:12] this slide here just summarizes some of the other new or accelerated projects of Of note, you're aware of the Crisis Receiving and Stabilization Center, which was discussed at the Finance Committee meeting. We have several critical information technology projects that are new or accelerated.

[00:50:33] And then also the Sicklin Road widening, Loudon Center placed across Road Boulevard. That project, the smart scale funding was accelerated, therefore design and land acquisition is able to accelerate with that funding as well. next slide as we just heard on the school side Banneker and the Waterford renovation and additions these projects were included in the Loudoun County Public Schools renewals and alterations project as they did experience some cost increases as well as some changes in scope they've been pulled out into

[00:51:10] individual standalone projects so this year in the CIP is the first time you actually see project page for those two schools and then of course the Parkview high school replacement project changing from the renovation and then additionally the electronic fare box replacement project this is also new funded I believe with grants and VTA 30% funds next slide please a few changes county renovation program this project also the government center renovation

[00:51:46] were two separate projects in the FY23 adopted CIP those two programs have been joined into just one county renovation program the Evergreen Mills Reservoir Watson Road this project has just an updated project schedule it is an active project was re-estimated during this budget process and it was identified as needing additional funding for construction it does have a one-year delay on the construction compared to last year's cip there's also a re-phasing of the route 15

[00:52:21] widening projects again just to align the segments for better phasing of that project and then the route 50 loudon county parkway interchange there's just a change to prior year mvta funding which no longer be on this project but newly awarded mvta funding showing in fy 25 and 26 of this project next slide please for the town request we were able to accommodate three these projects are

[00:52:55] existing projects that the county has previously funded and are experiencing cost increases so the hillsboro multimodal trail and pedestrian bridge is accommodated in fy24 for leesburg the evergreen mills widening project is also accommodated in both fy24 and 25 and then for round hill the southern gateway pedestrian trail all of which were able to be accommodated using mvta 30 percent funds okay next slide please as far as funding scenarios the county or staff received three

[00:53:33] requests for funding scenarios one which we've discussed already now is the the facility renewals alterations for the the Dominion and Potomac Falls projects the Western Line Recreation Center was a request to accelerate completion of this project if possible that funding request is not able to be accommodated as is detailed in the item the project production schedule is exactly what is expected to be able to be accommodated and and staff does not

[00:54:09] believe that project could be accelerated to be completed any sooner and then for the Evergreen Mills Road Reservoir Watson Road project the request was if the project could be accelerated to bring it back in line with the previous schedule. As stated, this project is an active project and is experiencing a delay in the design phase right now of at least a year and is also needing some land acquisition that may also take a considerable amount of time. So there is no funding scenario that would get this project

[00:54:46] back on the original schedule. It is going to be a year delay on that project. So those are the funding scenarios that were received in time for this packet um and so we can take any questions or discussion very good uh questions from the committee supervisor letourneau okay i got a bunch of stuff um and i will have a motion which we just distributed but i'm going to start with the southern services center um my level of frustration has been escalating rapidly because I feel like we've been having some type of discussion

[00:55:24] about scoping out a Southern Services Center for at least this term and maybe going back to the previous board term. And every year during the budget, I ask about it, and every year I'm told that we're still working with departments to figure out what needs to go there. We're at a point where we're going to lose opportunities to work with developers who have projects that they've got pending applications on.

[00:55:46] We already lost one where I believe that we could have potentially taken advantage of proffers to get some space because we don't have our act together. So I'll ask the question maybe to Tim. Would it help if I made a motion to put Southern Services in the CIP as future fiscal year with no funding?

[00:56:06] What's it going to take to sort of light a fire under somebody to scope out what this project should be?

[00:56:21] I don't have an excuse for you. Supervisor Alterno. Well, I'm not trying to, you know. Yeah, we've made that, I have made that commitment to the board on a number of occasions. You're absolutely correct.

[00:56:36] I will come back to the next finance committee meeting with a plan. Okay. I don't have a better explanation for you. Okay. Should I potentially look at asking my colleagues to add it to the CIP as a future fiscal year project? You could certainly do that. I think that the last direction of the Board of Supervisors was for us to seek leased space, which would make it a budget issue and not a CIP issue.

[00:57:00] So that is one of the reasons I'm thinking along those lines specifically in a conversation I had with Supervisor Glass, but something else today reminded me was we can't take CIP credit or give a developer credit for a project that's not in our CIP. So I've got a pending application in the South Riding area coming that has commercial office space in it.

[00:57:20] And I'm not saying that's the right project or that's the answer, but I can't even really have the discussion if I don't have a CIP project. It doesn't hurt for it to be in the future fiscal year. Okay, so maybe when we get to motions later tonight, I'll make that one as well. In my remaining 30 seconds, North Star Boulevard, so the segment that's left, which is from Tall Cedars to Braddock,

[00:57:56] we've talked about putting a tunnel there underground for pedestrian access to John Champ High School and to the west side of Stone Ridge. And I think that tunnel is contributing to a longer design phase perhaps than what we had anticipated. But where are we sort of on the feasibility of that? And I know we had this discussion the other night because we're going be probably seeking federal infrastructure money for this project um but i'm asking because you

[00:58:31] know when i was looking at potential ways to move things around in here i'm just not clear on where that is from a design standpoint so i know jim is here answer it's in the plans the tunnel uh we added that to the scope of the project uh early in the design process and i mean it's you know i mean it's been part of the scope for at least a year okay and there hadn't been any particular

[00:59:07] difficulties in in incorporating that that element into the design of the project at least none that I'm aware of okay it just seemed like we have kind of an elongated design process spelled out in here I got to get to the right page if you want to go to somebody else I can follow up I don't, any other supervisor want, okay, you're, you're it, Matt.

[00:59:36] Okay. I'm having trouble with these mics. So we have construction money in 28, but, I mean, if you're telling me it's easy, that's great.

[01:00:05] It's a relative term. In relative terms. I mean, you know, just looking at the book. So let me give you a little bit more context. When we were having some discussions about projects that could potentially benefit from another motion I'm going to make, we were sort of told on this one, don't try to accelerate it because we got too much design work to do.

[01:00:26] But we don't have construction money until 28. So that's a long time. So that's kind of why I'm asking. Okay, so I'm sorry. So if you could say your question again and make sure I'm...

[01:00:44] So he's just asking why there's so many years for design and why are there so many years leading up to... Like if I came up with ways to get some more money, which we're trying to do up here on a few things, I was kind of told this project wouldn't be a project we could really accelerate even if we had the money.

[01:01:02] So just to help you out, from a land acquisition standpoint, I don't think we can accelerate that piece of it. And so the only remaining question is whether there's anything that could happen in design. And from what I understand, there's a significant coordination process with VDOT that we don't control all of that timeline.

[01:01:23] That is part of why we have this design phase in here, is to allow for that coordination and approval process with BDOT. What, four fiscal years? Well, I mean, the plans are, memory serves, about 60% complete.

[01:01:43] You do have the overlap of the fiscal years between design and land. So, yeah, so without having an answer on the top of our heads, We'll work with the budget office to see if there's any room for anything to squeeze there.

[01:02:03] Okay. Yeah, I would appreciate it. And maybe as a follow-up, when you're looking at that, do we think, as part of this project, a signal may have to be included at Sacred Mountain and North Star, if that might be warranted?

[01:02:21] Have not heard of any emerging need to signalize that intersection yet, but we'll certainly. But, I mean, when we, you know, when we make it four lane median divided, you know, it's pretty bad today.

[01:02:36] But it's very much around the time that John Champ High School is in and out, right? Or rush hour when the residential community there is generating traffic. You look at it from a 24-hour standpoint, it's not necessarily that bad. But when you add in the four lane median divide, you know, we don't have a great track record of those being, you know, with that speed limit, you know.

[01:03:01] Check with the design team and confirm. Okay. All right. Let me go to Supervisor Glass. Thank you, Chair. I'm Stodd. I wanted the committee and staff to know that I had intended to ask a committee member to offer a motion on March 8th work session to have a community arts center added to the list of potential identified for future funding.

[01:03:31] But I wanted to ask Mr. Hemstreet, because the discussion that you had earlier was that if we are asking for things to be put on the CIP on March 8th, that it would mess up other things.

[01:03:50] But this is on the list for potential projects identified. Is that going to be an issue? So, no. The only thing that creates a problem is if we try to add a project within the six-year period where the CIP is already fully funded.

[01:04:13] So if you were to add, I'm just going to use a number. I have no idea what the thing costs, but a $40 million community arts center, then we would need to pull something out of the CIP to balance it.

[01:04:29] So those are the scenarios that we're talking about. If you're proposing to add the project into a future fiscal year where we haven't created the budget yet, then I don't see that as a problem. Okay. All right. And I'm doing this because, you know, first of all, it's good that there's no funding on this, so just to put it on for a future project that many of my constituents had contacted me about this.

[01:05:02] I've had people to say that they go out to Reston and other parts of Fairfax and Arlington to go see an orchestra or to see a play, and that we don't have a specific space for our community, different community projects, art, that type of thing.

[01:05:31] So I would love for us to put that on the list. Thank you, Supervisor Glass. Supervisor Turner. Thank you very much. Let me unofficially second that motion.

[01:05:48] I met with the performing arts group the other night. Let me do ask a question, though, and I fully support putting in a future funding year. If we loaded it into the FFY and let's say, as an example, The data center community is a collective community, launched a five-year project to raise $50 million to fund that project and make it their performing arts center.

[01:06:12] What would be the mechanism if we got full funding by which it would move out of the FFY into sooner years in the CIP? So you're saying that the private sector donated funding to build it?

[01:06:28] So that would be a donation? But the project, how would that work? Would it move down to as low as the next project on our development list? Would it move to the front of the line? How would that work? It's funded.

[01:06:43] It's fully funded. If somebody were to donate money to fully fund the project, we would go ahead and prosecute it. Okay, good. That's a great answer. All right. Thank you. I have a second one, if I could. On page 8-7 at the very bottom of future funding year project is the Ashburn Road parallel pedestrian bridge over Beaverdam Run.

[01:07:08] The intent there is to build a pedestrian bridge across Beaver Dam Run, which is a bridge to nowhere right now, because once you cross the pedestrian bridge over that Beaver Dam Run, you have no shared use path from there to Farmwell Road. So what I'd like to ask is if one of the members of the Finance Committee would introduce a motion to include a shared use path from Beaver Dam Run to Farmwell Road as part of that project.

[01:07:36] if you don't want to do that i understand completely i'll just introduce it to the board but it's kind of a it's kind of a uh not pointless but the project isn't done when we do what's in the current list for future funding we want to connect it to farm law i just looked at the photos we've got either a shared use path or a sidewalk all the way from beaver dam run north up to gloucester parkway so this is a fairly large missing link that would make perfect sense to add into this project. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. If I could ask you a question, Supervisor Turner, are you requesting it to be in an out year or just to be incorporated,

[01:08:15] added to the project that exists? Ideally, I think I'd like to attach it to the existing project and have it move in whatever term that is moving. I just don't know the funding implications. All right. It's bottom of page 5-7. It doesn't have any kind of identifier, but it's the Ashburn Road Parallel Pedestrian Bridge over Breaver Dam Run.

[01:08:38] Okay. I'm sorry, 8-7. I'm just trading glasses here. All right. Supervisor Sains. Thank you. I'd like to ask a clarifying question to Supervisor Glass. For the Performing Arts Center, are you looking for it to be in eastern Loudoun County or are you open to any location in the county?

[01:09:03] The constituents that I have spoken with would like it to be in the eastern part of Loudoun County just because many of them Franklin is a bit far for them to go to so they're looking for something on the eastern portion of Loudoun to to participate in okay perfect and to staff I guess to clarify or point of clarification if I have a motion for supervisor glass this finance committee has to make the motion was make the

[01:09:38] motion tonight and then hypothetically if it was to pass then I'll go to the full board for lack of a better word ratification is that correct that's correct okay all right so miss glass you're passing out your motion with mag I might add in to be say an Eastern Loudoun Community Arts Center would that be appropriate in your wording yes okay when the time comes I'd like to make the

[01:10:08] motion. Sure, absolutely. Any other questions before we figure out a motion? Megan, so the draft motion in the packet is, and I'm just reading it so we know what it is, it's to move the finance committee direct staff to develop CIP scenarios to include blank and return to the committee on march 8th so do we need to go through the entire presentation and add all of these in so the

[01:10:46] scenarios that we have are the ones on the the screen i think you've disposed of the first one with the motion that passed during item two staff does not recommend the following two motions but it's up to you if you want us to formally run through those scenarios and then whatever other motions um are made tonight you'll i'm sorry whatever other discussions of scenarios that are discussed tonight we'll need just formal direction on what you want us to go work on for the next

[01:11:20] meeting all right okay all right so i don't have to worry about adding in the town projects that staff is recommending as part of this motion they are already in this great okay thank you All right. Well, we've got Supervisor Sains and Supervisor Letourneau.

[01:11:43] Let me go. Supervisor Sains, are you only bringing forward Supervisor Glass's proposal? Let's go to you first because I think that's going to be the simplest. Okay. I move the Finance, Government, and Operations Economic Development Committee recommend the Board of Supervisors add a project titled Eastern Loudoun County Community Arts Center to the projects identified for the future development section of the fiscal year 2023, fiscal year 2028 amended capital improvement program. Is there a second?

[01:12:15] Second. All right. We have a second from Supervisor Letourneau. Supervisor Sains, do you want to take the initial comments or do you want to defer to Supervisor Glass? Thank you for taking this motion, Supervisor Sains. I appreciate it. And like I said before, this is something that um i've heard from my constituents about having a um a community arts center for uh

[01:12:50] for our community it's for you know those who um may not be able to um uh use the larger facilities because they are very expensive um this is for our you know local folks who want to do plays or music a facility i know that we have an orchestra an area for them to you know hold their their equipment all these sorts of things that we have in the county that a lot of people don't know

[01:13:25] about because we don't have one facility for them to use and it would be great to have something like this. And it also brings people outside of Loudoun to come in and see the great artwork, the great music and other things that we have here. So I really appreciate you all supporting this. Thank you. Very good. Supervisor Letourneau. Yeah. So it's always easy to do these because they're free, right? Because we're not putting them in the sixth year. But I guess what I would

[01:14:03] probably want is more discussion about whether we're talking about a facility that is meant for community use, a community arts center, or a performing arts facility in which something like the Loudoun Symphony could use, which needs a much, much higher capacity. You know, there's a big difference between sort of a black box theater with 100 seats and an orchestra would need probably several thousand seats. And, you know, Prince William County had this discussion with the Hilton Center many years ago. It's probably worth looking at what that model was and how they

[01:14:38] got that done. I'm open to putting this in the CIP for the same reason that I was discussing earlier, which is that it makes it eligible for us to take it as a proffer as part of some sort of application that could come to us. If we don't have a CIP project, then there's nothing to match it up to so but I'm sort of interested more in the scoping and I don't necessarily think that you have to anybody has to answer that question tonight but I think staff is going to want to know that before they really are able to looks like Mr. Hemstreet wants to get in on what I'm

[01:15:14] saying all right Mr. Hemstreet thank you chair I'm sorry so Ms. Burke was also reminding me of that and so one of the things that we could recommend if it's if it's the pleasure of the committee is to add to the motion a direction to staff to return perhaps in the fall with a issues paper what do we call them budget development item budget development item that runs through different scopes and then we would meet with supervisor glass as part of that effort and bring that back so the finance committee could then narrow the scope as to what exactly is meant by the motion if it's the pleasure of the committee if you want to add that

[01:15:54] And that could be a potential solution. Supervisor Saines, would you accept that language? Yes. All right. Supervisor Leturdo? Yep. Okay. All right. You were, are you? I'm done. You're done. Supervisor Saines, we're not ready for closing yet, but you had some, would you like to go to, okay, Mike.

[01:16:16] Thank you very much. The community discussions I've had is the latter scale rather than the former, that it should attract audiences from around the region. I like the fact this is now kind of a placeholder in the CIP because I really think we can get major corporate funding for this concept and really enter into a five-year fundraising campaign with naming opportunities that could be really exciting.

[01:16:43] And not through anyone's fault. We have just grown so fast in this county, but all of our comparator counties and areas have some kind of a really first-class performing arts center. We've now got a new metro station, so we can draw big crowds, I think, from the D.C. metro area, depending on the venue and the performances there.

[01:17:04] And I think it's long overdue, so I'm very pleased to support it. And as a 22-year nonprofit fundraiser, I'm really chomping at the bit to start a coordinated campaign to go out to our corporations and say, hey, let's get on board here for some naming opportunities. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:17:20] Supervisor Sains. Thank you. No, I appreciate this glass bringing this item to us tonight. And it sounds like we've got support for it because it's a great idea. And looking forward to seeing what staff scopes up and bring us back. But, yeah, to Supervisor Glasses Point, Supervisor Letourneau, Supervisor Turner, we have definitely a lot of opportunities.

[01:17:37] here to grow our performing arts and, you know, those who have loved arts in the county for ballet, symphony plays, and training classes, a whole bunch of stuff. And then we can partner with, you know, our regional partners, George Mason, Nova, corporate folks.

[01:17:57] We have, there's tons and tons and tons, as many of you guys know, arts theater companies traveling, you know, all over, so we can attract something here. And then, you know, to Supervisor Letourneau's point, we do have one application that's working through the pipeline that in their application they did mention, if I remember correctly, memory serves me well, that they wanted to look at possibly doing a performing arts center or concert venue at that location.

[01:18:22] So that is definitely something we should go and talk to them about and, you know, see if we can do a PP3 with that particular entity or somebody else down the road. So looking forward to seeing what comes back and bringing this to fruition at some point.

[01:18:38] Good job, Ms. Glass. Thank you. Although I'm a little nervous about the county getting into this because I don't think this is as high a priority for government as some of the other things we do in the social services area, I like what I heard from Supervisor Letourneau, Supervisor Turner, about the possibility of attracting private funding.

[01:19:03] So I'll support it at this point. And also it came from Supervisor Glass. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And I'll vote aye. So that'll pass 302 with Chair Randall and Supervisor Briskman out of the room.

[01:19:21] I want to go back briefly before we get to Supervisor Letourneau's motion or motions. Does anyone want to make a motion for any of those three current funding scenarios? Well, actually, the second two, the Western Loudoun Recreation Center or the Evergreen Mills Road, Reservoir Road, Watson Road.

[01:19:46] Does anybody want to add either of those into the main motion? Not seeing any. Okay. Any commentary from staff on this?

[01:20:05] Okay, so we do not have any motion to include Western Loudoun Recreation Center or Evergreen Mills Reservoir Watson. Are you comfortable with that? All right, just are we being clear? Yes. All right, okay.

[01:20:21] In that case, do we need to even make the draft motion since it was envisioned for one or all of those or one or more of all those three scenarios? We would need a motion if there are any other funding scenarios presented tonight that You would like for staff to work on for the March 8th meeting and I think we'll be going to supervisor Letourneau for that. So yes, I have two motions one of them Unfortunately, we didn't print up because it just came up in conversation So why don't I do that first because I think it's simpler which is that I would move that a CIP project be created for the

[01:21:02] southern services center and that it be assigned a future future fiscal year all right we have a motion by supervisor letourneau for the southern services center yeah um to be in the out years in the yeah in the out years all right it's seconded by supervisor sains supervisor letourneau this is on page eight six of projects identified for future development as you can see it's got all kinds of undeterminates and no estimates. I think I have kind of dual purpose here. I know Mr. Hempstree is going to come back and work with us on this. I think it would be, it's easier perhaps

[01:21:39] to, it's easier to forget about something that's not a CIP project. So I'm hoping that by creating the CIP project, we can keep them, keep, or actually establish some momentum for this. But also, as I said, there may be some opportunities coming up with some land use applications to try to work with a developer on a potential location here and it would be helpful to have a cip project to be able to point to and so we'll obviously pending the update from staff on what the scope is and the size and the cost location wise i think we're talking about something in the route 50 corridor

[01:22:15] just as a reminder for everybody i think the the issue why the reason we've had this discussion is because that part of the county all the services the county office are either in leesburg or sterling and while it's certainly true that it is a relatively affluent part of the county there are still many many individuals that have need for everything from early intervention to mental health services all those sorts of things and those are all you know easily a 25 to 35 minute drive away and so we just don't have anything nearby so that's that's the idea behind this discussion that we've been having for quite

[01:22:53] some time so i appreciate uh adding this in thank you any other committee member um all right well looks like we are ready to go to a vote supervisor letourneau any closing all right all in favor please say aye aye any opposed well i'll vote aye so that's three zero two with chair randall and supervisor briskman um out of the room all right you have i have the blue motion let me go ahead and make it and then i'll explain it i moved the finance government operations and economic

[01:23:28] development committee direct staff to develop cip scenarios using prentice drive to loudon county parkway to lockridge road as an offset to accelerate the following projects shore shellhorn road and mwaa property to moran road route 7 widening loudon county parkway to route 28 west wind drive and braddock road widening paula 6 to loudon county parkway and return to the committee on march 8th 2023 second from uh supervisor saints yes but could i add a friendly yeah i think there may be a few friendlies on this so and that's fine it wasn't necessarily intended to be an exhaustive

[01:24:07] list you want me to give my opening first or sure whatever you want to do yeah so just to explain to the public what's going on here so i uh i had some time on my hands and really was digging deep into the cip and we've had this discussion about princess drive for a while so what we're talking about is a road that is essentially a connection between Loudoun County Parkway, Route 606, and Route 28. It's on 10-45 if you have your CIP book. And today we don't have any connections

[01:24:39] there. However, we have two other CIP projects that I mentioned here, Shellhorn Road and West Wind Drive, that are going to make those connections. So essentially we're going to go from having zero to two and then this is a third which runs parallel to Shellhorn. When we first started the planning around this the land use of this area was not known. We were talking about potentially having pretty high density residential development just outside the 65 LDN on the Loudoun County Parkway corridor. It did not develop that way. It is data center alley today and it will

[01:25:15] continue to be throughout this entire corridor which just does not generate much traffic. So, given the project cost, this is a $149 million project. I know we've already expended some money on it, and we've already done some land acquisition. And I'm not necessarily saying that we should completely shelve the project.

[01:25:33] But it's funded in FY26 with almost $109.5 million of construction costs. And I just think there are many other projects in the county that are a higher priority than this one. Certainly, I have a few in my district. I know others do.

[01:25:49] So I did speak with Supervisor Sainz and Supervisor Glass about this. It is current, broad run, and future Sterling District. I think we're all kind of in agreement. I would also throw out that my list isn't necessarily intended to be exhausted. I asked that question about North Star because I was considering it for this motion as well.

[01:26:08] So depending on the answer, I may want to include it here instead of brag. I don't know. So I think it depends on kind of what you guys tell me. And that I'm open if anybody else has anything else they wanted to look at, you know, as well. Great.

[01:26:24] Supervisor Sainz. Yeah, I was just going to appreciate the motion. I was just going to add in, if we could, friendly to add in the bus stops, because right now we are, you know, doing the pad work, laying the concrete. But I know we've already voted and directed staff to look at doing the bus shelters themselves.

[01:26:40] But I think if we can get some funding from this to actually start putting bus shelters down in place and it can accelerate that project, let's get it done. That's I would accept that. Thank you. All right. Staff comments. Megan. Can I just clarify? So the bus shelters and bus stops, the funding in question is FY24 funding, which is cash proffers.

[01:27:05] So we would just need to explore whether or not that is the appropriate use for bus shelters and bus stops. And then the rest of the funding freed up is not until 26. Is there bus stop funding, sorry, Madam Chair, is there bus stop funding past 26?

[01:27:39] Yeah, so there's, it's phased, so there would be funding in FY24, 26, and 28. So I think perhaps what he might be suggesting that is that the 28 funding be. Okay, thank you.

[01:27:54] Not to speak for you, but. Any other discussion? Oh, Supervisor Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a question. If we delay the apprentice drive construction to at least fiscal year 27, would we need to delay the professional services and design that's occurring in fiscal year 24?

[01:28:18] So we're going to need to explore this scenario request. We can't answer those specific questions right now. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. Yeah, maybe as just part of my closing, I think what I would probably propose is that the whole thing get paused. So that would potentially include earlier some of this earlier funding as well so I but I think it depends a little bit and it's probably as part of this it will be good to know we've already expended 29.6 million I think a lot of that was land acquisition so you know but it would be probably good to get an accounting of that and you know as I said I'm not necessarily proposing we take it out of the CIP I just think

[01:28:57] there are bigger priorities and I would like to see you know once we get Westwind and Shellhorn built which still not going to be for quite a while what the traffic flow looks like what the metro station utilization looks like and all those sorts of things before making a decision to committing us to this much money for this project all right and for staff's benefit it it's that staff should develop cip scenarios at this point that's that's what the ask is yeah all right okay just so we have some options i did want to clarify this um prentice improvement

[01:29:36] is um one of two segments of improvements going on the other segment is fully almost fully funded if not fully funded with nvta 70 percent um that that project is not in the current cip it's been fully appropriated so as we're exploring the scenario that's you have to do that's the wax pool segment yeah we do have to do a little research to make sure that any delays that we would recommend for this segment doesn't negatively impact our nvta 70 but we'll consider that as part of this motion all right any other comments all right all in favor please say aye aye i'll vote

[01:30:13] aye so that passes 302 with chair randall and supervisor briskman out of the room um any other discussion or motions on the cip item okay matt you good i think i'm good all right okay We're going to move on now to the Waterford issue.

[01:30:39] Chair, Chair Umstott. Yes, sir. If I may, there was a request from Supervisor Turner involving a project in Ashburn. That's right. Yes, thank you. We're not clear on what to do with that. Can I maybe just ask that his item get researched and brought back to the committee?

[01:31:01] Yes, we can do that. So I'll, yeah, I can move that as just that. Ashford Road Bridge. Yeah, and I was going to ask if that was in the missing link study as well. I don't know. I believe it is, but don't hold me to that.

[01:31:16] I'm pretty sure it is. Well, I'm happy to move that staff research that item that Supervisor Turner is requesting and bring it back to the committee. And I'll second. All right. Any more discussion on that? Tim?

[01:31:32] I believe we were not real clear on the exact scope of Supervisor Turner's question. So if the committee is going to ask it, if we could just ask Supervisor Turner a couple of clarifying questions. I think I do understand what you're talking about.

[01:31:47] But you're talking about the segment that putting a shared use path between the bridge, the new bridge south, correct? Correct. Okay. That's right. That's all I need to know. And I can specify an eight-foot wide shared use path. Although 10 is the Cadillac, I'd be happy with an eight-foot.

[01:32:03] Thank you. All right. Very good. Okay. Any more discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And I'll vote aye. So that will pass 302 with Chair Randall and Supervisor Briskman out of the room.

[01:32:19] All right. Thank you, Supervisor Turner. And thank you guys for catching that. All right. So we're going, we're now done with the CIP program. and we're going to move to the Waterford issue.

[01:32:40] Supervisor Kirshner is not here. We're tearing out now. Are you sure you want to stay? So do we have any kind of staff information on the Waterford proposal?

[01:33:03] Chair Umstead, DTCI staff is going to lead this item, so I will turn it over to you. Very good. Thank you, Nancy. Good evening. Yeah, I don't have a formal presentation, but I'd like to review a few key points from our item. So, you know, the purpose of this item is to seek the committee's guidance and direction regarding the establishment of a new capital project to be entitled Village of Waterford Preserving the Landmark Infrastructure Improvements Project.

[01:33:33] And, you know, just by way of background, in July of last year, county staff presented the Village of Waterford Preserving the Landmark Infrastructure Improvements Master Plan Study, which recommended a number of improvements to the Village of Waterford National Historic Landmark.

[01:33:53] Those improvements were things like correcting the drainage and managing stormwater, coordinating with issues related to the potable water system, Things like, you know, putting utilities underground, creating continuous pedestrian pathways, parking areas, a number of different traffic calming measures.

[01:34:18] Essentially, making improvements to the village itself that would bring it more in sync with the National Historic Landmark status. So a number of different improvements. The board then forwarded the request to fund the Village of Waterford improvements to the Capital Improvement Program 2024 budget process for consideration and prioritization.

[01:34:40] Separate but related to this was as part of the fiscal year 23 adopted Capital Improvement Program, the board created a Waterford traffic calming project and allocated $500,000 of local tax funding for design services.

[01:34:56] And then in January of this year, the board sent consideration of removing that Waterford Traffic Calming Project from the Capital Projects Fund and transferring that $500,000 from that project to this new project for the Village of Waterford Preserving the Landmark Infrastructure Improvements Project.

[01:35:15] And then that was sent to this committee for work sessions. Also separate from this, there was a standalone project in the same area. And in February of 23, the board endorsed the Waterford Water Feasibility Study, which recommends improvements to a communal water system for the village of Waterford.

[01:35:35] As part of that approval, the board allocated $1.5 million to conduct a preliminary engineering for the project from the existing water and wastewater funds in the capital fund and directed staff to continue evaluation of potential interconnected communal systems to address water and wastewater needs.

[01:35:52] The reason I'm mentioning all of these things is that the recommendation in this item is to create this new project, and in this new project, this $500,000 would be used to do a number of very preliminary things. One is to coordinate with those other projects, the water and wastewater project, because right now we don't have a project that can coordinate with those.

[01:36:14] So should the board consider providing this initial $500,000 funding for the landmark study by using these previously utilized funds, you know, what would that be used for? Primarily, very preliminary engineering and environmental review tasks.

[01:36:32] The preliminary engineering things, things like survey, we would coordinate with the other two projects, the water and wastewater projects, because they will also be doing surveying to determine what the kind of differences that we would need to do to be able to add to it.

[01:36:48] So we wouldn't be doing duplicate efforts. NEPA compliance, environmental review, things like wetlands and water review, threatened and endangered species review, cultural resources review, all of these things are very preliminary and then important for us to understand as we scope out what the project would really be.

[01:37:07] Right now we have this planning study, but we don't have any, you know, hard data that would help inform, you know, a good scope and estimate other than a planning level estimate, so a good preliminary engineering estimate for the project. One of the key things that would need to happen early on as well is utility identification and mapping, so mapping where the utilities are in the quarter because there's just narrow roads, not much room.

[01:37:33] We need to know where they are now and then where they can go as a key part of the project. It would also support public involvement and, of course, working with community advocates on applying for grant funding. So, again, this is, it wouldn't fully fund, for example, preliminary engineering fully to the point where we would, you know, be able to advance.

[01:37:54] It's a very preliminary amount that would allow us to bring forward those early engineering efforts. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Is, well, let me first move to my colleagues. Any questions, Supervisor Sainz?

[01:38:14] Thank you. All right, so refresh my memory. So I know we had this discussion before. Supervisor Cusher wanted to take money that was already allocated for, I don't know, gosh, where is it? Traffic calming. Traffic calming in that area and then move it to this new project or whatever.

[01:38:30] We kind of call the new one the landmark project, just as an all-encompassing kind of term. A little confusing that just all we're doing is moving one fund from one account to another fund account. But anyway, but it still is for the Waterford area. And pretty much all this vote would do is just ratify that and just move it along.

[01:38:48] Is that accurate? And allow us to get some, you know, preliminary data collection. It would actually create a CIP project and allow staff then to advance work on the project within the $500,000 limit.

[01:39:05] Okay, and it's not going to take any funding from any other CIP items? No, the recommendation is to just move it from the other project to this project. Other, what are, to this one? Okay. Tim. So, thank you, Chair Romstad. I just want to make sure we're being clear.

[01:39:21] The current project is a traffic calming project that has a construction value of $7 or $8 million. The preserving the landmark project is a lot more than traffic calming. So traffic calming is a component of that. It is contained within the Preserving the Landmark study that was brought to the board, and the board did accept that as kind of a strategic plan type document for the Waterford community.

[01:39:48] The construction value of the Preserving the Landmark project is at least $60 million. So it would be establishing that project and then providing direction to staff to proceed with the preliminary engineering aspects of that project.

[01:40:10] Part of the funding strategy for the project is to work with the community, which we do have a history with the Waterford community, to work with them to get grant funding for much of the capital costs that are part of the program.

[01:40:28] I do not believe that $500,000 is going to accomplish the level of preliminary engineering that will be necessary to actually compete for grants. So I do believe in order to access other funding sources, we will have to add some money to that in order to accomplish enough of the engineering design to be able to compete for grants that will either further the coordination with the water project or be able to compete for other portions of the grant.

[01:41:03] The reason why staff is recommending, if the board wants to do this, the reason why we're recommending that we move forward with this is because of the potable water project that the board previously adopted at your last meeting. So there are common elements that can be utilized from the potable water project, those being components of the survey.

[01:41:26] If not, if we can get in early enough, we might be able to coordinate a survey that's sufficient for both of our purposes. However, there are other things in these narrow rights-of-way. So the potable water project would go in the street in the right-of-way.

[01:41:45] The preserving the landmark project also contemplates undergrounding of electric and communication utilities, also contemplates potentially additional stormwater elements, which could be the addition of positive drainage or inlets and pipe and other things that would also go within the right-of-way.

[01:42:10] So there are other advantages to coordinating the two projects if this level of capital project is something that the board wants to contemplate within Waterford. It would be similar to the coordination of construction effort that was done within Hillsboro, where they did something very similar, where they coordinated potable water, wastewater, stormwater improvements, streetscape elements into the same type of project.

[01:42:39] So I want to be careful about saying that the cost of the effort is only $500,000. I believe it will be more than that if we are going to reasonably be able to compete for federal grants out of the infrastructure program, for example, and things of that nature.

[01:42:59] All right. Thank you. Supervisor Letourneau. So if I were to think about this project using, like, this standard CIP project page, am I going to see, like, $500,000 allocated in, I guess, whatever the current, wherever that was allocated, and then nothing, and then future fiscal year, you know, $59. 5 million?

[01:43:23] so if this project is swapped to be the landmark project we do not have enough information to for this budget process to even do those even do that yes okay so we wouldn't be able to have that project phasing there or be able to so by creating the cip page you sort of have authorization to go out and scope the project correct okay um although you could do that you could also do that if it was just on the you know future projects list right well we wouldn't have funding attached to it you

[01:44:03] have in this in this case you already have the 500,000 correct which I think I tend to agree is probably not going to get us very far so you know would you be coming back do you think during fund balance or something like that asking for additional funding just to do the preliminary engineering so I'll defer to Ms. Boyd on this but my feeling is that we would use a portion of the $500,000 to get a better feel for the scope, and I think we would likely have to come back with a suggestion for a larger amount that would allow us to progress the engineering enough to a point where we think we can qualify

[01:44:43] for those common grant applications that are out there, because we're going to have to have some level of design done in order to be competitive. Okay. Okay. Well, I have no problem allowing that to proceed and continue and being at a point where we can try to compete for grants and things like that.

[01:45:04] But I guess just sort of for the discussion that sometimes crops up around these things, we have to be really clear about the fact that there's a lot of money that's going to have to go into this, and we're not funding most of that in the CIP right now, and we have a lot of other projects.

[01:45:21] So question for staff. So the way the draft motion is worded, the new project would be named landmark in the FY23 to FY28 amended capital improvement program.

[01:45:41] Do you believe that that includes the potential $60 million? I mean, would you interpret it that way? Yes, I would. I don't know about including, but this is advancing that project.

[01:46:01] So that potential $60 million, this would be advancing an increment of that project development within the $500,000 limit. Tim, are you, anything to add to that? Okay. All right.

[01:46:20] So one final question. If the board decided not to spend $60 million and if the community could not get grants or the county could not get grants and there's some skepticism among some staff that anybody could get that kind of money in grants, is the $500,000 going to be wasted?

[01:46:47] or can it do double duty by helping with the potable water project? Yeah, I think that there's a lot of, because it's all in the same space, the ability to coordinate between the three potential projects, the two actual projects and the third potential project, you know, is a good opportunity to do that, to be able to capitalize and not have duplicate efforts.

[01:47:17] So, you know, I think the effort would be not to waste money by duplicate efforts and to be able to coordinate with those other projects so we can minimize what this project needs to do and focus the limited resources on work that's unique to this project.

[01:47:36] All right. I will make the motion. I move that the Finance, Government Operations, and Economic Development Committee recommend to the Board of Supervisors that the board terminate the Waterford Traffic Calming Project in the Capital Projects Fund and transfer funding from that project in the amount of $500,000 to a new project to be named Village of Waterford Preserving the Landmark Infrastructure Improvements Project in the FY23 to FY28 Amended Capital Improvement Program. Does anyone want a second? A second by Supervisor Letourneau.

[01:48:16] This might help move something forward. I'm not optimistic that we're going to be able to afford $60 million for this project. However, the village of Waterford seems like a very enthusiastic group of folks living there think they can raise that kind of money from grants.

[01:48:41] If they can, that would be absolutely wonderful. and this might give them an opportunity to have a basis to go out and raise those funds. But as far as the county coming up with $60 million, I just don't see it, especially in this next CIP.

[01:49:01] Anybody else? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. So that'll pass 302. I think we're done. So we are adjourned. Thank you all very, very much.

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