Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Business Meeting, Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 4h 23m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7263
Agenda (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=73&clip_id=7263

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-20. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:01:13] Hi, Brandon. This is Lisa. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Great. Thank you very much.

[00:04:39] Good evening, Supervisors. Good evening, Staff. Good evening, Loudoun.

[00:08:01] I'd like to call to order the May 2, 2023 Loudoun County Board Supervisors Business Meeting. The student has a hearing loop. If you need a hearing assistance, please switch your hearing aid to the telecom mode. If you need a hearing aid, we have those as well. Please see the clerk to collect one. This evening, Mr. Turner will be doing words of inspiration and leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:08:19] Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. not exactly words of inspiration, but the phrase keeps rolling around in my head these days because it's seeming disturbingly applicable. It's a paraphrase of the Edmund Burke quote. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. And it occurs to me that you can travel on any public transportation any time these days, day or night, and you will see exactly the same message. See something, say something. These are times when we see something wrong we need to stand up and be counted and be part of the solution and not part of the problem

[00:08:55] and so while again not inspirational they are certainly cautionary and certainly a call to action for all of us please join me in the pledge me too pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay my colleague mr tony buffington has called to say He will not be able to make it tonight because he is, I believe, stuck at work.

[00:09:30] My other colleagues who are not here yet, I have not heard from, and I'm assuming they will be here soon. I would remind everybody that we started our meetings an hour earlier, and I know an hour doesn't sound like much time, but in the middle of a workday coming from D.C., four to five can be a very big difference.

[00:09:46] And so I imagine they're probably in traffic and making their way here and will be here as soon as they can get here. Until then, I'm going to go on and rethink the consent agenda. The proposed consent agenda is as follows. Item R1, Proclamation to Recognize May 2023 as Lyme Disease Awareness Month.

[00:10:03] That's for approval and presentation. Item R2, Proclamation to Recognize National Salvation Army Week, May 15th through May 21st. That's also for approval and presentation. Item R3, Proclamation to Recognize Provider Appreciation Day.

[00:10:19] That is for approval only. Item R4, a proclamation to recognize May 2023 as Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month in Loudoun County. That is for approval and presentation. Item R5, a proclamation to recognize May 2023 as Jewish American Heritage Month in Loudoun County.

[00:10:38] That is for approval and presentation. Item 1A, appointments and confirmations. Item 2, administrative items report of May 2, 2023. item 3 cpmt 2020 2022 that's 0006 leedsburg south fire station is there a motion to approve motion to be made by miss brixman is there a second on the motion there's a second there's discussion on the consent agenda seeing none on paper say aye aye aye any opposed that motion

[00:11:09] will pass 504 um okay um let's see so for additions and solutions tonight um miss brixman will have an addition to the agenda when we get to the action item, which will literally be the only action item we get to tonight, so she didn't have to make that, she didn't have to make the motions tonight, the motion to suspend or to put it on the agenda when we get to the action items. Mr. Turner will, without objection, during his board comments have a request for the colleagues,

[00:11:47] for my colleagues and for the board during his board comments that he would make a request as it relates to TLUC, the TLUC meeting. Does anybody else have any additions or teletions right now? Mr. Turner, is your light on for any reason? Because you're not doing it yet.

[00:12:02] Okay, wonderful. I'm sorry. Okay, I'm going to do, and even though I tried to pare them down, they're kind of lengthy. I'm going to have, I'm going to do my comments today on, this has been a really, really busy two weeks for me.

[00:12:24] I've attended a lot of meetings, both at the regional level and the national level, and I won't go through it all right now, because we ain't got that kind of time, but I do want to just speak on a couple of them that I've done I thought were, one, I thought they were interesting, and two, the other one I think is just important to have.

[00:12:44] The Healthy Counties Committee of the National Association of Counties had a very interesting and I thought very important seminar on loneliness in America. And I just wanted to share some of this information with you because I just thought it was fascinating.

[00:13:03] It says that 31% of all Americans, to include 61% of all young adults And 51% of all mothers with young children say that they experience loneliness. What loneliness does to the human body, what people who report that it does to the human body, is people who are lonely have a higher rate, a higher incidence of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive declines, and often earlier deaths.

[00:13:37] I learned that there were three types of loneliness. The emotional loneliness, when that means you can be around people all day, yet not feel connected. So loneliness doesn't mean people are not around you. You can have a group of people around you all the time and still feel lonely.

[00:13:53] Social loneliness, which means you are usually not able to interact with people, and so that leaves you lonely. However, there was a subcategory to that because they made it clear to say that social loneliness doesn't necessarily include isolation.

[00:14:09] A person can feel isolated and still be okay with that. Some people are like, they're just fine being by themselves even for long periods of time. So social loneliness means you're not with other people, but you want to be with other people and you can't.

[00:14:26] And then there's something called existential loneliness, which is much harder to describe. And some person feels that they are completely separated from the human condition. Like they're not part of this, like society has left them behind. For obvious reasons, loneliness became worse during COVID, and for people who had feelings of loneliness already, it was very hard for them.

[00:14:49] However, again, there were some people who didn't mind being isolated at all, and for them, COVID wasn't a problem. The cohort that we're all, well, we're worried about everybody, but the cohort that a lot of people in the mental health space are worried about are young girls between the ages of like 11 through 18.

[00:15:10] And that does not mean we don't care about boys, but young girls assume they have the hardest trouble right now. The belief in the working theory is that young girls spend more time, were spending more time on social media, and they were comparing themselves with images of other young girls to their ages who were not real.

[00:15:29] In other words, you know, looking at a picture of somebody who's 15 years old, and as I've said before, that young lady gets up, she has somebody do her hair, she has somebody do her makeup, she has, you know, her picture's airbrushed, And then she's up on social media. And if you're just a regular 14-year-old girl, you're looking at that and you're going, I can't look like that.

[00:15:47] I'll never look like that. And you immediately have some self-doubts about yourself. And so it's been a good deal harder for young girls. I thought this was really interesting. COVID was harder on elderly people who were in care programs.

[00:16:02] And so if they were in nursing homes, acute care, where the family could not visit, they felt abandoned. and it impacted their physical condition. However, there was a smaller cohort of elderly who fared a little better on COVID, and they were the people who still are in their own homes but are often caregivers to their grandchildren or other children.

[00:16:26] They actually might have missed their grandchildren, but they were fine not being daily caregivers to their grandchildren, and they said that they actually were able to do more things They did arts, they did crafts, they did more things because they weren't caring for their grandchildren.

[00:16:44] Among that cohort of elderly people who did, fared well during COVID, they also had one thing that happened, which was a higher incident of STDs. So their grandchildren weren't visiting, but somebody was visiting. they said that 65% of those responders said that for people between ages of 65 and 80 who did respond, they, during COVID, became, quote, re-interested in sexual intercourse. So really seriously good for them. Well, not during COVID, but you know what I mean. Otherwise, good for them.

[00:17:19] So it was a really, really, really fascinating discussion. Supervisors and anybody else who wanted. I have tons and tons of links if you want to read about the loneliness condition in America and what we're doing right now, post-COVID, and how that's affecting people. I've read like every study and every link, and I just thought it was fascinating. So we did one on aging. I'll go through that next year, next week, next meeting, because I don't want to bore everybody too much tonight. I also did a transportation public hearing that was held through VDOT. The agencies that were involved with VDOT, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, the Northern

[00:17:59] Virginia Transportation Commission, VRT, and then all of the Northern Virginia localities, so Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William. The majority of public speakers spoke on the need for more bike and pad trails in Nova. There has been an effort that's been going on for quite a long time.

[00:18:18] I imagine my colleagues who go outside, so Ms. Bricksman, Ms. Umstead, Mr. Turner, you don't go outside biking and petting, and I just don't go outside because there's just no reason to do that. But there's been an effort called the National Capital Trails Network that many of our environmental groups have been pushing for a long time, and that is an effort to connect walking and bike trails throughout northern Virginia, and what we found that most locations, including Loudoun,

[00:18:52] is doing pretty well connecting our own county and planning for bike-impaired trails within our county, but we haven't yet started doing the connection for bike-impaired trails from county to county, so there was a lot of that discussion. Also, there was another discussion again, and I had the numbers wrong last time about the serious injuries or fatalities for people who are bicycling and on foot, it actually said that in NOVA, in Northern Virginia, we are 30% higher than the rest

[00:19:27] of the Commonwealth to have somebody die or have a serious injury on a bicycle or walking. That number comes from the Virginia Health Opportunity Index. There was a couple of reasons for that. One of the reasons is in Nova, and I'm not, I'm going to be careful because I'm not criticizing anyone, that the signalized crosswalks are not designed well and that the signals themselves, a person will start to walk across four lanes, they'll get to the center where, you know,

[00:20:02] we have the little centers, the salvation piece of land right there, and then the sign changes and it has a countdown and people are not sure if that countdown means that's how long they have before they jet across that street or if it's just because a little walk signal that's gone so they're just not sure what to do and so a lot of times they're not sure cars are not sure so they start jetting across the street too late the light turns red or the light turns green and these things happen it was it's also said that you know that distracted drivers are still an issue

[00:20:38] But also a larger and maybe even larger issue are distracted pedestrians, so people who are walking while on their phones and looking down and stepping, literally just stepping into traffic. I don't know how you bicycle and can be on your phone, but I guess people are doing that.

[00:20:59] So that was an issue. And all the agencies that I mentioned, as well as all of Northern Virginia, is starting to work on this issue because 3% higher than the rest of Commonwealth is really, really, really a high number of people dying. The other larger issue that we discussed, and I'm sure my colleagues who are in NVTC have probably had this discussion as well, and that is the fact that Northern Virginia only received 7% of smart scale money that Virginia provided.

[00:21:28] It was $1.6 billion in smart-scale money. Northern Virginia received only 7% of that. The reason that's an issue is because by the criteria laid down by which you should receive smart-scale money, Northern Virginia should probably be receiving at least one-fourth of that money.

[00:21:45] And it's supposed to be a completely nonpolitical process that is just about congestion reduction, emissions, lower emissions, safety, and those types of things. But using that criteria, there has not been a very good answer.

[00:22:03] There's been some answers, but not a very good answer of why Northern Virginia has not received more smart scale money. Secretary Miller was there, who was just a very nice man, and has said that in October, he's going to take his staff to kind of like a little retreat and have a discussion about are we doing smart scale correctly, or should we change how we do the smart scale program?

[00:22:25] Lastly, I want to say to my colleagues, supervisors, I'm going to make a request and a gentle reminder to you all. And I'm going to do it publicly so that I'm on record and everybody knows I did it. It is really important that we get and that you get anything that you want on the agenda in a timely manner, which is supposed to be like a whole week in advance, it's important for a couple of reasons.

[00:22:56] One, it is a lot more work for my office and for the staff when things hit us late because now we've got to go make sure it's properly done and all these types of things. But two, and we have had this discussion before, the public is not seeing what comes to the agenda at the last meeting, at the last minute often.

[00:23:16] And even if it's something pretty innocuous like a resolution that we have no issues with at all, There could be a person from the public who might want to even come speak in support of it. And so if you're getting things to us the day the agenda goes out, the day before the agenda goes out, or even sometimes a couple days after the agenda goes out, it's just too late.

[00:23:37] So I did allow it this time, but this is my statement to you, my dear colleagues. In the future, I won't be allowing that. And so if you get something to me and ask me to put something on the agenda, no matter how simple and innocuous it is, expect that that answer is going to be no because it's actually in our rules of order and we just want to follow the rules.

[00:24:02] So that's all the statements I have today. And that was a lot of talking. All right. Today, I'm going to call my voice for a cause. My voice for a cause today is the Northern Virginia Family Services. The Northern Virginia Family Services Vision and Mission is a non-profit organization recognized nationally for its effectiveness.

[00:24:25] NVFS serves a diverse community of clients in Northern Virginia, most of whom live in poverty. It provides the essential building blocks for financial, emotional, and physical well-being. With these essential resources, the community is better equipped for future successes.

[00:24:42] Every year, NVFS empowers more than 35,000 individuals to achieve self-sufficiently. With us today is Martin Quintero, who I met a couple weeks ago and who has just been absolutely fantastic since I met him.

[00:25:01] I'm going to ask Marvin to introduce everyone that you have brought with you, Marvin. And then after you do that, I will ask you a couple of questions. And anyone on your staff, on your team, wants to answer those questions, feel free to do that.

[00:25:18] So, Mr. Marvin Contrero, would you like to take it out? Over, please. Again, Marvin, I'm the Director of Community in Reach. I'd like for each one of my colleagues to introduce themselves, share their names, and what do they do for the agency. Wonderful. I'm Kate Rean. I'm the Director of Youth Initiatives. Hello.

[00:25:36] My name is Marcella Castro, and I'm an IPE Counselor. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Come back. Come back. You're what? An IPE youth counselor. Oh, okay. Thank you. Hello, my name is David Rojas, and I'm also an IPE youth counselor. Wonderful. Good afternoon.

[00:25:54] My name is Michael Best, and I'm a program manager with Ventures, where we try and find the intersection between nonprofit and private business for projects or programs. Okay, wonderful, wonderful. Okay, Marvin, tell us some of the services. I kind of mentioned them generally, but can you be a little more specific with the services you provide, especially here in Loudoun County?

[00:26:13] Okay, excellent. Yes, so we do have youth initiatives program. We also have a gun and youth violence intervention, prevention and education, job training and entrepreneurship, pay it forward. And what I lead is a Loudoun Recovery Program, which basically assists our county residents that have been affected by COVID.

[00:26:34] And we are providing them mental health, benefits counseling, career navigation, and direct assistance. You say you need that or you lead that? I lead. You lead that. Okay. Do you have any events that are coming up in Loudoun County? Surely we do. - Okay. - So we have our job search and resource fair.

[00:26:52] It's gonna be on June 3rd at Banneker Elementary School. And we are joining with a lot of other agencies and local departments, organizations. And I will read some of the names and that would include Loudoun Hunger Relief, Crossroad Jobs, Innova Health System, Just Neighbors, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Windy Hill Foundation, Loudoun Health Department, Loudoun Cares, and Health Works for Northern Virginia.

[00:27:20] And what day is that? And this is on June 3rd between 9.30 and noontime at the Banneker Elementary in St. Louis. 9.30 to noon, June 3rd. Do you know what day June 3rd Paul's on? It's a Saturday. It's a Saturday. Wonderful. Saturday morning. How can residents, if they need assistance from NDFS, how would they do that?

[00:27:41] Okay, so I could give you two phone numbers, my, my own, 571. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're giving your personal cell phone number? The work number. Okay, very good. Okay, keep going. Yeah, we do service, but keep the privacy a little bit, if we can. So my cell number, work number, is 571-579-1985, and it's 571-579-1985, and the main number for the agency is 571-748-2500.

[00:28:15] Okay, is there a website? And the website is nvfs.org. One last question that I didn't give you all in advance, and I apologize. When you say youth services, at what age are you talking? Are you speaking? We serve the age of school age, so that's going to be 5 through ages 21, doing mental health for 5 to 21, and then also doing gang prevention intervention for ages 10 to 21.

[00:28:41] And that's done in Loudoun County? It is. We do at-home visiting, community-based. It is free for families, and it's provided in English and Spanish, as well as groups and workshops and schools for newcomers and kids exposed to trauma. Is that part of the community in-reach programs? It is not. It's our youth initiatives.

[00:28:57] The youth initiatives are separate from the community in-reach programs. You know what? The work you're doing right now is so important, especially post-COVID. Thank you so much, Marvin, and for everyone who came with you. We really do appreciate you, Ross. Thank you so much. Mr. Hemstreet, do you have any comments this evening?

[00:29:16] Thank you, Madam Chair. I have four comments for this evening. The first is that Loudoun County is now accepting applications from first-time homebuyers for a program that provides lower interest rates on home ownership loans in Loudoun. Funding for the program comes from Virginia Housing's Sponsoring Partnerships and Revitalizing Communities Program, or SPARK.

[00:29:37] There are income limits and other eligibility requirements for applicants. Details are available at loudoun.gov slash home loan programs. Second, Loudoun County fire officials are spotlighting the dangers of improperly discarding smoking materials, which sparked two recent fires that caused extensive damage to homes in the county. Fires such as these can be easily prevented if smokers follow a few simple steps, including smoking outside and making sure that cigarettes are fully extinguished. Officials also recommend soaking discarded cigarettes in ashes and water before disposing of them in metal containers away from the house. Third, members of the community are encouraged to learn

[00:30:16] and engage about Loudoun County's efforts to increase environmental and energy sustainability by attending the upcoming Energy and Environment Forum. The event, which will be hosted by the Loudoun County Environmental Commission, is scheduled for May 11th from 5.30 to 8 p.m. at the Academies of Loudoun.

[00:30:34] Details about the forum and the county's many environmental initiatives may be found at loudoun.gov slash environment. And then finally, on May 12th, the Loudoun County Disability Services Board and the Arc of Loudoun will co-host a disability resource fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Rust Library in Leesburg.

[00:30:52] The free event is intended to highlight a wide variety of community resources available to people with disabilities. Participating organizations will include representatives of the Loudoun County government as well as organizations that provide educational, employment, and recreational opportunities to Loudoun residents.

[00:31:08] Those are my comments this evening, Chair Randall. Thank you, Mr. Hemstreet. Supervisor, I did forget one thing that I want to put on the record. May, I'm sorry, yeah, May 24th, which is a Wednesday, at 6 o'clock I will be holding my 8th annual State of the County.

[00:31:23] Obviously, all of you are invited. I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking with Mr. Buffington since this is his last year on the board with me, with all of us. And so I would love to have you join me. And without objection, I'm going to have that be televised and webcasted and all those things.

[00:31:43] So please join me. Okay. I did. He has been. You have been. That is very fair. You absolutely have. No, you don't.

[00:32:00] Maybe not this year. Please join me. All right. We will now move to our information items. Our first information item is the Significant Ensure Report. And this time, it is the sheriff's department. Would the sheriff, Chapman, would you all come down to the table, please, sir?

[00:32:30] Oh, wait, he's on.

[00:32:46] Yes, he's parking right now. Oh, he's parking, so we're just going to just. Yeah, he had another thing right before this, so he is on his way. Okay, you know what I didn't actually say to you all, and I should have been advancing, I'm sorry. We're trying to hold the presentations to 10 minutes if possible.

[00:33:03] If possible, we'd like to do that. So, is that possible? Okay. We will do our best. Thank you.

[00:33:21] Normally, when you guys are here, I'm not quite this efficient with time. Thus, the sheriff is not running down the aisle like he's on the prices right, like he is right now.

[00:33:38] Hello, Mr. Chapman, Sheriff Chapman. How are you, sir? I am well, thank you. I just made the request that I'd be making for everyone doing presentations. If we can hold this to about 10 minutes, that'd be great. that doesn't include questions so when you were ready we are ready you're ready with you okay well thank you chair Randall members of the board excuse me tonight lieutenant colonel Sawyer lieutenant gun Lee and I will be presenting and answering questions about the LC so significant report for the third quarter of this fiscal year an expanded report from what we have

[00:34:16] presented in the past as an intro I would like to mention three matters of particular interest first as you know the new quarter started with the shooting at the Dulles Town Center on April 2nd. Emergency dispatch received the first call about the shooting at the food court at about 11.57 a.m. that day, followed by many more calls from the mall.

[00:34:36] I am proud to say that our deputies arrived just three minutes later, encountered the victim of the shooting outside by the Cheesecake Factory, provided initial medical care, and raced upstairs, placing the suspect under arrest just two minutes later at 12.02 p.m.

[00:34:53] By 12.06 p.m., the victim was en route to the hospital and was being administered whole blood by Loudoun County Fire and Rescue. All critical aspects of this incident were under control in less than 10 minutes from the time the first call was received to include a major law enforcement and emergency services presence on site and confirmation that this was not an active shooter situation but rather an isolated incident.

[00:35:19] This was a remarkable response by the Emergency Communications Center staff, LCSO deputies, and our command staff and fire and rescue personnel. Once the incident was contained, the Atlanta County Sheriff's Office, working in a rescue task force manner with fire and rescue, the Fire Marshal's Office, and the Dulles Town Center management closed off all mall exits and entrances and searched all stores for anyone who might be sheltering.

[00:35:45] In the meantime, local news media was broadcasting and posting the breaking news right away, and some gathered in the parking lot near our command post. We issued a public statement, then held a joint press conference on site around 3 p.m. once we had all the facts in hand.

[00:36:01] Fire Chief Keith Johnson and I conducted a press conference, joined by Supervisor Sylvia Glass. I want to thank you, Supervisor Glass, for being on site that day and for offering your support and for speaking to your concern for the community as well as our emergency responders. To be clear, never during this brief and isolated incident was the community at risk, nor was information delayed or withheld.

[00:36:24] Next, I am pleased to say that the Lyon County Sheriff's Office senior-level collaboration with Lyon County Public Schools has been much better since the appointment of Dr. Smith as the interim superintendent. It has been refreshing and completely different from the previous administration.

[00:36:42] This is evidence that effective communication and collaboration is possible between our organizations at our most senior levels and the way things should always work. Our past engagement with Kevin Lewis and John Clark from the Loudoun County Public School System security team was frequent and included regular discussions on how to best keep our children, teachers, administrators, and parents safe and well-informed within the school environment, how to get the most benefit from the collaborative efforts of our school resource officers and london county public school security personnel and how to improve our mou in areas of

[00:37:17] communication coordination of response and training to include having london county public schools security leadership participate in our active violence training something that we do for fire and rescue personnel and other stakeholders this collaboration has become even better since the appointment of dr smith he and i have met personally to discuss the miu and are in direct contact on safety issues related to Lyton County students and the schools. Further, Lyton County Sheriff's Offices work collaboratively with Jen Evans in conducting forums at various Lyton County

[00:37:51] schools over the past few months about fentanyl poisoning, other drug concerns, and vaping. We also continue to provide D.A.R.E. instruction to encourage good decision making at elementary and middle school levels, and a D.A.R.E. program reaches over 12,000 Lyton County public school students each year. Graduation ceremonies are held every spring, another of which I participated in this morning and was again struck by the positive, grateful reaction from both students and their parents. Use of our Safe to Talk app continues to be part of our school safety efforts and is supported by the Loudoun County Public Schools. This was introduced by the Loudoun County Sheriff's

[00:38:30] Office several years ago as a way for students to anonymously contact our dispatch directly in the event of an emergency or in the event students felt more comfortable bypassing school administration to relay their concerns directly to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. We continue to work with Loudoun County Public School System to bring other safety-related programs to the students. We continue to move forward in a positive collaborative direction. Finally, I want to say a few words about our body-worn camera project with the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney. Here, too, collaboration is working. This highly technical project has been underway for a long time

[00:39:07] and both teams have worked toward a smooth transition to online delivery of video data. Once completed, our data will be available to the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney. This data will include ADC records, adult detention center records, crime scene records, emergency communication documents and recordings, in-car and body-worn camera videos, and incident reports.

[00:39:29] I'm happy to say that the kinks have been worked out and that our go-live is imminent. I believe this will be coming to the board as an information item soon, so I just want to let you know that about 20 Latin County Sheriff's Office employees have been involved in this project from various functional areas and that we have done our part to make this work.

[00:39:51] Now to the Significant Activity Report. As you can see, we have expanded it to be more comprehensive, incorporating not only significant countywide and regional law enforcement incidents and data, but also data generated by our Courts and Corrections Division for the first time. We have also memorialized the many awards and other accolades LCSO personnel have received, along with our engagements in the community.

[00:40:14] I'm especially proud of these awards, which reflect the dedication of our personnel and how other public safety professionals and the community perceives us. Speaking of perception, you're going to hear the results of the county's latest citizen satisfaction survey today. Considering the declining lack of confidence in county government, the increase of crime nationally and the turmoil and scrutiny law enforcement has faced over the past few years, The responses received from Loudoun County citizens regarding the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office and our county enforcement partners reflects remarkably high citizen satisfaction ratings with approvals ranging from mid-80s to the 90s,

[00:40:52] along with the high value the community places on public safety. I'm going to turn this over to Lieutenant Colonel Sawyer now to highlight recent awards along with the countywide crime data and trends. Then Lieutenant Colonel Lee will update you on recruitment and highlight the data from our Courts and Corrections Division.

[00:41:12] All right, so I'm going to move quickly as we go through here. I'll reference page numbers as we go along, as I know you all are familiar with this report already. Starting on page five with the awards and recognition section, we really just wanted to highlight, and you all know, the incredible accomplishments of the LCSO staff.

[00:41:29] We have a tremendous staff in the Sheriff's Office, and that's really been highlighted by several awards like Dispatcher Molly Rau, who received the Dispatcher of the Year Award from Virginia Sheriff's Association, Detective Jenna Sullivan, who received Deputy of the Year from Virginia Sheriff's Association, Detective Tommy Rodriguez, who received the Virginia Homicide Investigator of the Year Award, and then moving even into this quarter in February, the Sheriff receiving the Sheriff of the Year from National Sheriff's Association and also being recognized by the Virginia House and Senate for that accomplishment in March.

[00:42:05] And then even since we submitted this report, we've been notified that crime analyst Rebecca Kelly is getting the Civilian of the Year Award from Major County Sheriffs of America. And Detective Lorraine Goldberg is getting the Unsung Hero Award, and she actually received it already from the Office of the Attorney General for her work in the arena of domestic violence and strangulation and suffocation.

[00:42:28] So really, really incredible work by LCSO staff. Moving on to page number six, at the bottom, LCSO dispatcher Chris McDonald received the Stork Award. That's again, which is really rare.

[00:42:45] So you receive that after you deliver a baby over, you know, by phone. So a lot of people never see that in their entire career, and dispatcher McDonald actually has two now. So that's a pretty incredible accomplishment there. Moving to the bottom of page seven, back in February, we held our 13th annual awards ceremony, recognizing a lot of just, again, incredible work by sheriff's office staff.

[00:43:09] And I want to give a special thank you to those board members that attended that ceremony as well. On the bottom of page eight, we are pleased to bring Deputy Cameron Gentry back to work in February. And, you know, after that Walmart shooting, he has showed just incredible just passion and determination to get back to work.

[00:43:31] And I'm pleased to say that he actually returned to full duty yesterday. So he is back in uniform in a full duty status. In fact, I saw him on my way over here and he's grinning ear to ear, just thrilled to be back to serve the Aladdin community. I'm going to skip forward a bit to page 11 where we talk about community outreach.

[00:43:50] And the one thing I wanted to highlight there, as the sheriff mentioned, one of the big things that we did in the previous quarter is partnering with Loudoun County Public Schools to hold six different fentanyl forums on just awareness of fentanyl and other opioids in the community.

[00:44:07] Moving to page 12, you know, one of the biggest things we had back in February was the conviction of Ronald Rodan for the 2011 murder of Bethany Decker. And that's been in the news a lot. We really wanted to highlight the work of the cold case unit, which was formed by Sheriff Chapman when he came in office back in 2012, and really takes an emphasis on making sure that families of these victims know that we never forget, we never give up.

[00:44:35] And I really want to highlight the work of Detective Mark Bush and crime analyst, excuse me, just really Detective Mark Bush and the CA's office did a phenomenal work putting that case together. And then, actually, the incident right above that, the stabbing that we had in Town Center Plaza back in early February, you know, that really, that incident was incredible to watch.

[00:45:00] And, you know, that's an ongoing thing, so I can't get into a whole lot of details there. But the work that our deputies did on that case, we had two deputies providing life-saving care, truly, you know, trauma care. It's called tactical emergency casualty care. Had they not been there with an extremely short response time and had the training and equipment, this likely would have been a homicide.

[00:45:22] So really just wanted to give a huge shout out to the deputies who responded there to that scene. Moving on to page 13, back in April, Mr. Farkhand Syed was found guilty of first-degree murder. This is related to the December 2021 murder of Najat Chimlali Good.

[00:45:42] And this was a highly, highly complex investigation. And this is where I really wanna give a shout out to Detective Rodriguez and crime analyst Rebecca Kelly. The two of them did an unbelievable, phenomenal, highly detailed investigation on that.

[00:45:59] Moving to page 14, we have our Community Policing Act data that's in there for review with a total of 5,456 total stops during that quarter. And then moving to page 15 at the bottom, we have our calls for service data, which the one thing I wanna point out to that is, when you look at 21, 22, 23, you see a pretty steep incline there.

[00:46:20] But I did wanna just state that really, we are returning to pre-COVID numbers. So when you go back to the years before that aren't shown here, 2020 and 2019, those numbers are right around 40,000. So we're not seeing just some off the chart increase there, we're really getting back to pre-COVID numbers there.

[00:46:39] Moving on to page 16, we get into our countywide crime statistics, But a few things I'd just like to highlight there. In the violent crime category, what you'll see is, you'll see aggravated assaults, again, are up and you see that kind of fairly steep, you know, increase there.

[00:46:56] That is also going back towards pre-COVID numbers. So 2019 and 2020 showed 39 and 41, respectively. So going back to 41 is really putting us back into the pre-COVID timeframe. The red line for forcible sex offenses is down. There was a spike last year, but it's down.

[00:47:12] And that's actually down even from pre-COVID numbers. So that's a good trend that we're seeing there. Robberies were pretty consistent. And then homicides, we did have one homicide in early January that was in Hamilton, which was a domestic-related homicide.

[00:47:28] Moving down to the property crimes, larcenies. You'll see larcenies are fairly significantly up. We are seeing an increase in larcenies, and that's kind of across the board from shopliftings to catalytic converters and a lot of different things that are there. So those are up. Auto thefts are also up slightly, with burglaries being slightly down.

[00:47:48] Moving on, the only thing I'm going to say about the different station calls is the Ashburn Station at the bottom of page 18. The first item there is the Silver Eagle Group burglary, where 10 firearms were stolen from the Silver Eagle Group. And I wanted to add that we have recovered several of those, not all, several, and they have been recovered locally, and that's a very active, ongoing investigation.

[00:48:13] So with that, I'll turn over to Lieutenant Colonel Lee. Well, good evening, Chair Randall and the Board of Supervisors. My name is Gun Lee, and as you may already know, I've been here for about five months, spent over 30 years across the county. And I'm going to say something that you already know, and that is you have a phenomenal employees and great leadership here.

[00:48:38] I can say that, and it's evidenced by the fact that the recruitment and the retention with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office is going well. In fact, in 2022, and I'm going to just throw out some stats here, we had 79 sworn deputies higher.

[00:48:58] That was the highest number that we had for many years. And out of that 79, we had over 56% who were pre-certified. 56%. That is a huge number.

[00:49:15] And it tells you one thing. From outside looking in, this is the employee of a choice that when the law enforcement across the street looks into and get involved in. So we need to be very proud of that. Although we have great results, we are, every day, continue to make recruiting much, much better.

[00:49:39] Currently, it takes about six months to hire a deputy sheriff. We are in a process of utilizing app to reduce that number to three months. I'm sure you know this, in the national average, it takes a long time to hire police officers and deputy sheriff.

[00:50:02] And there is a competition among all agencies to hire the best of the best. And that's what Loudoun County Sheriff's Office would like to do. So that reduce that number, that we could be the first one to hire the most talented, best fit deputy over here.

[00:50:21] And I do want to thank the board and Mr. Hamstreet for considering the retention and the hiring incentives. That's going to help us. As you know, with the Fairfaction, D.C., and metropolitan area, they go range from $25,000 and up.

[00:50:37] And I can tell you there's one police department in California that has a $75,000 pay incentive for police officers. Although money isn't everything, we know that. It is a reputational agency that the applicants look for, and that's what we're striving for.

[00:50:58] The second, due to time, I will speed this up regarding our court services. Please know that the construction is going well. We're looking at late June or early July for our Loudoun County Sheriff's Deputy to go ahead and occupy the space.

[00:51:18] And we'll be doing some safety checks to make sure that everything is running just fine to ensure that our judges and our attendees are well protected. So we're looking at more than likely a July or August time frame that will go live to have a general district court movie at that location.

[00:51:38] And lastly, very proud to say, I know this is a chair of Randall's heart, our adult detention center continues to provide outstanding program for our inmates. Although we currently have an average of about 185 inmates, we have multiple programs out there to help our inmates to, one, to ensure that they don't come back, but number two, provide tools and necessary service to help them get on their feet. To include the adult mental health first aid, that is an eight-hour

[00:52:13] program, phenomenal. It's going to be helped both inmates and also outside folks when they go out there. Second, we have a great program called the Changing Habits and Nurturing Community Engagement. It's of 15 classes over 16 weeks.

[00:52:31] It's a two-tier program, one to provide a drug awareness information to our inmates, but also second is to prevent them coming back to our adult-to-transfer system. And lastly, we have a VDOT, Virginia Department of Transportation, a flagger certified program, where they're certified in that once they are out of the jail system, they can immediately apply for VDOT and obtain a profession.

[00:53:02] And we also have a serve-safe food handler program, which I'm sure you already know. It is basically working with the culinary expertise so that they can go out there and find a job with their culinary profession. And that's all I have for it. Thank you.

[00:53:19] Well, thank all of you. I'm going to, before I turn it over to my colleagues for a round or maybe two rounds of comments or questions, I'm going to say that I did see Deputy First Class Gentry. I don't know. I forgot where I saw him at. But my gosh, what an amazing young man his attitude was.

[00:53:39] He came over to me and thanked me, and I was like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding? He was, he was, he's just, he's kind and smart and such a good public servant. And I am so thrilled that he is safe and back at work.

[00:53:56] Of course, you know, we know that the mental health effects of something like this for our deputies and for our fire and rescue who responded can linger for a very, very long time. But but the young man himself is just an astounding young man. And I, you know, we I was there when he left the hospital.

[00:54:14] I think I said Mr. Turner and Miss Umstadt. And he I mean, there was a reason we had that reception when he left the hospital that day. He's quite the young man, and we wish him all the best in the world. So we're going to have a round, and maybe two if we need it, because Sheriff Chapman, you haven't been here in a while, and I appreciate you being here tonight.

[00:54:35] There's, I think, a lot of questions for you, so we may have two rounds, but let's start with the first round at least, and I'll start with Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheriff Chapman, I just caught the statement. Did you make a statement about confidence in county government that I missed? Can you restate that for me, please?

[00:54:51] I had a chance to look over that ICMS, rather, that study that was done. Very comprehensive study, a lot of categories that were there. Kind of looked through it. I don't have it memorized, but I did see that it looked as though some of the stats were down across the board in many areas to include services provided by the county as a whole.

[00:55:12] Okay. Actually, in reading through the report, all of the indicators for county governance were similar. For anyone who's taken an entry-level statistics course, similar means there was no statistically significant difference in the numbers from the last time.

[00:55:29] There were three categories in county governance that actually increased fairly significantly, although not statistically significant. They were jumps. Overall customer service by Loudoun County employees went from 80% to 85%. The overall direction that Loudoun County is taking was up from 50% to 53%.

[00:55:49] And there's one other one in here, oh, a job of Loudoun County government does at welcoming resident involvement was up from 54% to 55%. But again, to emphasize, they're all similar indications from prior ratings, which indicates that there's no statistically significant change in the confidence in the government in any of these numbers.

[00:56:11] I would also note in public safety, in every single category in public safety, the numbers were down. And I could easily say that there was a downward trend in the public safety numbers, but that would be a cheap shot because there is no statistically significant difference in the public safety numbers either.

[00:56:32] All of your ratings are exactly similar. So when I hear blanket statements like that, which are clearly intended as a cheap shot, I'm just really disturbed and disappointed. I think it's disgraceful. I think it's unprofessional. And I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for throwing that in there.

[00:56:47] It was just a cheap shot. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Glass? Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I just wanted to thank LCSO and the deputies in Fire and Rescue for your response at the Dulles Town Center.

[00:57:08] I'm pretty sure it was probably a terrifying event for those who were there, and your quick response probably helped a lot of people with their anxiety and, you know, showing up and letting them know that they're safe.

[00:57:25] So I just wanted to thank you for that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to start off by thanking you after several conversations with your office. You guys did finally put the process for getting an emergency risk protective order up on your website.

[00:57:47] I think that anybody who wants to seek an ERPO will go to the Sheriff's Department first. So I'd like us to go a step further and have it as one of the buttons on the homepage, because someone who's in distress and wants to start the process of getting an ERPO implemented, I think we could help them by not making them kind of dig through.

[00:58:07] But it's much better now, so I appreciate that. When we met last time, we talked about reporting out gun thefts in the county, and I thought we had agreed that we would get a report out on that in the significant incident report. So I didn't see it in the significant incident report.

[00:58:24] And I think with the gun violence happening in our nation of late, and I know that the community is very concerned about it. Our advocates are very concerned about gun thefts. And you mentioned the 10 firearms that were taken recently. So I'll ask again, can we please have a report out quarterly of the numbers of guns that are stolen out of cars or homes and wherever every month?

[00:58:50] So bring it quarterly, but tell us every month if you wouldn't mind. I think you were bringing up the LCSO, SRO, MOU, because maybe you saw the meeting that happened at the Joint School Board. I think we did get a lot of our questions answered there, but I was in fact shocked, really shocked to learn that the Sheriff's Department has changed nothing about their processes since the grand jury report came out.

[00:59:20] And the grand jury report was, you know, there weren't recommendations, quote-unquote, for the sheriff's department, but the grand jury report was critical of how the sheriff's department handled these cases. And, you know, the victims, the first victim's father even said, the SRO failed my family.

[00:59:37] And so some of the things that we talked about during that meeting, and I do appreciate the open conversation and the willingness to have a conversation about it. But I hope that you guys take to heart when you're negotiating this MOU with the schools that we really need SROs who are trauma-informed trained, and not just, you know, the umbrella trauma-informed trained, but trained to work with victims of a certain age with trauma-informed care and investigations.

[01:00:08] And I really, you know, I don't know, you know, obviously I'm not an expert in policing, but telling, you know, someone that they have to go tell their story to an SRO and then go tell their story to an investigator, I think, just, you know, re-traumatizes them. And a couple other quick questions.

[01:00:24] You mentioned recruiting. I'd like to know, of the 79 hired, how many were women? How many women you now have in your command staff? And then lastly, can you, well, I'm out of time. Maybe I can have a second. You can answer that question if you'd like to. Okay, but I will have another question if I'm okay later, if I'm allowed.

[01:00:42] The question of how many were women, what was the other question? How many women are in command staff? How many women are in command staff? You can answer that question. Anybody, I don't care who. So as it stands right now, for all personnel, we sit at 26.68%.

[01:01:08] That includes both civilian and sworn. When you look in the sworn side, female staff for sworn is 12.3%, which is consistent with national averages right now. It is very difficult recruiting females into law enforcement.

[01:01:24] On the civilian side, we have about 71.3% female, which is above national averages there. As it comes to leadership, we currently have nine women who are sworn supervisors.

[01:01:45] That is 8% of our sworn staff. That is, again, above national standards. We have seven who are master deputies, and master deputies carry a pseudo-supervisor role as well, and that is 15% of our master deputies.

[01:02:04] Okay, we'll come back. We'll come back. Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Sheriff, I wanted to congratulate all of you on, uh, the number of Valor Awards, um, that your people received.

[01:02:22] Um, it was one of the, I think, best attended Valor Awards ceremonies in, in quite some time, uh, even, even relative to pre-pandemic, but your folks seem to be very highly trained and their response in emergencies seems to be superb.

[01:02:45] and I think all of us very much appreciate that. We certainly hope that the board's decision to add, I think it was 36 additional patrol or field officers, will help you maintain a high level of safety in the county.

[01:03:10] And please, next year for budget, as you see needs arising, Please let us know in the fall, in the late summer, if possible. But thank you for doing everything you can to keep loud and safe.

[01:03:28] I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. So I do want to, I think we're going to have a discussion about the survey later. I do want to point out, though, when it says similar, it's not talking about similar to previous years. It's talking about similar to the national benchmark.

[01:03:44] I initially had the same confusion about what similar meant. So you have to look to the left where it has the yearly statistical, and I don't know whether they're statistically significant or not, and that was actually one of the questions I'm going to ask because there is decline from 2016 and 2018 in a lot of areas, which is a little bit concerning, but it's something for us to discuss when we get into the survey results.

[01:04:09] I did just want to make note in particular of the traffic safety program that's in the stations. We have really been taking advantage of Master Deputy Rudolph as at Dulles South, who has just an incredible amount of expertise in that area.

[01:04:30] And we've actually, with his help, uncovered really some code issues, some things where the sheriff's office really can't enforce. One of the things that I learned this from both him and Deputy Thomas is a lot of these vehicles at car establishments that get put out on the street, they don't have titles, and they actually can't be towed because they don't belong to anybody.

[01:04:55] Or they can be, but they can't track back to anybody because there's no title on them. So we had the county attorney out recently with several of your staff to look at certain areas, industrial areas in the county where we're having chronic issues. And I think we're all working together now to try to work on some potential ordinance changes.

[01:05:14] We may actually need General Assembly authority on changes. But, you know, I really appreciate that type of thoroughness to not just sort of say, oh, yeah, we can't do anything. But now let's take the next step and say, well, we still recognize we have a problem.

[01:05:33] So what do we need to do in the law? And if it's county ordinance, what does the Board of Supervisors need to do? if it's something that's in the state code that limits our ability what what do we need that to change to be able to really try to get at that so I'm hopeful with Mr. Rogers help and I know you were out recently in the Dulles district looking with the sheriff's office and some of these things that we can bring some of that language forward for my colleagues benefit I think it would benefit everybody in every district so I just wanted to commend his work and also the command staff there that are you know supporting that type of work because it's kind of going to the next level of trying to solve problems, which is really what we should all be trying to do.

[01:06:11] Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair, and gentlemen, thank you for being here. Thank you for all the hard work you do. Please pass down my thanks to your rank and file and all the tremendous work they're doing. I want to thank a couple of you and also T.J. DeLitta for the safety briefing out there in Western Loudoun that was done just a couple, about a week or two ago.

[01:06:35] Great briefing. Really good turnout by a few from there in Western Loudoun. Thank you, Sheriff, for coming out there. I appreciate it. It was really well done, well put together, great questions. I also want to thank you for bringing up Dr. Smith. I think sometimes partisan politics and whatnot, we often get very critical of each other, and not that Dr. Smith is partisan at all.

[01:06:55] We've had some difficult times even with this board, with folks at the school, and for you to come out and put forward, hey, we're having a great relationship, far better than the previous semester. I think that's helpful for us to hear, and it's refreshing. You know, everyone's always being so critical of their things all the time, and I really appreciate doing that.

[01:07:14] And I want to say one thing. I don't think you should be ashamed of yourself. You didn't in any way bring up during your talk, but I want to congratulate you on winning Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriff's Association, I believe it was. And well done. You should be proud. Your staff should be proud.

[01:07:30] And as Supervisor Umstead said, many of the Valor Awards that were won, as well as, I mean, welcome to go into it. I'm going to give you a couple of minutes to talk if you want, a number of the other awards that were won by some of your staff. So, and I also want to say I give my best to Deputy Gentry.

[01:07:47] It was a pleasure to work with him and help him through that process, as it was very, very difficult, I know. And I know many of his injuries continue, will remain for the rest of his life. But I'm very grateful that he's up and about and doing well. I have one question, and then obviously anything else you'd like to say.

[01:08:06] The body-worn camera that you mentioned, program that you're working with the Commonwealth Attorney on, could you kind of flesh that out a little bit? Where are we on that? And maybe Sawyer would like to speak to that, but where are we on that? What is the – how soon – what are we going to end up? What's the end product look like?

[01:08:23] Obviously, that's a big thing, especially with the number of body-worn cameras that we have. Sure, I can take that. So, as the sheriff said, the actual implementation of that is very, very imminent. Just the final, you know, touches back and forth with the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. That project really is a highly complex project.

[01:08:41] It sounds on the surface level fairly simple. It just moved video from one place to another. But, you know, for example, one of the, you know, one of the logistical issues that came up in that was that the Commonwealth Attorney's Office then has to do things with that video as well, such as discovery and moving it, you know, to defense attorneys.

[01:08:57] So it needs to be delivered in a way that they can effectively move it to the next level. and ideally electronically, because we have a video processing section. We're able to create DVDs, but if we deliver electronically just to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and they don't have an effective practice in place to move it on for discovery, then they are stuck burning DVDs, and they don't have the staff to do that.

[01:09:21] So that's just one facet of that, making sure that the system we set up is effective in transitioning video from us to them, but then also from them to defense attorneys and other places where that video needs to go. And then also making sure that everything else the sheriff talked about as far as case reports, incident reports, things like that, we're taking electronic delivery much broader than just video as well.

[01:09:45] But I believe that's coming up before the board as an information item here pretty soon. I think it's a major slide and that's gonna be, and y'all are familiar with him and his expertise in that, he'll be able to give a lot more detail on that as well. - Thank you, Mr. Sangergood. Okay. A couple things. So, Mr. Chapman, you know, my grandmother always said, you know, to build yourself up, you don't have to take somebody else down. And I'll just say that, that I did look through the numbers. And of the 150 categories, three, we went lower. And those three were Loudoun County is a good place to retire, cost of living, and ease of walking.

[01:10:25] 12 places we went higher, and then the other 135, we stayed similar. And again, as Mr. Letourneau said, it's similar. And so I didn't think that was necessary. And I think that you can certainly, and you should certainly, compliment your department without needing to swipe the county.

[01:10:47] So I'll just say that like that. I do have one question for you. You did explain kind of tangentially what happened during the shooting at Dulles Townsend Mall, which was such a scary call to receive.

[01:11:06] And so thank you for that. My two questions are, I've been in the mall more than the average person, and I often see a sheriff's deputy stationed in the mall. So is there a sheriff's station in the mall, and is that how y'all got there so fast?

[01:11:25] That's my first question. My second question, you touched on it, but not really. And this is an opinion question, Mr. Chapman, so this is not a factual question. In my opinion, you have used the alert system in ways before that were, in my opinion, political in nature, and there was nobody at any risk at all, any risk, and you've used the alert system for things.

[01:11:52] Now, you have every right to do that. You have every right to do that, but you have, even when there was nobody at risk. In this instance, you're right. Thank God. There was no further risk or greater risk that it was contained. Questions I received were things like, you know, the mall's closed.

[01:12:10] Could they have said that? Could we get some more information? Or even something else. And so I think your explanation of there was no risk, thus we didn't put an alert, I get that, and that makes sense. It just doesn't jive with the fact that there have been times when it's being used, in my opinion, politically, where there was certainly no one was in danger or risk.

[01:12:33] So can you square that circle for me, please? Let me start off with no, we don't have people stationed at the mall anymore. We used to, we do not. That was a quick response. It was a great response. It was. No, it was. I wasn't questioning that. It was a very quick response.

[01:12:49] I wasn't questioning that. So that's not a problem for us. As far as the allowed an alert is what you're talking about here, it's never been used. So I would challenge your definition of this being used politically.

[01:13:05] It's never been used that way. The only time that we used the allowed an alert was to put a report out, and this was the report, information that was factual. It was proven to be factual by the study that was done by IAC. But was anyone at risk? Because the criteria you used was there was no risk, thus we didn't need to use the alert system.

[01:13:26] I understand and agree. We put out information, whether it's about risk or whether it's not. It's information that's of value to the citizens that we serve. So you didn't think that at that moment putting the alert out was of value to citizens? At that moment, we were in the middle of clearing the mall with rescue task force personnel going through store to store, We were going through every single bathroom that was in the mall, making sure all the doors were locked.

[01:13:50] The fact that we were working with mall management to make sure that everything was secure. We had deputies surrounding the mall, so there was no risk of anybody going into the mall, showing up and going into the mall. We had press that was showing up that we were handling on the outside of the mall. And then as soon as we were able to get information out, we put a press release out, I think at about 2 o'clock, which was less than two hours after the incident had occurred and been contained.

[01:14:15] And then by three o'clock, we'd already done a press conference on that, that Supervisor Glass was nice enough to participate. So sometimes it is putting information out, and sometimes it is if you believe there's a risk. It can be both of those things. Sure.

[01:14:31] Okay. All right. So it's not just was it risk. It's also information that you might choose to put out on your own. That's right. Okay. And you might not think that's political, but somebody else might. Somebody else might. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate your answer, sir.

[01:14:46] you very much um if we need to do a second round let's try to do um let's try to do that ms brixman thank you madam chair and thank you for bringing up the alert system because a number of my constituents because my district's very close to there were wondering why there wasn't an alert and it's i don't know how complicated it is to put something like that my understanding is that it comes from dispatch i get alerts on crashes all the time consistently so a lot of the community was questioning why there wasn't an alert on that Um, and I would advise that maybe next time that there is an alert, because whether there's a risk

[01:15:23] or not, people want to know if there's a, they can make their own judgment too, right? They can be like, well, there might not be a risk, but I'm not going over there anyway. Anyway, uh, the other thing I wanted to discuss and, um, I, you know, I want to compliment Captain Hill. He was always very responsive to me and, uh, and, and Lieutenant Rogers has been very responsive and helpful on a number of items he sat on an interminable traffic conversation with with some folks in my district recently and I understand we're working on the Whitfield parking issue together hopefully without

[01:15:58] using a BMI but something was very concerning to me I think it was last week we had a meeting with the Sugar Land Run HOA association about the 7-11 over there and the dry cleaners and all of that and what I heard was a little bit disconcerting to me and that was we're just going to hammer home and cite these people and make it very uncomfortable for the folks that are there and that they were going to get ticketed and violated and all this but what I heard from the community was there's drugs there's clearly addicts there there's homeless people there

[01:16:38] um and so i i asked this during the meeting and i just wanted to bring it up with you can we please make sure that our community officers have resources that they can give to people because when i asked about that in the meeting the answer was kind of like no and i know that we have organizations in this community mobile hope uh department of failing services mh sads all there are resources that we can offer folks? Because a lot of those folks probably don't just want to be there hanging out, right? You know, I have a young person in my extended family who's dealing with,

[01:17:17] you know, being addicted, right? And they don't want to be addicted. They don't want to be behind a 7-Eleven shooting up. And so just to ticket them and cite them, that's not really going to help the root of the problem. So can we please make sure that these officers have the resources that are available in the county to offer those folks yes and we definitely do you know point to resources um you know i'm familiar you know at a high level with the issues that are going on there and they are there are extensive issues there um you know when it comes to enforcement of these things we do look to um you know to get to the root cause of that primarily the distributors and people who

[01:17:56] are um you know who are essentially causing the problem that's there um so there's a lot of investigative efforts there's a lot of resources going in there to try to get to that level And Supervisor Brissman, if I may, regarding your first question about 79 deputies that we hired, just to let you know, we, yes, we hired 10 who are female.

[01:18:19] So that equates to about 13% in 2022. And I tell you, the Sheriff Chapman has authorized the research and study about recruitment. And one of those things that we learned was that many, many years ago, we used to bring out SWAT and everyone else into our recruitment strategy.

[01:18:41] But that's no longer the case and does not work. We're reaching out to a lot more diverse to ensure that we are providing and reaching out to, especially we learn as we, you know, contact a female college majority of populations.

[01:19:03] We have learned a lot, and that is, you know, these women recruits, they want to make a difference, and that's what they're seeking from the law enforcement profession. and we're reaching out to social media and every other platform to track that. So I just want to add that in there.

[01:19:20] Thank you. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheriff Chapman, I apologize for my overreaction. It was an overreaction that was also unprofessional, and I apologize for that. Your comment really touched a nerve. I got a lot going on right now and just really touched a nerve. My planned comments were to congratulate you on your selection as Sheriff of the Year, to congratulate Deputy First Class Gentry for being back on the job.

[01:19:43] that's terrific to congratulate all the deputies who i think the world of for the valor awards and for all the diverse awards that you've gotten over the last couple of weeks so once again i do apologize mr sanes thank you madam chair just um again hate to bring up the subject but in regards to the system alert since it's brought up a few times and maybe we need to review how we're using that system alert because saying we didn't put put something out for a shooting granted yes Thankfully, it was not a mass shooting. It was an isolated incident, but the system alert goes out for car accidents, for missing persons, and various other things in the community every time

[01:20:23] something happens. So for a shooting to happen at a big populated area like the mall, there should have been something sent out. And I know we're playing Monday morning quarterback, but if we put something out for car accidents or missing persons, we should have put something out for this incident. Yeah, I'd like to add something on that, if I may. One of the biggest differences, because we've gotten that question before I get it from car accidents I get it for these things one of the big differences with this one is the volume of calls coming into the emergency communication center was very different so so yes it typically is our emergency communication center that sends out uh you know sends out alerts uh but they were inundated and I don't

[01:21:00] have the exact data but it was like it was I want to say well over a hundred calls that came in in a very very short period of time okay and I hate that time is limited but again that shows that there should have been something sent out. And I probably were 85% sure, 90% sure to review. I'm sure there's a system alert that went out when the shooting happened at the Walmart.

[01:21:20] Go back and check it, if you can. Go back and check. But again, if we can just review our processes, because again, if we're sending something out for a car accident or a special event, missing person, amber alert, or what's the senior thing called?

[01:21:38] I forget what it's called. Silver alert. Silver alert. If we're sending those things out for that, we should be able to send something out for a shooting. Yes, and we are reviewing that. So thank you. I think the fact that you're reviewing it is a great answer because the fact that you had so many phone calls coming in says that maybe people wanted to know what was happening.

[01:21:58] That's why you had the calls coming in. I got to tell you, I am jail officers are my favorite officers. Haven't worked in the jail and prison system for so many years. I've seen some not great jail officers, but I've seen some jail officers who have just spent lots of time talking to young people and taken some real care with them.

[01:22:20] And for whatever reason, they're sometimes not talked about with as much dignity and respect and pride that I think they should. But you are right. You will always hear from me, a support of a good jail officer, because a good jail officer, if doing their job correctly, can really turn a young person's life around, or not even a young person's life around when they're...

[01:22:44] So if they are listening, those are my people. Those are my people if they're listening. I do have two questions. So, one, how are we doing with programming for female, for the female population in the jail? I know there's a much, much smaller population, and so sometimes it's not as, I know that the programs are not nearly as robust for the men as they are for the men.

[01:23:09] I've, you know, I've talked about this for many years. And it's hard to do that because some of the programs are based on population and based on numbers and volunteer base, and so it's hard to do that. But I do hope that they're getting some level of service. That's my first question.

[01:23:24] My second question is, Sheriff Chapman, it was interesting because somebody the other day said that of all people, I have thought you want a crisis receiving center. And I said, listen, Mike Chapman and I have had many issues and we've gone back and forth about many things.

[01:23:42] But the one place where we are squarely locked in together and have always been is the crisis receiving center. In fact, as I write my state of the county, I'm going to put something in my state of the county about a crisis receiving center. I did want to let you know that this is something that is being discussed in the region.

[01:23:59] It's been discussed at COG. Every time I have a chance, I talk about it. It's not that the sheriff's deputies won't do the job of sitting in an emergency room. That's not an effective use. And it's really not.

[01:24:15] A person who's in a mental health crisis, they're not committing a crime. And so, you know, it's not, it's even for people who are CRT trained, it raises the anxiety of the person who's sitting there. It takes deputies off the street. It's just not a good use of that.

[01:24:31] And so we really, really, in this whole area, need crisis receiving center, especially since, you know, the jails were, I mean, the mental health units were unceremoniously shut down. So whenever you want to talk about that more, however you want to work hand-in-hand with that, you know, I believe I am leading in that effort, and I am more than happy to have you join me, and let's try to work on that together.

[01:25:00] But to the question of the jail, the female population. Yeah, Mr. Randall, we provide the same equal opportunity, especially with the CHANCE program I talked about. I believe there's going to be a female inmate participating.

[01:25:17] You're right. There isn't a high number of— What is the census right now? Do you know? I do not know. Okay, that's okay. That's okay. I didn't ask you that in advance. But I can tell you that the six times that I've visited the intake, you know, this is the theory that I hear, and that is we treat equal people equally and unequal people unequally.

[01:25:40] So we do provide extra additional care. I don't know what that means. What that means is there's a vulnerable population who needs some extra support. Oh. That's what it means, Chairman Randall.

[01:25:55] All right. And as we— So then you offer more to the people who need more. Okay, that may be a better way to say that. Okay. Yeah, I apologize. That's okay. We're doing well. Well, please give my regards to all the officers, but give them a special regard to the men and women who are working in the ADC.

[01:26:18] We will. And Chair Randall, just one more thing. We're doing some outstanding work down there. We're really tapping into technology, to CCTV program, to help our inmates. Invite me over. I'd love to tour. I'd love to see you. Invite me over any time, and we'll make that happen.

[01:26:34] Will do. Thank you. All right, thank you for coming. We appreciate you being here this evening. Supervisors, let's go to the next and last information item, which is what we just talked about, the survey of residents.

[01:26:51] Would staff please come up?

[01:27:09] Good evening. I thought we were going to have Ms. Burke with us. No, I guess not. Ms. Cox, okay, we're good. Hi, how are you? Hi, doing well.

[01:27:24] Thank you, Chair. Good. So is there some people online also with us this evening? We do. We have Brandon Barnett from the National Research Center in Polko, who will be reviewing the presentation materials. As you know, this is the third cycle that the NRC and Polko have conducted for the county on the National Community Survey.

[01:27:46] We do have over 500 benchmarks that they compare our data to. And while we know that the county has trended downward, Mr. Barnett is ready to discuss this from a national perspective as well. We are not the only jurisdiction that is seeing this trend.

[01:28:03] And it's not something that's isolated to our particular Loudoun County findings. We also wanted to point out that respondents to the survey really rated Loudoun County services very highly overall.

[01:28:18] So while we did see that decline, we saw compared to our similar benchmark communities, those who have similar populations to Loudoun County, that we actually fared higher on 50 out of those 123 indicators. So while we are looking at a national phenomenon of something trending downward, we are still faring very well against our benchmarks.

[01:28:41] As with previous surveys, we also want to just caution that there is a limitation to the survey data. These surveys are not designed to be the sole source of information to be used for policy and practice decisions. Or politics. Or politics. And also that the results for each of the facets that Mr. Barnett is going to present are not designed to be compared to one another.

[01:29:05] They are designed to be compared to the benchmarks for the same facet. So it's kind of comparing apples and oranges when we look at a comparison for that purpose. So with that, I am going to, we do have a presentation. It's more like 15 to 20 minutes, Chair Randall, if that's expected.

[01:29:24] Actually, no, I think the presentation is fascinating. I've gone through it, and I think that it's important for anyone who wants to truly understand it and not just kind of use this as a political weapon or a political tool, either one, to truly understand what this is.

[01:29:41] And so I am fine going through the slides. In fact, I'd like to go through the slides. Excellent. Let me see. I apologize. It's not showing up on the screen.

[01:29:59] There we go. There we go. No, that's not it. That is not it. That is not it. We can do that one. There we go. All right. There we go. There we are. And I will turn this over to Mr. Barnett from the National Research Center.

[01:30:16] Thank you. Thank you, Megan. I'm happy to be here to present a summary of the findings for the Loudoun County National Community Survey. Before I begin, on behalf of myself and my Polko NRC co-workers, I'd like to thank Megan Cox, who was our primary contact throughout survey development and implementation process.

[01:30:36] she provided thoughtful and detailed feedback throughout the project. A little bit about Polco and NRC. Polco's online community engagement polling platform provides the information tools local governments and other public sector leaders need. Now hundreds of organizations nationwide use Polco for strategic planning, budgeting, and empowering resident voices. We make civil verified community engagement online not only possible but accessible. NRC and Polco merged in 2019 to more effectively serve local government and project resident voices. The National Research Center at

[01:31:15] Polko gives local governments and other public sector organizations the data they need to make more informed decisions. Since 1994, we've worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide. NRC is best known for our national benchmarking surveys, such as the National Community Survey, the National Employee Survey, and the Community Assessment Survey for older adults, among others.

[01:31:35] Our benchmark database is the largest of its kind in the United States. We also partner with the International City-County Managers Association, the National League of Cities, Engaged Local Government Leaders, Alliance for Innovation, and we work closely with the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Before we dive into the results, I want to emphasize that there are a variety of ways these results can be used. Most commonly, the jurisdictions we work with use their survey data to monitor trends in resident opinion over time, measure government performance and ratings of public trust, and to inform budgeting processes

[01:32:12] and strategic plans. Our results allow you to benchmark your community's specific characteristics and services against those same characteristics within other communities in our benchmark database. Our hope is that as these findings are presented, it will spur ideas for you in what could be done with these results or where you might want to dig deeper. The National Community Survey is a standardized five-page comprehensive survey that allows municipalities to assess resident opinion about their community and local government. The NCS focuses on the livability of

[01:32:47] Loudoun County by categorizing survey questions into 10 main facets of community livability as shown here. These facets have been identified through extensive survey research as those that are most impactful to residents' quality of life. The NCS includes items within each of these 10 facets to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community. Finally, these facets also tend to align with municipal departments, making it easy for county staff to quickly find the information that is of the most importance to them in the final report of results. All households

[01:33:23] within Loudoun County were eligible to participate in the survey. A list of all households within the zip code serving Loudoun County was purchased based upon updated listings from the United States Postal Service. Using GIS boundary files provided by the county, addresses located outside of the Loudoun County boundaries were removed from the list of potential households to survey.

[01:33:45] From the list of eligible households, 5,000 addresses were randomly selected to receive the survey. The 5,000 randomly selected households received mailings beginning on November 28, 2022, and the survey remained open for six weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting the household to participate in the survey. The next mailing contained a cover letter with instructions, the five-page survey questionnaire, and a postage paid return envelope. Both the postcard and cover letter included a web link to give residents the opportunity to respond to the survey online, and all follow-up mailings asked those who had not yet completed the survey to do so

[01:34:23] and those who had already done so to not respond twice. The survey was available in both English and Spanish. In addition to the randomly selected households, a link to an online community-wide open participation survey was publicized by Lowen County. The open participation survey was open to all county residents and became available on December 26, 2022. Survey remained open for two weeks and 972 responses were received. A total of 1,507 completed surveys were received from these efforts, providing a response rate of 11% and a margin of error of plus or minus three

[01:35:00] percentage points. We then compared the demographic profile of survey respondents to that of adults in Lowndon County using the most recent Census and Americans Community Survey data and weighted the survey results. Weighting is a survey research best practice and helps us improve the representativeness of your survey results. One advantage to a local government participating in our community surveys is the opportunity to compare your ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation. NRC was the first organization to conceive of the idea

[01:35:36] to create benchmarks of public opinion. This allows jurisdictions to compare ratings of services to ratings of similar services from other communities. There are currently about 500 communities in our database. Loudoun County received comparisons to the entire benchmark database, which I will be referring to as the national benchmarks, but also opted to receive custom benchmark comparisons to a subset of communities of similar size. We'll now move into an overview of the survey results.

[01:36:08] In the survey, we have two questions that ask directly about those 10 facets of community livability. The first asks residents to rate the quality of each, and you can see the resulting comparison to the national benchmark in the shading on the chart. The second question asks about those same facets of livability, but is centered on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on each facet in the coming few years. So we ask about both quality and importance of each of these facets, and we use those answers to create the quality importance

[01:36:41] matrix, which we'll see on the next slide. We use this chart, which is also included in the report, to help determine which areas are of relatively higher importance and lower quality to residents. Those are located in the lower right quadrant as pictured, denoted by the star. This chart is one of many ways to interpret your data and can be used to identify key findings and help a community determine which areas may need additional focus or resource allocation in the coming years, and also which others are performing well by comparison. Of the 123 survey items for which

[01:37:19] residents provided evaluative ratings, nine received ratings higher than the national benchmark, 110 received similar ratings, and four received lower ratings. Ratings are considered similar if they are within 10 points of the national average, and higher or lower if they are more than 10 points different from the average. A few of the ones that were higher were the overall quality and variety of the business and service establishments, both employment and shopping opportunities, and the overall economic health. The four that were lower were Loudoun County as a place to retire, cost of living, the ease of walking, and the availability of affordable quality housing.

[01:37:59] Loudoun County also elected to compare their results to a customs subset of communities. Of the 123 items for which residents provided evaluative ratings, 50 received higher ratings, three of which were much higher. 82 received similar ratings, and one received lower ratings.

[01:38:16] Those three that were much higher were the overall economic health, the cleanliness, and crime prevention. The lower was Loudoun County as a place to retire. When compared to results from Loudoun County's NCS from 2021, in 2022, two received ratings that were statistically significantly higher than the previous survey iteration.

[01:38:41] 97 received similar ratings and 24 received lower ratings. The one that was higher was the opportunities to attend special events and festivals. Some of the lower were being open and transparent to the public. the overall image or reputation, the availability of affordable quality mental health care, and the availability of affordable quality food. Moving now into the highlights of our findings, I do want to point out a few items that stood out to us as survey researchers. There is a lot of additional data in the full report that we won't cover today, but today's presentation will focus

[01:39:19] on a few areas that we found to be most noteworthy within Loudoun County's survey results. The first of our key findings was that the economy in Loudoun County remains an asset and a priority for residents. The economy remains a strength of Loudoun County, with about 9 in 10 residents rating the overall economic health of the county as excellent or good, and a similar proportion identifying this as the top priority for the next two years. The overall quality of business and service establishments received high marks from 82% of respondents, while three quarters positively rated the variety of business and service establishments. Both of these scored higher

[01:39:57] than the national averages. Three-quarters offered positive reviews for the county as a place to work, which was above average, and as a place to visit, which was similar but a decrease from 2021 to 2022. Roughly 7 in 10 viewed positive ratings to the vibrancy of the downtown commercial areas, economic development, and the opportunities for shopping and employment, all scoring higher than national averages. Residents' evaluations of cost of living indicate an area of opportunity, as just 2 and 10 gave a rating of excellent or good.

[01:40:29] And while this was on par with the previous year, it was lower than the national benchmark. I just want to make one thing clear, because this is not, when you read it, it looks a little confusing. When you look at the pie chart, under poor, that's 496. That's not percent.

[01:40:45] Just look at that closely, because when you look, the first time I saw that, I was like, and I realized it's a number, which is, yes, no, it is, and that's right, right? That is 4%. That's 4%. Okay, that's even better, but better, right?

[01:41:04] So, good, okay. Yeah, that's like 490, that still might be the same number. But I was just like, what is this number? Because it's so close, I couldn't, yeah. I mean, it's written close to get, see what I'm saying? It's 4%, you can't see it though, right?

[01:41:20] Right, it is a very small sliver. I thought it was 496. Okay, but it's 4%. The poor is poor. Okay. Reporters in the room, that says 4%. Thank you very much. You may continue.

[01:41:40] As a part of a series of custom questions unique to Loudoun County, residents were asked what specific issues the county should focus on over the next two years. 83% rated the cost of living, cost of housing as essential or very important, and 72% felt it was important for the county to focus on employment opportunities. However, it is noteworthy that roughly 7 in 10 residents said that they would not be willing to incur a tax increase to improve either of these issues.

[01:42:12] Residents were also asked in what areas they had reduced spending due to housing and transportation costs. About one-third had significantly or moderately reduced spending on grocery shopping, and roughly 2 in 10 had significantly reduced or eliminated spending on recreation activities, childcare, entertainment, and educational opportunities. Our next key finding is that many aspects of Lownden County's community design receive positive reviews, but residents identify some areas of opportunity. The quality of the overall design or layout of residential and commercial areas in Lownden County received positive ratings from 6 in 10 residents,

[01:42:51] while about 9 in 10 rated this as essential or very important. These comparative lower quality and higher importance ratings indicate that the facet of community design may be an area of focus for the county in the coming years. Ratings within this facet tended to be similar to the national benchmark and to ratings given in the previous survey administration. About 8 in 10 gave high marks to their neighborhood as a place to live and the overall appearance of Loudoun County, while roughly 6 in 10 gave positive reviews to well-designed neighborhoods, historical preservation, public places where people want to spend time, and code enforcement. However,

[01:43:29] just 2 in 10 residents offered positive ratings for the availability of affordable housing, Though this was similar to previous years, it was scored lower than the national benchmark. In a series of housing-related questions unique to Loudoun County's survey, residents were first asked what types of affordable housing are needed in the county.

[01:43:49] Roughly 7 in 10 strongly or somewhat agreed that apartments or condos, townhouses or row houses, duplexes, and smaller detached single-family homes were needed as affordable housing options. Conversely, 8 in 10 strongly or somewhat disagreed that mobile homes were needed and about half disagreed that tiny homes were needed.

[01:44:09] When asked about priorities for the location of affordable housing, locations near schools and public transit were considered a major or moderate priority by about 8 in 10 residents. And two-thirds felt that locations near recreation amenities or parks, trails, and open spaces should be a priority.

[01:44:26] Sporting events, stadiums were rated the lowest in priority for affordable housing to be built near, with 7 and 10 giving ratings of low or not a priority. The third of our key findings is that ratings for mobility are generally positive and alternate transportation may be an area of focus for the county.

[01:44:48] The overall quality of the transportation system received ratings of excellent good from about half of residents, which was on par with the national average. Mobility-related services generally fared well, as street repair and cleaning, snow removal, and sidewalk maintenance received high marks from about 7 in 10 residents.

[01:45:06] Further, street repair was rated more positively in Loudoun County than in other communities across the nation. Aspects of car-related travel received mixed reviews from residents, with 7 in 10 giving high marks to the ease of travel by car and the ease of public parking, and half giving excellent or good ratings to traffic flow on major streets.

[01:45:25] In thinking about alternate modes of transportation, about half of residents gave positive ratings to the ease of travel by bicycle and by walking, while just one quarter gave favorable scores to the ease of travel by public transportation. While these ratings were similar to the national averages, public transportation indicates a potential area of opportunity as Loudoun County residents are more likely than those who live in other communities to utilize it, with at least 30% responding that they use public transportation at least once in the past 12 months.

[01:45:58] When asked about specific issues for the county to focus on in the next two years, about 8 in 10 residents identified traffic and road maintenance as essential or very important, and 6 in 10 considered trails and bike paths to be important.

[01:46:14] Residents also indicated how often, if at all, used various types of public transportation. Bike and walking trails were the most used, with 8 in 10 residents having utilized these at least once in the past 12 months. About 6 in 10 had used a taxi, Uber, or Lyft, and 4 in 10 had used the metro rail, 3 in 10 had carpooled.

[01:46:37] The fourth of our key findings is that safety is a community strength and remains a priority for residents. Ratings for safety-related items on the survey remain consistent from previous iterations, with all items scoring on par with national benchmarks.

[01:46:54] Roughly 9 in 10 recorded feeling very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods during the day and the county's downtown commercial areas during the day. A similar proportion reported feeling safe from property crime, violent crime, and from fire, flood, or other natural disasters.

[01:47:13] Safety services also fared well, with 9 and 10 offering positive reviews of fire services, fire prevention and education, and emergency medical services. Roughly 8 and 10 gave ratings of excellent or good police sheriff services, crime prevention, animal control, and emergency preparedness.

[01:47:32] The NCS has a space where a community can add questions of current topical or policy interest. I'd like to show the full responses from the community to those custom questions asked by Loudoun County that we haven't already touched on. The county asked residents how important specific issues were for the county to focus on in the next two years.

[01:47:53] Around 8 and 10 rated schools, crime and drug use, youth activities and reduction of youth crime, cost of living, cost of housing, traffic and road maintenance as essential or very important. followed by about three quarters offering similar ratings to access to mental health services and health and human services and employment opportunities. However, when asked if residents were willing to incur a tax increase to improve each issue, schools were the only issue that more than half of residents said they would be willing to incur a tax increase. A little less than half

[01:48:29] were willing to support a tax increase to address crime and drug use, youth activities and reduction of youth crime, traffic, road maintenance, and access to mental health and health and human services. In conclusion, the economy in Loudoun County remains an asset and a priority for residents.

[01:48:50] Many aspects of Loudoun County's community design receive positive reviews, but residents identify some areas of opportunity. Ratings for mobility are generally positive, and alternate transportation may be an area of focus for the county. And safety is a community strength and remains a priority for residents.

[01:49:11] You done? Yes. So with that, we will take questions. Yeah, that was fantastic. That was fantastic. Thank you so, so much. It's been actually kind of fun and interesting looking through this and reading all the cross tabs and all those types of things.

[01:49:28] All right, supervisors, if you have questions, please put your light on Mr. Letourneau. All right, first of all, we shouldn't do these in election years anymore. Everybody is way too touchy about everything, or at least get the results in election years. The 2016 survey results that are here, that comes from the UVA survey, right?

[01:49:47] That's correct. So I think it's kind of unfair to include that because that was a different survey. I noticed that it seems like across the board that survey found higher marks than what this survey does. So I just think some of that data is a little skew, but it's kind of showing up on the same plane in our presentation.

[01:50:04] Just to confirm I was, in fact, reading it right, when it says similar, it's referring to the benchmark of all the counties, right? not our previous ones that is correct our previous results so there are some where we had i think statistically significant changes um mostly negative um a lot of it is on stuff that i'm not sure that we have too much to do with like availability of food and health care and that kind of thing um i don't know what to make of the k-12 education one i'm sure all everybody up here

[01:50:36] I'm sure looked at that and noticed it um it's on page 30 of the uh of our packet um and you know if I if I throw out the 2016 number which was 92 percent rating excellent or good k-12 education um the 2018 number was 87 percent and the number now is 66 percent so that's a 21 point drop which strikes me as pretty significant um on the other hand that's still two-thirds saying excellent or good. Do we have any sort of cross tabs on,

[01:51:15] I mean, I could ask this for a lot of these questions, but on this one, on whether there was any differentiation between how parents answered that question versus how people without children answered it? So we do actually have some cross tabs. I don't have them in front of me, but yes. Okay, I would love some feedback on that. I'd be very curious to see how that sort of broke down i also noticed that there were i think we made an effort scientifically to to pair this up uh to have a representative number of people from each district and it would be also fantastic to get the cross tabs on the district results just to see if some

[01:51:53] of these issues like i suspect in the dullest district the traffic and mobility numbers are going to look a little different than they may than some of the other um other ones um i noticed on affordable housing, 74% of respondents expressed a preference for smaller single family detached homes, which I thought was really interesting because it's something we talked a lot about in the 2019 comprehensive plan. And then quite frankly, I don't think we've really delivered on much. And so I'm kind of, I'm calling attention to it partly as sort of a, a clarion call to the development community, because I do think there's, there's, this survey shows there's appetite for

[01:52:30] that type of product and outside of I know one project in my district we didn't we haven't seen a lot of it so um my time is up yeah cross tabs cross tabs cross tabs yay uh Mr. Turner uh thank you Madam Chair um Ms. Cox did did you say that it's not appropriate to uh look at uh prior years to current year that's an inappropriate comparison no I said um that it would not be an appropriate comparison to compare facets so for instance public safety and governance oh gotcha gotcha

[01:53:08] so if we're down year over year or over a two-year period that the fact that it's down is a trend that's a viable trend that we need to look at yes and we can provide the statistical significance for each of these yeah i would like to see that as well um and um i actually saw the education number and had the opposite reaction my reaction was we've had people screaming for 18 months how bad Loudoun schools are nationally, and now we take a survey to ask how schools are doing.

[01:53:39] Well, gee, you know, okay. I looked at that, and I thought, that makes perfect sense. That's exactly the result of marketing, and I don't think there's anything substantive in that data. I would like to see any more granular data as to what that was based on, but if we're asking people what they think, and they've been bombarded for 18 months with negative messaging about Loudoun schools. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you very much. Ms. Brooksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. Are we able to disaggregate the data to see what male respondents said versus female respondents? Yes. Okay, is that

[01:54:17] in here and I didn't get there? So we do have the cross tabs that we are still reviewing and validating. Okay, okay, great. I'd be very, very interested in that. And then as Supervisor letourneau said on on the i guess you're calling it cross tabs on the schools i'd also love to see it on um on the subject or the question please rate on page 32 please rate each of the following aspects of quality of life in loudon county as a place to raise children that went down from 90 to 82 percent and i'm also wondering if if those were actually parents that said that or if it was

[01:54:57] you know some folks who like supervisor turner said are just upset for and they're not even parents so um the other thing that really really a couple things that really really struck me um and i think that we really need to think about is uh it says between 2018 and 2022 results continue to decline in the overall appearance of the county 79 of respondents rated the overall appearance of the county is excellent or good compared to 80 and 87 percent in 2020 and 2018

[01:55:33] so and i don't think that's just about housing i think that's about something else so if there's if there were any sort of more granular granular questions on well why do you think the appearance of the county is not as good as it used to be in 18 and 20, that could inform the next general plan or maybe some of our zoning and those sorts of things.

[01:56:05] If we could get any granular information on that, I think it would be fantastic. And then lastly, I found it fascinating that 80% of the people surveyed said that schools are very, very important, and the number that said they would be willing to incur a tax increase was 59%. I think that our community understands that investing in public education means we have a

[01:56:39] better economy. We have an engine that drives businesses to come here because we have great schools and it drives people to come and want to live here because we have great schools and our residents understand that and they are actually willing to incur a little bit more cost and it looks like actually the next one down from there is access to mental health services and so I think that is really another clarion call to us as to where we should be investing schools and mental health services thank you so I believe when the delta to the schools on a 1.67 billion dollar

[01:57:15] budget is $3 million, we were absolutely investing in school services. What is interesting is the page four, the comparison to benchmarks from the comparison to 21 to 22, when you go inside those numbers, you all have said it, and I'd like you to talk a little bit more about it, those numbers dropped nationwide. So those numbers were interesting. They were food service. There were a lot of things that were COVID-related still. A lot of it was connectivity to other people and and connectivity to, you know, to, to, to, um, to, to be able to socialize, which makes sense that

[01:57:51] that would drop nationwide. And it makes sense that it would drop in Loudoun because during this time we weren't, we didn't have connectivity. And so, um, I, you know, I don't, I don't know if I need to see the crosstabs on that. I, I think I truly understand why the numbers dropped here and everywhere. And even here, they didn't drop as much, but, um, but I'll be willing to see what what it's looking like next year when we're when we're more fully coming out of COVID and we can have that connectivity and again and people are not feeling as I mean people were feeling very you know scared about just will we have enough food to eat and that type of thing during COVID

[01:58:29] and so a lot of those reviews were national reviews that I think were directly related to the pandemic so I'll be I'll be interested and see what they look like next year I agree with Miss Letourneau, let's try to do this next year, not in an election year because numbers can always be used in ways that are however people want to use them, to be honest.

[01:58:53] These are actually very, very, the comparison numbers are very, very good compared to other counties in the country of our size. I also want to give a shout out because it hasn't been said yet. is when you look at the numbers for public safety, fire and rescue public safety numbers are off the charts.

[01:59:15] 95% approval rating for fire services, 85% for fire prevention and education, 93% for ambulance emergency medical services. Our numbers for our fire and rescue department is higher than any other numbers in the county bar none so yes jazz hands jazz hands chief johnson they are and then they are they are really the best numbers of fire i mean 95 that's you know you you don't you just don't get higher than that um so this is really interesting i will be interested in seeing the

[01:59:53] the uh the cross tabs and what they look like and how they look and and all those types of things um i do appreciate your work on this um i i was fascinated by i mean i kind of like dove into this a long time ago. Just fascinated by these numbers. So thank you, and thank you to the contracting company that did the survey. Thanks very much. Supervisors, let's do a couple of, not all, of the presentations. Let's see here. We have, I think, as many as five for presentation

[02:00:32] today? I think so. For presentation? No, no. We have the Lyme Disease Awareness and Prevention for a presentation. That was from my office. We have the National Salvation Army Week.

[02:00:47] That's from my office and Supervisor Umstead's office. We have the presentation of the Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the proclamation for Jewish American Heritage Month in Loudoun County.

[02:01:06] And I think that may be four. It may just be four. I count it four. Okay, so for the Lyme Disease Proclamation, which is, I don't have a cold person on that. You haven't signed any of them because you were late.

[02:01:27] But that's okay, because I don't actually have them in my hand, my people. I don't have them in my hand. So what we would do first is the two for Asian American Native Hawaiian-specific Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month in Loudoun County.

[02:01:46] And if Ms. Glass would join me down front for those, that'd be what? Madam Chair, the receivers for the Asian American Proclamation let us know today that they will not be here. So we're going to defer that?

[02:02:01] Yes. Can we defer that the next time? So we'll probably present it later at a site. So we've just changed that to approval only. Do you have the one for Jewish American Heritage? Yes. Are the receiver? Are they here?

[02:02:17] Yes, they are. And Mr. Rogers, or Mr., I don't know where he went. I'm going to need my proclamations, or we're going to be deferring those as well in just about five minutes. But, Ms. Glass, can you join me down front for Jewish American Heritage Month?

[02:02:41] Mr. Rogers, I didn't mean.

[02:03:04] You guys come on over. We can go on each side. Hello, ma'am. How are you? Good to see you. Ms. Glass, you can stand wherever you want to while you read this.

[02:03:28] You want to stand right here and read it, and then I'm, okay, here you go. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll go ahead and read the proclamation. Whereas Jewish American Heritage Month was originally observed in May 2006 as an effort by American Jewish leaders to specifically recognize the contributions Jewish Americans have provided in the United States and to help Americans of all backgrounds to discover, explore, and celebrate the vibrant Jewish culture in our nation.

[02:04:02] And whereas the Jewish community is a diverse population with millions of Americans who can trace their ancestry back to several nations and have contributed to our society in various aspects, including health care, technology, business, education, government, arts, science, military, and community service.

[02:04:21] And whereas over the last year, Loudoun County has had instances of anti-Semitic behavior through graffiti and other means, which has no place in our community. And whereas Jewish Americans play a vital role in Loudoun County's economy and workforce and significantly added to Loudoun's present and future development and make our county, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the nation more vibrant and inclusive.

[02:04:48] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim May 2023 as Jewish American Heritage Month. Would you like this? Sure. Thank you.

[02:05:08] I have a framed poster that my father gave me and that hangs in my home titled 350 Years of the Jewish People in America. And it begins in 1654 when 23 Jewish refugees fled Brazil and the long arm of the Inquisition.

[02:05:26] to land in new amsterdam scroll ahead some 369 years and here i am the rabbi of bet havarim reform congregation one of the jewish communities of loudon county my name is rabbi amy saboweth and i'm here with two of our board members julia schneider and alex butterman and julia's son zachary who is about to become a bar mitzvah next month and we receive this act of solidarity

[02:05:58] of recognition and of celebration on the part of our diverse county with the Jewish community, which is also diverse. We received this proclamation with pride and with many thanks. And I think of the Jewish people that I know in Loudoun, and I will hash out some of the categories that you already mentioned, who are educators, healthcare professionals, engineers, psychologists, law enforcement officers, members of the Navy, lawyers, farmers, nonprofit executives,

[02:06:35] computer programmers, moms, dads, volunteers. And in this proclamation, I see their efforts. I also think of our graduating seniors who aspire to be K-12 educators, firefighters, Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, ballet dancers, army reservists, coaches, cybersecurity engineers, doctors, nurse practitioners, research scientists, social workers, ocean managers, moms, dads,

[02:07:15] and I have hope that their future efforts and successes will not go unsupported or unappreciated. So thank you for shining your light on our light. So, Rabbi Amy, you have been, for me at least, so helpful.

[02:07:40] And you've invited me to synagogue and to dine, to talk, to teach. It's been amazing. But this past Thursday, your comments at the Valor Awards, they stunned me.

[02:08:01] And I actually asked you for the actual comments. We have had, as Ms. Glass mentioned in the proclamation, incidents of anti-Semitic behaviors in Loudoun County. And I'm going to mention this at the state of the county and how that's not welcome.

[02:08:19] And I was thinking, how do I say this? Like, what words do I use? so it's not, I don't know, it's not, it raises up a community versus talking about the people who do the hateful things, which is always a, you know, a challenge. Your words were just fantastic, so I'm going to pick them up almost verbatim and use them. You should do that. Send them on to me and use them, because they were just wonderful, and you have been, you have been just a shining light to the community i watched somebody recently um about a year ago do a bar mitzvah it looked so

[02:08:57] hard it looks so hard i was so impressed by it i was tell me how long you've been studying for this and tell me um what it what it takes to to to get to the place where you're about to have your bar mitzvah um so um i started like my original studying in second grade when i was seven but i I started, like, really studying specifically for the bar mitzvah, I think in December, and it's really difficult.

[02:09:28] As I get closer, the time per day increases. It's like an hour a day, I think, of just memorizing and reading. It's very difficult. Oh, yeah, we're meeting after to check on my progress. It's very stressful, yeah.

[02:09:53] Because you're learning, like, a whole language, right? After prayers and parts of the Torah and everything. How long does the mitzvah ceremony take? It's usually two hours and then a party. The party part.

[02:10:12] I did. I watched somebody, and I just thought, how long did that take? I was so impressed. So congratulations to the both of you. And, yeah, let us know how that goes, and let us know how the party goes afterwards, too. Okay. Anybody else want to say anything before we take a picture?

[02:10:29] Yeah? Okay, let's get a picture.

[02:10:33] fantastic thank you please do please do thank you but everybody for salvation army please come down

[02:11:34] and mr rogers can you come down here for just a sec please is he still in the room matt is he i can't i literally can't see i literally can't see army and miss miss umstead miss umstead oh for salvation yeah but this is not how's he doing let's come on both sides please hello sir you

[02:12:13] want to come right here so you can read to everybody on the center? Hi. Hi. Thank you, ma'am. Welcome to Sergeant McKee and Sergeant McKee. It's very nice to see you. All right. This is a proclamation from Loudoun County, Virginia for National Salvation Army Week. Whereas in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the week after Mother's Day National Salvation Army Week, which is May 15th to May 21st, 2023. And in Loudoun County, the Salvation Army has provided 28 years

[02:12:51] of service to support struggling residents. And whereas the Salvation Army of Loudoun County has programs such as the Diaper Bank, which distributes diapers for children on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Feed the Hungry, which provides meals or groceries to families across the county, A Pathway to Hope, which assists families with children overcome challenges like unemployment and unstable housing with a caseworker.

[02:13:20] Emergency Assistance, which provides utility or rental assistance and eviction prevention. And through Angel Tree, thousands of gifts for children at Christmastime. And whereas the Salvation Army Thrift Store accepts donations from the community that have the potential to make a life-changing difference for others, and the thrift store is one of the major sources for funding for services and resources for the community. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors

[02:13:51] does hereby proclaim May 15th to May 21st, 2023, as National Salvation Army Week in Loudoun County and recognizes the dedication of the volunteers of the Salvation Army of Loudoun County to our community so and sergeant mckee would you like to say a few words or chair randall first we'd like to thank you for this this is a real honor to us the salvation army exists in loudon county to serve

[02:14:28] the people of loudon county we are currently distributing between five and seven thousand pounds of food every week in loudon county we distribute meals that we take out into the areas of need into the county every week. We are doing a lot of work with rental assistance right now.

[02:14:50] We've really exhausted our budgets to do that. One of the things that you mentioned a whole lot of things that we do, and we do a lot, but a couple of things we do in addition to that is we have started youth programs, and we are teaching music. We teach band instruments, guitar, keyboard, and singing, and of course that's free of charge, and all of our programs include food. So when we bring kids in, a lot of times, mostly we have to go pick them up, but they get fed also. Of course, we are a Christian-based organization, and we do what we

[02:15:27] do because of the love of Jesus Christ in us to share with the community. We want to make sure that we help anyone. We don't care who they are. We don't care what their creed, orientation, race, anything. We help everyone because that's what we're supposed to do. I want to thank this community for the support. Our thrift store is in constant need of donations because it's a vital part of our funding stream. But we are in the same struggles as some of the organizations are

[02:16:04] with getting help. Our warehouse is understaffed. But again, Loudoun County steps up and provides us with volunteers to work in our store to which we are so thankful we are so blessed to be in Loudoun County and we just take our hats off to this county it's a wonderful opportunity for us to serve and we are so thankful we're we've got representation here of our advisory board and a few of our employees and out there taking pictures is our case worker who I'm gonna I'm gonna say something about Keisha Keisha was hired not for her skills which are many but

[02:16:40] for her love of people and her care for people, which is what we are all about. So I want to thank you for all that you do for us. Thank you so much. It's amazing that an organization like Salvation Army would say that you're blessed to be in Loudoun County because the truth is we are really blessed to have you here.

[02:16:59] You are.

[02:17:05] Right now, and then my staff, who forgot to bring mine down, we'll do it after.

[02:17:51] We'll do public comments. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[02:18:01] We have five people speaking, and I believe if I'm looking at this right, two of them are on the WebEx.

[02:18:59] For all of our public speakers, I'm going to ask that as you are speaking, you not only face me. Oh, we have two more. You not only face me when you're speaking, but quite frankly, according to our rules of order, you speak to the board through the chair.

[02:19:16] So you should face me and direct your comments to me as you're speaking. I'd appreciate that and have the discussion in just a second. Hold on, Mr. Rogers. That's fine. So the first speaker is Julie Pastor, followed by Matt Binka, followed by Natalie Moslem.

[02:19:40] Yep, go ahead. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chairman, members of the board. My name is Julie Pastor. I've been a Leesburg resident for over 30 years and served as the county's planning director. from 1992 to 2015.

[02:19:57] In the early 1990s, Loudoun adopted comprehensive land use policies and ordinances to ensure Dulles Airport, its economic engine, was protected from residential development. These policies, regulations, and aspirational approach were the envy of jurisdictions near and far because they protected the airport first and foremost and made sure that any or potential property owners would be properly advised of noise and operational impacts to building, buying, selling, and living nearby. I never thought those original principles and

[02:20:34] policies would be in jeopardy. That was not until I saw the latest headlines touting the board's intent to spend taxpayer money for consultants to look at ways to flip the script and get the airport to figure out ways to adjust its business operations to mitigate noise and impacts on nearby properties. There is no way this approach supports economic viability and growth of Dulles, but instead will undermine and risk its competitive advantage relative to other airports in the region. When they do return your calls, I hope they tell you that while they can

[02:21:12] sympathize with how difficult it is to address these constituent issues, they're disappointed that decades-old commitments are so quickly being dismissed. Or maybe they say it more directly, we know your job is tough, but we expect not an intervention to doing ours.

[02:21:32] Providing that support going forward, how about forgetting the airport consultant and instead ensuring that developers are building projects with the required noise attenuation and navigation easements, enforcing disclosure provisions and settlement documents, making sure that sales centers, realtors, and residents have access to copies of planning documents, and making serious efforts to reach out to realtors, the building industry, and your constituents with honest conversations about what can and cannot be done to mitigate the impacts of noise. And perhaps most important, thinking long and hard before

[02:22:10] approving additional residential and other noise-sensitive uses where the plan doesn't call for it anywhere near these areas because if you approve such projects you will just be exacerbating the problem ma'am your time is up ma'am what you can do if you didn't finish you can feel free to give your give your notes to the um to the clerk or send them to us via email thank you so much thank you um matt binka followed by natalie moslem i'm sure randall members of the board Thank you for giving me the time to speak to you today.

[02:22:48] My name is Matt Benka. I've been a lobbyist for 30 years. I currently represent the Loudoun County Public Safety Towing Association. Our association includes eight of the towers who are currently on your public safety rotation list right now.

[02:23:05] I've represented the towing industry in Virginia for 20 years. I've worked on with dozens of localities helping to draft their public safety and trespass towing ordinances, regulations, and RFPs. I want to thank you all, all the board members that have met with us recently.

[02:23:23] We're meeting with two of you all tomorrow, and hopefully we'll be able to meet with the rest of the board within the next couple weeks. We're here today to express our sincere concern with the current Loudoun County Public Safety Towing RFP process, which is being run by the Sheriff's Office instead of the Board of Supervisors as required by Virginia law.

[02:23:45] There are five main reasons why we object to the current process. Number one, the RFP as structured is a significant change from the current program that could eliminate competition by putting the whole program's safety of our citizens in jeopardy.

[02:24:02] Number two, the Public Safety Towing Board, recommending the changes, has two towers that are going to be submitting on the RFP. No locality in Virginia has ever allowed towers to sit on a panel determining terms for an RFP that also allows them to bid on the contract.

[02:24:26] This is counter to the fair and open procurement policies and procedures of every locality in the Commonwealth. Three, the citizen appointed to the board also has a strong relationship with the two toers on the board and the sheriff's office, which is also a serious conflict of interest.

[02:24:44] Number four, because of the conflict with both the towing members and citizen members, the RFP, as currently tailored, helps the two toers that are currently on the board. This RFP has been developed to exclude everyone the other toers out of the traditional rotation system.

[02:25:03] Number five, the current RFP was submitted without any public comment or meeting the Public Safety Towing Advisory Board for the last year. The towing community in the county deserved better. We are asking the board today, and we will be before you next week, to do four things.

[02:25:22] Number one, stop the current RFP process. Sir? Number two. Mr. Minka? Yes. I'm not sure if you can see the clock because you're on the phone, and if you can, I apologize. But your time is actually up, so what we will, again, you can send your comments in via email to us.

[02:25:42] Okay, I will. I was just about done with 20 seconds. No, no, no, no, no, not 20 seconds. Your time is up, but thank you. Yes, ma'am. All right. Yes, ma'am, thank you. We're going to go to Natalie Moslem, followed by Robert Griffin, followed by Jose Gonzalez.

[02:26:00] Good evening. Good evening. How are you? Thank you for being here today to hear our concerns. My name is Natalie Moslem. I'm with D&M Towing. Again, to go off of what the past speaker just said, Matt, we are, D&M Towing were established in 1992. I've been in business in Sterling, Virginia for 30 years. We have 10 employees have been towing for Loudoun County Sheriff's Office more than 20 years. We're a woman and minority owned business registered with SWAM. As he mentioned, we are part of the 8 out of 10 toers that are on the rotation. What we wanted to bring

[02:26:38] to your attention is the RFP and that what's going on has not ever been done in any other locality surrounding the area, anywhere in Virginia. Moreover, instead of the long-standing 10 company rotation, they want to assign a primary and secondary toer to handle all the police towing calls this is a serious concern for us and also for all the citizens of laden county less companies on the road means that there's less tow trucks available to help our citizens there's going to be a huge difference between 35 trucks versus all 10 companies with over 250 trucks in times of

[02:27:18] emergency or disaster it's imperative that we have all the trucks and all hands on deck to quickly and effectively clear roadways and help the citizens. In an instance, just last week, there was a tractor-trailer rolled over on Route 7, which caused intense traffic and ensured that there was even a lot more multiple accidents from individuals not paying attention to the road because they were so focused on the tractor-trailer.

[02:27:45] On this scene, there were very different various municipal branches involved, such as the Sheriff's Department, State Police, Leesburg Police, and VDOT. The same way with all these parties involved, we need to have multiple towing companies involved.

[02:28:01] One or two is just not going to cut it if we have situations such as these where so many people need to come out to help. Furthermore, we've had snowstorms and natural disasters, which has had many citizens stuck and vehicles left abandoned because they can't be driven in the inclement weather.

[02:28:18] Plows during this time with all the stuck cars on the roads cannot effectively go ahead and plow and get the roads clear for our citizens. Again, this is another concern for us. To finish off what Matt was trying to say, the first thing that we wanted to ask you all was to delay the RFP.

[02:28:38] - Listen, your time is up as well. I'm so sorry. - No problem. - Please, please send it to us. And if you have it in writing, give it to the clerk. - Thank you so much. Supervisors, just point of information. The person who was supposed to come for the Lyme disease couldn't make it.

[02:28:53] That's why we didn't, he hadn't brought it down. I will put that for approval only, and I'll take it to them and do the proclamation with them. Our next speaker is Robert Griffin, followed by Jose Gonzalez. Please do not start Mr. Griffin's time until I speak to Mr. Griffin first.

[02:29:13] Mr. Griffin, welcome back to the boardroom. Thank you. Sir, before you start talking, and I haven't started your time, Mr. Griffin, hold on, please. And I have not started your time yet. I want you to know that I ask of you what I ask of everybody that comes to the boardroom.

[02:29:30] I'm very, very consistent. So when I ask you not to turn around and talk to the room, it's because our rules of order and our rules of decorum in the room ask that anyone that comes to talk, talks not only just to the board, but to me, to the board through me.

[02:29:49] May I respond to that? I haven't started your time yet. Just give me one second. I have not started your time yet. The other thing is this. When you turn around, you're no longer on the microphone. And so the only people that can hear you are actually in the boardroom. The people who are on television, so your much wider audience, cannot hear you if you're turning around.

[02:30:11] So I'm going to respectfully ask you, sir, to please direct your comments to me and only me while you are speaking. And I would really appreciate if you did that for me, sir. May I? And now I will start your time.

[02:30:27] May I respond to that? Yes, you may. When I see all you board members, I would like to be able to speak to them. Is there not any reason that I shouldn't? It's just fantastic. But let me start over.

[02:30:44] Greetings for all you who are children of God, children of Christ, and the pagans, too, who do not know Christ and do not believe in Christ. To those who do not see, although they have eyes, and do not hear, although they have ears, children of God know the truth.

[02:31:10] God made two genders, male and female, not other genders. The demonic spirit, demonic spirits of evil called equality or equity run rampant through this board. Its demons are socialism, communism, Marxism, and all the evil results of those philosophies. The spirit of God gave us

[02:31:48] our Constitution. It came from Mosaic law, given to the Jews by Jesus and by God, to come into the world and expose himself, to get rid of paganism. Those that do not know Christ will end up in hell.

[02:32:12] Those that pretend to know him, but the Spirit of Christ does not live within them, will end up in hell. You know, it's remarkable that I just heard that Loudoun County, the gentleman thanked Loudoun County for abiding to all the volunteers. But the spirit of Christ lives in those volunteers.

[02:32:39] Finally, I would say to you and ask the citizens of Loudoun County to come and talk. Expose yourself into this lion's den of iniquity, Democrat lions of iniquity. They are destroying your spirit, your freedoms, our constitution. And I would appeal if there's any attorney in this country that would like to defend me and present me.

[02:33:06] Mr. Griffin, your time is up, sir. I would like to present and help me today. Mr. Griffin, your time is up, sir. And would like to allow me to get a... Mr. Griffin, your time is up. If I say this one more time, I'm going to call you out of order. Your time is up. Our next speaker will be Jose Gonzalez, followed by Michael Fernandez.

[02:33:30] And Mr. Gonzalez is on the web, is on the phone. Good afternoon. Thanks to the Loudoun County Supervisors for understanding this matter. My name is Jose Gonzalez, and I'm the owner of the Body Works of Virginia. This is in regards to the same matter as Matthew Benka and Miss Natalie, Muslim.

[02:33:51] And I'm going to start with my ask, since it doesn't seem like it's time for us to push everything through. So we actually have a similar ask in regards to this matter. We ask for this RFP to be withdrawn and void it.

[02:34:07] for the Loudoun County to rebuild this complete RFP from the ground if the changes want to be applied. We build the Loudoun County Tow and Board Association first, the proper way with no members that hold direct monetary benefits, and work to RFP that is in the best interest for our community, not the sheriff's department, but our community.

[02:34:31] With that being said, the Valley of West Virginia have been a staple of Loudoun County since 1977. We have been assisting our community, and we employ an average of 35 to 15 to assist hundreds of thousands of members in our community. I present myself today as a part of the London County Public Safety Association, towing association, that represents 8 out of 10 towing companies in the current rotation.

[02:34:53] Our main concern is regarding our towing board, which currently has two chairs, two members with direct monetary interest in our RFP. It is believed that the current RFP is manicured to their needs and aspirations. It's also a unique scenario in our state and our localities.

[02:35:09] In addition, we believe the citizen chair happened to be manipulated by the toe-in-board chairman due to a personal friendship that exceeds the professionalism. As well, there is Section 6.10 in ethics and public contracting.

[02:35:24] I suggest the revision of County Code 2.2-43.69 paragraph to be exact. My biggest and most important concern on allowing the monopolizing and limiting the competition in a public service are the way this could impact the future of our citizens and services they deserve.

[02:35:43] An example, timeliness and monitor charging and preparedness for emergency events, as Natalie mentioned, are just some of the concerns. Our employees are the biggest and most important part of our companies and our community. They're taxpayers in Loudoun County, and a huge majority.

[02:35:59] Their livelihoods will be placed at stake and face unemployment. I will leave you guys with that, and I find no problems in the current rotation to be reshaped in such a drastic way. Thank you so much for your time and for listening to us. Thank you, and thank you for starting with the end part first.

[02:36:16] was more helpful and then my last two speakers are Michael Fernandez and Al Leach good evening mr. Fernandez good evening thank you the board for giving us time today I want to just make sure we finish on all four real quick we do ask that the board members as a new tone RFP panel meet again to review the RFP options and submit those to the Board of Supervisors for your approval within

[02:36:53] three months of the first meeting so those were our full request we'll submit those in writing to you all as well if needed but I've been in business for 27 years in Loudoun County and I proudly served the sheriff's department for many many years and all my employees have as well my company's name is Battlefield towing um it you know in this world today changes a lot of changes with things but uh you know certain times we you don't change things dramatically and that's what's happening

[02:37:26] right now you're going from multiple resource resources for the county to literally one or two resources and as you know loudon county is very prone to severe weather um as natalie just spoke to you about a dump truck rolling over. You had multiple resources out there. It's in the best interest of, first of all, the citizens of Loudoun County, the Sheriff's Department, which I have worked with for many years close to them, to have multiple resources, just like the municipality does. You have VDOT, you have Virginia State Police. Just that dump truck alone, you had

[02:38:03] Leesburg Police, you had the Sheriff's Department, you had multiple resources there, and you had multiple different towing companies there. It's been that way for many years. So to drastically change this current contract to specifically one or two towers is just not right for the citizens of Loudoun County. And as you know, there are two towers that sit on the panel that are submitting bids for the RFP, and that is not right as well. No other jurisdiction allows that.

[02:38:33] They always take two towers that are outside the county that have no monetary value and can put their experience and knowledge of the towing industry to the board and give them any input they might need. So as that, I appreciate your time again and hope that you all understand our issue.

[02:38:52] Mr. Vandis, it would really help if you all put those four issues in the email and send them to us. We certainly would. Okay, all right. I appreciate it, Chair. Thank you so much. And then our last speaker is Al Leach. Good evening, sir.

[02:39:08] Thank you, Madam Chairman. My name's Alan Leach with Al's Towing and Storage. I employ about 43 people in Loudoun County. I've been towing for the Sheriff's Department and the State Police a little over 21 years. I have 35 trucks in the county that, you know, of course we pay taxes on.

[02:39:26] We've been inspected by the Loudoun County. I love the Loudoun County sheriffs. I tow for five police departments from the Pentagon to Falls Church to Fairfax. I love the Sheriff's Department. They're great. We've been inspected twice in 23 years, and all of a sudden there's an issue.

[02:39:42] They're trying to press this through. As I say, I sit on the board for Alexandria at Fairfax and Arlington and never has a tower with monetary value voted, not just been on there, voted for their own contract. That's just, it's never happened, and we just want the contract to be fair.

[02:40:00] I've talked to Sergeant Blankenship of the Virginia State Police. He has no issue with the way the contract is. His exact words are he knows who can do the job, and he doesn't want to be told who he has to use. And that's pretty much the issue.

[02:40:15] If we could just, you know, re-bid it, do it over again. It's a fixed bid contract, so why take away 350 trucks? You know, I've done the math, 350 trucks instead of 30. It just really makes no sense. And I have a little time left.

[02:40:32] If anybody has a question, I'll be glad to answer, and thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisors, I have been involved in this issue for quite some time, And so I know that you're going to be getting meetings, but I will be happy to give anyone an update.

[02:40:49] And I also think you should, my staff update, I believe, was Ms. Turner and Mr. Sandy at the time. So that might be helpful, too. It is an issue I would like for us to all become aware of. Thank you. So that's all the public speakers, and we have no more resolutions at this time.

[02:41:10] Yeah, so we're doing great. And so what I think we're going to do is, because I'm not taking us off this day since it's 7 o'clock, so I'm not going to do that. But Ms. Bricksman does have in front of us an action item that she asked us to look at.

[02:41:34] She first has to ask for the suspension of the rules for the action item to be discussed. I do believe she had this discussion with everybody after anyway so miss Brixman if you'd like to make a motion put us a for the rules then you can do that and then we go from there I think it's a reconsideration of the reconsideration I'm not sorry every consideration it is that thank you madam chair I move that the Board of Supervisors reconsider the adopted motion for item five Department of Planning and Zoning work plan from the April 18, 2023, board business meeting.

[02:42:10] Motion's been made and seconded, but this motion is just for the discussion, the discussion on the reconsideration only is what we're doing right now. So Ms. Brickson, would you like to discuss that? I think I'm good, Madam Chair. I'll have my discussion after my next motion.

[02:42:26] Okay, any discussion on the reconsideration? Madam Chair. Yes, yes, ma'am. I would have preferred that this come up in a couple weeks, so i will be voting no on this tonight okay okay fair all right anybody else all in favor say aye any opposed um i only have two nays okay so that that's is six one two from six two one with mr buffington being off the dais um and i'll

[02:43:05] have some more to say when we actually get to the motion miss bricksman should i make a motion thank you madam chair it's a long one so bear with me. I move that the Board of Supervisors approve the current list of projects listed in tables 1, 2, and 3 and respective project prioritizations on the Department of Planning and Zoning Work Plan as identified in the April 18, 2023 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item along with the following amendment. I move that the Board of Supervisors amend the Department of Planning and Zoning Work Plan by directing staff to research the scope, cost,

[02:43:40] and time required to prepare and perform the comprehensive plan amendment portion of the data center design standards and locations project through a third-party consultant and return to the board with this information and proposed funding source.

[02:43:59] Is that it? That's the motion, sir. Second on the motion. Motion is made second by Ms. Glass. Discussion on the motion, Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. So this came up as I was leaving the meeting on April 18th and really thinking about our staffing and our resources issues that we're having and trying to get some of the work done that this board has directed get done, including the CPAM and the ZOAM as it relates to the data center remapping and study that was done.

[02:44:36] And I think we started it in 2021. And Supervisor Sainz actually asked, could we get a consultant to do a certain project? And that got my wheels turning because the CPAM and the ZOAM for this have now been moved to the spring of 2025.

[02:44:54] So they've been moved back at least three months. And I think probably before that they were moved back another three months. So I just felt as if, you know, this is some work that the board has directed to get done, and it needs to get done so that there is certainty in the data center world, but also certainty for our residents that, you know, we want to move forward with thinking about some of these issues.

[02:45:23] So this could potentially bump the timeline for just the CPAM by six to nine months, and that means that it would be completed, hopefully, roughly in mid-2024. And in talking to staff, they believe that it could be accelerated by up to nine months.

[02:45:42] And so this would be the policy part of the data center remapping in the data center study that TLUC also worked on. This would just be the policy part. And then after that, we would decide whether we want to keep the consultant for the ZOAM part Or if we have staff capacity once the CPAM is complete, then we would just bring it back to our staff to finish out the project.

[02:46:09] During the entire project, staff will be involved. This doesn't mean that we lose any of the institutional knowledge and work that staff has already done on the ZOR and the study that came through Buddy's department and DED.

[02:46:25] We're not losing any of that institutional knowledge. And lastly, I'll just say, this is to just ask staff to come back with a proposal. We're not tonight saying, we're hiring a consultant for this, it's done, we're signing on the dotted line. Staff will come back to us in maybe the next business meeting, maybe in a month, and say, this is what the project looks like, this is the scope, and this is what we think the cost will be.

[02:46:50] And then we can decide if we want to accept that proposal or if we want to keep it in the work plan as coming to be finished in spring of 2025. But I just felt as if we can help out staff and we can get these projects moving forward.

[02:47:10] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. I very much appreciate Supervisor Briskman alerting me to this, I think, yesterday. it still is very, very short notice for something this large.

[02:47:28] And I know that a couple of our board members have reached out to Mr. Levy with the Data Center Coalition. It took him by surprise. Concerns he raised are that this probably will not relieve staff of as much of a time commitment as I think Supervisor Briskman would like to see.

[02:47:59] The data center coalition feels that their members have been working closely with staff. They're concerned that this is going to nullify all the work they've already done. In order to make sure everybody sees an advantage, I would prefer to see this come up in two weeks from now.

[02:48:25] I don't perceive the emergency to pass this on such short notice. So for those reasons, I will oppose at this point. I don't necessarily know that I would oppose it in two weeks, but I just feel the notice has been too short. Thank you, Ms. Letourneau. Thank you. So this has been a topic that we've had a lot of discussion about. It was eligible for this same motion at the last meeting, which was not made at the time because, as I understand it, there wasn't as much of an understanding of an alternative way

[02:49:02] that we could approach this, but I don't see the harm, so to speak, in passing the motion, because all we're doing is asking staff to come back to us with a report of what it would take to do this CPAM more quickly using outside resources. And then, you know, certainly the data center coalition can weigh in on that, but it doesn't make any difference if we wait two weeks or not if we're going to ask staff to do that because it's up to us this is a work plan issue you know this is not a substantive issue this is a work plan issue now there's lots of substance

[02:49:41] associated with this issue but right now we're talking about you know essentially air traffic control what we're doing when and what we're telling staff to do and when and that's solely a board discretion so i i don't buy the argument we have to wait and let somebody else weigh in on on that type of issue. What I've been really concerned about with this CPAM is the amount of uncertainty it's created in the data center industry. And the longer it's out there without us doing it, the worse that's going to be because there's so much speculation about what we're going to do and what it means. So I view any effort to try to get this done in a more reasonable time

[02:50:20] frame as beneficial to the county, to the residents, to us, but also to the industry, Because I can tell you, as somebody who works in the business world in my day job, the one thing people don't like is uncertainty. Having an understanding of what the rules of the road are, in some ways, is more important than even agreeing with those rules of the road if you're trying to follow them.

[02:50:41] So I think an effort to try to do this more quickly and bringing in outside resources could be a good idea, depending on what we hear from staff and how exactly it would work. And certainly, there'll be ample time while staff is gathering this information. And then when they bring it back, because it will show up in a packet, for us to get feedback and address any concerns that there may be about how it would move forward.

[02:51:04] So I would be supportive of moving forward with this tonight. I think it's actually a win for everybody involved. Thank you, Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I don't disagree at all with either of what my fellow supervisors just said. My biggest concern is this kind of took me by surprise.

[02:51:20] I'm not necessarily opposed to the motion per se, but I haven't had really much time to consider it. I understand that this was a previous motion, but it wasn't a packet motion. There was really no discussion about it. And so I don't really believe there's a big problem with waiting a couple weeks.

[02:51:36] Will it really make that much difference in the uncertainty of the data center industry? Just for me to kind of weigh through it and talk to a number of folks and perhaps talk to staff on the pros and the cons. And I really appreciate perhaps what we're trying to accomplish here, but I know there's been a couple of times that I brought motions forward, and Mr. Letourne didn't like me bringing them forward kind of out of order.

[02:51:54] So I, you know, and maybe this is not that big of a deal, and maybe this is something we want to do more often, but I kind of appreciate a little more heads up. And I, so that's the only reason I'm posing. I'm not necessarily posing what we're perhaps are trying to do here, but I'd like a little more time to digest it.

[02:52:11] So that's all. Thanks. Thank you. I'm going to associate myself with Ms. Umstead and Mr. Kirshner's comments, although I am going to vote for this. In fact, I was the one that just yesterday called Mr. Levy because he hadn't been called yet.

[02:52:27] And my concern is not that I understand the motion fully. I don't have to have the motion explained to me. My concern is a couple of weeks ago when the DEQ item came up, as a board, we sent a letter to DEQ and the Data Center Coalition that said we'd like to increase communication.

[02:52:45] And so when something's going to come up with the concerns of one another, can we have some forewarning and some forethought and some communication? And so, you know, I'm a big proponent of government leading by example. And so if we're going to ask our business entities or other entities to do that, I think it's okay if we do that also.

[02:53:05] I do not think there's any harm doing this today, nor do I think there's any harm for this waiting two weeks. It's just not. And I couldn't, as I talked to everyone, no one could explain the harm. of, of waiting two weeks. So I, I know I had this talk of Mr. Levy. I've talked to him three times in the past 24 hours. I told him I was going to support it, but I also told him and Ms. Bricksman that I was going to make these comments that I, you know, that, you know, overall, I would just rather see things be put before the public and, and a little bit more foreign knowledge. I don't think there's harm, but I also don't know if somebody would have wanted to come speak about

[02:53:44] talking the topic and so and we could have made the motion to reconsider and then made a motion to send it to the meeting on the 16th so both of those things still could have happened so yes I'll support it but but I would prefer if we don't put ourselves in this situation in the future that we have to kind of explained or defend or you know that type of thing and especially when we can give our business community or our nonprofit community or whomever more forewarning, it's just appropriate to do that, I think.

[02:54:22] And in fact, I think it's appropriate, and I think it builds better relationships and more trust. And so I will support it, but I do feel a little backed in the corner. I think what we're doing is good. But I also think that I never want to be accused of this board not being a transparent body.

[02:54:47] And these little things or these little picky things can come up sometime in that way. So in the future, let's just try not to do this. It was kind of what I spoke at when I first started the meeting, which is putting things into the agenda late. So in the future, let's just try to give everybody a little bit more runway.

[02:55:06] Having said that, I do think it's a reasonable motion that I fully understand. Thank you, Ms. Bricksman. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I do appreciate my colleagues' support on this, and I will associate myself with Supervisor Letourneau's comments, which I don't often do, but he's right.

[02:55:28] This is air traffic control for us. It's something that's been in our work plan for a long time already, probably almost two years at this point so it shouldn't be a surprise that we that we want to do this work um and i know that you know it's also been out there in the public that we that we are have been short-staffed and we've had to delay things and delay things and so um i'm really glad that my colleagues are going to support this and that we can hopefully get this at least this project accelerated um a little bit in our work plan and with that i will quit while i'm ahead thank you madam chair

[02:56:04] All right. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? That motion will pass 6-1 with Supervisor Kirshner and Supervisor Umstead opposing and Supervisor Buffington being off the dais. She talked to Ms. Levy yesterday, too. Now it has been said.

[02:56:29] supervisors, what time is it? Oh, for God's sakes. Where, where, where, where, where are you hungry people? All right, we're going to go on and take the dinner break, and then we will come back and do nominations, more comments. I think we'll be, well, we have a, the thing is, guys, this, we have a closed session. We could just finish this right now and then go to closed session in the end. We could just finish it. We don't have that much more to, and nominations, we're like, yeah, so let's Let's just do it, and then go to closed session.

[02:57:00] So then everybody can just go home. Everybody out there is like this, right, yeah. Jazz hands, go home, everybody go home, jazz hands. Okay, gotcha. So let's do-- - Bye, Ethan, go home. - Let's do board comments. I mentioned in my opening remarks that Mr. Turner has a request of TLUC, and so I'll go on and call Mr. Turner first, and without objection, he's gonna ask the TLUC committee a question.

[02:57:23] - Thank you, Madam Chair. We kind of stumbled last time, and I'm led by me in the stumble. I went to the summit, the Western Latin Summit, some last week, and Mayor Littleton from Middleburg asked the TDR expert from Montgomery County to come down and do a presentation, and he did a presentation.

[02:57:47] And I know I've raised the issue of TDRs. This is an innovative variation on the TDR concept, and Mayor Littleton has put together a full presentation on it. And what I would like to do without objection here tonight, if I could, is simply invite the mayor to address TLUC on an information item and present the information on this program so we can talk about it and ask questions about it and then decide what we're going to do about it, if anything.

[02:58:11] This is not a decision-making issue. It's just without objection I'd like to have that introduced at TLUC. No objection. All right. Anything else? I do have some board comments if we're doing those. Okay. Let's do it. On Monday, April 24th, my staff spoke with Angela Rassus from Toe Brothers to discuss their application for North Star Square.

[02:58:31] On Friday, April 28th, my staff and I met with Brendan McCarthy, Caitlin Monahan, Matt Souders, and Gary Schaefer from Vantage to discuss their buy-ride application for Vantage VA3. And on Monday, May 1st, my staff and I met with Ryan David from Urban Engineers, Tracy Banner from McGuire Woods Consulting, Aaron Swisholm from Walsh Kalushi, and Ron Meyer from Ron Meyer and Consultants to discuss their application for Belmont Innovation Campus.

[02:58:53] That was a site visit of that potential 450-megawatt data center on Belmont Ridge Road south of the Vantage III data center, which is a 280-megawatt data center. It was a very interesting site visit, sparked a really interesting conversation, which you will probably hear more about before not too long.

[02:59:13] That's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no comments and no disclosures. Thank you. Ms. Glass.

[02:59:30] Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few disclosures. On Wednesday, April 19th, I met with representatives from DLA Piper and Noves Partners to discuss ZMAP-2021-0003, Ravonna.

[02:59:45] On Friday, April 21st, I met with representatives from Walsh Colucci and discussed ZMAP-2021-0008, Village at Clear Springs. On April 24th, my staff participated in a pre-app meeting with representatives from Cooley for PRAP-2023-0026 Freedom Station rezoning.

[03:00:11] April 27th, I met with representatives from Topgolf and Cooley to discuss special exception 2022-0041 Topgolf lighting. May 2nd, my staff met with representatives from Dominion Energy to discuss the Prentice Drive and DTC substation applications.

[03:00:29] I went to a few regional committee meetings. I went to Clean Air Partners board meeting on April 20th, where the discussion was regarding the need to inform the community tips, actions to improve air quality in the region.

[03:00:47] If you go to cleanairpartners.net, there are many ways to help to improve air quality. Air pollution still threatens the health of 7.5 million people in our region, and it creates harmful effects on the environment and our ecosystems air quality actually this week is air quality awareness week and if you go to cleanairpartners.net slash air dash quality dash awareness dash dash week you have the opportunity to win green lawn equipment and you have until

[03:01:20] friday to do the of this week to do that i also also went to naco human services committee on April 26 and they had a couple of speakers speakers there someone from the Department of Commerce his name is Ezra Kagan and he discussed the CHIPS Act and that is a 39 billion dollar investment in semiconductor industry and what they're trying to do is there they they have a key provision of the CHIPS

[03:01:52] Act, where they're going to have child care requirement mandating companies receiving funding to provide affordable child care. They also talked about the counties for career success, and they had someone from NACO's, the NACO's program manager, Annie Zing, I think that's how you pronounce her name, and it's an initiative. It's called Counties for Career Success, and that's an initiative that

[03:02:27] recognizes the role of counties in streamlining pathways to good jobs and supporting individuals in those learning industries. One more thing. I went to the Northern Virginia Regional Commission where we received an update from the Vice President of the Workforce for Northern Virginia Community College on the numerous workforce initiatives that they are undertaking in the region.

[03:02:55] And we received a presentation from Steve Cooper, who is the CEO of Acceleration, who's working with Arlington County to help with the demand for skilled technologists. And it's sort of an apprenticeship where you get folks from all different walks of life to go through the process of learning how to find a career in the IT industry, and they had a young man who was working at, I think he was working at Whole Foods

[03:03:31] midnight until 7 a.m., stalking the aisles, and he was going to Nova, and I think he had a second job, But with this program, he was able to stop working those other jobs and have this apprenticeship.

[03:03:52] And he started to be able to get a job starting at $20 an hour. So that really helped him out. And talking to Mr. Cooper, he said that we in Loudoun County, we are going to look into doing this program as well.

[03:04:09] And that's it, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. first disclosures before we get to the news from Catoctin. On April 20th, my staff attended a briefing from Bill Vest and the county staff about the Leesburg Fire and Rescue Station. Now to the news from Catoctin, Madam Chair. I'd like to remind everyone that the town of Lovettsville will hold their annual manifest event at the Town Green on May 27th from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The event will include plenty of backyard Olympic-style friendly competition with teams of six to eight

[03:04:45] participating participants competing across eight different events to see who will take home the champion title there will also be food vendors pony rides face painting balloon animals and kids in fun zone so what is this event this is on may 27th from 8 a.m to 6 p.m so mark your calendar and go outside, Madam Cher.

[03:05:12] Also, it's going to be a busy month for Moravon Park, which has a number of equestrian and other events coming up. I'm not going to name all the events, but those events run all throughout May. Please go to Moravon Park's webpage. There will be dressage events. There will be a number of different two-day annual summer shows, K-series, et cetera, the Virginia Foxhound Club and the 75th Anniversary Foxhound Show.

[03:05:36] as well as others. So they have a lot of horsey shows going on this month in Morvin Park. Please check their website. And then furthermore, as many of you know, this week is Loudoun Small Business Week. It's a chance for us to shine a spotlight on our remarkable small business community and give them some much-deserved recognition. So part of that, today, I was able to visit two small businesses in Catoctin, the first being Inertia Labs in Paonian Springs.

[03:06:04] I think Mr. Turner should definitely hear a little bit more about this. They started as a government contractor with really a lot of guidance systems. It's pretty remarkable. They actually have their lab in South Dakota, but they also test everything here.

[03:06:21] You wouldn't think the small Payonean Springs. They're really kind of quiet, and they have, I think, 45 employees just there in Payonean Springs doing some phenomenal work bringing economic business to this county. And it's pretty tremendous. Now they've moved more into the private sector, doing a lot for drones and other type of guidance systems as well.

[03:06:42] So that was really fascinating. I had a great time. Chris Blosser and myself and some of my staff were able to visit. Then we followed that up with Three Creeks Winery near Hamilton, which we partook of their wares, which were excellent, by the way.

[03:07:00] We toured both businesses. If you have a chance to go out to Three Creeks Winery, it is ages 21 or older, because they have a creek there. They know running around children just because of potential dangers. But it is a phenomenal location off from Hamilton Station Road with a beautiful view, great award-winning wine, one of the best winemakers in the area.

[03:07:24] And I just had a phenomenal time. They've taken a barn and just made it into a great tasting room. And we presented them with a small business week award for their tremendous contribution to Loudoun County through us as a board in economic development.

[03:07:40] So, Madam Chair, toss back to you. That's the news from Katoctin. So when you say you partake of the wares, it means you drank. I had a little, but all in moderation. I just want to understand what partake meant. This is a great part of representing Western Loudoun, their tremendous wine and breweries.

[03:07:59] That is very true. Not that I know. And scenery. I don't drink, so. Thank you, man. All right, thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you, man, I'm sure. Yeah, the Small Business Week looks a little different in the other parts of the county. Mr. Kaelin doing day drinking, doing this. Just kidding.

[03:08:18] That's why he's so happy when he comes to meetings, isn't he? All right. Disclosures, April 20th, I met with Stan Nix, Andrew Marshall, and Colin Sherato of Timberline real estate partners and brian winter harter of of the winter halter of dla piper to discuss the revana application um i wanted to take a minute and update you um on some metro issues uh the board got an update on public safety public safety is the number one thing that uh our riders and the community have been concerned about um and so we received an update on the results of several

[03:08:53] different board initiatives. We have increased police presence on the system by 70% per shift during this calendar year. We have four crisis intervention specialists that have been hired since December, and they responded to 120 calls for assistance. So these are similar to what we're doing. These are non-law enforcement to help with the homeless or mentally ill who are on the system.

[03:09:15] We have our own body-worn camera program. We began deployment on March 28th. We're deploying 315 body-worn cameras by August 1st. We have MOUs with a number of law enforcement agencies to staff at 25 different stations. So the results of this increased police presence are really dramatic.

[03:09:37] The number of arrests among adults are up 72 percent in this calendar year. The number of summons and citations are up 276 percent. The number of juvenile arrests are up 103 percent. The number of criminal and civil fare citations for fare evasion are up 420% in calendar year 2023.

[03:09:59] We have seen a 20% decrease in crime at stations so far. We also are deploying new fare gates that will help prevent fare evasion. They've been previewed at the Fort Totten station, which has seen a 50% reduction in fare evasion in the last couple weeks since they were installed.

[03:10:19] And we wanted to remind people to use text MyMetro Transit Police. It's M-Y-M-T-P-D. If they see something when they're on a train, that's an anonymous text tip. If you wish to make it anonymous, that goes right into the dispatch center so they can get somebody out to help.

[03:10:39] We had 2,100 text tips. going back to the the point about um civil fair citations the general manager is asking the district of columbia to amend the civil citation there in order to allow us to check the ids of individuals that we are citing so what we have discovered is almost everyone who is committing a crime on metro did not pay not surprisingly to get on the system so what's been happening is when we are able to stop somebody and ask to see their ID for the fare evasion issue, they often have outstanding warrants for violent crimes.

[03:11:16] And so in that way, we have been making, that's one of the reasons why arrests are up so much. When we're making these stops on fare evasion, even if it's just a warning and we can check ID, then it is resulting in helping to take some of the violent offenders who have outstanding warrants off the system.

[03:11:35] That is the number one threat to Metro right now in terms of ridership. It's fear because of the number of incidents that have happened. And so those are the steps that we're trying to take to address it. The other thing I'll mention is over the next two months, first of all, we should all be preparing for the silver line work that's going to disrupt the one-seat service between Loudoun County into the District of Columbia as we repair the entire track system on the orange line.

[03:12:03] that the shared area there where silver uses orange that is original track from when that was built and there's no efficient way to fix it without tearing it up it's not safe to have workers in the in the rail area working on one side when you have trains going past so we have to we have to shut that down it'll be about a month we've provided information I know that public affairs is involved and we're going to have more information about the plan of how to handle those customers the other thing is just on the fiscal cliff you will start hearing us with more detail talk about our $750 million deficit, of which the responsibility in Virginia

[03:12:40] is going to be about $217 million. That's just the deficit. And so we do have an incredible challenge in front of us. I know, Chair Randall, I was at a meeting today, Metro-related. They mentioned how passionate you were last night, I think it was, and we appreciate that. So we'll have a lot more discussion about this. I'm not going to get into the details, but And just know that we're doing a lot of work to sort of roll out this whole issue and potentially some ways to solve it.

[03:13:08] It does feel like Virginia has put their heads up finally, all of the different agencies in Virginia, to really talk about this issue. And as Mary Hines said, not in the Rob Peter to pay Paul way, but to really fix the issue.

[03:13:24] So it was a good meeting last night. So thank you. Ms. Letourneau, let me make sure I understand what you said so I can put it on my Facebook page and my newsletter. Are you saying that for very likely a month, for a month, service will be on the silver line to where the silver line meets the red line and then no more, and it'll be down for a month?

[03:13:47] Is that what you're saying? Yeah, we have to get you the details and make sure the communication is, and I did share it with all of you by an email when we made the announcement. So we're doing track work, so what will happen is you'll be able to take the Silver Line to, I think it's the McLean Station, and then you'll have to take a bus to go further, and you'll pick back up, I believe, at Roslyn, and I could be a little bit off.

[03:14:10] We have several of these projects this summer, and then you can continue your trip, but for that middle section in Virginia for about a month period of time, the trains will not be up. And just to be clear, because you did, I just want to say this kind of out loud. When they get on the bus, there will be no additional charge for the bus.

[03:14:29] Correct. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's a shuttle service. Okay. I just want to put that kind of out. Yep. All right. Ms. Brixman. Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually don't have any disclosures. And unfortunately, I missed the Valor Awards because I was at the Virginia Association of Counties Board of Directors meeting in Lancaster County, Virginia, beautiful area of the state.

[03:14:48] We talked a lot about the General Assembly and the lack of a budget and how that's impacting school funding across the state. And we had a bit of a discussion about perhaps seeking state funding for fire and rescue services similar to what we do for police, public prosecutors, public defenders.

[03:15:09] That will be a huge project if it's ever to happen, but it was an interesting discussion. I also did attend the Healthy County Advisory Board meeting from my car. Heard you asking questions, but you updated all of that. I did want to talk a little bit about the fact that the United States Senate failed to eliminate the deadline in the Equal Rights Amendment this week, mainly because of the filibuster, not because the majority of Americans disagree with the idea of women having equal rights in our Constitution.

[03:15:37] 52 senators were in support of it, and sadly, 46 were against it. It's kind of barbaric to think that we are pretty much the only developed nation that doesn't have an equal rights amendment for women, and we've been trying to do it for 100 years.

[03:15:52] But nearly all of Americans agree that we should have women identified in the Constitution and have equal rights. 94% of Americans believe that. As a matter of fact, in a 2016 survey, that's 90% of men, 96% of women.

[03:16:12] And when identified by political party, 97% of Democrats, 90% of Republicans, and 92% of independents believe that women should be, this should be codified in our Constitution. Practically speaking, because the Constitution does not mention women, we often go unseen by our judicial system.

[03:16:30] For example, a 2,000 ruling by the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Violence Against Women Act that allows survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault to sue their attackers in federal court.

[03:16:48] The ERA would provide clear judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination. Not every state in the U.S. has ratified an equal rights amendment, and therefore, federal and state courts are inconsistent on their rulings, and that's not fair to anybody.

[03:17:06] Laws like the Equal Pay Act are not protected by the Constitution because we don't have an ERA, and that can be repealed or rescinded at any moment based on political whims. Title IX, for example, was completely eroded by the Trump administration.

[03:17:26] And as if trap laws weren't enough to erode our rights, with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, we are seeing ever more heinous laws restricting the rights of pregnant people, mostly women, even to the point of restricting our rights to travel across state lines and receive safe and efficient and ethical and FDA-approved medication through the mail.

[03:17:52] We should all be terrified for our daughters, our cousins, our nieces, our nephews, our aunts, our granddaughters, because these freedoms are being blatantly taken away.

[03:18:11] And the Equal Rights Amendment could actually fix that. It's just blatantly un-American, and it must be fixed. The ERA simply reads, equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on the account of sex.

[03:18:33] How on earth those 46 senators can look themselves in the mirror at night having voted against the Equal Rights Amendment is completely lost on me, and shame on them. But we have other ways that we're going to get this done, hopefully. Gun violence. So far this year, we have had 185 mass shootings, 14,075 total gun deaths, 8,052 were suicides, 6,023 were homicides.

[03:19:03] This includes now 86 children under the age of 11, 495 the ages between 12 and 17. We have 311 people shot in our nation every day. Of those, an average of 111 die.

[03:19:23] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Bricksman. Mr. Sains. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have one disclosure, mandatory disclosure. I, along with my staff, met with the Rivana applicants on April 21st, and I'd like to share that Women Giving Back, a nonprofit in the Sterling community, is doing their annual Cinco de Mayo festivities, which will be taking place on May 4th from 4 p. m. to 7 o'clock p. m.

[03:19:54] at their headquarters at 20 Export Drive in Sterling, Virginia. It's a very good fund, and it's a good fundraiser. They're a major fundraiser for a very good nonprofit in our community, so if we can come out and support them and have a good time at the same time. Thank you.

[03:20:10] Thank you. My only disclosure is I spoke with Matt Leslie about the village of Cure Springs. He is from Walsh Colucci, and I spoke with Vervana once more on just their applications. Oh, and John Peterson called me to chat about the previous vote we had taken, not a vote coming up. I want to say that last, I think it was Friday, Ms. Umstead and I attended the, attended an event. There was a partnership between the schools and the business community, and it was absolutely amazing of the things our kids are doing. And I sat there, and I want to say, if Nick Minnock, if you could hear me now, if you're listening to my meeting right now, let me

[03:20:49] say that you come out to Loudoun County to cover LCPS and school events all the time. Where were you where were you in this absolutely incredible event that showed how well our kids are doing um how lcps has set up set up programs with the business community and the absolute just amazing everything from learning to with uh tracy hamlin uh to learn to be to to do recording through every other um industry you know i i look at the numbers that came out and where our school system sits

[03:21:26] right now as far as how much their numbers have fallen by 21 percent I agree Mr. Turner is it any wonder that they've fallen by by that because and I am not and I have not and I would never excuse some of the issues with with the school system and especially with the past superintendent never I never have and I never will but the total beating up of Loudoun County school system all the time when when you look at our numbers we literally came out of covet better than any other school system in virginia for a school system our size and second overall um it was our numbers are

[03:22:05] absolutely incredible our teachers are dedicated our parents are involved and our students are amazing and all the numbers prove that out and the fact that you know when we have these events it is like a total press blackout but you know let let let anything happen in the schools and i'm not saying those things shouldn't be covered they should but cover it all don't just cover the the planes to crash cover all the planes that land safely so this is a um this is a challenge to nick minnock to reach out to lcps to find out about that event and other events um and look at

[03:22:41] LCPS's numbers and maybe do a whole reporting on that, because it's a pretty darn amazing school system. And again, not to forgive or to dismiss anything that happened that shouldn't have happened, but you know what? Our numbers are just astoundingly good in LCPS. I also want to say that this month, the month of May, is National Military Appreciation Month, And I will be bringing a resolution next time to talk about the Military Appreciation Month.

[03:23:12] I always say that we have three veterans on this board, which is pretty amazing. And myself, I am a daughter of the Army, which is the best branch, by the way. Loyalty Day, it was May 1st. I was wondering if someone was going to say something.

[03:23:31] Public Service Recognition Week is May 2nd through May 7th. Military Spouse Appreciation Day is May 7th. VE Day is May 8th. Children of Falling Patriots is May 13th.

[03:23:47] Armed Forces Day is May 15th. And, of course, Memorial Day is May 13th. So to all the people who have served, are serving, and to your families, which I very well know what military families go through, I want to say that we recognize that this is Military Appreciation Month, and truly, truly thank you for your service, and thank you for your sacrifices.

[03:24:13] And I believe that is all I have, so I will give back 54 seconds. Supervisors, if you have a... Madam Chair, I just have a point of privilege. I didn't get through my entire board comments, and I neglected.

[03:24:29] If you just give me a moment. So Mr. Turner has asked for the same thing. And I said, I'm going to go to both of you at the end of the meeting. Unless, I mean, is it going to be fast or both? Okay. I'll go to Mr. Turner first, and I'll go to Mr. LeTourneau. Thank you, Madam Chair. We had a meeting of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, and they reported out on the Community Choice Program.

[03:24:49] There were $18 million of projects on I-95, 395 corridor. $48 million of projects were recommended, of which $16 million was towards transit operating costs. But those projects will reduce daily car trips by 11,000 trips, 35 million fewer annual vehicle miles, 138,000 hours of delay will be saved each year by using transit.

[03:25:14] 76% of greenhouse gas emissions are reduced over driving by yourself, and $4 million of annual savings for commuters in fuel costs. So it was pretty cost-effective. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. I just wanted to, before time had passed, to recognize the passing of my former chief of staff, Monica Filiao, who I think some of you who served with me in the previous term knew.

[03:25:40] Monica served us from 2014 to 2018. She was a presence in the back of the room, only 52, with a wonderful daughter.

[03:26:01] Her service is going to be on the 13th, and please keep her family in your prayers. Thank you. She was kind. She was gentle. She was smart. She was communicative. She was completely nonpartisan. She was a lovely, lovely woman.

[03:26:19] So thank you for mentioning her. If you have comments or nominations, please put your light on. Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I nominate Ms. Ashley King to serve on the Family Services Advisory Board.

[03:26:37] And I nominate Lisa Savaglio to serve on the Disability Services Board. Anybody else? Sorry. You coming back? I do have one nomination. Okay. I nominate Kathleen Leonard for the Public Utility Electric Representative position on the Environmental Commission.

[03:27:00] Who's there now? That would be Brendan Shaw. It's the Dominion representative. He's stepping down? He what? It's a different position? Okay. I thought we had all the positions filled, no?

[03:27:16] We did. So somebody is stepping, so somebody. Yeah, Mr. Shaw has that slot now, but he's changing jobs. Oh, okay, he's changing jobs. Okay, I'm sorry. All right, changing jobs means that. Okay, I think that might be everything until Mr. Sainz.

[03:27:33] I know we've been on the dais down for three and a half, four and a half hours. So we will be in the closed session. If you need to make a stop for yourself before you walk into closed session. That's fine. I don't know why I keep looking at you when I say stuff, because you just keep looking back at me, that's why.

[03:27:53] Mr. Sains, will you hear this in the closed session, please? I move that the Board of Supervisors recess this public meeting and enter into closed session pursuant to Sections 2.2-3711-A8 and A29 of the Code of Virginia to consult with legal counsel pertaining to the negotiation of a collective bargaining agreement where public funds are being expanded and where negotiations in open session would adversely affect the bargaining position of the county.

[03:28:18] - Motion's made and seconded. Discussion on the motion. Seeing none, all in favor say aye. - Aye. - Any opposed? A motion will pass 801.

[03:28:26] We are in closed session.

[04:22:38] - Closed session, Mr. Sainz. - I move the closed session be adjourned that the Board of Supervisors reconvene this public meeting and that the minutes of the public meeting should reflect that no formal action was taken in closed session and further move that the resolution certifying the closed session be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting.

[04:22:53] - Motion's made and seconded by Ms. Umstadt. Discussion on the motion. If you please affirm, Mr. Letourneau. I affirm. Affirm. Affirmed. And I affirm as well. A lot of people say aye. Any opposed?

[04:23:10] That motion will pass 8-0-1. And I think that is it. And before, at 8-19, we are observed. We are, we are, we are.

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