Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Business Meeting, Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 6h 42m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7270
Agenda (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=73&clip_id=7270

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

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

[00:07:12] Amanda, cool, good. Well, good evening, supervisors. Good evening, staff. Good evening, Loudon. I'd like to call to order the May 16, 2022, Loudon County Board of Supervisors business meeting. This room has a hearing loop. If you need a hearing aid, please switch your, if you need hearing assistance, please switch your hearing aid to the telecoil mode.

[00:07:32] If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please do the clerk to request one. I am being told that Mr. Kirchner, Mr. Sainz, and Mr. Letourneau are all running just a bit late from work.

[00:07:50] I'm not sure if traffic's bad today or not, but those three gentlemen have told me they're running late, but they're on their way, so we expect to have a full day this evening before too long. In the meantime, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Supervisor Umstead, for worship and inspiration, our prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:08:09] Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to offer up a prayer. Dear Lord, in this time of increasing divisiveness, we ask that you bless Loudoun County and all her people and help us to see what is good in each other and try to work on helping those who may be angry or frustrated, Help them get past that, because there is so much good in this county, and we need your help to realize it.

[00:08:44] Thank you, dear Lord. If everyone could stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Allegiance to the flag of the patient, provisible.

[00:09:07] Supervisors, we have a fairly long consent agenda, and so I'm going to go through it. Mr. Turner, when we get to the consent agenda, you may want to just briefly talk about the changes that were not made on ZOC, just so people understand, because many of the emails, you're actually doing what many of the emails have asked you to do.

[00:09:33] So I'm going to read the consent agenda. Item R1, proclamation declaring May 27th, I'm sorry, 21st through 27th, 2023, as Emergency Medical Services Week approval and presentation. Proclamation R2, bike to work day, that's for approval only.

[00:09:53] Proclamation R3, resolution to commemorate Eagle Scout rank for six members of Troop 7-11, that's for approval and presentation. How exciting. Proclamation R-4, proclamation declaring Loudoun County Foster Parents of the Year.

[00:10:09] Approval and presentation. Ms. Brixman, as you are in COG with me, will you join me down front for that proclamation, please? Proclamation R-5, proclamation to recognize June 2nd as National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Approval and presentation.

[00:10:26] R-6, resolution to support the semi-quincentennial, 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War and America's independence. That is for approval and presentation. Proclamation R-7 to recognize June 2023 as LGBT plus Pride Month in Loudoun County.

[00:10:48] That's for approval only. Proclamation 1A, appointments and confirmations. Item 2, I'm sorry, item 1A, appointments and confirmations. Item 2, Administrative Items Report for May 16, 2023. Item 5, the Franchise Cable Agreement Renewal.

[00:11:07] Item 6, Bramble 10 Pool Proffer Amendment Public Hearing Waiver Fee Reduction. Item 8, Authorization to Advertise a Public Hearing for Creation of a Community Development Authority at Ravonna at Innovation Station.

[00:11:23] Item 10A, additions to the 2023 joint committee work plan. Item 11A, contract renewal, public safety radio system management and support services. 11B, contract renewal, inmate medical and psych services.

[00:11:41] 11C, disability services board annual report. I do encourage everyone to go read that, please. 11D, environmental commission bylaws conversion. 11E, Family Service Advisory Board Bylaws Conversion, 11F, Loudoun County Community Service Board Bylaws Conversion, 12A, Advisory Plans Examiners Board Bylaws Conversion and Annual Report.

[00:12:05] Item 12B, Facility Standards Manual Public Review Committee Bylaws Conversion and Annual Report, 12C, Board of Zoning Appeals Bylaws Update, 12C, 12D, Zoning Ordinance Committee Bylaws Update, 12E, Heritage Commission bylaws update, and 12F, Planning Commission bylaws update.

[00:12:27] Is there a motion to approve? So moved. So moved by Subvisor Briggsman. Discussion on the motion. Mr. Turner. Do we need a second? I make the motion. I'm sorry. Seconded by Ms. Briggsman. Thank you. Is there a discussion on the motion? Yeah, I'd just like to discuss item 12D.

[00:12:44] I kind of mucked this up, so let me kind of explain what happened here. We had a discussion in TLUC. when the Zoning Ordinance Committee was initially formed, for about six months or so after it was formed, and this is growing pains for any new committee, it was completely restructured with new bylaws, there was a number of items and challenges that the ZOC faced, one of which was reported back to me was the size of the ZOC. Now, at the time, I think we had either two or three legacy members who have since left the ZOC, so it was 18 or 19 members that were in the room.

[00:13:14] That's really not optimum for a committee, so I had it in my head that we wanted to reduce the size of the zoning ordinance committee and there were a number of other issues but that was the one I was focused on so when it came up in TLUC to renew the bylaws I thought this is an opportunity to pare it down so I proposed an alternative motion to pare it down by removing the two at large slots and combining two of what I couldn't consider the environmental preservation slots into a single slot got a lot of feedback after the TLUC motion and the motion that came out of TLUC was to discuss it at this board meeting, and so in the intervening time, I talked to a bunch

[00:13:51] of stakeholders and key people in the discussion, and we decided it's really, it's working fine. It's pretty good size right now. Everybody is, it's at the right size. It's not worth going through the thrash to just get rid of a couple of seats, so what basically I've done here with consent is we've, by consent of everybody on TLEC, we've said we're not going to take up that alternate motion.

[00:14:13] The base motion, which is to approve the bylaws as proposed, keep 16 members on the ZOC, is what we're voting on and consenting to tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to mention that the bylaws changes that we're voting on tonight and putting through on consent were accomplished because of the hard work of the Committee on Commissions, Boards, and advisory bodies.

[00:14:42] And it's sort of like a little bit unceremonious given all the work that we did. It was sort of like a lot of sausage making. And now it's finally these new bylaws are getting passed with their amendments. And I also just wanted to comment on the joint school board committee amendments that we added a couple things to our work plans.

[00:15:03] and my colleagues will not be surprised that pickleball was in fact added so that we can follow through hopefully on whenever a tennis court is resurfaced and else by lcps that pickleball lines will be added we did four schools in our in our first initiative through the joint committee and this is basically to say hey let's just do this every time the the courts are resurfaced so that we can add to our inventory of pickleball courts in the county because it is the fastest growing sport in the nation. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Briggsman. I want to

[00:15:39] actually take just a minute. As we have updated the bylaws for many of our boards, commissions, and committees, I want to just take a second to thank everybody who sits on all those boards, commissions, and committees. These are advisory boards to the board of supervisors, all of them, And every one of us makes an appointment to that board.

[00:15:59] And then there are other appointments made. They take time. You know, I say all the time, you know, the nine of us who sit up in this dais, I think we do it for the right reasons. And I think we're, you know, we're great and wonderful and smart and all that stuff. But you know what? We are not the end all and be all on every issue in the county.

[00:16:17] And we have just amazing citizens who step up and give their time to serve on our boards, commissions, and committees. I call them, I talk to them all the time, especially over the last, I guess, two and a half years, maybe three years.

[00:16:34] Some of our behavioral services boards, our family services board, our CSB board, disability services board, I mean, we have seen such a rise in behavioral health issues, mental health issues. They have been working overtime, substance abuse issues, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, suicidology.

[00:16:54] And so, you know, I never take for granted that there are citizens of Loudoun County who freely give up their time to sit on these commissions, committees, and boards so they can advise us so that we can make better decisions.

[00:17:09] And I just want to take a moment as if you look at the bylaws, there were a lot of changes to the bylaws, quite a few changes to the bylaws. But I want to just take a moment and thank everybody, because you don't have to serve in this way, and you do, and it is service indeed to your fellow citizens of Loudoun County.

[00:17:24] So thank you for everyone who's serving on those boards. Anybody else? All in people who say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass six, and we have one abstention. That motion will pass 5031, with Mr. Sains, Mr. Letourneau, Mr. Kirshner not being in the room, and Mr. Buckington abstaining on the motion.

[00:17:46] All right. Just really quick. I only have two very small things for my chair's comments right now, and those are, Mr. Hemstreet may mention this as well, but Loudoun has been granted our triple AAA.

[00:18:03] We, Ms. Umstead and I, were accompanied by staff up to New York about, what, three weeks ago, a month ago, to have meetings with the review boards. And I will say our staff is phenomenal.

[00:18:22] And so to receive a triple A from even one credit rating agency is impressive. To achieve one from all three credit rating agencies is pretty amazing. And one of the agencies even said to us, if he could give a triple, triple A plus, he would give one to Loudoun County.

[00:18:39] And so thank you to all the staff that went on the trip. but more importantly, thank you to all the staff who manages our finances so well all the time that we continue to receive a triple AAA credit rating in Loudoun County. Secondly, I want to say that my voice for a cause, I'm sorry, no, no, no, not yet, my stay of the county will be a week from tomorrow on the 24th of May.

[00:19:04] This is my eighth annual stay of the county address. I do want to say that the RSVPs, if you want to be in the room, the room is full. And so if you RSVP, you are more than welcome to join us, but you would be in the overflow room if you came in person.

[00:19:23] You can also, of course, watch online or watch. It is televised, but the room is now full for RSVPs. In fact, the room may be a little bit over full for RSVPs. And so so I look forward to offering the state of the county this year's title for the state of the county address is we do hard things.

[00:19:45] And we certainly have done all of us have certainly done hard things over the past three and a half years in Loudoun County. Now, my voice for a cause is veterans moving forward in a service dogs for veterans, veterans vision and mission.

[00:20:01] The vision of veterans moving forward is to provide service dogs, facility dogs, and emotional support dogs to veterans with a physical and or mental health challenge at no cost to the veteran or their family. Veterans moving forward, services are available to any veteran of any generation who served honorably, and that's physical and or mental challenges resulting from military operations and or accident or disease experienced during or after military service.

[00:20:30] If they live in the continent of the United States, Hawaii or Alaska, they can benefit from the service. The dog we have today is going to a veteran who actually does live in Loudoun County. And before I have our attendees introduce ourselves and their dog, I do want to say that I really appreciate that you all also include mental health.

[00:20:49] Mental health is health, and sometimes people don't really realize that, especially when people have been in the military, The mental health scars may not be as visible, but they are deeper and sometimes more serious than the physical scars. And so the fact that you all do mental health as well, I am very, very grateful for that.

[00:21:06] Having said that, would you like to introduce yourselves, or would you like to introduce Jacob? Okay. A fallen veteran, Jacob Beazel, that was killed in Iraq.

[00:21:25] He is going to a Loudoun County veteran, and he is for PTSD and anxiety. And he'll do nightmare interruptions also. Nightmare interruptions. Yep. So when they get night terrors, which comes kind of hand-to-hand with PTSD, the dog will wake them up in that.

[00:21:41] Would you introduce yourselves? I'm sorry. That's okay. I'm Katie. I'm the head trainer and program director at Veterans Moving Forward. Okay. I'm Lori. I'm the chief operating officer at Veterans Moving Forward. So how do you train a service dog, and how do you know what service dog to match up with a veteran?

[00:21:58] That's a big question. Sorry. It takes, I pull the puppy at about eight weeks and I actually look for breeders that kind of gear towards working dogs and service dogs. And then I test the litter and I pull what I think is going to be the strongest puppy because I want a good foundation to start with because they have to be, they can't be noise sensitive.

[00:22:21] They can't be traffic sensitive. They have to have a really good solid foundation. And then I start socializing. I'm socializing as one of the most important parts of raising a service dog because we're asking this dog to live in our world and that's really not where they're from so socializing is probably the most important part that's that is that's fascinating now i have all these other questions that are not on my sheet yeah matching with the veteran we actually have a it's an it's an extensive process to go through the application process and because we have to know that that veteran's going to match with that dog which is always a tricky kind of situation because dogs do

[00:23:00] have their own personalities so we try to match up and look at the personality of the veteran with the dog wow do you just and this is the i'm sorry it's not my sheet do you decide in advance of the dog is going to be a dog for a physical injury versus a mental health injury i try sometimes they'll surprise you and it's like oh you didn't get as big as i thought you were going to and because with uh physical you have to depending on the kind of mobility the dog's doing And sometimes you want that dog to be half the veteran's weight, depending on the amount of mobility they're going to be doing.

[00:23:35] And sometimes they'll surprise you and say, yeah, I don't like that harness. I don't want to do that. Okay. One more question. I'll go back to my questions on my list. Okay. Are almost all your dogs retrievers? They are at this point. Yep. They're Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, because I do use puppy raisers, which we're always in desperate need for.

[00:23:57] And puppy raisers, I have to be able to put that dog in anybody's house at that point. And retrievers just have a great disposition for that. And I don't have to worry about, you know, going through different periods where the dog's going to get, whether they're going to get along with cats, kids, anything like that, because retrievers were meant for that.

[00:24:16] Wow. Okay, back to my sheet. That's really amazing. Can you tell me about any events that are coming up? The events we have is one of our signature events, and it is our fourth annual Drives for Dogs fundraiser, and that is held on June 1st from 6 to 8.

[00:24:36] It's an event where you go to the driving range at 1757, and you drive, you know, golf balls. We have hors d'oeuvres. We have, you know, it's a good networking event, raffle prizes, contests of longest drive, putting, and it's our one signature event that we do.

[00:24:56] Very cool. Ms. Umstead or Ms. Glass, from that angle, can you guys take a better picture than we can? We can't see the dog from our angle. If you don't mind, can you take a picture from your angle? We try to do that without being obvious, but you know, Jacob was laying down, so. I can get some of that again and get him to jump up. How can residents volunteer and how can people donate and be involved?

[00:25:24] To volunteer, we have, you can go to our website and we have a volunteer application on our website and they can fill it out from the website and send it to us and they can mark their interests. Do you want to do fundraising? Do you want to do admin work? Do you want to be a dog walker? Please be a puppy raiser because we're in desperate need of those.

[00:25:42] So that can all be done and then they do an interview and then we place them where their interests are. We're not requiring like, oh, you have to do three days a week or four hours or whatever. It's their choice. We take whatever volunteers. But to a puppy raiser, you guys didn't give the puppy away, right?

[00:25:58] Yeah. You're not giving the puppy away. You're raising it for a veteran. You're raising it for a veteran. When you see that dog working, it's not as hard as what you think. Actually, one of the nicest dogs we've placed, he was an awesome working dog, was raised by a 16-year-old kid.

[00:26:16] Oh, wow. Wow, that's amazing. And he did an amazing job, and he's still friends with that veteran. Okay, I have one last question. How many dogs do y'all think you've trained and given away? We average, well, Katie and I have both been with the organization since 2019. And if you recall, one of those years was COVID year, so things slowed down a little bit.

[00:26:36] We were the only two working, no volunteers, nobody because, you know, COVID. We're averaging about four dogs a year, four to five dogs a year. All right, all right. You know what? That's amazing work. Thank you. Thank you so much for what you're doing. And thank you for Jacob. And thank you for, I guess, in a way, it's a strange thing to say, but for all the people the dogs are named after.

[00:26:56] Thank you for that. Yeah, it's our way of honoring them. If you look at our website under the dogs, it actually honors that veteran, and there'll be a little paragraph about what that veteran, how he served. My gosh, my gosh. Thank you so much for what you all do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[00:27:15] Okay, Mr. Hemstreet, do you have any comments this evening? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I have four comments for this evening. The first is that Loudoun County will soon be announcing the go-live date for a new online land management system designed to increase efficiency and transparency for Loudoun businesses and residents.

[00:27:34] The new system, called Landmark, will create a comprehensive online tool for accessing, managing, and maintaining Loudoun County's land-related information. For more information, including how to sign up for updates on the project, that can be found at loudoun.gov slash landmark.

[00:27:51] Second, the Disability Services Board is honoring Loudoun businesses and organizations that go above and beyond when it comes to fully including people with disabilities in the workplace. The Advisory Board is seeking nominations for the FAME Awards, with FAME standing for Full Accessibility and Inclusion, Moving Towards Equity.

[00:28:12] Information about eligibility and other criteria may be found at loudoun.gov slash FAME Awards. Third, residents and visitors will have the opportunity to celebrate springtime at the source during the 2023 Loudoun Spring Farm Tour this weekend. The popular self-guided tour will be held rain or shine this Saturday and Sunday, May 20th and 21st.

[00:28:33] There are more than 40 stops on this year's tour, which showcases Loudoun's vibrant rural economy. More information about the tour is available at loudounfarmtour.com. And then finally, following up on my communication to the board yesterday, I would like to congratulate Erin McClellan on her appointment to the position of Deputy County Administrator.

[00:28:52] She is filling the position that will be vacated by Charles Yudd, who will be retiring after 26 years of service to the county. Mr. Yudd will be with us until mid-August. He's handling several important projects that were detailed in the email that I sent you.

[00:29:11] So making the appointment now allows us several months of transition as well as, you know, kind of support around those areas. So join me in congratulating Ms. McClellan. Those are my remarks this evening, Chair. Thank you. And I went to see her today, and we absolutely do congratulate her, absolutely.

[00:29:29] Supervisors, it's not 5 o'clock yet, so we're not going to start the 5 o'clock speaking slot. We're going to go on and go to item I-1, which is the end of federal COVID-19 public health emergencies. Medicaid and SNAP, unwinding considerations, it's a whole thing.

[00:29:45] So would staff please come to the table for item I-1? Thank you. Oh, the famous Dr. Goodfriend. Dr. Goodfriend, it's good to see your whole face.

[00:30:08] It's a Ms. Fernandez item and a Ms. Graham item. Hi, how's everybody doing? Good. But he's already passed it over to you, is that what he's done? Okay. Ms. Fernandez, we're ready when you are. Good evening, thank you very much. We do not have a slide presentation, but you do have the item in front of you.

[00:30:28] I wanted to come and give you a little bit of information and answer any questions that you may have with regards to the ending of the, what we're calling, what the feds are calling, you know, Medicaid unwinding, as well as the termination of the SNAP emergency allotments.

[00:30:45] As you know, or as the item indicated, SNAP emergency allotments ended. You might want to see what SNAP is. Sorry, thank you. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and then Medicaid, which is medical coverage for lower-income individuals and families.

[00:31:07] What we're finding is at least I can speak for Department of Family Services, And my colleagues are here to answer questions pertaining to their individual organizations as well. But one of the things that this, the unwinding for during Medicaid, I'm sorry, during COVID, staff were instructed, this federal guidance, that anybody who was receiving Medicaid would not be terminated from the rolls for any reason except for three.

[00:31:45] individual or families moved out of the state of Virginia they asked for their cases to be closed or terminated or the individual passed away in addition during the time of the pandemic with regards to SNAP benefits in individuals and families or households were receiving the maximum allotment for the household size so not necessarily what they would have normally been eligible for but the maximum for that household size. Starting March of this year, families and individuals and families

[00:32:21] went back to receiving what they were eligible for under federal regulations. So those are the two major components of the item that you have in front of you, and we're willing or able to answer any questions you may have concerning that. Thank you. Ms. Graham, do you have anything you want to add? Nothing specific. As Medicaid unwinds for the last few years, we've had a higher rate of people who were covered by the Medicaid benefits compared to the uninsured population, so there'll

[00:32:53] be some administrative correcting that we'll need to do as we go forward, but people who qualify for services through mental health, substance abuse, and developmental services will continue to get their services. Okay, and Mr. Dr. Goodfrey, do you have anything you'd like to add? So we do think there'll be some financial impact to the health department of this, but I think the much greater impact is access to care with folks coming off of Medicaid and where they can get services, whether it's a free clinic, the community health center, or coming for government services

[00:33:31] when they're no longer able to be covered by insurance. Additionally, the increased risk of food insecurity and economic insecurity resulting in this. So our food pantries may see an increased number of people needing their services.

[00:33:51] Our Women, Infant, and Children's programs may have more folks trying to enroll in order to get nutritious food for their families. And so we're going to continue to monitor it and working very closely with family services and other community nonprofits to see how it may impact them.

[00:34:13] Okay, thank you. Questions for staff? Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this presentation. So what was the average that folks that were receiving SNAP, how much were they receiving per month?

[00:34:33] I will get back to you on that. I don't have how much they were receiving. I can tell you the average that they are receiving less. Okay. It's about $205,000, if I remember correctly, that the average household will no longer receive now that they are going back to what they were eligible pre-pandemic.

[00:34:52] So $205 per month, they're receiving less. Correct. I can tell you on an annual basis what folks were receiving, not individual families. So we, about 11,000 recipients of, Loudoun County has about 11,000 recipients of SNAP.

[00:35:13] So it's about 6,000, just over 60, under 6,300 households receiving SNAP in our county with about 32, I'm sorry, it was a reduction of 38%.

[00:35:30] So about $1.3 million reduction to Loudoun County. As you may or may not know, with every dollar in SNAP, in federal SNAP benefits, it actually, there's about $1.79 that gets generated back into the community.

[00:35:52] So there's now not only a reduction of SNAP benefits going to the families, But then we're also seeing a reduction in economic drivers into our community. Do you find that folks are starting to reach out because they are not receiving those funds for food?

[00:36:20] Yes. I mean, as with any of our programs through COVID, the numbers skyrocketed. And now because folks are no longer receiving that extra benefit that they were receiving during COVID, they are calling our offices, they're going to the food pantries in our community, reaching out, calling the information referral line to see where they might be able to receive any other services.

[00:36:43] We have been working with organizations such as Loud Hunger to help folks or help their staff, help those who are no longer receiving that benefit to apply again because maybe some circumstances have changed. We are now also redetermining because during COVID, on top of not being able to close cases, which means caseloads rise, then some other policy changes came into effect. So now we will go back to pre-pandemic, conducting interviews with everybody,

[00:37:24] redetermining whether or not they are eligible for their benefits, and then determining what, if anything, they are available, but then also connecting them with resources in the community to be able to help them as well. Thank you.

[00:37:39] Thank you. Ms. Brixman. Thank you, Madam Chair. So if I'm reading the chart correctly or table one correctly, between 2020 and 2023, we had a major increase in SNAP and Medicaid applications.

[00:37:58] Was that, and maybe it was a dual cause, but my question is, is that because of the waivers, because of COVID, or was it just because of COVID and people not being able to get to work? There are different drivers, right?

[00:38:20] There's not one single driver for the increase that you're seeing. Yes, one, we could not close cases, so that right there inherently raises our caseloads. Now the federal government has given us a little over a year to now redetermine all those cases where we weren't doing those previously.

[00:38:41] So that number will reduce a little bit. In addition, policy changes, more people are eligible for Medicaid. You might have remembered in my presentation during our budget request, some of those drivers for increased caseloads, specifically in our public assistance program.

[00:39:02] So there's many different factors, but one of them is, of course, because we weren't allowed up to this point to close cases that may have been closed along the way. Okay, and it seems to me when you say that we're given a year to redetermine cases, will there be a proactive activity to reach out to folks who may be expiring and maybe don't know it because they've had the last, what, two to two-and-a-half years where they didn't have to do the annual re-enrollment?

[00:39:35] So will you guys be proactive on that? Yes, those notices have been going out for months now. the state um there have been we've been also working with our pack you know there's toolkits going out every every um for our public assistance programs on their signature line explains to folks what they need to do um trying to make sure that everybody has their addresses up to date so that they can get the notices yeah um but we are now starting to do those redeterminations and reaching out the state also helped with some of those um as well so there's a lot of different so i've been

[00:40:12] I've been very worried about this because, you know, and we have something coming up in the federal legislative agenda tonight to actually put it in our federal legislative agenda that the waivers are extended, like that you shouldn't have to proactively re-enroll every single year if you were to qualify.

[00:40:31] But it seems to me like if we were at $33,000 for Medicaid and our normal is $12,900, that we, to get back to normal, 20,000 people would have to be taken off of Medicaid. Am I reading? And then it's $16,000 for SNAP and we have to get down to $4,000.

[00:40:48] Am I reading that correctly? Not all of those will come off the rolls. Again, depending on what their situation is, how many people are in their household. So we will be redetermining every single one of those cases to see if they still qualify or not.

[00:41:04] There will not be, what we are anticipating is about 30% of the enrollees will not qualify, but that does also not preclude them from applying again. So even though we may be reducing the caseload, I'm sure many of those will either appeal, We're looking at probably a 60-some-odd percent increase in our appeal rate, but then also it does not preclude anybody from reapplying for any one of the benefits to see if they qualify again.

[00:41:40] Thank you. Let us know how we can help. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner, before you go, and don't stop my time, you know what, you guys, the three of you, you actually didn't introduce yourselves. And after the past three and a half years and what you all have been doing in your departments, I do want you all to introduce yourselves because people should know just the amount of work that you all.

[00:42:02] I mean, I think Dr. Goodfriend had a cot upstairs and has lived here for the entire three and a half years. So if you all don't mind, can you just introduce yourselves, please? Since my mic is on, Ina Fernandez is the director with the Department of Family Services. And I'm Margaret Graham with the Department of Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Developmental Services.

[00:42:21] And Dave, a good friend with the soon-to-be locally administered health department. Absolutely. Thank you. Mr. Turner? Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Hernandez, you said something that just caught my attention. So you expect about 30% of the people currently enrolled in these programs will not qualify to remain on the programs.

[00:42:43] And then you said they could reapply. What would change in the reapplication that would suddenly make them qualified to be on the program? There's a whole host of things, whether, you know, new family members are living with them, they've reduced their household incomes, anything, any little thing may change that.

[00:43:02] But as we're going through redetermination, we are also, it's complicated because family services, Loudoun County Family Services isn't the only one, we're not the only ones doing the redeterminations. The state is helping out. We are looking at hiring.

[00:43:19] The state is also providing some overtime funds so that we can hire part-time folks to help with these redeterminations because it's a huge backlog. And with any redetermination, mistakes happen. So then if something happens, we want to make sure that the people have the right benefits.

[00:43:37] So if by chance they don't qualify, we will obviously check that out. make sure that any type of case is looked over thoroughly. And again, they also have the opportunity to appeal. Okay, thank you.

[00:43:53] A couple of things. So if I heard you correctly, and if I didn't, please correct me. Are there less recipients or less money or less SNAP benefits going to each household? Are you speaking with the SNAP emergency allotments?

[00:44:14] It's fewer allotments. So each household, again, this is an average, will see a reduction of about $200. But it's not fewer households. It's fewer allotments per household. It's fewer, fewer, less money.

[00:44:30] Yes. Yes, not fewer households. But it's not fewer households. Okay. All right. Maybe I should clarify that because, again, now with redeterminations. Right. That's why I asked that question because of what Mr. Turner just asked. But that's how I read the package.

[00:44:47] it's not it's a smaller allotment per household for the for the snap for the snap but the households are still the same number of household households are still enrolled yes the one thing that changes is during covid we didn't have to do face we didn't have to do the interviews though those face-to-face interviews moving forward again some changes every day we get a different policy change so we were going to have to start doing those again now we may not so there's okay every day different. I understand. Did this affect WIC at all? Not directly. So there are two pieces that

[00:45:23] affect WIC, and I think as Ms. Hernandez had mentioned about the waiving of the face-to-face requirements. During COVID, the face-to-face requirement was waived for WIC, so people didn't have to come back on a monthly basis, which is a barrier to service, but it was a federal government requirement. That went away during COVID. Is it back? In August, it comes back. Oh, that's ridiculous and so absolutely we do expect we'll have a significant drop-off because it is a challenge for folks to be able to come in uh to get uh uh for their in-person visit now for wick

[00:46:00] what is the point because wick is the women infant children's program what is the point of making a young mother come in for service and what are the way things going to happen i mean why what's that what's that what's that about so a key rationale for in-person for wick is because it's primarily a nutrition education program.

[00:46:17] So they want to see the baby? They want to see the baby, want to see the mom, do tests on them, provide in-person education. But the challenge is it is a significant barrier. So we do expect maybe a quarter of a third of our roles will come down just because folks will have to come back in person.

[00:46:39] And then the other piece, as I mentioned, is as money gets tighter in these households, People look for ways to be able to feed their families. And so there's always in a community people who are WIC eligible but don't take advantage of that service.

[00:46:54] So easily there may be folks who say, okay, even though it may be a burden to come to WIC, now I really need that in order to feed my family. So we may see that balance out a little bit as more folks seek out our services. What's the limiting age in WIC?

[00:47:13] For children, it's age five years. pregnant women and children up to age five years all right well thank you so much for this item and thank you for all you've done and all you keep doing for loud and candy we appreciate it appreciate you all right um it's still not quite five o'clock yet so i'm actually going to go on and we're going to we're going to kick off one of our action items if if mr yud and mr freeman are in the room we may go on and do the draft legislative program i see mr yeah is mr freeman in the room? Is he here? Oh, there you are. Y'all get to go home early tonight. Let's do it.

[00:47:57] We are ready when you are. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Good evening. We are here to bring forth the federal item. But before we get into that, I would like to introduce our federal lobbyists from Greenberg truck. We have to my right, Greg Nall. He's the assistant director

[00:48:30] of Government Relations. We have Monica Schulteis. She is the Director of Government Relations. And not here tonight is Diane Blackman. She is the Senior Director of Government Relations. So in the item tonight, we have four sections. In Section 1, that is the section for action.

[00:48:54] We have 23 requests comprised of requests from board members as well as staff. Section 2, we have information on the 2022 grants requested by the county, as well as the status on those grants to present day. Section three, we have the budget requests that were fulfilled by the 2022 spending bill that was signed by President Biden in December. And in section four, we have our FY24 federal funding requests that have been officially submitted by Congresswoman Wexton,

[00:49:33] senator kane and senator warner and staff is here for questions wonderful wow wow wow wow okay i think we have lots and lots of questions um anybody else have anything else we're good all right questions if you have a question about the um about the federal legislative item i know we've gone a little early but we've had the item since last thursday so if you have a question put your light on miss umstop i probably should defer to my colleague um supervisor briskman on this because I know she and Supervisor Letourneau were looking at this,

[00:50:11] but can our position on freeing up slots at Reagan National be included? Yeah, yeah. We got that letter today from him. Did you see the letter? Yeah. Yeah. In the 2022 federal program, the statement on the perimeter rule is in accordance with that letter.

[00:50:33] The other part of that letter that touches on the FAA reauthorization is in Section 1 as in requests as well from staff. And I don't recall, Charles, I don't know if you were about to answer as well, but another airport-related issue is the Leesburg Tower issue.

[00:50:55] Do we need to take any further action to express our concerns about FAA lack of funding there? It might be helpful to express that, but the program already addresses it, and we have enough room to move forward.

[00:51:13] And if there was a board action or a town of Leesburg request, we would continue forward with that. I think with that question, Ms. Umstott, it might be helpful to relate to the full board that the program exists.

[00:51:30] This is the update step, and I think the view that the staff has, and it's shared by the representatives from GT, is that by adding these statements, you then have room to move right to whatever the direction the situation calls for, whether it be outreach to a federal agency advocating for a particular piece of federal legislation.

[00:51:56] But the program is a, I guess, a living document that provides guidance to staff and the consultants. And so it exists already. These updates are what we would have action on tonight. Thank you.

[00:52:11] Do you guys want to add anything to that? You're good? I see you're talking amongst yourselves. Sorry. I would just add, what Charles said, we try to keep the statements broad so that if something comes up, we know what the board wants.

[00:52:27] We know what it is. but if something comes up in that day, we need to go and talk to Wexton or we need to respond to something, we can do that very quickly versus having to get board approved. Board direction, yeah, yeah, I understand. Ms. Bricksman.

[00:52:43] Thank you, Madam Chair. So on the expansion for long-haul flights at Reagan, do you guys need a motion to add that to the letter tonight or not?

[00:53:00] In regards to correspondence, I know the perimeter rule is covered in the 2022 federal program, but upon adoption of tonight's 2023 federal program with FAA reauthorization in Section 1, we may be okay.

[00:53:17] I would inquire with other staff, though. I think that would cover it. I think we have enough direction to have that statement in the program so we could send a letter. Okay, so you don't need a motion for that. And I really appreciate that coming up because I sat on the VACO Region 7-8 meeting the other day, and Congressman Conley talked about it for about 10 minutes because he's very concerned about the impacts of residents around Reagan National, and he's also very, very concerned about the impact that it would have on Dulles Airport

[00:53:55] as an economic driver for the region. And so I know that there are, in fact, of course, a number of our legislators at the federal level that would be interested in making sure that this thing stay the way they are and it doesn't have a detrimental impact on Dulles or smaller regional airports either.

[00:54:16] So I really appreciate that. And I appreciate, actually, all of staff's work because I know I had a lot of requests about what goes into the federal agenda. And you guys worked really hard to make sure the language got in there. so I really appreciate it. I did have one question about the universal free meals in schools. I was a little bit confused about what it said in the item. I couldn't tell if we are still doing it in Loudoun County or if we're not doing it anymore in Loudoun County. Do you guys know? I just don't know where

[00:54:51] that stands. We can double check with staff, but we, as a request from you, Supervisor Brisbane, We just wanted to make sure we include it in the item. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:55:08] And then something on page 15, the chart, there is a grant for combating hate crimes that we did receive. And it looks like it's with Department of Finance and Budget. I don't recall what that does. I'm glad we have it.

[00:55:26] We have staff here to answer any questions in regards to table one. If Dr. Cox is in the, and here she goes. Tick tock. Apologies for being a little bit late to the table.

[00:55:46] So the Combating Hate Crimes grant is actually a grant that DFP is facilitating with four local faith-based organizations to secure their locations through target hardening and through security training and assistance.

[00:56:03] Interesting. Okay, I'll follow up with you on that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Ms. Glass.

[00:56:21] Thank you, Madam Chair. Do we still explore applying for more grant funding from a particular program, even if we've already had awarded some money? Specifically, I'm asking about safe streets for where we were awarded almost half a million, but I'm wondering if we are exploring applying for additional funds for different projects. projects? Yes, we are looking at additional funds for safe streets as well as for other pedestrian and sidewalk and trail projects and parks and trails. Okay, thank you. Is that it? Yep. Okay.

[00:56:47] Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Madam Chair. On Section 1, page 12, reproductive rights, can you talk about what it is that we're actually saying that we want to do there? Section 1, page 12, reproductive rights, what is that saying that we want to do with that?

[00:57:09] Can you talk about that for a second? So that statement was comprised of several requests as it pertained to reproductive rights. And so what we did was we consolidated that to fit the requests and cover everything that was requested.

[00:57:27] So my take on it is that this is about abortion and that we're going to seek to support any law that would further reproductive rights for women. and also not only in Virginia, but in every state, and then regardless of other state law.

[00:57:46] Is that right? Well, the statement was in an attempt to fit Virginia, but it could pertain to other states around the United States as well. Okay. When we vote on this item, I'll be asking to vote on that part of it separately.

[00:58:03] Thank you. So let me just, before, in your time, so let me just say that what we're going to do then is vote on the entire item. We're going to remove reproductive rights, which sits on page 15, which is really about the Hyde Amendment. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, page 12, which is really about the Hyde Amendment.

[00:58:19] Remove that from the program, vote on that separately. Is that what you want to do? It would be my pleasure to allow that, Mr. Buffington, not a problem. Anybody else? Okay, so a couple of things. Let's go to page 3, and let me just say, I don't know what we have to do to get the GSA per diem bill done, But listen, I mean, my gosh, just give me a second before I go through all of them because, I mean, we have done, I don't know what else to do.

[00:58:47] We now have Metro in Loudoun County, and that was supposed to be the tipping point is we didn't have a Metro. We weren't part of the Metro Compact. We're now part of the Metro Compact, and I would be very curious to know what is now the issue since we're now part of the Metro Compact.

[00:59:02] That's the first thing. Page five, I really do appreciate the discussion on red flag laws. I always get a little disturbed when people blame mental health on every time that there is a shooting. However, if we're going to talk about mental health as it relates to shooting, then we should do something toward putting money and efforts toward people with mental health issues.

[00:59:23] And so I'm really, really pleased about that. Thank you for all the work, Mr. Freeman, especially on the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Program. Of course, Gabriella Miller was a young girl, 10 years old, who's lived in Loudoun County.

[00:59:39] She died of cancer, and her parents have been trying to get this research money through for quite a few years now. They've gotten it through the House, but it's gotten stalled in the Senate, and they've had to start over and over again multiple times. And so this time, this Congress, I really want to join her parents and our federal legislators helping to push that through.

[01:00:02] It fell in the Senate by one vote. It was a vote of Rand Paul from Kentucky is what felt that one. And I really, you know, if we need to go down to Capitol Hill to help get money for children's diseases, that is incredibly important. And I'd like to do that and help with that.

[01:00:19] And finally, and thank gracious, both our senators and Councilman Wexton have jointly and separately put in money for a crisis receiving center to be placed in Loudoun County. What we know right now is that when people have a mental health crisis, they go to the hospital.

[01:00:39] By law, a law enforcement officer has to sit with them. They often sit for hours or sometimes even days, thus taking that law enforcement officer off the streets, and that's not really a good use of them, of their time and what they should be doing, not to mention a person with a mental health crisis, they're not breaking a law by having a mental health crisis.

[01:00:58] And so we treat mental health as if it is an offense, and it's not. And so having a crisis receiving center will allow us to let those patients go to a hospital where they can get services for their acute mental health issue until a bed is available or until their crisis passes.

[01:01:20] And so it is long, long overdue. It is something that I have been advocating for, that the sheriff has been advocating for, that Chief Johnson has been advocating for, and really, mental health, we have all been advocating for this, so I am very, very pleased by that. So back to the per diem question.

[01:01:39] Y'all look so excited about the per diem question. So we have been working with the delegation on this, as you know, for years. Fifty, sixty years, something like that, yeah. And recently, this first part of this year, we have heard from GSA.

[01:02:00] It seems in the last every year or every time they get questioned, they move the goalposts. So what it was before, you have to be on a metro line. We're on a metro line. The goalposts moved this year to we haven't heard from any other federal agency that says this is a problem and that their employees are having difficulties getting hotels.

[01:02:28] And so that's their latest on what they haven't heard. So we are working with the delegation. Wexton has been very supportive and open to, you know, taking a strong lead on this.

[01:02:46] And we are working with Visit Loudon and other partners, including builders that are, you know, want to build hotels and the hotel industry to try to see what we can do to move this.

[01:03:02] And we're not going to get an agency to say, my employees are having problems getting this, but we can have agency support, even though they'll move the goalposts next time. So what you just said is we're going to keep trying, and they're going to keep moving the goalposts.

[01:03:19] That's what we've got going on right now. We have to have a strong, the delegation has to put some much more heavy hand. Put a little back in it. Yep, I agree with that. Thank you. Thank you very much for all of your work, and let me make a motion. I'm going to remove it from the program. What? Can I speak on the side?

[01:03:37] You already did. I mean this one specifically. In the motion. Okay. Okay. I'm with the Board of Supervisors to adopt the draft 2023 federal program as found in the attachment 1 to the May 16, 2023 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item with the removal of the reproductive rights item that is on page 12.

[01:04:01] Motion is made and seconded. Discussion on the motion. First of all, thank you all. Mr. Freeman, you are just rocking at your first year here. I mean, you know, both the state program and now the federal program, you're doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for all your work.

[01:04:16] This is maybe, I think, our meatiest, heaviest federal program that we have put forward, and everything in here is important. I see a lot of things in here that really are still a response to COVID, some of the things that are in here that are very well and important to do.

[01:04:39] I also appreciate that for this program, this doesn't feel like that this is supervisors. I mean, obviously it's our program, but I've also heard from a lot of staff who I've talked to and I've called, and so in the creation of this program, we have just a lot of datas and facts and figures, and I love datas and facts and figures, and so I really appreciate what's in here, how immediate it is, how important it is, and if there's any time that And, you know, usually the legislative team that goes down and works the program is the vice chair and myself.

[01:05:14] I'm ready to go in any moment. Well, not in any moment, but I'm ready to go down and help with the legislative program, especially, I think, on the per diem issue. You know, it's just been going on forever, and they do keep moving the goposts, and it's really kind of ridiculous at this point.

[01:05:30] And Mr. Buckton is going to speak on this, but it's very frustrating because literally you go across the street to another hotel and we're losing so much money because of the per diem issue. Beth Erickson from Visit Loud talks about it all the time. Buddy Reiser talks about it all the time.

[01:05:46] It is ridiculous that at this point we are the only metro compact region locality that is not part of the per diem. So that really does need to change. So thank you for all that. We're going to keep working on that. Mr. Buffington.

[01:06:02] Thank you, Madam Chair. Regarding the perimeter rule and the per diem issue, having worked on Capitol Hill for 20 years, I would say that this has nothing to do with per diem and government employees. This has to do with members of Congress who want to go to the nearest airport, which is Reagan and not Dulles, on Thursday when they get done with being in session so they can take a direct flight.

[01:06:24] Many of those congressmen and women, there's no direct flight from Reagan. So if they exclude Dulles, then they can get their direct flight at Reagan and they can take a quick flight and be, you know, they can take a quick ride. Their staffers usually drive them over to Reagan, drop them off, and then they can take a direct flight home.

[01:06:43] It's just quicker for them to be home. So that's what's happening here. That's what's behind all of this. And that's why this is such a problem. It doesn't have anything to do, in my opinion, with per diem rates for government employees. I just wanted to throw that out there.

[01:06:59] Thank you. Okay, Ms. Bricksman? Thank you, Madam Chair. I will associate myself with Madam Chair's comments on the per diem. I do agree that it feels like they're moving the goalposts, and we should definitely be included in there. I mean, now we have Metro, so it's pretty easy if you want to hop on the Metro from Dulles to get, if that is the case, to get into D.C.

[01:07:21] Again, I'm really excited about this program, and I thank staff for all of your hard work. The IRPO, red flag laws, as we know, President Biden signed or put in an executive order that offers financial assistance to jurisdictions that want to educate and train their law enforcement on red flag laws, IRPOs, and I'm really excited that we put this in there.

[01:07:46] we can see the lcso actually put in for more than four million grants previously so i'm hopeful that um either as a county or lcso on their own will be putting in for some money to uh to uh have our red flag and and erpolo processes be more robust and the education be out there also excited that we're including um council in eviction proceedings and the research on this was incredible I personally think it should be right to counsel in eviction proceedings, but that will be further down the line.

[01:08:21] But, you know, for example, in Massachusetts, full representation for low-income tenants, 90% of the cases resulted in positive outcomes with 70% of tenants remaining in their homes and 20% of tenants having more time to find a place to live if they had to leave.

[01:08:37] In California, folks were three times as likely to be able to stay in their homes. And, you know, this is preventative. It's not just about, you know, people not having to pay their rent. I mean, the programs can be designed in such a way that the landlords also get their rent, right?

[01:08:56] They aren't put out. We don't put people out in the cold who need a roof over their heads, and we don't, you know, we don't hurt the landlords either if these programs go correctly. So I was really excited to see that in there.

[01:09:13] We already talked about the re-enrollment waivers, the SNAP benefits. I'm also really excited about the universal free meals in schools. I hope that that can influence some folks. I know that Delegate Rome's been working on that down in Richmond as well. And the last thing I'll talk about is the universal child care, universal pre-K.

[01:09:32] We know that when students get a little bit of a head start, they do better across the board. They do better in school. They do better in their careers. They do better in life when they have affordable, quality child care and pre-K.

[01:09:48] And thank you so much for adding also on page four the technical change for the workforce development that we add it to be before and after school, because before and after school is what's happening in real life. Again, thank you so much. Very happy to support the motion.

[01:10:04] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Okay. Mr. Brevin, I will agree with you on the perimeter law, but I think the perimeter law and the per diem are two different things. But I do agree with you that the perimeter law really is just about people in Congress who want to get on the plane in national and go home faster.

[01:10:27] And God rest his soul, this all started with John McCain, who I like and all that, but this all started with John McCain because he wants to get to Arizona faster. I know everybody's shaking their head, right? But the per diem is not the same thing as perimeter rule. So those are two different issues. But I do agree with you on the perimeter rule.

[01:10:43] It's an issue. But truthfully, the other thing is that Reagan's not going to have any slots anyway. And so at some point, it works itself out because you're not going to span. Reagan Airport has numbers to expand, too. So that will figure itself out just because of space. So anyway, for this item, minus the reproductive item, all in favor say aye.

[01:11:04] Any opposed? That motion will pass, 6-0-3. Now, the reproductive item, I think, Ms. Bricksman, that was your language. However, Mr. Buffington made the motion to take it out. And so technically, since he actually asked for it to be removed, it would be his motion to make at this point.

[01:11:28] Mr. Matthew, do you want to make a motion? Madam Chair, I move that the reproductive rights item in Section 1, page number 12 of this item be removed from our federal legislative agenda. Is there a second on that motion?

[01:11:47] Seeing none, the motion would die for lack of a second. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. All right, it is 5 o'clock. Madam Chair, I would like to make a motion to include that item in our meeting. Oh, that's right. Okay, thank you.

[01:12:04] Well, actually, if you don't mind, I would rather have Ms. Bricksburg make that motion. Okay. Absolutely. Yes, thank you. Thank you for the reminder. I move that we include the reproductive rights language on page 12 of the item for May 16, 2023, the federal legislative agenda.

[01:12:21] Second. Motion is made seconded by Ms. Armstead. Discussion on the motion. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. This motion actually, and thank you, staff, for working on this motion. I really appreciate it. We actually already passed this in our legislative agenda to Richmond.

[01:12:41] And also this is part of the National Association of Counties federal agenda as well, which was accomplished through the work of myself and a colleague from California to get the National Association of Counties to put this in their legislative agenda as well. A lot of this was kicked off, of course, because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

[01:13:04] And we are now in a position where we have a Supreme Court that is stripping us of our fundamental rights. And so it is imperative upon us to, as much as we can, put pressure on our legislators to make sure that we actually, that they know that we oppose these sorts of things, someone trying to take away our fundamental rights, and it doesn't just stop with abortion.

[01:13:29] It is starting to threaten folks' ability to cross state lines to receive legal reproductive care. They are now talking about stopping medication from being delivered through the mail, which the FDA has fully approved.

[01:13:49] And the next thing is going to be access to birth control. So I think that this is actually much more than just the Hyde Amendment, although I fully support full repeal of the Hyde Amendment. It is ridiculous that we don't have funding for health care and full reproductive health care that can be funded by the federal government.

[01:14:13] So for all of those reasons, this language is in here, and I really appreciate my colleagues supporting adding this back into our federal legislative agenda. It's really important. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Ms. Umstead, would you like to? Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Madam Chair. This item, while it's called reproductive rights, and then there's a paragraph in the item that talks about it, it doesn't mention abortion, but as Supervisor Brissman just stated, okay, I missed it then.

[01:14:41] This does include abortion, and obviously a very controversial topic. It may be different in different districts throughout Loudoun County. However, in my district, the majority of people that I've spoke to would be anti-abortion and anti many of the things that this, if it passes, would tell our federal legislative team to go down to Washington, D.C.

[01:15:06] and fight for these things. So I want to represent my district the way I believe it should be represented, and I don't believe they would be supportive of this. So that's why I removed it and will be voting against it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bovington. So you and I have the same district, and I've talked to people in the district as well, And I think I'm not I'm not sure that that I would agree with you that this doesn't represent your district.

[01:15:32] In fact, I would respectfully disagree with you. And I think state numbers and national numbers prove that out that I don't think the Blue Ridge District, which includes a good part of eastern Loudoun County. You know, most people believe that that abortion rights should remain safe and legal no matter what.

[01:15:50] So I am going to respectfully disagree with you. But I also want to be real specific about what this motion is because this motion actually talks about the Hyde Amendment as it pertains to state law. And so what we're saying is when Roe v. Wade was overturned, it became a state issue.

[01:16:08] What we're saying is that what is legal is that you can't say something is illegal in another state. So if you live in a state that wants to repeal Roe v. Wade, that doesn't transfer to a state. So you can allow people to travel across state lines and things like that.

[01:16:26] So whether or not we have a discussion on abortion, and we can, I also believe that it's important to say what we're actually voting on. What we're voting on is discussion of the Hyde Amendment as it pertains to state law and as it pertains to the protection of health care providers who offer health services in every state in the nation, regardless of state law.

[01:16:49] I am literally reading from the item. And so I want to be real clear of, you know, this is, because Ms. Brickson said a lot, and Mr. Buffington said a lot. But I'm talking, I always think we should talk about what we're voting on, and we can make an issue bigger, but the words in the item are the words in the item.

[01:17:07] And so I just want to make sure people know that what we're voting on specifically right now is a state law issue. And anyone, I don't know many people who don't support each state being able to make their own state laws and not impacting the state law of another state. That's pretty basic.

[01:17:25] So, Ms. Bricks, would you like to close? Thank you, Madam Chair. You know what? I'm just going to read it so that everyone knows what we're voting on. Reproductive rights. This statement is to support legislation, usage of funding, and additional appropriation of funds to further the reproductive rights and protections of health care providers who offer health services in every state of the nation, regardless of state law.

[01:17:47] This statement is in efforts to support final and permanent repeal of the Hyde Amendment, support legislation that expands access to reproductive health care and codifies the legal right to privacy in all medical decisions, support federal legislation that codifies the right to travel across state lines to receive medical care, and oppose legislation that restricts the right, support federal legislation that increases access to medication for reproductive health care and birth control through the U. S.

[01:18:17] mail system and oppose legislation that would restrict that access. This statement is similar to board direction received at the January 17th, 2023 business meeting for the legislative program's lobbying efforts on the state legislative level. So Supervisor Buffington, you are right in the narrative that word is not used, but I think it's in the actual legislative agenda when you go to the red line part. But, you know, abortion is health care. And reproductive health care should be the choice between the pregnant person and their doctor and perhaps their significant

[01:18:57] other and their family. And that is it. Nobody else should be in that room. There's not room for anybody else in that room. And so, again, I'll just say thank you to my colleagues for supporting this in our federal legislative agenda. And thank you, staff, again, for working on the language with my office, and I look forward to, in fact, our consultants working on it on the Hill.

[01:19:24] Thank you, Madam Chair. Motion to be made, Mr. Buzzer-Brixman, seconded by Mr. Buzzer-Umstead, all in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 5-1-3. Mr. Buffington voting against the motion, Mr. Sains, Mr. Kirsten, and Mr. Turner being off the dais. Thank you very much.

[01:19:39] We appreciate you all. It is now 5-17, and we are going to go to public comments. although we do have supervisors we have less people who have chosen to speak at five o'clock because they changed and want to speak at six o'clock instead and so our five o'clock speakers if i have this right i just have three at five o'clock if that's correct all right they are rick gentry hannah butcher and david butcher uh when if you are here you can come to the podium

[01:20:05] closest to you rick gentry is first good evening sir good evening how are you i am well ready when you are. Okay, this is about the towing legislative that's coming up. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Randall and the rest of the board. My name is Richard Gentry, and I've been a resident of Loudoun County for over 24 years. I own multiple properties and businesses within Loudoun, and I'm happy to call it home. I'm on the Police Towing Advisory Board, and first and foremost, I would like to

[01:20:42] express my appreciation to my industry for stepping up to the plate and continuing to serve the citizens and sheriff's department, even with the contract expiring three years ago. From what I can tell, it appears that the companies are keeping the prices consistent for the scope of work, even without having an obligation to the Sheriff's Department. I've read complaints from other parties questioning this process, and it's frustrating that we have spent time and effort on this just to be regarded as selfish and illegitimate. We spoke to other members of our industry and brought forth their concerns, suggestions to the board. Many of those were approved by the board, and in our final draft, Loudoun County only took some of our suggestions

[01:21:18] in writing the RFP just to clarify we're only an advisory board not making policy as suggested by others there are items mentioned to you all that did not tell a whole story and I ask that you verify the information that's presented to the board one item is that it said that the process is incorrect and never been done prior to be clear the towing members were appointed by the supervisors not the sheriff's department second is that this process has not been done in Virginia but from what I have found that the county of Roanoke city of Fredericksburg and possibly the City of Fairfax uses the same structure for police-directed towing. Not to mention the last

[01:21:53] contract Loudoun County did in 2017 used the same process. Not having a towing contract in place can be dangerous and expensive for everybody involved. The rate of secondary accidents and incidents raises significantly for every minute of roadway closures and distractions.

[01:22:10] There were a few options that we had worked up and what was voted on I felt kept competition by warning multiple companies each zone. I don't feel the secondary and tertiary options were great options, but with the availability to subcontract, that helped. I'm not opposed to refining this RFP and discussing other options, but starting over again is going to take quite a bit of time.

[01:22:29] Regarding the action item, there are stats involved, but I would ask that the evaluation process focus on the stats during the active contract that ended in 2020. In closing, we have all given hours to a process that has been used in the past by Loudoun County and other municipalities, but does not seem welcome by certain parties. I'm open to further discussions if needed to move forward with this or any RFP in the future. Thank you for your time. Have a good night. Thank you, sir. Hannah Butcher and David Butcher. Good evening. Good evening. I do have handouts I'd

[01:23:08] like to distribute. Give them to the clerk, please. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair and Supervisors. My name is Hannah Butcher. I am with Roadrunner Wrecker Service. I am speaking in support of the county staff's recommendation on action item number four to continue the current RFP for police-directed towing. I'm primarily addressing the concerns of conflict of interest.

[01:23:37] Virginia Code 46.2-1233.2, which I've attached in handout number one, states a specific makeup of the police-directed towing advisory board, including members of towing and recovery industry. The first page of the Loudoun County Advisory Board's policies and procedures in handout number two also states that boards that are mandated or authorized by Virginia Code are exempted from these policies and procedures. The police-directed towing advisory board, I think, is a perfect example of a board that falls under that exemption. It was previously stated that in no other advisory

[01:24:15] board in the Commonwealth can a tower participate in police-directed towing and sit on the board or vote. This is not true, like Rick mentioned. In handouts three through eight, I printed the police-directed towing advisory board memberships for several other counties and cities in Virginia.

[01:24:31] All of these have voting towers on their advisory board that also participate in their police-directed towing. Many of these boards even require towers to participate in their jurisdictions towing as a condition of membership. We are not the only ones that conduct our police-directed towing advisory boards this way. In fact, it is a form of good practice as our towers know the roads, the traffic conditions and ultimately the needs of our county. We have heard an argument of conflict of interest with little to no factual backing, a claim that the county attorney and county staff

[01:25:04] have previously invested time in explaining and refuting. You have and may or may not continue to hear a lot of opinions on what is best for Loudoun County police-directed towing. We have heard shock value terms such as sole source tower, conflicts of interest, fewer trucks on the road, and elimination of competition. These terms are meant to be striking and distressing, but they are falsely used. The structure of this RFQ promotes safe, quick clearance backed by research and data that will be shared more shortly. No tower has any decision making, and there is no limit on the number of words that can be given. The same number of trucks will be on the road before and after

[01:25:43] this RFQ is awarded. Thank you. Thank you. And the last speaker is David Butcher. Good evening, sir good evening madam chair and supervisors and thank you for this opportunity to be heard my name is dave my name is david butcher with roadrunner record service i've been in business and lived in loudon county for over 30 years my company has handled police directed towing

[01:26:17] the entire 30 years i'm here to speak in support of staff's recommendation to proceed with the current curament process for police directed towing as is i was appointed to the advisory board since its inception in 2012. I volunteered as its chair the entire time. The current RFP is zone-based with primary, secondary, and so on, rather than rotation. This is of best practices for incident management and safe quick clearance. It has been proven and is the best type of system

[01:26:52] for police-directed towing. Faster a road is open means less time of first responders in harm's way, plus can move on to the next call for service. There's a less 20% of all accidents or secondary accidents. There's less chance of secondary collision may occur.

[01:27:09] Recently, several first responders' vehicles have been struck in Northern Virginia, including one in Loudoun County. Currently, there's no contract or agreement for a tower to provide service to the Sheriff's Department nor for fire and rescue. Over 500 calls for service for towing have gone unanswered this past year.

[01:27:29] This is certainly a public safety issue. Lots of research and time has gone into the recommendations of this RFP. It's vetted and supported by county staff, sheriff's department, and the police-directed towing advisory board. Rotation contract has happened in Loudoun County and has continually failed.

[01:27:48] Any rotation system does not work. Continuing is saying no to responder safety and citizen safety. Longer backups and delayed service just continues. Zone-based local counties include Arlington County, City of Alexandria, and Fairfax County.

[01:28:09] A publication done by the U.S. Department of Transportation and handout on page 8 states, in Fairfax County, aggressive monitoring of police resources deployed at arterial street crashes and have efficient dispatch of towing and recovery service reduce the average clearance time of those incidents by 40%.

[01:28:30] Please bring structure, accountability, and safety in continuity with this RFP. thank you very much thank you sir thank you um we will do the towing item um right after we we're going to do uh proclamations and then we're going to do if we are at six o'clock and i think we will be we'll do our six o'clock speakers um and then we'll go on and do the the towing item after the six o'clock speakers because i know a lot of people in the room for that and and i don't feel like we need to i mean i i try not to leave the dais to go on break when the

[01:29:08] the room is full for basically one item that people want to see, and so we'll stay in the dais until we do that item, and then we will take our break after that item. But first, right now, we're going to do proclamations, and we have quite a few of them, and if the following people would join me down front for the following proclamations.

[01:29:25] For the Proclamation for Emergency Medical Services Week approval and presentation, Mr. Sainz, would you join me down front? Proclamation to declare a bike-to-work day. Supervisor Sains, I'm sorry, Supervisor Bricksman, Supervisor Turner are going to join me.

[01:29:41] Madam Chair, Madam Chair, the Bike to Work Day is only for approval. Oh, it's approval only, okay. Supervisor Turner's invited to join me on Bike to Work Day to do it. He always does. He does every time. You guys invite me also, and no thank you. Resolution to commemorate six members of the Eagle Scout Troop 7-Eleven, that's amazing, is for approval and presentation, and that will be Supervisor Buffington joining me down front.

[01:30:12] Proclamation to Clayton Loudoun County Foster Parents of the Year for approval and presentation, and Ms. Bricksman, because she is on call with me, will join me down front. Proclamation to recognize gun violence awareness, Supervisor Bricksman, Supervisor Umstead will join me down front. Resolution of support for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War.

[01:30:34] American independence is approval and presentation. Mr. Sains will join me down front. And then the Pride Month legislation is Ms. Glass, Ms. Umstead, Ms. Bricksman will join me down front.

[01:30:51] So let's start off. That's approval only. Is that approval only? Yeah, we're doing it. Because we're going to do that at the event. Okay. So let's start off with the Eagle Scout resolution. Let's start off with that. Mr. Buffington, let's go down front for that.

[01:31:12] Are they all here? Oh, okay. I see them all.

[01:31:32] By the time I walk down, it'll be fine.

[01:31:58] So one person, yeah.

[01:32:27] Congratulations. Eagle Scouts always have such good handshakes. I think they're not completely signed because they're missing two signatures.

[01:32:46] So what we're actually going to do at the end of this is we're going to keep these and get the other two signatures. Sure. Here, I need this one. But we're going to keep these and get the other two signatures, the other two board members who weren't here today to sign these, and we'll get them to you after tonight.

[01:33:06] I want to make sure they have all the signatures. Without further ado, Loudoun County, Virginia, Resolution, Troop 7-11, Eagle Scouts Ben Jarvis, Colton Hall, Edwin Kyle, Jude McKay. Did I say that right?

[01:33:23] Is it Judd or Jude? Okay. Christopher Reynolds and Spicer Wadman. Whereas the Eagle Scout Award is the highest recognition or rank attainable in the Boy Scouts of America program with only 4% of scouts achieving this honor, and whereas 103 scouts from Troop 7-Eleven of Percival have received the Eagle Scout Award over the past 20 years, and whereas Ben Jarvis, Colton Hall, Edwin Kyle, Jude McKay, Christopher Reynolds, and Spicer Wadman are the latest scouts from Troop 7-Eleven in Percival who have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout,

[01:33:57] And whereas Ben Jarvis has achieved over 60 merit badges in his time with Troop 7-Eleven and served as a troop leader and chose for his Eagle Project team to build a birdhouses for the neighborhood. And whereas at 13 years old, Colton Hall is the youngest Eagle Scout in the troop and the seventh Eagle Scout of his family, and he chose to construct a Gaga Pit cart.

[01:34:23] Did I say that right, Christy? Okay. I want to hear about that when I'm done reading. For Blue Ridge Bible Church for his Eagle Project, and whereas Edwin Kyle led the troop as the senior patrol leader while in high school, and his Eagle Project was preparing the concrete flooring for a new storage shed at Percival Baptist Church, and whereas during the Jude McKay's time in Scouts, he served in several leadership positions, including senior patrol leader and chaplain aide and built a sun shelter for Kids Club in Winchester for his Eagle Project.

[01:34:59] And whereas Christopher Reynolds taught three different merit badges and earned 30 merit badges for his Eagle rank and his Eagle Project restored a shed and paddock for Project Horse, a local nonprofit that helps veterans overcome post-traumatic stress through equine therapy.

[01:35:16] And whereas Spicer Wadman led Troop 7-Eleven for two years and participated in the character-building adventure of a backpacking trip to Dolly Sides Wilderness at 13 years old in weather that was below freezing and with hurricane-force winds and chose for his Eagle project was a stone-entry walkway for Blue Ridge Bible Church.

[01:35:37] And I live near Blue Ridge Bible Church. I can tell you that that is beautiful. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors recognize the accomplishments of Eagle Scouts Ben Jarvis, Colton Hall, Edwin Kyle, Jude McKay, Christopher Reynolds, and Spicer Wadman. Round of applause please. So who did the Gaga Pit cart? Can I hear a little more about that?

[01:36:09] Not to put you on the spot but I'm putting you on the spot. So basically what we did was we built a cart for a little small game it's called Gaga Ball and there's eight panels you have a ball that you hit with your hands and you have to you get everybody else out by hitting them from their knee and down and it's a portable cart but it was very difficult to move so I built a cart to make sure that we can get it in and out of the building easily

[01:36:46] Very nice, thank you so much, I'm sorry for putting you on the spot but that sounds like an awesome project thank you for doing it anybody else want to talk about their project at all sir would you like to say anything i'm here on behalf of spicer wadman who's out of the country right now and couldn't make it today thank you for being here and thank you to the troop leaders of 7-eleven you guys are outstanding madam chair i just have a question first of all you all this is a very very impressive troop i don't think we've ever had this many um eco scouts at one

[01:37:25] time that this and then the number but i i thought you had to be a senior a junior senior junior or senior in high school to be an eagle scout that's not correct oh so you're the youngest to be become an eagle scout in troop 7-11 you can be any age as long as you accomplish all the goals by that age well you were very you guys are all very impressive very i don't know what i still know what a gaga thing is but that was very but you're still very impressive thank you all i think

[01:37:57] we're good. Let's take a picture. Thank you. Can everyone who's here for the emergency medical

[01:39:18] service resolution please come down? Emergency medical service. There you go. Half the back room gets up. What does that mean? It's a good thing. How are you doing? I'm doing either side.

[01:39:57] Hey, hey, hey, Al, how are you doing? Good to see you. Of course, of course. Good. How are you? Pretty good. That's going to be on both sides. Bounce us out. Bounce us out. What's going on, doctor? How's it going? So the same thing, we're going to read this, and then we're not going to give it to you because we have colleagues who are not here yet, and we want it to be signed by everybody, but we will read it, okay?

[01:40:21] Okay, proclamation for the Emergency Medical Services Week. Whereas Emergency Medical Service is a vital public service, and Emergency Medical Service delivers life-saving care that dramatically improves survival and recovery rates of those who suffer sudden illness or injury, and whereas the Emergency Medical Services system consists of first responders, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, public safety telecommunicators, firefighters, law enforcement officers, educators, administrators, nurses,

[01:41:01] physicians, and trained members of the public. And whereas the fire and rescue emergency medical service members, career and volunteer engage in thousands of hours of specialized training and continuing education to enhance their life-saving skills.

[01:41:17] And whereas the members of emergency medical services teams, whether career or volunteer, engage in thousands of hours of specialized training, I've just read that, it's in here twice, for the life-saving skills, and whereas our community is truly fortunate to be served by our dedicated emergency medical providers, now therefore be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim May 21st through 27th as Emergency Medical Services Week in Loudoun County in honor and recognition of emergency medical personnel and the vital

[01:41:54] contributions they make to the safety and well-being of our community. We encourage the community to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. Chief Johnson. Dr. Morgan. I'm happy to say a couple words. Thank you, Chair Randall. The theme of this year's EMS Week is where emergency care begins, which traditionally we think of emergency care as hospital-based. And in Loudoun County, we're fortunate to do a lot of advanced care even before

[01:42:30] the patients arrive at the hospital, everything from blood transfusion to more advanced procedures. But where emergency care really begins is even before that call to 911, where we get the support from the Board of Supervisors to do what we do, but also the citizen that recognizes the stroke symptoms or the symptoms of a possible heart attack, picks up the phone, makes the call to 911, and then goes the next step when our 911 dispatchers give them instructions like how to do hands-only CPR.

[01:43:00] They do it. In fact, we are, Loudoun County is in the top 5% in the country for pre-arrival CPR by bystanders. 62% of every cardiac arrest in Loudoun County gets compression CPR by bystanders. That's huge.

[01:43:15] And so that starts the chain of survival for cardiac arrest victims. So it's just one example how really the emergency care system is everyone in this room, everyone standing before you and behind us. It's a big operation to make it all work. And so thank you for the recognition. And we appreciate your proclamation.

[01:43:32] Morgan, I think we have started the transfusion, blood transfusion, fairly recently, and not every county does that. Can you talk a little bit about that program? Because it's fairly new and very impressive. We were bored during the pandemic, so we started a groundbreaking program in our downtime where we brought the ability to transfuse blood to patients before they even arrived at the hospital.

[01:44:00] We in Arlington County went live in the fall of 2020 with that program. We were the first in the region, one of the first in the state outside of some helicopter services, first ground transport. We're still among just a handful in the region, but this concept is catching on.

[01:44:15] It's spread since to Fauquier County, Fairfax City, the PHI air medical helicopters, the Virginia State Police helicopters, the Fairfax County Police helicopter all now carry blood under the same program. So it's really taking off, and we're leading the way in that important mission.

[01:44:31] We've transfused probably 30 to 40 units to different patients during that time frame. And so great program. It clearly saves lives. We need blood, so please donate. Super important. You can't manufacture blood. It only comes from human volunteer donation.

[01:44:49] And so I'm a regular donor. I would encourage those of you who can to do that as well. Yeah, I do remember during COVID how bored the firefighters and rescue were. You guys had nothing to do at all, nothing to do. Anybody else want to speak? I'd just like to say on behalf of all the EMS system volunteers and our firefighter colleagues that we really appreciate the recognition and support from the board.

[01:45:17] No, we really appreciate you. I'm going to hand this to Dr. Merck and put him in the middle so we can take a picture.

[01:45:44] Two parents, come down front, please, with us.

[01:46:16] Mr. and Mrs. Terry and all the kids, let you come down front with us. and all the workers. Would you come down front for us?

[01:46:48] Come on down. I know I love this. My favorite every year. Hello, sir. How are you? I am, well, I'm amazed by you. That's how I am. Hi, guys. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is it Sanobia? Sanobia. I'm glad to ask you guys. Good to see you guys.

[01:47:07] Good to see you. Good to see you. We can be on either side of me. You can go on both sides. okay good you're awake did you just wake up okay um so this really is one of my one of my favorite resolutions proclamations we do every year um you know i think in this day and age to be to be a parent is hard to be a foster parent is just god's work and so we appreciate you all so so much and so we do this through the the council of government has the foster parents from each locality that

[01:47:46] they recognize every year. And this year, the Terries were the foster parents from Loudoun County, Virginia. And so we're going to read the proclamation, see if they want to say anything, and see if Ms. Fernandez wants to say anything as well. Garrett and Sanavia Terry became approved foster parents with the Loudoun County Department of Family Services on July 25, 2019. And since their approval, have served as foster parents and respite providers for 11 children and adolescents.

[01:48:13] Mr. and Mrs. Terry consistently answer the call to assist a child in need and treat every child that enters their home as a member of their family. And whereas with patience and flexibility, Mr. and Mrs. Terry appreciates the uniqueness of each child for which they care and adopt to meet the very needs of every child.

[01:48:39] And whereas Mr. and Mrs. Terry support the mission of the Loudoun County Department of Family Services and the work of the Foster and Adoption Program to assure the best outcome from the children in their care, and whereas the Metropolitan Council of Governments will recognize Mr. and Mrs. Terry as the Loudoun County Foster Parents of the Year and honor them for their unwavering commitment to the children of Loudoun County.

[01:49:04] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors to hereby proclaim Garrett and Snobia Terry as Loudoun County's Foster Parents of the Year. Okay, which one of you wants to speak?

[01:49:23] Okay. I just want to say thank you, God, for putting us in a position to be used to care for these lovely kids. That's all. Thank you for allowing yourself to be used. Would you like to say anything?

[01:49:39] Okay. I don't know if I could have said it better myself. So for those of you who don't know, our foster parents are really the heart and soul of our organization, making sure that children who come into care, into our care, are loved, are safe, are able to enjoy family, and be able to live and grow in a safe environment.

[01:50:08] Without our foster parents, we don't know what we would be able to do because there are so many kids who need this home, this family, this service. And every family, just like you said, the proclamation says, making sure that the unique needs of each child that comes through a family is first and foremost is incredibly important.

[01:50:32] So thank you both for the love and the support, and not only to the children, but also with our organization and the foster care workers with which you work, to make sure that the kids in need have a very safe place to go.

[01:50:49] So thank you. Wonderful. So again, we have two colleagues who are not here who I know wants to sign this resolution. So we're going to have you all hold it for the picture, and I'm going to take it back. and then we're going to make sure you get it with the signature of all of our colleagues because I know that they would want to sign this.

[01:51:07] But first, what I will do is I'll have you come stand right here, you come stand right here, and then hand this to the two of you to take together. And if you don't mind, I'm going to stand by you. Is that okay? All right.

[01:52:18] Okay, let's have everyone come down for National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

[01:52:37] Hello, hello. You can come on either side of me. I'm good. I say everybody, everybody in this organization has to be tiny. You're all tiny. you are thank you thank you thank you madam chair okay well thank you so much for coming today um i usually say this uh during my board comments but i'm going to say it right now so far this year

[01:53:16] we've had 225 mass shootings 15,787 total gun deaths 8,976 were suicide 6,811 were homicide This includes 98 children under the age of 11 and 561 between the ages of 12 and 17.

[01:53:37] So I read those every board meeting just to emphasize that this is a problem that needs to stay at the forefront of our nation and our minds. whereas every day more than 120 americans are killed by gun violence and more than 200 are shot and wounded with an average of more than 17 000 gun homicides every year and whereas

[01:54:13] americans are 26 times more likely to die by gun homicide than people in other high-income countries whereas virginia has 1121 gun deaths every year with a rate of 12.8 deaths per 100 000 people A crisis that costs the Commonwealth $14.2 billion each year, of which $288.3 million is paid by taxpayers.

[01:54:39] And whereas, support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens go in hand with public safety measures that keep guns away from people who are a danger to themselves and others. And whereas gun violence prevention is more important than ever, as we see an increase in firearm homicides and non-fatal shootings across the country, increased calls to domestic violence hotlines, and an increase in city gun violence.

[01:55:04] And whereas in January 2013, Hydea Pendleton was tragically shot and killed at the age of 15 on June 2, 2023, to recognize the 26th birthday of Hydea Pendleton, born June 2, 1997, people across the United States will recognize National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

[01:55:25] And wear orange in tribute to, one, Hydea Pendleton and other victims of gun violence, and two, the loved ones of those victims. And whereas the idea was inspired by a group of Hydea's friends, their classmates to commemorate her life by wearing orange.

[01:55:43] They choose this color because hunters wear orange to announce themselves to other hunters when out in the woods. And orange is a color that symbolizes the value of human life. By wearing orange on 23, Americans will raise awareness about gun violence and honor the lives of gun violence victims and survivors.

[01:56:03] And whereas, we renew our commitment to reduce gun violence and pledge to do all we can to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them or have access to them and encourage responsible gun ownership to help keep our families and communities safe.

[01:56:19] Be it resolved that the Loudoun Risk Advisors hereby proclaim Friday, June 2nd, 2023 as National Gun Violence Awareness Day in Loudoun and encourages all community members to wear orange to spread awareness of gun violence and support community efforts to prevent gun violence.

[01:56:46] Thank you. Does Melanie want to say a few words? This is the head of Loudoun Moms. I just wanted to say that Wear Orange is in its eighth year.

[01:57:02] As Supervisor Bispin said, Hadiyah's friends, as anyone who has a friend who is killed by a gun, wanted to do something to deal with their trauma and their grief, and they created Wear Orange. It's an educational campaign. It stresses things that we as a community, as we in Loudoun County, and I thank all the supervisors up here for supporting this day in and day out, not just on the second.

[01:57:26] There are things we can do. we can keep our guns secure we can keep them unloaded we're not using them we cannot put them in our car and drive and walk away and leave them in our car if we see signs of mental health trauma or suicidal ideations there are steps that the county can do and we have the resources in the county to do these things to help your fellow family member friend neighbor student whoever it is we have so many resources in the county and if we all work together as a community we could start decreasing gun violence every day.

[01:58:01] So I just wanted to stress again that this is educational. There are things we can do. There's a website if you want to look at wearorange.org. It's all about things that we can do as a community to help end this public health crisis. So thank you very much. That was very well said because if anyone was really listening to her, you didn't say one thing that wasn't completely reasonable and logical to do.

[01:58:28] it was all just prevention techniques that's all that it was everything you said i also want to thank you all because you know to follow and you too miss brixman to follow these numbers as closely as you all do there is kind of a um an emotional trauma that you that you face every day just following these numbers as closely and every time that something happens as a shooting you know you all you know all of us do but you all really respond to it and i know that that has to just be really hard so i'm going to also encourage you all to take care of yourselves and take care of your mental health because this is very it's a very very important work but gosh this is very

[01:59:05] very hard work that you guys have chosen to do and we need you to keep doing it and i we we all appreciate you so much and i mean you uh in that as well so thank you thank you for believing that we can be safer thank you all right um i i'll just say one more thing and reiterate that what she was talking about was gun sense.

[01:59:27] It's just gun sense because we're trying to respond to gun insanity. And the other thing I do want to say is all of the volunteers and activists and advocates in our community, I stand with you 100% and I appreciate we all stand with you 100% and we all appreciate the work you do. Thank you.

[02:00:26] Would you join me down front

[02:01:07] please for the 250th anniversary? Where is my proclamation? Would everyone please come down front hi hey we can come on either side hey how are you it's great to see you either side either side it's fine with me good very good okay what I'm going to ask you to do is once for me

[02:01:43] pronounce the word yeah I had I have been saying that okay they was wrong yeah you know what I actually might I actually might whenever I come up on it just do like this how do you say it? Semi-sen-quintinio. Semi-quincentennial. Okay. All right. Resolution for support of the semi-sen-quintinio 250 anniversary of the American Revolutionary War

[02:02:17] and American Independence. Whereas the American Revolutionary War made a powerful impact on Virginia, thousands of Virginians from diverse backgrounds enlisted in the Continental Army, while many others served in local militias. Virginia farms supplied food to the American cause throughout the war, including at the infamous winter of Valley Forge.

[02:02:39] Richmond, Norfolk, and other towns were burned or damaged. And whereas Loudoun communities were frequently crossed by the Continental Army as well as British, German, and American Loyalist prisoners, and whereas hundreds of Loudoun residents of all backgrounds served in military capacities during the war, while those at home supplied food, labors, goods, and livestock for the Army.

[02:03:05] And whereas Virginians were leading voices in the political movement for American independence from Great Britain, and whereas Loudoun County is rich with African American history, the realities of lives of the enslaved, the countless story of people who served in the Continental Army, or joined the British in search of freedom, And whereas Virginia is home to numerous historic landmarks and sites associated with the American Revolutionary Period, such as Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, the commanding general of the U.S. Armed Forces during the Revolutionary War.

[02:03:39] and whereas the 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War will be observed from 2025 through 2033, and the Virginia Assembly is participating in the commemoration, and whereas Loudoun County is well positioned to participate in the commemoration because it lies at the intersection of several 18th century thoroughfares, including the Carolina Road, Ashby Gap Road, Snickersville Turnpike, and Vestal Scrap Road,

[02:04:11] and whereas the semi-sequentennial anniversary is the opportunity to augment regional tourism, honor our unique heritage, and further local history education.

[02:04:28] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors does honor the semi-quincentennial anniversary of the American Revolutionary War and American independence and pledges to participate in the commemorative activities.

[02:04:49] Well, this is important. I was listening to somebody recently who was talking about how America is still a baby in the world. And I thought, yeah, but we've certainly done a lot in our time that we've been a baby in the world, have we not?

[02:05:07] Who would like to speak to this item? There you go. I'm Tracy Gillespie. I'm the current chair of our semi-quincentennial committee. We used to think sesquicentennial was hard when we were doing the Civil War. Centennial was easy with the World War I, but semi-quincentennial is starting to roll off.

[02:05:24] The six of us, seven of us, six of us represent 33 members of our committee. came together last September when we learned that the Commonwealth had formed its own commission to commemorate this time period. We represent, I think, 17 heritage sites and organizations around the county. We also have representative from representation with Visit Loudoun, Loudoun County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Libraries, work with the clerk of the court, and it's exciting that we're bringing all of us together for these next several years to help

[02:05:58] our citizens learn about the early years of not just, you know, America as a whole, but Loudoun County in general. And I'd like to ask Travis, if you wouldn't mind just saying a minute's worth of what makes Loudoun unique or a part of it. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And before I begin, thank you, Chair Randall, and thank you to the board. So as you've heard through that proclamation, Loudoun County really stood at the forefront of social events, political events, military events 250 years ago. Our political leaders helped to spearhead a lot of the early

[02:06:34] movements towards independence from Britain. Hundreds of Loudoun County residents served in the Army. Many more remained here on the home front supporting the Army and its efforts. So it's really an incredibly diverse collection of stories that we get to tell. And as a committee, it's our job, our mission, to make sure that these stories are told in a way that is very truthful, a way that is holistic, a way that is inclusive, really covers the full breadth and impact of this important period in our history. And it's also our mission to not only

[02:07:09] focus on the events of 250 years ago, but to focus on our shared American ideals and our continuing work, our ever-continuing work towards a more perfect union. I think I would be remiss if I didn't really appreciate the fact that there was a discussion about african-american history and the fact that the realities of the lives of the enslaved is a search for freedom so i i appreciate that being there as well um again i know my two colleagues who are not here really want to sign

[02:07:46] this i'm sorry i keep saying that because i know that they really would so we're going to take a picture i'm going to take it back and we're going to make sure we get it back to you and we'll make sure you have a copy, too, Mr. Clements. Okay? All right. I'm going to hand this to you and put you

[02:07:59] in the more, I think you're in, are you in the center? Yeah, put you in the center. Okay. We have

[02:10:02] quite a bit of speakers, although I literally, I do think we had more. Just give me one second, if you don't mind. I know. Yeah, yeah. I'm just a little bit confused. Can you come up for just a second? Because the list you gave me has less speakers than the list I have, even with the ones that came off the five o'clock time, and I don't want to miss anybody. I know that I'm going to call Mr. Clemons first and then I'm going to call Mr. Wynn. So we're just going from here and that's the same list as this right here. Yeah, I see this. Yeah. That's only three people though, right? That's just the three that came off. It's four. Okay. All

[02:10:41] right. As long as I don't miss anyone. All right. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to start because I always allow public officials if they're in the room to speak first if they would like. And so I'm going to call our clerk of the court, Mr. Gary Clemons up to speak, please. Good evening, Mr. Clemens. How are you, sir?

[02:11:05] Going well, ladies and gentlemen of the board. Thank you for having me this evening. I come before you today to help me spread the word about another potential scam among our residents in Loudoun County. Unfortunately, while we're having more civil court cases in the circuit court going to jury trial, we also have unscrupulous, unethical people who are trying to manipulate individuals by making them think they miss jury duty. Individuals who, under the auspices of being a sheriff's deputy or a police officer are contacting Loudoun residents explaining they

[02:11:39] missed their jury duty obligation, and they can avoid spending time in jail or more severe penalties by paying a fee, a rather high fee. I just wanted to bring this to the board's attention. We hope to communicate this to the public. We've used the public information office. I also ask perhaps you use your newsletters to your constituents. Under no circumstances will a sheriff's deputy or a law enforcement officer ever call someone if they miss jury duty. If someone does miss jury duty, they'll receive a notice from the court or my office. They'll have

[02:12:16] an opportunity to explain why they miss jury duty. If they don't respond to that, then they'll eventually appear before a judge of the circuit court to explain why they miss jury duty, and then the judge will decide what the penalty will be. So I'll send each of you some information through your age. If you can include a little snippet in your newsletter, I just want to communicate to the masses that under no circumstances will anyone from law enforcement or the sheriff's office call you to explain your missed jury duty and pay a fine or a fee. Thank you for your participation and assistance in this regard. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this topic.

[02:12:50] Hope you all have a wonderful evening. Mr. Clements, first of all, thank you for coming in and telling us. I think I can speak for the board when I say we can put it in our newsletters and on all of our social media pages as well if you send us that information. Thank you for making us aware absolutely I do appreciate that thank you chair Randall absolutely Mark Wynn followed by Jose Gonzalez followed by Betty Beacom nope good evening good evening boy a lot to talk about but I'm going to try to just stick to the facts Loudoun County is like a very a little history lesson

[02:13:29] like another place that I lived early in the 80s and late 70s San Francisco beautiful place safe clean, easy to get around, prosperous. Sound familiar? Sadly enough, I lived there when they started promoting the same policies and the same practices that this county and the schools are doing. If you look at San Francisco now, it's a cesspool. I hope that the adults in the room

[02:14:04] will step up and stop the madness that's going on. Another real quick history lesson, and this only comes by living in Loudoun County long enough, when I bought my 10 1⁄2 acres that's adjacent to the 173 acres that you all bought recently, and if anybody's an attorney up here, they're going to understand what I'm saying.

[02:14:26] I had to get an extra four months to do a study period and advertise because the property back in 1852 was owned by two people. In 1860, excuse me, 1886, it was only owned by one.

[02:14:47] No death certificate, no transfer of title. And the rumor is that person that came up missing was African-American right after the Civil War. I know I had to advertise. I know that the property that you all bought was specific warranty deed for Randy Rouse because he bought it from a bank.

[02:15:14] I know it went from his estate because he passed away to Timberline LLC through a specific warranty deed. I know it went from them to you all under a specific warranty deed.

[02:15:30] I don't think it's ever been advertised if there's any heirs out there that are entitled to stepping forward. You know, if everything's going to be equal, let's see the rules for me apply to the rules of thee. So you should find out if it's really yours.

[02:15:47] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wynn. Jose Gonzalez, followed by Betty Beacon, followed by Al Leach. I think Mr. Gonzalez is on the WebEx. He's on the phone. Good afternoon, and thank you, everybody, for the amazing time throughout this whole meeting.

[02:16:04] I've been listening to the whole thing, and I'm going to get straight up to my point. My point goes straight to the police-enforced towing, and as we mentioned it before, I'm with the Body Works of Virginia. I own and operate out of Loudoun County, Virginia, and I don't see any needs or urge to change the RP as it has been mentioned previously today by a couple of members that sit on the Board of Supervisors for the PD job.

[02:16:37] I don't see the need or the drastic need. There are some changes that have to be addressed, of course. However, I still strongly believe that the rotation system is the best and the most proven system to work, especially when we talk about those five plus an answer calls.

[02:16:57] That just meant it didn't get answered on the first ring or second ring. They got answered and they got serviced by one of the following members of the rotation. If we didn't have a rotation system and phones was on somebody's company, this will be a severe issue, a bigger issue, you know.

[02:17:15] So having a rotation system works. It's proven by the numbers that somebody else attended that accident. It wasn't the first attempt, but somebody attempted that accident, and it's factual. It works, and I don't see the need for the change.

[02:17:31] Again, I appreciate your time, and hopefully we can continue on this fair system that allows all of us to keep employing a great part of our community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kirshner and Mr. Letourne.

[02:17:47] Welcome to the dance. We have lots of resolutions for you all, sir. Our next speaker will be Betty Beacom, followed by Al Leach, followed by Jessica King. Good evening, ma'am. Good evening. Hi, my name is Betty Beacom, and I work at Al's Towing.

[02:18:04] I've been there for many years, and I'm here to talk about the Loudoun County Public Safety towing possible change. We currently are offered, through Al's Towing, health insurance, 401K, vacation, and a paycheck every single week.

[02:18:22] I feel that the current way that the Loudoun County calls are run are fair. I know for Al's Towing, when they call us, we respond timely. We provide as many trucks as they want, no matter what time of the day. We clear the scene quick and safe safety.

[02:18:40] I'm not sure why this is being sought to go to one or two towers. I feel like you're setting two towers up to be successful and eight to ten who are just going to be in a financial deficit, impacting many employees who run those calls and depend on having calls.

[02:18:59] I'm asking that you guys delay the current RFP and appoint people to the board to maybe two other towers who are from outside the county and who are not going to be bidding on the contract. And I appreciate your time.

[02:19:16] Thank you. Thank you. Al Leach, followed by Jessica King, followed by Nicholas Chosillon, I think it is. Good evening, sir. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you, the board, for taking all our calls and our time.

[02:19:32] I really appreciate it, Tom. My name's Al Leach. I've been in the towing business for almost 40 years. I've towed for Loudoun County for a little over 20. We employ about 43 people. I have real estate offices in Loudoun County and Fairfax. I sit on the towing advisory board for Fairfax and Arlington for the private property towing.

[02:19:56] And nowhere in Virginia that I know for a police contract that two people that are bidding on the contract can vote. The big word is vote for their own contract. In the Virginia Procurement Act, it's 22.4300. It says it's supposed to be in a fair and impartial board in a fair and impartial manner.

[02:20:17] And it hasn't been. Loudoun County, the police department on the prior contract, we had it worked out pretty good where nobody was taken off the contract. they had a strike system if you didn't answer the phone you turned down the call you got a warning the second time you got suspended for 30 days the third time you were off that was never implemented by the sheriff's department and if it was it would have saved a lot of problems there is issues you all have the stats there is some people that aren't doing their job but you know most of the people are doing their job and they're taxpayers and they have employees

[02:20:55] and they have families, and this is their livelihood. So, you know, I just would hope that we would redo another board and make it fair and impartial, and we could all work together and make everybody happy, I'm hoping, especially for the citizens. Thank you.

[02:21:13] Jessica King, followed by Nick, no, there's no clapping in the boardroom, followed by Nicholas Chauchion, I think, followed by Rohil Khan. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Jessica King, and I've worked for Al's Towing and Storage for six years.

[02:21:30] I was hired on when my husband was on deployment to Africa, and Al took me on knowing that I was going to be a mom of two kids leaving constantly when I had to. I have been through COVID with him, sick children, death in the family, and then finally breast cancer.

[02:21:47] And the only reason that he was able to support my job through all of this is because we maintained the Loudoun County contract. We were able to rotate fairly with all the other towing companies in the county. If one of us couldn't respond, somebody else responded. It's how I maintain my family and my job.

[02:22:03] And it would be detrimental if we lose the contract right now for my career. It's how I support my family. It's how me and my husband support our family. And as someone who lives, travels, does all kinds of stuff in Loudoun County, I don't think the response time for one tow company to be able to do it is justifiable.

[02:22:25] I don't think one company can go from Sterling to South Riding to Luckett to Leesburg. I don't think it's possible. It's too far apart in this big county. I think it should stay the way it is with multiple companies being able to rotate through the list. That way citizens aren't being kept up in traffic, citizens are not being held behind all kinds of debris on the road, and that you're not backing up major highways Route 7, 15, 28, Route 50, waiting for one company to come in to respond to that accident. Thank you. Thank you. Nicholas Sauciona, and I am quite sure I am

[02:23:02] I'm just asking your name and you're going to tell me how to say it correctly, followed by Rohel Kahn, followed by Farahal Humayu. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chairman. I'm Nicholas Shadoin. It's nice to meet you. Thank you. I appreciate being able to come up here and speak.

[02:23:18] I'm going to talk a little bit about the towing contract that's recently been going on here. And my wife, Jessica, just came up and spoke about from her perspective. I've served the community and been a public servant my entire life. I've served in the Army, I've served as a civilian in the Army, and I now work for a federal agency.

[02:23:35] I also work part-time for Al's Towing and Storage, which has been a great opportunity to earn some extra cash in different income areas and be able to have different opportunities, vacation money, Christmas money, and that kind of thing. As I'm sure you can all understand, switching to one contract or one provider will have a great impact on the rest of the towing industry and the rest of the towing companies.

[02:23:59] One of the things that's always amazed me about local government is how unfortunate it is that most of the citizens aren't even here to listen to the contracts that are going on. Most of the things, and people pay attention to the national news, the things that are going on just a few miles away in Washington, D.C., but the decisions that are made that really impact people are done in rooms like this, and things that really occur happen here. Being able to witness a 13-year-old Eagle Scout. I'm an Eagle Scout myself. I didn't get it until I was just about 18, ready to age out. It's incredible to see the things that happen on the local level. And this is one of those

[02:24:36] contracts that has vast and important impact on a multi-million dollar, on a multi-million dollar industry in this county. If you switch to one company or two companies, you're impacting the rest of it. And there's a cascading effect on us all. There's an impact on the number of employees that other companies can have. There's an impact on the number of trucks on the road and taxes that are then brought into the county. These are all things that really need to be considered when we're looking at these kind of contracts. I really appreciate the opportunity to come forward, especially as just a part-time employee for a towing company. But this will have a great and grave impact on my family, and I felt it very important to come here today and speak with you

[02:25:15] all. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you for speaking. Wilhill Kahn, followed by Farahal Humayu, followed by Danny Hoffman. Mr. Kahn here?

[02:25:39] Okay, then I'm going to put you at the end, Mr. Grimes, okay? All right, thank you. Okay, is Farahal Humayu here?

[02:25:55] No? How about Danny Hoffman, Edward Danny Hoffman? Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair and the Board. I appreciate you guys taking the time out of your day and this evening to listen to our problems or concerns in reference to this RFP.

[02:26:13] I own Double D Towing, been in business since 2007. As a matter of fact, I own several businesses in Loudoun. We pay a lot of personal property taxes, and we count on some of the, you know, towing and police towing here in Loudoun County to pay our bills.

[02:26:29] I employ about 27 people under Double D Towing, and my other business, I employ 13, most of which live in Loudoun County. You've heard a lot of concerns from a lot of the other towers. We, as towers, or me personally, think that we should revise this or review the RFP, go at it again with different towers or towers out of the community or county, so we can basically, well, excuse me, I'm not good at talking, so I just wanted to, I've kind of forgot most of what I was going to say.

[02:27:04] But at the end of the day, again, I appreciate you guys. I think we should either delay or cancel this RFP and go at it again with some different towers and hear what other towers have to say. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.

[02:27:19] Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Clements have already spoke. And so our next speaker is Robert Griffin, followed by Michael Fernandez, followed by Tony Marquillo, I do believe.

[02:27:34] Good evening, Mr. Griffin. Good evening, Madam Chair. I'm going to start off by making an appeal to do as these people did today, come and speak before this board of supervisors. The second appeal I'm going to make is for an attorney here in Loudoun County, if you know of an attorney or if you are an attorney and you would like to seek help me to enjoin this Madam Chair from interrupting, harassing me when

[02:28:10] I speak in all manner of, I find, do not find that in your rules of decorum, but I would like you to send me a copy of the rules of decorum that you rely on and the code of professional responsibility that you all signed. I would like you to send me a copy of that, specifically citing the instances in that rules of decorum that you rely upon so that I may not even turn to honor and to acknowledge the people in this auditorium. Will you do that, madam? I hope you

[02:28:47] will, because I would like an attorney to enjoin you from disruption. And I'm addressing all you Democrats who have not renounced the evils of the Democrat administration. You put on the facade of helping the people here locally. But many of the problems stem, come directly from the Biden administration, the Democrat Party. You do not represent the people here. You represent

[02:29:23] the Democrat Party in that fine facade. And to you, Madam Chair, you put words in my mouth a year or two ago when you said I asked you to call me concerning Mike Turner. I did not ask you, but you said I did at the end of the meeting when I had no opportunity to discuss and counteract that. You even lied in a message you left on my phone when you said that I'm going to mail you

[02:30:00] a letter concerning Mr. Turner's conduct, but you did not. In fact, the letter I received was dated several days after you said the letter was mailed. Is that in your rules of decorum or in your rules of professional conduct, madam? Mr. Griffin, your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. I expect the Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Your time is up.

[02:30:26] Michael Fernandez, followed by Tony Marquise-Kelio, I believe, followed by Tamara Fernandez. Good evening, sir. Thank you, Madam Chair and the staff. Hello. Thank you all for your time and consideration on this item.

[02:30:44] My name is Michael Fernandez, owner of Battlefield Tone. I've been in business for over 27 years and proudly serve in Loudoun County Sheriff's Office for over 20 years. I also want to thank the staff of recruitment for all their hard work. The new data was released clearly showing what the problem is.

[02:31:03] The tow company response data from the sheriff's office shows all of us a few things. One, that all the companies listed here due to unpredicted and uncontrolled events are not 100% perfect. Clearly showing Loudoun County Sheriff's Office needs multiple resources.

[02:31:22] It also shows, most importantly, who's not performing by a very large margin. So by eliminating the very worst non-performing companies, it would solve 95% of the problems. The current RFP, which is still due by the 19th, does have flaws that would create safety and performance issues for Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, and most important, the public.

[02:31:46] We would request the term right of first refusal be taken out of the RFP. Right of first refusal is not the correct term for the police contract. The data from the tow company response clearly shows secondary and third option towers would receive less than 1% of the calls, but still would have to meet the standards and monetary investment of the primary tower.

[02:32:09] That doesn't make sense. With all this said, we ask the Board of Supervisors to delay the current RFP to reappoint two new towing representatives that are not going to bid on the RFP. Reappoint one new citizen member who does not have conflict of interest.

[02:32:29] With the new members, ask the advisory board to meet again and review the options and submit those to the Board of Supervisors for your approval. Thank you all again and look forward to your understanding. Thank you, sir. Tony Marcillo, followed by Tamara Fernandez, followed by Natalie Moslem.

[02:32:53] Good evening, sir. Would you pronounce your name for me, please? Anthony Marcello. Anthony, oh, I had the last name right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Board of Supervisors. Unfortunately, today was a regular work day for me. I left my notes at the office.

[02:33:10] But what I do come here with is 35 years of experience in towing. And in my 35 years experience, I have never seen towers on an advisory board that votes for, you know, a contract that they would be bidding on or, you know, anything's other likes.

[02:33:28] I think we need to delay the RFP, install two new people on the board for it, a new citizen. And I would say we almost need to install a whole new board for it and start fresh.

[02:33:44] And we go from there. And the one problem, like my boss will say, I do work for Battlefield Towing. I've been there 18 years. The one thing we do see is a lot of companies that do do the towing here are nonresponsive. You know, I think that's one thing that we need to clear up first and then go from there.

[02:34:03] And just, you know, try to avoid all the corruption that comes along with this kind of stuff. And that's what we'd like to see done. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Tamara Fernandez, followed by Natalie Moslem, followed by Charles Grimes.

[02:34:22] Good evening, ma'am. Good evening, Chair and the Board. I'm Tamara Fernandez, the wife of Michael Fernandez, the owner of Battlefield Towing.

[02:34:39] We started this business from the ground up. I can say that in 27 years we have been in business, we have created a successful company. To Mike and I, our accomplishments and success is not based on what we personally have acquired, but being able to provide men and women jobs, careers, health care, PTO, to name a few.

[02:35:11] We rely heavily on the Loudoun County contract income, which we have proudly served for over 20 years. To provide these things for our employees, with the new suggested plan of primary and secondary towers, if we were not voted to receive a primary zone, this would cause a dramatic impact to our business, as it will to many of the towers in this room.

[02:35:42] I imagine job losses, the ability to provide new employees with close to double the state minimum wage, and the benefits. I suggest we delay the RFP, keep the rotation system with the elimination of towers who clearly do not rely on this contract or take it serious.

[02:36:12] And the numbers reflect who those towers are. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. I appreciate that. Natalie Moslem followed by Charles. Our last speaker will be Charles Grimes. Good evening, ma'am.

[02:36:30] Good evening, Madam Chair and board members. Thank you for being here today to hear our concerns and all the time that individuals have put in over the past week to have meetings with us. Hi again. I'm Natalie Moslem with D&M Towing. We were established in 92 and in business in Sterling for about 30 years.

[02:36:47] we have 10 employees and have been towing for the sheriff's office more than 20 years and serving the citizens of loudon county we are a small and women and minority owned business swam certified and we're part of the eight of the ten towers on the safety rotational list for lcso the current rfp as you've heard everyone is seriously flawed as the two remaining companies sit on the advisory board and have helped to first-hand draft a bias proposal which would benefit them. No one else in the area includes towers who will bid on the RFP on their advisory

[02:37:22] board. We've had the sheriffs has had a rotation system inclusive of 10 vetted companies and it's been working just fine has been for decades and this new RFP proposed will erase healthy competition and is all in all unnecessary. Government RFPs usually on all levels invite encourage small and women minority-owned businesses to actively participate in the bidding. This new RFP, however, does not support such businesses and has been orchestrated in such a way to eliminate them as it favors the big guys in the county. Being a woman and minority-owned

[02:37:59] business, we're hoping there would be some help we could receive to stop this RFP full force as many people would be negatively impacted, as well as owners, employees, and most importantly, the citizens of Loudoun County. I'm asking for you all to help to delay this RFP, appoint two no-towers to sit on the advisory board who will not bid, and appoint a new citizen member who does not have conflict of interest. I would like to ask the public behind me to please stand to show your support and start stopping this RFP. So I know I can't turn around, but anybody behind me

[02:38:34] who is in support with us, please stand. I'm sure a lot of people have left already, but as you can see um we're all here full force backing this um and we could really use your help to uh make this happen for us please thank you thank you very much thank you um our last speaker is mr charles grimes and sir when you finish speaking if you don't mind to go fill out a form just so they can have your information okay thank you no sir you can speak first okay thank you my name is charles

[02:39:08] Grimes. I'm with Al's Toeing and Storage. I've been with Al's Toeing for over 38 years and have towed for the Sheriff's Department for over 20 years. Al's Toeing provides the employees with a 401k medical insurance and provides that without, if this continues, if he can't provide it for us.

[02:39:34] I live here in Loudoun County. I work in Loudoun County. It's the best county in the world. The Tone Board is set up for two companies only, and if we continue to allow this, it would only put the other companies out of business.

[02:39:54] This ultimate would put over, if you add all the companies up, that this is going to affect. It'll put 125 employees out of business to all the companies if this happens. The operators, not the owners, are the ones who are out here working day and night in hazardous conditions to make the roads safe and clear.

[02:40:19] Excuse me, I'm kind of nervous. I'm asking today you to abolish this current tow board. A new board should not include the owners, friends of the owners, and persons expecting monetary benefits.

[02:40:40] If we do not make a fresh start today, we risk the chance of the owners of the companies to control the price of towing and emergency services in Loudoun County. And this can put a lot of small business out of business all the way around.

[02:41:00] You know, it's got to stay fair all the way around. And we got to use people outside the county. Because right now, the way it's set up, only two people are going to benefit out of this. And I'm 65 years old. I don't want to be out of a job. And all these other people behind me don't want to be out of a job.

[02:41:19] And they just, you know, they got families. So we just ask that you abolish this board you have now and start with a brand new one, please. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Will staff please come to the table?

[02:41:34] There's our last speaker for the evening. Will staff please come to the table for this item? We're going to do the police towing procurement process item right now before we take a break. Subvisors, if you would, if you have not done already, if you look in your folders, you did have a motion that was sent to you today.

[02:41:51] I think I've called many of you about the motion and talked to many of you about the motion already. It is on a blue sheet of paper. That is the motion I will be making tonight. But we will have staff present first.

[02:42:09] Good evening, and thank you all for coming. you there is no there is no presentation so whatever you'd like to say sure good evening chair randall members of the board thank you for having us this evening my name is cheryl middleton i'm the county's purchasing agent with me this evening is major craig schleiden from the sheriff's office and we are here to talk about the police directed towing procurement process staff does not have any additional information beyond what is provided in the item but we would be glad to provide a brief overview of the packet or address any specific questions whatever your preferences

[02:42:44] Well, I have had, I don't know, I've been talking about this since September of 2021, so I don't have any questions. We had a meeting yesterday, so I appreciate that. But if anyone has any questions that can't be made in the motion, we can do that now.

[02:43:02] But otherwise, we can make questions in the motion. But I see lights coming on right now. So, no, we can take questions. This is an important item. People want to ask questions outside the motion. I don't mind. I will go to Ms. Bricksman first. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for briefing me today on this, and thank you to everyone who came to speak about this. Do you know if any other jurisdictions have a first right of refusal in their RFP?

[02:43:28] Off the top of my head, no, but we do know that there are some other jurisdictions that have a slightly similar model to what we have in terms of the structure of their contracts. Specifically, the Fairfax County contract model also has zoned, similar to the Loudoun County proposed contract for light-duty towing.

[02:43:46] Okay, I'm going to stop you right there. Having a zone is different than first right of refusal for the entire county, right? Correct. Okay. So my question was, does any other county have this in their RFP that gives one or maybe two companies the first right of refusal countywide that you know of?

[02:44:05] Not that I'm aware of. Okay. RFP is not structured that way either. Okay. Oh, it's not. Can you explain to me how RFP is structured if it's not giving someone first right of refusal? Sure. RFP does include a first right of refusal by zone, so what the RFP proposes is that there will be a primary and secondary tertiary award by zone, and there are four towing zones.

[02:44:28] Okay, fantastic. And then do you know of other jurisdictions that have specifically designed their towing board membership so that there are only non-county towing companies on their boards?

[02:44:49] In our research, there are some jurisdictions that have only outside towers on their boards. And then I did find one or two other jurisdictions that do have in-county towers or in-jurisdiction towers on their board. I'm not aware if there's one that has a mix, but I did not research all the localities in Virginia that do implement police-directed towing.

[02:45:11] Okay, but we know, we did see in our item that Fairfax and Arlington specifically have members on the board that are not companies that serve the jurisdictions. That is correct. Okay, and I know you may not know the answer to this, but I just want to put it out there.

[02:45:28] Is it, do you know if we are able to do that with our form of government versus Fairfax and Arlington? I know they have different forms of government, but would we be able to set up a different structure on our board where it has only folks who would be precluded or would only have folks who are not serving the county?

[02:45:48] In other words, we wouldn't have this perceived conflict of interest of someone serving on the board as well as being able to respond to an RFP. Can we do that? Do you know? I would want to defer that question to the county attorney's office because I'm not intimately familiar with the structures.

[02:46:04] Mr. Rogers? yes we certainly can do that our form of government would not impede the county's ability to do that okay I will also have a motion after we finish our discussion thank you madam chair okay okay okay um miss umstead thank you madam chair all right uh major thanks for being here thank you for being here thank

[02:46:41] you for briefing me previously I've now had three briefings on this I've had briefing from Hannah of Roadrunner was very very good and I've had a briefing with Mike Benka and others working with him also very good so my my major question is why why wouldn't we want to have all responsive towing companies in

[02:47:13] a rotation? Thank you for the question. We want to ensure that we are getting the roadways cleared in Loudoun County from motor vehicle crashes, as well as disabled motorists, and as expeditiously, as quickly as possible. So we want to make sure that the contractors that are on the tow list, or rotation, however it ends up working out to be, are the most responsive, are, you know, getting there quickly and clearing the scene quickly, bringing the right equipment.

[02:47:52] So the position that we take is we're agnostic to how we reach that goal. It is just that we want to make sure that we have the best qualified, the best responsive contractors, you know, that are responding to scenes to clear those roadways.

[02:48:10] So it was the PD TAB's recommendation to propose the method in which the RFP, you know, was worded. But again, we defer to the County Board of Supervisors on exactly, you know, what your pleasure is in terms of that RFP.

[02:48:31] Are you all, are both of you comfortable that there are more than two or three responsive towing companies serving the county? I would say that we have several responsive companies that are serving the county today, yes.

[02:48:51] Okay. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Okay, cool. Mr. Letourneau. So the way that RFP is structured, could a different company win a bid in a different zone? Correct. So as I mentioned, we have four tow zones included in the service for police-directed towing, and the way the RFP was written was that we would make a primary, secondary, tertiary award by zone.

[02:49:19] Also included is a minimum qualification in the RFP is that in order to qualify for a particular zone, you have to have a tow lot that is in the zone that you're trying to submit a proposal for or in an adjacent lot within a certain mile radius to provide efficiencies in the process.

[02:49:34] So technically, yes, more than one firm, or excuse me, a different firm could be awarded different. Do we have that language today on the location of the lots? That is correct. And the zones? Yes. Okay. So there seems to be an assumption being made by some of the tow companies that they would not win, could not win a bid under this RFP.

[02:49:56] So it is a competitive RFP process that is set up very similar to how we would handle any other RFP process with evaluation criteria. and we did not believe that the way the RFP was structured that it was overly restrictive or to prevent competition. Are we simply awarding the bid to the lowest bidder? No, so because for it's an RFP process, it's a qualifications-based process. Additionally, the way the RFP was structured, it's that the county actually sets the rates for the towing, so pricing is not even a factor as part of this. Does the police-directed towing advisory board have any role whatsoever in awarding the contracts? No. No, I think that's an important

[02:50:33] point because we heard that over and over again the word contracts used in relation to the police directed towing advisory board so who is deciding who to award contracts to so that group yes explain how that works correct it would be a proposal analysis group comprised of various staff members in the past the pag has been comprised of members of county administration as well as the louden county sheriff's office okay um from the sheriff's office point of view you mentioned your your goal is to just have the best towing possible but you're agnostic on how many companies should be

[02:51:09] in the rotation that's correct uh the the recommendation by the pd tab was to have a smaller number of of toers and what was the reason for that i based on their discussions and and experiences with tow towing in loudon county so based from both the vendor side or the contractor side as well as law enforcement side and the finding that there were several contractors that were not responsive and so the thought was that at least from if you have three per zone instead of sort of a limitless number correct we wouldn't have to make as many phone calls and in terms of

[02:51:44] like how many resources are being devoted do we have any criteria about the i mean it's one thing to respond it's another thing to actually be timely and responsive so what's the criteria about that so we do have performance standards built into the rfp and i would have to pull those up quickly. But typically, you'll need to respond within X number of minutes. Before then, the sheriff's office would need to call for the next firm that's available. Thank you. Mr. Turner.

[02:52:15] Thank you, Madam Chair. I've now had three very good briefings on this subject. There's nuance here that is lost if you don't have all three briefings and a couple of side discussions. So I want to stay focused on the problem we're trying to solve. Anytime we have contentious issues, I go right to, what are we trying to solve?

[02:52:33] Now, is it Major Schleiden? That's correct, sir. I'm pretty sure it was Oak Leaves. I couldn't see it from here. The statistics are pretty illustrative, I think, that we have a problem. A 15% noncompliance rate or non-perform rate is not acceptable in these kinds of situations.

[02:52:52] This is public safety. So we're trying to solve the noncompliance issue. So clearly the current system is not working. There's a presumption that if we go to primary, secondary, and tertiary in four separate zones for the light towing, that there's a direct correlation and we will solve that problem.

[02:53:13] But it really comes down to the performance standards, which we capture in the RFP, which I think is correct. But now you go to the impact on the industry, an industry that has been very reliable and very helpful for us in many circumstances in Loudoun County for a long time.

[02:53:30] And we do open up the Pandora's box, and this is one of the nuances that occurred to me afterwards, we do open a Pandora's box, to Supervisor Letourneau's point, there is nothing to prohibit a single company from getting all four light towing district contracts and the heavy district contract.

[02:53:46] And that will have a devastating impact on a number of employers in this county who have provided good service to the county. So the challenge then is can we solve the problem and still do it in a fair way that rotates through towers who can meet the minimum acceptable standards.

[02:54:06] So I've talked with Chair Randall about her motion. I think her motion does exactly that. And I don't like the potential unintended negative consequence that if we go with the RP as it is right now, that theoretically one company could get all five contracts.

[02:54:24] That's what I want to try and avoid. The standard is meet the minimum performance standards and get those numbers down to where they're acceptable, but also not put 10 different towing companies out of business in the process. And I think Chair Randall has effectively threaded that needle.

[02:54:42] I accept the comments about the makeup of the towing advisory board. I am receptive to outside towers being on the towing advisory board going forward. And I accept the fact that we have evidence that there are both kinds in existence, that there are towing companies that can craft the RFP that are going to then bid on the contract, and there are ones that have outside towing companies.

[02:55:07] I think I prefer the outside towing company just to avoid the conflict of interest going forward. But I don't think that's particularly relevant for solving the problem right now. So I think Chair Randall's got a good motion here. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple questions.

[02:55:23] Some have already been asked for statements. First of all, I just want to start off with a brief statement before I follow up my question. First of all, I think really the objective, it's very clear, we want safer roads, we want faster responses. And obviously none of us want to put anybody out of business, and I know there was a lot of talk of that this evening.

[02:55:40] And I know there's a lot of concern for that. But I also look at the performance number for a lot of the individuals in the industry. That's not everybody, and I'm not speaking to everybody. But some of the performance has, quite frankly, been dismal. And I think I saw a statistic that about 25% of all accidents, or maybe 20% it was, come from after following up on a secondary accident.

[02:56:01] And I know, I mean, I've represented people who there was an accident. Some people get hurt. They get killed. There's a secondary, a lot of rubbernecking. So obviously getting accidents removed from the road, from the sheriff's department's perspective, and for the public safety is incredibly important. With that said, I do have a couple of questions.

[02:56:22] First of all, does any other jurisdiction have a similar RFP procedure that we are following or request that we are following? Can I ask a clarification question? So there are several entities that do an RFP process.

[02:56:38] Others go through an ordinance process. Most notably for me is Fairfax County has gone through an RFP process that looks somewhat similar to ours. Okay. So it's not uncommon. And there, how about any others that you're aware of? And that's obviously a neighbor, so I'm just, and that's fine if you don't, because I have limited time.

[02:56:57] Sure, my apologies. Off the top of my head, the other ones I can think of went through an ordinance process. So I've reviewed the chair's motion, and I'm assuming staff has reviewed this as well. So I have a couple of questions on actually how this would change the current process.

[02:57:13] My understanding that the motion would narrow it down to up to five. And my understanding is most of our zones have about five towers anyway right now. So how would this be different than what we're currently doing? Are you asking me that question?

[02:57:30] I can follow up, Madam Chair, in your motion, or I can... Are you asking me that question? I'll follow up with that question. It's either way. It's up to you. It's not up to five. It's a minimum of five if you read the motion, though. Okay. So it's a minimum of five. What if five don't qualify?

[02:57:47] The minimum of five was actually requested. That was the language requested from the sheriff's office. Okay. And how about, are we having problems with our heavy towers versus our light towing? I would defer to Major Slejian, but I don't believe we've had as many issues. So why would we change that process or not?

[02:58:07] Is there any thoughts on that, Madam Chair? Well, if you're saying why would we change the process, then you're basically saying you would support my motion because we're changing the process. I'm referring to the heavy-duty towing. So am I. Okay. So am I. If we do this motion, we really wouldn't change the process from what's happening right now.

[02:58:25] That's kind of the point of the motion. The process has been changed already. My understanding is we have one on the heavy duty. We have one toe. Probably two, but yeah. An alternate. Yours is three. If you look at the – we can go back after the motion, though.

[02:58:40] We can talk in the motion. Mr. Buffington? Thank you, Madam Chair. Major slide, and thank you for being here. Are you aware of Chair Randall's alternate motion that she plans on making tonight? Yes, I've seen it. Okay, and obviously you're aware of the packet motion that's in the item. Does Loudoun County Sheriff's Office have a preference over which one is supported by the board?

[02:59:01] We do not have a preference over what the board is, the board's pleasure. The point that we have now is we have nothing, and we're relying on the previous contract, and so we would like to see something so that we are able to enforce the terms of a contract.

[02:59:23] And with respect to having a contract, I'm guessing the most important things to you would be responsiveness of the contractors, how quickly they get out there, and that they safely and as quickly as possible remove whatever's in the way of the road and open the road back up fully.

[02:59:41] Is that correct? That is correct. Do you think that either of these would do that successfully, either of these motions or both of these motions would successfully do that? Do you have any concerns about one of the motions? I don't have any concerns about the motions.

[02:59:57] You know, I think we can make it work either way. Just, you know, we're just looking for some direction. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sains. Thank you, Madam Chair. So if we were to approve Madam Chair's motion when we get to it, walk us through what the time frame and the steps for that, and then to the Sheriff's Department with that motion, would that change anything or cause any safety issues?

[03:00:28] In terms of changing anything, it would be very similar to what we have today, so there really wouldn't be much change for staff, and I don't foresee any safety issues, no, sir. In terms of the timing, if I recall correctly, the chair's proposed motion would require us to cancel the existing RFP and then regroup to update some of the requirements of the RFP.

[03:00:54] so I would just need time to work with county administration and the sheriff's office to ensure that we've incorporated all of the updates appropriately, and then we would reissue the RFP, which is typically on the street for at least another 30 days, and then we would continue on with the rest of the RFP process. Okay, so a rough timeline, are you saying, after you huddle with county administration and staff, are you saying it's going to take 30 days to issue a new RFP, or is it going to be 60 days, or 45, what is it? I would estimate it would take approximately 30 days to get a new RFP reviewed, issued, and on the street.

[03:01:26] And then it's on the street for another 30 days to 45 days, depending on how many questions we receive. And then we would go through the evaluation process, conduct site visits, and then convene at the PAG to make our final selection. September, October?

[03:01:45] Roughly, yes. So with the other RFPs, you never went out to any site visits or anything of that before? For the RFP process that we went through previously in the 2015 time period, we did. Okay, and so you're saying if you've got new bidders, then you have to go back out.

[03:02:06] What about the ones who say, hypothetically, I'm just going to call it a name, not saying anybody, but say Gerald Walsh, who's in Zone 5 Percival, say if they were to throw their name back in the hat, would you have to go back and revisit, or have you already visited them before? No, we would revisit anyone that we select as part of the shortlist process to ensure that their sites comply with everything in the RFP.

[03:02:30] Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. I'm going to make a motion. I move the Board of Supervisors direct staff to counsel immediately request for proposal RFP number RFQ-572784 for police-directed towing service. I further move the Board of Supervisors direct staff to issue a new RFP for police-directed towing service that contains the following amendments.

[03:02:48] One, the police-directed towing service contract should be awarded to a minimum of five highest-rated towing companies responding to the RFP for light-duty towing and up to three highest-scoring towing companies for heavy-duty towing. Two, previous performances with the county shall be a consideration of the RFP criteria.

[03:03:06] And three, the towing contracts with the successful towing company shall be awarded an administrator on a rotating basis across, that is evenly distributed across calls for services by zone. So we're still doing the zone service.

[03:03:22] That's the motion. Motion to remain seconded by Supervisor Umstead. Okay. So first of all, I think the first call my staff and I got on this was literally September of 2021. So when I say I've been talking about this issue for a long time, I don't mean, with all due respect, three briefings.

[03:03:38] I mean a couple years, literally a couple of years. And I appreciate everyone that's brought this to our attention. The truth is this. Right now we have somewhere between 11 and 15 towing companies, and some of them are not doing what they should be doing.

[03:03:56] They're just not. They're not responding on time. They don't answer their phones, and that is a problem. That is the problem that's leading to the 15% to 20% of the failure rate that Mr. Turner was talking about. In any class, 20% failure rate is a problem.

[03:04:13] In towing, it could be a lethal problem. And so we have to absolutely fix this problem. What I'm putting forward, and by the way, if you remember, I sent a letter to Sheriff Chapman. I don't know how long ago. But Sheriff Chapman's letter back to me, it was on March 14th. His letter back to me was a very helpful, illustrative letter. He got back to me literally the next day.

[03:04:41] And his letter back to me was really what helped inform this motion, to be quite honest. And I want to, you know, be sure that I'm saying that there are no kind of bad guys in this. The legislation is written in a ridiculous way that allows things I don't think it should allow, but it is what it is.

[03:04:59] However, I do think that a couple of things has to happen. One, we have to take care of that 15 to 20 number. Two, it's important that we put this in a process so that one company doesn't have the right of first refusal because they would probably never refuse, which means the other companies would not get any business so that we shouldn't make a monopoly.

[03:05:22] The board shouldn't make a monopoly of a towing company. That's not the right thing to do. Three, and very important, we should be able to consider what past towing companies have done. And so we put an RFP out. If somebody bids, a towing company bids, and we know that in the past they didn't do a good job, they didn't answer calls or whatever the issue was, that can be considered, and they would not receive the points in the RFP for that.

[03:05:45] So they are very unlikely to be included again in this. Four, we should do it by zones for obvious reasons because Loudoun's a big county. Somebody in Sterling may not actually get to somebody in Middleburg in a reasonable time. So the zones make sense to still keep them there.

[03:06:02] Five, and very important, there is a difference between heavy-duty and light-duty towing. However, we haven't had the issue with the heavy-duty towing, and so we believe that two or three towing companies could probably take care of the heavy-duty towing.

[03:06:18] I do want to say I want to thank Cheryl. I want to thank the sheriff's office. I want to thank everyone who's been involved with this. I have had meetings with me or my staff, have had meetings with everyone involved with this more than one time. And that's how we came up with this motion.

[03:06:34] I will try to answer questions about the motions if you have any questions about the motion. I'll try. I'll try. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank everybody, all of you in the audience who came, And Major and Cheryl, thank you very much for all your hard work.

[03:06:51] They were very good briefings. I tend to make very fast decisions, which is not a good habit. And this was one where I was still trying to let the information I received percolate through the third meeting when I finally started to settle on. In fact, I was still up in the air until Chair Randall explained her motion to me.

[03:07:08] I thought that's a pretty good compromise. I can live with that. This is a complex issue. And I like this potential compromise, but it's a complex issue, and it's got a lot of nuance, as I said. So I'm comfortable with this motion, but thank you all for your hard work on this.

[03:07:27] I appreciate it. Mr. Letourneau. So I do have some concerns with the chair's motion. We only have one current heavy-duty contractor now, right? That's correct. So I don't know why we would change that to three. And I have concerns about that because the heavy-duty industry is a lot different.

[03:07:45] The amount of capital investment it takes to buy and own that equipment is huge, and there's not a lot of demand for it. So if you're splitting it up, that to me doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm also a little baffled by, and I don't mean to single anybody, I'm not going to use a name, but we heard some companies say if they don't get the county contract, they're going to go out of business.

[03:08:08] Well, the one individual that said that worked for a company that had 329 tows for the county over the course of a year. That's less than one per day. So if one toe per day is going to put you out of business, then something's wrong. And I don't want anybody to go out of business, believe me.

[03:08:26] I'm interested in having competition. I'm interested in a rotation. I don't know that five is the right number. I was comfortable with three because that's 12 slots because there's four zones. So if you have three companies and four zones, then there's an opportunity to have 12 different companies potentially get this.

[03:08:43] So I'd be open to some discussion about the primary, secondary, tertiary language in our RFP because I think that could be adjusted as a way to deal with this. But not having any kind of primary, secondary, tertiary and then going to five to me is not really compromised. It's really going from maybe one extreme to another extreme, closer to the extreme we have today in which there's just a lot of rotation going on and the quality of service starts to get degraded. Because the reality is you do want to narrow it some so that everybody has its skin in the game and they actually perform the service as we want

[03:09:19] it to. So I'm not necessarily here saying the existing RFP is perfect, but I'm not sure this is the solution I'd be looking for because I don't understand why we would go to three on heavy. And I think five is too many. I also think the staff's process is designed to allow anybody to win the bid. And so I don't understand the assumption that from everybody else that they wouldn't win um because you know in my experience the staff pags are really really good they do look at performance they look at a lot of factors they're not going to be influenced by any particular

[03:09:57] company or who was on the the the police director towing advisory board that's a staff ethics issue so you know and that's really a different issue on what on what you know this looks like so i'm not sure i'm ready to support this i had not seen this until uh today until two hours or so before the meeting um so unfortunately i was not somebody that this was shared with so um i don't think i can vote for it tonight mr luton i'm going to ask you to look at page three under heavy duty towers i'm going to ask you to look at page three um because i'm not sure where the one is coming from i haven't done anything that i haven't either asked about or seen in writing we have three people

[03:10:36] under heavy duty so but it's yeah but hold on a second i'm going to go mr hemstreet who went to want to say something and then yeah mr. Umstreet no thank you chair Randall I just wanted to clarify so we did we did assist the chair's office with drafting a motion so I just want to make sure the board understands how we interpret the motion so we interpret that the award to go to a minimum of five different contractors but then the sheriff's office or procurement in the sheriff's office would then assign those five or more contractors to individual zones so you'd have

[03:11:15] at least five contractors but you could have one contractor in a zone if that's the only contractor that qualifies in that zone you could have it actually says that no it doesn't it says never mind yeah so so if that's not clear and how the motion's worded then that's that's my fault in terms of not making it clear but our understanding from the chair's office when we wrote the motion was that the intent from her and other board members was to be able to award the total towing contract to at least five different contractors and then assign them by zone.

[03:11:45] So there's other things in the RFQ or the RFP that are relevant, such as having a lot that is in the zone or approximate to the zone. So those kinds of things would still apply, which means that those contractors, once they're qualified, would have to meet those other requirements of the RFP in terms of responsiveness.

[03:12:03] Can I ask another clarifying question then? The other pieces of this is that past performance, so if there was past performance and the performance was substandard, then that could be counted as a deduct, for example, in the scoring criteria.

[03:12:20] However, regular performance, or if you're completely new, would not count against you in terms of the evaluator criteria. And the last part is just making it clear that the towing contractors have to qualify by zone.

[03:12:39] And so they would be assigned to a zone based off their qualifications. Mr. Turner, I'll come back for a point of clarification after I go to everybody else. If you still have a point of clarification to be made, okay? I'll come back to you. Ms. Brixman? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm fully supportive of the motion, and I really appreciate Madam Chair digging into this quite deeply over the past, would you say, over two years, almost two years.

[03:13:02] You know, we did start hearing about it quite some time ago, and I think that this is an appropriate way to look at things and go back and redo the RFP. I do believe that there are probably one or two towing companies that weren't able to respond when they were put on the list, and that's probably tanking our numbers.

[03:13:23] So hopefully we can weed them out with the criteria that Madam Chair has put in the motion. And listen, I don't know anything about running a towing business. So if someone tells me that they could, you know, go out of business or it would be completely detrimental if they didn't have access or able to, you know, get some portion of the contract from the county, I will tend to believe them.

[03:13:54] I've never been brave enough in my life to start my own business or deign to think that I could actually have more than a couple employees working under me and have to pay them and do their health insurance and all that. So I'm glad that we're going back and taking another crack at this and very happy to support the motion.

[03:14:11] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have just a couple of clarifications. Can I ask Mr. Hemstreet some clarification on this? Sure. Hold on just one second, okay? Certainly. Mr. Hemstreet, just clarification. So the way I understand, and as a follow-up question to what Mr. Letourneau says, the way the motion reads is, because it says minimum, and I think that's what's throwing me off, It would be a minimum of five contractors, assuming they all met the criteria, but that could be one in one zone, two in another zone, five in another zone, potentially, if they met all the other criteria.

[03:14:48] Is that correct? That is how the motion was written, yes. Okay. That makes a little more sense. I'm always a little concerned about the number of cooks in the kitchen here, but that does create competition. There's some good to that. my understanding of how this has this the the heavy heavy duty towing has has currently exists as there was a primary and a secondary will that continue or will this motion change that and that's directed either the madam chair or mr hemstring so the motion was written to allow for that to be up to three to three no but we currently exist with a primary and then secondary

[03:15:27] will that change so that's been working well so i just yeah i would defer to well what we would need to do is figure out how to adapt the language of that but it very well it would be on a rotating basis if there was more than one if there was and there may and there may not be never mind i'm sorry i'm in your time so there could be just one or if there was more than one then that would be on a rotating basis the way that the motion is drafted yeah that does that does give me concern madam chair um the third question i have in the remainder of my time is is this a three-year contract as the original rfp so when the new rfp was written one of the requests from the towing

[03:16:05] community was to have a longer term contract just because of the amount of investment that is required. So if I recall correctly, it was a three or four year base term with multiple renewal options available thereafter. So what would staff, and if I can ask staff a question, what would staff, if we were to shorten that, because my concern is we're kind of jumping into a quick process here that hasn't quite been as vetted as maybe we would have hoped because we're kind of switching midstream here. My concern is if we jump into a four or five year contract or a three to five year contract and things aren't working well, we're kind of stuck in that in three to five years. So

[03:16:43] maybe the prudent thing would be to shorten this contract to see how things go. And because it looks like Ms. Brisbane's motion would be to send this back to finance to kind of reconsider the board. So Ms. Milton and I actually had that discussion yesterday of shortening the contract, even though I know some of the towers wanted a longer contract, to shorten it, and I know I'm in your time right now, for two reasons.

[03:17:09] One, to see where it goes. Also, because a new board gets to appoint the people they want, and so depending on what happens with Ms. Brickman's motion and what happens in the General Assembly, which is where this all sits, you may want to have a new board kind of decide who they want on that, on the towing advisory board to start with, which is a good reason to have a shorter contract.

[03:17:34] However, that would be something that I would defer to staff's expertise on that, but I wouldn't have any issues at all with it being a bit of a shorter contract. So if I may, so all of our contracts do include regular termination provisions, so it could be termination for convenience in the event that there is a significant change to the program that's directed by the board that would result in us needing to revisit the contracts as a result of the PDTAB process.

[03:18:00] But we are open to suggestions. Okay. Well, that's not part of the motion, but we can come back if you want to do it friendly, just in case. Because I want to go to Ms. Glass, and I want to see if Mr. Letourneau still has a point of clarification.

[03:18:19] Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do support this motion, and I just want to thank everyone for coming out and speaking on this issue. I know it's very important to you all, and we do want all of our businesses. is to be successful in Loudoun.

[03:18:35] Madam Chair, I do have a question. So in part two of the motion, how would we evaluate a company that has never provided service to the Loudoun County government? I want to make sure that if a new towing service starts up in the county that they are not penalized for never providing service.

[03:18:55] I didn't understand that anyone would be penalized for never providing service. I believe the issue is if somebody has provided service and that service was poor, they would not receive those points. But there would be no penalty for having never provided service. Is that correct?

[03:19:11] That is correct. As part of the experience requirement of the RFP, we'll look at the holistic experience of the firm. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, want to thank everyone who came out and speak to us today. This is a tough decision for us, and we know, obviously, it affects a lot of you.

[03:19:28] I asked earlier from a sheriff's office perspective, Now, I'll ask from a staff perspective, knowing, you know, the packet motion that the packet says that staff supports and also knowing and having helped write Chair Randall's motion, do you have a preference from a staff perspective?

[03:19:46] Do you still support the one in the packet, or how do you all feel about that? Staff can support either motion because both comply with requirements of the Virginia Public Procurement Act. Okay. Well, having been law enforcement for 20 years in the past, I no longer am, and having had to be the one out in traffic waiting on a tow truck driver to get there and make things safer for everybody,

[03:20:13] My primary goal here is to make sure we have the most responsive towing companies that respond the quickest and safely and quickly clear things up so we can get back to normal.

[03:20:30] And I personally believe that the motion in the packet right now does that better than this other motion. I don't think this other motion is bad. Chair Randall's motion that we're voting on now, I plan on supporting the motion in the packet first. And if that fails and we end up with this, then I think I'll probably support it.

[03:20:49] I think there may be some alternative motions on this that I'll probably try and make this a little better. I think five is too high. I would like to see that number be three for the light duty. But we'll see what happens here. Thank you. So the motion on the floor is the motion, is the motion, is my motion.

[03:21:08] Okay. And I'll answer that question in just a second. Mr. Sains. Thank you, Madam Chair. clarifying on the heavy duty section so right now it's we have a primary secondary and a tertiary or how you say that third tertiary thank you right now so there's not a rotation it's just we got the primary then if the primary can't go then we go to the secondary secondary can't go then we go to the third option correct there is not an existing rotation for heavy duty towing and in your opinion in sheriff's department do you foresee the another company coming in

[03:21:47] an offering heavy duty in the RFP or from what you know or is this what we see is what we get even if we go with another RFP? So I do believe that there are multiple firms in Loudoun County that offer heavy duty towing services. That are not on this list. That's on page three. Beyond the list I'm not sure. I'm aware of the firms that are available from the previous contract but I'm not aware of new contractors that may be available that can provide heavy duty. And that's my question is if we were to go out or in your opinion to do rfps and i'm assuming you know that some of this

[03:22:22] business do you foresee another company coming in possibly or not off the top of my head i would i would not feel comfortable assuming who may or may not respond to the rfp sheriff department are you aware of anybody else possibly i don't have any knowledge no okay so madam chair in your motion is it your intent to have it on a rotational basis or do it for a second so thank you for the question. It would be my intent to have in a rotational basis. My assumption, and if that assumption is wrong, please tell me, that you wouldn't have somebody in the secondary and tertiary role for the heavy-duty towing. They couldn't provide heavy-duty towing. So since you have

[03:23:01] two other towing companies for the tertiary and secondary and tertiary, I'm assuming that they could do it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be in there at all. So that's why I had that under rotation. If that is wrong, and if you have people here in the secondary and tertiary that can't do it, tell me.

[03:23:18] Otherwise, I'm going to leave it on, I would have a rotation. The firms that were listed previously did meet the qualifications. Okay, then that's my answer. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, well, unfortunately, I know way more about Tony than I ever thought I want to in my entire life over the past two years.

[03:23:43] You know, again, my letter to Sheriff Chapman was, I think, the most helpful thing we could have done because his letter back to me was really helpful. I'm sorry if the motion wasn't clear or that you all had not seen it. It actually does say across calls for each service by zone, so I thought that was clear.

[03:24:03] If it wasn't, I apologize, and I hope that's cleared up at this point. I would have gone with a number of five to be the number, because right now we have 11. And so I would have gone with a number of five. It was the sheriff's office that said a minimum of five.

[03:24:19] I would have left it differently, because I'm trying to respect the sheriff's office and what he wants. So he had said a minimum of five. That wasn't me that said that. Mayor Randall, that's not exactly correct. I know that's what you heard from me. That is what I heard from you. My information came from procurement. And so what I had intended to say was that that's what procurement had provided to me.

[03:24:39] which included the grouping and consultation with the sheriff's office. Okay, so let me just stop my time. Let me just back up something. All right, so it could be five and not a minimum of five in each zone. So the recommendation to say a minimum of five came from procurement.

[03:24:55] That didn't come from the sheriff's office? Because I was told that. Okay, so we'll make sure. So you were saying a minimum of five? When I was asked to review the proposed staff motion, we agreed that a minimum of five, because the way the original draft was worded, it said no, I think it said no more than five, or it was a very hard number, so that we wanted to make sure that in the event, depending on where the proposal evaluation came out, that we weren't arbitrarily excluding a particular firm.

[03:25:34] Let's just say that the points all fell close together. We wanted to make sure that we said at least five versus just a hard five to in case there's a sixth firm that came in that also had a great performance experience or a great proposal that we weren't artificially excluding them.

[03:25:50] Oh, okay. Well, that's tough because I actually would have rather had five because it's more than one zone. So I'd always rather have five. We have 11 now, and it's kind of been a little bit unwieldy.

[03:26:10] And so five and no more than seems more logical to me. And I never want to disrespect you all because you were the experts in this field. Do you believe five would be, if we didn't go to the term a minimum of and just set five, do you believe that is too risky that we would be excluding somebody?

[03:26:35] I never want to take that chance. Again, just because we have had so many tow firms participate in the process in the past, and there might be some new firms in the area that might be interested in participating, I want to make sure that we aren't setting a hard limit in the event that we do this.

[03:26:51] How's this? And I know I'm a little bit over my time. Mr. Kirshner is going to make a friendly that I'm going to be happy to accept to say that this contract will be for one year as we see how this goes. How about we say five right now and we'll see how this goes since the contract will be happy to accept a friendly for one year. and then we'll just see how this goes.

[03:27:08] And if it doesn't go well, we can then adjust that. I don't want us to go back to what we have been doing, though, because it has been a little bit unwieldy. So, Mr. Letourneau, do you still have a point of clarification? No? You're good? Okay. Mr. Kirsten, would you like to make it friendly? Yes, Madam Chair, I'd like to make it friendly that this not be more, that this contract, this motion and the contract that we're talking about in this motion not be more than one year, just given all the uncertainty that we're dealing with.

[03:27:33] And I would be happy to accept that. fact we talked about that just just yesterday for all the reasons you just said the second or the motion was miss umstead are you saying no to that i'm not good with that you're not good with that mr i am not which would you mr kirsten would you like to make a make a motion then yeah i moved to this be a one-year contract i would second that discussion on the motion mr kirsten yeah i just think wait wait no no no yeah i'm good i'm good i'm good okay i'm sorry i should go eat in a minute okay go on so any in in and i know we've been discussing this for a long time So I don't want to say we've been rushed or anything like that.

[03:28:07] I just think we need to – we don't want to be locked into something that's four or five years long when we don't know how it's actually going to work. And I think the goal, of course, is public safety. And so if we put forward the contract and we find out that it's lousy and we may be stuck in a lousy situation for a period of time, And I would like to have this revisited, especially given we are about ready to address a motion, perhaps, to look at how we formulate our towing board into the future.

[03:28:40] So I think that's just a wise thing to do. Again, I'm trying to look at what's in the best interest of the citizens of Loudoun County and the safety of our roads. And we obviously know what we have had, not everyone, but we have had some atrocious failure rates, quite frankly, that should not be tolerated.

[03:28:59] And so we're trying a new process here, and in trying that new process, I think we need to consider how long we put that new process in. If it works great, we can renew it for four or five years going forward, but I do think that that would be.

[03:29:15] And I'm also a little concerned, given this motion, that we have a process that we've been following for the heavy duty, and now we're going to change that process. And I'm a little concerned simply because if it's not broke, don't fix it. So I would like to see, because I know, as Mr. Letourneau said, it takes a lot of significant investment.

[03:29:35] Apparently, we do have multiple towing companies that can provide that, but I imagine that's far less than the light towing. And so if we're doing this for multiple companies, is that going to put strain on them or what?

[03:29:51] I don't know, and I just haven't had an opportunity to delve into that, given the newness of this motion. But I think it's wise just to go one year overall. Great. So we're now discussing the motion on the floor right now is just a motion of one year. Oh, I'm sorry.

[03:30:09] If I could provide just a point of context. So I understand the desire by the board to want to see how this works. As I did mention, there are termination provisions that are built into a contract that would allow us, in the event that we get into the contract and it's not providing the efficiencies to the sheriff's office that we had hoped, that we'd be able to exercise our provisions under there without any, what's the word I'm looking for, without any cause to the contractor.

[03:30:37] So it would be a termination for convenience section. There is a significant level of investment that is required for these tow companies to participate in this contract, and a one-year period may not be sufficient enough for that. And additionally, knowing the length of time the PDTAB process typically takes, And to get through that process, the new RFP process, a year contract may not be quite long enough to be able to accomplish all of those things.

[03:31:05] A recommendation for consideration might be a two-year contract with optional renewal options that would provide additional more time, not only to the towing community, but to not rush the next PDTAP process. Okay, thank you. There's still a motion on the table, though.

[03:31:21] I'm going to go. No, hold on. You get a closing. You get a closing. You get a closing. You want to amend it? No. No, and you get a closing. Well, is it because now it's not a friendly anymore?

[03:31:37] It's a motion. This is actually, it's not a friendly at this moment. It's a motion. So are you saying you want to amend your motion? Because that's the motion on the table right now. So let's finish with this motion. And by the way, that's not what you said to me yesterday.

[03:31:55] Not. Ms. Bricksman? So in the RFP right now, how long is the, I know you said this earlier, But in the RFP, I think you, tell me again, how long is the contract and what are the renewal options, please?

[03:32:12] The existing RFP that's on the street right now is for a three-year period with, I believe, up to six or seven renewal options. Okay. For all the reasons that you just said, and probably mainly because if you are trying to run a business, it's really difficult to just think that you're going to have like a one-year contract.

[03:32:30] I'm not going to support the motion for one year. I probably will not support the motion for two years. I think that it's appropriate to do it for the three years because also we have the provisions in there that if things aren't working out with certain providers that we can change or cancel or do whatever, go to the third person down the list or something like that.

[03:32:51] So I like the way it's designed right now. I think three years is very reasonable so that we have predictability. Our businesses who are trying to provide this service have certainty, right? They need to have certainty to know how many employees they need to hire. You know, the downstream effects of having only a one-year contract are numerous, right?

[03:33:13] It falls into what kind of health care can you provide? How many employees can you hire? How many part-time employees can you hire? What are the benefits you can provide or not provide? And a lot of that comes down to if you're talking to an insurance company or you're talking to a subcontractor, being able to provide those services or have a subcontract or hire part-time, All of that could be dependent on whether you have, you know, a runway, a three-year contract where you know and it's predictable what might be coming into your revenue stream.

[03:33:43] So I would argue against doing it for one year, and I would also argue against for doing it two years. I like the way it's set up in the RFP right now. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. There were two aspects to my friend Mr. Kirshner's motion that I cannot agree with.

[03:34:05] One is the one-year limit, and the other is limiting the number of the competition to no more than five, unless that part was retracted.

[03:34:23] Part of my motion. That wasn't Mr. Kirshner. Mr. Kirshner hasn't said that this motion is only for the year contract. this motion has nothing else but that for the same reasons well regardless I can't support any motion that puts a cap on on the number who can compete at five and does not allow more qualified bidders to compete and I cannot support the one-year limit because of the same thing Supervisor Briskman said okay but this motion is just about the one year right now right okay all right Mr.

[03:34:56] Buffington well you just clarified my main question so when we vote we're only voting on the term this is this this motion right here is only for the one year discussion that mr person put in the table um i've never opened my own business but in talking to a lot of business owners in my district they they are concerned about certainty and having certainty and when they have uncertainty they are very concerned about that and so while one year contract in my opinion does not provide much certainty for a business um it's hard to plan out you can't plan out beyond one year if that's all you have if this is an important contract for you it sounds

[03:35:33] like many of these uh folks at least who came out this evening this is an important contract for them and so I don't know about the one year thing um we'll see I'm gonna see what Supervisor Kirshner has to say in his closing um before I go back to you for to do that let me say that um you and I should talk later because because I I fancy myself a fairly good communicator and I remember a very different conversation yesterday and I need to understand what just happened here okay thank you

[03:36:08] Mr. Kirshner I'd like to go back to you for um for whatever you'd like to do at this moment thank you Madam Chair um my plan was to withdraw that and recommend two but and then ask for a friendly um but I'm not sure Mrs. Umstead will accept that so let's just vote on this motion thanks so wait a minute what I was initially going to withdraw then ask for a friendly for two Okay.

[03:36:35] But I don't want to go through this whole process. I think I've heard what everybody believes. You can just draw the motion. I think I want to vote for a limited period of time. Okay, so you want to vote? Yes. Okay, you want to vote. All right, motion was made by Mr. Kirshner.

[03:36:54] I second the motion. This is just a motion for the one-year contract. All people, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, that motion, so Mr. Kirshner and I, voted aye, Mr. Letourneau abstained on that motion for the one-year contract. Now we're back to the original motion. We're back to the original motion. I think everyone has spoken on the original motion.

[03:37:21] I think I've even taken points of clarification on the original motion. So I'm not doing anything else with the original motion at this point, but voting on the original motion. All in favor of this motion. For the clarification, Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Letourneau. So right now, based on your motion we could have 15 towers spread throughout the zones which is exactly what we have right now because your wording says a minimum of five towers so we could have all of the same towers we currently have under your motion it says a minimum of five we have criteria now it no we really don't

[03:37:56] no we really don't we we we could is that likely we only have 11 right now and we know some of those will not make it well I won't say will not make it some of those will have what they've already done to be considered and thus probably wouldn't have that in the in the motion now truthfully I had a minimum because I did think that that was what Mr. Chapman wanted I am happy to adjust my motion to say to not do not have a just to say five that is not an issue for me at all but even that was to

[03:38:34] be the same number that would still be that wouldn't change anything no it absolutely no it doesn't no no no guys well then we're not this with this this we're not doing madam chair talking around me no we're not we're not doing that madam chair point of clarification i'm just i'm ready to vote this motion right here doesn't change the current system at all 11 towers currently bid in rotation under this motion 11 towers could bid on rotation it does not change the current system I disagree.

[03:39:11] That's fine. I disagree because, well, could they bid? Yes. But if the goal, and I know we are all out of order and out of line right now, so I apologize. If the goal is to fix the issue of having the failure rate of 15 to 20 percent, then the goal is to remove the towing companies that are causing that issue.

[03:39:35] The motion, by its very nature, if you read number two, that says previous performance with county should be a consideration, I believe will address that issue of having the failures. So the motion wasn't let's have less or let's have more.

[03:39:52] It's to address the issue of the failures. I believe the motion does that. That's what I believe. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

[03:40:08] No. Okay, if you are an A, please raise your hand. Okay, that motion will pass by four. with Mr. Letourneau, Mr. Kirshner, Mr. Buffington, and Mr. Turner.

[03:40:26] So all the men who don't know anything anyway, just bow it against the motion. I said who don't know anything anyway, which means you know some stuff. That motion will pass by four. That motion will pass by four.

[03:40:43] This item is over. No, no, no, I have a motion. This part of this item is over. Ms. Bricksman, would you like to make a motion? Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Board of Supervisors direct staff to research alternative membership options for the police-directed towing advisory board to be aligned with the next Board of Supervisors term and return to the Finance, Government, Operations, and Economic Development Committee.

[03:41:07] Motion is made. And second by Supervisor, that was glass, right? That was glass. Okay. Ms. Bricksman, should I have an opening? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll try to be brief. So the idea behind this is to look at the code, which we looked at briefly here, and it does appear that we have the authority to do this.

[03:41:26] And we have the authority to decide whether we want county towing people to be allowed to be on our board and, you know, whether we can live with that apparent conflict of interest or not. But it's not going to happen like this year.

[03:41:43] So the idea is that we review this and whatever we implement, if we decide to change the membership, because it has to come back to the full board after Finance Committee, if the Finance Committee recommends a change to the membership so that we have out-of-county towing membership on the board, it would start with the new term.

[03:42:04] So it's not an immediate fix to what has been identified by some as an issue and potential conflict of interest, but it could be a fix in the next term. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, before we go down this discussion, I may get a point of clarification for Mr. Hempstreet and Mr. Rogers.

[03:42:21] Mr. Turner, just give me a second. Mr. Turner, I need you to give me a second. I need a point of clarification before we walk down this aisle too long. As of right now, legally, can we legally say that a tower who is who's on the police director of a company on the police director towing board cannot also put in for the rfp by virginia code can we say that so i'm going to answer a question and then

[03:42:57] the county attorney can fix whatever i say so for because we talked about this yesterday for the current rfp or the rfp that is about to be let based off the direction that was just passed The answer to that is no, because at the time that those towers sat on the PD tab, they were not aware that they had no way of knowing that the board would not let them participate in the RFP.

[03:43:24] So we cannot preclude them from the current RFP or the one you just directed us to issue. Going forward, we think, but this is a conversation we had early this afternoon and the one I had with Supervisor Brisbane, I want some time to research this so we're certain that what I'm about to say is true.

[03:43:42] We believe or we think that going forward for the next police-directed towing advisory board, if the board wanted to place that restriction on towers that are on the board, then you could restrict them for the next towing.

[03:43:58] that's not an issue that we have to fix in the general assembly I don't think so but at the time we talked I had not read the code and so I was not sure okay Mr. Rogers do you have anything different to add to that I definitely agree with the first part of what Mr. Hemstreet said I would like to have that opportunity as well to see if there's a way that we could restrict it should that be the board's desire okay point of clarification Madam Chair um yes my motion And my motion does not, well, I guess we can research it.

[03:44:30] I'll say this in my closing. Go ahead. Okay. All right. I just wanted to walk in the house and then at the end, Mr. Rogers goes, that's still illegal because I'm not spending enough that time. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. So I will support having a discussion about the membership at the Finance Committee because there's a couple of different ways to handle it.

[03:44:50] we may not be able to explicitly prohibit, but we could also simply appoint different people to the police director towing advisory board if we choose to. I also am not going to presume that there is a conflict to have somebody, and I would like more information, which I think this item could do. It is my observation that this entire discussion could have benefited from going to the finance committee, because what happened was nine of us had different briefings, and slightly different things may have been said a slight different way and interpreted a different way and we ended up with confusion on the dais so i would have advocated and if i thought about it at the time but it was kind of before all that back and forth happened i would have made a substitute

[03:45:28] just to send the whole item to finance but at least going forward um we can do that with the membership discussion and maybe have a clearer discussion and it's on the dais and it's in public and everybody hears the same thing okay all right uh mr turner uh sorry mr buffington Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't see in the motion where it says that our goal of this would be to prevent people that are on the committee or the commission or the towing advisory board from putting in for the RFP.

[03:46:05] However, it sounds like that is one of the goals, just from the talk that I've heard so far. So for that reason, I cannot support this because I think there's no one better than local tow companies who know our area better than any tow company outside of our area.

[03:46:20] to be on that police-directed towing advisory board. So I would not support this because I think that might be the route that this was going down, and I would not support not having local towing representation on that advisory board that is simply an advisory board to our board that just simply makes recommendations.

[03:46:45] We can listen to those recommendations or not listen to those recommendations. That's up to us. So unless there's some legal reason why to do this or why they can't be on that board and make recommendations to us and still put in for these RFP processes, then I would not support not allowing them to put in for these.

[03:47:06] Thank you. Oh, my gosh. It's usually better. I promise it usually is. One of the things that we talked about yesterday that I, what are you pointing at? Never mind, nothing. I didn't see a thing. I didn't see a thing.

[03:47:22] Do you want to go? Okay. one of the do you want to I was just going to say I I'm going to vote for this motion just because I don't have a problem going and discussing it in finance but I kind of agree with Mr. Buffington that that and and I don't know how many of the towing company I mean I know we have two that represent two towing companies in the county now on that board I don't know how many of the other towing companies in the county actually sought to be on this board and so I think it's it is important to have local consideration on this um it does look a little funny to have those

[03:47:59] making recommendation but again we still have that filtering process of going through our our staff um when they're on there so i i get what mr buffington says and i don't necessarily disagree and i i'm not on finance staff on the finance committee now but i think finance committee should take that into consideration when reviewing different ways but i will support this motion at this time. Okay. One of the things that we talked about yesterday, which was why I was supporting the motion of one year, was that I think we forget that these appointments run with the board's term.

[03:48:32] And so if we make a, you know, we can do this next year, we can look at all this, but whatever we put in place is going to, it's going to be in place now for however long the term of the contract is. And no matter what we do, the contract's now going to be in place for three years or so which was why it made sense for me to say one year because we can do this and we can call come up here next year or whoever comes back to this day is next year but you're going to make appointments to a board and the contract's going to be already in place for three years of our of

[03:49:06] a next board's term unless something happens which i mean i'm happy to support this but it doesn't really make i think a huge difference one way or the other with what because there wasn't support for Mr. Kirshner's motion. So it doesn't really, I'm happy to support it.

[03:49:26] I just don't think it really matters a whole lot at this point. Ms. Fishman, would you like to have a closing? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So just to clarify, I don't want to preclude any of our towing companies from bidding on or responding to RFPs.

[03:49:47] If we decide that we aren't going to change the membership to preclude Loudoun County towing folks, I don't think that we will have a choice other than to allow them to bid on the RFPs when they come through.

[03:50:03] My goal is to research, and I think we do, I was just reading the code, and it's actually not that complicated. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but it appears as if we can decide, you know, the parameters of who serves on the board. We know that Arlington and Fairfax also do this.

[03:50:19] They have folks who aren't from their county on their boards to avoid any sort of, I'm assuming, to avoid any sort of insinuation of conflict of interest. I would like to see, when staff brings this back, I would like to see other comparator counties included to see what they do, maybe in Virginia Beach, maybe in the Richmond area, Prince William, some other larger counties to see if that's what they also do, if they also set up their boards in a way that there are folks from other counties that are on the board rather than in-county towing folks.

[03:50:58] I agree that the best people to be towing in our county are the businesses that are in our county, and I would want them to respond and win the RFPs. So I appreciate my colleagues' support on this, and, you know, let's get the work done and make the recommendation, and hopefully it won't get changed in the next term.

[03:51:23] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Motion was made by Supervisor Bricksman, seconded by Supervisor Glass, I believe. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? And I'm going to abstain on this one. All right. So that motion will pass 7-1-1 with Mr. Buffington voting against it with me abstaining.

[03:51:42] Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Supervisors, we're going to go into closed session and do closed session items one and two. Two first and then one second. Mr. Sains, would you please read us into closed session? I move that the Board of Supervisors recessed this public meeting, entered into closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3711A3 of the Code of Virginia to consider acquisition, disposition of parcels of property within the 2011 and 2022 Broad Run Election District.

[03:52:17] I further move that the Board of Supervisors recessed this public meeting and entered into closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3711A3 of the Code of Virginia to consider acquisition, disposition of parcels of property. property within the 2011 Blue Ridge election district in 2022 Little River and Dulles election districts. Motions made second by Supervisor Glass.

[03:52:39] Discussion on the motion? Hearing none. On paper, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 9-0.

[03:52:47] All right, we are in closed session. Mike and Julie, you guys got to sit down so we can read out of the closed session.

[04:31:37] Are we ready? All right. I move that the closed session be adjourned, that the Board of Supervisors reconvene its public meeting, 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.

[04:31:54] Motion is made and seconded. Discussion on the motion. Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Any opposed? A motion will pass 9-0. Did we have a motion at all out of closed session? We did, right? Mr. Buffington has it. All right. Mr. Buffington, I'd like to make a motion.

[04:32:13] Madam Chair, I move that the Board of Supervisors direct staff to prepare a resolution to initiate condemnation and quick-tick proceedings as required pursuant to Virginia Code Section 15.2-1903B for the purpose of approving the proposed public use and acquisition of certain property interests located in Little River and Dulles election districts that are necessary for the construction of the North Star Boulevard Phase 1, Route 50 to Evergreen Mills Road project, and I further move that staff advertise the resolution for the July 12, 2023

[04:32:47] public hearing. You good? Do I have a second? Motion made and seconded. That's a point of order. You have not affirmed. I don't know if you want to do that after this motion. Oh, I'm sorry. We need to do that. I'm sorry. Affirmed that nothing has happened in closed session. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Letourneau. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirmed. Affirm. I affirm as well. Thank you. Thank you for that. Mr. Buffington.

[04:33:21] Madam Chair, do I need to read the – okay, we're good. So this project is an important project for Loudoun County. It's highly anticipated by our residents. It was, as you all know, awarded a $25 million federal, what was called Tiger at the time, Tiger Grant.

[04:33:39] That puts some time constraints on the project completion and making sure the project moved forward in a timely fashion. It's also designated or has been in the past, I think, and I believe still is, designated a corridor. of statewide significance for Virginia, and it's a design-build process.

[04:33:57] So the contractor is responsible for the initial effort at land acquisition, and they have come to us asking for help, saying that they're having difficulties acquiring all of the necessary land. So this, given all the things I've already said, this is an important project, and we can't delay it any more than it already has been delayed.

[04:34:19] It couldn't come soon enough, and I definitely support this. Hopefully we can come to a conclusion without the quick take or without condemnation. My understanding is during this board's time, anytime we've done this, we've never actually condemned anything because they came to some sort of agreement before it got to that point.

[04:34:39] So hopefully that will be the case, but if not, the road is important. We've got to get it done as fast as possible. A lot of people are waiting. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? I'm going to be able to say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 9-0.

[04:34:55] Okay, we have not had a break yet because we went straight into closed session, which means we've been on the day or in session since 4 o'clock. So, supervisors, let's take a 10-minute real break. Thanks.

[04:38:26] So we're going to be back in.

[04:46:14] Okay, we are back. Let's go on and do – and we actually are back on time. Look at that. Let's go on and do nominations. If you have a nomination, please put your light on. We do the same thing every meeting. Okay, Mr. Turner.

[04:46:34] Thank you, Madam Chair. I nominate Colleen Gillis to the Zoning Ordinance Committee as the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Representative. Letter of recommendation from the Loudoun Chamber, President Tony Howard is on page 13 of Item 1B nominations. Thank you.

[04:46:50] Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Madam Chair. FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION, I NOMINATE EMILY SOUTHGATE AS THE MEMBER OF COLLEGIATE FACULTY SPECIALIZING IN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES REPRESENTATIVE.

[04:47:06] AND FOR THE COMMUNITY SERVICES BOARD, I NOMINATE ELAH HASAMFAR AS THE AT-LARGE REPRESENTATIVE. WHAT COLLEGE IS THAT PERSON FROM, DO YOU KNOW? MEMBER OF COLLEGIATE? I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T KNOW. MY STAFF PUT THIS ON.

[04:47:22] It's okay. Mr. Kirshner? For the Historic District Review Committee, I nominate Lucas Berger, B-U-R-G-H-E-R, if that's, I think it's the correct pronunciation, as an at-large representative on the Historic District Review Committee.

[04:47:40] Thank you. Anybody else? All right. Then let us go on to board comments. I will start first with Supervisor Umstead. No board comments. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lutero.

[04:47:57] Sorry, Madam Chair. I do not have any disclosures, and I apologize I was late to the meeting today due to a work commitment. I would have joined Supervisor Buffington in opposing that one item in the federal legislative program due to it being outside the scope of our purview, in my view.

[04:48:26] Otherwise, I'm going to hold off on Metro Board. We had a long meeting last meeting, but there's nothing that I think it's pressing for you all to know other than I need to make sure that everybody up here has the information on the bus shuttle links for the Silver Line.

[04:48:43] So I will reach out to staff and just make sure that everybody up here has that and can share that with constituents for the upcoming closures. That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Although I actually was looking forward to the Metro update today.

[04:48:58] No kidding. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. By way of disclosures, on May 4th, we met with Colleen Gillis, Grant Ehat, and Michael Majestic of Cooley and Willard Retail on Cascades Marketplace.

[04:49:15] And on May 8th, my staff met with Colleen Gillis on the Topgolf lighting application. By way of regional updates, Supervisor Kirshner and I joined the Metro Washington Council of Governments and our Department of Economic Development for the farm tour.

[04:49:32] About 50 regional elected officials from COG, Extension Services, USDA, and a couple other organizations had the opportunity to learn about Loudoun agricultural cattle, pig, chicken, and goat farming. The farmers who presented were amazing, dedicated, and passionate about their craft.

[04:49:51] We all learned a great deal, and ideas are brewing in COG about a regional effort to preserve land for agricultural and farming uses. The COG Farm Committee is, in fact, tasked with helping the region become more self-sufficient in food production. So this falls squarely in the committee's purview.

[04:50:08] So I look forward to that work. I must commend the Department of Economic Development and their team for this stellar, stellar event. It was amazing. We went to four ag-based businesses, but other businesses from rural out and were also represented in food that was provided to us and even like fresh cut flowers from a different farm.

[04:50:32] So even though we only went to four destinations, we learned about other agriculture and farm businesses as well. I attended the Virginia Association of Counties Region 7-8 meeting as well last week. We discussed the state budget, of course, and lack of school funding from the state, housing issues, and elections.

[04:50:52] I made everyone aware on the call about the potential for Virginia to be pulled out of the ERIC system and the Metro Washington Council of Governments resolution that was recently passed early this year to make sure our region stays in the ERIC system, which helps update voter rolls based on interstate moves.

[04:51:08] This is especially critical to maintaining our voter rolls in an area of such transition between Maryland and Virginia and the city of D.C. Pulling out of such a system can only serve to weaken the process, which very well might have been the goal, unfortunately, when our Department of Elections and administration pulled us out the very next day.

[04:51:32] So also during this meeting, Congressman Jerry Connolly, as I mentioned earlier, spoke at length about the impacts of potentially expanding the long-haul flights at DCA, and the detrimental impact it could have on residential areas around the airport and to the major economic engine that is Dulles Airport.

[04:51:53] I had the pleasure of presenting the Provider Appreciation Day Proclamation at Algonquin Elementary School last week. It was awesome. CASA was there, and I got to meet a whole bunch of kids. I haven't been in elementary school for quite some time, so that was awesome. And just a reminder to everybody that Friday is Bike to Work Day.

[04:52:14] The county is hosting two pit stops in Sterling and in Leesburg, and I'm hoping for nice weather. I haven't checked the weather yet. And I shared my gun statistics during the proclamation earlier, so I think that's all I have.

[04:52:29] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. Mr. Buffington. Thank you, Madam Chair. No comments until we get to the items. And I do have one disclosure. I spoke briefly, or I communicated briefly with David Butcher regarding item number four that was on tonight's agenda.

[04:52:50] And that was earlier in the week. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have one disclosure. On Monday, May 8th, my staff met with representatives from DLA Piper regarding Pacific Corporate Park.

[04:53:07] And last week I had met with Boy Scouts from PAC-1151. They had me to come in and talk to them about what we do on the Board of Supervisors. And they had very, very good questions.

[04:53:23] That's it, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Kirschner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no mandatory disclosures, but the news from Catoctin is very good this week. First of all, my boys got their 4-H slams this week. I picked them up, and they're very excited about their 4-H projects coming up, and a lot of other 4-Hers are getting ready for the fair coming up in July, so mark your calendar the third week of July.

[04:53:48] Go to the fair page if you'd like to attend. This past Friday, as Ms. Brisbane mentioned, we went on a tour of Western Loudoun Farms that was hosted by COG in economic development. They did a phenomenal job putting together.

[04:54:04] I know our county staff has worked pretty hard on it as well. We visited Longstone Farm, George's Mill Farm, Potomac Vegetable Farms, and Wheatland Spring Farm and Brewery. It was about as nice as a day you could have. We did a little hay riding and and had partook at most of the places of some of the goods.

[04:54:23] Great chance to check out the local farms, learn about the benefits and challenges and that they are dealing with here in Loudoun County, which are many. But there are on both sides of that coin. Also coming up, the Lovettsville Oktoberfest is still four months away, but it has just been named Loudoun's best community event or festival again for 2023.

[04:54:45] Mayor Hornbaker broke the news late last week with lots of thanks and congratulations to Festmaster Jeff Schutt and Oktoberfest Committee and everyone else who has helped to bring back Oktoberfest in 2020 and make it Lovettsville and Lowndes Marquee event. Back to you, Madam Chair.

[04:55:03] Thank you very much. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. In Northern Virginia Transportation Commission meeting, a number of items that the one that really stuck out was we had a fairly long discussion about the $750 million revenue shortfall that is just over the horizon for Metro. Make no mistake about it, this is not an illusion, and unless something is not fairly radically done with the funding mechanism for Metro, the only option they will have is to dramatically cut Metro service in the D.C. area. It's a very serious problem, and it's going to get

[04:55:42] more serious, so pay attention to that one. I attended the memorial service for firefighter Jeffrey Rizzo last Saturday with Supervisor Umstadt. It was a very moving service, as they always are. His name was added to the memorial over at the training ground, the Loudoun County Training Ground, and he'll be honored down in Richmond, I believe, on June 3rd, and entered into that memorial as well, and we wish his family the very best. On Thursday, May 4th, My staff and I met with Angela Rassus and Eric Anderson from Toll Brothers, as well as Colleen Gillis from Cooley LLP, to discuss the North Star application.

[04:56:21] And on Monday, May, my staff met with Jennifer Garcia from DLA Piper to discuss the approved Belmont Park application. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sainz? I'd like to say my staff, mandatory disclosures. I got you.

[04:56:36] Yeah, you were first. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Mr. Sainz. I just have mandatory disclosure. My staff and I met with the Pacific Corporate Park applicants on May 8th. That is all. And all I have is, as I've said earlier, I've had multiple meetings with people from the, on both sides, all around all issues of the towing advisory board issue.

[04:57:00] And I will keep all of my other comments that I need to make to my state of the county, which will be on May, May 24th. Anything else I want to say, I'll say it then and I'll say it there. all right let's go to the next item then which is I believe I'm sorry I think it's the Ravonna

[04:57:20] it's a Ravonna Ravonna item whoo-hoo whoo-hoo hey I don't think we need these well do we need to staff presentation there been enough changes that we need to staff presentation miss miss Marsh you think there there are no updates since the board packet went out I can go over the updates It was on slide six.

[04:57:54] Other than that, we're happy to answer it. How about you do that? Okay. I think you've run over these already, but let's go on. Let's go on. Yeah. Okay. Following the board public hearing last month, the applicant made updates to their application.

[04:58:13] They have changed the former horse pen run park that will now be referred to as Ravonna Park in the application materials. The applicant has also increased their unmet housing needs units to 10%. It was 8% at the public hearing. They increased that to 10%.

[04:58:29] The applicant has added a proffer that would allow them to provide four sale units in Block B. Block B is where the hotel is proposed, and the applicant has proffered to dedicate all three parks to the county.

[04:58:45] The applicant has increased their credit request from $7.8 million to $12 million, and also So the applicant has updated the Innovation Avenue traffic signal proffer language. This has addressed staff's concerns, so we no longer have an outstanding issue with the T8 intersection along Innovation Avenue.

[04:59:07] We still do have two outstanding issues. It relates to the credit request that staff cannot support. We do not have any policies to support the $12 million credit request. And staff would also, we do not support the applicant not providing all of the anticipated regional road and transit contributions.

[04:59:27] But with that, staff can support approval of this application, but we cannot support approval of the applicant's credit requests. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay. I think we could probably go straight to a motion on this. We've been doing this for quite a long time.

[04:59:44] Ms. Glass, would you like to make a motion? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Board of Supervisors approve ZMAT-2021-0003, Special Exception-2021-0004, Special Exception-2021-0011, ZMOD-2021-0003, ZMOD-2021-0004,

[05:00:10] ZMOD-2021-0005, ZMOD-2021-0006, ZMOD-2021-0047, and ZMOD-2021-0092 for Vanna at Innovation Station, subject to the proper statement dated May 10, 2023.

[05:00:32] The conditions of approval dated May 10, 2023, provided as Attachments 1 and 2 to the May 16, 2023 Board of Supervisors Business Meeting Action Item, and based on the Planning Commission's findings of approval.

[05:00:48] Second. I'm going to take that one because I don't care. I'm taking this one. I've got more meetings than anybody else in this room on Bervon. I'm taking the second. Okay. Give to Vice Chair Sains. All right. Opening, Ms. Glass.

[05:01:04] I want to thank the applicant for addressing some of the concerns raised at the public hearing as I feel that this is a fantastic application before us today. I am thrilled to make the motion for approval of this development as Ravana is slated to be a world-class community and will set up Loudoun for a more diverse economy and business tax base.

[05:01:29] A lot of previous approvals have existed at this parcel, And I hope the Ravonna developers are able to pull this one off, as I know there's a lot of interest in this site already. I want to thoroughly thank staff and the Planning Commission for their fantastic work on this application.

[05:01:46] They worked through a lot of issues before the application arrived at the board, and it is most appreciated. I also want to thank our staff, Jackie Marsh, as well as the rest of the staff for a wonderful job for giving us information, answering our questions.

[05:02:07] You all have done a fantastic job so far. I know it's not over yet. Although Ravonna will be moving out of the Broad Run District, I look forward to seeing the development of such a vibrant transit area in Sterling and the Sterling District.

[05:02:25] That's it, Madam Chair. Moving away from Ravonna, that's more the point. Ms. Umstead? Thank you. So I'm in a quandary, but you may be able to solve it. I very much want to vote for this. I think it is the perfect kind of project in the perfect location.

[05:02:45] And I think it has the opportunity to bring a lot of really good top-notch office development to that area, as well as the residential and retail.

[05:03:02] I've had two different briefings from different staff members on the residential component. One briefing by staff was that this number of residential units actually would be a decrease.

[05:03:21] The other briefing was that it would double the number of residential units. Trying to figure out what that means, I have to assume that the general plan would call for more residential units than this project provides.

[05:03:39] but the zoning right now would provide for half of the residential units. Jackie, do you think that's a valid understanding of that? I do, and the plan does contemplate more residential in this area than the applicant is proposing.

[05:03:58] Okay. And then I go to the annual school operating costs, which the school's estimated at $18 million. but they also said they have never evaluated a project like this in Loudoun County so my staff went and looked at similar projects I believe in Arlington and we looked at student generation numbers for similar projects in Arlington and as a result the 18 million dollar annual cost

[05:04:32] to the schools of this kind of project I think would probably only be about $1 million a year if I look at what this project would generate in students in a similar project elsewhere in the region. So I'm still torn, but I think I will probably support it. I may be debating this back and forth, but I do think it is the perfect project. Thank you. I think we just need a moment

[05:05:06] here to just take in. I think we're all like, just like, like, do-do-do-do-do-do. Thank you, Ms. Umstead. I know. Wow. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make sure I got some of the moving parts down correctly. So for the regional transportation proffer, they're carrying over $751,000 from a prior proffer that they've made and asking for that credit, but they're

[05:05:43] offering $6,000 per unit for every house above the $751,000, correct? Yes, it would be for each new unit above the $1,265. Right. They're not offering the $1,000 per unit transit. They are.

[05:05:58] They are offering that transit. I thought they did not offer the transit. Oh, for the new units, yes. Okay. No, they're not rolling over transit from the previous application. Okay. All right. Can you clarify where we are on the civic space?

[05:06:13] Is it still there as a civic space? They have committed to at least 127, 500,000 square feet of civic space. Where all of that will be has not yet been determined. Some of it will be indoors. Some of it will be outdoor. but they are providing an adequate amount of civic space.

[05:06:31] Is that up? Because it seems to me I remember talking about 50,000 square feet of civic space. That would be indoor. Indoor civic space. They will have indoor and outdoor. So they are committing to a certain threshold of indoor civic space, which we don't see quite often. Okay. And what is the reason that the staff does not support the $12 million credit for the three parks?

[05:06:51] Is it because those parks are not in the CNA? The parks do not meet our capital facility standards. They are not an identified need in that area. The amount of park space and staff disagrees with the applicant's credit.

[05:07:07] They are basing their values on an appraisal. We have not agreed with the applicant's appraiser almost the entire process. Who's going to maintain the parks, Ravonna or the county? If they would dedicate the parks to the county and the county accepted the dedication, then we would maintain the parks.

[05:07:25] But so far, they haven't done that. It is in the proffers for them to offer the dedication, but we would have to accept it. Okay, so if we accept the dedication, then we accept maintenance of the parks. There could be a credible case made.

[05:07:41] Well, then we're not giving a $12 million credit if we're going to have to maintain the parks. I mean, that sounds like a horse trading option here. Obviously, not for here tonight, since we're voting on the application. And then they have agreed to proffer, I believe, the traffic light if it's warranted, recognizing that VDOT has to approve the 35-foot exception.

[05:08:01] The applicant will perform up to three signal warrant studies, and if VDOT approves a traffic signal at any of those intersections, the applicant would have to put that traffic signal in. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Brixman?

[05:08:17] Thank you. I just had a couple questions. You mentioned something about a hotel and changing that portion of the application. So if you look to the northern part where it says block B, here's my cursor, that was always intended for a hotel use.

[05:08:37] So the applicant has added a proffer that they could provide up to 100 for sale residential units in this block. So it could be in the hotel or some other type of building, but the option is there. So the option is that if they can't get a hotel to go there, that they could put housing there instead? No, they would still have to provide a hotel in that block according to the CDP.

[05:09:06] They could do both. Okay, and you think that there's room for them to do both? I do. And so they could provide like condos for sale inside a hotel? They could do that. Interesting. Okay.

[05:09:21] And then what was the change in the affordable percentages as far as AMIs because we went to 10%? So half of the units will go up to 60 AMI, and the other half would go up to 80 AMI.

[05:09:44] So there are now 10% total, 272. so 136 could go up to 60 AMI, 136 can go up to 80 AMI. Could or committed? Committed. So half the units are committed to be zero to 60% AMI? Yes. Oh, okay, great. And then why was there an increase in the facilities credit from 7 million-ish to 12 million? I will have to defer to the applicant that was something that they came back with on their own. Okay, but staff can still support the

[05:10:21] application i can support the application overall but staff cannot support the credit request okay all right thank you madam chair thank you mr buffington thank you madam chair um part of the comp plan how many units could they have done to be consistent with the comp plan maximum the plan doesn't specify a number of units it would specify the percentage of the overall development at up to 70% and the applicant is not close to 70% with what percent what percent are they between 45 and

[05:10:57] 55 so it's significantly more less they could be done is the way I meant that yes they could have done significantly more yes they could have they could have done all residential okay thank you Mr. Letourneau uh yeah so the valuation issue I understand and I appreciate staff flagging it for us and they were right to flag it for us i also have understand what the calculation that the applicant's using i think maybe in a different application that wasn't of this significance

[05:11:32] i would be more concerned about it but when you look at the sum of everything that's being offered to us um i think this is still a very very good deal for the county um we've you know i've been around for prior iterations of, of this, uh, of this parcel. And I think this is a, you know, it's going to be hard in this environment, but I think this is a viable plan. Um, the, uh, the hotel condo model is becoming really common and, and it might be a good way to kind of go about getting those kinds of, uh, products. Um, and, you know, I think this will be something a little

[05:12:10] different than what exists in some of the other mixed use areas. Um, you know, in terms of the open space and the way that it's laid out it's going to be a little bit unique and really give us a selling point that we can be proud of so i will be voting for it mr saynes thank you madam chair um we'll be we're happy to be receiving this property from the broad run district once the new uh you know starting next year and uh we're happy with the application we are thankful for staff and all their work and all the the work sessions and planning commission to get to this

[05:12:47] point to get to it here tonight where thank you for the applicant who actually listened uh to the comments from our colleagues here on the dais and in regards to uh what i believe changing the name of the park to um working with the previous applicant for their neighbors across the street um listening to chair rannell's suggestion regarding uh for sale units in in the property with the hotel and and we we all was doing some reading at the wheelie avenue station in reston they're going to have a hotel with um four cell units on the top and i know

[05:13:22] arlington or roslyn excuse me they're building a hotel with four cell units uh attached to it as well so it's not a not a foreign it's new but it's you know there are similar products out there so we're just we're going to be one of those trendsetters to have something like that you know hopefully here um in the coming years when this happens um and there's a lot of amenities we have the civic space we have the park space the offices that we need to have here in loudon county and this is a good location it's connected to metro um so i foresee a lot of uh good things happening here

[05:13:59] we have the performing arts possible um center going here to supervisor glasses credit for that so a lot of good things here so thank you to everybody involved and look forward to voting for this tonight i almost was going to tell you wrong unless i sit unless i can see tristan i wasn't going to vote for this but but then the other day buddy sent me a picture with Tristan in it so that was good enough um I don't know when I've been so excited about voting for a for a project a couple days ago my husband and I were in Reston Town Center and he's and and

[05:14:36] my son was asking me about it and I said to my son I said 30 years ago this didn't look like this I said it took a long time for Reston Town Center to become Reston Town Center and my son asked me you know when like about the metro and i say it's going to happen it's going to happen when the market requires it when we need to but it's going to it's going to eventually happen this is the first major development we're putting in and when i think about we talk about a 2040 build a 2050 build what what the metro is going to look like or this area is going to look like in the future

[05:15:10] this is exactly what we envision around mass transit you're supposed to build dense and vertical You're supposed to have a lot of amenities. You're supposed to think outside the box and have a hotel with an apartment in it. You're supposed to try to have different things happening in your civic spaces.

[05:15:30] You know, we expect that as we go through this process, there may be tweaks here and there. We know that. We know that. But I think my first Ravana meeting was, I don't know, late 2018, I think, maybe late 2018.

[05:15:47] I am thrilled to be here right now. I think it's a fantastic project. You know, is it perfect? What project is ever perfect? I really appreciate that you all have just hung in there because I know that the economy has gone up and down, and you've gone up and down with the economy, and it hasn't always been.

[05:16:05] At points, it was like, is this going to happen? Is this going to happen? Is this going to happen? But you stayed with us. Mr. Reiser stayed with you and his whole department. I am so appreciative of the vision you all have had in this because, you know, it takes vision to have this.

[05:16:24] So this is an enthusiastic yes vote for me without any hesitations, any qualifications. Having said that, I need you all to get Tristan up here as soon as you possibly can because it's, you know, this is, we got to celebrate this together.

[05:16:43] So do that. And the last thing I would say is just a humongous thank you to our staff. Aaron McClellan worked on this for a long time. His Hempstreet worked on this. Courtney Sendor worked on this.

[05:16:59] Buddy Reiser's whole office just went all in more than once. Jackie, Marishan, and our staff. I mean, the staff has been incredible, and you got us to the finish line. So, everybody, great job, and thank you. Would you like to close?

[05:17:15] Thank you, Madam Chair. I know people talk about Reston Town Center. This is going to be better than Reston Town Center. I'm tired of hearing about Reston Town Center. It's in Loudoun County. That's all I have to say. Thank you all again. All right.

[05:17:32] All in favor, say aye. Did you say aye, Ms. Umstead? Yes. Okay. Any opposed? A motion will pass 9-0. You all do not know the miracle that just happened here today.

[05:17:49] So that's fantastic. Thank you. All right. Let's see. I think we're on number nine because number eight was on consent. Yeah, number nine. Really, no.

[05:18:08] Oh, this is your item. Okay. Do you want the presentation? There's a lot that's changed, right? Some stuff has changed. It's only eight slides. Oh, so the presentation's not going to help. It's up to you, sir. Mr. Staines, would you like the presentation?

[05:18:28] We're going to have the presentation. Good evening, Madam Chair. Good evening. and board members. So we have Mr. Venti with us tonight to do a presentation if you're obviously looking forward to that. And then we have Mr. Fairbanks with us should you have any questions in landfill operations or anything like that once we get through the presentation. So you tell us what you want and we'll move forward. We're going to do the presentation. All right.

[05:19:00] Thank you. Okay. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Mark Avaney, General services, pleased to give you this information to respond to your board member initiative on renewable energy requests for information. By a bit of background, this was directed by the board originally as a waste reuse technology such as green hydrogen. Eventually it was tweaked a little bit and was called alternative energy supply options and linked to the developing energy strategy. Staff used the same consultant ICF that we used for our energy strategy.

[05:19:39] we received a good response a total of 10 in three different categories i should mention right here that all of these would be large capital projects in both scope and cost we categorized them in three different boxes if you will one was renewable energy sources these would all use hydrogen in some way and production i'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide Government by example, mainly utilizing landfill methane gas as a new energy source, and this is the one we are particularly interested in and we'll talk more about.

[05:20:13] And then the last one we called community action, which would be various technologies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Loudoun County. To talk a little bit more about the details about the responses we received, renewable energy sources, as I mentioned, were all hydrogen production in some way, shape, or form, using steam, water, solar as a feedstock.

[05:20:35] These would all help us get towards a net zero carbon, as well as possibly provide fuel for vehicles or buildings. While these are all very interesting, these are complex technologies and not necessarily proven in the U.S., so we were a little hesitant to bring these forward to you.

[05:20:54] Community action were similarly technologies that could be used as alternative backup power for generators, the development of fuel cells. These we would look at a little more, and they could work as partnerships, but again, would require much more study. The option that we were interested in, as I mentioned, based on our energy consultant advice and staff discussions, fit in the government by example category.

[05:21:19] This had to do with capturing the landfill methane gas that we currently flare and convert it to a new energy source. To be clear, as trash decomposes in the landfill, it produces methane. Methane is particularly bad in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and so modern landfills such as Loudoun County flare those to turn them into a different form, which is less harmful towards our greenhouse gas emissions.

[05:21:45] However, that gas can also be used as an energy source, and if we use it as an energy source, it could displace a less sustainable energy source. These projects exist all over in Virginia. Prince William County Landfill does just this. It's generally not a technology risk.

[05:22:02] It does align with the energy strategy. In fact, the energy strategy specifically mentions using landfill methane gas in such a manner. But these are large projects with large capital costs of $20 to $25 million estimated.

[05:22:18] So this wouldn't be something that we would want to get into lightly without the board's direction. So our recommendation is the other proposed projects, although, as I said, we did find them interesting, we have concerns at this time, and we would like to kind of pass on those and just keep them on the shelf and maybe look at them at a later time.

[05:22:40] However, as far as, and I also want to mention that we are doing some things already as a result of this. We are having conversations for accounting for our out-of-county renewable energy use with the data centers. We are exploring grant opportunities for cleaner renewable energy.

[05:22:57] And we are participating in the National Capital Region Clean Hydrogen Hub. In fact, we wrote a letter of support for that effort that would accelerate hydrogen as a clean energy source. It's the opinion of staff that we let the hydrogen hub folks take the risks associated with developing that hub, and then possibly we could join into that.

[05:23:18] So there's no fiscal impact at this time. However, a possible future capital project on the development of use of landfane methane gas would require more study and resources. If interested in prioritizing this effort, we would recommend forwarding it to the FY25 budget development process.

[05:23:36] As this board knows, you all have been very supportive with our energy and environment plan for FY24 and have funded that effort, so we are currently moving ahead with those efforts. This would fit in nicely with those efforts, but we feel that with staff time and where we are right now, it would be difficult for us to do in the fiscal year starting July 1st.

[05:24:00] That's our presentation. I stand ready to answer any questions. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Mr. Sains you have a motion Yes Madam Chair Thank you and thank you to staff for the presentation And the update Got the update I'm pretty sure you read your packet Got the update from staff here just a minute ago Received a lot of good information There probably should be We probably could go back and get even more information If we really wanted to possibly And with that I was talking to staff And asking some questions And then talking over myself and some stakeholders outside of the board made the decision to come up with alternative motion

[05:24:40] that will hopefully get us to look at doing a feasibility study a little bit faster than instead of waiting till fiscal year 2025 so I'll read the alternative motion and continue from there so I move that the board of supervisors direct staff to return to the July 2023 finance government services operations committee with proposed scope and cost estimates for a feasibility study on the beneficial use of landfill gas at the loudun county landfill second thank you madam chair so yeah so instead of waiting till next budget cycle i said you know what let's see if

[05:25:15] we can speed this up a little bit further direct staff to do the research on a feasibility study come back present the what a feasibility study might look like how much it might cost bring that back to us in finance let's review it and then you know and then make the decision to move forward from there instead of waiting to fiscal year 25 and and then doing the exact same thing then so this is a kind of speeding things up kind of you know we're already are doing some great things on our energy plan I think this is something else that we should look at doing and continuing on this process of being innovators and and trend centers in our energy strategy so thank you

[05:25:54] Wonderful. Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. A question for staff. So, do you think we have the staff capacity to speed this up, so to speak, or to at least have the information the Vice Chair is requesting by this July's Finance Committee meeting?

[05:26:19] I would say, Supervisor, that we certainly will do as this board desires. As you know, we do have a lot of things on our plate for the energy and environment work plan, 17 items in total. And so I do have some concerns about fitting in an additional item. We certainly can do that.

[05:26:35] We might need to have staff support in terms of a contractor leading this effort, for example, rather than staff leading the effort. So that might cost a little more, for example, if the board's desire is for us to prioritize this. we can certainly do that but there may be additional costs for uh having a contractor manage that rather than staff so will you need a contractor between now and the july finance committee no ma'am we have a contractor on board who advises us on the landfill so we would work with that contractor to develop a scope of work and a cost and we would present that to you at

[05:27:11] the july meeting and give you that information on the what that cost would be so at this point would I be correct in assuming there is no heavy burden on staff between now and the July Finance Committee meeting? That is correct. All right. Okay. I will support the motion then. And then we'll see at the July Finance Committee meeting how much of a burden you would be taking on if you pursued this. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. Supervisor Emsen asked one of the questions, which was, is it too much of a lift to get to July even? It sounds like it's not.

[05:27:50] Will the feasibility study be looking at that capital cost and any potential payback? Is that what we're really looking at when we talk about feasibility? It will begin to do that. This is a complex project to take methane gas and capture it and put in a pipeline and how the return on that investment.

[05:28:13] So we will certainly try to provide as much of that information up front as we can, Supervisor, so that the board can make an informed decision. um yes we will we will attempt to do that to the best i have a lot of familiarity with carbon capture projects due to my other world and my other job um and they are there it's an infancy technology this is a little different um but it's not that different in concept um it's it's not at a stage where it's commercially particularly viable yet on that side of things on this side of things i know i i'm a little skeptical that a large scale you know 20 25 million dollar project

[05:28:51] is really feasible for us to do something like this, considering what the payoff would be. But I'm willing to have the discussion at the finance committee and allow for a feasibility study to be ultimately conducted to look at. Obviously, one of the things we have to look at is how much CO2 or methane are we actually preventing versus that amount of cost.

[05:29:14] The cost-benefit analysis and something like this is really important because that's money that could also be spent in other areas of our energy strategy that may net more of a benefit, and that's a budget discussion down the road. But I think hopefully we can have the discussion of finance and maybe shape some of the parameters of the feasibility study to get to some of the things I would be looking for to understand better for this type of project.

[05:29:40] Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with both Supervisor Armstrong and Supervisor LeTurneau. Supervisor Armstrong asked exactly the question I was going to ask. It sounds like you have the bandwidth to get us the feasibility study by July, But I just want to expand a bit on Supervisor Letourneau's point.

[05:29:58] The more I look at this, the more I look at the rate at which we are solving the greenhouse gas problem globally, I am more and more convinced that it's going to take some pretty radical solutions. And I'm thinking probably nuclear is going to have to enter the mix if we're going to have an appreciable bite.

[05:30:15] because right now we have entities all over the planet that are chasing 50 different small ideas to nip away at the problem a little bit at a time, and that's not going to get us there. It's the rate of decay of our – the rate of appreciation of greenhouse gases right now far exceeds our efforts to limit it, as evidenced by how fast the global temperature is going up, much faster than they predicted 10 years ago.

[05:30:42] So absolutely, let's ask the questions. Let's see what the feasibility study comes back with. But I suspect we're going to have a tough time proving a positive ROI on a $25 million investment. I really think the answer is going to be, yeah, you can do it, but there's just not enough juice for the squeeze.

[05:30:59] But let's see. Let's ask the question, and I'm happy to support the motion. Thank you. I would associate myself with all the comments made by my colleagues. I don't need to make them again. Mr. Sclean, do you have a closing? No, thank you. All right. All in people who say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 9-0.

[05:31:16] i think we have one more item thank you thank you very much it's an 11 um yeah 11 11 d did not go no no no it's it's d it didn't no 11 11 d was that consent then we have oh because it was taken off okay 11 g was taken off consent by my colleague from the blue ridge district

[05:31:50] no i'm here for other reasons as well okay she's here for the better service took you a second took you a second did you hear her did you hear what i said took her a second all right um so mr bluffington would you like to go would you like to introduce the item and go to

[05:32:24] a motion since you took it off consent um i just want to vote on this so do you want me to make an opposite motion i just want to vote i don't want it to pass well well in order to vote then It has to be a motion made, and there's already a motion in the board package.

[05:32:42] I assume you're not making that motion because otherwise you're left to not consent, which means you have to make a motion. 11G. We wouldn't have to make a motion because if we don't make this motion in the packet, then nothing happens, and that's what I want to happen.

[05:32:57] Okay, but I know, but he took it off. Yeah, here's my motion. Nothing. Let's go to the next item. All right, I'll make the motion. No, okay. He can vote against it. Yeah, but that's just Mr. Buffington. Come on. Whatever. Then make a motion.

[05:33:16] Okay, Ms. Glass, make a motion. Thank you. Oh, it's so long, Tony. Okay. I move that the recommendation of the Finance Government Services and Operation Committee that the Board of Supervisors increase the appropriation to the Loudoun County Public Schools FY 2024 operating fund to $13 million.

[05:33:41] the additional amount appropriated to the Loudoun County Public Schools shall be funded by additional state revenue and up to $13 million of FY 2023 year-end funds, with the final amount being the difference between the existing $13 million state revenue shortfall in existence as of May 9, 2023, and the state revenue added, if any, that will exist as of July 1, 2023.

[05:34:04] I further move that the recommendation of the Finance, Government, Services, and Operation Committee that the Board of Supervisors direct staff to, one, obtain confirmation from the Loudoun County Public Schools that it will return at least $3.3 million of FY2023 year-end fund balance, and two, process a budget adjustment to estimate and approximate $3.3 million of FY2023 year-end fund balance and increase the FY2024 Loudoun County Public Schools operating fund budget by that same amount for the purposes of administration of collective bargaining.

[05:34:40] Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, it might be good that we're talking about this in a business meeting since, you know, we talked about it at finance. But basically what we're doing here is we're increasing the appropriation of Loudoun County Public Schools so that we close the state funding gap.

[05:35:03] And it will be closed by one of two ways or maybe two ways. So one way it could be closed is if the state actually comes through with the $13 million and closes the gap themselves. It could be closed by entirely them not closing the gap, and we entirely close the funding gap with fund balance.

[05:35:22] Or it could be closed with a combination. So, for example, if the state ends up with $6.5 million to LCPS, then we would close the gap with $6.5 million in county money. I believe this is the right move.

[05:35:40] I believe that telling our teachers, our staff, our administrators, and everyone that works in our school system, all the way down to the custodian, this tells them that they are going to get the pay raises, they are going to get the benefits, they are going to get everything they deserve for the hard work that they do in our excellent, world-class public school system.

[05:36:02] And if we didn't do this, we would basically be allowing the state and the Youngkin administration to defund public education and delegitimize public education. So what we're doing is assuring that the schools are funded in a way that they need to be funded so that we continue to get excellent ratings in all measures, including test scores, state championships for debate, state championships for sports.

[05:36:27] we are we have a very high on-time graduation rate that's higher than pretty much any school in the state and probably in the nation we are one of the like top five schools in the entire state so i'm really proud that we're doing this i'm really proud and thankful that staff worked out a way that we could get our schools fully funded and i hope everyone on this day supports the motion thank you thank you mr buffington thank you madam chair yeah i took this off consent because, number one, I didn't support collective bargaining on the county side, so I'm not going to support it on the LCPS side.

[05:37:02] And number two, this is a state shortfall. And the state keeps shortfalling us in all these different departments that they normally fund. And if we just step in and fill the gap every time, then they're going to keep doing it more and more. It's encouraging them not to fund their portion of what they should be funding and putting it on the backs of the localities.

[05:37:24] And this is not a one-time thing. If we do this, per the motion, it would increase the base budget for LCPS every year from now on by another $13 million. This is not even a one-time thing. It's just this year and then every year going forward, we wouldn't even talk about this $13 million because it would be included in the base budget.

[05:37:45] I don't think we should be doing that. If the state wants to shortfall LCPS, then the state representatives can answer to the residents of Loudoun County. And to be honest, if Loudoun County goes without $13 million for the school system, that is a little teeny drop in the bucket, and they'll be perfectly fine.

[05:38:05] In the years past, when we've given them less than what they asked for, they find money. They will find this $13 million if we don't fill the gap and the state doesn't provide it. I'm not saying they shouldn't get it. The state should get it to them. This is the state's mistake.

[05:38:23] They should fix it, not us. That's my point. So I'm voting no. Thank you, sir. Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wholeheartedly agree with Supervisor Briskman in supporting our schools, supporting our teachers, our students.

[05:38:48] Those are the ones that would suffer, our students, if we're not going to support them. and show our educators that we support what they do, how hard that they work. There was a concern that they weren't going to get the raise because of this shortfall.

[05:39:11] And so I'm hoping that my colleagues realize that this is the reason why many people come to our county is because of our school system and how we support them. And I would hope that that is our goal, is to make sure that we fund them and to make sure that we show our constituents that we do support them.

[05:39:48] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Okay. I get where Mr. Boveean is coming from. We had a lot of this discussion at the Finance Committee. I think the problem we have is, regardless of how many of us think about it, the board did not intend to reduce the LCPS budget by $13 million.

[05:40:07] This $13 million was assumed to be in it. There was a gap between what we funded and what they requested, and we were intentional in that gap. But the $13 million was not ever part of that gap. So I kind of do a level set at that point because that's the commitment that we're making.

[05:40:23] The problem we have is that this is a cash flow issue on the LCPS side. If we don't make some sort of commitment to fund this money now, then they will delay this $13 million appropriation, and right or wrong, the school board is putting this on teacher salaries.

[05:40:43] And I understand that because it's discretionary. It's spending that they can control. So the bottom line impact, if we don't do this, is that they will delay salaries. And I do have a concern, salary increases, and I do have a concern about recruitment and retention for them going into a new contract year, which has already been an issue nationwide, not just in Loudoun County.

[05:41:06] So I don't want them to go into their contract negotiation year when they do have to hire hundreds of new teachers, as they do every year, both net new and replacing, and having uncertainty over this amount. So while I agree with Mr. Buffington, I like how this is structured in that we're not just handing over the $13 million.

[05:41:27] It only ends up being that way if the state comes up with nothing. And whatever the delta is between what the state provides and what the county is going to be getting from the state is what we end up getting back. So it is structured, I think, smartly to sort of address this issue.

[05:41:45] You know, we obviously, I don't really want to rehash the whole we get it. I mean, the Young administration messed this up in the first place, but both parties have had months to deal with this. They have not. So let's not make this a partisan political thing because the Democrats that control the Senate are really the reason why they went into recess and didn't address this issue.

[05:42:04] So let's just skip past that. And the bottom line is we need to deal with it because they didn't. And I don't have any problem with us being very fierce in our advocacy to get this addressed and dealt with um but it can't be on the backs of the teacher contract issue which is what would end up happening so that's why i supported it finance and i will support it tonight um mr kirstner thank you madam chair uh i'm i'm going to support this motion i'm going to support it with some hesitation i'll explain why because i agree with everything that mr bucking has said but i also agree with everything that mr letourner said um i also will tell you that quite frankly um

[05:42:44] you know the statements that are made up here that money will increase test scores and stuff As a lobbyist for education for over 10 years, I can guarantee you there's not a correlation between money and test scores. There's a lot of other factors that play into that. However, I'm quite disappointed, and I understand it's discretionary spending, that the school, LCPS, has chosen to say, well, if we don't get this, it's going to be on the backs of teachers.

[05:43:08] I think they could have tightened their belt. They could figure it out and make sure these teachers get the raises that they need. But instead, now it falls in our lap once again to kind of pick up the slack. I agree. We have not gotten the funding from the state that we anticipated we would get. And so the school made a decision, and now, once again, the Board of Supervisors has to come in, and we have to put this money in reserve to fix a problem that's been caused by lots of other different levels.

[05:43:34] I'm most disappointed because this board said we're going to follow a 60-40 split, and now, obviously, once again, we're funding this shortfall, and we are not sticking to that. So this, for me, quite frankly, is probably a one-time thing. I don't think my vote, if this happened multiple years in a row, not going to get my vote.

[05:43:55] I understand this 60-40 split is kind of a new thing that we're following. But the school's got to figure out how to run a budget on the money that we're able to raise. I will tell you one thing. I am getting complaints galore on the increases in taxes. My taxes alone went up $3,500 a year.

[05:44:13] A lot of money. And that's, I'm not alone. There's a lot of other taxpayers in this county that are paying it. So we've got to figure out how to tighten our belts a little bit. But this is money not coming directly. It's coming out of fund balance. I think we can put it in reserve, and hopefully we will never have to issue this out, but it will actually come from the state as we had previously anticipated.

[05:44:35] Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I think probably many of you remember I said I'd die before I would vote to have one single Loudoun County taxpayer tax dollar bail out the state. But the simple reality is, after I said that, I took a deep breath and I realized Governor Glenn Youngkin doesn't give a flip about education, and he sure doesn't give a flip about education in Loudoun County.

[05:44:57] He's made that painfully obvious over and over again. For my colleagues to suggest that this is not partisan is laughably naive. It's just laughable. It is 110 percent partisan politics. And the reason I'm going to happily vote for this is because that's the only way the schools are going to get the money, and this gap is going to get filled by Loudoun County.

[05:45:18] I don't think Governor Glenn Youngkin will give one dime to fix this problem that he created. So, yes, I'm going to vote for this motion. So I do think it's a little rich for Mr. Attorney to say we should make this partisan and then take a swing at the Democrats in the Senate.

[05:45:34] You can't do both those things. Listen, the truth is this, this, this, this mistake by the Department of Education under the Governor Youngkin was made months and months or weeks and weeks before it ever came out. And so, and so people responding to it is not the issue. The issue is it could have been fixed when it first happened, literally when it first happened, they chose not to.

[05:45:54] You know, I'm always a little amazed because the truth is Loudoun, we can actually, and we shouldn't have to, and that way Mr. Buffington is totally right, but we can actually address this. I'm, you know, there are counties all over this state that their entire school budget is what the state gives them.

[05:46:14] And, you know, for somebody who, yes, cares about our kids in Loudoun, but I care about kids in Petersburg, I care about kids in Richmond, I care about kids in Norfolk, I care about kids in Chester. Somebody cares about kids just in general, I am shocked that there are other counties who probably can't afford to do what we're about to do, who are not just completely up in arms about this issue, because it will hurt kids.

[05:46:40] Mr. Kirshner makes a point, there is not always a correlation between the money and the schools, but I wouldn't also say that there's no correlation, and that's proven off. If you look at some of the states, and I've done a lot of studying on this myself, which have the lowest school giving, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, they do have the lowest test scores in the country, so there is some correlation.

[05:47:04] This is not something we should have to do. Mr. Buffington makes a point because this is what we do for health department. It's what we will, or in the past we have, probation and parole, court services. It doesn't stop the shortfall, the public defender's office.

[05:47:25] But the difference is we have made up those differences. And I don't know anybody on this dais who haven't voted to make up those differences in all those departments I just mentioned. so why now when it's the schools are we going to not vote to make up that differences those differences if we did it with probation or parole we did it with the court services we did with the health department now we're going to make them now we're going to take a stand that we're not going to do with schools really where was all this before we get to education because we're going to make this stand now listen this should be corrected and we should put this if it's not fixed we should put this in our legislative program next year we absolutely should we should

[05:48:02] keep it in there until it does get fixed in the meantime um whether or not lcps um should do something or not this wasn't the lc this wasn't lcps's fault and they gave us the most responsible lean uh most lean budget they've given us in years under dr smith and no one can say that their budget and no one has said that their budget hasn't been responsible so i'm not making this their fault either this lies with the yunkin administration that's where this stops miss Bix, would you like to make a closing?

[05:48:32] Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Actually, you know, Mr. Kirshner must live in like a $4 billion mansion or something because I live in a single-family home, and my taxes only went up a couple hundred dollars. And you know what? That's the investment that I'm willing to make, and I'm not going to complain about it.

[05:48:51] And, in fact, a return on your investment is exactly a return on your investment. This is a great investment in our community. And as Supervisor Letourneau said, we didn't have an intention of cutting $13 million from the school budget when they brought it to us.

[05:49:08] The state forced us to think about whether we were going to leave the gap or not leave the gap. And we decided that we're not going to leave the gap, hopefully, at the end of this vote. But yes, there was a direct correlation between investment and what you get in a return on your investment.

[05:49:25] And that comes out in test scores. That comes out in high on-time graduation rates. That comes out in how many kids actually go to, you know, four-year colleges or two-year colleges out of your school system. We grew by 35% in the last 10 years.

[05:49:41] If you don't think that we're going to have expenses when it comes to county services, you'll be sorely mistaken, 35%. And we've been spending a lot of time on this board figuring out how to catch up. Our schools are worth the investment.

[05:49:58] Our kids are worth the investment. Our teachers are worth the investment. And it's true. It would be a cut in pay. Special education teachers were apparently on the block. Pay raises are on the block. And it falls squarely in Richmond and Governor Youngkin's mansion.

[05:50:16] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Motion made by Supervisor Bricksman, seconded by Supervisor Glass. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will pass 8-1 with Mr. Buffington voting against the motion.

[05:50:32] okay I think I think that is all we have with the exception of going to close session number three mr. saying would you please read in closed session I move that the board of supervisors recesses public meeting enter into closed session pursuant to sections 2.2 - 37 11 a 8 and 829 in the code of Virginia to consult with legal counsel pertaining to the negotiation of collective bargaining agreement where public funds are being expended and where negotiations in open session would

[05:51:05] adversely affect the bargaining position of the county come on motions made second by supervisor i have never seen that love before all in favor please say hi hold on hold on we didn't discuss oh discuss i'm sorry i'm just saying i've gotta i've gotta be in dc very very very early tomorrow i'm going to skip the closed session okay i just want to say that now and not vote to go into closed session and then not be here when it's over okay so you're going to leave that we're

[05:51:41] going to leave after this vote then yeah yeah okay all right i'll abstain on the vote because i'm not going to be okay um but you can yeah you can vote no i mean yeah yeah okay all people say i oppose or abstain it doesn't okay so the motion passes a zero one with mr letourne or abstaining all

[05:52:00] right we're in closed session we're back in session mr flames will you please read this out

[06:42:03] Yes, sure. All right. I move the closed session be adjourned that the Board of Supervisors reconvene this public meeting that the minutes of the public meeting should reflect that no formal action was taken in the closed session or further move that the resolution certifying the closed session be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting.

[06:42:21] Motion made and seconded. Discussion on the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Everybody please affirm. Ms. Umstock? Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. And I affirm this. I affirm as well.

[06:42:39] And I think with that, we are adjourned. Mr. Sains, will you...

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