Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Business Meeting, Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 6h 37m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/8208
Meeting page (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/8208

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 2026-10-09. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:09:33] Hi, Mr. Letourneau. Hello. How are you? Good. You ready? Yep, okay. Well, good evening, supervisors. Good evening, staff, and good evening, Loudon.

[00:09:49] I'd like to call to order the July 7, 2026 Loudon County Board of Supervisors Business Meeting. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, please switch your hearing aid to the telecom mode. If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one.

[00:10:04] This evening, Supervisor Glass is going to do words of inspiration or prayer and listen and the pledge. Dear Lord, as we just celebrated the 4th of July, commemorating our country's 250th, help us remember to lean into the enduring spirit that has guided our country from its founding to this moment. Lord, may you inspire in us a renewed dedication to serve our neighbors, uphold our responsibilities, and seek unity in our community. Help us to carry forward the promise of democracy serving always to strengthen the fabric of Loudoun County and our nation.

[00:10:42] In Jesus' name I pray, amen. We stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:11:05] Okay, I do not have any additions or deletions to the agenda. I would remind my colleagues that starting today per the General Assembly new state code, if we have additions to the agenda, they can go on the agenda, but they cannot be voted on unless it is deemed an emergency, and so I just want to remind everybody of that going forward that's what we're going to be.

[00:11:34] Before I read the consent agenda, I will say that once again we have a couple of items that did go out on the consent agenda and the package, but really should never have been on the consent agenda. So I'm not completely sure what's going on there. So when we have pre-agenda, I will work with staff a little more to have the discussion about what should be and what should not be on the consent agenda and how and why. Because I don't want people to feel like they have to keep taking things off, which should have never been on in the

[00:12:09] beginning. So, the Aspen to Golden and the Barrister sub-stations are not on the agenda, on the consent agenda, and really should have never been on there. We are also not putting the secondary row on the consent agenda because we have a lot of speakers on that item. In fact, we have speakers on almost all of our action items today, so we will not be putting a lot of things on the consent agenda. What we will be doing is taking a fairly early a break for closed session because we'll have a good amount of time before we can get to public comments which we can't even get to until 6 o'clock. So the consent agenda as

[00:12:47] of now is as follows. Item 1A, the Affordable Dwelling Unit Advisory Board, 2026 annual report. Item 1B, Housing Advisory Board, 2026 annual report. Item 1C, the Housing Choice Voucher Resident Advisory Board, 2026 annual report. Item 1D, the National Resources Strategy.

[00:13:06] Item 2A, appointments and confirmations, and item 3, the administrative items report of July 7, 2026. I will make a motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Vice Chair Turner. All I would say is to my colleagues and to everybody, the agenda items for all of the housing are really interesting and really important.

[00:13:30] And the boards and the staff are doing a very good job with talking about the need for attainable homes, talking about where, giving stats and numbers. This is, as we know, a nationwide issue to have an adequate number of homes.

[00:13:51] And so if you have time to at least read or go over, if you can read it in full, that's great. But please try to read up with us because they're so important to take up and to read. Anybody else? Ms. Bricksman?

[00:14:07] Thank you, Chair Randall. This might be a question for staff, if I may, through the chair. I met with a couple Housing Advisory Board members, I think it was last week or maybe the week before, And they shared that they did receive a presentation about the consultant report on the Unmet Housing Needs Strategic Plan, but did not receive a copy of the report.

[00:14:31] And so I was wondering when that report would be made public and be able to be read by the Housing Advisory Board and or the full board. Hello, how are you? Good to see you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hello.

[00:14:47] Hello. So the plan right now is for that item to come to the board or to TLUC for September. So when that's released to the Board of Supervisors for review, it'll be released to them at the exact same time.

[00:15:03] Okay, then will it go back to the Housing Advisory Board? Because it seems to me it might be difficult for them to kind of digest and actually advise us if they haven't had some time to actually digest and read the entire report. So I will say they have been provided with briefings and a lot of the data already.

[00:15:20] It just hasn't been the full consultant report that they've received. So they've received the meat of the information in a couple of meetings we've presented literally since the fall. And then recently we did a separate meeting with them, a special meeting to go over data related to it.

[00:15:39] I guess my question is, will they have an opportunity to read the full report and then digest that and make recommendations, or is it now on to the Board of Supervisors with them just getting a presentation? I will say that it will be presented to TLUC, so I guess in between that and the board, they would have that opportunity to provide us with additional information.

[00:16:04] I don't believe there's going to be a major need for that because it'll be really just drilling down into various specifics that probably doesn't make a lot of policy changes at this point, but we will be going back with them for action steps and all of that component throughout the fall and the next year.

[00:16:24] You've got to remember that this is a review of the plan. We're not coming with major changes for the plan. that was not the intent of the consultants review it's a lot of data updates and components related to that and then for us to continue to work on a lot of the action steps that were in the in the plan but we'll have it'll be an iterative process I'm hopeful for for the years to come honestly not just all right thank you so much anybody else thank you very much sir appreciate you all right all in favor of the senator please say aye any opposed that motion

[00:17:03] will pass 702. Mr. Sains and Mr. Kirshner, we expect to be here as soon as they possibly can get here. Okay, I don't have a voice for cause today because they had to counsel at the last minute, and so we'll do that at the first, at the next meeting in July. But I do have some chair comments. So the first thing I want to say is that we are meeting on July 21st, which is our next meeting, will start at 6 o'clock, two hours later, because

[00:17:40] there will not be an adequate number of supervisors who can be on the dais at 4 o'clock, and it's unlikely there will be an adequate number of supervisors that will be on the dais at 5 o'clock, and so the meeting has been advertised and will be pushed back and will start at 6 o'clock. So I said, I will say that today. I'll say that at the end of the meeting. I'll say that at the public hearing. It'll go out. I'll put it on my page. It'll kind of be everywhere, but just so everybody knows that. On July 18th, I did a presentation. I think, Mr. Crony, you joined me

[00:18:18] at the Washington Dulles Airport for best workplaces in Loudoun County. We also got a presentation from Jack Potter who updated us on the airports right now, BWI, not BWI, but Reagan and Dulles, and what we know is although both airports are doing well, Reagan is doing for many reasons much better than Dulles, however, the good thing about Dulles is the employment fee is significantly down.

[00:18:56] What seems to have fallen off some is some of the international flights at Dulles. The national flights are doing fine, but the international flights have fallen off some. There's probably many reasons for that. We do not believe that's a long-term problem. He also gave us an update on some of the construction going on over at Dulles.

[00:19:15] It was really very helpful. So that's the first thing. On July 22nd, I participated in the Electrical Infrastructure Working Group. I did that with Mr. Turner. That has gone out in the media and a couple of other places, the Electrical Infrastructure Working Group.

[00:19:33] It was a staff-led effort and a staff-led group led by Mr. Rogers, but I did want to say I participated. Before we're back on this dais again, I will be going, many of us will be going to the National Association of Counties. I have a kind of a busy schedule at the National Association of Counties this time because I will be speaking on behalf and with the local public policy health group that was put together by former Governor John Kasich.

[00:20:08] And I will be doing the calling of the fireside chat. I don't know why they're calling of the fireside chat, but I'll be participating in the fireside chat. and I'll be moderating two separate panels for the Health Policy Steering Committee where I am Vice Chair of the Health Policy Steering Committee.

[00:20:26] And so I have a pretty busy conference at NACO, but what I'm most excited about, and I do want to report that for the first time, supervisor staff actually have committee assignments in NACO, at NACO, so they will be voting members at NACO.

[00:20:46] My Chief of Staff, Matt Rogers, has been assigned to the Justice and Public Safety Policy Steering Committee and my Senior Legislative Assistant, Justin Hennessy, will be on the Community and Economic and Workforce Development Steering Committee.

[00:21:06] So they are going to be voting members. And what that will do is allow Loudon's influence and voice to go further because of course NACO does federal policy, and we have a federal policy agenda, and so all the things that we've talked about or have even perhaps put in our ledge agenda that could be voted on at a NACO meeting and then go to the full floor.

[00:21:30] The resolutions go first to the committee meetings, and then they go to the full floor, and if they're passed at the full floor, those are the things that the National Association Congress of counties puts before Congress. And so having two more voting members from Loudoun extends our reach and a little bit extends our power. And so I'm really very, very proud of, I'm very, very proud of Matt and Justin for being the first supervisor staff voting members from Loudoun of NACO and they will be going with me to that.

[00:22:06] And so that's all I have for my chair's comments. Before I move on, Mr. Hemstreet, is Ms. Bells in the room right now? Is she here yet? Mr. Hemstreet, before I hand it to you for your comments, I did hear a rumor that someone is having a birthday this Friday.

[00:22:29] They're turning 29 years old, from what I understand. And so I didn't know if you could confirm that rumor. But just in case you can, I thought as I handed it to you for your comments, I would ask you to confirm the rumor that we have a staff member that's turning 29 on Friday.

[00:22:49] Thank you. Yes, ma'am, chair. I can confirm the rumor is correct. And I believe Ms. Bells is in the back of the room. Happy birthday, Ms. Bells, and thank you for all you do. You are phenomenal. You do a phenomenal job, and we're so lucky to have you.

[00:23:04] And happy birthday and enjoy your time. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have four comments for this evening. The first is that after receiving approval from the Virginia Supreme Court, Loudoun County has launched an adult behavioral health docket in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

[00:23:22] The specialized docket is designed to provide access to safe and effective treatment and supervision for eligible individuals as an alternative to incarceration. Loudoun is the first jurisdiction in Virginia to offer this type of court docket. More information is online at loudoun.gov slash community corrections programs.

[00:23:41] Second, Loudoun Transit has implemented several service changes as of July 1st, including a transit-on-demand pilot program in Sterling seven days a week, an expansion of existing transit-on-demand service in Leesburg. In addition, the commuter bus service is providing more options for riders to travel directly to Washington, D.C. from Leesburg and has made schedule improvements to reduce travel times on multiple routes.

[00:24:03] More information about these service updates can be found at loudon.gov slash bus changes. Third, I'm pleased to announce that the Department of Information Technology has been honored with the Northern Virginia Employer Recognition Award from the Virginia Career Works Board of Directors. The award recognizes the commitment of the department and the county to workforce development, specifically for the Loudon Learners Program.

[00:24:26] Six information technology apprentices participated in the innovative program and successfully transitioned to full-time employment in a new career field and occupation. And then finally, I'd like to formally welcome Danny Davis to his first business meeting as a Deputy County Administrator and George Govan to his first board meeting in his permanent role as a Deputy County Administrator.

[00:24:48] I hope you'll join me in welcoming both Mr. Davis and Mr. Govan to their new positions with the county. Thank you, Bancher. Welcome them both, and welcome back, Mr. Davis, to the county, and congratulations to Mr. Govan. Very exciting.

[00:25:04] Okay, Supervisors, we have with us today Joe Lurch from the Virginia Association of Counties because there are three county departments who have won awards. Hello, Mr. Lurch, how are you? What we're going to do this is Mr. Lurch is going to read the first, the kind of preamble, And then the vice chair and I will go down front and you'll do the departments one at a time.

[00:25:29] Then they'll stand to the side, so the next one comes and the next one comes. And then there will be a picture of everybody together. How does that sound? That works. That works for me, too. Yeah. So, Madam Chair, members of the board, once again, Joe Lurch with Virginia Association of Counties. Very happy to be there.

[00:25:44] This is my second year in a row coming to give awards, which I always like to do. Just for the benefit of your constituents who may not have seen this presentation last year, VACO has been around since 1934, representing all the counties in Virginia. We chiefly do this through legislative advocacy, mainly at the state level, some at the federal level.

[00:26:05] We also have education programs and member service programs. The Achievement Award Program we established in 2003, and it's really trying to provide examples of innovative approaches that can be replicated, scaled up by other counties and that's really what we're trying to do is promote just kind of that creative thinking by a lot of counties and their staffs and their departments. So as the chair said I'm proud to present three achievement awards today. This is the 24th annual achievement awards program we received 103 entries in 2026 and of that we had

[00:26:45] 40 winners selected from 26 counties so it's truly a competitive program when less than 40% of all the entries are selected as winners so a little bit about Loudoun County in the history Loudoun County has earned 37 achievement awards and those 37 achievement awards has you ranked tied for third all-time now I know madam chair asked me last year where is Fairfax right I was gonna I asked you this time, too.

[00:27:09] Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you this time, too. I didn't bring that data with me. Oh, come on, Joe. Come on. You know I'm going to ask you that question. I know. I apologize. I saw that. I was like, oh, yeah, she asked me that. Yeah, I was going to ask you that. I need to call Jeff McKay. Yes, she did. And so not only that, do you rank third all time or tie for third?

[00:27:29] This is the 14th year in a row since 2013. Wonderful. It's really just keeping up at an amazing pace. So a little bit about the criteria that our judges use. Does the program offer an innovative solution to a problem, situation, or delivery of services?

[00:27:46] Does the program promote intergovernmental cooperation and interdepartmental cooperation? Does the program provide a model that other local governments can learn from or implement or maybe even tweak some that they could use to fit to them? And really, does it represent an innovative approach that's customized to the local government?

[00:28:06] So, without further ado, and I think what we'll do is I'll read the first one, and then I guess we'll take the pictures. Sure, we'll come down after you read the first one, no problem. Yeah, so the first one is the County Sheriff's Office Adult Detention Center, or ADC, Service Puppy Program.

[00:28:23] And so this really is an innovative approach that offers combining offender rehabilitation with meaningful community impact. So, in partnership with the Healing House Incorporated, which I got to meet Kathy out there earlier and got to meet Toby, who Toby will be in the picture, I hope. Toby's very sweet. In partnership with Healing House, what they do is they're able to have incarcerated individuals train these dogs to be service dogs within the community. And there's been a lot of success. Since 2023, 13 participants have helped train more than 20 service dogs,

[00:28:58] with five fully participating and four successfully being placed as mobility, psychiatric, autism support, and facility service dogs. And in fact one of the trainers post-released got employment within the field, which that I think is just amazing. It's just providing really that really a great link to the community. So that's I think something that I think could be replicated in many of our communities. I know personally we had a dog that we had that was trained Luna Bird Correctional Facility, not to be a service dog, but I think this is

[00:29:34] something taking a step further. And so proud to present this award with the Sheriff's Office and with the Healing House.

[00:30:30] Oh, that's a talk? That's a talk.

[00:30:50] That's a funnel to everybody. Ladies, I'm sorry. I don't know why it won't open. Can you push that release button? Hi, everyone.

[00:31:06] I'm Susan Davison. I am the inmate programs manager at the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, and I would like to say we are honored to receive this recognition. And thank you so much to Kathy with Healing House for taking a chance and partnering with us.

[00:31:23] Wonderful. Anybody else want to say anything else? So I say all the time that, you know, having worked in jails and prisons for so long, I think that the corrections officers have such a tough job, and I really appreciate them. And I want to say to you that, you know, not everyone sees inmates.

[00:31:39] They don't see the person, they see the inmate. And what we know is the vast majority of people who go into a jailer prison come out. So that they can come out with some other skills, with some other training, with some other knowledge, with some other education. That's what we want, and that's what you're doing here. And that's what you guys do with the ADC just in general.

[00:31:57] So thank you so much. We appreciate it. All right. You want to say anything, Healing House? Just thank you guys for taking the chance on us as well. All right. Toby's wonderful. We're going to take a picture with Toby.

[00:33:24] So your second award is the Locational Clearance Review Mapping Tool, which exemplifies innovation in county government by combining technology, collaboration, a really customer-centered design to address a longstanding regulatory challenge. So what you did is you had several of your departments, there's acronyms here, so I'm not going to read the acronyms, but essentially it's your mapping, your building departments, all got together, your IT, as I understand it, to modernize the permit review process.

[00:33:52] while strengthening environmental compliance and public service delivery. It's scalable, adaptable, and relies on available GIS technology and make it a model program for jurisdictions seeking to streamline development, review, and improve transparency.

[00:34:09] By proactively addressing regulatory complexity through innovation and outreach, Loudoun County has created a forward-thinking solution that enhances operational effectiveness, inter-departmental collaboration, and public trust. And in reading the application, I thought it was pretty neat. You can go online using this tool and just sketch out, here's the shed I want to put in, or here's the addition.

[00:34:29] And it automatically populates it like, well, here are the rules. You're in whatever district, these are things. And so it really, I think, streamlines, and it gets information out front. I know how dense and complicated zoning and development and building codes can be, and I think this is really a great tool.

[00:34:46] So with that, yeah. Do you want to come over here, right here?

[00:35:16] You here. You who I call the voice right here, I love your voice. So let's take a-- well, first of all, you want to say anything? Well, let me say this to you. Some of the-- I call you the voice all the time because you have the most calming voice of anybody I've ever met.

[00:35:38] But this-- we actually heard about-- I think all the supervisors heard about wanting to streamline this process last year because the longer it takes to do applications, the tougher it is, the more it costs.

[00:35:53] We want to get through it faster. And so you all took this up, and you figured out how to do this right away. And you all are kind of the unsung department. You're not always down here with us, but you're always working. And we really do appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. OK. Let's take a picture.

[00:36:13] It's amazing. It's a calm voice. That's why they're so amazing. Are we good?

[00:36:24] Yes, so Madam Chair, earlier we talked about dogs.

[00:36:56] We're going to talk about cats now, not to be left out of the equation. So this last award is the Tag Your Home program designed by Loudoun County Animal Services to mainly minimize unnecessary intakes of free-roaming cats at the animal shelter.

[00:37:12] I think what's really interesting is that I didn't realize this. A lot of times that cats that are free-roaming have owners or are cared for, But if they end up in an animal shelter, a large part of them don't make it back. And it's just, and what's really interesting about this is that this program has a collaring program, specifically been able to keep out of the shelter at a rate of over 80%, reducing the unnecessary burden on the shelter of housing, healthy, cared for cats, while offering supportive, accessible services to engaged constituents who want to help cats in need.

[00:37:49] So really, this is getting information out to the community. I was actually just at the vet earlier today. I got a bunch of scratches getting my cats there. And it was interesting because my vet was asking me, it was like one of our cats had decided he wanted to be an outdoor cat. And so he was like, all right, well, you know, there's feline leukemia, you know, this, that, and the other.

[00:38:06] And I started to think about this. I was getting education through my vet. But you're really getting education out to your members from the animal care and shelter. And I think this is really just a neat program. How did you know your cat wanted him? Didn't he tell you? He said he decided. He just decided.

[00:38:22] The door opened and he bolted. That's so interesting. Okay. All of a sudden, nine years old. You all come on up then. Come on back.

[00:38:39] I am not scratching people. You didn't bring any cats? That's good, because I'm terribly allergic. Want to come over here? Come on. Come on. So first of all, congratulations. And I say all the time, you all do such an amazing job.

[00:38:56] If anyone has ever gone to our shelter, you know that we are a shelter that gets animals out. And that's what we believe in in Loudoun County is getting animals out. And you all do a phenomenal job all the time. I was over there not long ago. It was, I was like, I'm going to just come back over here.

[00:39:13] You're going to find me just sitting in the hall with dogs, you know, with puppies covering me. It was such a lovely visit when I came over. So thank you. Thank your staff. Thank you for everything you do. Yeah, we're so grateful that this program really took off the way that it did. So essentially, when cats are outside, they're allowed to be outside.

[00:39:31] And we want to make sure our community understands that cats outside are allowed to free roam, but they can be spayed and neutered and microchipped at very low cost through Loudoun County Animal Services. So if someone finds a cat outside, it doesn't mean that cat is lost. It may just mean that it's out for a little walkabout on its regular day.

[00:39:47] So by putting these collars on the cats that simply say, am I your cat, text this number, We're able to confirm that these cats do have family, so then they don't have to come to the shelter. All right, I love that. Thank you very much. Let's get a picture.

[00:40:29] Come on back down. Thank you. Yeah, and everyone, especially Toby. Toby's a person, too. Especially Toby.

[00:41:30] Taco days and everything else.

[00:42:04] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Thank you so much for the program.

[00:42:23] I'm excited to come over. Really, I know. Thank you. Appreciate it. It's great. Great program. That was lovely and fun, and there was a dog, so it was great.

[00:43:02] Okay, we're going to do the item number I-2, which is the electrical substation white paper. Would the staff please come down, please? Are you ready when you are?

[00:43:32] Good evening, Madam Chair and Supervisors. My name is Abdul Jaffrey. I'm the Project Manager for the Data Center Standards and Location.

[00:43:52] Today, I'm joined this evening with Dan Galindo, Director of Planning, Department of Planning and Zoning, as well as Mike Niccolo and Frederico Lopez from Kilmerhorn Consulting Firms. And the purpose of this agenda item is to present the findings of a white paper that summarizes the functions and languages, considerations associated with different types of electrical substations.

[00:44:18] and the findings of this white paper will also inform future land use policies and regulations related to the substations as part of phase two of the data center standards allocation project. At this stage, staff is not prepared to address questions related to the proposed land use policies and regulations. Those matters will be brought forward to the board considerations at a future meeting.

[00:44:46] With that, I'll now turn the presentation over to Mike and Federico. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Randall, Vice Chair Turner, and members of the board. My name is Mike DiNicolo. I'm an engineer and project manager with Kimley Horn & Associates.

[00:45:05] I'm here today with my colleague Federico Lopez. He's a substation engineer with 30 years' experience. We've been retained by the county to support information as it relates to substations. Loudoun County has approximately 95 existing and proposed substations within the county, and there's anticipated demand to continue to grow.

[00:45:34] As such, the purpose of this white paper is to provide general information to the county and to support the development of policies and regulations around substations. And then this presentation just briefly summarizes what's in the white paper. This is an agenda for the meeting.

[00:45:54] We'll start with an overview of substations. We'll explain what it is, what a substation is, and then the different types of substations that exist within the power grid. We'll get into the air-insulated substations and gas-insulated substations, discuss the pros and cons of each.

[00:46:17] We'll also, you know, go through location and siting considerations for substations. We'll look at substations that service data centers and what are typical screening methods that are used to mitigate visual impacts.

[00:46:34] And with that, I'll turn it over to Federico to start on the topic of what is a substation. Thank you, Mike. So the first question, what is a substation? So, basically, a substation is a facility in the power grid that transforms voltage between different levels.

[00:46:55] Basically, it switches, protects, and controls the flow of electricity, the flow of power between sources and the end consumers, the users. Next one. Okay.

[00:47:12] So, there's different ways to classify substations. We have three classifications here. We're going to start with the first one, and that is related to the classification related to the voltage of the substation.

[00:47:27] As you can see, we have three categories: transmission, sub-transmission, and distribution. And each one of those have different voltage ranges. So if you see transmission and your substation has ultra-high voltage, I'm going to be talking about those ranges in a few seconds, it means that is a transmission substation.

[00:47:48] If the voltage that you have in your substation is a medium voltage, normally it's classified as a distribution substation. The ranges, as you can see there, for example, for ultra-high voltage is between 500 kV to 1200 kV kilovolts, sorry, 500 kV and 1200 kV, that's kV is kilovolts.

[00:48:12] high voltage 200 to 500 kV, high voltage 70 to 200 kV approximately, sub-transmission normally is between 40 to 70 kV, medium voltage 1 kV to 40 kV, and low voltage below 1 kV.

[00:48:33] These ranges, these numbers can change between different utilities, so we have to be sometimes careful about when we talk about this division. So yeah, it can change between different utilities or geographical zones, okay? The second classification that we have is the type substation based on its function. So there's four main functions that you can see in substations, step up, step down, switching, and converter. So step up substations are the ones that are mostly related to elevating

[00:49:11] the voltage from generation to transmission. There's two examples there. Well, there's two lines, two bullets saying generation collector. When we say collector substation step up, collector substation normally is referring to renewable energy when you have solar substations, solar panels, wind farms.

[00:49:35] So they require collector substations just to step up the voltage for the transmission system. A step down is on the other way when you basically change the voltage from high voltage to low voltage just to feed the user, the customer, normally for distribution points, industrial plants, data centers.

[00:49:58] Now the third definition there, classification, is switching station. Switching station is related to utilities when utilities have transmission lines that they have to manage the power they have in that substation. The only thing that they are doing is just switching the flow inside the substation.

[00:50:17] That's a typical switching substation or utility switching substation. Converter is a substation that normally converts from AC to DC or DC to AC. So there's these four type of classifications of substation based on functions.

[00:50:35] And the last classification that we have here is based on the insulation. So as an introduction, there's two pictures there. On the left side, you have an AIS substation, air insulated substation. That's the typical conventional substation, the one that everybody sees and 99% of the system is just, 95% of the system is just constructed.

[00:50:56] A very high level of substation that you have in the system are air insulated. On the other side, you have a gas insulated substation. Gas, we're gonna be talking about that substation, but it's behind the building that you have all the elements so you don't see it from outside.

[00:51:13] You don't see the electrical equipment. Thank you. So we're gonna go define a little bit more about what is AIS and what is a GIS. AIS uses the air as the primary insulation medium between energized components and between those components and ground.

[00:51:32] Just a quick technicality here. When you have two electrical conductors and those electrical conductors, very electrical conductors, when you put them close together, they are gonna start arcing, right? So when you see the marking, that's the minimum distance that you can have as a possible design.

[00:51:53] So you don't want to break that distance. The thing that is happening is that the insulator that before was the air that it was just doing as an insulator between the conductors now is breaking, right? So all the substations that you have, air-insulated substations that you have in the field, they have minimum distances that you have to comply with.

[00:52:13] So that's the reason they are bulky and big, because if you go with smaller credences, electrical credences, then you can have arc issues. It's not safe to do it that way. Now, the EIS substation is a substation where you use gas, pressurized gas.

[00:52:34] This is SF6, that is a sulfur hexafluoride. You use it as an insulation medium. When you do that, you can reduce that distance dramatically. So that's another technology that is being used highly in the industry. So next one goes into the pros and cons of SF6.

[00:52:58] I didn't mention that one of the problems with SF6 is that it's a greenhouse gas and is 23,000 times stronger than CO2.

[00:53:14] So there's some regulations that basically can make the use of SF6 difficult. And again, heavily monitored and controlled due to the fact that it's a green gas.

[00:53:33] Now, coming back to the pros and cons, The pros for AIS, lower cost, simple design, straightforward visual inspection, easier fault detection if there's a fault inside the substation. You can easily detect where it's the fault.

[00:53:49] Easy to replace equipment. There's no requirement of SFCs or any kind of gas for installation. The pros of the GIS system is that aesthetics, you can hide old equipment behind a building or under a building and the footprint can be reduced dramatically, as I said, up to 70% on the original AIS footprint.

[00:54:18] So now Mike. - Yeah, thank you. One of the things we were asked to do was to look at the current definition of utility substation, which exists within the county's zoning ordinance, and develop any revisions to that definition or a proposed revision.

[00:54:35] So the original definition had, you know, language with non-electrical substation components in it. You know, so it referenced related infrastructure such as natural gas and television. So, you know, those are things that we suggested to remove from that definition.

[00:54:55] And we also, when we looked at it, we thought the terms converter and collector should be added. You know, Federico talked about collector substations earlier, you know, obviously for renewable generation, if any of that exists within Loudoun County, collector substations would be a substation that would be technically electrical substation and converters, right, high voltage direct current projects. I understand Loudoun has a proposed project for one of those, so we felt it necessary to include a converter station as a station that falls under electrical substation. And then

[00:55:35] the other recommendation is, you know, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, view shed impacts and different types of substations so if it makes sense you know we thought it made sense to include definitions for air insulated substation and gas insulated substation if there's any you know changes to the code pertaining to either substation type and and here's just we get into it a little bit more on the white paper but here are just a list of some of the considerations that go into

[00:56:09] locating and siting substation. So, you know, obviously Federico touched on it a little bit, but, you know, horizontal and vertical clearances, you know, as required by the National Electric Safety Code requirements, you know, obviously in terms of topography and geology, flat areas, good drainage outside of floodplains, obviously good practice, good access with from a public road where equipment could be, you know, equipment could be installed or trucks could be driven to install equipment. And then obviously minimize impacts to environmental features, you know,

[00:56:47] as wetlands and water bodies. Minimize impacts of noise and visual impacts to the community. And then safety and economic related items. You know, Federico touched on it a little bit before. I think one of the interesting things is uh the economics of it um GIS or gas insulated substations are you know at least the equipment is typically uh more expensive however you know uh if there's reduction there could be significant reduction in land at times and depending on that price of the

[00:57:19] land the the cost can make make sense for GIS in certain arrangements um so you know one of the things we wanted to show is you know within the county obviously a lot of substations we said there was 95 existing proposed substations within the county there's a lot of substations obviously serving load centers such as data centers so these figures on screen are showing kind of a general arrangement of of how electrical infrastructure feeds these data centers so there's a switching

[00:57:58] substation which is you know shown on the left which were the high voltage you know transmission lines come in and then redirect power to the district distribution substation where they step down voltage and a lot of times from 230 kv down to 34.5 kv medium voltage and then it's distributed to the load center or data centers you know there's there's examples where there's substation cited on a data center campus as shown on the left to serve that campus. And then there's other instances where the substations are cited off the campus and where they could serve

[00:58:38] a data center and potentially other customers as well. One of the questions that came up when we were working with staff was what is the typical size of a substation in Loudoun County? And we kind of did a quick review the county post data online of all the substations that exist um and so we looked at five data center uh complexes or um and we we kind of analyzed what what those sizes are so the average campus size of those five campuses came to be around 75

[00:59:16] acres and the average substation size for the switching substation was roughly 1.6 acres and the distribution substation being around 3.2 acres so of that overall lot uh the data center campus had made up of roughly about six percent of the the area of the of the site and that's talking about air insulated substations um and you know as shown in that figure on the right shows the power lines coming in and then feeding the substations on the right um they're they're

[00:59:51] low they're typically located on the edge of a data center campus. So as it relates to visual impacts a lot of times they're on the edge of a property or adjacent to a roadway or something else. So we'll get into screening in a little bit but maybe one of the considerations there.

[01:00:11] And I think you know when we this figure here just showing those switching substations I think it's important to understand the high voltage is you know Dominion you know operates that switching substation on the left and that's a separate facility you know it's a fenced in area owned and operated by the utility and then the facility on the right is a NOVAC distribution substation which again is they have their own gate they have their own equipment and O&M procedures for that facility and a lot of these facilities are have redundancy in their system so that

[01:00:50] they could continue to feed load to the data center if there's an outage of a certain piece of equipment. With that I'll turn over Federico to just go through some of the major components of a substation. Thank you. Thank you Michael. Well in the picture the thing that we're doing is showing some of the equipment that normally you can find inside of a substation. On the left side of the slide, we have a transformer. So the transformer is the one that transforms, basically

[01:01:25] changes voltage levels from low to medium to high voltages or vice versa. In that transformer, you can see there's a source arrestors. Those source arrestors are protecting the transformer from over voltage coming from inside the substation or outside of the substation via transmission lines, for example, a lining hitting a transmission line coming into the substation.

[01:01:50] So those source arresters basically will sink that energy into ground. It will protect the transformer. On the right side, there's a circuit breaker. So the circuit breaker is the one that open and closes circuits. Those circuit breakers are very important, not only from the control perspective, but from the protection and control philosophy perspective as well.

[01:02:18] When there's a fault, the circuit breaker together with the relays will act and isolate the part, the zone, the area of the substation or the transmission line that is faulted. Very important part of the system as well, the substation.

[01:02:38] We can move to the other one. Thank you, Michael. On the left side, now we have a typical bus work, a bus on inside of a substation. You can see the insulators. As you know, those buses are energized. So to maintain those buses up high due to the clearances, you need some structures.

[01:03:00] But between structures and the bus, you need the insulators. And that's the thing that you see in the picture. There are some insulators and the bus itself that is the moving the power, the current between the different elements inside the substation.

[01:03:17] On the right side, that's inside of a control house of the substation, you find a lot of equipment, electronic equipment, that's basically protection and control relays. Sometimes you have HMIs, there are computers that you can manage control the substation from that computer.

[01:03:36] that's kind of the brain of the substation um not only from the from the control perspective but from the metering and um protection uh is is quite important now these are this is a table with a typical equipment heights i know that there's concern about uh you know um how the substation looks from outside um so uh those are typical heights of elements inside of the substation We have, for example, lining poles, there's a range between 60 to 150.

[01:04:14] That depends on several reasons as well on the type of substation that you have related to the voltage. There's transmission, substation, transmission, sub-transmission, or distribution. But you can see that a lining pole can reach 150 feet when you have to protect a high-voltage substation.

[01:04:35] The lighting poles are used for shielding the substation from lining discharges into the substation. There's the dead ends that is where you land the transmission lines in the substation. So our structures are pretty high as well.

[01:04:50] And you can go through all of them. There's different heights, the control enclosure, the fence, the fence can go up to 15 feet. The high voltage ring bus normally between 30 to 50. So there's different dimensions there that are used here for information on heights and.

[01:05:15] - Thank you, Michael. - Awesome, thanks. And one of the things we looked at, obviously we went through all the different heights and some of those being quite high, 150 feet, there's some limitations on screening methods, but shown here is just typical screening methods that are used throughout other communities within Loudon. So I'll just briefly go through it. But vegetative buffers obviously includes landscape buffers of trees, shrubs, and ground cover is an effective measure.

[01:05:50] Substations all for security reasons have fencing. So to treat it with an architectural fence and wall is a good measure. In terms of topography, if the site could be designed with a berm on one side facing a uh you know a view shed that's sensitive that that's a good um solution especially if there's vegetation on top of a earthen berm um setting uh sighting and setbacks are are typically used and um what we were talking about with the county was uh just ongoing maintenance and

[01:06:27] replacement so after a facility is put into service that those if a trees die or that there's some sort of uh you know method to get those replaced or to keep the walls and fencing and in good order even after a permit is received um and in the report we we also did a quick look at just local other local counties and just documented some of the things that they were doing just for consideration from uh fairfax county prince william and in arlington county um and then

[01:07:03] you know lastly uh in terms of uh substation approval process um you know substations you know over 115 kv they're you know required to go through the the virginia state corporation commission for approval um also you know requires loudon county approval um so we just put together a flow chart that kind of show the process of how these approvals are typically work, and starting with utility planning at the PJM level, to early design, to permit applications,

[01:07:43] and then incorporating local conditions, receiving approvals, and then building permits and construction. So, you know, with conclusion here, you know, obviously substations are critical to the grid reliability. You know Federico went through different types of substations so they they vary significantly in scale technology and impact to the community. The current definition for utility substation we have a few suggestions for modifications to modernize it. Effective

[01:08:19] siting you know looks at several factors land use and technical and operational and then there's Screening and buffering are good ways to mitigate visual impacts and then GIS and architectural enclosures are also Could reduce overall site area and visual impacts So the point the idea is to align land use regulations with current industry practices and to support infrastructure needs and community compatibility Thank you with that we will open up to any questions. Thank you so much supervisors

[01:08:56] i was first thinking that we could do two rounds of three because i think there's so many questions on the dais right now for obvious reasons i have a better idea let's just do one round of five minutes each and so we can try to get through questions and answers in five minutes for everybody if you don't need five minutes don't take five minutes but instead of doing two rounds of three let's do one round of five probably let's try to get through as many as possible if you have a question please put your light on miss brixman thank you um you said that we have in the county 95 existing and proposed substations when you said proposed are those ones that are actually in

[01:09:35] like process already that we know about i can respond to that uh thank you that's correct those are the ones that that we have an application in our we have applications that does not include the substations that are with dominion and that we don't have a Better forecasted, right.

[01:09:55] And it doesn't include like the 30 to 40 that they have said we might need. No, it does not include that. Okay, okay. And it looks like on slide five, am I reading this correctly in that schematic, it looks like every data center needs two substations.

[01:10:16] Am I looking at that, am I deciphering that correctly? They need. Yeah, sure, sure. in many of the data center projects we've been involved in, there's high voltage lines coming in at generally 230 kV, and there's a, in most cases, there's a switching substation, which then feeds the distribution substation. And they look like one substation because they're usually abutting each other. That was my next question. So they're like close together?

[01:10:47] They usually share a fence in many cases. They will share the footprint, for lack of a better award. Okay, okay. And when it comes to this process that you're talking, that we were talking about on the last slide, the top line, utility planning, regional grid planning, and forecasting load growth. So how involved is the county in that top circle? Yes, so usually there's the RTEP,

[01:11:25] the regional transmission expansion plan process that PJM puts on, and they'll select projects. But there is a, you know, they'll put out an RFP for transmission solutions, and in that process there is the ability to have public comment.

[01:11:46] So they do have, you know, I think there's maybe a two or three month period when they're looking at projects where you can... So, sorry, I only have five minutes. So they have public comment while they're working on it, but it would be up to us as a county to actually engage.

[01:12:01] We are not asked to engage. That's my understanding, yep. Okay, because I read with concern when we get to the Aspen application, I read with concern the letter from Dominion that said, you know, this reliability loop and a bunch of other plans happened three years ago.

[01:12:21] And we're just kind of dealing with it now. So that's my question. So when they're doing that, it would be incumbent on us to actually be proactive to be watching what's happening. They don't engage us. Even though they're talking about, like, potentially property in our county, they aren't necessarily telling us that.

[01:12:44] Right. And in some cases, at least the ones I've looked at, there could be maybe 90, like, transmission solution proposals. You know, so there's a lot that they look at. And so then in that process, they'll narrow it down to like a short list, and then they'll eventually select the project.

[01:12:59] And once that project gets selected, then they start to kind of design and permit it through the Virginia SEC process and have teams kind of doing separate outreach through that process. Interesting. Okay, thank you. I think that we should be engaged in that.

[01:13:21] How come the walls, oh, are GIS substations more expensive? yes they are okay all right um and and then um how come the walls and the screening are like never as high as the metal because like i remember the substation we worked on in my last term right by a dullestown center and i remember the conversations and asking them for more screening asking them for um you know more mitigation and now i drive by it and like that wall we talked about is not even half as high as the metal.

[01:14:00] So do we know why that is? - I can, from the thinker point, I can explain the reason. If you are referring to AIS substations, you have lines, transmission lines that are coming into the substation.

[01:14:17] So I was saying before, you need some clearances, some safety clearances. So the higher you go with a fence, then you have to move up the transmission line just to comply with that safety. Oh, interesting. There's no way that you can hide that, unless you have an underground circuit that is coming under the fence.

[01:14:36] But that's another situation. On the conventional AIS, where you have overhead transmission lines coming into the substation, even if you go very high, then you will have to elevate the transmission lines even more just to comply with that clearance. You don't want the tip of the fence, the top of the fence, just basically breaking that insulation, The air insulation with the transmission line and then arcing is a safety issue.

[01:15:00] And then for design, I'd like us to look nationally and internationally, not just regionally for the design. Thank you. Correct. Thank you, Madam Chair. So tell me about noise and what can be done to limit noise as it impacts nearby communities.

[01:15:23] Do you want to touch on what equipment is? Yeah. I'm going to just talk about the substations. Yes. Normally, the noise in the electrical facilities is more related to rotating equipment.

[01:15:41] When you have a diesel generator, when you have a gas generator, when you have turbines that are rotating, they are pretty noisy. The element that can make noise inside the substation is the transformer. Transformers just buzzes, they like a buzz, but normally they are not above the limits of, there are some limits that I don't have right now, but normally they are not that bad on noise.

[01:16:11] So from the substation perspective, the studies that we do for noise are not as difficult as you would have, for example, in a data center where you have the generators and all that kind of stuff. So the mitigation for sound is not a big concern on substations.

[01:16:29] Even at night, because I've read that during the day the ambient noise may drown out substation noise, but at night in a quieter area, you may hear this constant humming.

[01:16:46] Yeah, the humming, that's something called corona effect. And it's just basically, you hear it in the transmission lines as well. When you're walking close to transmission lines, there's a lot of salt or humidity is high.

[01:17:03] So you can hear that buzz. But again, that's in the range of sounds that we can tolerate. It's not that it's going above the 100 decibels or 150 decibels.

[01:17:20] So, those are buzzes and hummings that are not really, well, concerned definitely, but it's not something that is just affecting somebody from the physical point of view. So the reason I'm asking, one of my constituents who lives in Tuscarora Crossing is concerned about a future data center and two future substations.

[01:17:50] And her fear is that the noise generated by these three facilities will be cumulative. Do you believe that fear is justified? as in it'll be three times noisier than if it were just one facility so my answer at this moment would be that i have to go specific i would have to go and do the analysis for the data center depends a lot on the equipment that they are using so it's very difficult just to to say

[01:18:28] this is going to be good or bad you have to do the the analysis first for particular examples or particular projects yes it is cumulative but again the substation is not the big factor I always point out to the rotating machines and all the things that are related to motors turbines fans those are normally the ones that produce the noise and do you think that

[01:19:04] The farther away you are from the substation, the less noise you're going to perceive. That's a fact. And do we have any kind of information on at what point, at what distance, noise will be minimal?

[01:19:22] I will normally, again, for this kind of particular, for a project specific to a project, normally there must or somebody has to, a consultant has to do a noise sound study.

[01:19:45] Without really knowing more about the data center and the substation that you are planning to construct, it's very difficult for me to give an opinion or for us to give an opinion. But, yeah, I think that, yeah, it's very, very difficult just to go into general just for a specific project.

[01:20:08] But you should have a noise sound study for the facility, yes. Thank you very much. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall, and thank you, staff. So in February 2024, I added utility substations to data center standards phase two.

[01:20:28] So I'm glad to see this white paper and all the data in the white paper. How many substations are located on site with the data centers? Did you look at that at all with the 95 that you're talking about? Supervisor Tacroni, we don't have a specific analysis for you, but we'll definitely get that number. With roughly speaking, we do see a lot of substations being on data center campus as well.

[01:21:02] Having said that, we also have substations being proposed outside a data center parcel or a campus. Excellent questions. Definitely will get you that answer for you. Yeah, I just would like to require, you know, substations be on-site where they're serving the data centers.

[01:21:19] So I would be interested in understanding how many are off-site. I would like to see that data. What setback do you recommend from schools, homes, and businesses? I did propose a 500-foot setback similar to the data centers that we're looking at.

[01:21:36] Do you have a setback? I mean, I think AIS, it might be more appropriate to 500, or GIS, the 500, but I'm wondering if you looked at setbacks at all. We only briefly looked at what the adjacent counties were doing, and from what I could see, like Fairfax County, well, they had landscape buffers of 50 feet, but setbacks, I don't have anything in front of me on what the setbacks.

[01:22:04] i think they're one of the counties had setbacks for residential land uses and i don't have the number on top okay and i saw that you showed a townhome as a gis substation so i would definitely want to explore that i think that that's what i'm looking for is something that fits into the character of the community and i thought that was a really unique design i've seen barns and i've seen um you know but i but it sounds like that could only be done for the gis substation not the

[01:22:35] ais that's correct um okay you can have ais substations on and this is these are examples that i have seen not here in the county in other places you can have ais substations in warehouses but basically it's the same size of the substation you are not reducing because you have to maintain the electrical currents you are ais so you have to maintain the same electrical currents so

[01:23:08] it's going to be big huge uh warehouses and um uh there's there's there's some in in in the south of florida um i i i have some examples but yes you you can you can do it but it's not practical okay but that would be interesting to see because i think most of the ones i've seen have been the gis um do you know if there's anything that can be done to prevent and mitigate emissions at gis substations because i understand the emissions is one of the concerns yeah i mean yeah one of the things i know we talked about is sf6 and and just uh you know and they have

[01:23:47] typically manufacturers have you know documented leakage rates you know and i think it's what i've seen is like 0.5 percent a year. There are manufacturers like some you know some of the manufacturers that do GIS equipment is Hitachi, Siemens, G, Vernova and Mitsubishi and they they have alternates now the SF6 free air you know gas insulation that they can use which is less impactful to the environment and they you know they claim that it's 99 percent less of

[01:24:21] greenhouse gas, you know. Okay, so there are different levels of GIS. Yeah, there's different gases that they're coming out with that could be used instead of SF6. That would be good to know because, you know, now we're looking at tier four generators for data centers that are better for the environment. It'd be good to know what technology is better with the GIS substation that reduces the emissions. So it would be helpful to know because it sounds like there's different levels, and I assume the more costly one is the one that would have less emissions.

[01:24:56] It would be good to know what the latest technology is with GIS for us. That would be very helpful. Thank you. Correct. One thing that I would like to add, although there's new technologies, the utilities and And in general, the people that work in the electrical system, they tend to be very conservative.

[01:25:26] So I don't see those technologies coming soon, but they are now breaking the market. So it's something that perhaps it would be worth it to discuss with utilities.

[01:25:42] But again, due to reliability issues, utilities don't go into new technologies unless it had been tested and prove that he's not he's not dangerous for for the system okay thank you very much I appreciate that miss class miss I'm said do you need me miss some stuff miss some stuff your lights thank you miss glass thank you madam chair and thank you for the presentation on one of your slides it's the substation approval process and you have the utility planning the conceptual

[01:26:22] design and after that is either the county land use submission with the special exception or site plan local hearing and approvals and then next to that is the sec application filed if required and there's an sec reviewing and hearings if the board denies a substation based on land use criteria could the state corporation corporation state corporation commission override the board

[01:26:53] and have the substation to be built that's a that's a that's a very good question i'm not sure that i know the answer to that okay that would be interesting to find out if you could do that he doesn't ask me to last legal so yes guess what i would like to would you like to ask mr mr rogers Yes, Mr. Rogers, please.

[01:27:21] Yes, Mr. Rogers. Would you please state that question? If the board denies a substation based on land use criteria, could the State Corporation Commission override the board and have the substation to be built?

[01:27:38] No. If the board turned down a substation, then the only remedy would be to take that action to circuit court. Okay. Thank you. The State Corporation Commission does not have that authority. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner?

[01:27:56] Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you everybody for this work. This is great. This is really good stuff. It's interesting.

[01:28:16] I could talk to you forever, but I may follow up with some questions. Just a couple of basics. So I want to talk a little bit about the size of substation. I was not aware of a collector substation. It kind of piqued my interest because we do have an item coming up later tonight on solar panels in the West. A collector substation, how much different is that than, let's say, a switching substation or a step-down substation?

[01:28:32] Is it significantly different in size, footprint? Really, from the point of view of step-up and step-down, if you are using the same voltages and you have the same amount of feeders, meaning that, for example, you have 34.5 and each one has the same capacity in power, They should be similar.

[01:28:55] Okay. And size and height and -- Yeah, correct. -- footprint. Okay. And do they have to be located close to where you're generating electricity to step it? Correct. So that's -- Okay. So if you have a field of solar panels, you're going to have to have a substation nearby?

[01:29:11] Correct. Correct. That's the idea. Okay. Converter station. Converter station, right. Yeah, both. Right. Okay. That's good to know. That's very helpful. and I fully appreciate your answer. I want to talk a little bit about the GIS.

[01:29:32] You talked about the noise factor a little bit ago. I want a follow-up question on one of my fellow supervisors. Is the GIS quieter than the air insulated as a general rule, or does it not matter a whole lot? It's smaller, correct, in footprint usually, or can be?

[01:29:48] Correct. Significantly smaller. That's a good question. I hope so. Yeah. Well, the main equipment, the equipment that produces noise in the substation basically is the transformer.

[01:30:07] Right. So when we talk about GIS, we're talking about the bus work, the conductors. So normally, if you have an AIS bus, you can have some corona sound, like humming, that is not really high. Inside of a GIS, you don't have it.

[01:30:24] So from that point of view, yes. Yes. But if you have a staff station that is humming, normally it means that there's corona and somebody is going to fix that. Is there some, yeah, and you talked about the screening and the buffering and that sort of thing.

[01:30:40] Are there certain screenings that are better at, I guess, dulling any noise? Is that something you looked at as part of this white paper? I mean, at Kimberly Horn, we have people that do noise modeling, and we can certainly ask that question.

[01:30:56] Federico and myself, we don't do noise models. Fair enough. I just, it wasn't a question, I thought until just he mentioned that. Yeah, but like if you think about a fence, for example, and like a standard utility fence with, you know, holes in it versus like a solid fence, you know, that's masonry.

[01:31:13] I mean, that's going to have better, you know, noise mitigating. Fair enough. Yeah. If you have a barrier, if you have a wall, definitely it will just basically diminish the sound. I mean, that's common sense.

[01:31:29] Okay. So back to the GIS and the size. My understanding from the reading I've done, I don't know if I read it in this or I read it someplace else, but they can be significantly smaller than your AIS. Correct. Okay. So we're talking, I think when I saw one of the slides, we were talking about five acres for your general size for servicing a data center campus. So GIS is going to be significantly smaller than that. Is that correct? That's correct. Is that, and I think And that's more easily fitting into kind of, I think, the barn concept, for example, that Supervisor Tacroni mentioned.

[01:32:05] Obviously, the larger AIS is not going to be that small, so we wouldn't be able to ever do that, I'm assuming. Is that correct? So, in principle, GIS upstations are going to be -- I know practicality is a different issue. Yeah. Okay. They will be smaller, definitely. How much more expensive is a GIS system than an AIS system to put in?

[01:32:24] Prices are getting better. Okay. Are we talking 100% more, 300% more, I mean, any kind of general range? It can go from, I'm going to give you a range. Sure. But it can go from three times the price to perhaps five or ten times.

[01:32:42] And what makes that variation? I mean, obviously, is it just the size, capacity it's handling? Reliability and the amount of equipment that you need. Okay, so three to ten times, potentially. Yeah, it could be as high. Fair enough.

[01:32:58] I would say a good number is 2.53 and a conventional substation, but a very specific one, a very complex one, can go as high as eight or ten times, yeah. Fair enough. I will have later follow-up questions, but thank you.

[01:33:15] Later, because we're not going to do another round right now. Okay. All right. All right. Mr. Vice Chair Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. One small thing, the report said that there are cases where the data centers own their own substations.

[01:33:35] We've been told by Dominion for a couple of years right now that Dominion owns all the substations. Can you clarify that? So, yeah, our understanding is Dominion will own and operate their facility. A lot of times what happens, at least what I understand, is that data centers will buy a property to develop, And they will either subdivide or the partiality easement for, you know, Novak or Dominion.

[01:34:01] So they'll grade it and they'll size that to their specifications and their grading tolerances and everything. So, and then at some point they'll turn it over to them and it has to be in, it has to meet their criteria, but they will own and operate it.

[01:34:18] that developer in many cases, you know, bought the land, and then I don't know the cost-sharing agreement. Okay. What's the approximate size of a converter substation? I've seen some pictures, and they look pretty gargantuan. Yeah, I've been involved in a few HVDC projects in the past.

[01:34:41] It really depends. At one point, we were looking in New York, trying to cite those, you know, for when all sort of wind was going pretty big there. So obviously in an urban setting, they were looking at different things and how you could stack equipment and how you can make that work.

[01:34:58] Any guess on Anchorage? I, you know, I would say, I would say. I mean, we're looking at 3.2 for distribution substation and 1.6 for a switching substation. It's going to be probably 10 acres plus. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the pictures look like it was pretty big.

[01:35:14] So if you're collecting, if we're collecting solar and wind sources, we're going to have to use a collector substation to gather the aggregate DC inputs from those renewable sources. Aren't we then going to have to have a converter substation to convert it to AC to upload it to the HVAC network?

[01:35:35] I would just make a distinction maybe between like a, like a renewable, you know, inverter-type substation versus a high-voltage direct current converter station, which when I was quoting like the 10 acres plus, that's a substantial facility for HVDC to HVAC.

[01:35:55] Yeah, yeah, for transmission. So I'm not, on renewables, I'm not sure. Well, but at some point, if you're going to be efficient, you're going to have to collect all the renewables and aggregate them presumably for a, in a, well, in the collector substation.

[01:36:10] And at some point, you're going to have to convert them if you're going to upload them on the HVAC network. Yeah, the solar substations, the solar facilities, normally they use inverters, and the inverters convert DC to AC.

[01:36:26] Ah, so they invert on site at the solar and wind. Correct. When you have the panels coming out of the panels, you have something called the PCC, and then you have the inverter. From that inverter, you go into a transformer, an AC transformer that is going to be just basically elevating to the collector substation.

[01:36:45] So you are having all those inverters just distributed through all the-- So you're actually now collecting AC power rather than DC power directly powered. Okay, I wanna talk about the 525 HVDC buried line coming into Mosby substation. My understanding is that's gonna be converted to HVAC to go up on our existing grid.

[01:37:06] That tells me Mosby's a converter substation, 10 acres? Yeah, I mean, we can certainly look at it more, But yeah, if it's a high voltage direct current line and it's running for an extended period of time and it comes to a converter station, it's gonna be a larger facility for the-- - Okay, then my next question is, can MOSBY be both a collector substation and a switching substation?

[01:37:32] Or is that two substations with just simply double the acreage or can it be combined into a single acreage? - Normally substations, solar substations are constructed by developers, independent companies, and they connect to the system.

[01:37:50] So the switching station normally is provided by the utility, and you connect across the fence or with a small Gentile line from the collector substation to the switching station. I personally, I haven't seen a developer just connecting to a switching station or the collector substation being owned by the utility, that's my personal experience.

[01:38:18] I don't know if the utility owns the distribution, owns the collector substation, perhaps they have some kind of hybrids, but from the point of view of private developers, you don't see that. Okay.

[01:38:34] Normally it's just connecting from the collector substation to the switching via rigid bus or Gentile line or separated facilities, yeah. Okay. Can we go to slide 7, please? And as we're going to slide 7, two questions.

[01:38:51] One, is that just a rendering or is that already built? I know, but it also says rendering. Thank you. Thank you. I think it says understanding is under construction, but we can confirm that.

[01:39:09] It's under construction. Could, could, is this type of construction, this art, is that only available for a GIS station? Could that not be used for an air insulated substation? As I said before, if you have an air insulated substation, you have transmission lines coming overhead.

[01:39:33] So then that's a no, then it can only be used for a GIS substation. Correct, correct. Okay, all right. On slide nine, you talk about the fact that one reason for the AIS is one of the pros is that it's easier to replace new -- it's easier to replace technology.

[01:39:51] Is that just because the GIS substations are newer and there's just not as much of the parts and services out there for the technology? Eventually will it just be just as easy to replace the technology in the GIS as the AIS?

[01:40:06] GIS substations have been in the market for 40 years. So they are not new -- there's new GIS technology coming. So why is it harder than to replace this technology? The GIS comes as modules, and they are connecting each other, so they are pressurized, and they don't have any leaking.

[01:40:24] So if one of those modules just fails, it's very difficult to -- it's almost like you have to de-energize the whole substation just to replace the module, while if you are in an air-insulated substation, if one of the equipment fails, you can isolate that small portion.

[01:40:41] Okay. It's -- I understand. I got you. I understand. Thank you. I'm going to go back a little bit to Mr. Crony's question, because you did answer the question, but I don't know that there was a why on that question.

[01:40:57] She was asking, well, she did ask a follow-up, why would a substation, what would be the reason that a substation that is not a reliability grid substation, what would be the reason that it couldn't be on a data center campus? Because your answer to her were, some of them would be on the data center campus, some of them would not.

[01:41:20] I understand why a reliability substation would not, but otherwise, why wouldn't it be on the data center campus? That was a very big hub. - There's a lot of ifs in some of these questions, and I'm sorry about, we don't have all the answers, because there's different inputs, variables in some of these questions.

[01:41:51] The first thing is that there is a system for the data centers, reliability system called the tiers, tier one, two, three, four. And the higher you go in that tier, more reliability, the system has to be more reliable.

[01:42:08] So the failure index is pretty, pretty high. So that's the reason they use two lines or different redundancy on different circuits and all that kind of stuff. So that's tier four, okay? So when you are talking about a substation, a switching station inside the, and I believe that's the question, sorry, but you're talking about switching station inside of a campus, of a data center campus, normally the switching station is owned by the utility, right?

[01:42:40] And they need access full 24 hours to that substation, to that facility for any kind of fault or control issue or any kind of situation that they have to access the substation.

[01:42:56] So my understanding-- So then, can I only have 48 seconds? So then what you're saying is a data center would have to give permission for them to have access to the substation if it's on their campus.

[01:43:13] So, it being off the campus is to the, for lack of a better way of saying it, to the benefit of a data center that makes their lives easier because it doesn't have to have, they don't have to give permission to have some substation on the campus of the data center, which is not a really good answer for us.

[01:43:31] But is that the answer? I think some data centers, at least what we've seen is, I think data centers prefer to have the substations on site because they can control the schedule better. We've seen instances where data centers, there's a substation built, but they can't get a line to their facility to power it.

[01:43:50] So they're working to try to acquire easements and to get power to their site, even though their facility is built, sitting without energy. So I think a lot of data centers would prefer having that facility on their site. As with we.

[01:44:05] Yeah, and I think that is the preference, and there are cases, and I don't know if it's because the load at that facility, maybe it's a smaller, maybe there's one building at a lesser load, and they wouldn't need a full distribution substation, and they could be served with, you know, one or two circuits from a substation that serves a few users in the area.

[01:44:29] Okay, all right. Okay. Okay. Sorry. That's okay. I'm just going to add some extra information here and this is, I think, that is very important and we haven't been clear about it. When you have a switching station, right, normally the switching station is constructed on an existing transmission line, right?

[01:44:48] So you have a transmission line and then they put and install a switching station and transmission line, right? And then you connect your substation, your collector substation, your step down substation, data center substation to that switching station. Okay. The issue I guess is that the assumption is that now that switching station is going to be feeding only the data center. The fact is that the line has to continue, sorry, has to continue just providing service for the people that are on the remote ends of that line. So the line is still there and the line was there before because it was

[01:45:24] feeding some users, not only the data center. The fact that the data center is connecting doesn't mean that all that energy is going to the data center. So reliability, from the point of reliability, the utilities are very picky on that. They don't want not only the data center to have control on that, but they are responsible for the other users. So if the switching station is in some way affected, it's not only affecting the data center, it's affecting a big portion of the system. So that's the reason that switching stations, utilities tend to be very conservative

[01:46:00] on that that was helpful thank you thank you very much all right yes the earlier question the crystal substation expansion in ollington is completed oh and it looks like that that's that wind arena is how it looks great great okay all right well thank you very much gentlemen we appreciate you being here thank you uh supervisors we uh that that that took a while and that's great That's fine. We will really only have time now to do one closed session right now, and we're going to do closed session number four because it's, I was going to try to do two, three, and four,

[01:46:40] but four is required to do before we can get to one of our other items tonight. And so, Mr. Turner, if you do not mind, would you please read us into closed session number four? I move the Board of Supervisors recess this public meeting and enter into closed session.

[01:46:57] pursuant to sections 22.237, 11A7, and 8 of the Code of Virginia to consult with legal counsel pertaining to actual litigation involving the Goldman-Mars transmission lines and regarding the provision of legal advice on land use applications for substations. Motion is made and seconded by Supervisor Letourneau. Discussion on the motion? All in favor say aye.

[01:47:18] Aye. Any opposed? Motion will pass 9-0.

[02:39:21] We are, Rebecca, we are back and we're sorry we're running just a little bit late. We're going to read the closed session and then go right to public comments. And so apologies for being a little late starting public comments today. Mr. Vice Chair Turner, would you please read this out of closed session?

[02:39:37] Yes, ma'am. I move the closed session be adjourned, that the Board of Supervisors reconvened this public meeting, that the minutes of the public meeting should reflect that no formal action was taken in the closed session, and further move that the resolution certifying the closed session be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting.

[02:39:58] seconded by Supervisor Sains. Discussion on the motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Would everybody please affirm? Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Affirm.

[02:40:13] And I affirm as well. All right, we're going to go to public comments. We do have the second person, it looks like he is virtual. So before I start public comments, let me say that speakers commenting on a matter on tonight's agenda will speak first. When your name is called, please come to the podium closest to you and you can state your name for the record. I will call a few names in advance so you guys know that you're going to be coming up next when your time

[02:40:51] has expired. Please yield the floor to the next speaker. I would ask that, well, I will say that there is no speaking and shouting from the audience during public comment and we just ask for no cheering or clapping just because that can get out of control really fast. And I will respectfully ask that as everyone is speaking, that they direct their comments toward the board because you came to speak to the board. And I will finally say that mr uh mr andy can we do have a remote speaker so you are uh back there can you hear me

[02:41:26] andy yes i can loud and clear wonderful thank you so much and then now we're going to start let's see our first speaker is cindy kohler followed by remotely doug wren followed by the next two are remote actually abigail lawrence and craig bond had a family emergency so i let her know that well thank you for telling us i hope i hope things will be okay thank you so he i have his speech um that will give them to you okay we're ready for you miss cooler thank you

[02:42:02] good evening chair randall on board of supervisors i live in the conductant district for the last seven years thank you for the opportunity to speak about including wilts door road in the secondary road six-year plan at the march 17th board of supervisors meeting i noted the road's poor condition vdot quickly graded it but by early june it needed regrading and then a month later the road already needs help again grading is only a short-term band-aid without proper drainage and targeted repairs the same problems return i had sent you all examples of the road the issues

[02:42:40] with the road in your email accounts today. Wilster Road is an old rural gravel road dating back to the 1930s, serving over 41 Luckett's homes who rely on it every day. It has seen increased cut-through commuter traffic due to Route 15 congestion, making erosion and potholes worse.

[02:43:00] These conditions raise safety concerns, often forcing drivers to have to navigate to the other side of the road to avoid the damaged areas. Preserving Wiltshire Road's heritage as an unpaved rural road matters. It's more than a road.

[02:43:16] It is part of our community where neighbors know one another, walk, bike ride, or ride horses, gather for cookouts, and value its beautiful rural landscape. Paving would change it, inviting more traffic and high speeds. thanks to the rural roads committee for working closely with the county and vdot on developing criteria to identify these unpaid roads for improvement while preserving them i'm optimistic after hearing supervisors kirschner's supportive comments at the last board of supervisors meeting that this funding would assist unpaved rural roads like wilts door without paving it so i hope that

[02:43:53] wilts door road will be able to benefit from this so thank you thank you very much we appreciate it Our next speaker, and the next two speakers are remote, Abigail Lawrence and Craig Bond. Good evening, Chair Randall and the Board of Supervisors.

[02:44:13] My name is Abby Lawrence. I've lived in the Tatoctin District for four years now. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the Secondary Road Six-Year Plan and how Wiltstor Road can benefit from state funding to improve it without paving. I agree with my neighbor, Cindy, And I would also like to add that grading only provides a temporary fix.

[02:44:33] Without improved drainage and targeted repairs, 15 cut-through traffic will continue to worsen erosion, potholes, and drainage issues. As the parent of a toddler, who you probably hear, I am concerned about school bus safety navigating the road. I want Will Store Road improved for safety while preserving its rural character and keeping it unpaved.

[02:44:54] Thank you to the Rural Roads Committee for their collaboration with the county and to VDOT to develop criteria that Wilt Store can benefit from while preserving it and making it safe. Thank you. That was really helpful. Craig Bond, followed by Emily Houston.

[02:45:10] Good evening, Chair Randall and Board of Supervisors. I live in the Catoctin District on Wilt Store Road for the last 14 years. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about why Wilt Store Road needs state funding to make it safer.

[02:45:27] Wilt Store has seen increased commuter cut-through traffic as a result of the increasing congestion on Route 15. And commuters do not respect the speed limit. I support my neighbors' comments and would like to add to them.

[02:45:45] Grading does improve the road, but is only a short-term solution for repairing soft shoulders, erosion, and chronic plot holes in specific locations. These degradations reappear after one or two rainfalls and often force drivers onto the opposite side of the road.

[02:46:05] More robust improvements are needed. Where I live on Wilt Store Road, there needs to be shoulder stabilization and a guardrail adjacent to a 30-foot drop-off. Wilt Store does have two sort of sections of pavement where it joins Taylorstown Road and Route 15.

[02:46:25] I sent the board members a picture of the pavement at Route 15, which is approximately a year old, showing a growing pothole and failing asphalt. As this continues to degrade, it will create a braking hazard for vehicles approaching Route 15.

[02:46:44] This, too, needs a longer-lasting improvement. Thanks to the Rural Roads Committee for working with the county and DDOT to define criteria that define funding to roads like Wilt Store while preserving their rural character and keeping them unpaved.

[02:47:03] Thank you. Thank you, sir. Emily Houston followed by William Niedringhouse. Good evening. I'm Emily Houston, and I'm a member of the Rural Roads Committee, and it's nice to get some thank yous from everybody. Two years ago, the Rural Roads Bill became law.

[02:47:21] This bipartisan legislation was championed by Loudoun's state elected leadership, Senator Perry and Delegates Reed and Higgins. As author of the bill, I would like to clarify the true intentions of this legislation. The goal is to use state funds to improve unpaved roads and give VDOT the flexibility needed to use methods other than paving and in ways that significantly lessen the need for ongoing maintenance and in a more cost-efficient manner.

[02:47:51] It is no longer just a binary choice, leave the roads as they are, or pave them. Now there is a third option. So what does it mean to improve without using asphalt? the bill is explicit it says quote improved materials drainage upgrades or enhanced design of the highway profile other techniques shall be considered improvements if they increase safety reduce maintenance costs or enhance the historic qualities of the highway or highway segment

[02:48:24] in 2022 vdot undertook an improvement project on old waterford road and it serves as a model for what the rural roads bill intends. The road had been severely neglected for years, and one section had fallen into complete disrepair. Eroded drainage ditches were reconstructed, and the roadbed was reshaped with a proper crown. The surface was compacted, resulting in a hard crust. This work was done by our local maintenance crew using standard quality aggregate. One-third of all the

[02:48:59] miles in the U.S. are unpaved. There's a vast body of knowledge about how to properly manage them. An unpaved road can be brought into the 21st century. The Rural Roads Bill gave us the directive to do this and it can be done. And I have some pictures that I'm happy to leave with you all. You can leave them right over there. Thank you very much. William Needham House, followed by Jane Covington. Good evening. Thank you. Emily's great. We think she's done great work on this issue. Our group for 20 years has worked closely with the county

[02:49:35] to help plan, build, and maintain scenic trails throughout the county. We have shared our vision for a Potomac Heritage Trail across Loudoun County along a route worthy of the name National Scenic Trail. In most of western Loudoun, walkable areas neatly coincide with the unpaved roads. In western Loudoun, the unpaved roads in effect are the trail network. The 2025 Western Loudoun feasibility study for the Potomac Heritage Trail sees these unpaved roads as the key to achieving a world-class route for this

[02:50:08] national scenic trail and we agree. Some amazing newer term possibilities that rely on the unpaved road network include a trail from Leesburg to Waterford, from Waterford to Lovettsville, and one farther east from Leesburg to Lovettsville. They also allow a new Appalachian Trail access with adequate parking from far north in Loudoun County.

[02:50:30] We are glad the state of Virginia, thanks to Emily and others, has passed legislation that recognizes that the unpaved roads may be improved without paving. They would remain walkable and be safe and pleasant for drivers. We support the county's efforts to develop a fair and objective method for allocating state funds for non-paving improvements that preserve our unpaved roads.

[02:50:55] We have an excellent opportunity to enable them to function both for transportation and recreation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Jane Covington, followed by John Benedict. Good evening, Ms. Covington. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you.

[02:51:11] My name is Jane Covington. I reside in the Little River District, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Rural Road Committee along with Emily. So, thank you. For the past 18 months, a collaborative effort has been underway to develop an objective, data-driven approach for the improvement of Loudoun's gravel roads.

[02:51:30] DTCI, VDOT, and the Rural Road Committee, with the offices of Supervisor Kirshner and DeCrony, are working together to develop a cost-effective, thoughtful alternative to paving. The primary goal of this collaborative effort is to shift away from the one-size-fits-all approach of paving and instead focus on targeted segment repairs for known problem areas.

[02:51:57] Thank you, everyone. This problem-specific approach allows for appropriate localized interventions such as ditching, installing new culverts, reshaping the roadbed without the unnecessary high cost of paving. Targeting troublesome segments saves the county money. To determine exactly how and when to intervene for gravel road improvements, VDOT, DTCI, and county staff are actively tracking data points to form objective selection criteria. Problematic road segments will be identified based on

[02:52:37] documented safety concerns, citizen complaints, historical maintenance costs, traffic counts, VDOT input, and so forth. Thank you for your patience that we've moved forward to send this to the board at a later date. Going forward, ideally you, the Board of Supervisors, in a parallel effort, will encourage DTCI to launch pilot initiatives to jump start this process. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Ms. Covington. John Benedict followed by Clement Lupton. Good evening,

[02:53:13] sir. Good evening and thank you for public comment. I am John Benedict. I live in Little River on State Route 627, which is one of our historic gravel roads. It is named Parsons Road in my stretch. It's one of those routes with the iconic stacked stone walls and the grand old trees of the farms and the vineyard with the bull run mountains in the backdrop. It's popular with cyclists and walkers and the occasional tourist. But beyond the scenery, gravel roads have other advantages in these rural

[02:53:46] areas. One of them is greater safety, which I've seen firsthand. The gravel surface slows vehicles and encourages walkers and cyclists to share the road safely. For one example, Parsons has a blind curve south of Little River Turnpike which I frequent routinely on my tractor. It's a feature that'd be dangerous on a paved road but on gravel it poses minimal risk because the surface slows vehicles to a safe speed. Our gravel roads actually perform well and Parsons is always well maintained but I have experienced many spots elsewhere in the county where gravel

[02:54:24] maintenance can be a challenge. These are typically at the steep grades, chronically wet areas and locations with heavier use. The rural roads bill confirmed that VDOT can use road improvement funds for alternatives to paving and it's a great opportunity to improve gravel conditions at those targeted problem areas. VDOT and Loudoun can preserve the historic roads and the scenic countryside while delivering much more bang for the buck, improving more locations than could ever be done with paving. So I'd ask the county to press VDOT to move more quickly on these.

[02:54:56] that's encouraged DTCI and VDOT to gather more data about other techniques and materials, develop criteria for how and where to use them, and to do more demonstration projects. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Clement Lupton, you are going to be followed by Thomas Donahue.

[02:55:15] Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Randall and members of the board. I'm Clement Lupton, Government Relations Manager for the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, And I'm here tonight to support the proposed Aspen project and any current or future related reliability projects that are subject to the board's consideration.

[02:55:33] Reliable power infrastructure is fundamental to Loudoun County's future. As our community continues to add homes, businesses, data centers, and other investments, electricity demand will only increase. Our infrastructure must be ready to meet that demand.

[02:55:51] The Aspen substation is a vital part of Dominion's Loudoun reliability loop that will enhance the regional grid, boost service reliability, and lessen the risk of outages for residents, businesses, and critical operations throughout Loudoun. A stronger, more resilient grid is essential.

[02:56:08] It supports our economic health, it is essential to our quality of life, and helps ensure the long-term energy, stability, and affordability that residents and businesses need. The Chamber also supports Dominion Energy's ongoing efforts to engage with residents, property owners, and local officials to find innovative solutions that will reduce the impact of infrastructure investments, such as this, on local communities.

[02:56:33] These investments are intended to meet the public's energy needs, and we support a collaborative effort to ensure they serve our community's broader interests. For these reasons, the Loudoun County Chamber urges the Board to approve the Aspen Substation Project. These investments are crucial for maintaining Loudoun County's growth, reliability, and economic competitiveness.

[02:56:53] Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Lupton. We imagine we're going to see you a lot in this boardroom, probably. Nice to see you. Thomas Donahue, followed by Paul Brasilio. Good evening, sir. Good evening. Tom Donahue from the Catoctin District. I'll try to do a transition here and say someday we thank Supervisor Kirshner for the attention he's paying to the Valley North situation, and I look forward to future conversations from the board on that.

[02:57:19] But turning back to, I'm part of the conspiracy with Emily on roads, and I just want to make some additional add-on comments, which is that I think we need to identify some initial compact projects that will help us understand how to actually go about such improvements effectively.

[02:57:37] We need to crawl before we run. I think we also need to focus very, very hard on the subsequent maintenance to be compatible with those improvements. Otherwise, the improvements will be undermined, as we have seen in the past. I would start by identifying small segments that get the most wear.

[02:57:57] And from my experience on Canby Road, this can involve drainage. But where we really see it on Canby is higher degrees of road damage at pavement, gravel transitions, intersections, curves, and the bottom portions of hills. So they're very specific kinds of places that we can make very small surgical improvements using full death reclamation, better aggregate possibly, and certainly the rolling and not coming back afterwards and scraping it all the way.

[02:58:29] So I think, you know, again, we need to get past this maintenance procedure now, which as much as I like it when VDOT shows up and does my road, I know that all they're doing is pushing the gravel into those hardened indentations in the road, and it all just washes away at the very next rainstorm. This is not a good use of our money. We can do better. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Donahue. Paul Vasilio, followed by Pauly Nigel. Good evening, sir.

[02:58:56] Good evening, Chair and members of the board. My name is Paul Vasilio, and I reside in the Kadocton District. I've been a Loudoun County resident for about three years now. My house is on Ward Hill Road. It was my first purchased home, and I have invested more than $100,000 in home improvements because I'm here to stay. After 15 years in D.C. and five years serving overseas, I settled in Leesburg because I fell in love with the area. In fact, the only downside about my home is the roads I have to drive to get there. Last September, I've submitted five road segments for consideration under Virginia's Rural Rustic Road Program.

[02:59:32] I only requested roads that I drive every day because I wanted to speak from firsthand experience living on these roads means planning your trips to avoid unnecessary driving it means memorizing where the newest potholes washouts and standing water are for every after every heavy rain and without fail the first thing visitors say to me is your roads out here are awful when they come to my home gravel roads today are carrying far more traffic than they were designed for every day brings delivery trucks contractors landscaping crews garbage trucks visitors to local farms and businesses more traffic means more dust more washboarding, more erosion. Those conditions damage vehicles, reduce

[03:00:12] visibility, and make the roads less safe for drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, and horseback riders alike. I'm also concerned about emergency response. At 44, I'm the youngest resident in my immediate neighborhood by at least two decades. Medical emergencies happen. As a first responder myself, I know how much road conditions matter when every minute counts. The rural rustic road program has already recognized similar roads such as Gulick Mill Road, Hogsback Mountain Road and Lena Road. I respectfully ask the board to continue that commitment by supporting improvements to Hughesville Road, Shelburne Glebe Road, Forest Mills Road, Foundry Road, and Ward Hill Road. I'm available to

[03:00:51] provide additional information regarding my specific observations on road conditions in my neighborhood and thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Paul Nagel followed by Katherine Jones. Good evening. Good evening. Hi, I'm Polly Nagel. Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight. We have lived in Loudoun County since 2000 in the western part of the county. I'd like to speak a little different angle on the gravel roads and the importance of keeping these roads gravel and maintaining them for all the outdoor enthusiasts and athletes. Whether we're gravel bikers, endurance runners, or hikers, we need a place to feel safe outdoors. All the gravel roads currently

[03:01:30] create routes that are like an extended trail system. The county already has an amazing pre-existing park system with all these gravel roads out west and these roads provide an easy connection to nature without the county needing to purchase any new land. I love that I can step out of my front door and run at least four different directions on mostly gravel. Gravel biking and running clubs are drawn to western Loudoun as a safe haven to explore and get outside. One of the main reasons people like my family sought out this gravel road lifestyle was to get away from the paved roads

[03:02:04] and traffic. Not only cyclists and runners use the gravel roads, but like I said, the casual hikers and walkers enjoy connecting to the tranquility of the backcountry. And we can all feel safer on the gravel roads than paved roads. They have a natural speed regulator called washboard to keep vehicles moving at a slow speed. However, we need to maintain these roads. This county has enough paved roads in development, so let's commit to a strategic maintenance plan of gravel roads rather than paving them. Let's choose to preserve our very special outdoor recreation network and way of life.

[03:02:38] Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Catherine Jones, you'll be followed by Ava Zerenchal. Good evening. Good evening. Hi, how are you? I'm well. Good evening. My name is Catherine Johns, and I live in the Catoctin District, and I'm the Vice Chair of the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association. That's a mouthful. At VPHA, we think it's critical to protect Loudoun County's natural resources and cultural heritage for future generations. How Loudoun County is built is very important. Preserving Loudoun County's unpaved roads is not an obstruction to process but a

[03:03:15] fulfillment of Loudoun County's stated policies which reflect the wishes of its residents who recognize that no other location in the world has historical assets as unique as Loudoun County's unpaved gravel road network. The Board of Supervisors strategic initiatives by annual update from December 2025 includes initiative 3.6 which mandates that the county and I quote preserve our gravel roads by establishing processes for rural road maintenance and criteria for including these roads in our preservation program. In addition Loudoun County's heritage preservation

[03:03:51] plan recognizes that history is not confined to individual buildings. In fact it recognizes the landscape and its historical transportation corridors as a vital component to Loudoun County's character and as contributing to tourism and attracting residents to the area. By fulfilling your mandate and applying the countywide transportation plan with sensitivity, the Board of Supervisors will ensure that Loudoun County's historic gravel road network maintains an integral part of our cultural landscape and we will reap the benefits of these unique assets for generations to come. So in conclusion, repairing our

[03:04:27] gravel roads rather than paving them is consistent with loudon county's planning policies thank you thank you and it's nice to meet you i just talked about joe bingle just this morning about you so nice to meet you thank you avis rinshaw followed by emily johnson good evening miss rinshaw good evening chair randall board members i'm avis rinshaw and i'm here to ask you to support a policy direction on item four that prioritizes what else enhancing and stabilizing our dirt roads rather than paving them many of our dirt roads are experiencing

[03:05:00] unprecedented rare wear more than i've seen in 30 years of driving them the cut through to commuter traffic has accelerated washboarding rutting dust drainage failures far beyond what v dots routine grading can keep up with at least on limestone school road but paving the dirt roads is not the only solution and in many cases it's not the right one. Modern dirt road stabilization techniques dramatically improve durability, traction, safety. Stabilizers and polymer emulsions can bind the soil and reduce the dust, strengthening the road base and significantly

[03:05:40] cutting long-term maintenance costs. Those proven methods are environmentally and fiscally responsible. Stabilization also protects our waterways by reducing sediment runoff, which is especially important in the roads near me because we're so close to the Potomac.

[03:05:58] I hope that Loudon takes runoff seriously because stormwater regulations are tightening and new fees are being considered for its mitigation, especially here in Leesburg. Unlike asphalt, dirt roads don't trap and radiate heat. They stay cooler, reduce localized warming, and help maintain a healthier microclimate for nearby farms, forests, and waterways.

[03:06:18] And in a county where data centers affect the weather system, that's a big deal. Please work with VDOT to expand stabilization treatments, improve drainage and crowns, and invest in long-term solutions that keep our rural roads functional without sacrificing what makes them special.

[03:06:35] Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Renshaw. Emily Johnson, you will be followed by, oh, Elizabeth Stutzman. Good evening, Ms. Johnson. Good evening, Supervisors. My name is Emily Johnson. On behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council, last night was a contentious meeting in here with lots of talk about energy demand, and rightfully so.

[03:06:59] It's fitting tonight to have a follow-on discussion about energy innovation. A multitude of renewable energy solutions, in addition to regulated demand, are crucial to addressing the situation we have created loud and support for appropriately cited and incentivized solar battery and virtual power plant programs could help protect individual customers and insulate their costs meet local capacity requirements and contribute to a greener future we are so we are grateful for the study put forward tonight by supervisor briskman and coronies offices to look at how agrivoltaics could fit more broadly into our county

[03:07:35] as our crop-based agrivoltaics project has fit so well at our community farm here agrivoltaics combines farming with solar in a careful balance to preserve productive land while offering energy independence for farmers who are too often asked to substitute solar farms for their food production but it is just one part of small-scale distributed generation solutions which should also be promoted in our built environment finding good solutions takes coordination and planning so we We were happy to hear the chair say last night that the county has asked the state to support a temporary statewide pause to address data center related problems across the commonwealth.

[03:08:13] We would love to see that reflected in next year's legislative program as it was not officially in this year's scope. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Elizabeth Stutzman followed by on the remote call, Kim Fulmer.

[03:08:29] Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? My name's Elizabeth and I'm a resident in Potomac Station. My husband and I recently purchased our townhome right across the street from the proposed Leesburg Gateway development and are concerned that by allowing data centers like this one, we would have an industrial complex close to a residential neighborhood which brings many downsides.

[03:08:49] One concern of residences being so close to data centers is noise. Sound studies need to account for both audible frequency and low frequency sound at full emergency capacity. Residents in Prince William and Ashburn have compared the sounds of a data center over a mile away to sounding like a helicopter when they stepped outside of their home.

[03:09:07] Diesel and gas generators create harmful emissions and should be avoided in close proximity homes. Data centers in the area are relying more on generators as there is an eight year wait for power with Dominion Energy. With many potential projects vying for energy and the high energy demands that data centers have, this brings major concerns for a grid that is already operating at maximum capacity, as observed during the recent heat wave where data centers were told to run generators to avoid brownouts.

[03:09:31] residents experienced a major impact to air quality and could smell the fumes. In addition to high energy usage data centers could use a significant amount of water. This could put a strain on resources during a period of drought which we have already seen this summer. As a result of these increased demands on utilities there will be an increase in cost to the average consumer.

[03:09:50] In the state of Virginia utility costs have gone up 13 percent this year. There is no way to fully mitigate the increased operating costs to keep up with the demand and residents will have to bear bear the burden which is not offset by the tax incentives game. Another large concern is property values. The existing studies are fundamentally flawed as they show that property value increased in a period of uncharacteristic growth but show no comparison to nearby areas where data centers are not currently being built. Loudoun County property values are estimated to decrease this year. Additionally, a petition was started in December after this topic was brought forward.

[03:10:22] There are over 700 people in the area that do not support data centers being built. All Facebook votes that the applicant and town has posted have received extreme negative responses. My request to the board is to ensure that no more data centers are built within two miles of a residential area in Loudoun County and have proper mitigations in place to minimize their impact.

[03:10:41] Thank you. Kim Fulmer is remote, followed by Robert Griffin. Yes, can you hear me? We can hear you fine, ma'am. Good evening, Chair Randall.

[03:10:57] My name is Kim Fulmer, and I have two young boys, and I live next to the George Washington University campus recently sold to Amazon. Yesterday I tried to attend your town hall to give public comment. I brought my husband, two-year-old son, and a sign that read no more data centers. We arrived early, but there was nowhere to sit, so I was forced to drive back home and watch from my phone. The data center employees in matching light blue t-shirts packed the room so that Loudoun residents could not participate. What I watched was deeply disturbing. We were shown a ProData Center presentation that lacked empathy for the residents that live next to data centers

[03:11:37] like Vantage VA2 and suffer the ill effects of noise and air pollution. Our townhomes have stood since 1994, yet you blamed people like me for buying a house on buy-rate land, suggesting that we should have known to check the zoning ordinances before buying a house in one of the highest-rated public school districts in the country. If I was supposed to have done my homework, why didn't the Board of Supervisors do theirs and prevent the data centers from being built next to our houses? Last month, Supervisor Briskman hosted the town hall that we all deserved.

[03:12:15] She listened to the grievances of local residents negatively affected by data centers near their homes, and she pledged to fight for us. Why can't you do the same? Instead of blaming the General Assembly, we need to hear your plans to legalize a moratorium on data centers in Loudoun County.

[03:12:34] It's 2026. Look around you. Listen to the uproar across the country. As public servants, your mandate is to serve the people of Loudoun County, not billionaires. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Robert Griffin, and you will be followed by Tyler Ulmer. I'm not sure if it's Omar or Weimer? It's Tylee Omar. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Griffin.

[03:13:03] Good evening, Madam Chair. I'm Robert Griffin. I want all you citizens of Loudoun County to know that Chair Randall is not who she says she is. She has orchestrated the destruction of public records to prevent public knowledge of when I came to speak. She defamed me. She accused me of speaking inappropriately to young children. So again, Madam Chair, I want to know, and I'm asking

[03:13:37] this under my Freedom of Information Act, the date of that meeting and when it was that I spoke inappropriately to children. And to you, Mr. Hemstreet, I didn't ask you to respond. You're the person who responds to records. I ask you, Madam Chair, what is the date of that meeting? Well, you don't care you don't care at all what people say here you exploit that's your purpose and let me just give you another example madam after the school resource officers i watched you on youtube

[03:14:14] and you were going to be so heartbroken should a little accident happen somebody invade a school with a weapon and kill one or two students you're just going to be so heartbroken i think you're fake. How does that grief compare with a mother or father who has to go to a funeral home to dress her little girl or maybe place their son in a suit that was special for them on Easter? Oh, I'm going to be so heartbroken. That's bullshit. Pure, unendated bullshit. You have a cold,

[03:14:54] calculating heart and you deem this as a privilege to speak. No, it's a right. You're the one that breaks the rules by right to speak and your fellow citizens to voice their outrage.

[03:15:10] - Mr. Griffin, your time is up. - Thank you, madam. - Thank you. - Thank you, madam. I'm bowing to you. I'm bowing to you. - Mr. Griffin, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Tylee Omer followed by Stacey Westman. Good evening.

[03:15:27] thank you very much for letting me come and speak tonight um see if i can top that one i live in northwestern loudon and i'm not happy one bit about the exploiting transmission towers and lines being proposed and forced into this board's designated transmission corridor i hope this board will defend the conservation easements the prime soils our scenic view sheds the local tourism and what is left of our farms by filing as interveners opposing these towers and lines and insist on burying hvdc lines when the virginia scc applications are filed since you're so

[03:16:04] interested in undergrounding the mosby line we in northern western loudon expect the same consideration and support in addition i have become aware per the loudon county news that there's a loudon county infrastructure work group of the of the 50 people on this committee 14 are the data centers 11 are the energy companies 10 are loudon county staff and of the eight remaining there is not a single private property owner or hoa from northwestern loud and represented where these massive transmission infrastructures are wanting to plow through so now we have to feed

[03:16:39] these giants with power and i would like to know how and why 22 administrative applications for data centers were grandfathered in so that they could build by right even though that doubled the square footage of data centers in the county and the public would not be able to comment on those 22 administrative centers. In closing regarding the town hall held last night while much was discussed I don't believe on any of the presentation slides anywhere was mentioned about the moral wreck and rebuild the valley link north or the wreck and rebuild of the 514 line that's dumping more power into the alley and I believe your constituents would like to know if your plans

[03:17:17] is to keep recommending to the SCC of shoving them into the designated existing right-of-ways i.e. your corridors, that this board has designated in CPAM. What is your position if the rows are at maximum capacity? Will you be fighting to put them underground or taking more land to accommodate the beast? What are we doing to fix this? Thank you. I'm sorry, your time is up. Thank you. Ma'am, if you have any, if your comments were not quite finished, you can give them. No, I was gone.

[03:17:44] Okay, thank you so much. Our two last speakers are Stacy Westman and Pete Holm. Good evening. Good evening. I'm not nearly as angry. Thank you.

[03:18:01] Okay. So, you saw me last night. I'm here again. My name is Stacey Westman. I'm an AI and cybersecurity strategy technologist. My family and I have lived in Loudoun County since 1995. I appreciated the electrical substation white paper.

[03:18:19] It gave really useful information and detailed analysis. But one major issue is missing, and that's cybersecurity and cyberphysical risk. Modern substations are not just electrical equipment behind a fence. They rely on digital controls, remote access, communication systems, automation, and vendor connections.

[03:18:37] A cyberattack can become a physical event that disrupts power, damages equipment, affects emergency response, hospitals, and creates consequences beyond the property line. That risk is even greater when a substation serves a data center.

[03:18:53] data centers depend on power, controls, cooling systems, generators, batteries, we all know. But before Loudon decides on how to accommodate more power lines, substations, and data centers, the county must answer some really basic questions. How much additional high-load infrastructure are we willing to accept? Which projects actually justify it? How much do we distinguish reliability needs from speculative development? AI is a bubble, potentially. We need to consider that.

[03:19:21] and what measurable public value does Loudoun and its local communities receive in return for the long-term impacts and risks. Phase one gave the board more control over individual data center applications, but it didn't establish countywide carrying capacity criteria, corridor saturation limits, a clear approval sequence, or a standard for weighing public benefit against public risk.

[03:19:44] Phase two should require electrical capacity to be tied to approved and buildable end uses. disclose ultimate capacity and expansion potential and evaluate cyber physical consequences i'd like to ask that you add cumulative amount approval sequencing municipal impacts cyber physical risk and measurable public value to the framework before we develop policy okay your time's up will you do me a favor and meet me right over at the desk right here just in just a quick second sure thank you um our last speaker is pete home good evening sir yeah good evening uh thank Thank you, Chair Randall, and all supervisors.

[03:20:24] So my name is Pete Holm. I'm a resident of Waterford. And what a surprise. I wasn't coming here tonight to talk about gravel roads, but here I am. I live off of Browns Lane, and my wife and children and I agree with everything that was said tonight.

[03:20:40] We very much appreciate the gravel roads that we live off of. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here in support of Barrister, the substation application. I think Barrister is in the right location, surrounded by other data centers and substations.

[03:20:56] And I appreciate the opportunity to work and collaborate with our neighbors in the community group as we participate in the electrical infrastructure working group. I feel like we are making good and fair progress, and I look forward to working with staff as well on the CPAM-ZOAM Phase 2 design standards and locations.

[03:21:17] And I was also here last night, and I was able to get a seat as a resident of Loudoun County. I am pro data center, but I appreciate the opportunity to speak here last night. And I think we all just saw why it was probably hosted here last night. Unfortunately, some people maybe get carried away.

[03:21:37] So I think it was probably a safe, secure facility to be at here last night. So I appreciate hosting it here. Maybe it was a little small, but it was definitely safe, and I felt safe here last night. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So that's all of our speakers.

[03:21:52] thank everybody for coming out. We are going to go on right now before we take our first break because we went to closed session but we haven't done break yet and we're going to do the six-year road plan because I think most people are probably in the room for the six-year road plan. So if staff will come to the table for the six-year road plan Mr. Turner will you take the um take the gavel real quick and I think Mr. Kirchner we can almost go straight to it almost go straight to a motion for the six-year road plan. So if you would take the motion just for a second and when staff

[03:22:22] comes to the table. Good evening. Good evening. We're going to go straight to a motion or do we have, does anybody, would anybody like to hear any of the presentation? I'm happy to go to a motion.

[03:22:59] Okay. All right. Go ahead. Thank you. So I move the Board of Supervisors approve FY 2027 to FY 2032 Secondary Road six-year plan as provided as attachment one to the July 7, 2026 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item and authorize the County Administrator or his designee to execute the proposed Secondary Road Six-Year Plan on behalf of the county.

[03:23:21] Second. Moved by Supervisor Kushner and seconded by Supervisor Tacroni. Opening comments. Yeah, thank you Vice Chair. I appreciate it. The Secondary Road Program I think is really, really important in the large comprehensive process that we're working on. I know my staff is doing and myself to a large degree is doing yeoman's work on trying to move forward in the proper manner and I really appreciate everyone that came forth and spoke on the secondary road program. I just want to clarify with staff with just a nod of the head or yes or no. The secondary road program is largely money that's

[03:23:59] provided to us from the state that will allow for hard surfacing of basically gravel roads is that correct? For improving gravel roads. So improving so improving can be more than hard surfacing it could mean drainage it It could mean ditching and that sort of thing, correct?

[03:24:17] Yes, sir. Okay. Just wanted to make sure it's clarified so everyone understands that. I am largely in lockstep, maybe 99.9% with most of the folks that spoke. I really appreciate Mr. Donahue's comments. I think they were right on point.

[03:24:33] And I know that my staff has been talking to the working group. I've had a number of meetings with VDOT, and I appreciate those meetings. We're talking about identifying those specific areas, the hot spots, both that my district as well as Supervisor DeCrony and Chair Randall's district receive, as well as those who have called in and made complaints to the county.

[03:24:52] When we ultimately get to the place where we, when we develop this criteria, I know that the research group is going to be coming out with recommendations for criteria on how to maintain and what type of improvements to do, Um, given our gravel and rural rustic roads, um, my understanding, and I know, um, this is a bit tentative, my, they, I, I've heard hinting around that we are going to get those improvements come this fall.

[03:25:25] So my preference, it would be that we, um, come back, because when we adopt this, and I'm, I'm assuming it's going to pass, when we adopt this, we ultimately preserve that money to use um what and what what's authorized under under the legislation for this we preserve that money we don't lose it but why we're passing this now is because we preserve that money we accept it it goes into the pot and now we have that money to use once we come up with that criteria and we can use it within that criteria as long as it meets the standards of this rural roads is that correct yes sir okay so i'm look i'm looking forward to that i think that's really

[03:26:03] really important. But I'm hesitant to add any roads to the program this year, which is why we, any roads we're adding is essentially blank, essentially because we have yet to really identify that criteria, which we've been working on for a couple of years now, and I'm told we're going to have it really soon. So I'm excited about this. I think having a standard criteria is really, really important on how we improve and move forward on those roads. And I do believe in our rustic rural roads. It's important for recreation, for horseback riders, for those people who moved there, and for the rustic feel.

[03:26:33] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall. So I have a question, and then potentially a friendly amendment for Supervisor Kirshner. Would it make sense to do a pilot, to jumpstart, you know, some of these materials and some of these methods?

[03:26:54] I don't know when you're coming back. I guess that's the question. Are you coming back in the fall with the criteria, or are you coming back next year? So I'm just questioning if it makes sense to do a pilot with one road from the Catoctin District and one from the Little River that we know needs targeted improvements.

[03:27:17] Good evening, Supervisor Tacroni. So it's hard to say at this moment because we still need to work through some of the nuts and bolts of the process and exactly how this will flesh out. We are having a meeting with county staff next week, and we hope to talk through some of that some more.

[03:27:37] I can probably give you a better answer after that discussion. There is, I think, potential for doing pilots, but, you know, keep in mind that we need to make sure that we come up with concepts that are viable for those pilot projects.

[03:27:54] And that's kind of where the rubber meets the road. We just aren't at that place yet. But I think there is potential there. We just have some work to do first. Do you think, will you be coming back to the board in the fall with some of those updates?

[03:28:11] Well, I would defer to the county staff, but I think that is the goal, to come back in the fall, if at all possible. Supervisor Crony, one of the things we are looking at is during our transportation summit.

[03:28:26] And this is one of the items that we would have presented there, and we're inviting VDOT to be part of that conversation. for the transportation so maybe that would be the time to talk about some pilots potentially it's enough time to to have those conversations between now and then okay well i don't want to wait till june or july of next year so that that's kind of the question is um can can we do a pilot potentially or or make a motion for some pilots this fall sometime

[03:28:59] that's the question so for the secondary six-year plan that we're here for is just accepting the the funds, state funds that Supervisor Kershner mentioned, accepting it into the pot for use later. When we're ready with the criteria and a pilot, a concept for a pilot, at that time, those roads could be added to the program and does not have to be any time when we're

[03:29:36] not ready. I mean, we can wait for that. When we're ready, you can add the roads for those improvements as long as at the transportation summit thank you thank you so much miss brixman thank you chair randall um so the projects the four projects that were listed in the item have already been approved but it sounds like from the item and from the conversation that a decision has not been made as to whether they will be the compacted gravel or if they will be paved with an impervious surface. Is that correct? The ones that have already been approved have been approved

[03:30:14] for hard surfacing. Does that mean pavement? Pavement. Under rural rustic program to be paved. Okay, so Old Wheatland, Hogback, Lena, and Gullick Mill are going to be paved? That's correct. Okay, they already have been paved? They will be. Old Wheatland is under construction right now.

[03:30:36] The others will follow. Okay, so those, are we approving money for those four projects then, if they've already been approved? Or what are we approving the money for? Those monies have already been appropriated in the previous secondary six-year plan.

[03:30:51] So this year's six-year plan, it's a rolling plan. So every year we add another year to the next six years. And we don't know what the... We are accepting the new monies into the program. And we don't know what the new money will be used for yet. We don't know that yet. So it's listed as to be used for future projects.

[03:31:08] Okay, thank you. I want to thank the speakers from the Potomac Heritage Trail and for the comments about the gravel riding and the hiking and all of the activities that are happening and the potential to use the gravel roads for the Potomac Heritage Trail.

[03:31:27] So I definitely want to keep those maps in mind. Do you have the proposed mapping for the Potomac Heritage Trail? We don't have those ourselves.

[03:31:42] Okay. I think maybe we should provide that to you so that we're all kind of on the same page as to, you know, you will probably be involved in this CTP, the countywide transportation plan, but those sorts of trails are going to be discussed.

[03:31:57] So I think it might be helpful to make sure that that information is shared so that the vision of the Potomac Heritage Trail and some other, like, gravel riding activities are shared as we are making these decisions about impervious surface and or hard packed of those roads.

[03:32:17] I recently visited Roanoke as part of my Sorenson Political Leaders program. They've leaned really hard into these sorts of outdoor activities for their tourism industry. And I think that Loudoun County could do the same. So I want to make sure that we aren't cutting off our nose to spite our face when it comes to the potential of these activities for our tourism industry.

[03:32:38] And it's one of the reasons why I appointed the VeloPigs founder to the Rural Economic Development Council. And so if it's okay, without objection, colleagues, I would love it if VDOT at least had that information as we move forward and when you make your recommendations.

[03:32:56] We can have that information, but we'll defer it to the county as they will be developing the CTP. Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. So as I read this item, I'm a little hung up on language because it seems a little obscure to me.

[03:33:22] the reason i'm saying that is because i focused on the old waterford road project where we thought we had an improved basically pressed gravel solution so we didn't have to pave the roads we had a lot of speakers here tonight that said we don't want to pave roads and now as i look at the six-year plan we're basically discussing how we're going to spend money and which roads we are going to pave so it sounds like with the what sounded like i don't want to say failure but less than optimal results from the old Waterford Road experimental pilot project, the only options

[03:33:57] we have are a rural road made out of gravel that we periodically have to regrade, fill in potholes and re-gravel or paved roads. Is there any option in the middle there that I'm missing or are we basically talking about the rustic rural road program and that the solution is to pave the road?

[03:34:13] That is what, you know, I think county staff reported they're working on, working with us to develop what that process could be to develop those type of solutions since this is the first time we will be developing those. So we're setting up the criteria for those first and then develop a process to get to that point but we don't have the answers yet. So criteria to come up with an option other than unpaved or paved? Yes. So how will we develop those? Those are the things that are being discussed with the county. Okay great. Thank you. So I remember when I was

[03:34:49] first elected and I went out to West Atlanta County and and and I and I thought my god we got to pave these roads and Mitch Diamond said to me like he was not happy with that comment and just made sure that I thought we he made it very well known that that was not what we were going to be doing and so we've been having this discussion for a long time and one of the things I had asked is like Like, but you, you know, you moved to a gravel road, and so, you know, isn't that kind of character why you moved here?

[03:35:22] And I think that's true. But then I have received that and answer on that from Avis Renshaw, from Paul Brasilio, and one other person who spoke last time, a woman spoke last time.

[03:35:38] And there's something that she said that the three of them said that I really hadn't thought about, which is, yes, they moved to a gravel road, but when they moved to those gravel roads, the traffic was not what it is today. And so the amount of large vehicles that go through, the fact that people have MapQuest and Waze, and so when you're driving and if a main road is backed up, it sends you around and sends you to the gravel roads, It is not the gravel road experience you would have had some 5, 10, 15 years ago.

[03:36:14] And so people moved to that gravel road experience, and now the experience is very different just because of the traffic that's on the road. And then the next question is, well, then how do we maintain the – because the roads are part of the character of Loudoun County, the rural, rustic character of Loudoun County, and not asphalt everything over, which is something I know Mr. Kirshner has been working on for, in fact, I think it was one of the things you ran on, Mr. Kirshner, been working on a long time.

[03:36:44] And so I very much appreciate Mr. Kirshner and Mr. Crony working with Ms. Houston, I'm assuming working with everybody from the Rural Roads Committee to come up with an option that we believe does more than one thing, keeps the real character of the county because it's so vitally important that we do that, figures out the funding of it at the same time, and makes roads that are safer and that don't get washed out with every rain and that we're not calling VDOT for all the time

[03:37:22] or people are not telling me that it's ruined their axles on their cars and that type of thing. And so I support these efforts. I certainly hope they work, and we're not back here two years from now talking again about these roads, but I think that this seems to be a good place to land, and I certainly hope it works.

[03:37:42] And I thank everyone who's come out and talked about this, because I've really learned a lot. Mr. Kirsten, would you like a closing? Very briefly. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the things I think is really important for my fellow supervisors to hear, as well as our public who have come out and spoke, is we spend a lot of money in this county on maintenance in the western part of the county.

[03:38:01] A significant part of our maintenance budget, obviously for obvious reasons because it's not hard service so it needs ongoing maintenance. I think in the long run it probably washes out, no pun intended, to about be at the same cost as the paved road because that's got to be replaced every 15 to 20 years.

[03:38:16] But my point being is the idea behind the criteria that's being developed by the Research Council and the criteria that ultimately I think staff is going to be tasked with coming up with on our rural roads is how do we utilize the money that we're getting in this rural rustic road program to not provide maintenance because we know you can't use it for maintenance, but how can we improve those roads to hopefully reducing the cost of maintenance? And there may be some areas here or there that may need some hard surfacing, but what will that criteria be? Because right now it's become kind of a crapshoot, so to speak. We pick a road here, we pick a road here, more people complain here, they don't. And we would like to have

[03:38:54] a really comprehensive approach and preserve much of the heritage as the Chair has mentioned that we have here in the county and that heritage is we're unique as was mentioned I think in the opening statements that you that were made by someone I'm not sure who it was I think it was the staff but we we have this really incredible historic resource and uniqueness about western Loudoun County and we're trying to keep it that way people move out there to ride their horses one of the problems we have of course is we have a lot of people traveling through the western part county to get here from other states and they're going offshoots because those roads have taken so

[03:39:32] long to get the necessary those are kind of main major arteries but the veins and the lesser arteries are getting tons of traffic i mean people are going through water people are going down dirt road will store road is one of those and and it's really hard on those roads they'll get a lot less traffic if we improve those arteries that we're working on right now and so there's a there's a method to all of the madness it just takes a while to get there so thank you staff thank you vdot for all your hard work on this. I appreciate the meetings that you've had with me and my staff and your continued cooperation to try to get to a point where we really have an excellent criteria and we improve the process of how we do this. We are, I think, on the cusp of

[03:40:10] making a real big breakthrough and getting to the place that we need to be on how to proceed with this process. It's a learning process because we're somewhat unique in this, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. The motion was made by Mr. Kirchner, seconded, I'm told by Mr. Crony. Is that correct? I want to be able to say aye. Aye.

[03:40:29] Any opposed? That motion will pass 9-0. Supervisors, I think item 7, the BMI, will be very fast and then we can take a break and come back and do the two kind of heavier items. And then we have three more closed session items. We have a long way to go. So let's try to get one more done before we take a break. It's a BMI between Ms. Brickman and Mr. Crony.

[03:40:52] and a BMI supervisor can take about three minutes to explain it, and then they can make a motion. I don't care which one of you do that. Mr. Crony, you want to do that? Ms. Bricksman, you want to do that? Either one's fine with me. Okay? There's only one. It's not both. It's just one.

[03:41:10] Okay. Okay. All right. You got about three minutes, or faster, if possible? Or just make the motion? Well, I'm sorry.

[03:41:25] i'm looking at the wrong here it is agrivoltaics white paper so i'm hopeful that my colleagues will support this we are looking at asking the rural economic development council to research and investigate the potential to do more agrivoltaics in loudon county and what the um you know what the barriers might be to that what the benefits might be to that um as you know i'm sure that

[03:41:55] Governor Spanberger signed the bill about agrivoltaics sponsored by Russett Perry, Senator Perry, and Delegate McAuliffe laying down some basic definitions for agrivoltaics in that it's a way to, it's a way for people in the ag industry to not have to make a choice.

[03:42:17] They can have a combination on their property of a couple acres of solar and then, you know, be able to have the rest of their land in production. Also, the PEC pilot project is testing actually growing around and under the panels.

[03:42:39] And the pilot is about, I think it's about three acres perhaps. And what they do is they power the entire farm, plus they put power on the grid through battery storage, or they store power, and then there's an opportunity to put that power on the grid.

[03:42:59] So anyway, I've had some conversations with the REDC folks who said they really are looking to contribute more and would look forward to contributing and doing this research and digging into it. I had a conversation also with our economic development director about it and bringing it to the REDC, and he endorsed the idea as well, so hopeful that we can move forward with this.

[03:43:26] Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you make a motion? I move the Board of Supervisors authorize the Rural Economic Development Council's development of a white paper on agrivoltaics, as described in the July 7, 2026 Board of Supervisors business meeting action item and direct staff to work with the REDC and return to a future board business meeting with a scope for the white paper.

[03:43:52] Second. Well, I'm going to give that to Mr. Crony. Oh, you'll see that. I think he was just messing with us. He almost got it. No, I wouldn't do that. Of course I'm going to give that to you. He was joking. That was good.

[03:44:07] Opening on the motion, anything else you want to say? Thank you. I mean, I'll just echo what our friends from the PEC said about this. This is going to be small-scale distributed, you know, an exploration of small-scale distributed systems in other areas of the county.

[03:44:24] And it's really a unique combination of agriculture and contributing to our clean energy goals. Thank you. Mr. Crony? Yeah, thank you, Chair Randall. So I hope my colleagues will support this. This is an opportunity for the REDC to take a look at the feasibility of agrivoltaics.

[03:44:44] We already have two good examples in Loudoun County. One is Karen Schoenvel's farm, and the other is PEC's farm. And they both have been able to preserve agriculture while, you know, making green energy to help sustain the farm.

[03:45:02] I do want to make the point that this is accessory solar, not utility-scale solar. This solar would be just for the principal use of the farm. You know, utility-scale solar is not permitted in agricultural zoning districts, and I would not support that.

[03:45:24] We talked about how that would need substations. I do not support that. So this is, you know, an opportunity to really look at, you know, ensuring that agrivoltaics do not supplant agriculture but complement.

[03:45:43] So I think that is what REDC would be looking at, and it would be, you know, obviously it would come with battery energy storage. So, you know, you could use some of that power later that you're generating for the farm and maybe even give it back to the grid if that is set up.

[03:46:04] But I don't support any kind of substations or utility scale solar in the rural policy area. So, I look forward to REDC really digging deep into how other jurisdictions have done this, and also just the good examples that we have already in the county.

[03:46:25] Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Kirshner? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure I'm going to support this, but I do have a question from my fellow colleagues, if that's okay, Madam Chair. That's fine. Are these type of solar ventures that are being proposed in this white paper, because the way I'm looking at the zoning code, Do we have a utility minor and a utility major, both of which require some sort of exception?

[03:46:46] Would they fall under that? Because the only third option is utility scale. No, I don't think so. No, there's solar. I mean, PEC did not need to come to us for permission to set up their pilot project, you may recall. So it's, and I'm pretty sure they're not violating our zoning ordinance.

[03:47:04] Okay. Well. It's not utility scale. I understand, but any sort of minor or major or utility scale under our zoning ordinance requires, it's either not allowed or it requires some sort of special exception or an actual rezone.

[03:47:22] So here's my concern with this. I think this is a really, I'm really concerned of where this may take us. I really was trying to get behind this. I really was because I understand what we're trying to do here. I think I'm not going to vote for this, and let me explain why.

[03:47:39] Western Loudoun County is very different than rural West Virginia, or rural Iowa, or rural Ohio. We are not largely, we're largely agribusiness, or what we largely provide is a beautiful landscape with our wineries, our breweries, people who visit us.

[03:48:01] We do have agriculture throughout, but that's a lot of what people come out to see. My big concern is if we go down this route, we're now going to become a power provider. And when we're talking three or four acres scattered throughout western Loudoun County on a number of different farms, that's going to ruin in large part the viewshed that we've all come to enjoy and appreciate.

[03:48:26] Now, listen, I'm for finding all kinds of ways for farmers to coexist and, or not coexist, but to exist and to make additional money and to really support their operations. But what I'm really afraid of, especially if we're going to be putting some of this power back into the grid or battery result, what we're going to see is a lot of these pop up and I think will really ruin something that we have largely established.

[03:48:49] The other thing I think that's not being said here is these are still solar panels. They're going to scar the natural vistas and open space. And then what happens when we have to -- when we've installed these solar panels and they have to be decommissioned, creates soil depletion.

[03:49:06] We love the soils that we have here in Western Loudoun County. And when the lease runs out, what then happens to the land? Maybe they will get some of those answers in the white paper, but I'm really concerned about going down this route for what we have established in Western Loudoun County for the last 15, 20, 30 years and where we're getting.

[03:49:27] So I'm going to vote no. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Turner? Thank you, Madam Chair. Protection of Americans' farm country is a pretty major policy pillar of the Agricultural and Rural Affairs Policy Committee for the National Association of Counties. And if you look down on the talking points, they specifically talk about agrivoltaics as a best practice to preserve farmland. A lot of these farms are being approached by major developers that just want to panel over the entire farmland with solar and offering major dollars to

[03:49:59] do it. And the agrivoltaics option is, I think, a really viable, innovative option for some of these farmers to make money off their land and still be able to be farmers and produce our farm products. And so I've been reading through the NACO policies, and this is a major policy for NACO. The other sidebar, which you were finding in data centers, we're finding in affordable housing, what's happening is because, again, we're in market imbalance and demand exceeds supply, a lot of states and even federal government options are preempting

[03:50:36] local authority in order to establish utility-scale solar on these farms. And there's no other option. And so one of NACO's positions is they have to fight to make sure that we preserve the local option and county authority to use their land in a way that's most productive.

[03:50:52] And by producing a best practice like agrivoltaics, then I think that it serves that purpose. So I'm more than happy to support this project. Thanks. Thank you. I wonder if the maker of the motion and the second of the motion would accept a friendly amendment. When we did the agrivoltaic that Senator Perry and Delegate McCullough put forward, and after I posted about it and was pretty excited about it, and I'm still very excited about it, one of the questions that was asked is what do you do with the panels when they're lively,

[03:51:27] when their lifetime is is done how do you dispose of them is there any um compounds in them that could be contaminatory i don't and i don't know those answers and so when they asked me that i would i mean my answer was i have no idea and and but it sounded like a valid question and one that i think is is is um good to know whether it's industrial or not how you dispose of the panels afterwards and when, in what way is it safe, it's something that I think I'd like to know.

[03:52:01] So I would like a friendly amendment to say that as part of the white paper they also discuss what happens when the lifetime of the panels is expired and I would ask that be a friendly amendment to this motion.

[03:52:17] Do the makers of the motion have any issue with that? I'm fine with it. All right, then I'll have, that would be the friendly amendment that I would add to the motion to figure out what do you do. Because, I mean, I don't, I honestly don't know everything solar panels are made of.

[03:52:33] Maybe somebody else does, but I don't. And so I, you know, whenever we do something like this, we have to know what the next step is later on. And if that next step later on, and I'm sure there's an answer because there's solar panels everywhere. So I know that there's an answer, but I'd just like to know that that discussion and that answer is part of this discussion.

[03:52:55] And otherwise, I'm fine. Ms. Kirshner, would you like a closing? I would. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Supervisor Kirshner, you know, I think I may have misspoke in that there wasn't any type of sort of permitting or administrative application for the PEC project.

[03:53:15] So I think the white paper might go through that, and we can always ask PEC, because what we have asked in the white paper is that they identify any sort of regulatory barriers for our agricultural community to do these sorts of projects.

[03:53:34] So I think it will come out if there are any sort of – but I know that we didn't – it didn't come to us, right, when PEC did it. So it couldn't have been major utility. couldn't have been a special exception but but i think you might be correct that it was some sort of an administrative application um because i have also heard as i've been talking to some of our agricultural folks out there that there could be financial barriers to doing this and i don't know if it's just the investment in the equipment or if it is the um just the process of getting the permits and those sorts of things so hopefully that will all that will all come through in the

[03:54:08] white paper. I do want to address the concept of view sheds and those sorts of things. And if my colleagues have not been out to the PEC project, I really, really encourage you to go out and visit the PEC project because, I mean, I just don't know how that small project is interrupting somebody's view shed or how such a small project could interrupt the vast view sheds that we all enjoy in Loudoun County and that make rural Loudoun so special and so I really do invite my colleagues to go out there and I will also say that I can't imagine that Piedmont Environmental

[03:54:47] Council would be proposing projects like this if they would in some way harm the environment or harm our lands or interrupt you know agricultural development and you know growing food and all of those things. So I do have a little bit of trust in them that they think that this is safe for our environment and safe for those who want to grow and contribute to our clean energy goals. So thank you, Madam Chair. Motion made by Mr. Brickson. Seconded by Supervisor Coronel. In favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 8 to 1 with

[03:55:27] Mr. Kirshner voting against the motion. All right, Supervisors, let's take a 10-minute break before and then come back and do two more items and depending on how fast

[03:55:36] those go go straight in the closed session. Supervisors if you can come

[04:13:42] back to the dais and take a seat I'd appreciate it. Supervisors you can come back to your seats and take a take a take a seat I would appreciate it.

[04:14:06] Okay we're going to go on and do item number six which the which is the Aspen substation which which is in the Leedsburg district would staff please come to the table good evening do you have any we've been talking about this quite some time now do you have any updates yes okay happy to forego the presentation just provide updates wonderful thank you is that okay with

[04:14:46] everybody miss miss umstead this your district is that okay with you this you have updates I mean updates would be fine yeah yes do you want to a presentation i come again would you like to have the whole presentation and what updates be fine i from my perspective updates would be fine wonderful okay everybody good with that thank you we're ready when you are the condition addressing the undergrounding of existing distribution lines was removed however the applicant has provided a memo indicating intent to do so outside of the legislative process they have also held four work group meetings and two

[04:15:24] community meetings, including one additional work group meeting since publication of the staff report. Do you have a result of those meetings? Can you can you give a description or give any results from those meetings? There haven't been any conclusions as a result of those meetings applicable to the Aspen substation other than the updates provided at the last business meeting and then the new update. Okay, I think I'll bring your mic a little closer. Thank you.

[04:15:54] all right um then if that's the case ms umset would you like to go to a motion yes ma'am i am going to go with the second option um which i believe uh includes um the design option that supervisor sains had requested i move that the board of supervisors approve leji 2024-0038

[04:16:26] Aspen substation specs 2024-0054, specs 2024-0055, and specs 2023-0026 subject to the conditions of approval dated July 2nd, 2026 with the addition of condition nine of the selection of color options charcoal buff pueblo for the screen wall identified in exhibit a

[04:17:00] to the in the conditions and based on the findings of approval provided as attachments one one a and two to the july 7th 2026 board of supervisors business meeting action item before there's a second does she need to pick a color she's a pick you need to pick a color you read all the colors a supervisor this is supervisor sayings is um request and it's staff's drafting or opaque

[04:17:32] all right yes we have is there a second motion motion is made in second just give me a second and we'll we'll have an opening and then we'll pick a color that's not opaque because opaque is not a comic is not a color um i don't like pink miss um say which like um uh was like an opening uh yes ma'am um like many hold on just a second uh she's actually guys

[04:18:04] hello she's actually talking okay okay all right the design team down here was finishing good good glad to have them on board but you can go on now You know, for me, the most important thing about this substation in particular is its critical position in maintaining grid reliability.

[04:18:37] And if we lose grid reliability, that grid is not just a data center or many data centers. It is homes in the county, people's houses losing power. It's apartments losing power.

[04:18:53] It's businesses, small businesses losing power. And for me, that is persuasive. I appreciate the additional screening that Dominion is willing to put along the W and OD.

[04:19:09] I appreciate my colleagues pressing hard for that. But I think grid reliability is of critical importance. And that's why I will be supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. Have you guys really?

[04:19:27] Ms. Umstead, do you care about the color? Yeah, I'll make it friendly. Okay. I would propose that the color be Pueblo. That would be my friendly amendment. Which is, which one? Is it orange? No, it's like a... Third one here.

[04:19:44] Oh, charcoal. It's a brownish color. It's a brownish color. It's brown, okay. Earth tones. Earth brown. there you go yes there you go it's on top there if she's accepting my second i accept okay i like that one actually comment yeah i think that's the most sort of subtle um all right so just commenting on the motion for a moment i i've i've been supportive of this application because strictly within the confines of what the board has to look at

[04:20:21] this is consistent and now we've gotten much better improvement in terms of the the buffering looking solely at this application and this is of all the ones to try to mess with this is not it because this is connecting us to the northern part of the grid the entire mid-atlantic reliability network really is dependent on this substation obviously understand what a lot of the concerns are broadly on this topic but we cannot play russian roulette with this type of issue and so

[04:21:00] the board needs to approve this and i'll be supportive thank you miss brixman thank you madam chair um i do appreciate the um the work on the reliability loop and the additional conversations that Dominion has had over the last few weeks, but this substation siting for me is still too close to the WNOD, and the visual mitigations are not enough for me. We just

[04:21:30] learned tonight how other, we have seen other examples of how the visual impacts and screening and all that can be mitigated and barrister tonight even has sort of green lattice which is much better the other problem I have is is a larger problem but in the letter from Dominion on this item it says that PJM and Dominion decided three years ago that this was going to be needed

[04:22:05] and kind of came up with a plan three years ago for a lot of this infrastructure and the county was not consulted and so I would like to find a way that we are included in those conversations in the future so that the community isn't sort of taken aback or surprised when these applications come through I I'm fine with the color I will just say and this is also speaking to a larger issue when you're in that area now this will be the fourth substation one of them has a a little further away from the WNOD has the gray wall.

[04:22:44] And the other two to the north of the WNOD have nothing. They have some mesh fencing. So it's going to look very inconsistent amongst those four different projects.

[04:22:59] I don't think we can solve it by changing the wall color, so I'm not kinda gonna fall on my sword over that. But I really would like to see Dominion work with the county to figure out how to go back to some of these substations that are really encroaching and ugly and figure out a way to make them better, at least get rid of that mesh fencing and do something nicer, especially on the W&OD, especially on some of our major corridors like Atlantic Boulevard, and figure out a way that this is less impactful on the community overall,

[04:23:38] especially because we also heard tonight that we have 95 substations in the county, either built or kind of in the pipeline, and that doesn't include more that are coming. And so I will continue to push for improvements to the design and the visual mitigations of these substations as they're coming through.

[04:24:00] I won't be supporting this application tonight. Thank you. Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be supporting this application as well after heavy consideration. I believe that as a few of my colleagues have mentioned about the grid reliability and, you know, in order to provide that electrical power for our residents, these lines need to be provided.

[04:24:36] And I'm thinking about the last week that we had with the temperatures being over 100 degrees. And, you know, if there's a possibility of something going wrong, I think that would be, you know, something that I would not like to see in our county, in our community.

[04:25:01] So I will be supporting this. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall. I wanted to go back with what Supervisor Brissman said. I'm reading this letter dated June 1st from Dominion. And I do think if there could be some consistency across the existing substations neighboring the Aspen location, I appreciate the 40 additional plant units per 100 linear feet in the locations where there are no tall vegetation, along the frontage of existing Goose Creek and Pleasant View substations.

[04:25:39] But I would ask that you look at consistency to make sure that there's a nice, you know, visual as much as we can with, you know, and I know the existing doesn't, they don't really have much of anything. So let's try and look for consistency when we're doing the screening, the enhanced landscaping.

[04:26:02] And I do appreciate the underground distribution line along the south side of the WNOD. It sounds like that's a commitment that Dominion is willing to make. It's not in the proper statement, but it's a commitment, so I appreciate that. And I also want to say thank you for having two community meetings, one virtual, one in person.

[04:26:23] That's really important to me, is going out to the community. I know we've been doing those working groups, but what's more important to me is making sure the community has a voice so I appreciate that Dominion went out in person and virtually I will be supporting this but I would like this to be a model for future data center applications in the sense that we're looking at enhancing the ones that exist that have no screening and no buffering so that we can improve the visual impact to our community.

[04:27:00] Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to agree with all my colleagues who have spoken so far in part. Obviously, I'm going to vote for this for the obvious reasons that were already stated. Thanks to the applicant for going the extra mile. I think that's really, really important.

[04:27:17] Agree to deny this is playing Russian roulette. And our job is to balance these things with our residents, our citizens, and those we represent. But I also want to agree with Ms. Briskman, even though she's voting against this, and just make a call out to our data center and substation applicants.

[04:27:37] Not only with your existing structures, I think it will go a ton of the way in the communities to go back and review some of these approvals that you already have. You don't have to. There's no requirement to. But I'm going to tell you, it'll go a long way in your communities. It will go a long way with our constituents, and I think we'll have a lot less friction when the industry steps up and improves a lot of these setbacks, or not setbacks, but screenings and landscaping and that sort of thing in areas that can be done that haven't been done.

[04:28:07] And this can be used as an example, I agree. Some things can't be done because they've been put in place years ago, but some things can, and I think that's really, at probably fairly minimal cost to a lot of these. So I think that's a really important thing to say publicly, and I would encourage all of our applicants who have had prior applications that have come in to go back and look at, okay, how can we improve this for the sake of the community, for our reputation in the community?

[04:28:34] And that's just a call I shout out. So I do applaud Supervisor Brisman for bringing that up. I have thought that for a really long time. But, again, this is one of those things that huge strides have been made. And I'd even call on our Planning Commission to try to get a lot of these concessions before they even get to us so we don't have to fight over a lot of this stuff.

[04:28:52] But anyway, nonetheless, thank you. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, my colleagues have touched on a lot of what I want to say. I talked to my Planning Commissioner and said, heads up, this is what's going on. These are the kinds of conversations that are going on.

[04:29:09] And our goal here is for neither the Planning Commission nor the Board of Supervisors to have surprises with these things that keep coming back to us over and over again. And I think we've made big strides to that. As of about three hours ago, I was copying on an email from the community representatives that are talking to Dominion.

[04:29:30] And they have said, yes, we're comfortable moving forward with Aspen, Golden, and Barrister. And we understand the time constraints. We believe that Dominion in good faith has said they are going to do these things in the future to the extent possible. My staff and I are really antsy when we see words like if practicable because with the SEC and a whole bunch of examples prior to this, if practicable means no.

[04:29:56] So we understand the time urgency. See, I believe that Dominion and NOVAC have made some assurances in these rewrites and in some of these issues here that in a good faith effort that yes, to the extent that we can comply.

[04:30:12] The issue is they've got to check with NOVA parks to find out if they've got underground utilities and if they can get access to the easement to do the plannings. There are possible technological glitches with undergrounding some of the distribution lines so it's not legally possible for them to guarantee that my point here is I think we're really really moving in the right direction as a common group for the first time maybe ever and I think that's very encouraging but my team for sure is going to be watching to see if these substations start to look like the kinds of conversations that we have had and more standardized

[04:30:50] and more preemptive, to Supervisor Kirchner's point, more preemptive efforts to make them more visually appealing to the community and less impactful on the community. So great progress. I'm happy to support this, and let's keep up the good work. Thanks.

[04:31:12] So I think it was very good that we halted this project, I think twice actually, to have these discussions about design and how they can look better, what we should be doing, how they can be uniformed, both this one and as it's been said, to go back and look at data centers and substations that have already been put forward and are there.

[04:31:34] And all of this could be better designed and look better. What I learned over the past couple of weeks that I actually didn't know is that the entire East Coast is connected on the grid. So it's not just the COG metro area, which is what I thought.

[04:31:53] It's the entire East Coast that's connected on this grid. And so when I think about what happened just last week in the Algonquian district when the power went out, I was literally up all night long checking my emails and talking to people because it was incredibly hot.

[04:32:11] We didn't have, because we hadn't planned on having cooling stations open that night. There were people who had medical devices who were very concerned about their medical devices. There were people who had medicine in their fridges that needed to remain cold.

[04:32:26] and one person, they lost their medication and had to toss it all out and then have to go to the insurance company, ask their insurance company, could they not have to pay for all those medications again. The reliability of electricity is a safety, a health and safety issue.

[04:32:46] And so we can have all the kind of big lofty conversations we want to have, but when it comes down to it and people don't have power at 3 in the morning and they have an oxygen machine or a ventilator or something or medicine or something that they need to have power, it literally becomes a life issue.

[04:33:08] And I won't say yes to all substations. In fact, I won't say yes to most of them. But a reliability substation where you can have not just your power go off in Loudoun, Prince William, Fairfax, Montgomery County, Charles County, but up and down the East Coast is not something that I can, that I believe is, honestly, it's not even in my right to put that many people in danger. It would be in some ways for me immoral to put that many people in danger. And so I will vote for this for the health and safety of our residents and hundreds of thousands

[04:33:47] of more. Ms. Umstead, would you like a closing? No, Madam Chair. I think everybody said what needed to be said. Thank you. All right. Motion was made by Supervisor Umstead, seconded by Supervisor LeTerno. I want people to say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will pass 8 to 1.

[04:34:11] Supervisors, if I could take a point of information. Mr. Rogers, what could be the possible results if if we don't say if we if we if we had voted a different way tonight what could have been the possible results to that vote this is theoretical sure but assuming you voted no you could be challenged on that decision on the land use decision in the loudon county circuit court and the decision is based on the fairly debatable standard however you realized

[04:34:49] with a special exception, it's a permitted use. And then the question is whether the conditions to that specially permitted use are sufficient to mitigate the impacts of that use. The circuit court could overturn the board's decision. Also, and I know this is probably where you're going as well, is if the board turned down substations without having a valid basis for doing so, It is likely that utility providers would go to the General Assembly and seek to remove the county's zoning authority over substations.

[04:35:27] What the General Assembly does is another matter. All right. Thank you very much. We have one more item, and then we're going to go back to closed session. So our last item is the Barrister substation.

[04:35:44] Would everyone please come to the table or stay at the table? How you doing? Good evening. And this is in the Sterling District. Same question. Mr. Sains, do you, would you like something more or just updates or what would you like? Just updates, please. And we have just the updates, please. Sure. Following the May 19th board business meeting, the applicant revised the screening and buffering on the east side of the proposed substation. Here's a rendering as well that they provided. The applicant increased the landscape buffer along what would be future thumb drive or barrister street.

[04:36:20] from 15 feet to 25 feet, and committed an additional screening element shown here. The color proposed is green. They continue to propose the screening wall in the back. The color proposed is buff. And staff find that the proposed enhancements are intended to create the type of urban visual interest along streetscapes, and staff can support the application.

[04:36:47] - Thank you. Mr. Sainz, would you like to go to a motion? sure um i move that the board of supervisors approve leji-2025-0010 barrister substation special exception 2025-0021 and special exception-2025-0023 subject to the conditions of approval dated july 2nd 2026 and based on the findings for approval provided as attachments one and two to the july 7 2026 border supervisors business meeting action item thank you this Motions made and seconded by Supervisor Umstead.

[04:37:23] Is that who seconded the motion? All right. Discussion on the motion. Mr. Sains. Thank you, Madam Chair. I won't say it as delicately as some of the others in the last application, but how did we get here? We had to defer, ask, plead from residents, from the Board of Supervisors for the design that we see up here now.

[04:37:52] We shouldn't have to. Come to find out there were options for the security wall color. Come to find out, there are options for the design wall, which is the green wall, which is nice.

[04:38:09] But apparently they had this in their back pocket the whole darn time. We shouldn't have to defer and fight, plead, residents coming in, screaming and emailing and asking for us to get here.

[04:38:27] It's been said a few other times before for a few other applications, come with your best foot forward the first time. then we wouldn't have to do work sessions in a planning commission two or three. We wouldn't have to defer things here.

[04:38:42] We wouldn't have to push items off and have hours long as debates on items. If again, you come with your best foot forward the first time around. So hopefully the folks in the audience that are still here get the point.

[04:38:59] And moving forward, as has been mentioned, for the next applications, we will see these things the first time around when we have our meetings and not having to beg, plead, and borrow, and so on, or ask for folks to send me designs in other countries or in other states when you had this the whole darn time in your back pocket.

[04:39:22] I know some of the folks in the audience personally, and they're good people. One, we spent a few years together living pretty close together, and we grew out of our situation, which was great and doing pretty good. Another one I met and got to know on a personal level and shared stories about our families and whatnot, which is great.

[04:39:43] And, again, these are good people, but, again, we shouldn't have to be begging and pleading for these things. Bring them forward the first time around. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you, Chair Randall. Can you remind me, given the conversations we had earlier tonight, what type of substation is this?

[04:40:06] This is a hybrid substation. It means both air insulated and gas insulated. I'm sorry. I meant is it like now I'm forgetting what the definitions were of the different type of substations. reliability it is not a reliability substation it's a distribution substation okay um okay and it will serve the data centers nearby yes it will serve the data centers at the dulles-barry site okay um i will agree wholeheartedly with my colleague from sterling supervisor sayings

[04:40:46] um i i think that we we found a good compromise here at least there seems to be some grass and some buffer between what what could be a road or sidewalk or anything else near there i guess where did these images come from the applicant provided the rendering shown the applicant provided the renderings shown okay because we had this whole conversation earlier about how the walls are really never as tall as the metal and we have experienced that with a

[04:41:23] a couple substations that we've worked on and approved in the county. So I suspect that the metal and the actual construction of this substation is going to be above that wall, right?

[04:41:40] There's a lot more to a substation than just those lines and a couple poles, as we've learned. Clarify, madam, the equipment inside is what maybe you may be referring to? Yes. Okay. Oh, yes, yes, ma'am.

[04:41:55] The equipment inside will be visible above that wall, and for all the reasons that we discussed earlier this evening. So along with Supervisor Sane's request, I will request when applicants come forward with renderings like this that they show what will be seen above the wall.

[04:42:18] Because again, I drive by a huge substation on Atlantic Boulevard by the Dulles Town center on a regular basis where you can see the monstrosity way above the wall and I understand you know staff explained to us why you have to have that clearance but the images should be honest and show the metal and all the other infrastructure that's going to be above the wall please when when applicants come forward again I think that that is something that would

[04:42:53] be transparent to us and would provide transparency to the public. Thank you. I will support this though. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I do want to just echo something that actually Supervisor Kirchner said on the last application, which is we've been going through my district and cataloging all of the existing substations and what they look like.

[04:43:21] And there are several, quite a few, that predate really any of our updated regulation. They're just massively exposed. And some of them are in really, really visible locations that thousands of people pass every day.

[04:43:37] And I'm sure that's not unique to my district. But those are the ones, you know, Mr. Kirscher said, you know, we can't do anything about them, regulatory and legally. But I think in the interest of trying to move the conversation forward on substations, it would be very beneficial to have some honest conversations about some improvement on some of those with some modicum of screening.

[04:44:03] Some of them have no screening whatsoever. And I think if we wonder why the atmosphere has gotten to where it's gotten in this county where there's hundreds of people coming in, there's a lot of reasons. but it does not help when the image uh exists for many residents of the the worst case scenario on what these look like because that's what was built um and it took us you know tightening regulations over time to to be able to get to the point where that's not what's being built um and even now having to kind of negotiate that so i think we we do need this new paradigm i i

[04:44:38] appreciate everybody who's been engaged in this and it's it's worth saying that the the applicant here has made really good faith efforts and is is engaging in a way that the stakeholders and the board and the staff are finding to be very open and forthcoming and so they deserve credit for that so i'm not here to you know talk about past everything other than to ask i would like to have a conversation about trying to fix some of these and i can you know actually provide the county attorney a list of these and we can send it along um that being said this particular application

[04:45:14] is serving data centers that largely already exist that are being built or are in the process of being finished. It is in the back side of that one of those projects. It is not one of these that is visible. You have to literally be going into the site to try to find it. So this is not one of the ones that truly are going to create that visual impact that the public really has a visceral action to I also think there's some elevation here which will help so I will support this this application I think supervisor Sains has done a good job

[04:45:51] working with the applicant and getting to this point and again hopefully we can kind of have a reset going forward on these thank you thank you mr. Turner thank you madam chair this is a very good illustrative example of what is probably coming up ahead I asked my staff to research the history of the Dullesbury data center that this distribution substation supports it became a data center allowable use by right in 2018 in 2020 or 21 they submitted

[04:46:28] a zoning plan concept amendment to increase the FAR which triggered it in kicked it into a legislative application that legislative application was approved by this board in 2022 by a vote of 801. I was absent and Supervisor Cajone was not on that board so the other seven members that voted to approve this data center are sitting here tonight.

[04:46:55] The reason I bring this up is there are 25 roughly according to DPC just sent out an email this week there are 25 data centers that were grandfathered under the March 18, 2025 specs change that we made attaching specs to all data centers, and there's another 15 that were grandfathered under the 2023 zoning ordinance rewrite. So there's a total of 40 theoretically by right in the pipeline.

[04:47:23] This board approved this data center, and I personally believe and have been saying for months now, if you approve a data center, you're approving a substation and you're approving a power line. That's not a rigid rule, but it's a pretty good one to live by. I heard that said the the other day by Dominion. And I think that's true. And I think I have some pretty serious reservations if the board approves a data center and then disapproves the associated substation that's required by the data center. Now, in this case, we approved the data center. It's a distribution data substation directly to support the data center that we approved. And so I'm

[04:47:59] comfortable with this and I will support it. And it's helpful to me that the community just, like I said a few hours ago, supports it as well. The reason I bring this up is that we have data centers coming to us that this board has never seen, never approved, and they're going to ask us for approval on a distribution substation. That's going to have some real issues associated with it.

[04:48:21] So heads up, preview of coming attractions. I think this one is good, but it's a very good luster example of distribution substations that should be approved. Thank you. So this is not a reliability substation, correct? Correct.

[04:48:37] So this is not to make the grid reliable. This is to serve a data center, correct? I hesitate to affirm that, not knowing how the grid functions, but generally, yes.

[04:48:54] But it's not the reliability substation that can impact the entire East Coast, basically. Okay. All right. Thank you. The motion was made by Supervisor Sandro. You want to closing? Sure. Yeah, no, just in closing, and thank you for all the comments and whatnot, and again, you know, I don't want to sound too harsh in my opening, but, you know, again, we appreciate what was done on this, and this will hopefully be, as a joke, Mr. Turner coined the phrase, I think it was platinum gold standard a few years ago.

[04:49:24] this hopefully will be our platinum gold standard moving forward and then some in regards to the screening walls and the the decorative design wall as well to make it a little bit more attractive and I know we hopefully will see some some better examples moving forward with the other substation applications that we have in the pipeline so again want to be appreciative to the applicant and to the land use attorney company that worked on this to get it done But, again, let's make sure we're being trend centers and innovators moving forward and not falling behind the eight ball on things.

[04:50:01] So, thank you. Who seconded this? Ms. Umstead, right? Okay. Mr. Sainz made the motion. Ms. Umstead seconded the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion will pass 8-1. I will vote against this motion. We will now go to public, I mean, disclosures, and then we will go to, actually just do disclosures and comments right now, let's do them just both together.

[04:50:29] Yeah, I'm sorry, that's what I meant. Yeah, well, let's do nominations first. If you have nominations, stick your light on. Mr. Crony. I would like to nominate Madeline Skinner for the at-large Historic District Review Committee. That's it.

[04:50:51] Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I nominate Trustee Erica Daley for reappointment to the Library Board of Trustees. Mr. Kertzner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to renominate Stacey Metcalf as the Royal Economic Development Council representative on the Zoning Ordinance Committee.

[04:51:10] Her term is up on September 30th, but because we don't have an August meeting, I'm moving to renominate her now so that we can vote on that in September. You took mine. You just took mine. Well, you have the choice of whether to go first or last. Yeah, you got there first. You can second it.

[04:51:26] I do second it. I second Stacey. Yes, I second Stacey Metcalf. Mr. Sainz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I nominate Jasmin Taylor, Tyler, excuse me, for the Community Criminal Justice Board. And I'd also like to get her nominated now rather than later on if it's possible.

[04:51:43] Want to suspend the rules? I'd like to suspend the rules and make her appointment official now. Because why? Because they have a meeting coming up, and we're going to have a break in August. Do they have a quorum? I don't know, so I couldn't answer that question, but I think we should go ahead and get her approved now, please.

[04:52:02] That's a very unusual thing to do unless they're not going to have a quorum. She can go to the meeting. She just wouldn't be able to vote. That's why I'm asking, do they have a quorum? But she can go to the meeting. Sure. They don't have quorum. All right.

[04:52:20] Well, then you need to – I'll finish nominations, and you make a motion to suspend. All right. Thank you. Ms. Bricksman? Mr. Hemstreet. Yeah, well, hold on, Ms. Bricksman. Your face is doing all kinds of stuff down there.

[04:52:38] Just give me a second. Ms. Bricksman. Ms. Bricksman. I nominate Mohamed Beg as the Algonquian District Representative on the Communications Commission. I don't really want to say this name, but Mr. Hemstreet?

[04:52:57] Yes. So what we heard was a nomination for Stacey Metcalf for reappointment as the Rural Economic Development Council representative to the Zoning Ordnance Committee. So Ms. Metcalf is actually on the confirmations list, so she was confirmed for reappointment earlier, so we just need to clarify.

[04:53:22] I thought her term expired in September. So we haven't, that's really weird, because I haven't, I was going to. So she was nominated by who? She was nominated on the last board meeting. By whom? By Mr. Kirshner.

[04:53:41] So we just want to clarify. Do this twice? So she's been confirmed tonight then. It was confirmed for REDC. Earlier. This is REDC. Oh, to ZOC. Well, that motion didn't say that. On the Zoning Ordnance Committee, to ZOC.

[04:53:58] Okay, so I think that the... we have on the confirmations item which is a carryover from the last board meeting nominations suvrata kirschner at the on the what month are we in we're in july so it's on the june 16th meeting nominated stacy metcalf to the zoning ordinance committee for reappointment as the rural economic development council rep so that nomination was made on the june 16th meeting so we carried that forward it was on the confirmations item as from tonight to

[04:54:37] is on the confirmations item tonight when it was approved on consent i just want to clarify that we're talking about what we're talking with the board i thought one was the redc for some reason i had in my head and then one was the redc um member to the zone to zog that's what i thought that doesn't work like that that doesn't work like that so it was on confirmation i'm sorry Well, I'm just saying the REDC puts on Zoc who they will want to put on Zoc.

[04:55:05] You don't have to make a nomination to Zoc for that if it's coming from the REDC. Is that what you're saying? Okay, my understanding that Ms. Metcalf was told to. So we have one more meeting in July. We can figure this out before then. Okay, let's do that.

[04:55:21] All right. And if we need to suspend the rules because they don't have quorum, then we can. Ms. Metcalfe's term on the RADC, we're recording as valid through December of 28. Yeah, that's what I have, too, because, yeah.

[04:55:37] Ms. Brooksman? Well, she has been confirmed. I just want to make sure the board's clear. On the consent agenda at 4 p.m. today, she was confirmed, or whatever the time it was, she was confirmed. All right, thank you. All right, Mr. Sainz, would you like to suspend the rules? Yes, ma'am.

[04:55:57] Well, he said that they don't have quorum. All right, all right. I'll withdraw, I'll withdraw. No, I'll withdraw, it's fine. Okay, yeah, she can go to the meeting, though. She can go to the meeting. Yeah, yeah. She can attend, she just can't vote. I'll withdraw the motion to suspend.

[04:56:13] Okay, well, you didn't make a motion, that was cool. All right, let's go to disclosures and comments. Mr. Crony. Okay, thank you, Chair Randall. On June 22nd, my staff attended a pre-meeting for a dog daycare and boarding facility on St. Louis Road.

[04:56:35] On June 29th, my staff had a call with the applicant for Happy Paws. On July 1st, a member of my staff had a call with Novak regarding the DEMO substation. On July 2nd, my staff met with Molly Navatri and Christine DeWitt regarding the School for Advanced Studies application.

[04:56:55] All right, my board comments. So I want to make it clear that I have not voted for one data center since I took office in 2024. Why, you ask? There are many reasons, but one reason is the lack of a sustainable plan for an electrical infrastructure that is required for data center uses, whether they are by right or legislative.

[04:57:16] The data center industry is driving the massive increase in power infrastructure. In July 2025, I submitted a BMI to add electrical transmission line and substation information to staff reports for data center applications. I did this to provide transparency and clarity about the location of on-site and off-site high-voltage transmission lines and electrical substations. We've been told that we cannot speak about power, but we could always speak about the location of high-voltage transmission lines and substations because that is land use. It is

[04:57:50] infrastructure, just like transportation and public utilities. Unfortunately, now we are playing catch-up because we did not have a proactive plan for the location of substations and high-voltage transmission lines that data center applications require. The electrical infrastructure CPAM was started in December 2024, one year after I took office. Phase one that was approved in February 2026 provides a map with our preferred location of high voltage transmission lines within existing corridors. Phase two is ongoing and that is the proactive plan for new high voltage transmission

[04:58:28] corridors. This plan will not be approved until spring 2027. An electrical infrastructure working group was just established in June to discuss the planned electrical build-out and coordinate with electrical providers and the affected community. As we are trying to catch up, our communities are bearing the, are really suffering, I would say, as evidenced by the Golden to Mars and the Valley North power line battles. Substation battles are also happening with 95 existing or proposed

[04:59:03] substations and 30 additional substations anticipated as demand grows. I support proactive planning for electrical infrastructure that protects our communities and puts residents ahead of business interests. I also support asking the General Assembly to grant Loudoun County the authority to pause or limit data centers until we have a comprehensive sustainable electrical infrastructure plan in place and updated data center and substation standards that better protect our residents quality of life thank you thank you mr crony miss brixman

[04:59:41] thank you madam chair um i want to emphatically disassociate myself with the town hall event that took place in this boardroom last night i find it absolutely stunning that the county administrator the county attorney, the county clerks were engaged to support an event providing an impression that it was an official board event. It was not. The event was neither formally endorsed nor authorized by this board. When this room is reserved for political parties, political leaders or other groups, county staff is not engaged to support to the extent which they were last night, such as a county clerk being engaged to time members of the public during their questions

[05:00:21] and remarks. In my opinion, this was a misuse of county resources. I also disassociate myself with many of the comments made from behind this dais last night that may be misconstrued as the Board of Supervisors' official position on a whole slew of topics. Many of those comments do not reflect my opinion, my values, or my agenda when it comes to data centers, data center policy, and the nature of how the county became the data center capital of the world with all of the commiserate issues such as poor air quality, noise pollution, threatened water resources and the visual impacts on our residents as these buildings and power lines have encroached on their lives.

[05:00:57] As someone who has voted against data center rezoning since 2020, voted against the grandfathering resolution in 2025, and is a consistent skeptic of new data center development, I am also deeply offended by the comment that dissenting votes by members of this board do not matter.

[05:01:14] I can assure my colleagues that Algonquian constituents and many in the county writ large appreciate my dissenting votes and my ongoing efforts to protect them from the negative impacts of this industry. All of us up here have somewhat different constituencies. We have different lived experiences, and we are elected to be the voice of our communities. Our constituencies believe our votes and our voices matter, and they elected us for that reason, and sometimes that requires dissent.

[05:01:45] According to the Gun Violence Archive, as we mark the halfway point in 2026, I am discouraged to share that we've lost 6,669 lives to gun violence so far this year, and our nation has experienced 235 mass shootings.

[05:02:02] 446 of the deaths were children ages 12 to 17, and 116 were children under the age of 11. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my staff attended the Aspen to Golden open houses. Thank you. Ms. Glass.

[05:02:20] Thank you, Madam Chair. On Wednesday, July 1st, I spoke with representatives from Dominion at the Aspen substation community meeting about the Aspen and Golden substation application. Also on June 25th, I went to the NVRC meeting, and we had adopted five resolutions.

[05:02:49] One is the extension of an auditor engagement, the adoption of the fiscal year 2027 annual budget and programs, the authorization to purchase meeting room audiovisual equipment and furniture, the election of officers for fiscal year 2027 with Supervisor Karan Sains as treasurer, and the renewal of support agreement with go virginia regional council which is a business-led economic development initiative with funding to invest collaboration projects that bring

[05:03:24] more businesses and opportunities into the region thank you thank you ma'am mr letourno thank you madam chair by way of disclosures on june 18th my staff met with representatives of DLA Piper and Black Chamber to discuss Tech Park at Dulles, which is Leji 2025 0007.

[05:03:47] I wanted to mention, unfortunately, I had to miss the joint meeting with the Planning Commission, but I do, at least within our district, I speak with my Planning Commissioner very regularly, and we try to work very closely together, and I appreciate that was the sentiment behind that meeting to try to improve that, not necessarily improve, but just to sort of take advantage of the relationship and the two bodies that we have. Because of the time of year, I will raise a topic I have raised before just for the board's consideration, and that is our recess

[05:04:25] meeting schedule. And I'm raising it again because every year, for those of you that don't have kids in LCPS you don't necessarily pay as close attention to it but every year it seems like the date of back to school is getting pushed up a little bit. So this year it's August 15th and Ms. Glass certainly knows this. This year it's August 15th which means that the August recess is only half a recess. If you have a kid that does any kind of activities or play sports that That official report dates August 1 this year.

[05:05:00] And so just raising for our consideration a possibility which is that we could have our recess the second meeting in July and the first meeting in August. It would still be a month and it would kind of capture a period of time right before that starts getting busy again. And I say that less for us because we're board members and we deal with it but also for all the staff that support us that have kids in the school system and things like that.

[05:05:23] We just kind of squeeze them a little bit with this timing. So I will raise that just for future consideration when we get closer to our calendar discussion at the end of the year. That is all. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner.

[05:05:39] Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to wish everybody, now that we have celebrated our 250th anniversary as a nation, happy 4th and happy 250th. I had a great time with my family going to a number of the events, continue to celebrate our 250 years as a country, although not perfect, the greatest country on earth, and I'm really proud to be an American and super, super great to have celebrated 250 years as a nation.

[05:06:09] A couple of comments, no disclosures, but we have an important road study coming up in Catoctin this week. I've published this information on my Facebook and by email, but I wanted to remind everyone that Route 15 parallel roadway study listing session is this Wednesday, July 8th, that's tomorrow starting at 6 p.m. at the Smarts Mill Middle School cafeteria in Leesburg.

[05:06:33] This is a chance for residents to share their experience with cut-through traffic, which we've already heard today because of our Rural Rustic Roads program is a problem, about how them share about congestion and safety issues on the roadways that run parallel to Route 15, a very important project that we helped initiate and this board supported.

[05:06:51] Their feedback will guide the county staff as they assess the existing conditions and come up with practical and near-term recommendations. And I'm grateful for this initiative getting underway. It's a lot of hard work by my office and has been doing to address the serious complaints and problems that these secondary roles have experiencing due to heavy traffic on Route 15.

[05:07:15] There are some community events coming up in Catoctin. Blue Mons Bear Chase Brewing Company will host its second annual Handmade Christmas in July event on July 11th. So if you're missing Christmas, feel free to go there and have a few beers. Admission to the event is free.

[05:07:33] Christmas in July, as they say. They'll have food and drinks available from the brewery and handcrafted items from 30 local artists. The Purseville is having its wine and food festival, and it will be on July 18th. There will be live music, winery and brewery vendors, food and snack vendors, and local exhibitors.

[05:07:51] Early bird tickets are available at their website. that ladies and gentlemen is the news of from catoctin thank you i toss it back to you madam chair miss um stop uh no disclosures and no comments thank you thank you mr sains thank you madam chair mandatory disclosures on june 25th my staff attended dominion energies open house program from aspen and golden substations on june 29th my staff attended dominion energies

[05:08:25] open house program for golden substation and let me double check the date here bear with me one second i believe it was yesterday yesterday um july 6 right yeah today's the 7th i can't keep my date state gate uh dates in order my staff met with the the applicant for the loudon school for advanced studies or rezoning application and I would like to make an announcement for the news that's going on in Sterling. Our annual back-to-school supply drive has started again

[05:09:05] which is starting from July 6 and running through September 14th. This initiative would help reduce the burden on school costs on families who are fortunately need proprietary spending on household basics like rent, food, clothing, medical supplies. So whatever school supplies that you could think of when you're buying for your family or if you don't have any children attending school but you would like to help out a family or a neighbor or friend think about them we need school supplies like pencils crayons wipes other school supplies you can buy them at your local stores and drop them off at the sterling library the clobmore rec center or the dullest town center or you can go

[05:09:43] to our amazon witch list order online and they'll be delivered directly to us so again that's from now until September 14th and if you're interested in hosting a back-to-school drive at your place of business please reach out to the Sterling District Office for more information. Also a friendly reminder that the summer school lunch program is still going on at a few schools around the county so please make sure you're taking advantage of this program and then also reminder effective

[05:10:17] July 1st we're already seven days in. We have transit on demand is up and running in Sterling. This service has been a pilot program started in the Leesburg District by all counts that is doing very well. So we're going to assume the same will happen in Sterling. So if you're interested in getting more information please go to loudon.gov/transit-on-demand to receive more information on this great pilot program that's now within the Sterling District. And thank you for the residents that came out and spoke to us during the the public period comment you could as i always say every single time you could have chose to be anywhere uh but you chose to be with us to speak

[05:10:55] your mind on on topics and issues that are near and dear to your heart so we appreciate you doing that and i'll just say let's treat each other with respect and dignity that's all thank you mr turner thank you madam chair uh on june 29th and july 1st my staff and i spoke with kathleen Leonard and Greg Matthey from Dominion to discuss the Barrister and Aspen substation.

[05:11:26] On June 25th, 30th, and July 3rd, my staff and I spoke with Kathleen Leonard from Dominion to discuss the Aspen, Golden, and Barrister substation. And on June 22nd, 30th, and July 6th, my staff and I met with Dominion, Novak, and Equinix to discuss the Barrister, Aspen, Golden, and Deimos substations.

[05:11:43] I have -- I have a fond, funny, and somewhat off-color story to relate, and so I will tread gently, but I would like to relate it. I found out last week that my first roommate from the Air Force Academy passed away last week. Paul Taylor was his name. And he was a good guy, kind of a dweeb, but then so was I. It was summer of 1969, summer of Woodstock. Everybody else was Woodstock, and I was going through first basic cadet training at the Air Force Academy. There's a pleasant experience. And we had a rule. Our doors got kicked in at 6.30 in the morning, and when the

[05:12:20] Doors got kicked in, you had five minutes to have your room in special inspection order and be in uniform and out in ranks. And the problem was, is that you couldn't be seen in the hallway before they kicked your door in. And what would happen was, I would wake up this whole first three weeks, I would wake up, and when I woke up, you slept on top of your bed, it was already made, because you didn't have time to make a bed, so you made your bed the night before and you just slept on top of your bed.

[05:12:50] And I would wake up, and as soon as my eyes opened, I had to go to the bathroom so bad, I couldn't stand it. And Paul is up already, and he's buzzing around the room, he's cleaning everything, he's cleaning all the tile, and he's cleaning it. He said, Turner, get up, come on, get up, get up. And I said, I can't, I just can't get up.

[05:13:07] And this went on for two, three weeks. And finally, he admitted late in the three-week period that, in fact, he had already gotten up and simply gone to the bathroom in our sink. And I said, that is not fair.

[05:13:24] That is absolutely not fair. He was a good, good guy, and he retired as an Air Force colonel and passed away. And I honor his memory. As we say at the Air Force Academy, he is gone but not forgotten. Thank you. Thank you. So let me say that I find it just kind of shockingly hypocritical that Supervisor Bricksman would make those comments, seeing how she has had town halls where she has not only had the staff come to the town halls, but had the staff be on program as like the main speaker as a town hall.

[05:13:54] And in fact, had one town hall where she had the staff there, and then she interviewed them or she moderated a panel with the staff there. And so the idea that staff hasn't helped out at town halls is ludicrous. I certainly wouldn't have ever done that, sit down and interview the staff at a town hall.

[05:14:14] And the reason I had it here was because of the threats right now going on here and in the world. I announced this data center from this podium, I mean, I'm sorry, this town hall, from this dais. It was on the FOIA calendar.

[05:14:30] If anyone wanted to object, they could have objected, and they did not. But to be very, very clear, Ms. Briggsman, you've done the same thing and had people from the staff off-site at your town hall speaking as you interviewed them.

[05:14:47] So memories are short, but let's keep that clear. I also want to say this. I, and I said this last night, I will disagree with my colleagues. I use Ms. Umstead as an example. I disagree with Ms. Umstead's decision-making process and often her decisions, especially as it relates to data center.

[05:15:08] I never have questioned her intentions, ever, ever. We can disagree with one another, and we can disagree with our decision-making process and what we come to without questioning one another's intentions.

[05:15:24] That is not something this board has done, and it's not something I believe will be helpful for this board going forward. We are the board that we are because we don't do that. We don't make accusations, we don't say things that are not true, as was done tonight.

[05:15:41] We don't have short memories and accuse somebody of doing something that they have done themselves. We try at our very least to be collegial, if nothing else be collegial. So I will disagree with people, but I'm not going to disrespect them, and I'm not going to question their intentions, because to do that harms the board, harms the staff, and most importantly harms our constituents who we are all here to serve. I have great respect for the service of my colleagues. The last thing I want to say is I was so happy and

[05:16:18] relieved that the Supreme Court said the birthright citizenship in this country is the people who are born in this country are citizens. I have friends, I have a staff, I have people that I dearly love whose parents may not have been here in the documented status, but were born here and they're every bit as American as I am, and I am so thrilled by that ruling.

[05:16:41] Thank you very much. Do we need a break before we go to closed session? Nope. All right. Mr. Turner, would you like to read us into three closed sessions? I move the Board of Supervisors recessed this public meeting and entered a closed session pursuant to Section 2.23711A3 of the Code of Virginia to consider the disposition of a parcel of property for public use in the Broad Run Election District. I move that the Board of Supervisors recess this public meeting and enter into closed session pursuant to section 2.23711 of the Code of Virginia to discuss a prospective expansion of an existing business or industry

[05:17:20] where no previous announcement has been made broad has been made in the Broad Run Election District. And I move that the Board of Supervisors recess this public meeting and enter into closed session pursuant to sections 2.2, 37, 11, A5, and A6 of the Code of Virginia to discuss expansion of an existing business in the Leesburg District where no previous announcement was made and the investment of public funds and a facility in the Leesburg District where competition and bargaining are involved to retain an existing business. I will give that second to Ms. Glass.

[05:17:53] Motion made and seconded. Discussion on the motion. All the people to say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 9-0.

[06:12:36] Okay, we're going to read in.

[06:36:09] We're back in session. Mr. Turner, will you read us in, please? I move that the closed session be adjourned. The Board of Supervisors reconvened at the public meeting that the minutes of the public meeting should reflect that no formal action was taken in the closed session and further move that the resolution certifying the closed session be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting.

[06:36:26] Motion made and seconded. Mr. Letourneau. Discussion on the motion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Would everyone please affirm? Affirm. And I affirm as well.

[06:36:42] I do want to say one more time that the July 21st meeting will start at 6 o'clock instead of 4 because we will not have a quorum on the dais at 4 and we will likely not have a quorum on the dais at 5.

[06:36:58] We should be able to have a quorum back on the day at 6:00, so we have a 6:00 start time on the 21st. I think that is all. We are adjourned.

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