Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2023
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 3h 23m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3239
Official Board of County Supervisors page (Prince William County): https://www.pwcva.gov/department/board-county-supervisors

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 2026-11-04. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:10] Good afternoon. It is 2:03 on Tuesday, February 14th, 2023. Happy Valentine's Day. Those who wish, please join me for a moment of silence. Thank you. If we could all rise for the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

[00:00:37] and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God. Okay, we don't have any items are because it's a work session day so we will move directly into public comment time we'll hear in-person and remote public comments this afternoon we currently have two people signed up to speak in person each speaker will have three minutes to share their views opinions regarding matters before the

[00:01:12] board please state your name and generally where you live in Northern Virginia, and this isn't applicable, but after the first 15 minutes of in-person public comments, we will close the sign-up list. So up today, we have two speakers, Mitch Nason and Jess Brown.

[00:01:36] Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Mitch Nason resided. My address is on file. As you all are well aware, an 18-year employee of the county and president of the Prince Wing Professional Firefighters. I stand before you today. I actually didn't plan on testifying this afternoon, but I felt it was appropriate to give you all an update. I sent an email to everyone supervisor i'll touch base with you just kicked back to my email address so i'm not quite sure just but shared some information with you all over the past couple months regarding the attrition rates in the fire department as well as our vacancy rates the staffing crisis that's being caused because of that and then the underlying shortfall in our compensation package that i believe is is driving that and that's why i think it's pertinent to

[00:02:14] today's discussion and what i wanted to just make sure everyone was aware of is that i provide you with some attrition numbers and the vacancy numbers, and those just went up again by two today. We just got two more resignations today, so I thought it was appropriate to share that. In addition, of course, you all probably saw the CPI numbers just were released and showed that inflation was up yet again, albeit at a slower pace. And so, as outlined in the emails, I think there's three rationales, three specific reasons why you all should consider a compensation increase for your fire department, and quite frankly, for all county employees, but I'm here to advocate on behalf of the fire department.

[00:02:47] And number one is just simply the market analysis, some of which you're going to get information today from your consultant. The second is inflation. Since our last market adjustment back in 2019, we've seen our wages eroded by about 16%. Our starting salary has been stagnant at $18.11 an hour. And then finally, pay parity amongst your public safety agencies.

[00:03:06] January 1st, a little bit over a month ago, UL instituted a pay raise for your police department, which was well-earned, well-deserved, and I believe actually showed some great leadership on UL's behalf to invest in your county staff and at this point now we're seeing the the parity at all ranks or the disparity at all ranks in the police department converted to the fire department is astounding and it's being felt and so on behalf of myself personally but also all of our members especially those that are watching today online we look forward to the discussions you all are going to have today as you all make the as you wade into budget season and take on the important tasks that

[00:03:44] you all do every year which is deciding how to utilize the hard-earned money the taxpayers of this county to provide the best services to them so thank you all for your deliberations and for your continued service to the county. Thank you. Next speaker please. Hi everybody I'm Jess Brown with SCIU Virginia 512. I'm speaking on behalf of SCIU Virginia 512 union supporters. I live in Fairfax Virginia but I've been working with the incredible Prince William County union leaders and I stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters from the firefighters union here today

[00:04:23] just to talk about the collective bargaining ordinance I also want to lift up Maggie Hansford in the tremendous victory that she had last week with the Prince William Educators Association that is the largest bargaining unit to vote yes for a union contract in in Virginia to date that's 11,000 county employees who now have the right to negotiate a union contract, and that is so inspiring. And I just want to talk about the top three changes that we are urging the board to make

[00:04:56] during the 90-day review period that Supervisor Bode directed. We have the right to bargain over pay and conditions, but Prince William County employees also need the right to bargain over working conditions if county employees can't talk about working conditions with the county are you going to help resolve the issues we will have to bring health and safety issues staff issues and others to the board to meetings like this because the current ordinance doesn't

[00:05:28] allow it the ordinance must include full-time and part-time employees regardless of benefit status Black and brown people make the majority of part-timers in the county. If you exclude provisional workers, that means many people of color will be denied access to a union.

[00:05:52] Finally, the third top issue is unfair labor practices need to include clear standards and accountability so all our rights as workers and as union members are protected. Otherwise, this ordinance is nothing but a fancy sheet of paper with no real accountability.

[00:06:12] And just to do a quick overview of the full list, it's still missing full scope of bargaining, real bargaining over working conditions not undermined by the county rights section. It's still missing provisional employees who work more than 120 days per year for police supervisors or captains and above for fire supervisors or deputy chiefs and above still missing standard practices and grounds for ulps it's still missing standard powers and autonomy to be effective to be effective

[00:06:45] neutral party for the labor relations administrator and finally it's still missing employee right to use county communication systems other than email to discuss their union thank you so much for your time thank you miss man do we have anyone signed up rest is there anyone online for in for public comment time okay that will conclude our public comment time for today uh next on we are on to the county executive time mr shorter the floor is yours great thank you very much madam chair

[00:07:22] and board members i will be quick first we are very pleased to announce that the household hazardous waste and electronics recycling program reopened to the public last week february 8th this drop-off service is available for all prince william county residents with operating hours on wednesdays and saturdays from 10 a.m to 5 p.m residents can find more information about the program at pwcva.gov backslash trash and recycling we are also pleased to announce

[00:08:02] that prince william county is now a certified member of the virginia values veterans program or v3 program the v3 program helps employers develop and implement successful long-term strategies to recruit hire and retain virginia veterans now the county has access to veteran specific job fairs we are also on the v3 website so veterans and transitioning service members can view our job openings. Being a member of the V3 program allows us to tap into a valuable

[00:08:40] talent pool with unique knowledge and abilities that our veterans gain throughout their service. I truly appreciate members of the Department of Human Resources, some of which are here today for their tireless efforts in making this happen. I am also pleased to recognize our Department of Economic Development, who recently received several awards from the American, I'm sorry, the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals, or AMCP.

[00:09:13] AMCP administers and judges several international competitions for marketing and communications professionals. The department's Scale and Curiosity video channel won an award. It's a video essay that explores the life cycle of life science companies, featuring Rio-Prince William County business owners at all stages of growth. The department also won awards in the government category for their 2021 annual report and their DED news blog. Last but certainly not least, I want to recognize our Department of Facilities and Fleet Management for recently

[00:09:53] receiving honorable mentions from the Mid-Atlantic American Public Works Association for three separate projects. These awards are designed to recognize public works agencies in the mid-Atlantic region for commendable projects, initiatives, and programs that contribute to enhancing the quality of life and creating safe and sustainable communities. The projects that receive the honorable mention awards include the Bull Run Regional Library Alteration project the circuit court clerk's office suite alteration project and finally the prince william

[00:10:32] county animal services center congratulations to the facilities and fleet management team we are very proud of you and very very excited about the recognition that is all madam chair thank you madam chair thank you much miss very much mr shorter supervisor bode thank you madam chair thank you mr shorter for the update um i just had a couple of questions on things completely unrelated to what you just talked about um one it's my understanding that next board meeting on the 28th is when we'll be discussing the noise ordinance changes is that correct that is correct and two to that regard I know a directive was given quite a while ago in regards to putting there a work group to sort of look at these issues of data center impacts

[00:11:11] and what have you can you give an update on where we are with that directive happy to give an update the staff have have been working tirelessly after that directive was given I'll say that the work group internal staff in this work group will be led by agency staff they are prepared to meet right after the February 28th board meeting they will be soon as as soon as that meeting occurs be prepared to meet with stakeholders as you know and as was described at the board meeting where we received the

[00:11:43] directive community will be involved ie the the business businesses related to this and the homeowners associated with so we plan to do the engagement outreach and make sure that they are pulled into this conversation I'll also say that so in addition to the initiating the working group we're also next board meeting on the 28th coming back with some additional requests for the board I understand from the team that we are scheduled during the board

[00:12:18] meeting to initiate the zoning and ordinance and the design of construction standards manual to allow staff to work with stakeholders to develop recommendations to mitigate the data center impact. So a lot of progress has been made and looking forward to continued progress.

[00:12:35] Appreciate that. And Madam Chair, just one more thing. A request there, and that's great. I think that's what we've been, the direction we've been talking about as a board over the past couple meetings. I just hope that those impacts of data centers doesn't look at just noise because I know that's what started this but there's a holistic look especially in light of some of the most recent applications we've seen where we have data sort of impacts next to residences you know we're talking about view sheds heights sound we're talking about all these other issues so I hope that that that initiation speaks to a much more holistic view and comprehensive than just noise I'll add thank you for that and appreciate that very much I'll say that we were just talking about this this morning I'm you know fortunate to say that the staff

[00:13:15] have actually thought about that and so we will be coming back with the staff report that recommends just that this will this group will focus on all all impacts or sort of mitigating those impacts associated with data centers not just in the way so I think you'll be happy with what the staff is developing and what we're prepared to come back with on between an energy to just to be clear very good appreciate that thank you madam chair thank you mr. shorter Thank you.

[00:13:43] Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. County Exec, I just want to congratulate you on the V3 program. It has been a long time coming in our military community, and so this will give us an opportunity, as you've said, to partner with just the military, not just the active duty servicemen and servicewomen, but also the spouses thereof and that talent pool that is out there.

[00:14:08] Unfortunately, I didn't have that opportunity when I was an active wife of a Marine. But this program is so, it breathes a breath of fresh air into the military community and partnering with the civilian community. And so this is very important when we look at that talent pool and that expertise in our communities and just partnering with the bases.

[00:14:32] So I'm sure we did have a pilot program initially with Quantico, and I'm sure that that partnership will strengthen because of this program. So kudos to HR and to your staff and to you for this V3 program. Thank you. Supervisor Franklin.

[00:14:48] Sure. Just for clarity on the noise ordinance, and just maybe a reminder for me, was that to look at noise related to data centers or noise across the county? Well, it was focused on data centers.

[00:15:05] If I remember correctly, the discussion did certainly come up that other commercial establishments might be impacted by this work. And so I believe that given the scope of the working group and any changes that might ensue, we will certainly be looking at the impacts on other commercial establishments.

[00:15:26] And that is to say HVAC systems in particular with schools and other large facilities. Yeah, because I was just going to say, if we're going to put in other things like viewshed and things of that nature, that may need to be a separate group.

[00:15:43] Well, so I understand, and I'm happy to get support from the staff on this, that there are four agencies involved. That's essentially why. We know that the scope here is significant, and so this is going to be staff-led, multi-agency-driven for that reason.

[00:16:00] We know that the impact here might be larger than just planning. And so if it requires, as the work begins, for us to provide for some separate process, we will certainly come back to the board to make sure that that's known.

[00:16:20] Sure, because the largest issue is noise, so I just want to make sure we're not veering away from the purpose of the original ordinance. If anyone else has any comments, we'll... Madam Chair, members of the board, on the 28th, there will be the public hearing with regards to amending the noise ordinance, which will be removing the HVAC decibel exemption in the evening. The other item is with regards to the zoning text amendment that will be coming forward looking at other issues with regards to the data center. So there are, and there was a

[00:16:55] directive to the county executive for him to put together a work group with regards to issues. Because there's going to be a one-year sunset on the noise ordinance, for the county exec to have a work group in place to look to see if there are any other issues so I hope that that may that may answer your concern associated with kind of us moving beyond the scope that was intended as the county attorney said we do plan to come back on the 28th with the noise ordinance amendment

[00:17:28] that has been posted and that that is how we plan to come but there is a separate item this working group happy to have Rebecca Horner speak more to more detail on this if needed Ms. Horner Madam Chair members of the board Rebecca Horner office of executive management I'll be very quick the design construction standards manuals regulates construction so we look at buffers and any other things related to that could be required at the time that somebody applies for a site plan and so

[00:18:04] we wanted to consider initiation of that as well as the zoning ordinance which could potentially address noise walls and barriers and things like that the noise ordinance does not require an initiation so that can be brought forward anytime if this working group finds something that they want to recommend related to the noise ordinance but initiation of the design construction standards manual and zoning ordinance would allow the working group make recommendations related to noise thank you very much okay seeing no

[00:18:42] further speakers that will move on to the county attorney miserable the floor is yours thank you madam chair members of the board we have a few items for discussion in closed session we will have consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to actual or probable litigation with the related legal advice regarding public nuisance and possible legal claims in response to the manufacturer marketing sale and distribution of opioids and

[00:19:07] And regarding the lawsuits against and potential settlement with Teva, Allergan, Wal-Mart, CVS, and Walgreens, along with certain of their other related corporate entities, for their role in the distribution, manufacture, and sale of pharmaceutical opioid products, where consultation, briefing, or discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position, litigating posture, or negotiating strategy of the public body.

[00:19:29] We will have a consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to discussions concerning two economic development items regarding the prospective businesses or industries in the counties as expansion of existing businesses or industries, where no previous announcement has been made of the businesses or industries' interest in expanding their facilities of the county, along with the related discussion or consideration of the investments of public funds for the economic development matters where competition or bargaining is involved, where if made public initially the financial interest of the county, would be adversely affected and where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the litigating posture and bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body.

[00:20:08] These items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A567 and 8 of the Virginia Code. Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Before the board votes to approve the closed meeting agenda I need to disclose a personal interest in this transaction. I am employed by a federal affairs firm with which represents one of the entities considered as part of the proposed settlement of the litigation therefore i am disqualified from and will not participate in the closed meeting in any vote regarding the proposed settlement related to any of the companies

[00:20:43] thank you so move madam chair second motion made by supervisor angry seconded by supervisor bailey any further discussion seeing none please vote vote unanimous supervisor franklin abstaining from okay very good we are now on to our work session which is the compensation study and I believe mr. Gilkerson from you resources and Mike verdam from Gallagher benefit services are here to discuss that welcome mr. Gilkerson thank you I'm

[00:21:22] madam chair members of the board my name is Joe Gilkerson I'm the director of human resources for Prince William County I appreciate the time that you're given us right now to go ahead and present to you the findings of our most recent compensation study one thing if I if I can stress is that what you're going to see today this presentation our recommendations and the numbers that you'll see are what is being recommended as the minimums so without further ado I'll introduce mr. Mike Verdun he is a managing principal with Gallagher Benefit Services Incorporated we have used them when we created our class and

[00:22:01] comp study. This is a compensation study, not a class in comp. We've already done the classification portion of it three years ago. So this is just our normal follow-up. Every three to five years, we should look at how our scales are and where people are within these scales. Plus, on top of that, HR is always working with the departments to ensure people have internal equity and that we're staying competitive with our outside sources as well.

[00:22:26] So with that, I'll turn this over to Mr. Mike Verdun. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Welcome, Mr. Verdun. Madam Chair, Board, thanks very much for the opportunity to be here and present our study process and our findings from the compensation study.

[00:22:44] So today we're gonna walk over just what the original project objectives were, what the study itself, the methodology that we use, we wanna make sure we're sharing how we got this data and what we do with it and then what our overall findings and what those kind of minimum recommendations are that Joe said too as well.

[00:23:00] So first, Gallagher contracted with the county in order to conduct a compensation study covering all employees the county civilians plus the sworn employees a little bit expansion of the previous study we did not have the sworn employees last time collect market data to ensure external competitiveness and assess the salary ranges that currently exist and make sure that we are making recommendations for the salary structure adjustments as necessary based on the data that was there and then updates any costs related to maintaining current placement people below the minimums of the pay range to see a forecast what that looks like the first step in the studies determine the overall labor

[00:23:37] market and part of that labor market is considered of the Northern Virginia area so in the original study about three or four years ago we had a broader market this one is like nope we need to focus on the Northern Virginia market we had these different seven comparable organizations we developed a custom survey and sent that survey out to them that is standard practice when it comes to collecting public sector market data so that we're ensuring we're trying to collect the same job content not just job titles to title matches we received data back from all of them except for the District of Columbia there were multiple phone calls multiple emails multiple attempts to research online to

[00:24:13] find the data in order to have comparisons to no findings within that within the survey itself we had a list of benchmark jobs the 86 and 21 from general government and leadership were the same benchmark jobs that were utilized in the original study that is common practice so we're trying to compare consistent apples to apples over the years as well as we're developing and updating the new salary structure we added in the 34 benchmark jobs from the public safety for fire police the ADC as well as the sheriff's department and so that was done in order to make sure we have those those jobs are available in

[00:24:50] the overall appendix the benchmark jobs themselves are selected to be a representative sample of those general government and leadership roles that exist. We try to get job market data on approximately half of the overall job titles but representing a significant employee population as well on that general government side. On the public safety side we try to get job market data on all of those job titles that exist. So when we get those surveys back we review all of that data that's coming back to us to make sure that we understand that hey it's not entered in hourly monthly or at different levels or the minimum is bigger than the maximum or vice versa or actual salaries are

[00:25:29] below the minimum or anything like that to follow up to make sure that we're getting an overall trend of that data appropriate job content match whether there's data entry errors where their current salary fell outside those ranges any of those questions we would follow up with those participants to make sure that we have these as accurate of data as we possibly can in these situations in addition to that custom survey we need to recognize that the county does compete in a broader labor market that represents the overall private sector Gallagher we purchase multiple survey sources that we utilize to represent the private broader private sector in which our clients compete okay this is

[00:26:08] proprietary information that we purchase that they conduct these larger surveys these are three of the sources that we've used in the original study as we're also using in this study and updating those matches as appropriate so within though that data we have you Willis Towers Watson Mercer and comp data surveys those are large national international published survey sources that conduct reputable market surveys on an annual basis representing private sector organizations in there we also looked at different data cuts that exist within there to represent supplement the government industry if we can also to represent the local market being where we are right now we have the ability to

[00:26:48] get a good northern Virginia Alexandria Arlington data market set within that Typically, there's enough participants that we can get that data set that is in there. In some of those, we have to go back out. So we have concentric circles that we basically draw. Let's get as close to the client as possible.

[00:27:04] Then if we need to go out a little further because they don't have sufficient data in that group, go out to the mid-Atlantic or to the northeast region in that sense. And I'll get into what we're looking at with regards to data adjustment factors for that as well. So that is the information that we're using to compare and contrast.

[00:27:19] We want to look at what the public sector is versus the private sector as well as that combined market. Knowing that on the general government side, maintenance, IT, finance, those types of roles are present in pretty much every industry out there. And we need to recognize that as well. When we're making those job matches and the same that we ask the participants to do, we're looking for at least an 80% job content match.

[00:27:43] It's very difficult to find 100% job content match, but that threshold is that's the professional standard to say we have the right level of work, the right content of that work within the jobs matching that we're using. So within this, we're also trying to kind of compare and contrast at a similar level because we get data back in multiple versions for all the positions except for fire because fire has different hourly rates, different hour counts, calculations over the course of a year.

[00:28:08] We use annual for the fire because the different hours could adjust. But for every other position, we broke that down to hourly rates within there because you might have 2000, 2080, 1950, anything like that to make sure we have that hourly rates so we can go across part-time, non-exempt, and exempt levels on a very consistent basis.

[00:28:29] That is a standard practice as well because there might be different number of days, different number of hours per day. That gets us down to that most common denominator with regards to that. In addition, and I talked about this a little bit, we did an outlier analysis. So we compare the trend of that data with the overall.

[00:28:45] There might be individual jobs that are extremely high, that might be three or four standard deviations off of the norm. The purpose of this study, again, is to identify that overall market trend in order to make salary structure adjustments. We're not trying to use this data to say this job itself is 17% below, therefore it needs 70% adjustment.

[00:29:06] We're trying to take that data for this job, this job, and this job, and that representative sample in order to make salary structure adjustments and reconfigure that pay trend line So it ensures that the county has a salary range of minimum, midpoint, and maximum that allows the county to be competitive, to recruit, retain, and mitigate pay compression within that range as well.

[00:29:25] So we're looking at those outlier analyses in the course of this as well and make sure we're not including anything that is like, yeah, there's a rare circumstance that that person is paid twice as much as what everybody else is within the market data that we are trying to collect. There are two different adjustments that we make to one of these to the published data.

[00:29:44] So those published data survey sources are published at different points in time. They might be from October of 2021, January of 2022, April of 2022. We need to recognize that those data are published at different time, and we age that data forward.

[00:30:00] At that point, we're using a 3% projected. That's what the surveys were telling us at that point in time. We know that is a fluid number constantly right now. The new ones that we just got back out this last month had a little bit different projection as well. So, we're having that 3% moving that data forward to January 1, 2023.

[00:30:18] The other adjustment that we make, the published data, if we had to take a data cut that was not in the Northern Virginia market, is to utilize an organization called Economic Research Institute. That is the gold standard to look at different cost of labor differences between geographic regions.

[00:30:34] This is a survey source that organizations that have multiple locations around the world, around the country, are going to say, "What is the cost of labor in XYZ City, Oklahoma, versus our home base within D.C.? What do we need to pay differently for a cost of labor and also understand cost of living?

[00:30:50] We look at the cost of labor differential. That is a more consistent number over the years. It's going to indirectly include cost of living, but sometimes cost of living is going to be highly volatile and be very, very different from year to year. Cost of labor has a more consistent trend to it, is the appropriate way of kind of looking at what does it pay here versus what do we need to pay.

[00:31:13] a different location in that example if we need to have a United States data cut for some of those surveys which is a rare instance we would have had to increase that data by 17 percent to be effective in the Northern Virginia market so we're looking at that broader Northern Virginia market that very similar to what we do in other locations when we did a broader project in the Seattle Tacoma area we said what is the Seattle Tacoma Bellevue MSA area what is that cost of labor and how does that compare and contrast against other jurisdictions that we collected market data from as well because that is the labor market in which it represents so once we got to that point reviewing the

[00:31:53] data adjusting the data to make sure we're trying to compare as close to apples as apples as we possibly can with regards to the jobs as well as the data itself and what it represents we're looking at these different differences we're looking at the pay difference and the purpose of this again because we had a limited pool we're looking at what is the overall structure comparison for the different general government, the leadership, and then the public safety positions on a broader salary structure. Anything that is plus or minus five percent is deemed highly competitive. That is this world at work that's kind of the guidelines that we're looking at because you may be one or one cycle

[00:32:29] behind or one cycle ahead of the market within that margin of error that you have with any kind of data set you're collecting. Plus or minus ten percent is considered competitive. When you are getting over ten percent off the market There is potential misalignment or misalignment with the market, okay?

[00:32:45] But those are indicators that does not reflect county decisions or a client's decisions on how they need to relate to that point in the market as well. And the next slide has the colors of those associated with this as well, just so we're trying to align some of these. So we're looking at two different figures here, general figures.

[00:33:04] The one on the far left that says the market 50th percentile is that middle point in the market of actual pay for those organizations. So in the survey that we sent out, we said, hey, here's the accountant description at Prince William County. What is the job title that matches at your organization?

[00:33:22] What is the average actual pay of your incumbents? And then what is the minimum, midpoint, and maximum that salary range for that job? So then what the 50th percentile here represents is that overall aggregate difference for all those jobs in the general government, in the leadership, in the public safety for actual pay against the market for those positions.

[00:33:47] So that 50th percentile was originally used as the basis for developing the pay structure that we put together first. That is a common practice of over 80% of organizations, regardless of public or private sector, is to build a pay structure with the target pay at the 50th percentile, that middle point in the market.

[00:34:06] And originally in the original project, we developed that paid trend line of the 50th percentile and then built a salary range around it. So the minimum would be lower in the 50th, the maximum is higher in the 50th. That 50th percentile is that middle number. So if you had 100 numbers, it would be number 50 in the middle there that you would be saying, that's the number we're looking at.

[00:34:25] Looking at the market median is a common practice. It's not overly skewed by extreme highs and lows year over year when you're looking at different data as well. So you can see within this, if we look at the general government side first, the actual pay across those levels, the custom survey, published survey sources, as well as the full market, which combined those custom data as well as the published data.

[00:34:50] On average, those jobs, I think that was the 80-some jobs, sorry, I just blanked on that number, the 86 benchmark jobs, 8% below on actual pay. However, the salary structure itself is deemed highly competitive at the minimum, at the midpoint, and then above the market at the maximum.

[00:35:12] So it's just where the pay is within the range. The range itself is competitive for the positions in the A through D bands. So it's movement of employees through that pay structure. On the flip side, the leadership positions was identified as being below market at both actual pay and then also the salary ranges that those positions are tied to.

[00:35:39] And then in the public safety, the police does include the recent adjustment that was provided. And then what we're looking at here is, again, focusing on that salary structure. So at a minimum, in order to maintain competitiveness of your overall pay structure, the county should elite consider at a bare minimum that 6.8 percent adjustment to maintain pace with the salary structure in the market on the sheriff's side 7.8 percent on the adult detention center side 4.2 percent to maintain placement so your minimum midpoint and maximums are aligned with that target

[00:36:18] market supervisor lawson thanks mike if you're okay with it i'd like to ask a question now so that as we move forward I have a full understanding so you are comparing obviously the market well you have the market group general leadership public safety but under market 50th that is specifically where Prince William comparisons are specific to the market right so you're saying negative 8.3 percent for custom survey yeah I want to make sure I understand you

[00:36:56] correct no it's a great question I want to make sure yeah make sure that we're talking about the data in the right way here. So the market 50th represents what is the actual pay in comparison between the county, actual pay to actual pay in the market. So we're saying within that custom survey, those markets are there. Of those seven that responded or how many ever it was. Across those 86, 89 benchmark jobs. Right. On at the aggregate difference. So it's a difference. We're not just averaging the percent differences. We add up, here's the total amount that Prince William County pays for those jobs he has a total amount the market pays for those same jobs right the overall

[00:37:35] difference is 8.3 percent okay um but you have a negative correct yes negative so county is 8.3 below the market total pay so here here is what i guess to go a little bit deeper so every every position has a range obviously mid men and max correct the ranges can vary right or is the

[00:38:04] market pretty uniform on range yes the the ranges at different counties can they can vary they could be we talk about in terms of range spread like the difference between the minimum to the to the maximum right you know some counties may have a very broad range structure that could be 70 percent okay so in that case that's hard that makes it even more challenging for you but what did you find as far as the range goes was it um for the most part pretty uniform or did did some jurisdictions

[00:38:43] have a broader or more narrow range than us i will have to double check but i know in this region the ranges tend to be broader in the public sector than in other areas of the country okay so where i'm from i'm from minnesota the typical range spread of public sector is about 30 to 40 percent Typically, here, we saw over 50% range spread is kind of what that typical is.

[00:39:06] And that is one of the reasons why the focus that we try to build the pay structure and adjustments off of is that midpoint of the market. Because the minimum and the maximum could be very, very broad. But if we focus on the middle, it's still going to be representative of something that's common, at least.

[00:39:23] But just to clarify something that she said, the market min, mid, and max also refer to the county information. yes okay it's not just the market 50 the other is county information also yes it is always showing the comparison between what the county pays or what the salary range for the county jobs against the market so any negative number there that's a county information great thank you you're 1.1 percent below the custom survey market minimum yes yep just trying to put it in relationship to you

[00:39:53] it's like hey we are 6.7 percent below this point correct so using all that and again we're using these numbers in aggregate because we did have a smaller pool. We're not trying to make decisions again on individual jobs and the comparisons there.

[00:40:12] That is never what our recommendation is either, to say, let's change this one. We're looking at the comp philosophy with regarding a balancing internal equity with the external market. How do we update and set up the new pay trend line, et cetera? So on the general government side, we found there's really no adjustment to the current pay structure that is necessary when a flat adjustment percentage on the leadership side there is a significant gap that exists potentially significant difference at that 12% think about those different salary ranges that were there

[00:40:48] so what our approach is and what was done before because the market data especially on the general government leadership side is a representative sample of jobs we're saying we need to blend that data with internal equity the county utilizes a job evaluation methodology to determine the salary range placement that helps to have a foundation of pay equity as well because all jobs are looked at through a gender race neutral job evaluation method it says what are the decision-making what is the supervision what's the complexity of this job against other jobs within the county to have that internal hierarchy

[00:41:25] and so from that we have that internal equity this is something that the county has continuously reviewed and evaluated, one of those steps to maintain the system over years is that as jobs change, we may not be able to get new market data for it, but we can look at how has that job changed internally?

[00:41:42] Does it move from one grade to the next based upon the complexity, supervision, overall decision making of that role? So that current general government leadership ranges was developed originally through that process, so we wanted to take that and recalibrate that line and find out what would the adjustments be if we continuously look at applying that job evaluation method to balance internal and external.

[00:42:10] So what we do that is through, sorry I get to nerd out a little bit here on math, but we get to do regression analysis. You find out that pay trend line by balancing those two different aspects. The internal equity has a point value, the dollar value of the job on the external side, and you pull those two things together.

[00:42:26] So I'm going to show you some of those charts and how that works. One of the other things to think about is pay compression. Whatever salary structure we look at, we want to make sure we're helping to mitigate pay compression if it's occurring in there. Talking through with the county on the overall process, as Joe had alluded to earlier as well, is there's a consistent review between HR and departments as they're sort of hiring people, promoting people to look at what that pay is in comparison to other similar current employees if they're bringing somebody in new to make sure that we're, hey, if we're going to have pay compression, do we have a substantial reason for it?

[00:42:59] you can't continuously avoid pay compression you just have to have the right steps in place to mitigate it as much as possible before you proceed supervisor vega has a question thank you madam chair i want to know if these percentages uh take into consideration the cost of living here in prince william county compared to other jurisdictions mentioned so far yeah so oh sorry i went the wrong way my fault i was pushing the other side of the button so within the custom survey because the the approach would say these are the custom survey organizations that that are in Northern Virginia, that Northern Virginia represented the overall labor market.

[00:43:35] Any comparison between Fairfax or Alexandria or Arlington to the county, those were not adjusted. But if we had data that were representative outside of that Northern Virginia market, we adjusted that data utilizing the Economic Research Institute. So that is why if we had that United States data cut, which we had maybe a couple of those, we would have had to adjust that data up by 17% to be effective here, because it's not just representative of the organizations in this area.

[00:44:07] It is not common practice to say, hey, we're going to adjust the data between, from Minnesota, from St. Paul to Minneapolis. They're right next to each other from Hennepin County to Ramsey County, or from those jurisdictions where they're right next to each other within there. That type of adjustment is typically not the approach, the economic, the cost of labor differentials is minimal between those, but we've used it on the published survey source side.

[00:44:32] you for that because you know as I was going through the information provided to us that's what I struggled with right we want to be able to compare apples to apples not apples to avocados and so when we talk about Prince William County and the jurisdictions that we neighbor it's Falk here it's Stafford and so I find a bit difficult right that we're comparing ourselves to Fairfax to Arlington when their cost of living I'm housing is much more expensive than here in Prince William County and so that was the reason for my question but I'll take a deeper dive later down thank you so we talked about the pay compression

[00:45:07] aspect here. So this is just an initial picture, the overall process. What these plot points represent are all of those 120-ish general government and leadership positions and the market data. This is the actual average salaries of the incumbents at the county. The x-axis is the internal equity. They are evaluated at different levels. So you can see that we have more jobs kind of in the middle because that's where more of the population is as well. We want to be representative of that sample.

[00:45:36] So I highlighted this area down here. There's some potential pay compression that may exist in there, especially when we start adding in some of the market data within there. This is a visual representation of that pay difference, that 8.8%, the 12% difference between the county and the market when it comes to the overall survey.

[00:45:55] That yellow line represents the market pay trend line for those same jobs. The red-orange one represents the county again. you can see that difference the patron line is slightly higher very same curve but that would be the basis in the original project what we did is we took that yellow line and we said that is going to be the midpoint of our new pay structure if we built a structure around that with a maximum higher and a minimum a little bit lower the county has the ability then to pay below at and above that target market point of the 50th percentile so we want to model this and say what would we do if we change the current structure utilizing this new

[00:46:32] data and so this right now is a map of where the current Prince William County maximums midpoints and minimums fall and you can see that the pay range especially over those A and B level jobs is extremely wide at one point the counties we're gonna move the maximum to the midpoint and then recalculate the maximum so the pay trend lines and some of the lower level jobs are extremely wide right now in comparison to the market and that is also visual because most of the positions in there are paid in the bottom half of that because of how that

[00:47:06] midpoint was calculated and adjusted in the past. But we say overall, the pay fits within that trend. And you can see on the market side, the yellow line, that it is trending higher when it comes to some of those leadership level positions. So then what we try to do is model several different pay structures if we looked at the market minimum and market maximum in comparison to the current county line you can see that there is a significant disconnect in some of the entry-level positions with regards to what the

[00:47:41] market max was and what the Prince William County max is so the current maximum is extremely higher the minimum is fairly aligned but there is a significant difference with regards to the pay trend at some of the higher level jobs which is evident within the actual pay which is evident within the salary structure data that we also saw and then if you couple that with the internal equity and developing the pay range structure it confirms what that those levels need to be okay we looked at several different ways of developing a pay structure one of the goals is not is to ensure that the current ranges would

[00:48:18] not go down but we want to make sure that where is there a difference is to ensure that that salary range goes up so what we did is we did a blended approach of the current pay structure at the county in comparison with that that polynomial that regression line to reflect the market so we're identifying where are those differences between the county and the market and how do we remedy that in the framework of the structure that can still be validated in the data what happens then is that in three years four years if we have the ability of privilege to come back this is a we can replicate what was done we

[00:48:56] can compare what was done we can validate that hey this is what's changed year over that time frame as well it's always based upon that equation in there and not moving this range in this range in this range in this range we have it based upon that overall equation and what that combination is so with regards to the general government and leadership side recommend implementing a salary structure on this next slide here that has the proposed were based on the regression analysis and does not increase the each grade at an equal rate

[00:49:28] so we're not taking the current structure and updating it by 5% because that doesn't reflect what the overall difference is at different levels as well. We want to ensure all employees are at the new minimum, so we have identified those employees that would fall below the new minimum, maintain that current comp ratio of pay in the new structure, and any remedy actual pays that the county HR will look into to say, hey, do we need a remedy, any actual pay in comparison to other employees as well.

[00:49:55] So on this, there's a lot of numbers here. what i want to walk through from left to right is we have our the dbm grades that's the current county pay structure we have the current county minimum midpoint and maximum and then we have our proposed minimum midpoint and maximum utilizing a comparison so if you'll see on the first line across our proposed minimum midpoint and maximum are the same as the counties what their current is Because the proposed one using our equation, using our approach, would be lower than what the county's current is.

[00:50:31] So we don't want that to fall down. We want to ensure that you have that minimum rate and have $11 up to $12 an hour coming as well. So in those other places, you'll see where the difference is. Starting in that B21, you'll see that the minimum in our proposed structure goes up by 1%.

[00:50:49] That's reflective of that equation when we're thinking let's blend internal and external and making sure we're building a whole cohesive pay structure. So you would also have some of the other percentages go up a little bit higher. But as you can see, at those leadership level positions, it's reflective of what we also found in the market, where actual pay and salary ranges were off by over 12%.

[00:51:14] So it is a blend of the current structure, ensuring that no pay ranges at any point, minimum, midpoint, or maximum, go down. So there is not lost value in that.

[00:51:32] but then adjusting the salary structure where necessary to better align with the overall market. So this is thinking back to slide 10 and what those numbers were on that slide as well.

[00:51:53] So now with regards to the police, fire, ADC, and sheriff, within the police, the salary structure itself was higher than the overall market based on a recent update that was made.

[00:52:11] Recommend, there's no, does not recommend an increase to that. It's already at the leading that market level. on the fire, recommend looking at that salary range midpoint, and at a minimum, the county needs to consider that 6.8% adjustment to maintain competitiveness of that pay range with the market.

[00:52:29] At a minimum, move that 6.8%. Similar to the sheriff, is to have a minimum movement of that pay structure. We're looking at these, each individual, 'cause they're each built on their own pay structure in those comparisons, is 7.8% adjustment.

[00:52:47] Overall, that midpoint was 7.8% below. making sure that number moves up. And then the adult detention center, the overall difference at that midpoint was 4.2%. So at a minimum, the county board should consider adjustments in those levels to ensure the minimum, midpoint, and maximum keep in alignment with where the market is.

[00:53:07] But there's always the balance between what the financial affordability is, with the target pay, with the strategy, with other concerns with regards to the positions and the competitive relationships that exist.

[00:53:24] Overall, in the general government, we did identify 92 employees that would fall below the new minimum. The annual cost to move them up to that new minimum was $64,000. When we look at the public safety, we're looking at that overall adjustment using our minimum figures of this 6.8%, 7.8%, 4.2%.

[00:53:45] Maintaining employees spot step within that pay range as well impacted 952 employees and would cost approximately $5 million annually. madam chair supervisor Lawson thank you do you break down which agencies within the 952 employees like do you break down which apply to which agency in our costing sheet yes yeah we looked at it by employee like you know I'm a police officer I'm at step three let's maintain so of the 952 right there where are the

[00:54:24] bulk of them I would have to look back at that okay I mean I'm gonna guess it's not the police department no that this did not impact the police because so adjustments already been right so it's fair to say that probably all of them are fire sheriff and adc adc correct yes okay maybe an outlier here or there in the police department but probably not okay that would be important to know too so i just so i understand this and i i haven't delved

[00:54:57] into this and so this is so are you saying across our entire general general government area like everybody except public safety, there are only 92 employees below what you would consider a satisfactory minimum. They would be, let me flip back to this here really quick, they would be below our new proposed minimum. And so as you can see, there's no adjustment to the minimum through the first six pay ranges because the current minimum is already higher than what the market trend would show. And then there's some minimal adjustments, but people are already paid above that, but there

[00:55:36] or 92 employees that would be paid below that new minimum, Gallagher proposed minimum in that column. - And I'll have to look at this. What I'm just trying to reconcile is I know that we have, like for instance, in CSB difficulty hiring people because the minimums are too low and we can't, and then we hire them at the higher end of the band and there's salary compression and it's a problem.

[00:56:00] I'm trying to figure out how people like that fit in and if there are only 92 people out of the entire workforce that are being technically underpaid. Can you help me with that at all? Well, the underpayment is going to look different based upon each job as well and what the environment is and what the population of potential candidates for that job that may exist in the market and labor market that you're recruiting.

[00:56:23] And so I don't know exactly where those jobs fall within this structure. Hopefully some of the minimum updates here are one of a piece to that puzzle to remedy that situation in a way. Madam Chair, go to Supervisor Franklin because she signed up and I'll come back to you.

[00:56:42] you want to hit your button yeah this may be similar to what the chair just asked but sticking with this slide can you tell me and this may be a question for staff who the a-level who the a-level employees are like what type of positions those are yeah typically the a-level so the a and b-level jobs are typically non-exempt hourly positions and then parks some some of the other service customer service type positions as well okay and these are full-time jobs? Some of them, yes. Okay. And then, so I'm looking here and there's no proposed increase for

[00:57:21] the A-level employees. Correct. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yep. So what we found in the market overall when we're looking at those positions is that the pay for those jobs, you can see the yellow plot points, and we have a good number of those jobs here, that overall the salary range here is really in alignment where where that market minimum was already so basically other jurisdictions are paying about the same amount correct on the salary structure side of it and that is something typical that we have seen lately is that the the floor at some of those non-exempt

[00:57:59] level positions moving up in that way and organizations responding to that movement to increase you know living wage minimum wage moving those rolls up so and obviously you know we can take the time to do the math ourselves but do you know how much these equal out to per year in terms of a salary like is this like $50,000 is this below $50,000 so typical multiplied by 2,000 so it have you know 22,000 for if you have us at the minimum of the entry-level pay band at $11 an hour yeah

[00:58:36] so what does that amount 20 about 22,000 a year correct yeah so that's obviously something that's that needs to be said thank you yeah usually the typical figure of 2000 about 2,000 hours a year supervisor blossom thank you so on that note where I was wanting to confirm is back to when the chair was asking about the general employees and the 92 and that cost is only you know $65,000 and you run the math and the average of that is $700 but then you've

[00:59:13] got a big difference in your public safety and that average cost is like five thousand something or maybe it was seven thousand I don't remember my math but my takeaway from that is at least with the general government we're overall we're pretty competitive there's obviously some anomalies there like or maybe not even anomalies but special circumstances like the chair mentioned community services but I'm guessing the police department

[00:59:47] adjustment. December is also what really triggered the public safety one. Yes, ma'am. Madam Chair, members of the board, one thing to consider is what we're talking about two separate things. So to bring people to minimum is individuals. There's 92 individuals that the proposed scale increase, if we change that minimum, 92 people will fall outside of that minimum. We have to bring them up to that minimum. So that's why that number is so low and why that cost is so low to bring them up because they're fairly close to where the proposed minimum is going to be at for that so hopefully that that that clears up a little bit am i

[01:00:27] right in saying joe that then you know we're not way out of whack with those 92 because you said they're fairly close to the proposed minimum correct and also bear in mind that that every year we're going to be increasing that minimum wage with the state as well so there is some movement with that that's going to happen every year as well so hopefully it answers the question as well yeah i mean my takeaway is What I said was, you know, we obviously don't want any employees under the proposed minimum.

[01:00:58] Correct. But 92 is a lot better than 1,200. Yes, absolutely. And this goes back to us monitoring the scales, talking with the various departments. When people leave, we're figuring out why they're leaving. We're making sure that the scales, where we're having this now with Gallagher, is to ensure that our scales move with the market.

[01:01:17] But individuals in between them, we're also monitoring almost daily with different individuals of where they should be moving as well within the scale taking account internal equity outside compression things along those lines supervisor Bailey thank you very much so I would I would imagine that the reclassification that we did last year helped with this in terms of getting us back in alignment or getting us in alignment to where we need to be yes when you say reclassification

[01:01:56] mean when we did a classic comm study yes yes absolutely and that's why we continue to monitor we continually work with um gallagher as well to make sure that we are staying within uh the idea and concept of what we're looking for for this scale to stay competitive both internally and externally so the other question i had in in terms of that does this help with has this help with our retention rate um retention is is is i think that our retention overall is is competitive now as we We age out.

[01:02:29] We have COVID caused a lot of people to retire or consider other options for their jobs. There's a lot of different factors in that. Culture, person's desires. Some people may want to branch out and do something else. So I think overall, though, collectively, our retention rate is competitive, and I would put us up against anyone else collectively.

[01:02:51] So the last question I want to – I'll come back with other questions. But in reference to that, when we look at skill set also and pay, that's another component that we're utilizing as well. When you talk about, you know, just improving skill set and professional training and all like that, that builds into our numbers in terms of the reduction from 1,200 to 92.

[01:03:16] Right. The goal, yes, ma'am, the goal is to retain employees, to train them, to develop them for that next level job if that's what they want to do, or for a job in a county somewhere else. We see a lot of cross-departmental movement up and over. So, yes, I think that you're exactly right with that.

[01:03:33] So one more question, Madam Chair. The other thing, just bouncing off of something that Supervisor Vega said, when we are looking at these numbers and we're trying to figure out, you know, skill set and compensation and all that, we're looking at the entire region from a market perspective.

[01:03:51] We're not just looking at the southern region and the northern. We're looking at the entire region. Am I wrong to assume that? We're looking at Northern Virginia right now. Okay. So with our comparatives right now, that's who we're looking at for that. Okay. Supervisor Bodie.

[01:04:10] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation so far. Just a couple of questions. You said fairly early on that you're sort of looking at it as sort of a uniform basis, not sort of hourly versus annually and what have you. Is that right? For all the positions outside of fire, we got everything down to an hourly per hour wage rate. Okay. I guess why I'm struggling with that is, well, fire is a completely 56-hour workweek. It skews the numbers differently, but some departments and some agencies have different total hours that people work. Some of them are 40-hour workweek. Some of them are 37 and a half.

[01:04:47] I know that in my professional life, there are times we're working for the same company. I was a 37 and a half worker and a 40. Are we also doing those comparisons, not only from an external equity basis but also that internal equity because we basically have some situations folks working in the same building but based on how their how their hours work they're actually falling behind whether or not they're being paid for 40 hours a week versus 37.5 which would then change your your multiplier there below 20 000 to uh 1750 or something like that right within the employee census if you can correct me if i'm wrong within the employee census we had the annual rates

[01:05:25] we had an hourly rate we had the number of work hours in their work hours per year so that is one of the oh i'm sorry sorry about that yeah so if in the census that we receive we get the job title employee job you know department etc and we say hey here's the number of here's the annual salary here's the number of work hours here's the hourly rate that is and that is one of the corrective actions i think that was taken in the original project was say i'm part-time you're full-time we're doing the same job. Our hourly rate is the same. I'm just, in an annual basis, I'm not going to make as much because I'm working half the amount of hours that you are. And so that's one

[01:06:03] of the reasons why we looked at the hourly basis to ensure that the salary structure has that, we're looking at it as being as consistent as possible. Because you're going to have some that are 40 hours a week, some that are 35 hours a week, some that are 37 and a half. Yeah, I just wanted to piggyback off of a point that I think Surazer Franklin was making earlier, where if we're, that multiplier for 40 hours is 2,000.

[01:06:27] But then we're talking about living wages, people being able to afford to live in the same community as those 40-hour workweek folks, 37.5 folks falling in farther behind. So I just think that differential needs to be discussed a little bit more. Just a couple of quick questions.

[01:06:44] Can we assume that because we're somewhat competitive at hiring people, is what this says with our minimums and our different brackets, there's salary compression because we're hiring them at a higher rate and then we just aren't giving raises to the rest of the thing.

[01:06:59] And so there's somewhat salary compression, and that's why the people at the upper end of the scale are a little bit behind if we have to adjust them more so. Yeah, I mean, where wage growth happens more often is that you are trying to hire people higher in the pay range in comparison to where your current employees are.

[01:07:16] Sometimes over the years, if you're moving the salary structure 3% and you move all employees 3%, your employees are not moving through the pay range. And so then the next year you're hiring somebody else in of the same rate that somebody is already at as well so and so ignoring public safety for a moment with just general employees we may be able to hire people but it's difficult to retain them because they go other places where they can make more money is that a fair statement yeah i mean yeah as joe alluded to there's multiple reasons why people will leave based upon they have a better opportunity over here for the career growth that's just not going to happen here because the people that i'm here are brand new and we're the same level that opportunity for career growth

[01:07:55] might not be there so okay thank you supervisor lawson then supervisor bailey thanks um so back to supervisor bode touched on the difference in hourly you know rate and there is a bit of a apples and oranges comparison there um right now i'm thinking also of our fire and rescue department who is now on a 56 hour work week and i know a lot of our neighbors are not at the 56 hour work

[01:08:29] we fairfax is but loudon's not i don't think alexandria is so we need to be mindful that that's a big difference and are we going to drill down into the public safety conversations like after later in your presentation or you want to take that up now we looked at the annual pay with regards to that to make sure the pay range itself is is competitive where does the adjustment on the pay range need to be.

[01:08:59] The hourly structure is, every organization is going to be very different within how that day cycle is going to work. Okay, I agree with you, but let's just walk through this exercise. A firefighter in Loudoun County is, I would imagine, 80% similar duties to a firefighter in Prince William.

[01:09:21] You agree with that? Yep. If I'm a firefighter in Loudoun County and I am only working 48 hours a week and i'm a firefighter prince william or kenny is and he has to work 56 hours a week and the duties are practically the same and i'm making just as much then kenny's foolish to stay in prince william when he go to loudon and get the same amount of pay for less hours right so what am i missing okay so so then that goes back to the question of the why did you compare it uh annual when you

[01:10:00] really need to drill down into the hourly the the calculation of hourly rates if we here's here's an example so we had recently done this for another entity and if we get the hourly rates from the participants it's trying to calculate those hourly rates it's going to be calculated very differently they might calculate it based upon a a what do they call it a shift rate versus an hourly rate off the 2080 or off of this or what goes into the contract within there so there are various rates in which they would report to us getting it within the annual rate is going to provide us the most consistent comparison say this

[01:10:40] range is here these ranges are here some are going to have more hours some are gonna have less hours some are gonna we have the hourly so some are gonna be 35 hours a week 37 and a half hours a week or 40 hours a week as well and we're trying to make sure that we have those comparisons okay hold on here and can we raise the podium up apparently it's difficult to hear you at home oh sorry didn't mean to interrupt you I just yeah I appreciate that um I was kind of thinking that earlier um that's okay um but we're talking a difference of over 400 hours a year I mean and that's just that's just a basic

[01:11:20] you know everybody nobody works overtime that's a that's a big difference and honestly Mike no i didn't understand maybe maybe my mind was still in the math but can you explain that again that what your answer that you just gave me when i gave you the prince william loudon comparison because i honestly didn't understand i don't know the number of hours that everybody has in my head i had a spreadsheet before so yeah some are going to be what the 25 76 some are 29 12 some are gonna be 2800 per year based upon those participants they're varying numbers but but would you agree

[01:11:58] with me though that i mean back to ranges you can have a you know a range you're you're never going to get dollar for dollar 80 that's why you shoot for 80 percent men minimum mid max but i i think over a 400 hour difference is pretty significant um so i guess i would challenge you to or ask you to reconsider going back and looking at it more as an hourly versus an annual in that example is anyone else tracking me i had done the annual and hourly before and went back to the annual

[01:12:37] when i was breaking everything down so yeah i think it's understandable supervisor bailey then supervisor angry and then supervisor franklin um i i wanted to go back to um when you were talking about the market rate for the firemen, you said that it shouldn't be minimally, we shouldn't go less than 6.8%.

[01:13:11] Did I understand that correctly? Yes. Okay. Yeah, this is the floor. That's the floor. That's the floor. Yep. But it shouldn't go below that. Correct. Okay. So, and then I think for the sheriff, it was what? It was a 7.2?

[01:13:26] Yeah, I think. 7.2. But we shouldn't go any lower than that as we're looking at this. Correct. Yes. Okay, so with that, I want to go to the, and Joe, this might be for you, I'm not sure, but y'all were tag teaming, so it's good.

[01:13:41] I want to go to our emergency folk. What does that look like? Are they part of the public safety piece, and what does that look like in terms of their classification and their pay and their structure?

[01:13:58] Emergency communications, ma'am? Uh-huh, yeah. They are on a DBM, so they're with the general government. on this scale right now. So they're not, they're not classified. And I ask you that because of the different requirements they have there now, like we just came, we're going through, we're finishing coming through COVID and those requirements and their skill sets were different. Correct. So can you expound on that just a little bit in terms of their pay? And maybe I'm asking the wrong way. I mean, just their public safety, their general, they're not public safety. Correct. Right now we have, we have them in the general government scale. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And across the market, Is that the norm?

[01:14:38] I'll take a dive on that to take a look. But I think generally you'll see probably a 50-50 depends on where that government or that county wants to place them at. Okay. And I ask that because they've got different requirements coming out of COVID, you know, and different hours coming out of COVID.

[01:14:58] And just how would that affect, you know, their hourly rate as well and their classification? We can certainly take a look at that. If you would, please. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Supervisor Angry? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just going to go back to Supervisor Lawson here. You know, I hate to stay in the fire and rescue arena on that, but when you run these numbers, of course, when we say 56 hours, there's a three-hour mandatory overtime included in that.

[01:15:27] Is that where your number, did you factor that? Or when we talk hourly, like an hourly overtime is very different than an hourly wage. OK. And I'll say I have to go back and see how we know the spreadsheet.

[01:15:44] I just think in this area is going to be very complicated, you know, and so even if we as we get to whether it's six point eight or higher or whatever that is, this is this is really one of those Rubik's Cube of trying to figure out what that looks like.

[01:15:59] I will say in the ultimate of all of this, even as a volunteer firefighter, I do recognize and know that our lower rank in file and fire and rescue do need a pay bump as we look at this. What that range is at this point is a big question. So I appreciate the study and how we're going about it.

[01:16:16] I'm just, there's so many variables here that I, you know, it's a lot. So I'm trying to figure that out and what that looks like. So I appreciate all these questions in the conversation. I don't know what happens at the end of this because what I see on the screen before me is about a $6 million somewhere.

[01:16:35] Somebody needs to figure out whether that's something we're doing now or later. I would love to make sure that these numbers and calculations are correct. So not a question, just a comment. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. That one is, it's complex. Supervisor Franklin.

[01:16:52] Sure. Just going back to the discussion on fire from Supervisor Lawson's question, I think what she was saying that may be helpful is if you can provide some numbers with a straight comparison of other jurisdictions that have the 56-hour workweek, I think that's one thing.

[01:17:09] I think what you have here is helpful, but I'd be curious to see what that percentage is for the comparison for those that have the same, I guess, pay structure, for lack of better words. Yeah, we can go back and work with Joe on that.

[01:17:26] Yeah, because at a 56-hour workweek, it is 2,900 hours. And assuming that it's not compensated by on and off and hours like that, if it's just 56 hours on a workweek, that's a lot more hours than other people. But we can follow up and get that.

[01:17:45] Supervisor Lawson? Yes, Supervisor Franklin, you were exactly right. I was basically asking you to give us another set of numbers. So thank you, Supervisor Franklin. She cleared that up. Okay. Any other questions?

[01:18:03] Okay, seeing none, I guess. Yeah. Well, so this is the end of your presentation, correct? Yes. So we are at the end of his presentation. So, yeah, if you have another question, yeah. Thank you so much. Sorry, my head was in fire. So general questions for you.

[01:18:24] Right now we'll stay just on public safety since that's where we just ended on fire. It's definitely, it has been for a long time, you know, a bit of a, as Mr. Alexander likes to put it, an arms race.

[01:18:42] I grew up in the 80s, so we remember that. So the Cold War arms race. Anyway, what did you factor in as far as what our neighbors are going to be doing?

[01:18:59] They're in the budget season soon, too. How did you anticipate any pending changes to these calculations? Yeah, we actually asked that question, and most of them did not have the answer at that point in time when we were trying to collect the data.

[01:19:15] But you did ask it. Yeah. What is the next budget cycle increase? Most of them were like, we don't know right now. Okay. Did you speak to directors of each department and the leaders of our public safety agencies to learn the duties and did you interview as part of this compensation study to learn how did you ascertain that 80 percent is included in that you felt safe or comfortable with your 80 percent

[01:19:50] comparison and what was the process there to collect the data yeah from the current job descriptions that exist here at the county that are updated updated or anything like that that those were reviewed and updated. That content is there. That content is provided as a summary in the survey itself as well to say, here's what a lieutenant does. Here's what a cap, you know, those different ranks, et cetera. And then the participants will match that. And those participants are kind of typically like Joe's counterparts or some of the NHR's counterparts are, they typically, they do that process on a routine basis. So they're very familiar with matching a similar level job.

[01:20:28] Okay. So, Mr. Gilkerson, those job descriptions are updated frequently or frequently enough? Yes. Right now, they're currently at the three-year mark. We go through and we update them periodically.

[01:20:44] We also look to see and we reach out whenever we do a recruitment or we look at a position to see if anything has changed within the job description. We do have some that go across several different agencies, so we have to be very cognizant of that. We make sure that we have verbiage that can support all the different agencies, or we specifically will point out for this agency, this is a requirement as opposed to the general job description.

[01:21:08] So, yes, we do keep them updated. Okay. Good to know. Yes, ma'am. And then, Mike, if we could go back to fire, sheriff, and ADC. Supervisor Bailey mentioned that you're recommending a minimum would be the 6.8 and the 7.8 for fire and sheriff, respectively.

[01:21:26] The ADC, I never want to overlook any of our public safety agencies. ADC has been struggling for years with hiring, a lot of vacancies, incredibly tough job.

[01:21:42] They're sworn officers, they're trained. How did you compare the sheriff's deputies and how, I guess, how familiar are you with the sheriff's deputy role as well as the ADC officers?

[01:21:57] Yeah, I've actually had a chance to tour multiple of those. We did a project down at Virginia Beach and toured both the different sheriffs and that one. They were looking at all internal equity with regards to the different service lines that exist there. So it was not external data. It was all about internal equity within a project.

[01:22:15] But yeah, understand we work with cities, counties that have different structures around the country. Typically the corrections areas within counties and other places as well and the police within the cities and everything. So we're familiar with what those levels are. We're saying here's the minimum qualifications for what those roles are, that they're sworn levels and the matches that exist.

[01:22:37] But you referenced Virginia Beach? That was a different project for myself. It was just a different project that had a chance to be there. So at some of the places you have a chance when we were here years ago for the original project, we had a chance to tour multiple places as well. Okay, I guess the question is, did you include in your recommendation that the ADC sworn employees' job descriptions are similar to the deputy sheriffs within the Northern Virginia market?

[01:23:05] They're more matching to other detention. So you're taking Prince William Regional ADC and comparing it to Virginia Beach? Not Virginia Beach, the ones that are listed on the participants. Okay, okay. Yes. All right, sorry, you threw me off when you mentioned the Virginia Beach. No, you're talking about familiarity with the overall functions and stuff like that, so.

[01:23:23] okay okay um let's see i've got a few more questions related to um i don't know if we want to get into signing bonuses today are we are we delving into that as part of this discussion we do not have okay because i brought up in december that the signing bonus recommendations were different for the public safety agencies and i personally like to keep those uniform do you remember that you guys they're like some i think police and fire were five or ten thousand ADC and share for five?

[01:24:00] Yes. So the purpose of this discussion right now is just the salary, the compensation, the base salary for the various positions. One thing, if I may back up a little bit, something you mentioned about ADC, I believe the board has passed a resolution saying that ADC now will be part of GAP Act as well.

[01:24:17] So hopefully that will help with retention as well. So we're making strides to help support ADC and make sure we're getting in good quality individuals as well. Yeah. Mr. Gilchriston, can you remind everybody, including me, what GAP Act is? So it's basically ensuring that they get certain pays through there.

[01:24:39] I don't have it in front of me, so I don't want to start talking off the cuff on it. But it allows for certain benefits and certain overtime requirements to be put in place to make them more competitive and more online with other public safety positions out there.

[01:24:58] And do we build capacity within their agency budgets to allow for that? Yes, ma'am. I'm HR, so I would let David Sinclair speak to that. Poor guy. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. But I'm assuming yes.

[01:25:14] David Sinclair has that taken care of. Okay. And as long as we're on explanations, what does DB in your column, it's the general workforce, you have an acronym for it? Yeah, that's the job evaluation methodology called the decision ban method.

[01:25:29] Decision ban method. Thank you. All right. I think I'm done for now. Thank you. Supervisor Bodie, and then I have a question. Sure. I just have two final ones. One is a Doug question, but I think it needs to be asked publicly anyway. I know that other jurisdictions, including ones that you're comparing us to, their sheriffs have different roles.

[01:25:49] Some of them, I think Loudoun, for example, they don't have a separate sort of police force. Their sheriffs sits over everything. Did you compare that role and what those look like as part of this study? I have to go back and check out the matches that were provided by law. Because different roles, different sort of overall responsibilities, so I think that's important to note.

[01:26:07] Two, ADC, I have three questions. So second, ADC, so I assume that you didn't look at just the wardens and all the folks that actually manage the inmates there. You also looked at the nurses, the other support staff that are in there too?

[01:26:23] This one looked at the sworn. Yes, correct. But we didn't look at anyone else in there, or were they just considered general employees? Mr. Bodie, with those other positions, they were part of the general government. Okay, so they were looked at, but just under general government and not sworn.

[01:26:39] Okay, that's good. And my final question, to go away from the ADC, and that's helpful there, is to go back to just the Judicial Center overall. Because I think it's sort of its own microcosm, and we have a lot of different agencies that are not only first for Prince William County, or tri-jurisdictional in nature.

[01:26:57] So there's a lot of diceness goes on. Almost to the complexity of the fire department, I won't go there. I know that there's a lot of, I won't call it sort of jockeying, but a lot of collaboration and talk that goes on year over year over year there in terms of whose department and whose office gets the raises this year versus that year.

[01:27:17] And so sometimes, now that we're looking at this, there may be an office that hasn't gotten their raise yet because they haven't gotten to that in terms of the cycle. So did you have those conversations at all with the individual offices there? And if so, were there any circumstances that was brought to your attention on an office that, frankly, has been left behind and how that sort of adjusts what you're looking at here?

[01:27:40] Are you referring to multiple offices that are all part of Prince William County in that building? Okay. Because we've worked with some other counties that have the courthouse, and they'll have multiple jurisdictions that are all in the same building that are part of, like, different, you know, tax entities or they're like an engineer's office they're a adult correction center they're juvenile they're all different totally different departments different organizations in a way so no the purpose here we did not talk to individuals about what the pay adjustments have been we're saying what is the

[01:28:14] pay range that exists now for those positions what is the actual pay for that position and how does that compare against the data that we collected in the market okay so then there's always going to be instances where, yeah, this organization has made these adjustments in the past, so therefore that's why they're ahead, or that's why this one is behind, because they have not had these adjustments, and that helps explain some of those differences within there.

[01:28:40] And so I will say it's not your job to necessarily go out and talk to all the departments about where they think they are, what they think they need, et cetera. You were just looking at data. But in terms of the courthouse, where does the clerk of the courts fall under this analysis?

[01:28:58] And really the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, but we'll sort of ignore them because they're their own thing. But where does the clerk of the court fit under? Were they analyzed? Yes. They were part of the general government, but understand that the clerk of the court is also exempt. They can have differences with their salaries as well.

[01:29:17] We try to keep them as closely as we can to the DVM of the position that they're in. But they do have some leeway in how they pay their staff. Well, I just, because I know there's some discussion about, so that the clerks to the, just the judges are now paid more than I think the clerks of the courts.

[01:29:36] And so we have this disparity. And so I'm just trying to figure out how all that fits in. Maybe that's another simple discussion, but we need to have that discussion too. Yes, and we're in conversation now with the clerk of the court on that right now. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I have Supervisor Angry, then Supervisor Lawson.

[01:29:55] Yeah, and just one question. Just the slide 21, salary structure recommendations. See, it's all the general government and leadership up to the E92, right? And so when you get into public safety, the FD and the sheriff and the...

[01:30:10] So when you pull out that last page that said your Gallagher structure, public safety, cost implementation, I see this is 952, but is there another sheet to this to show the breakout of the, I think somebody might have asked that already, to show the breakout of the police?

[01:30:31] By a jail, fire. That is possible, yes. We just looked at the full. Yeah, who in there are you saying of these 952 employees, you know, require this update, if you will, implementation?

[01:30:47] So I don't know if there's more. I'm pretty sure you've got more slides to this to go with that. If that's one that we can see, that'd be a good one to see. Yeah, I do not have a slide of that breakdown right now. But the 952 encompasses fire share of ADC.

[01:31:02] Yeah, because I'm literally looking at the classification listing of everybody spelled out here. But you really only list just the general government and not all of those, you know, Tech 1, Tech 2, Lieutenant Captain, Battalion Chief, and then so on and so on.

[01:31:20] especially when it gets down. Like when I get up here into the, because they're up top here, when you get into the JDC and the ADC, the AD01 through 08, like so you don't have the adult, I guess AD is adult detention maybe, but I'm looking at all of the master jail officers, jail sergeant, jail first sergeant, like that whole batch of folks that make up that program.

[01:31:43] So I'm just curious where they fall out in this 952 because I don't necessarily see, I mean, you just got it, just saying public safety, police, fire, sheriff, and adult detention center. But, you know, what those positions are, what makes that up? I would just be curious.

[01:32:00] So there's going to be different – oops, I went the wrong way. I'm sorry. I was clicking the wrong button. Oh, so you – okay. My fault. Maybe that's back behind it. So on the fire, on the police, due to the recent adjustment that was made, we factored that in, No additional adjustment is necessary based upon its comparison to data.

[01:32:22] In the fire, a minimum of a 6.8% adjustment based upon a comparison of the current midpoint of the county against the market. Now, we took the current salary structure of the fire, because we were looking across all those ranks, and said, let's update that by 6.8%.

[01:32:40] Then we'd say, hey, me as an individual, as a firefighter, I might be at step four in that range, up 6.8%. And in step four, I'm going to maintain the same spot. So it was a slightly different methodology for that calculation.

[01:32:56] So each one of those groups were adjusted differently. The positions that are in those are on the last page in the – oh, shoot, I keep hitting the wrong one. Sorry. So those are all the general government and leadership positions.

[01:33:14] And then on the last page here, with regards to police, those are the jobs that we had. And it could be multiple – number of people that are in those. So we never made it to the last pace. There it is. But I want to remind this board, you know, in 2019, because you've got everybody listed, but basically senior leadership in Fire and Rescue, there was a pay bump in there.

[01:33:38] It was a lower rank in file that really, when we talk about this. So inside of this, we're still talking captains and above. I'd be curious. I can't see. Yeah. I mean, it's all done. So I would ask to look at that, you know.

[01:34:01] People said they were top-heavy, and are we still saying that they're top-heavy, or where did the number – because there's not enough detail in the thing. We don't really know from this information where the adjustments actually are for the top of the fire department, I guess is what he's asking.

[01:34:19] Okay. So maybe we just need more detail. But I do have Supervisor Lawson and then Supervisor Bailey. Yep, thank you. From what I recall, and I can stand corrected if I get this wrong, but I think in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of our fire and rescue compensation adjustments in 2019 that Supervisor Anger was referring to, I think there were higher percentages in the pay scale on the higher ranks in the fire and rescue.

[01:34:48] And the feedback was that the pay scale bumps were less on the lower-ranking positions. I think that's what I just said. Yeah, it was top heavy. It was more increased at the top than the bottom. And so that's probably information that would be valuable for any follow-up regarding your work.

[01:35:11] Did you have any of that in this study? That compensation study was done by a different organization, but we can certainly circle back. But we still have the information. Yes, ma'am. We'll share with them, and we'll come back with more information. Okay. And then regarding the 56-hour work week and the three hours of overtime pay that Supervisor Angry reminded me of, can you look into the details of that?

[01:35:41] Because I don't think it's all paid time and a half. I think there's a complexity to that, as well as because of some federal standards. So when you're diving into those details, make sure to consider that. And then the chair brought up the clerk's office, and that gets really complicated because you have those state compensation board employees.

[01:36:09] And honestly, that gets into long division in algebra and calculus for me. And I don't know if are all of the employees in the courthouse part of decision-based, what did you call it, decision-banned method?

[01:36:27] or not everybody. They're blended. I'm sorry. They're blended. They're blended. So the blended employees are part of this study as well. Well, all the positions have a DBM to them regardless of where they're at right now. So they were part of this study. It's just where they're at within within that within that band. Okay. All right. Michelle Casciato, Deputy County Executive. I think we've we've got hold of a couple different issues here that are being conflated together.

[01:37:02] The issue at the Judicial Center is largely the difference between what the state employees are being paid, what the county employees are being paid, and the different levels of supplement that have been provided across those offices. Gallagher did not look at any of that. That's not any part of what the study was that Gallagher was contracted to do. They were asked to look at our existing pay structures, our existing pay plans, and make recommendations about where we needed to go in terms of adjusting to the market so that we can remain as competitive as possible.

[01:37:40] And if I can, Madam Chair, to continue that, it's important that we understand that the number 952 and 92, these are adjustments that will be made to bring those individual employees because they no longer meet the minimum, all right?

[01:38:05] So this was not about job classification. This was not about the consultant, at least, going about asking or surveying individual employees about their jobs as relates to our county partners.

[01:38:21] So I just want to make sure that we don't put those kinds of questions to the consultant because I think that's a different conversation than the one we are having about pay. Though I do have a question based on what you just said, would a clerk of the court employee who's paid by the state and we're not giving a supplement and has a certain job description, were they in this study?

[01:38:50] They are not our employees, so they would not be in our study. Okay, so I want to clarify that. This is county employees and the county pay structure. Okay, so this had nothing to do with the clerk of the court. The clerk of the court is a county agency with county employees.

[01:39:06] All of her employees are included in this pay study. They are part of our structure. They are in this pay study. They are all in a DBM because they are all civilians as opposed to public safety. But her folks and the classifications that serve the clerk's office, which also serve other offices across the county government, were surveyed as part of this.

[01:39:32] So they were included? The clerk's office, yes. Yeah, the clerk's office was. Okay, so... But we didn't do any comparisons to the state pay bans or any of that kind of stuff. This is strictly an internal study of Prince William County compared to the market. So we didn't do the Commonwealth Attorney?

[01:39:51] Same thing for the Commonwealth Attorney. Commonwealth Attorney is on our pay structure, is on our pay plan, and they were included in the study. They were included, so their numbers were in here too. We have classifications that serve both the County Attorney's Office and the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. They share a lot of the same pay classification titles.

[01:40:09] Okay. So I still have Supervisor Bailey and Supervisor Bodie. Thank you. So that applies to the public defender as well, correct? The public defender employees are not employees of the county, so they were not included in this study.

[01:40:25] Okay. This clarity. I wanted to make sure there was clarity with that. And county exec, our attorney, thank you so much for the clarity in terms of the classification because to keep us focused on what, And I apologize, Joe, if I brought that up and kind of mudded the waters, but that was, okay, that was my old HR head.

[01:40:46] So the other thing that I wanted to say, and Supervisor Angry, it was me that mentioned about the, when I was talking about the emergency personnel, just trying to understand that as well. So, Joe, please, if you can, and I was looking for that in these descriptors here, these classification titles.

[01:41:05] And so if we missed it, if you could provide that for us, that would be great. For the Emergency Communications Center. They were compared against others in the same position in other localities. Okay. But we can continue to look at that for you as well. Okay. Thank you so much. Supervisor Bodie.

[01:41:22] Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. So just to go back for a second to the Judicial Center, because I don't necessarily want to leave that yet. And I appreciate the clarity by everyone. I guess even though I completely understand why the state positions weren't part of the study, I think at least for our context, I also think it's about the study, But also in our context, as looking at the budget and this conversation we're having, I think it's still important to look at that because we have general district court folks, for example, that are receiving a supplement that the clerk of the court's office didn't receive.

[01:41:55] So we're looking at, even though they're not a different jurisdiction, they're a different office in the same building, they're receiving a different level of pay than folks that are our folks that are in that same building. Does that make sense? I hear what you're saying. I understand exactly what you're saying.

[01:42:12] The Judicial Center is a little too complicated to take apart at the podium today. What I would like to do is take the opportunity to pull that information together, provide it to you in writing, and then you can make the decision that you need to make accordingly for the budget process.

[01:42:29] That's fair. That's basically where I wanted to go with it. Just to leave that there with you all so we can have that conversation later and not just think that we're good based on what was said here. My last question slash comment is in regards to the fire department because it seems like their differential here and based on our conversation is a little bit farther from other segments of the workforce.

[01:42:53] Are there any conversations about us making these sort of Q4 adjustments based on the study, or is that just all going to be discussed in the upcoming budget? Thank you for that question, Supervisor Bodie.

[01:43:08] Our intent here was to make sure that we had this information as part of the proposed budget discussion. So we are not contemplating, as it were, making any adjustments current year, or I should say recommending to you any adjustments current year.

[01:43:25] That said, we are always available if there is a request for information. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Michelle, thank you for your offer to explain the debacle that this is.

[01:43:42] Just want to recognize Colonel Miletus and Sheriff Glen Hill, thank you for being here. But also, Michelle, if I could ask in whatever you're going to put together and present to this board, if you could also include the deputies that are paid by the state so that we can understand, because we're talking about two different pots of money here, and it can get very confusing when we're talking about pay and who's supplementing what, this and the other, because we do have some positions at the sheriff's office that are totally funded by the state, correct?

[01:44:10] That is not correct. Or partially? We have several comp board positions in the sheriff's office that are paid a certain amount that we receive funding from the state to help offset the cost. But all of those folks are paid according to our rates and our schedules.

[01:44:29] So if they happen to be in a comp board position, then we're in a good position of receiving money back from the Commonwealth for that position for 12 months but whether they're in a comp board position or not does not affect the rate of pay for that particular deputy okay thank you sure and i know we've had a detailed discussion for quite some time but i you know knowing that going forward with our budget one of the main things that we're focusing on in is employee compensation this is really important to understand exactly where we are before the this the county executive brings brings forward the budget so thank you for putting up with all our questions but it's really helpful for us to

[01:45:07] understand because this is just the beginning of the step of of you know what we do for next year's budget so thank you very much i uh let's see no no okay so i think we're all good i think we have a few continuing things to sort of you know i'm sure we go through this every year about who's an employee who's paid by the state and all those kind of things but it was really very useful to know and thank you for all the hard work and i think we have a little bit more we're coming back with and we appreciate all the hard work thank you very very much so um that concludes number six our work session and brings us on to supervisor's time we do have three um appointments

[01:45:45] that we need to get through if i could get a motion for 7a through c so moved madam chair second thank you motion made by supervisor vice chair body seconded by supervisor bailey is there any discussion on 7a through c seeing none please vote vote unanimous okay great um we're just going to go around the dais to provide some some updates we're going to say we're just going to start with supervisor angry and work our way down thank you madam chair supervisor vega and i will be hosting we'll be working with the department of public works and opal fields to schedule a community

[01:46:19] information forum to discuss the landfill renewable renewable natural gas facility this project will potentially affect some areas of the neapsco district those homeowners that will be personally affected have been notified by letter i would encourage my constituents to attend the forum on Tuesday, February 21st, 7 p.m. here at the McCourt Building. We will have representatives from Opal Field and the Department of Public Works available to answer questions and address any concerns from the residents. I want to congratulate Northern Virginia Regional Commission, NVRC. They received a grant. It's called a REPI grant, which REPI stands for the

[01:46:59] Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration. So what that grant is going to do is continue work on a shoreline restoration and flood mitigation project at Quantico Marine Corps Base. And I'll just point out that Department of Defense actually hosts this, and they heard 17 proposals last year, and only 13 were selected for funding.

[01:47:23] One of those 13 was NBRC and the work that they've been doing to resolve this issue. This is only phase one. They'll get a grant. They'll actually do a study, work with Quantico to figure that erosion mitigation out. And then it's, I think, about a three-step process.

[01:47:38] So they'll be moving on to get another grant to actually do the build-out. And so this is step one of a process. I also want to just congratulate Economic Development Office, a.k.a. Team Christina, for getting accounting to our V3 program status and achievement.

[01:47:56] So we currently have over 95 businesses in the county that are V3 certified. And what that means, these businesses understand the importance of hiring qualified veterans into their organizations. The model is recruit, hire, train, and retrain progress for veterans to have successful stories.

[01:48:13] And if you are a small business owner in Prince William County and you want to be a V3 company, go to DeltaVictorSierraVictor, that is DVSV3.com, and you can click on that bottom link to register and get your company signed up to be a V3 certified company as well.

[01:48:31] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. Supervisor Lawson? I don't have anything, thank you. Supervisor Brody? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be very quick. On this past Saturday, I attended the, let me get the full name of it, the Prince William County Rowing Club High School Erg Sprints at Garfield High.

[01:48:53] The Prince William Rowing Club, for people that don't know, is actually a pretty robust rowing club. almost a dozen schools in the county high schools are involved in the rowing club and they even though we're not in season for them yet they're practicing and they do these sprints every year to sort of begin to establish baselines on where the folks need to train so I want to thank Garfield High and the rowing club for inviting me out to that the only other thing I have to share is for my constituents who are eagerly awaiting the the Occoquan Greenway right now as we speak The county is working on the construction of a bow truss bridge across the Hedges Run Creek off of the trail.

[01:49:32] This is a significant step forward for the Occoquan Greenway. One of the most difficult and challenging things we've had to complete that project are the crossings over the rivers and the various creeks throughout the alignment of the greenway. The fact that we're getting so close to constructing these bridges, such as this one across Hedges Run Creek, shows how much progress we've made over the past few years in this project.

[01:49:55] So if you're on the trails that exist out there, whether the informal ones, the formal ones, and you see construction going on, know that that's part of the Occoquan Greenway, and we're moving forward with that. And that's all I have. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, and happy Valentine's Day to everybody.

[01:50:14] On the 8th, I want to thank Tom Smith and Public Works for coming to provide a Phase 1 and Phase 2 update on the Powell's Creek project, and it is going very, very well, and so we will be having a ribbon-cutting on that very soon.

[01:50:32] I'm looking forward to that. On the 9th, thanks to Rick Canasales and his team for providing transportation, upgrading transportation information regarding grant opportunities for the Potomac District. And so just look forward for those improvements as well.

[01:50:48] And then on the 9th, I had an opportunity to share at an event with the MVBIA concerning awards that were given. And I think one of our employees here, the county can't think of the name right now, received an award there.

[01:51:06] And then on the 10th, thank you to Tom Smith, Rebecca, and Wade for meeting with myself and Brendan Shaw concerning Possum Point and the progress that we're making with Possum Point.

[01:51:23] And so there will be a community event coming up in the latter part of this month to give the updates on the movement that we have with Possum Point. Also, just to highlight on that, there's a bill that has been passed in the Senate concerning the piping and the improvement of the water transfer there at Possum Point going into Cherry Hill.

[01:51:44] So that's good for our communities. On the 11th, I attended the Outstanding Black History Month program, Honoring the Mumford Point Marines at the National Museum of Marine Corps. And it was absolutely great. We have a wonderful Mumford Point Marine that lives in our community.

[01:52:02] And there's a school that had been named after him. Mr. Braxton is a Mumford Point Marine. He is now 92 years young. And so we will be honoring them at the end of the month with a proclamation. Upcoming events on the 15th of February.

[01:52:18] I'll be looking forward to attending a much-needed opportunity that we have hopefully coming forth with the FBI expansion from Quantico Base. On the 16th, looking forward to attending the county's Black History Month program at the Falazzo Building.

[01:52:37] We do that, and our county employees do an exceptional job with that, and that will be on the 16th. On the 20th, I'll be participating with Mayor Derek Wood and the Dumfries Town Council, Delegate Candy King, and my school board rep, Justin Wilk, as we talk with our youth about youth empowerment. There will be a town hall. We've had some unfortunate issues with mental health in the community, and we're going to give them an opportunity to lend their voice to us. On the 22nd, we'll have our third Potomac Talk with Chief Peter Newsham, our own police chief,

[01:53:15] and he'll talk a little bit about the community public safety initiative and the things that we're doing to make our community safe. On the 23rd, I'm looking forward to the Prince William County Chamber Business Awards and the silent auction event that's going to happen and sponsorship from our chamber.

[01:53:33] And then on the 25th, I'll be participating in the Donfrey's Black History Month program at Little Union Baptist Church. So happy Valentine's Day and happy Black History Month to all of you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Bailey. Supervisor Franklin. Sure, just a couple of things.

[01:53:50] Last week I met with the Potomac Club HOA, talked about the commuter garage as well as some other questions they had with regards to some of the projects we have going on in the community. So I just want to thank the HOA for calling me in and allowing me to answer some questions and give an update.

[01:54:09] I also want to thank Kappa Alpha Psi for allowing me to kind of join into their meeting, I think probably about a couple of weeks ago, to give a legislative update on what the board has been working on. And I will be having a transportation meeting with the Belmont Bay community on March 6th and looking forward to meeting with other HOA communities as well.

[01:54:34] I'll be attending the Black History Program on the 16th at 11 a.m., which is this Thursday, And I will be hosting my third annual Black History event on February 27th, 7 p.m. virtual with the highlighted topic of black civic engagement. So hoping people can join.

[01:54:52] So thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Angry already mentioned the upcoming town hall that we're going to be having next week. Also, for those watching at home, I'm sure that you already know that we have a special election for the Gainesville Magisterial District seat coming up. That election will take place next Tuesday, and obviously will be to fill the vacancy left by Supervisor Canlan.

[01:55:13] Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and voting will occur at your normal polling location. Also, let's see here. Bear with me as I read this, because you're all going to be like, what in the world is she talking about? But I'm going to refresh your memory. For anyone that does their grocery shopping, you all know that prices at the grocery store have dramatically increased, especially the cost of eggs over the last few years.

[01:55:36] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a dozen grade A eggs cost a retail average of $1.54 in 2019. Last year, it was $4.25, almost three times the amount, and it is predicted that that number is only going to increase. Two years ago, we did make adjustments to the domestic fowl overlay district, which expanded the number of homes in Prince William County, illegible to raise their own eggs with a baseline of one chicken per acre.

[01:56:02] However, those on parcels of less than an acre were excluded. I was recently reminded of this by some of my constituents, in particular one who sent me an email in regards to the cost of eggs and how inflation is impacting their life. I'd like to read a paragraph of what that email contained.

[01:56:18] Supervisor Vega, I wanted to ask whether during these tough economic times and with egg prices skyrocketing, would the board consider lifting the restrictions on domestic fowl? I have seven children and my uncle lives with us as well. We have 10 people to feed. We go through about 20 eggs daily.

[01:56:34] Being able to produce our own eggs would be so helpful. I am in the domestic foul overlay district, but I don't have an acre of property. I think it would empower a lot of families in the area and be a really simple thing the county could do to help out in these tough times. I'm obviously not going to dictate policy from the dais because we no longer do that, but I would like to ask the county staff look into at least temporarily expanding the criteria for those able to own a hen to those living on less than one acre.

[01:57:03] and have come back with a port. I will say that's a ZTA, the zoning text amendment, so it might not be as easy as it appears, but maybe county staff can come back with a temporary thing, so who knows. Thank you, and I did exclude roosters, because as a chicken owner myself and roosters, they're a bit problematic, so I just want to make sure that we're helping folks with one problem while not creating another, so thank you.

[01:57:25] That's all I have, Madam Chair. Very good. So I don't have much to cover, except I got to attend the on-the-road I-66 express lane update, hosted by the Washington Business Journal, and our own Christina Wynn and our own Rick Canizales were on part of the panel, so they talked about the changes that were going to be brought by having the I-66 lanes now open.

[01:57:58] I also got to have the honor of being on the Kojo Nnamdi show last Friday again with WAMU. I always loved going on that, loved always chief cheerleader of Prince William County and talk about how great things are going, so I really enjoyed that. I do have a couple of notices of intent to appoint.

[01:58:15] One is I'd like to announce my intent to appoint Mr. Calvin Farr as the at-large appointee to the Upper Occoquan Service Authority, better known as UOSA. That's a standard appointment. And in addition to Mr. Farr, I would like to appoint Mr. Don Panel and Ms. Astrid Nelson as alternates to the Upper Occoquan Service Authority, which is also very standard.

[01:58:38] They just need to be reappointed, is my understanding. With that, I'd love to move on to the next agenda item, which is the closed meeting. Okay. With that, we will go into closed session and then report out. Thank you.

[01:58:56] That is the subject of the litigation and part of proposed settlement of the litigation. Therefore, I am disqualified from and did not participate in the closed meeting discussion regarding the proposed settlement litigation. Therefore, I will not participate in the board's vote to certify that portion of closed meeting.

[01:59:15] Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote.

[01:59:32] Okay. I think we're all set on that vote. We have a motion. We have something to report out on. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move authorization and approval for the Prince William County's participation in the proposed settlement of opiate-related claims against Teva, Allergens, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, and their related corporate entities, and directing the county attorney and or the county's outside legal counsel to execute the documents necessary to effectuate the county's participation in the settlement for all magisterial districts.

[02:00:07] Second. Motion made by Supervisor Billy, seconded by Vice Chair Bodie. Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Per my prior disclosures just now, I will not be participating in the board's vote on the proposed settlement. Thank you. Any further discussion?

[02:00:24] Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Franklin abstaining from vote. We have one more issue. I'm going to turn it over to Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move approval for the endorsement of the upcoming Federal Bureau of Investigation in the nearby Springfield, Virginia area.

[02:00:46] Second. Motion made by Supervisor Bailey, seconded by Vice Chair Bode. The letter we just signed, we're codifying, we're making sure through a resolution that we support the letter we just signed. Just wanted to make sure, I thought we were doing everything that was certifying closed session, so I just wanted to make sure.

[02:01:05] We finished that, so this is just new. So is there any discussion on the FBI building? Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. Thank you very much. The board will be going dinner tonight, at least more than three of us, at Petra's in Woodbridge.

[02:01:26] Thank you.

[02:01:27] It is 7.32 for the continuation of our evening session of the board meeting.

[02:02:10] Right now we have item 9, the Office of Management and Budget, who are going to present the proposed fiscal 2024-2029 Capital Improvement Program. And I believe Mr. Sinclair from the Office of Management and Budget is here to present that.

[02:02:30] Madam Chair. Supervisor Angry. Oh, yes, yes. Excuse me. Before you start, Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, before staff begins its presentation on a proposed FY 2024-2029 CIP, I need to declare a personal interest in this matter.

[02:02:46] My wife is a special education instructional aide with the schools. As a school employee, my wife and I are members of a group which is affected by this transaction. Because I am able to participate in this matter fairly objectively and in the public interest, I will be participating in the board's consideration and adoption of the proposed CIP.

[02:03:07] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey is on her way. She's just a couple minutes out. Okay, Mr. Sinclair, make sure the microphone's on. And yes, that's a good height.

[02:03:24] We'll have to work on that. Yeah. So, okay. That worked out. Please proceed. Good evening, Chair Wheeler, members of the board. My name is Dave Sinclair. I'm the Office of Management and Budget Director, and I'm here tonight to present the county's proposed fiscal 29, 24 through 29, capital improvement program. Just to set things up, the capital improvement program is basically the county's six-year plan for facility and infrastructure projects. I'll

[02:04:01] also add that we've added a kind of a year 7 through 10 component to this year's CIP for projects that are about to enter the six-year plan. And we'll go over those projects at the end. It is guided by the board's established policies regarding the county strategic plan and the newly adopted comprehensive plan, as well as the capital investment and debt management policies identified in our Principles of Sound Financial Management.

[02:04:34] The CIP has many different funding sources. Some of the main ones we'll go over a little bit later, but it's funded by debt financing. We issue municipal bonds to finance our larger projects, as well as the county's general fund, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, 30% and 70% regional funds, state and federal sources, as well as the fire levy, stormwater management fee, solid waste fee.

[02:05:05] And also, our proposed CIP links to our annual budget and five-year plan, which, of course, Mr. Shorter will present on February 28th. It's important to establish the link between your proposed CIP and the debt service and facility and program operating costs that we have to incorporate over the five-year operating budget.

[02:05:33] I'd like to just go over quickly some of the completed projects that we have or expected to be completed this summer. We have the Cat Harpen Park Auxiliary Building that was completed in December. The Cloverdale Park Pedestrian Bridge completed last September. The Balls Ford Road Interchange Project is scheduled to be open this summer, and the Rollins-Ford Park is scheduled to open in September of this year. And an old mentor, Tom Blazer, always informed me, you know, Dave,

[02:06:10] September is still the summer. Before I begin, I'd just like to identify a couple capital project pressures that I'm sure you're familiar with. You've either been hearing it in the news or um uh in staff presentations over the past year uh first and foremost uh our capital projects are impacted by construction material price volatility the good news is some of our commodity prices have conned down come down in price over the past year based on the producer

[02:06:47] price index um but um some of them are still higher than the beginning of the pandemic uh two or two years ago. For example, just a quick survey of some of the major commodities. Lumber is still up 18 percent over two years ago. Steel products still up 70 percent compared to a year ago. These prices are coming down in May of 2022. Steel was 126 percent higher than the beginning

[02:07:22] of the pandemic so it's still a mixed bag prices are slowly seem to be coming down but they are still elevated and diesel currently is nearly 150 percent higher than what it was at the start of the pandemic we also have some significant supply chain issues anecdotally some of our hvac and electrical equipment and this has always also been collaborated we have some collaboration going on with the schools. Their experience is the same thing. Sometimes it takes a year lead time to get

[02:07:58] HVAC and electrical equipment. And I just heard from our Department of Fire and Rescue today that some of our specialty apparatus could require lead time from 18 to 24 months in advance to put in that order. For this reason, we have increased our CIP facility projects that you see here 25%.

[02:08:24] Whether that will be enough or not, I can't say at this time. A lot of these projects just started the design, and we really won't have a better feel until design is completed and we have professional engineering estimates. I'll also point out that we have a higher cost of borrowing to finance projects.

[02:08:45] Our interest rates have basically doubled over the past year, but we have incorporated that into our debt service costs that finance our larger projects. The proposed CIP is $1.26 billion over the six years, and as you can see on the left pie chart, the largest component is our transportation projects at almost $800 million over the six years.

[02:09:15] The next largest segment is our community development projects. That's our park projects, landfill projects, stormwater projects, for example. Our largest funding source is debt financing on the part of the county, followed by NVTA 30% and 70% funding for road projects.

[02:09:46] really quickly, the proposed CIP incorporates American Rescue Plan Act funding that the board allocated during the past six months, I believe, $30 million for various capital projects included in the CIP, most predominantly parks, recreation, and tourism projects. We also include a renovation of our emergency operations center, $5 million to improve broadband access in the county,

[02:10:18] and $1.3 million to finish the animal services center. This proposed CIP also incorporates recently announced congressional funding in the amount of $10.5 million secured by our congressional delegation, some of which is for projects already in the CIP, and some are for new projects. And we thank their efforts there. Moving on to community development projects,

[02:10:51] we have $7.4 million in fiscal 24 for landfill projects that are mandated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. This includes landfill cap phase two and landfill liner phase three. We do fund those on a cash basis. And $3.2 million for county watersheds to conduct drainage improvements, stream restorations, and to improve water quality

[02:11:22] consistent with state and federal mandates. We have included $1.6 million for the Transportation Roadway Improvement Program, sometimes known as TRIP. This is funded by recordation tax revenue that the board has chosen to designate for transportation investment.

[02:11:47] Under this program, $225,000 is allocated to each magisterial district. Sorry, Chair Wheeler. But what is beneficial about this is it provides a local source of funding for Mr. Canizales to maybe secure state or federal funding and to do a larger project.

[02:12:07] Now, I will say we did try to increase the amount of funding for this program, but unfortunately, the revenue source, recordation revenue, is actually declining. Because of higher interest rates, mortgage refinance activity has dropped significantly.

[02:12:26] But the good news is we have been able to maintain it at its current level, but we did take a look at that. We did want to try to increase that, but we're unable to do so. Moving on to the Building and Facility Capital Program, I know this is a highly successful program.

[02:12:49] For fiscal 24, we have $9 million allocated to the Building and Facilities Capital Program. All of it is funded by the county's capital reserve. The standard $4 million is shared equally between parks and our facilities and fleet management group, but wait, it gets better.

[02:13:09] We have also allocated additional $2 million in fiscal 24 specifically for parks. You can thank me later, Seth. In addition, though, I do want to point out we have a project that we have to do.

[02:13:29] We consider it a must-do project, $3 million to replace the underground fuel storage tanks at our Garfield fueling facility. These tanks were installed in 1990, so they are more than 30 years old.

[02:13:44] And we've been informed that our insurance carrier will no longer insure those existing tanks. We have to replace them. So that's $3 million allocated for that project.

[02:14:01] In the out years, we have $4 million each year, again, funded by the Capitol Reserve. Mr. Angry, it's taken me three years to get it, but this new program is for the community.

[02:14:19] We'd like to introduce a new program for your consideration. It is the Fire and Rescue System Station Renovation and Replacement Program. We did, the fire and rescue system commissioned a facility condition assessments at all 22 stations in 2021. And some of our stations range in age all the way from just two years old to nearly 60 years old. The assessments recommended major renovations at several stations and some stations

[02:14:58] that recommended outright rebuilding them. So what this program provides is $4 million a year funded by the fire levy to begin the work of renovating existing stations or begin the work to design station rebuilds where appropriate. I don't have a project schedule for you right now.

[02:15:24] This is going to be determined by the Prince William County Fire and Rescue System Executive Committee. I think they've just been informed of it recently. We had to make sure that the funding was available first to do this. We also do have two FTEs, two positions in our facilities and fleet management group to provide project management for selected stations. Some of the renovation work is very similar to the building and facility capital program, but it may also

[02:16:02] include energy efficiency projects that will be determined on a case-by-case basis. The goal here to provide a healthy balance between renovating and maintaining existing stations while also planning for new stations. Fire and Rescue Station 27, located in the Potomac Magisterial District, it's nearly a $20 million project. Design began last November, but we are going to request, staff is requesting construction appropriation from the board in fiscal 24. We think this project

[02:16:40] will be far enough along in the latter portion of fiscal 24 where we might be in a position to go out to construction bid and we can't do that without appropriation authority from the board. In the out years of the CIP we have fire and rescue station 28 but that doesn't planning and design doesn't begin until fiscal 26. Improvements to the public safety training center. The master plan

[02:17:16] was completed in 2019 and the projects include classroom and support space at our Brentsville's facility, Noakesville's facility. The project cost for the classroom and support space is approximately $30 million and we hope to begin design this spring with money that funds that the board already appropriated just for design. We have a couple new public safety technology projects that like to present to the board. The first one is enhanced public safety communications at our

[02:17:54] county schools. This is a two-year project funded by the Capital Reserve, and the intent is to purchase, install, or replace bidirectional amplifiers at public school buildings where appropriate to enhance public safety radio coverage. In addition to that, we have our 9-1-1 call handling equipment that is reaching its end of life. You might be asking, well, what does end of life mean? The current equipment and servers are basically seven years old,

[02:18:32] and we're talking technology here. So ideally, you want to replace it every four or five years, and because of its age, we're not getting the full capabilities of our next generation 911 system and replacing this, which is past due for replacement anyway, will enable us to take advantage of that. And again, the funding source of this is also the capital reserve.

[02:19:04] The next project is our juvenile services center. We hope to do some planning work this spring so that we can generate a cost estimate to present with our state delegation next fall to see if we can get state reimbursement from the Commonwealth for this project.

[02:19:31] Our out-year financing does assume state participation on this project, and the goal is to have a very good cost estimate for our delegation next fall so that we can get a final determination on whether or not the state will participate during next year's legislative session.

[02:19:50] The crisis receiving center. The board authorized the lease last July. We have to incorporate the out-year cost of that lease in our five-year budget plan. Right now, the project includes behavioral and substance abuse services for adults, but we have good news.

[02:20:17] The Department of Behavioral Health and Development Services has, I think, recently announced that they are prepared to provide $2.1 million annually for the county's crisis receiving center.

[02:20:36] This will be presented to the board either later this month or next month for you to accept the funding. And this will enable us to start addressing adolescent services from the crisis receiving center. Right now, the project budget is $16.6 million, and design is underway.

[02:20:58] There is a lot of work that needs to be done to outfit the interior of the building. It is a significant construction project unto itself. As I said, design is already underway. We hope to have the design completed this summer, and then we have to go through the standard plan review and bid it.

[02:21:23] and award a construction contract perhaps as early as this fall. Construction completion is currently scheduled for December 2024. Our Homeless Navigation Center, the total project cost is $26.3 million.

[02:21:51] Design began last month. I believe the board approved that design contract last December. And design is supposed to be completed in April of next year. with occupancy in November, 2026. This project as well, we are requesting staff is requesting construction appropriation as part of the FY 24 budget, uh, in the amount of $24.3 million.

[02:22:21] We think it's conceivable that at the end of fiscal 24, we will be in a position to advertise this project and we need the board's author authorization for construction funding before we can advertise that. The Judicial Center renovation design is underway for a lot of the funding that the board provided in fiscal 23 for things such as the elevator replacements, fire alarm systems, AV improvements, and technology improvements in the courtrooms.

[02:23:01] The fiscal 24 appropriation funded by the capital reserve in the amount of $6.3 million entails replacing exterior windows. That's a major project at that large facility, but also renovating the courtrooms on all three levels.

[02:23:22] The judicial center expansion, the board received the master plan for the judicial center expansion project last month. We are taking a phased approach for courtroom and parking expansion.

[02:23:43] Right now, the total project cost in this six-year CIP is almost $140 million. And we are seeking design appropriation from the board in fiscal 24 so that we can concurrently begin the design for the parking, including the parking structure, and the design of the new courtrooms.

[02:24:07] County-wide space, last year the board authorized the acquisition of property adjacent to the McCourt building. In fiscal 23, you provided some design funding to begin pre-planning and design work for future space needs. We think it's going to be warehouse space that will also kind of dovetail with improvements at the Judicial Center expansion project.

[02:24:45] Moving on to our parks and referendum projects that voters approved in November 2019, staff is requesting appropriation for design and construction of $24.1 million to do the project phases for each project that you see on the right-hand side there.

[02:25:12] On our mobility referendum projects, all projects are continuing with either planning, environmental work, or design through fiscal 24, and so no additional capital appropriation is necessary.

[02:25:37] I will point out for the board that debt service starts to kick on for the mobility referendum projects in fiscal 26, and then it slowly starts increasing over the life of the five-year plan.

[02:25:52] show you that later on towards the end of this presentation right now a key assumption is that the annual debt service resulting from the mobility referendum projects will be funded from dedicated transportation funding sources it could be from nvta 30 percent local funds that we receive annually it could be from grantor's tax revenue that we receive as part of that nvta construct or it could

[02:26:27] be a potential commercial and industrial tax i want to be very clear for the board staff is not recommending a commercial and industrial tax as part of the fy24 budget this is a future consideration when i say future i mean three or four years from now based on current project

[02:26:53] schedules, but it is a future decision that we will need to discuss. This slide summarizes the use of the county's capital reserve between fiscal 23 and what I've laid out in fiscal 24 to help fund some of these initiatives in the proposed CIP. We are looking at a total use of

[02:27:25] $37.6 million between fiscal 23 and fiscal 24. With those uses, the capital reserve is projected to have a remaining balance of approximately $60 million, which falls within the acceptable levels

[02:27:49] the CFO presented to you in December. I'd like to make a distinction for the board, the difference between a capital project budget and its impact on our operating budget.

[02:28:14] The capital projects that I presented to you this evening pays for the design, the right-of-way, the land, the telecommunications, and the construction of the walls, the brick, the mortar, the roadway. The annual operating budget pays for any annual debt service costs necessary to finance those projects if we are financing it through debt. Our operating budget pays for the facility's

[02:28:53] operating costs, such as the utilities and the maintenance necessary for that facility. And the program operating costs include the services that you provide out of the facility, the people, okay?

[02:29:09] This summary provides the capital appropriation that the proposed CIP we are requesting from the board it totals 123.2 million dollars for the following projects that funds the following project phases it also provides the funding source that we reviewed with the board this evening

[02:29:37] of this amount 76.2 million dollars is debt financing 20.3 million dollars is a use of the county's capital reserve 10.5 million dollars for federal 7.4 million for solid waste four million dollars from the fire levy and so on and so forth. This slide shows the impact of the

[02:30:13] proposed CIP on our five-year operating budget. This is just the capital piece that Mr. Shorter will present to you in his proposed budget on February 28th. What we've highlighted in green are uses of the capital reserve across the fiscal years and for the specific projects.

[02:30:37] I will just point out to you that, as you can see, the CIP expenses in our operating budget, as you go across the page, they get more and more as projects start to enter the construction phase and we start paying full-year debt service to finance our major projects.

[02:31:01] There is something I would like to point out, this line that's called future community improvements. We have debt service costs of $4 million entering the fifth year of the five-year plan.

[02:31:22] That is at this time an undefined project, but we have carved out about $4 million of debt service. That would finance at current interest rates approximately $40 million of capital improvement.

[02:31:38] And as promised, here's a list of projects that are waiting to enter the six-year CIP. These are not prioritized in any order.

[02:31:56] They are just arranged in terms of either master plans that the board has approved or master plans that the board has received. This is the final slide that shows the county's budget calendar.

[02:32:17] Mr. Shorter will present the proposed budget on February 28th. March, we will have budget work sessions for the board, and then things will really be flying in April with the schools presenting their proposed budget on April 4th. We will have budget recap in the official public hearing on April 11th, budget markup April 18th, and budget adoption is currently scheduled for April 25th. And with that, I'm going to get a quick drink while I'm Happy to receive any questions.

[02:32:56] Thank you very much, Mr. Sinclair. You always do such a great job, and I know that was a lot of information, though a lot of it isn't new for most of us, right? So I guess I would ask – I did have one question, but I guess I have to get out of here to see if people have signed up to – does anybody want to ask a question?

[02:33:27] Supervisor Lawson? Is she – oh, look, okay. Supervisor Lawson, yes, okay. I'm back to the right screen. Okay, great. Now I can't look at my presentation, but oh well. Okay, yes. Thank you. So, Dave, a couple questions for you. The first one that comes to my mind is regarding the mobility projects, which was on page 21.

[02:33:55] For example, Route 28 bypass, as you said, presumably start paying on the debt in 26, 27. Yes, ma'am.

[02:34:06] What if that's, like, any of these projects can get either delayed or actually sometimes they're delivered sooner, earlier, but 28 comes to mind, like, if I recall correctly, and I don't know if Rick Gonzalez is in the room, but we're waiting on Army Corps permitting, and I don't, last time I remember he presented, we were still in the early stages of design, right?

[02:34:35] Yes, ma'am. That is correct. Madam Chair, members of the board, Rick Canizales, your director of transportation. That is very correct, Supervisor Lawson. We are in the very initial stages of design. We're actually about to have the first public meeting on the design here in a couple months.

[02:34:53] I would suggest that David is looking out, Mr. Sinclair is looking out, three, four years down the road, where we do anticipate to get those Army Corps permits, and we do anticipate to be able to move forward with the project. So we let him know with that anticipation when we need funds to start construction, which we're looking at about 26, 27, probably closer to 27, because it will be a long time for the right-of-way of that.

[02:35:20] As you know, it's very intense. Okay, because that's two years from now, FY26. Correct, and that's why I'm saying that the right-of-way would be very intense. I'm thinking construction at the earliest would start in 27, at the earliest. So my point or question is, those could change, those timelines.

[02:35:39] The timelines could change, but I don't see, I don't think. At least for the other projects. Right, some of the other projects will start going on. So if you start looking at Miniville, if we can't find funding sources for that project, we'll start trying to start taking debt service on that. We see the 123 Old Bridge Road intersection.

[02:35:57] that may need some funds and as you know the second leg of Devlin there out the Linton Hall isn't fully funded yet we may be looking to get funds for that as well so it just depends on where we're at we're making a lot of assumptions as we're going out three four years out I'm just trying to put out best case scenario where we think we would be in each one of our projects so obviously you're working together oh yes man we talk we talk continually with David yes in his office good I guess 28 was the only one that was really and you're very correct and you're very right to say that construction would probably not start till in the outer years but we do have a

[02:36:31] timeline to meet because with extensions we can only meet the bonds out to 29 I believe right or so we do have to try to get under construction hopefully if that project will is to move forward and get those bonds pulled before that time frame so we can get that project fully funded if it goes forward okay and related to the funding of those projects and I I know you're cautious about this is probably more for Dave although Rick you're welcome to stay up there too

[02:37:02] a potential future um the C&I tax would that be built into the five-year plan um it so it's not adopted for F you're not recommending it's not adopted for FY24 but as you're running the models Are you using that to balance out your five-year plan?

[02:37:24] We are assuming a funding source for the Mobility Debt Service, whether it be funding sources that we already received, such as the first three bullet points, NVTA 30% local funding, grantor's tax funding, that by state code we have to spend for mobility improvements anyway, or a potential future C&I tax.

[02:37:49] Now, if we lock up the first three funding sources to finance debt service, we will tie those revenue sources up for 20 years while we pay the debt service on the mobility projects.

[02:38:06] That's why I just want to keep it on the board's radar, the CNI tax as a future option. if you don't feel like, if the board doesn't feel like tying up these precious revenue sources for 20 years.

[02:38:23] Right, right. And then this is more of a legislative question, but right now I can't recall any bills in Richmond right now that would affect the transit or the grantor's tax. I know that's been played around with before, but there's nothing going on in Richmond.

[02:38:39] Not for Prince William County. It's been played around for the inner jurisdictions, for the metro jurisdictions to deal with metro. For us, we were able to retain that funding, but I think it's very important what Mr. Sinclair said about the C&I tax, because the C&I tax, we do have to remember, that's also the other way that we meet our requirement for NVTA to continue to receive those 30% in grant towards tax rather than meeting our maintenance of effort that we have to now.

[02:39:05] Right now, we have to meet a certain level of local transportation expenditure per year that we had some trouble getting to last year, And we're tracking this year in order to receive that funding. If you implement the CNI tax, that MOE goes away and you would be able to receive those fundings without having to prove what you've spent per year to the NVTA.

[02:39:31] So just another thought on why not only the commercial and industrial tax would serve to help finance some of these bond projects outside of these funding sources and without tying up those funding sources, but it would also get to another requirement that we need to meet on a yearly basis with NVTA.

[02:39:47] Thank you, gentlemen. Supervisor Angry, then Supervisor Franklin, and then I have a question. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a lot. I've been trying to write so I can get going. Okay. Public Safety Training Center.

[02:40:09] So I'm looking at slide 12. Just for clarification. So that doesn't include the – at one point we were going to do that range expansion out there. Is that off to this or is that a part of this?

[02:40:26] It is no longer part of the project. Okay. And then when I look on slide 26, the shooting range acquisition debt operating, is that all of the acquisition that goes towards the elite piece that we're looking at? Yes, sir. Okay.

[02:40:41] We are financing that acquisition. Okay. I just didn't know because, as you talked about it in the public safety piece, I had a few questions about the whole elite piece. We took it out of the public safety training center project because of that recent film.

[02:41:00] Exactly. There's a cost savings in there somewhere. I don't know what that is, but we'll... We're not doing both. Yeah, we'll be able to talk about that. And then, so I'm just curious, the Garfield Underground fuel tank, where exactly is that? Where is that located? I'm just curious where that is. Route 1 near the Garfield Police Station.

[02:41:18] Gotcha. So when I think Garfield, I think the high school. I know where it is. That's right off of, right one off, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm always thinking Garfield High School and then, gotcha, okay. And then I had, darn it, you know I'm proud to come back to me because now I'm all over the place.

[02:41:38] But I got a few more, but I'll get back to them and just come back around. Thanks, Madam Chair. Supervisor Franklin. Sure, I just want to point out, obviously, some of my priorities include the Senior Center, the Woodbridge Library, and I wanted to ask for clarification, when you have Potomac Library, you mean Potomac District or the Potomac Library?

[02:41:59] The Potomac Library. Okay, because I think that's the same thing as the Woodbridge Library. Yes, ma'am. Okay, so you all may want to edit that. But wanted to point out those two as top priorities. And then kind of a newer priority, but new over the past, I would say, year is a recreation center that I've been pushing for on the Route 1 corridor.

[02:42:22] I've said this before, but the closest recreation facility we have is the Dell City Rec Center, which is about, give or take, 15, 16, 17 minutes away. You have the Chin Center, which is about 18, 19 minutes in a different direction.

[02:42:39] There's a Boys and Girls Club, but that's not a rec center, obviously, in Dumfries. And so we need something on the Route 1 corridor. And as we've been talking about youth services, and particularly in the context of some of the challenges that we've seen, I would say over the past year, particularly in the summertime, I would think that a recreation center would be something that we would need to prioritize.

[02:43:03] So I would say whatever we can do to make that a topic of discussion, that's something that I think we should do. And I will say that I've also gotten positive feedback from at least my district in terms of pushing for that. So that's something that I would like to keep that conversation going forward.

[02:43:23] And then again, obviously, the senior center and the library, we've already started the conversations there officially, and hoping that we can progress in those discussions. Thank you. I'm going to just jump in.

[02:43:39] The Navigation Center East, if you could go to that slide real quick. Yes, ma'am. So I guess I thought somewhere along the line we had already been working on that with design and allocating money. I guess that's not true. Is that correct, that we haven't started on it at all? The board has allocated the funding for design, which...

[02:43:56] No, no, the Navigation Center, sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. The board has allocated, I believe, $2 million for the design of the Homeless Navigation Center. We are using that budget to pay the architectural and engineering costs that started, as a matter of fact, last month.

[02:44:20] So I guess that's what I'm getting at. So we didn't start designing it until last month? Yes, ma'am. Okay. For some reason, I was under the assumption when we allocated the money, people might be designing it. That's not your area. Yeah, we still have to go through an RFP proposal process to select the contract.

[02:44:38] We have done that. The board has awarded the contract. The design has begun. I mean, design begins in January 2023, and you don't begin construction for two years. Is that normal? Can anybody tell me if that's – it seems like a long time to me.

[02:44:54] It can take a year to 18 months for the design, but also after that, you have permitting and plan review, and then you have to unfortunately bid to construction. Okay. It just, I mean, it just seemed like a long time, but if that's our standard, is that two years is standard for when we begin designing it to when we break ground?

[02:45:18] Yes, ma'am. It's at 18 months. It's government. It's just a thing. It takes time to get all the design done, and then you have to go through the permitting process. Well, permitting, we know, can take a while in Prince William County. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That was an inside joke.

[02:45:37] But that said, I guess I'm just not used to it taking so long to design, and that's just part of the, you know, I mean, it feels like we've been talking about this since the pandemic hit, right? We also, during the pandemic, we put a hold on it. We put a hold on things, so that definitely made it feel like it's been there for them.

[02:45:54] Okay. Well, thank you. My other question is just, you know, you talked about, Mr. Sinclair, you talked about a C&I tax. You know, we're just starting to bring business in and economic development projects. What is a C&I tax tax, just so my own edification?

[02:46:11] It taxes, it's like a real estate tax. The maximum rate, I believe, is 12 and a half cents. And it is applied to commercial and industrial properties. It is not applied to multi-family apartment properties.

[02:46:28] We believe it would generate approximately $13, $14 million a year currently. And by state code, it may only be used to increase transportation mobility capacity. So if I build like a garage or a gas station, it's taxed?

[02:46:48] No. So if this is a commercial and industrial property, it adds on to that real estate tax that we put on. So it's an additional real estate tax on the property, on the commercial and industrial property for the county. It's only applicable for transportation. What I did want to bring to your attention is that it can be taxed at that maximum.

[02:47:06] I believe it is 12.5, but it can also be lower than that. You can do it at 10 cents or 5 cents. You can increment it. You can just increase it by year. There's different ways of doing it. It's not an allocation that you have to go at the high end first. you can kind of look at it in different stages or you can look at it at a lower level.

[02:47:23] So I just wanted to bring that to the board's attention as well. Okay. Madam Chair. I'm sort of loathe to put another tax in. Yes? Well, so to piggyback on that, like right now there's a 234 bypass tax that would be similar in concept.

[02:47:40] So all those commercial properties, actually they're not even all along 234, like way over by Jiffy Lube Live, they're part of that taxing district. Correct. It's a taxing district. What that is, ma'am, and if I can add on to a supervisor lawsuit, that is it.

[02:47:56] I'm sorry, ma'am. Sorry, I was just going to correct me if I'm wrong, but it's an additional, like, two-cent tax to the real estate assessed value. So I don't know what... So instead of $1.03, it would be $1.05. Correct. Okay. Correct. And it obviously was to help pay for the 234 bypass.

[02:48:15] And I believe there's some other transportation taxing districts that other board members have on the east. That is correct, Madam Chair, members of the board. We have two taxing districts in the county. Both of them are on the parkway. One is on 234 bypass part of the parkway with Supervisor Lawson refers to, which he's a member of that district, and it is correct.

[02:48:35] It's a two-cent tax on that district. But, like I mentioned, just like the taxing district is just kind of like the CNI tax, where you can shift the funds and there's a maximum, and then you can kind of go within that. The taxing district in the Prince William County Parkway, which is a taxing district where Supervisor Franklin is part of and Supervisor Angry is part of, in that district, the tax was $0.20 additional on the property, on that tax.

[02:49:05] So since then, again, we've been able to pay off the debt on the parkway on the $0.20 tax district and on the $0.02 district. We're a little short, but we're still working on it to get there. But it works similar to that in a way that it's countywide, though, at that point. The C&I tax is countywide, and it does create the funds countywide, and we would have to determine how those funds be spent.

[02:49:27] Again, like Mr. Sinclair and I have discussed and how we are proposing it to use, if we do implement that tax, we would use that to pay off the debt on the road bond or debt that we take out on roads, as it is discreetly by code for roads or transportation only.

[02:49:42] Thank you. Supervisor Bode. But if I may, I apologize, Chair Wheeler. I do want to emphasize staff is not recommending a C&I tax as part of the FY24. Right, I don't want the headline to be we're instituting a C&I tax because we're not doing that.

[02:50:00] We're not. Okay, just to be clear. It is a future consideration. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. There's a couple of questions. First, Dave, you talked about you guys looked at the TRIP fund program and how this this year, because the recordation tax, it just didn't work.

[02:50:20] I guess my question there is, as you said, actually, can you go back that slide about the increasing costs over time? So you should probably see where I'm going with this. $225,000 per district isn't a lot even five years ago.

[02:50:39] Now that we're looking at increased costs of everything, it's even less now. So obviously not this year because there's constraints there, but, you know, year over year as we continue to move on through budget cycles, is it possible for us to at least look at keeping up with the current cost of inflation with these projects so we have that same buying power with our district trip funds as we do as we go along?

[02:51:02] because, frankly, we all know transportation projects aren't getting any cheaper. Regardless of the current state of the economy, they're just not. And we're already in a state where when Supervisor Candlin was here, he used to always talk about that weird gap where we don't have nearly enough trip funds to fund certain projects, but they're too small to have large-scale grant funding and other competitive grants and stuff like that.

[02:51:21] So we're stuck in this situation where there's certain sizes of projects. We, frankly, just can't pay for them. So I just want to put that on your radar as something to continue to look at in subsequent years because we need to find a way in order to start building capacity for the TRIP program just even to keep up with inflation.

[02:51:37] We will certainly do that, Mr. Boney. Appreciate that. Two, the BFP program for this year, I completely understand why it's $9 million. And I say this every time we talk about it now. Another thing that I know we have some constraints, but over time, I would love to see that program also built up because there are so many things in the county that we just can't get to.

[02:52:01] The point here that we're at a place right now with that $3 million for that Garfield fuel tank replacement. It's because we had to wait so long to get there, and now it's a must-do. Where had we had funds earlier on, we might be able to replace it for a much lower cost years ago. So just putting that on the radar, too.

[02:52:19] I like the fire and rescue one. Let me go to slide 27. It's one of your last ones. And before I get to that, I'll just say thank you for the proposed funding for the Ococon Greenway.

[02:52:42] Could not let that go. Appreciate it. So if you could just restate, Mr. Sinclair, this is sort of a whole list of projects that aren't being programmed into this current CIP, but are based on master plans that we've worked on, master plans we've received, things that we actually have planning documents for that don't have any funding sort of allocated to them yet.

[02:53:03] Or items of board interest. These are projects that we would characterize as being in years 7 through 10 of the CIP that are waiting to enter that sixth year of the CIP and begin the march forward across the plan.

[02:53:24] Sure. So two piggyback questions off of that. I see that the Community Energy Sustainability Master Plan is on that list, which as far as I know, we're kind of looking at a draft of later this year and for hopefully adoption by the end of the year. so i guess my question is if we're going to be adopting that plan hopefully by the end of this year but there's no funding for in the cip until you just said you're seven eight and nine how do those things jive together well i i recognize it's probably not enough mr bode but that million dollars that the board included in the fy 23 budget is available i know it doesn't achieve

[02:54:01] the goals that will come out of the master plan but yes that is a future consideration that um in addition to the building and facility capital program that's another program that could probably do with a dedicated source of funding as as well on an annual basis and that's something we'll have to discuss once the master plan is ready sure and i agree with that 100 so my last point are just two things to put on the radar of staff and my colleagues i actually talked to the county executive about this the other day and i also talked been talking to seth about this um a new

[02:54:36] lake ridge boathouse and so there's a feasibility study not the whole thing but just feasibility study money for a new lake ridge boathouse and then also planning money for the davis ford park so there's two things that consider to have come to me continuously over the last year and a half or so on community priorities that we haven't gotten on the horizon yet that i wanted to put on everyone's radar thank you thank you supervisor angry thank you madam chair all right i'll just Just before we get going, let me add my library to this mix real quick.

[02:55:14] I'm just going to read. I think you've been working with my office on this piece, so I'm just going to read it. I'd like direct staff to develop options and proposals to include cost funding, sources and feasibility analysis to increase the square footage of the Dell City Mini Library or relocate it. I'd like staff to work with my office while preparing this.

[02:55:33] So I have library proper funds available to use towards this project that we've been saving for this project. And this project was grown out of the Dale City Smart Area Plan, which included a new library. So we'd like for us to begin the work on that, to look at that.

[02:55:51] Now that that's not the way, let me just get to a few things that I was curious about. So on this, it says Neabsco District Park. Is that the Quartz District Park? Is that what that is? I forget what slide that was.

[02:56:07] Oh, sorry. Let me see if I can hear those. It is part of the parks referendum that voters approved in November of 2019. I will say, Mr. Angry, that design money is actually programmed in the adopted CIP for fiscal 25.

[02:56:28] That's why you're not seeing it in the FY24 column. That design money is, I think, $750,000. But it's currently programmed in fiscal 25. It did not slip or anything. We're just maintaining the schedule of all these projects.

[02:56:44] Yeah, and I agree with that because that whole development is about a 25, 26 outlook. And speaking of referendums, because of the Parkway Minerville, I know we had that bond. We got the bond for the park and for the road. I know we tied up a lot of funds right now to help with that road intersection piece.

[02:57:05] I'm curious about these bonds, and so when that was approved in 2020 at the 2019 election, how long does that last? Are we looking at starting that, and I know that's really a discussion for this board to have.

[02:57:21] So the voter authorization, I believe, lasts for eight years. The board can choose to petition to the courts to extend that authorization an additional two years, and that's it.

[02:57:39] If the courts grant that extension, we have a total of 10 years. After that, the authorization ends. There is no extension beyond 10 years, is my understanding. And if we still have work to do, we will either have to consider a different type of debt financing mechanism other than general obligation bonds or consider a new referendum.

[02:58:08] Okay. And so it's clear that I'll schedule some time with you and maybe Rick to understand where we are with this bond. Because at some point I would think that we'd have to, I don't want to use that term, but how to begin a process of using the bond that was approved to do for these projects.

[02:58:28] Madam Chair, members of the board, Supervisor, I agree. That's a great question. We are currently, as you know, designing that project along with a developer. We're looking at Mr. Sinclair has allocated $10 million of transportation, local transportation funding to that project in order for us to start doing advance right away for some of the total takes we're going to have to do in that project.

[02:58:49] So I think that we are right on schedule that if we need to take out bonds for that project, we'll be able to get with budget and finance in order to take out those bonds in time. Right now we're also looking at, actually today I saw a sheet that said that I think we've gotten about an additional $4, $5 million for this project in federal funds, and we're actually working on the federal environmental document at this time.

[02:59:15] So I think that we're really on time, and I don't really think we have to worry about that time mechanism at this time. And I'm going to probably get this wrong, but I think it was called RAISE? Is that enough? Correct. We do have a RAISE grant in there. Actually, last time we hit highly recommended on that grant. We did not get funded, but you do have to be highly recommended to be considered for funding.

[02:59:33] We're doing it for a second time around, thinking some of those projects came off the list last time, that we're going to be highly recommended again, and hopefully this time we'll hit it as well and get those funds as well. Thank you, and that explains good. And this last question, really, I don't want to step on Supervisor Vega, maybe even just ask her, but I'm really curious about the Lake Jackson Dam, because I thought at one point we were taking down that fence, or, you know, it's that hand crank job they do on that to open it up and relieve it.

[03:00:02] But there was some whole discussion about that. And so now we're still in the rehabilitation of the Lake Jackson Dam. So I'm just curious what the update is on that. Yeah, good evening, Chair Willow and members of the board. Tom Smith, Director of Public Works.

[03:00:18] Yes, we do have a project that it's actually an electric-powered gate, but we have to go out there and operate it manually. So that's the challenge. We do have a project that we're looking at that would actually take out that gate and expand the spillway. And we're currently, as you indicated, we got some federal earmark for that, but we still have to go through probably an application, FEMA application process.

[03:00:42] I've asked our environmental management division to work with our consultant to update that project. It's a little stale on some of the estimates, and as Mr. Sinclair said, costs are all over the place. as well as look at the possibility of expanding the spillway a little bit to give us even more capacity to potentially reduce flooding for larger storms.

[03:01:04] So we're looking at that project. The federal earmark for that is not enough to fund it all. We knew that, but so we're going to explore other alternatives as well and kind of revamp the project, and certainly we'll keep Supervisor Vega in her office advised once we get our engineer to take another look at the whole project.

[03:01:24] Thank you. Thank you, sir. Madam Chair, that's it for me. I'm done. Okay. Supervisor Bailey, then Supervisor Bode, then I'll jump in. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dave, thank you for this wonderful presentation. On slide 20, I think it's page 20. I'm going to go back to that one. For the Fuller Heights Park project, I know that we've been talking about that for a couple of years.

[03:01:54] Is that an expansion to what's there now, or is that renovation? I believe it's an expansion, Matt. I think it's maybe two fields, Seth. Okay, so that's what we talked about, Seth, before. Okay, all right, so I want to definitely advocate for that.

[03:02:12] And then the Powell's Creek Crossing, Tom, thank you for you and your staff came out and gave me a great overview of that. So the piece that you're talking about, the Powell's Creek on here, that's the finalization of that, that $9 million?

[03:02:31] This $9 million would be for construction of that facility, yes. Okay, so just making sure that's what we talk. Okay, I'm good with that. And then definitely that as we go through. But let's go back to the CRC. You know, that's my favorite slide, my absolute favorite slide.

[03:02:48] And just for a point of clarification for my colleagues and just, again, thank you for all of you in the day as for the support for this wonderful project that we're doing together. I just want to clarify, we've collected thus far $16.6 million, am I right?

[03:03:11] Yes, ma'am. That's the projected cost. So when you said, if you could just reiterate for me, the $2.1 million, that's ongoing that we just recently acquired for our youth? Well, the board hasn't accepted it yet, but my understanding is the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services is prepared to offer $2.1 million annually for adolescent services at the county's CRC.

[03:03:39] Community services will be bringing that item forward for the board's consideration, but my understanding is that it is annual funding. Okay, that's good. That's good. And then lastly, just in my advocating, I wanted to just point of clarification for the trip funds because I'm very appreciative for the trip funds, but I'd like for us to, and I've had a conversation, I'd like to continue the conversation with the county exec, if I may,

[03:04:15] in reference to that as it relates to something that Supervisor Lawson had mentioned about us, just how do we keep our districts clean and neat and trash pick up and things like that. So if you would, county exec, just entertain me going forward with that, because it's very important.

[03:04:34] We're getting e-mails and everything, but that needs to be on our radar as well. keeping and i know you're you've been thinking about it and everything but as it relates to our trip funds how do we do that so just putting that okay thank you so much thank you madam chair supervisor bode thank you madam chair just two final things for me and i'll be done probably for the night um dave when you mentioned uh the fire and rescue system renovation replacement program you said that uh it's great but you said a sort of schedule is is not ready yet because

[03:05:12] it's you guys want to make sure the funding would be in place do you have any sort of timeline and when that schedule might be up it's really uh the in accordance with chapter 9.2 of the county's ordinance really we need to uh allow uh the fire and rescue system specifically the executive committee lay out a schedule of projects and evaluate those priorities um i want to be respectful of that process sure um i unfortunately i don't have a time frame at this time but um i will certainly ask the question and and see what um the the chief and and and the system will uh say

[03:05:51] about that because i appreciate that because as you said before we have some fire stations that are literally only two years old we cut the ribbon on them within our term of office and others which are have been here for decades and decades and decades so i think for the community's uh edification from an equity standpoint would be good to start to see very similar to some of our other CIP programs especially the schools where they list out where folks can expect to start to see the facilities in their neighborhood upgraded I think it would help over time yes I agree and we'll certainly ask the question and see how fast they can turn that around and last thing madam chair

[03:06:28] is ditto for the county watersheds program you know there's 3.2 million dollars for stream restoration channel improvements culvert modification drainage improvements again I know we have a lot of sort of older streams that have been damaged by various things sometimes man-made sometimes just inclement and hazardous weather that have only increased over the last few years so we can start to get a handle on a timeline of which streams we're looking at and what have you I think we do publish that and it will be available in the proposed CIP document which will be dispatched to the board next week as part of the proposed budget.

[03:07:04] I will say, if you recall last year, we actually had a budget work session on the stormwater management fee and the need to replace and retrofit an aging stormwater management infrastructure. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. So I'm just going to jump in.

[03:07:19] If you could just go to the proposed CIP debt servicing and operating cost impact. It's like slide 26. And just help me, I guess, would it be possible, and maybe no one else cares about this, but to get, do you see where it says debt and operating, you know, for certain things, like the Homeless Navigation Center says debt and operating, and obviously some of it's debt service, right, and others because we're doing the project, just so people understand these aren't necessarily capital expenditures, they're costs associated with every new project, and so we feel we have to put them in the CIP or somewhere in the five-year plan, maybe not necessarily the CIP.

[03:07:56] can i get those broken out between debt we can certainly do that as a matter of fact each individual project page in the proposed cip document will differentiate that at the bottom of the page for you i think that's important that we're you know this isn't necessarily all just capital investment and the last thing the stuff in green i know you went through all the different sources right but the stuff in green at the top are those all sourced from operating and that's why they're up there no the items in green are funded from the county's capital reserve Okay, so they're funded from the Capital Reserve,

[03:08:33] so they're not necessarily operating expenditures every year. Correct. Are they in the bottom line, or are they not? They are part of the bottom line total, but I can net those out for you if you would like to see it. Yeah, because that sort of conflates two different things in my mind about what kind of increases we have year over year based on the debt service and the operating.

[03:08:55] Yeah, that's fair. With those in there, if we're not, you know, Because I sort of looked, I was like, I mean, it does go up. Don't get me wrong. It goes up. But just having those separated out would be useful for me. Thank you. Supervisor Franklin. Sure. This may not be exactly a CIP discussion, so I'll just keep it quick, but wanted to refer back to Supervisor Bailey's comments about the trip funds.

[03:09:17] That's something that I am certainly interested in potentially making more flexible so that we can take care of some of the needs, such as landscaping, particularly in the Woodbridge District, we've been dealing with a lot of challenges as it relates to maintenance of VDOT property.

[03:09:37] The other thing I'll just kind of throw out there, it's my understanding that this board used to have discretionary funds, and so would love to have a, uh-oh, Supervisor Lawson's looking at me, would love to maybe at some point. Supervisor Caitlin's going, we can get that back. Yeah, yeah, but, you know, in thinking that, at least with discretionary funds, We can use that not necessarily to do anything but to have more flexibility in taking care of certain projects that red tape would just kind of put us behind on.

[03:10:09] I'm trying to think of examples, but, you know, like maintenance could be one, you know, if we couldn't expand trip funds, beautification of certain communities and neighborhoods. So just thinking about additional funding streams or funding programs from funds that we already have.

[03:10:29] So just, again, that's probably a budget discussion, but Supervisor Bailey kind of pinged my mind about that. Supervisor Lawson. Thank you. I actually kind of forgot what I was going to ask because now I'm thinking I'll share some history when we're not in session.

[03:10:52] Individually, of course. uh so what was i going to ask something about oh i know i was going to ask sorry let's let's go back to navigation centers uh so we have funding for design of east which that's that's the facility down by the omni ride um headquarters right yes ma'am so i was just talking to miss tierney before the session started and mr shorter knows mr johnson knows the chair and i have spoken

[03:11:29] about this too how do we get the the navigation center for the west moving faster i mean we absolutely have a homeless population in the west end of the county that that needs more services and needs them sooner than later staff is working diligently to find the right location that has met a lot of different challenges but while i have the opportunity i'm going to advocate to officially put this on the CIP if we can.

[03:12:08] What process does that look like, Dave, to get this on the CIP, even if we don't have a location identified yet? Ideally, typically the process, I realize it's probably a current need, and I respect that.

[03:12:26] Ideally, a new project enters the CIP in the out years, years four, year five, or year six, and it slowly marches forward in a pragmatic uh fashion um so in the five-year plan you would put it on like fy 28 yeah right now it's on yeah it's on the list yes ma'am and i know that list is not in the order of priority because if it were i would say let's put it up at the top um but practically speaking how do and whoever's going to fill this seat in two weeks is going to also

[03:13:06] i believe advocate for the west end navigation center so from from a logistical practical standpoint do i continue to lobby mr shorter and and and his leader directors or how do i move this train faster on a financial side logistically mr johnson miss tierney are working diligently but on a funding side how do we make it happen i if i can so i actually

[03:13:40] We just reviewed an update from Elijah and Courtney that they plan to send to the board based on Supervisor Bailey's directive in question. So I will say, ultimately, we are going to continue to provide updates.

[03:13:59] I think the biggest challenge with the West, based on the update I just read, is the location. And so we will continue to certainly work with you and stakeholders who provide direct services to find the location.

[03:14:16] And ultimately, that is the next step, a suitable location. And so I don't want to get ahead of Dave, but we can absolutely continue to have conversations. I would say Courtney and Elijah have both done a fantastic job making sure that you're updated as well.

[03:14:36] Thank you. And we're having all these side conversations. I just want to make sure that the public knows, and especially the advocates that serve our homeless population in the West, that we are doing everything that we can.

[03:14:52] And I appreciate, Mr. Shorter, that you're already on top of it. So thank you. Supervisor Bailey, Supervisor Bode, then I'm going to jump in again. Thank you so much. So, Dave, I've got three questions. One is, thank you for, we had a wonderful, just as a reminder to our community, we had a wonderful joint meeting with our school board, and they talked about the public safety equipment that you're going to, surveillance equipment.

[03:15:25] It may not be surveillance, but I can't think of the proper name for it that you mentioned in the report. The public safety, is it communications or is it the, no. Is it communications?

[03:15:42] Communications, yeah. Okay. Okay. Scratch that. So let's go back. So the other piece to that was the 911 equipment that you talked about.

[03:15:58] Yes, ma'am. Is that the enhancement for the 988 system as well? Does that include that? I will find out for you on that. This is specifically 911, but I will track that down. Can you track that down for us, please?

[03:16:14] because I know that's something new, but we might as well just take care of it now if it's something that's required. And then up for the Dumfries Creek piece on slide 27, is that Quantico Creek? Because I looked it up, and I'm saying this in terms of names of things so that we understand when we're talking about it from a budgetary standpoint, but also the community understands.

[03:16:44] Yes, Supervisor Bailey, that's the creek that runs through Dumfries, which happens to be Quantico Creek. Go figure. So, yes, we'll make sure they get that corrected. But it's the Quantico Creek that runs through Dumfries. The Dumfries, okay. So, which leads me to the last little piece, the third piece that I had.

[03:17:01] Going back to something that Supervisor Franklin said about the naming of things. If you could, please, if it doesn't cause a lot of confusion or trouble, change the naming of things because she's right. Potomac Library is not in the Potomac District, but that's what it was named, you know, long ago.

[03:17:19] It's now, it's in the Woodbridge District. Likewise, with the new parking lot that's coming forward for she and Supervisor Angry, it's got Potomac slash Neabsco, and it is in the Woodbridge District. So just a little tweak, if you would, please.

[03:17:35] Certainly happy to do so. Thank you. Supervisor Brody? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. This time, I promised the last thing. It was just something that popped into mind because of Zorza Angry and Franklin. I know that quite a few of us have proffer funds that are at our disposal for various things.

[03:17:53] I know you get this request probably every other year or so, Mr. Sinclair, but could you send us a list of how much proffer funds we have, each one of those accounts for each district, so we know what we're working with? So where I'm going with this is that some of these projects, I think, could help get kickstarted and there might be able to defray some of the cost of the overall CIP we're able to spend some of our proffer funds on it all proffers or just specific to parks or roads or you want everything yeah okay thank you um i'm just going to insert myself real quick

[03:18:27] um the homeless navigation or just the homeless navigation center in the west at one point we had five million dollars of arpa funds i thought allocated to that was that what it was where we're getting the money to build it well no one institutional knowledge here sorry mr and then we also had we had 1.5 million in matching funds which we eventually had to had to give up because we couldn't find the space and i guess so is that correct that when we spent that arpa money somewhere else madam chair elijah johnson debbie county executive human services that funding actually was funding through the cares act directly to the office of housing and community

[03:19:04] development and that funding has been reallocated and we're using that on the acts project okay so that's all that's all gone that money does but so i guess my one question is are we still looking for space because we had we had millions and millions of dollars to do this and we couldn't find a space and so where are we with looking for space do we do it every week someone goes and drives around or or like can we have we just given up we have not given up we don't do it every week in fact we're in contact with some of our advocates and they've located another location that Ms. Tierney and I will be looking at along with staff.

[03:19:41] So we continue to look for locations. They've actually asked us to take a look at the space that we didn't take, but I don't think we're going to take that. That won't work. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[03:19:56] I just want to real quick make a quick comment. I'm going to plug Parks and Rec here because a lot of what we've been talking about with maintenance of streets and trees, you know, our maintenance fund hasn't been replenished in a very long time. So if we're going to talk about, you know, tripping this, we probably should be talking about how do we get our parks and rep back up to the wholeness that they were prior to the housing crash in 07.

[03:20:22] So I think, and I wasn't here, but as I recall, there was a lot of things that were pulled out and moved out. And while you're not going to – I'm here to speak on your behalf, Mr. Seth Henley-Voss, but I think if we're going to talk about what we're seeing on our streets, trash, a lot of this grass growing into the sidewalk gutters, which is – every day I see it, it kind of cringes me.

[03:20:43] But we really should invest into our maintenance fund with Parks and Rec and build up that service so it can do what it was intended to do. And I think that's something we have to bring back into the spotlight as we have these discussions, because we have it available.

[03:20:59] We just need to fund it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. We don't have a Supervisor Franklin had a remark. Sure. Just very quickly, just speaking on the Parks and Recs piece, and I'm going to call up Seth. Can you just give a quick update on the floors at Veterans Park?

[03:21:17] If you all recall, I kind of brought this up about a month ago, went to an event at Veterans Park, saw the floors. I hadn't been there in a while. They were absolutely abhorrent, and we asked that those floors be updated. They were only a few years old, but the maintenance had not been kept up, and so I think we have a pretty good update where the floors are in the process of being upgraded.

[03:21:45] Thank you for the update. Madam Chair, members of the board, Seth Henler-Vos, honored to serve as your Director of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, and I want to apologize on behalf of the department for this mishap. it was our error we've learned from it we are in a process of getting the repairs made it's about a three or four day process we issued the notice to proceed should be done by the easily by the end of the month but a five thousand dollar repair and it's a lot less costly than what it could have been so we dodged a bullet here and we're going to make sure that moving forward we're adhering

[03:22:20] to the maintenance schedule to keep the the warranty active okay well thank you mr sinclair It's obvious from the list that's just there, the tenure, that's not anywhere in the thing that we have some what I would call unmet needs that people perceive.

[03:22:38] And I know that trying to figure out where we're getting the money from and working all of it isn't easy. And we obviously want to invest in our community, which is what this is really all about. So we know it's a lot of work. Thank you. Thank you for all the staff showing up and answering questions.

[03:22:57] I guess we'll see how this fits into our overall budget presentation with Mr. Shorter when he presents it later on in February. So, thank you. Thank you to staff for all your hard work. Ms. Madden, do we have anyone sign up for public comment time?

[03:23:13] We do not. Okay. The chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. So move on, chair. Just tell me who pushed the buttons, and we'll go. Okay. Motion made by Vice Chair Bodie, seconded by Vice Supervisor Billy.

[03:23:29] All those in, please vote. Good job. We are adjourned. Good meeting.

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