Coraggio Consulting Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, March 7, 2023 Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2023 Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia Length: 3h 18m (video) Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3266 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:22:25] afternoon it is 2 p.m. on tuesday march 7th 2023 for those who wish please join me in a moment of [00:22:31] silence we can all rise for the reciting of the pledge of allegiance we are now on to agenda item [00:23:14] 3 3a and 3b approval of the meeting minutes for february 7th and the 14th the chair will entertain a motion to approve agenda items 3a and 3b second motion made by supervisor bailey seconded by vice chair Bodie any discussion carrying none please vote vote unanimous we're then going to on to agenda item four on today's consent agenda item there are seven items besides [00:23:51] proclamation are there any of the first seven of those that anyone wishes to remove from the consent agenda item because they have questions or concerns that they couldn't get answered before today okay if I could get a motion for 4a through 4g so move madam chair second motion made by Supervisor Bailey seconded by Vice Chair Bodie any further discussion seeing none please vote vote unanimous the chair will entertain a motion to approve [00:24:26] agenda items 4-h through 4-j so madam chair second motion made by Supervisor Bailey seconded by Vice Chair Bodie is there any discussion madam chair Supervisor Franklin sure just want to particularly recognize social work appreciation month I just want to thank our social workers here in the county for the work they do over the past several years particularly going through the pandemic there were a lot of needs in a lot of different ways and I believe that our county stepped up tremendously to provide those resources and so I do [00:25:03] appreciate it and then also be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that my own father was a social worker for 20 years so I understand the important work that you all do so thank you thank you supervisor Bailey oh thank you sorry I didn't push my buddy I too would like to show my appreciation for in honor of social work appreciation month as we've come out of COVID and had a higher need for your services as it relates to our children and anxiety [00:25:38] and depression you've just stepped up in our county and served us in a higher level I want thank you also for uh your input as we're standing up the the crisis receiving center here in our county so important that we have your input on that and so we just honor your patience and your expertise and your love for our county thank you thank you so um there's a motion on the floor uh all those in favor please vote vote unanimous supervisor vega abstaining from vote very good we're going to start with march 2023 procurement month and this will be received by the department [00:26:17] of Finance, Staff Members Adam Manney, Assistant Director of Finance for Procurement, Shanna Terry, Procurement Officer Mike Clark, Procurement and Procurement Court Manager, and Trenice Allen, Procurement Officer One, if any of them are here, you're welcome to join me at the podium. [00:26:52] Procurement Month, March 2023. [00:27:09] Whereas the Procurement and Materials Management profession plays a significant role in the efficiency and effectiveness of both government and businesses, and whereas the Procurement and materials management profession, through their combined purchasing power, spend considerable dollars every year, and so have significant influence on the economy, and whereas procurement and materials management professional work diligently to establish and maintain ethical standards in buying and selling, to increase their knowledge of efficient procurement methods, to disseminate useful information to its members, and to promote professionalism in public purchasing, and whereas in addition to procuring goods and services, the procurement and materials [00:27:46] management professionals engage in or have direct responsibility for executing, implementing, and administering contracts, developing forecasts and procurement strategies, developing working relationships with the suppliers. And whereas the Department of Finance, Division of Procurement Services, the Virginia Association of Government Procurement, the National Institute of Governmental Procurements, and other professional associations throughout the world engage in special efforts during the month of March to inform the public about the importance of the role played by the purchasing profession in business industry and government now therefore be it resolved that the prince william board of [00:28:25] county supervisors hereby proclaims march 2023 as procurement month and recognizes procurement professionals and the role they play in fostering efficient government so thank you thank you madam chair thank you board members on behalf of the entire team of procurement we appreciate everything you do and we look forward to continue to be a provide service to both the citizens and everybody [00:28:58] in the county as we continue on thank you for recognizing us we have social work appreciation [00:29:41] month march 2023 i have down that we have ms courtney tierney dss director phyllis jennings holt dss deputy director and laurie wilson chair of the dss advisory board and a few more you can introduce them. That's fine. A group very close to my own heart. Very close. Social Work Appreciation Month, March 2023. Whereas the National Association of Social Work has declared the month of March 2023 to be Social Work Month with the theme of social work breaks barriers. And whereas the [00:30:17] barriers faced by residents continue to be intensive and complex in their goals to live safely and self-sufficiently. And whereas the Prince William County Department of Social Services and the Prince William Area on Aging have 150 staff members who have degrees in social work or work in the human services case worker family of job classifications. [00:30:38] And whereas these staff members provide or support programs that provide strength-based, family-focused services to local individuals and families to transform lives. And whereas staff has been at the forefront of public efforts to meet the needs of all county residents to strengthen families, to create permanency for children to protect aged and disabled adults and children and to support all in navigating complex service systems now therefore be it resolved that the board principally and board of county supervisors hereby proclaims march 2023 social work appreciation month and [00:31:14] commends all social workers and human service caseworkers for their important work in breaking barriers faced by residents and transforming lives so congratulations good afternoon and thank you chairman wheeler and the members of the board of county supervisors with me today our director of social services courtney tierney the assistant director at social services for protective services van washington the dss deputy director phyllis jennings holt and the vice chair of the [00:31:52] the DSS Advisory Board, Idris O'Connor. So thank you all for being here. We'd like to thank you for the resolution. And while social work is good work, it is also hard work. Last year, DSS served over 100,000 residents, infants, elderly, and those in between, families and individuals who are homeless, abused, neglected, alone, afraid, sick, mentally ill, and disabled. In a word, they are vulnerable staff have broken barriers every day to transform lives through safety support and [00:32:31] self-sufficiency so again we thank you for this moment to recognize our social workers staff shared with me a poem that they shared with their staff and i'd like to take just a moment to read it to you the poem is entitled why be a social worker why be a social worker people often ask me the pay is not high the paperwork is beyond belief the stress you must have dealing with people's problems all day so i look at them and i try my very best to explain the pay won't make [00:33:07] me rich you're right about that the paperwork is insane and we always need more staff yes people come to me with a lot to explain from broken homes trauma and unimaginable pain but you ask why be a social worker? So let me share this with you. Why I continue to do what I do. It's the light in people's eyes when they first find that hope, when they empower themselves and finally [00:33:40] learn to cope. It's watching them find a new life, one they actually want to live. It's the joy of the families as they reunite and forgive. It's that one day you wonder, am I really making a difference in what I do. And then you get an email that reads, I'm happy, I am well, and I want to thank you. That's when you know, and I say it with a tear in my eye, there could be no better rewarding career. And this was written by Monique Renee Smith. So thank you all for recognizing [00:34:16] social workers. And last up, we have Flood Awareness Week in Prince William County, and I [00:35:11] believe chief forgo and brian meisner from emergency services are here and some others i'm never going to try to to get everybody it's just never going to happen all i know is that everyone whoever's here is always good right and it is too good to see katie mr meisner again it's been a long time you know we used to see them so often during the pandemic right it's like old home week so glad to have you back flood awareness week in prince william county march 12th through 18th 2023 whereas flooding is the most common and costly natural disaster in HNY, but only 3% of Virginians have flood insurance. [00:35:50] Prince William County is at risk every year of the damaging effects of flooding. And whereas the Virginia Departments of Conservation and Recreation and Emergency Management have designated March 12th through 18th, 2023, as Virginia Flood Awareness Week, encouraging Virginians to learn about their flood risk and protect the life they've built with flood insurance. [00:36:08] And whereas the Prince William County Office of Emergency Management, in collaboration with the whole community partners, is facilitating a variety of outreach activities through the month to encourage all residents and business owners to know their flood risk purchase flood insurance and to quote turn around don't drown unquote when roads are flooded whereas the prince william board of county supervisors recognizing that those who are prepared for emergencies recover faster and can help others who also may be affected demonstrating a sense of community now therefore be it resolved that the the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims March 12th through 18th, 2023 [00:36:47] as Flood Awareness Week in Prince William County. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board, Brian Meisner, your Emergency Management Coordinator, also joined today by Chief Forgo from the Fire and Rescue System, Katie Kitzmiller, our Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator, and Tom Smith from the Department of Public Works. [00:37:09] So as the resolution said, next week is Flood Awareness Week, and our messages this year continue to be a focus on making sure people understand their flood risk and the benefits of flood insurance. Just one inch of water inside a residential structure can cause $25,000 in damage, and most homeowners and renters insurance policies do not cover the cost of flood-related damage, so that is a separate policy that you would need to talk to your insurance agent or the National Flood Insurance Program about purchasing. [00:37:36] You can learn more about your flood risk by going to pwcva.gov/flooding and click on the interactive map to look up your address and all the various flood hazards or perhaps the good news that you're out of a flood hazard area. And then as well as our dam safety inundation zones where if in the unlikely event we should have an issue with one of our dams in the county, the area that might experience a sudden flash flooding if that dam were to have a problem. [00:38:03] Also make sure that you have a way to receive flood warnings. You can go to pwcva.gov slash alerts. And as the resolution stated, we really want to encourage folks to turn around, don't drown whenever you encounter a flooded roadway just 12 inches of water can float a passenger vehicle about 18 inches for a light truck or a van and no amount of water is safe to drive through even if you think the road's there it actually may be washed out and the flood water is still up over the the road surface you can see so please don't put the lives of our first responders that would have to come rescue you in danger and if you see that flooded roadway turn around don't drown and mr smith anything you'd like to add yes thank you again chair wheeler members of the board tom [00:38:43] Smith with Prince William County Public Works. I just want to thank our partnership with emergency management with flooding. It's not a matter if but when it will occur. Climatologists are telling us that we're going to be experiencing in this region of the country more intense and more frequent rainfall. So you'll be hearing and seeing grant applications we're applying for to improve our awareness as well as try to address some of our flood prone areas. It'll be discussed during the budget. But we appreciate your proclamation, your awareness to this. We appreciate our community and look forward to continuing to work together to keep our community safe from [00:39:21] flooding in the future. Thank you. That brings us on to public comment time. The board will hear [00:40:12] in-person and remote public comments. We're going to begin with in-person public comment time. This afternoon, we have roughly 15 people signed up to speak. I'm going to call the speakers five at a time. Each speaker will have three minutes to share their views and opinions regarding matters before the board. We ask that all speakers state their name and magisterial district or generally where they live in the county at the beginning of their remarks. After the first 15 minutes of in-person public comments, we will close the in-person public sign-up list. Today, our first [00:40:43] speakers are Russell Bryant, Patty Kuntz, Ayn Johnson, David Seary, and Cynthia Wilson. Good afternoon, Chair, Supervisors, County Exec, County Attorney, and Staff. [00:41:04] My name is Russell Bryant, and I live in the Woodbridge Magisterial District. Every budget of any government organization represents and requires an opportunity and a risk assessment. The opportunity for moving forward and attaining objectives and strategic planning outcomes for the whole organization and all its members. [00:41:23] The risk, which some may agree with, arrives with the balance of outlays for government, usual and customary services, and the financial sources. For governments, that source is usually taxes and certain fees. [00:41:40] All taxpayers make contributions, while some will not be as positive in making that contribution as others. Local government balances its sourcing via primarily property valuations and tax rates and occasional other sources. [00:41:57] Taxpayers, including myself, are happy with valuations that go up, not so for everybody, for the taxes that go up because we have higher valuations and an increasing population which requires additional services via the metrics that are prorated against the population. [00:42:18] In that respect, I want to thank the staff and the supervisors for all your work in delivery of the community's government services. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. [00:42:39] Good afternoon. My name is Patty Koontz, and I'm from the Gainesville District. I'm here as a board member of the Haymarket Regional Food Pantry. To say our pantry has had a busy few years is an understatement. we've had a 94% increase of clients from 2018 to 2022. In 2022, we serve 36,972 individuals, which equals 9,245 families. But with the growing number of new clients signing up, we are now adding a half an hour to our distributions on Monday through Thursdays, [00:43:14] and then an entire hour on Saturday. That means we will be serving 342 clients weekly. Why is this happening, and who are these people? Firstly, Prince William County is a very expensive place to live. In 2017, the United Way wrote a document called ALICE. [00:43:33] That stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed. These people have an income above the federal poverty level, but not high enough to afford a basic household budget that would include rent, gas, food, and child care. They are teaching assistants, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, nurses, receptionist, landscapers, to name a few. They work in jobs that support our county but struggle to make ends meet every month. In 2017, the United Way said that a family of four to live paycheck to paycheck with no savings is $85,644. Today, the Pew Charitable Trust says it is now [00:44:12] $105,189. We all know how the daily household costs have risen. But now we will be facing an even bigger crisis with SNAP benefits being reduced by $300 for millions of people living in poverty. Is it a little-known fact that every dollar spent by a SNAP recipient actually generates money for the government from $1.25 to $1.50? It actually creates revenue. That is because more people are able to buy food that leads to farmers and ranchers able to sell their [00:44:46] products, that leads to factory workers to process and pack the food, which leads to truck drivers to bring the food to stores, which leads to grocery employees who stock and check out the food. All those other people are earning wages and paying taxes. With this loss of buying power from the neediest, we could see an economic downturn when food prices rising even more, which creates a stress on all of us. I'm saying this to let you know that there's a great need in our county exists and will probably get worse before it gets better. We truly appreciated the [00:45:23] Prince William County Food Rescue Program that Chair Wheeler championed during the height of the pandemic. And right now, we're able to handle the additional food, but if things get worse, added help might be needed, not just for us, but for all pantries across this county. Thank you. [00:45:40] Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Look, that's all I asked for, just a smile and a good afternoon back. I feel like I'm in church. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, county attorney, got to meet all these people last week, county executive, board of county supervisors, and ladies and gentlemen here virtually and in the chambers. My name is Aine Johnson, and I am a member of the Woodbridge District. I stand today, this is the hard part, [00:46:17] I stand today as a wife, a mother, expected mother, pulling a quick Rihanna there, an advocate to foster parents, unfortunately, who have been failed by the Prince William County Department of Social services for 33 months, 28 days, for 89,251,200 seconds, for 1,487,520 minutes, for 24,792 hours, for 1,033 days, for 147 weeks and four days, I have invested my life into providing [00:46:55] a safe, nurturing, and stable environment for any child, any foster child, placed in my care. When I asked for transparency and accountability to members of the child welfare system as it relates to doing what is in the best interest of a child in their legal custody, my pleas were met with retaliation, insults, and the ultimate act of abruptly placing a child with another family. [00:47:20] The standard operating procedures outlined in the child welfare manual for foster care were not used by governing members such as Courtney Tierney, who just received recognition for Social Work Appreciation Month. We are asking for accountability. [00:47:36] We are asking for the following. A timely fraud investigation specifically for VMATs when children come into foster care, as well as when VMATs and how they are administered. Unethical behaviors of directors, inclusive of social workers, such as referring to me as a guinea pig. [00:47:55] a platform for foster parents to voice their concerns free from retaliation. Standard operating procedures are not intended for the Prince William County Department of Social Services to circumvent the law, but to adhere to the law in the best interests of children. [00:48:13] We are again asking, this is not my first time, this is not my husband's first time, we are again asking for the following individuals to be held accountable for their actions. We've reached out to Governor Glenn Youngkin. Commissioner Danny T.K. Avula, Christopher Shorter, Courtney Tierney, Diane Gestrich, Phyllis Jennings-Holt, Bridget Alston, Cheryl McMullen, Lillian Diaz, Caroline Lockerbie, Wani Diaz, and LaShawn Roberts Gibbs. [00:48:47] When the glass of transparency is held before the panel gathered before me, please ask yourself, is the glass stained with the handprints of children left behind by adults who have failed to act in their best interest. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. My name is Dave Sari, and I'm a resident of Gainesville for 24 years now. I want to thank the board for making [00:49:21] decisions recently, which were in the best interest of the entire county, and not just a select few. We're heading into a serious recession, 100%. Don't be fooled by the latest up move in the market. There's going to be a rug pull. The county, its citizens and its schools and first responders are going to be in a lot better shape in the coming years as a result of your hard work. Thanks very much. Thank you very much. Before our next speaker, I'll call the next [00:49:59] five, Ali Maum, Chuck Wilson, Charles Grimes, Carol Fox, and Ruth Ann Pizritz. Cynthia Wilson, Gainesville. I want to thank the Board of Supervisors for all their hard work and the new budget that is a step in the right direction for the future of Prince William County. Over the past year, I have attended many Board of Supervisors meetings, and I really appreciate all the countless hours of dedicated service they provide for Prince William County. They have to listen to Prince Prince William County residents speak for hours and hours, sometimes spending whole nights [00:50:38] listening to everyone's opinion. As we move into the future, this budget will be a good start towards increasing the county staff, and especially my special concern, the firefighters and policemen who risk their lives for us every day, and the teachers who guide our children. We are moving forward to be competitive in hiring and retaining important jobs in Northern Virginia. The board has shown amazing forward thinking for the county with the passing of the data center incentives. [00:51:06] In the future, the budget of Prince William County will be second to none in Northern Virginia. Thank you again for your hard work and concern for our future. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Ali Imam, Gainesville District. Thank you, respected board members, for your hard work for Prince William County. Over the last few years, we have seen some of you get bullied, insulted, are threatened by a very small group of activists whose goal is to oppose progress in Prince William [00:51:40] County. We have also seen a well-coordinated misinformation campaign unfold through petitions, rallies, weekly newspaper hit piece articles, which is still going on, and that are only meant to harass individuals. Yet you have shown courage and adequately tackled such bullying by the small group of minority activities, some of whom are not even our residents. Your only motivation was to see Prince William County thrive in all aspects, whether it is improving our schools, [00:52:12] local economy, government services, public health, social services, police, and fire departments, teachers, to name a few. Yes, I thank you for your such courage in supporting a bold plan to bring data centers to Prince William County, the new budget, and the Pathway 2024 comprehensive plan update. [00:52:36] Please know that I support the data center industry. We all know data centers are not the problem. The problem was poor planning on the part of previous Republican control board that created the data center overlay opportunity zone. To keep Western Prince William County free from residential housing and out of their back years, They allowed by-right data center without safeguards, protections, buffers next to residential neighborhoods and schools. [00:53:04] However, we thank the current Democratic Control Board, who is mitigating the previous poor planning and leading the solutions to this problem with the new ordinance standards initiated on February 27, 2023, and with the new detailed comprehensive plan guidance, such as those for the PW Digital Gateway. [00:53:25] The PW Digital Gateway provides an opportunity to create significant benefit both countywide and in Gainesville area, new critical commercial tax-based revenue for the county budget, and a means to bring certainty to future development while respecting the environment and providing sufficient buffer to neighborhoods, parks, and housing. [00:53:47] Your vision will help benefit our county for generations to come. We know hard work and many overnight meetings are yet to come to finalize this vision, but we are optimistic that you will show the same courage you have shown over the last few years. [00:54:03] Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Chuck Wilson, Gainesville District. The goal of the Board of County Supervisors is to improve the quality of life for the residents of Prince William County. [00:54:24] I'd like to thank you for the effort and all the hard work you've done putting this together. The Board of County Supervisors did an excellent job spending long hours to determine the best course of action for the present, allocating revenues to areas such as our schools, teachers, first responders. [00:54:45] The best course of action for the future is via data centers. The best location is the Prince William Digital Gateway. A data center campus utilizing the latest, safest, and most efficient techniques will be protected. Noise mitigation buffers will be employed, among others. [00:55:06] Prince William County will take a giant leap into the future. Tax revenues in excess of $300 million annually will be generated. New higher-paying jobs will be created. The Board of County Supervisors will make history. [00:55:23] Thanks again for all your efforts in making this reality. I fully support data centers in Prince William County. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. I'm Charlie Grimes from the Gainesville Magisterial District, and I'm not here to talk about data centers. [00:55:43] I want to encourage you instead to follow the comprehensive plan that you established in December, particularly that section of the mobility chapter where you said it's time for us to start building the bike and pedestrian infrastructure, the trails network, in addition to the road infrastructure. [00:56:02] If you go back to the August version of the comp plan, there were 15 pages and $5 billion worth of roads. There's a 400-mile trail network proposed in the December version. In order to build out that trail network, it's going to require 25 miles of trail per year. [00:56:21] And that's what we need to do, because we've not been investing in the alternative to roads. So the only option for getting from hither to yon is to hop in a car, emit the greenhouse gas emissions in order to get there from here. It's time to build the alternative. It's past time to build the alternative. [00:56:38] You now have a mobility chapter with a pretty good trails plan. Not perfect, but a pretty good trails plan. You've established that there are opportunities for us to build pathways to get from homes to schools, from homes to parks, from homes to jobs. [00:56:54] It's time to build the trails network. But if you look at your budget, you're cutting three positions out of the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism shop associated with building trails. Your opportunity is to revisit what you have in the budget. It's not a big tweak. [00:57:10] But instead of cutting three positions, what about preserving those positions, particularly one for a volunteer manager, because there's a lot of people willing to build and maintain trails, but you need to have a manager of the volunteers to make sure it's done right. And what about a grants writer? [00:57:27] Because there's a lot of money out there for the alternative to roads now, but you need to have a staff person dedicated to getting that money. So if you take a look at your budget, if you're making adjustments in the process, let me encourage you to implement the trails component of your mobility chapter by funding the staff necessary to make it happen. [00:57:48] Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, board members. [00:58:04] I'm Carol Fox. I'm from the Gainesville District. And I am here to talk to you about data centers, but not about data centers that you might approve or are going to approve or are thinking about approving. I'm here to talk to you about data centers that you have already approved. I have provided for you pictures of an area in Haymarket. [00:58:22] The first picture shows you the location of the data center site currently under construction on Washington Street, almost directly across the street from Tyler Elementary School, and just behind that sits Pace West. This data center bill will house four data centers when completed. [00:58:38] The next picture is the street view of the housing directly across from Tyler Elementary School, if you go down the road, and last view is the site build from the top floor of this stacked condo that you saw in the previous picture. We, the community, have concerns about the homeowners, about the two schools, and about the fire department. [00:58:58] It will be about two years before this on switch is flipped on the first data centers. But what are your plans to mitigate the noise from the data centers and from the diesels, generators, the quality of life that was so carelessly discounted in January when you approved this mess that's now coming to Haymarket? [00:59:19] It is a mess that the board created. I may remind you that the work has begun also on the 120-plus acre site. Just one block away, on the same side of Washington Street, is Tyler and Pace West. That's for an additional six data centers. [00:59:37] Hmm, more noise, more diesel fumes, more monumental mess. I feel sorry for the Gainesville Fire Department because they sit right in the middle of the John Marshall Technology Park. That is part of your 2040 plan. Hmm, how are they going to deal with the noise? [00:59:52] How are they going to sleep? How are they going to think? How are they going to get past the hum of those constant data centers? How are they going to successfully rescue people and stop fires? That will be a total of 14 data centers. Ten of them have been approved by you already sitting on this board. [01:00:13] So you need to start now. Start purchasing land to move the Gainesville Fire Department and to move Tyler Elementary School and to move the only 7-, 8-year-old pace west because they won't be able to stay there anymore after all these data centers are completed. [01:00:29] I need to see that information in your budget, and I don't look at your budget and see any information about future plan sites removing the mess that you have created. So those of you on the board have created this monumental mess because you were sold a pack of dollar signs. [01:00:46] So clean up your mess. Let's see what you're going to do for putting out money proceeds for the school system to build these new schools and to move the fire departments. Thank you so much. Before our next speaker, I will announce the next five. Luis Gonzalez, Barbara Dodge, Stephen Lorenz, Ken Nahr, Don Slayman, and David Paula. [01:01:09] Please proceed. Good afternoon. Ruthie and Pesaretz, Gainesville District. This is a big thank you for those of you with a prosperous future in mind for Prince William County. Stepping up and already giving a reduction in the residential tax, below a dollar per for the first time in 12 years, claims that naysayers said would not happen, while planning constructively to increase commercial income, more vision on Supervisor Franklin's part. More than $70 million in new dollars for our schools, taking the first steps, although many more are needed, [01:01:46] towards some sort of parity for our sworn-in and non-sworn employees. Hopefully with additional commercial tax revenue coming into Prince William County, the collective bargaining will help our county employees be some of the best paid in Northern Virginia. While Prince William County has managed to electrify Loudoun County into the richest county in the nation, it is Prince William County's time to step forward as a physical and fiscal leader. Thank you again for your courage, your perseverance, and vision for working for all of Prince William County residents, [01:02:21] even if they can't see it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. So, Luis Gonzalez, Barbara Dodge, Stephen Lorenz, Ken Naur, Don Sleeman, David Paula. [01:02:43] Good afternoon. My name is Luis Gonzalez. Union Electrician, IBW, Dr. 26. My wife, she works for the Prince William as a teacher. My daughter, she goes to the Prince William school. I want to thank you to you guys for all the hard work. [01:03:00] Can you just tell us generally where you live in the county? I'm sorry? Generally where you live. Niasco. Awesome. Thank you. I want to say thank you to the supervisor for the hard work you put into the school and support our teachers, fire marches, and the police. I'm here to speak in favor for the data centers. [01:03:20] I'm resident for Prince William, but I have been working at the data center before for the past 10 years, and I know how it is. And the noise they talk about hitting this room is not true. If you park next to the data center building, they're not that loud. [01:03:39] Unless they lost power and they're trying to generate it on, that's the only moment you probably hear a loud noise. That's it. Otherwise, it's not true. I've been there. I worked there from the beginning to the construction to the end of the building. [01:03:55] And I went back to do the service call. I upgraded the system for security, and trust me, it's not loud. I've been there for like 12 to 14 hours working. [01:04:11] So all the conversations I heard about the loud, loud noise, it's not true. So I'm here to support. Thank you for your hard work, and I appreciate all those data centers coming up to the Prince William. I hope you guys vote in favor. [01:04:27] And we're here to not only to support the electrician side, we're here to support everybody in the construction industry. And we look forward to you guys approve those bills. Thank you so much for your time, and God bless you. [01:04:45] Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, members of the board. I'm Barbara Dodge from Kohl's. I know that all of our board of county supervisors work very hard and often have to spend long hours on the job and some level of pay raise is in order. [01:05:09] However, a 70% increase in salary is exorbitant. There is nobody else in the county that has gotten anywhere near that kind of pay raise. This includes everyone in the business community as well as your constituents who are on fixed incomes. Where did the money come from for this level of increase? [01:05:27] Don't tell me it is from our increase in taxes. Please tell me the money came from closing down all of the DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion personnel, in all of our county departments. Our police department and our fire and rescue personnel deserve additional resources for both salaries and additional personnel. [01:05:49] The excessive salary increase for the Board of County Supervisors leads to a very poor perception as to where the Board of County Supervisors' priorities lie. As Supervisor Vega and Ellen Gloss mentioned last week, I too would like to honor my friend and frequent speaker before this board, Janet Rosenthal, who was a dear friend and a great patriot. Her death due to cancer is a loss to myself and Prince William County. God bless Janet and Old Glory, and God bless America and Prince William County. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, [01:06:26] please. Stephen Lawrence, Gainesville District, Budget and Taxes. This time of the year is dominated by budget decisions and tax decisions. Further development of the commercial tax base is the only path forward to provide the revenue required by the citizens of this county. [01:06:58] During a recent local political campaign, which a few people paid attention to around here, there was a lot of very interesting things said. However, shutting down commercial development and growth in this county is simply not an option. [01:07:17] Remaining a sleepy bedroom community for D.C. is not an option. Those options passed 20 years ago, and it's too late for that path. I trust that this board will continue bravely forward with clear eyes and an open mind. [01:07:37] God bless. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Ken Nahr, Gainesville District. The proposed 24 budget highlights what an impact just a slight initial uptick in the commercial tax revenue will have on the county's finances. [01:07:54] The first thing that should jump out at everyone is the residential tax rate has gone down by six cents. This is the first time in 15 years the residential tax rate has been below $1 per 100 assessed value. naysayers will likely counter with the statement that home assessments have gone up and the taxpayers will actually be paying $41 more. Mind you, our taxes have been going up around 10% annually for the last decade. The $41 overall increase is an average. So my guess is the actual impact on a majority of county residents who own homes below $400,000 will actually be negligible. Given the current inflation rate and the market volatility, I would suggest a [01:08:33] A six-cent drop is a win for everyone. I would like to commend Supervisor Bodie for presenting the idea of increasing the computer peripherals tax ahead of the schedule last November and for keeping the issue on the table monthly ever since. I'd also like to commend Supervisor Franklin for suggesting the new graduated computer peripherals tax matrix. [01:08:53] This would provide sustainable revenue growth while sending a clear and meaningful message to our commercial partners. With a somewhat modest increase in the computer peripherals tax rate, this board now has the flexibility to hire additional veterinarians, hire more first responders, subsidize our public defenders adequately, or even decrease the residential tax rate another penny to undeniably lower our property taxes. This board has provided more money to our schools than any other board in the history of our county. The proposed 24 budget will provide our school district roughly $75 million in more revenue. Prince William County schools have given historic [01:09:30] raises the last three years, and those increases have stabilized our personnel shortages. We have some great schools, and a vast majority of teachers, support staff, and administrators are amazing. However, we don't have enough of them. We are working them into the ground, and we still aren't paying them a competitive wage in comparison to our neighboring districts. We need several new schools. We need to renovate many of our existing schools, and we need to ensure parity between all of our schools. These same issues exist across all our sworn and unsworn county employees. [01:10:01] Smart growth is generating the necessary additional revenues to support the county's growing needs and requirements. It also equates to a sound and responsible fiscal policy. Slash-and-burn budgeting or blanket percentage cuts across the board for the sake of saying you cut taxes or shrank the size of the government in reality only cost people their jobs and denies service and programs to those who need them the most. [01:10:23] We must continue to pursue a commercial tax base of around 40% to offset our county's projected 25% growth over the next two decades. The proposed 24 budget is another great step forward for this board and the county. However, there is more to be done. [01:10:40] Continue on. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Wheeler and county board members and county executive, county attorney. My name is Don Slaman. I went to Annandale Elementary School, Annandale High School. [01:10:58] I'm from the area. I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I'm here today to compliment your work on moving the data center industry forward in this county. The data center industry has been a huge source of growth for my local union. We worked 19,500,000 hours last year. [01:11:15] That's up from 16,000 hours four years ago. We're now taking 450 new apprentices every year up from 300 four years ago. We have a training center that we purchased last century and built last century in Manassas. [01:11:31] That training center is overflowing, and we're going to have to expand. We calculate that the Digital Gateway will produce 21,000 electrical jobs. It's not going to be in one year, but it's over the building of that. That is a source of growth for this union. We are educating. We had lunch and learns with our apprentices at the Manassas Training Center over the last two months, educating them about their rights, their need to be involved in their community, to give back to their community, and to vote and to be active. [01:12:00] And we're following through with our members as well. This industry has just been tremendous for the growth of our union and for our ability to create careers, middle-class careers, entrance to the middle class for all folks in this county. [01:12:22] And we're also working to build not only career paths for underserved communities, but also we're working to build our contractor base. We have 200 contractors now. 35 of those are minority and women-owned businesses. We're going to have an event on March 30th that we'd like you to attend where we're going to try to help those businesses grow by introducing the general contractors and some of our larger contractors to help them get work. [01:12:49] Their ability to do all this work and growing small businesses and giving people a pipeline in the middle class is all due to this industry. The three of the last four years were the fastest-growing local of IBW, construction local in that union, of over 800,000 workers. [01:13:06] Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Chair Wheeler, board, thank you so much for having me today. My name is David Pala. [01:13:22] I'm a previous Prince William County resident, and currently I live in Fairfax. I represent IBW Local 26, the same as Don. I've heard a lot of people say a lot of great things about data centers today. So I'm going to take it easy on that. And instead, I'm just going to say thank you so much for the support that you've given everyone in this community. [01:13:42] You have a lot to be proud of. You are a solutions-oriented board that has accomplished a tremendous amount, whether it's lowering our taxes, ensuring workers' protection, and getting rid of things like wage theft and worker misclassification, whether it's the collective bargaining agreement that you passed to allow your workers to band together to form unions, and fully funding our schools and giving pay raises to your employees. [01:14:07] You've done a tremendous job. You faced a lot of adversity. It hasn't been easy. You've had many people coming and attacking you since your very first meeting, and I think that you've done a tremendous job hanging in the pocket and being great representatives to the majority of us who live, work, and want Prince William to be a great place to live. [01:14:27] So I just wanted to come and say thank you for all of those things, And I want you to remember as you look forward in budget season that a budget is a set of moral values that you all hold. And I want you to also think at the same time what another $400 million might look like in that budget moving forward. [01:14:48] Thank you so much. Thank you very much. This will conclude our in-person public comment time. And do we have anyone online? We do not. So Vice Chair Bodhi doesn't have to do remote public comment time today. [01:15:06] Okay. that brings us on to agenda item number six uh the county executive time mr shorter the floor is yours thank you very much madam chair and board members yep it's on um just wanted to mention last week's town employee town hall we had over 300 employees uh phone in i just wanted to just acknowledge and thank Nikki Brown, Michelle Casciato, David St. Clair, who joined me on that town hall, and just really all the employees who asked really thoughtful questions. We will [01:15:46] continue to take the opportunity to make sure employees are informed, as informed as possible about the budget, and continue the town hall approach to information, pushing information out to employees. So again, thank you all. And that's all for me, Madam Chair. [01:16:04] I was just going to say, does anybody have any questions? I just have a quick question just as a follow-up. It might have even been before you were here, when we were doing the comp plan. I had asked staff to look into length by width ratios for 10-acre lots so we didn't get some unusual lot lines. [01:16:22] And we got an email, I don't know if anybody else on the board did this weekend, about some lot lines and a new development out in maybe Nokesville area. So I was just wondering if you could just, not today, but just if someone could follow up and tell me the status of where that might be. Sure. I'm just throwing that out there. I did see the email, and thanks for the question. [01:16:40] I understand from the team that a directive was provided in May of last year, and that was followed up on, and I believe our acting deputy county executive, Wade, you came back to the board with proposed changes in June of last year. [01:17:03] And so did we decide not to do anything? Oh, we initiated a ZTA. Okay. And so I guess then my next question is, where's the ZTA? Right. And so we're, I don't know, Wade, if you want to stand up and give some more context, but ultimately the next step is on us, and we're happy to, you know, sort of follow up. [01:17:25] Ultimately, with the comp, actually, I'll stop and I'll let the deputy. Yeah, and I don't want to belabor their point, but maybe just a quick update. Yeah, good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Wade Hugh. Quick update. So we came to the board at the end of June to initiate changes both to subdivision ordinance, zoning ordinance, DCSM. [01:17:45] At the time, because of all the work done on the comp plan, a lot of the staff that would be involved in updating those things, a lot of members of the community that would want to have input, were focused on the comp plan. So the decision was, let's get the comp plan reviewed, let's get it approved, which was in December. [01:18:01] And we started efforts early part of January, February with the new planning director to kind of get things going. And right now I think we've just paused with our reorganization that we're going through right now. But we do want to reach out. We want to get stakeholder input. We have some ideas from other jurisdictions that we've just done a little research with length, with ratios. [01:18:21] And so we'll be ready to move forward. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we just prompted from the e-mail that we got this week. So thank you. I appreciate that. Anybody have other questions for Mr. Shorter? No? Okay, well, thank you. County Attorney, next on the agenda, we have the County Attorney. [01:18:38] Ms. Robo, the floor is yours. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the Board. This afternoon in closed session, there will be a personnel discussion relating to the following, the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission, PRTC, Board of Commissioners, and the Virginia Railway Express VRE Operations Board. [01:18:55] And we will have consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to the discussion or consideration of the acquisitions of real properties for public purposes to include for public parks and other public uses, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body, along with the accompanying consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by counsel pertaining to lease agreement and purchase-slash-sale agreement law, where consultation, discussion, or briefing in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining, position, negotiating strategy, or litigating [01:19:33] posture of the public body. These items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A1, 3 and 8 of the Code of Virginia. Motion. So moved Madam Chair. Second. Motion made by Supervisor Bailey, seconded by Vice Chair Bodie. Any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. Okay, thank you. Before we, our next, we have an agency presentation from finance, but I I believe, Supervisor Angry, you have a COIA statement to read before, and Ms. Attrick, if you want to get up and get ready, but he's just got to read his COIA statement. [01:20:13] Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, before staff begins its presentation on a general revenue estimate, I need to declare a personal interest in this matter. 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. [01:20:30] 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 discussion of this matter thank you madam chair thank you supervisor angry welcome ms atreed good afternoon madam chair members of the board um today i'm going to talk to you about the fy 24 to 28 general revenue estimate i want to begin with a brief slide on the economy if you recall i spoke to you at the end of january it seems like a really long time ago but it was really just over a month ago um in more detail about the economy you saw my dashboards and the things that we include in our quarterly report and so today I've kind of summarized it just into one slide so that we can really get to the meat of the [01:21:09] presentation and talk about the general revenues there's a number of factors that we're watching really closely obviously the rise you know high inflation we're seeing a decline in personal income a cooling of consumer and business demand there's still some supply chain issues and so there's talks of you know could there be a recession so these are things that we continue need to watch each quarter, and we'll adjust our revenues if need be. But right now, you know, things are still moving along in the economy fairly well, and we're not seeing any significant changes in our revenues. Our housing market, you'll hear, has cooled down a little bit. We'll [01:21:45] have some graphs on that. But these are things I think you hear about in the news, read about in the news, and economists are talking about. The revenue estimating process, I know you've seen this slide before. Mr. Weir, this one may be new to you, but our revenue forecasting process is a systematic approach to come up with some fiscally prudent results of estimating revenues over the next five years. [01:22:09] We identify all those major revenue sources. We're looking at the U.S., the state, the regional, the local trends. We rely heavily on subject matter experts, and the next slide I'll talk about those a little bit. And our projections are really data-driven. We have developed a pretty robust model. [01:22:27] The challenge to the model in recent years has been data centers because that's a new revenue stream for us, so we've had to work through that to get that piece of the model fine-tuned year over year. But we monitor these VIN projections once we make them every quarter. [01:22:42] We come and we either come and report to you in person or we send out the, produce the quarterly report. And then we make adjustments to that model, to the adopted budget if need be, on what we think those year end results will be. And clearly until they're audited and we end up at the end of the fiscal year, that's when it's known and we follow your principles of sound financial management on how those funds are disposed. [01:23:02] Any surplus is split, first goes to unassigned, split with the schools, then to your revenue stabilization, economic development reserve, and then into your capital reserve. Obviously, the board sets the tax policy, so those are the tax rates. But I do want to point out the accuracy of the revenue forecast over the years. [01:23:19] It's been highly accurate, 99%. You'll see the decline in 21 of 97%, so that was the COVID year, right? COVID started around March of 2020 when it became a pandemic, an announced pandemic. That fiscal year ended June 30, and we really took a slash kind of on the budget, thinking that things were going to really slow down. [01:23:40] Sales tax would decline. You know, unemployment was starting to rise. Restaurants were closing, but we saw the opposite. Sales tax grew. People were working from home and shopping from home and doing lots of home improvement projects, so less accurate. And 22, in some regard, relied on prior year estimates, and so we have fine-tuned, I believe, our 24 estimated budget. [01:24:04] It's much more aggressive, I think, more in line with what we've seen in terms of surpluses the last two years. Our internal and external... Supervisor Lawson, do you want questions at the end? Did we establish that? I think we'd rather, yeah. And we're going to try to go more methodically than all over the place, if everybody sort of can collect their thoughts. [01:24:23] Internal and external partners, these are some of the folks that we use to help us gauge what's happening in the economy nationally, regionally, and locally. We bring in a state economist from the state, for example, come in and talk to us. This year it was all remote, we did it online. [01:24:38] We bring in realtors to talk about the local housing market. We bring in commercial real estate brokers to talk to us about what's happening in the commercial world. We bring in someone from JD Powers in ADA. We were not able to get one of those the last two years, which we were able to this year secure a new speaker, they came in and talked to us about what's happening with used car prices as you know during the pandemic we saw them rising we are have returned more to normal and i'll talk about that and have a few slides in my presentation about vehicle values and we also use our internal staff right so like development services they see what's coming in in terms of permitting our budget office [01:25:16] obviously is heavily involved with numbers and putting together our budget the planning office same thing they know what's coming down the pike and what's being planned in the in the comp plan and then we also include our schools because they benefit from the revenue sharing agreement so they have a seat at the table but we really open it up to anybody that wants to come and participate a lot of folks across finance participate as do the school systems they bring a lot of the people from their team in to participate throughout this process before we get into 24 i want to just talk a little bit about 23 just to give you a quick little recap fiscal 23 you have a 1.2 billion [01:25:50] adopted a general revenue budget so this is the budget that is shared with the schools 57.23 percent lion's share being real estate taxes followed by personal property taxes and then sales taxes is the next biggest piece we now have a new piece of the pie for revenue diversification that food and beverage tax that's the fourth largest I think slice and then in all other is your new cigarette tax so as of the second quarter we did not make any rep changes we are still reporting that 15.7 million dollar surplus. If you recall, that was the dollars that you took action as a board to budget and appropriate to fund public safety compensation. But there are a number of things [01:26:30] that we are watching very closely. Real and personal property tax for third quarter. We don't report on third quarter until about early May, 45 days after the end of the quarter. But we are watching and thinking we will have a net surplus there of somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 11 million. However, we're very closely paying attention to tax relief. We adopted a provision for tax relief, those exonerations of about $34 million. It's already at $33.1 million. So there could be a downward adjustment needed for that. Investment income, we're expecting a surplus of about $5 million based on Fed rate funds increases, and they're projecting some additional basis point [01:27:09] increases going forward. And so we think that will yield some more realized gains to our investment portfolio taxes on deeds though we are seeing a slowdown in those recordings of refinancing activity with rising mortgage rates less people are refinancing their homes or in rates that are already lower than existing rates and so that one we may be dialing back so those are things that we'll continue to watch between now and May and then we'll be reporting out in the third quarter what I will remind the board is what we would recommend if there is additional surplus is that we do hold it there until the audit is complete. [01:27:43] While we did take action on this first piece, what we don't wanna do is spend dollars we don't already have. And so we wanna make sure we have enough to fund our unassigned. As you know, our general revenue forecast for fiscal '24 is about $123, $125 million higher. That alone will require an increase in your unassigned fund balance of about nine and a half million. [01:28:02] So we'll need to make sure that we have some of these surplus here to fund your required reserves in accordance with your principles. And then it would fall to capital reserve one-time capital needs we also you know as part of the quarterly report we also look at expenditure savings so that that's not factored into my numbers but you know at the at the end of the audit we look at both the revenue surpluses and then the expenditure savings which can all go into funding the reserves and then finally the capital reserve the county's tax base so for 1-1-23 we assess property as of 1-1-23 by code we are expecting a assessed value of [01:28:39] exceeding eighty nine billion dollars and that does include our projected growth for the 23 number you'll see the lion's share there again is residential followed by that commercial apartments is its own category I'll talk about that in the appreciation on apartments and then followed by public service public service is those properties the utility companies that are assessed by the state and then there's a small little sliver between the blue and the green you barely see it that's our vacant land graphed on here is the tax rate and this includes the fire levy and the pest management levy but what you'll see a [01:29:14] census board took office that rate has come down and you'll see the history of it there but it was flatlined for a number of years and then we have been able to lower that tax rate as that land book value has grown this is just a picture sort of graph of the tax base overall the based on assessed value from 21 to 22 so this is your fiscal 20 your 1/1/22 land book produced in our real estate annual report our 23 land book will be produced at the in final form at the end of this year but you will see the pie looks very similar residential still being the largest piece but you will see that commercial has increased a [01:29:54] little bit over the prior year and the next chart actually shows I think a little bit better in a columnar format you will see the the increase in technology services for example between 21 and 22 a 27 percent growth in the number of parcels and a 29% increase in assessed value followed by those industrial properties those seem to be the two leaders in our commercial area right now in terms of growth and then just shows a picture of the commercial side of the land books you'll see on the commercial side the technology services is about 19% of the land book and so that's where you find most of your data [01:30:33] centers followed by the next biggest growth that industrial I'm moving from 16% to 17% and then you'll see all the the other ones they can't land has increased because of the price per acre of land. On the commercial side, for fiscal 24, we are expecting about a 10% increase in commercial property assessment, but when you break those down by sector, it's much more varied. [01:31:01] So you'll see on the industrial about a 19% increase, on retail about 4%, hotels 5%, office 3%, and data centers we're still working on. So we will have that by recap. We'll probably send out an email to the board with this number once known. [01:31:17] As you know, there was new legislation put in place by the General Assembly, and so we're still working through that piece right now, and we'll have that wrapped up in time to send out notices by middle of March. On the average existing residential, our residential appreciation is expected at about 6.5%, so down from the 12% that we saw in the prior year. [01:31:40] Apartment appreciation, I put this on this slide because there are residents there, about five percent but apartments are assessed like a commercial property they have an income approach they get rents but we don't include them in the commercial slide either we we report them sort of their own category so that would bring the average residential assessed value from about 470,000 last year to just over half a million half a million at 501 thousand dollars this slide shows the history of the real estate assessed value and so you'll see over time the median residential real estate appreciation is four percent we use medium because that throws out [01:32:19] those big outliers so you'll see great recession 28 double digit appreciation in value and then you saw a 29 decline so it throws those out four percent is sort of the long-term average if you will or median and you'll see every time when the line goes up eventually it does come down and so we saw a 7.8 percent increase a 12.4 percent increase now we're down at just a 6.5 and you'll see for the out years we're projecting just three percent growth again because of talks of recession and you'll see a couple of times it dipped below that zero percent line so that's why [01:32:54] that three percent we believe is that fiscally prudent number to use to use next year when we do the fiscal 25 budget we look at it and we fine-tune it again but those out years will typically you know always be much more constrained because what we don't want to do is put you in a position of taking on activities that over the long term you can't you can't afford and we have to find ways to cut them down the road it becomes much harder to cut things three years down the road once you start it you kind of have to continue it the history of the real estate tax rate so this includes the tax rep tax levies and the average assessed value again you'll see that that lot that [01:33:32] orange line that tax rate has been able to come down over time particularly since this board has taken office and that assessed value has continued to climb. This one is based on all the proposed budgets. You should have new copies of this at your seats. This is different than what was dispatched because now all of the proposed budgets are now online. So we were able to get more information, better information that we had than when we dispatched this. But the proposed budgets show that our average residential tax bill, including fire levy, and we do that because the other localities their fire services are part of their their general fund is about 5276 [01:34:09] followed by loudon at 6 000 and then alexandria fairfax and arlington up over the 7500 7500 average tax bill and then down in the lower right the change in those average tax bill we are definitely the bargain at only 72 increase 49 of that being real estate and 23 being fire that's a one percent and a 6.5% increase, respectively. [01:34:32] The others, you'll see 239 is the next closest average tax bill increase and a high of 520 in Fairfax. This next slide shows that average tax bill compared to the median household income of each jurisdiction. [01:34:48] And so you'll see we are at sliver there compared to Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria. Loudon's sliver is closer to ours. Of that 5,276, 4,900 is the real estate portion, and 376 is the fire levy portion of the average tax bill. [01:35:08] This just graphs it just a little bit differently, so you can see it as a percentage. Loudoun's tax burden is actually less at 3.92%. That bar switched places maybe about three years ago now, I think. It used to be higher, but as their data center revenue has just compounded over time, they have surpassed us in terms of a lower tax burden. [01:35:28] and they have been able to reduce that real estate tax rate because of that growth in data center revenues. In fact, I think their data center tangible property exceeds the tangible property they get from all the vehicles in their county now. And this shows the real estate and personal property tax revenues per capita. [01:35:49] So about $615, the green is the personal property. Of that $615, about $128 is from data centers, and then the rest would be from all other types of businesses. I don't have that information split down for Loud and we don't have access to that level of detail. [01:36:04] But you'll see followed by, well, if you look at Loud and personal property per capita, 1,973. Again, that's their data center effect from all those computer and peripherals. When you look at the numbers of data centers, I think we have somewhere over 30, they have over 100. [01:36:20] So it is a much larger, like three times as many we have. I want to talk a little bit about tax relief. This map just shows where all the tax relief is located. spread out throughout the county we have it on the eastern end the western and the central end and you'll see there the various types of tax relief and exoneration that we offer elderly and disabled disabled veterans surviving spouses land use for agricultural properties religious and charitable and then rehab and solar so for solar projects there there is a exemption that is [01:36:53] provided for that the the piece that well actually go to the next slide I think it shows it better So about $37 million is the amount that is relieved. The fastest-growing category is disabled veterans. [01:37:10] What I was going to point out was some of that is mandated. Let me go back here real quick. Many of these categories are mandated. Some of them are a May, and we've enacted local ordinance then to have the same type of tax relief that the Code of Virginia allows. $37.1 million is the total tax relief that's offered that is recognized for tax year 22 or fiscal 23. [01:37:32] that is nearly five cents on the tax rate the fastest growing category as I said is disabled vets you see that throughout Virginia and that's something I think Virginia will wrestle with over the long term because it is a nice benefit and so it draws disabled veterans to this region we certainly have the employment hubs for disabled veterans with many bases Quantico Pentagon Virginia Beach area etc Newport News area I'm so I think we will continue to see that growing. For us, it represents about 2% to 3% of our general revenues. I think Stafford is the other locality where it's up over 2% of their revenues. And you'll see in total tax [01:38:08] relief, it's grown about 88% in about five years. So moving on to the 24 general revenue estimate, first I'll remind the board of the diversification principle. Again, that food and beverage tax and cigarette tax were two actions that this board took to diversify our revenue base. What that means is it makes us less reliable on any one source. I will say we are so heavily residential that it makes it very hard like the Great Recession and we were really impacted to the point that we had to cut our budgets and risk employees. We don't want to be in that position and so that's the reason that you diversify to try to smooth out any impact on one particular [01:38:48] stream. This is that same pie chart of the proposed general revenues so $1.3 billion dollar proposed general revenue budget for fy24 with 61 being real estate that that pie was 64 percent if you went back and looked at the 23 chart and the personal property was 19 it's now 21 and you'll see that the food and beverage is 2.3 this one shows um sort of by category in a chart form with the five-year plan going out and the piece that goes to the schools and the counties [01:39:22] so 787 000 of that general revenue will go to the schools and 580 i'm sorry million 588 million will go to the county also on this chart is the fy 23 revised the reason i used revised is because if you recall very early on we had a negative provision for the grocery tax repeal we ended up the general assembly ended up not passing that and so we took action to put that into the adopted budget and so we adjusted and started with the revised number for that reason this these revenues do assume that the real estate tax rate will reduce by almost 6 cents by 5.3 cents to 97.7 [01:39:59] from $1.03. It assumes that there will be a 15 cent increase in the business tangible for computer and peripheral in accordance with sort of the five-year plan that was laid out by the board by resolution. Now we did advertise a higher rate at $2.15 for discussion purposes but this does assume it's at $1.80. And then it assumes a return to vehicle assessments now at 100%. If you recall last year, we assessed at 80%. We did that because we did not believe that the values being produced by J.D. Powers were really reflective of market. It was because of the COVID, the limited chip [01:40:35] shortages, the lack of inventory, all of those things. And so most jurisdictions took some kind of action. I do know Arlington is going back to 100% value. And I think when I show you what's happening in the NADA, J.D. Powers guides, you'll see that it has returned to much more normal. [01:40:52] Our vehicles are now depreciating. They're not appreciating. On the business tangible computer and peripheral side, just to give you a little history on the computer and peripheral tax rate, back prior to 1999, it was at $3.70 per hundred. That's the same rate that vehicles, for example, are assessed or taxed at prior to personal property tax relief. And then to incentivize As our targeted industries and the data centers in 1999, it was lowered to $1.50, further lowered in 2001 to $1.25. [01:41:25] And then over the last few years, we've had a plan to increase it by about 15 cents per year to $2. So the five-year plan includes $2 in all the out years. How we got to $2, it was developed about four years ago, but that was the rate that on average if you have a vehicle valued under $25,000, you get personal property tax relief from the state. [01:41:47] about two dollars you weren't really paying the full 370 that's probably closer to two dollars and thirty cents now and so what i would say what i would ask the board is as we go through the budget adoption process it would be nice to get guidance for the next five years on what you would like to see this rate do so that next year when we develop the five-year plan you know otherwise we'll come back with two dollars since that's what was sort of in there for now so we would look for guidance from this board on that increase if you'd like to see an increase and then the approximate value of each nickel is about 1.4 million and that increases every year that value this is the chart where [01:42:24] you've seen the data center tax revenues 22 tax year 22 is actually fiscal 23 there is an asterisk by it because the year's not over they do their filing of business tangible in the fall when personal property taxes do so most of it is been recorded and recognized but as we do audits compliance you know those numbers can change as additional dollars are collected but you'll see the growth over the prior year was about 18 percent or now at 101 million dollars in data center tax revenues that's about 13 cents on the real estate tax rate for fiscal 23 [01:43:03] a thousand five hundred and thirty-five percent growth since 2012 when we started tracking data centers i think we had data centers prior to that but we just really started tracking it in 2012 when they started taking off you'll notice this chart now has a column called furniture and fixtures we're starting to break out between types within data centers so trying to get more data on data centers with the goal i'd like to eventually like we produce a real estate annual report produce a data center annual report we're not there yet we're still working on building our data center team and collecting data and modifying our systems to track some of the [01:43:37] data so that we can produce such a report some personal property tax considerations so these are the charts i showed you last year the blue line is what you need to focus on this year this is the average change from 1-1-22 to 1-1-23 in vehicles for model years 2007 through 2021. [01:43:57] They're all depreciating, an average decrease of about 15.7 percent. And then for trucks and SUVs, that's where we saw the largest increases last year. Again, they're on average depreciating 23.2 percent. So we believe it's now back to a much more normal market in terms of JD Power Guide, and so we're recommending an assessment at 100 percent of value and that's actually a decision I think I make and if you wanted to do something else it would require a resolution but that's a question for the county attorney. Revenue diversification, my last area I want to cover [01:44:31] is a future consideration. It is something not proposed for fiscal 24. It is not included in the proposed five-year plan today. You do have another revenue source where you could further diversify that's the commercial and industrial tax that is an additional real estate tax if you will on commercial property dedicated for transportation some of our surrounding jurisdictions have it it can be a high if I can't exceed twelve and a half cents it could be something lower one thing that to keep in mind is in the out years of the five-year plan we will start to have the general obligation debt service coming online and there is [01:45:08] not a funding source identified to fund that yet there it could be funded by the general fund it could be funded by NVTA although I would caution you in using NVTA it would tie it up for 20 years debt service runs for 20 years and NVTA 30 percent dollars has been key to find using as match monies to bring in other federal and state grants and so if we tied that up for debt service that could that could hinder that that grant award process but like I said it's not recommended today something just to keep in mind the other piece that it would generate about 18.1 million dollars in new revenue the other piece is the CNI tax we are [01:45:46] required to get that MVTA 30 percent dollars a maintenance of effort meaning we have to spend locally an equivalency to what the CNI tax would generate and so we have to show that to the MVTA in order to get those dollars in this past year we we almost didn't make it with local dollars we had to do some funding swaps around to make sure that we were able to demonstrate that we spent at least I'm not sure what the dollar amount was for fiscal 23 but but to make sure that we had that right amount to draw that money down if we had the CNI tax in place we would not have to have that maintenance of effort that would go away and would automatically be entitled to those NVTA [01:46:23] dollars and then the last slide is just the pathway to budget adoption I think this is a slide that Dave Sinclair has shown you with each of his presentations we have a number of public hearings coming up leading to markup and then finally budget adoption and with that I am happy to take questions thank you ms atreed i'm trying to get back to my people want to speak screen supervisor lawson i just pushed it so you're the first one yeah um so a couple things uh first of all michelle [01:47:00] this is a great presentation in the sense of i think you've added some new slides or at least from my memory that are helpful so thank you for that um i had an early on question and now i can't remember what it was so i should have written it down but i'm also trying to be mindful of what not to ask you publicly in the event that we have any litigating factors a couple things i'm going to [01:47:32] point out yeah we've reduced the tax rate but we we can't spend it the tax bills are still on the rise so the tax rate's coming down because assessments are going up so much so i don't don't think the board should be patting themselves on the back or county staff or people that speak at public comment time the reality of it is is the average tax bills every year that i've been on this board have risen so i'm every time everybody throws it out there i'm going to come back with the facts which is tax rate is down the real estate rate is down but that's a factor of the [01:48:11] market the housing market and i just think that that other piece of the other side of the coin needs to be discussed just as much so I had to throw that out there regarding what was it hold on I wasn't expecting to go first I thought for sure other people had requested to speak so maybe I should come back oh I know what it was it was slide 22 maybe I have an old slide but I don't [01:48:48] have i think it was alexandria is there enough the new ones are at our day right at your place oh they added alexandria in okay all the all the graphs oh it's underneath my okay i'll get it later thank you for that um compute uh the uh commercial and the cni tax commercial industrial so that that is not built into the five-year plan correct that's correct but it's clear that we don't [01:49:21] have an identified funding source and it kind of reminds me of the meals tax it's thrown out there a lot i mean mr martino was lobbying me for a meals tax four or five years before this board adopted one so just want everybody that's listening to know that the commercial industrial tax is certainly discussed publicly it may not be built into this year's budget but there are [01:49:52] strong indications that one day it will it will be proposed by staff and possibly adopted by the board so appreciate the candor just I don't I don't necessarily like the idea of it I understand transportation has to be funded but the 30 percent that you referred to you're right it it would compete with those matching grants for regional transportation projects at the NVTA but don't we also fund our VRE subsidy through the 30 percent uh yes I believe there's a piece that goes to uh [01:50:32] yeah PRTC yeah yeah well PRTC is gas tax but how much is the VRE subsidy out of the 30 percent that's several million isn't it it's approximately uh six six and a half million in FY24 proposed Okay, which is another reason why the 30% is going to meet its own challenges for the five-year plan on that. [01:51:03] All right, I think that's all I have for now. I'm going to collect my thoughts more, but some of these slides I don't recall from previous years, and they're really helpful, so thank you. You're welcome. So I'm going to jump in because I have no way of putting myself in the queue, so I know I was after Supervisor Lawson. [01:51:22] Just two quick questions. If you go back to slide, I think it's 12, all the way back to 12. Because I guess I had never really thought about this. It's a graph of the one. Yes, that one. [01:51:41] So obviously, you know, the real estate values are increasing, and so we're lowering the tax rate to sort of offset that, right? But, you know, the first, and that was, our first tax year was 2021. 2020 was when we got here, and it was a prior budget year. [01:51:58] We were still working on that. so in all those prior years where it was flat right the tax rate was flat and the the they were going up the housing values were going up and so it just they they didn't offset the they didn't offset the increases in assessments i guess is what i'm asking it just and you just kept raising like it because we've been trying to offset the increases and that those were just flat okay i voted for some of those budgets so i'm not denying that i just i because i mean we've been trying to keep on offsetting. I just, I didn't realize it was really, maybe because I haven't looked at the [01:52:37] whole, whole thing, you know, recently. So, so that was one thing. I, one really quick question, you know, you had said that the, the current data center revenue for this year is like a hundred and some million and it was 13 cents on the tax rate. Do we have any idea what the, the, but the bills for homeowners would go up if that wasn't there? I mean, I know that there's, that might be a Mr. [01:53:03] Sinclair question yes so for 23 it would be out 612 dollars if you assume the same 13 cents for 24 to be out 652 we don't have the projection of the model isn't industry specific when you in the revenue model so we're using it based on 23 which are actuals that are known it's about 13 cents on the real estate tax rate 600 and how much about 612 dollars 652 for fiscal would be higher if we didn't have that revenue okay that's a good number thank you let me see who's next supervisor weir afternoon a couple of quick observations and a question um it's [01:53:43] interesting that on page 20 you've got data center real estate values unknown and you'll know them by the recap but you've got a projection for what your total real estate taxes are and your personal property taxes are those going to change significantly between now and recap i don't think they'll change significantly but there will be change between now and recap and they're and they're they're always changes between proposed proposed is cut off really in feb in the end of December we are just getting for commercial businesses we are just starting to get the income and expense in so we're working through the commercial side all the way up until notices go out and so it does change sometimes it's negligible and we and we stick with proposed we stick with the [01:54:22] proposed and we don't bring forward a recommendation to change the general revenue budget and then it falls out by way of surplus or shortfall during the year been surplus forever which sort of goes with my with the follow-on to that If you look at the tech sector and the industry assessment and the growth of those assessments, I mean, they're really offset by the fact that they're a minor portion of the total revenue stream and the total properties. [01:54:48] So even if, for example, data center revenues go up significantly on a per data center basis, they make up such a small margin or a small percentage of the overall tax base that the impact isn't as great as you would believe. [01:55:06] Is that what I'm to interpret? So data centers make up a large piece on the business tangible. That's where the big dollars are. We'll get to business tangible in a minute. It's about 97% of the computer and peripheral and furniture and fixture revenues. In those two categories, data centers make up about 97%. [01:55:23] I'm just looking at the real estate tax portion. Real estate, it's a smaller piece, but as more come on, it is a growing piece. Okay. As long as we're on the subject of personal property taxes and that sort of thing, two things. I would note that your revenue growth projection of personal property taxes is a lower percentage than that of the real estate tax, so the real estate taxes are growing more quickly on a percentage basis. [01:55:46] Which slide are you on, please? Probably slide 29, maybe. Yeah, if you do the math on real estate taxes and personal property taxes, both your gross revenues are increasing at a significantly larger rate than they are in personal property taxes, and the percentage basis, the percentage growth in real estate tax is higher than personal property tax. Just wanted to throw that out there. If my math is correct, personal property tax [01:56:22] revenue is growing at 3.69% and real estate tax revenue is growing at 4.68 and everything else lumped together is roughly 1.44. So your principal growth is still occurring on the real estate side. And I did have a question on furniture and fixtures. I know they changed the law, I want to say last year. Are we, and I don't know the answer to this, how are we taxing fixtures for data centers? Are we taxing it as part of the real estate valuation or are we taxing it as tangible personal property? Yes and yes. It's both. There's a piece of... [01:57:02] I will leave it at that. I'm not going to delve any further into that question then. In fact, I'll just leave it at that. It's only taxed one place or the other. Let me clarify that it's not taxed in both okay but strictly the fixtures i don't care about the furniture fixtures they're taxed in both so typically when you have real estate improvements to real estate such as your hvac your major mechanical system those become part of your real estate right they're not things you take out when you leave the legislation changed such that there are pieces [01:57:37] that normally would have been taxed as real estate to be carved out as furniture and fixture and still taxed as real estate yeah i've got the exhaust and i'm happy to come meet with you one one i'll just i'll just leave it at that for the moment it's not the not the answer i was expecting but supervisor bode thank you madam chair michelle thank you so much for the great presentation as always and like supervisor lawson said i see a couple new slides um that i think are really helpful for this discussion um my first question is on slide 18 where you go through the historical [01:58:14] change in real estate assessed value thank that yes that one um so based on what you were saying earlier during the actual presentation, unlike sort of the large-scale sort of increase and decrease we saw centered around the recession and then around COVID happening, you know, knock on wood, you know, God willing, we're not going to have any drastic sort of changes in the values in the foreseeable future. I guess my question there is, since you're sort of [01:58:52] settling in the next few years around 3% being sort of where you think it's going to stay, Do you foresee any changes to supply chain issues when it comes to building houses and what have you that may cause it to fluctuate even a couple percent here or there? [01:59:09] So it's always a factor of what gets approved, right? It starts with comp plan and then planning and the planning board and, you know, all of that, what comes online. There's certainly there during COVID, there was a slowdown where there weren't a lot of new starts. And so it's there's this there was this pent up demand and not enough housing units for people to move into, which sort of, you know, has led to the 12 percent appreciation that we saw last year. [01:59:34] You know, I don't have a crystal ball for the for the future. You know, it's something we talk with the industry about every year on what they're seeing. But, you know, we live in a good region where I think housing will always remain fairly strong here. And, you know, as as Mr. Weir pointed out, the real estate piece is where we saw, you know, a lot of growth. [01:59:54] um it's such a large piece of our pie like we started off as a bedroom community right with mostly houses and commercial now has become a much bigger piece but the residential piece is still such a large piece it's going to take a lot to move that commercial that commercial piece of the pie to make it look like it's really changing it's changing it's definitely changing it's just there's so much housing here um and our housing continues to appreciate so if i could a couple more questions based on just what you said and i appreciate it because you went where i was hoping to go with it so some of the planning decisions that we've made as a board has helped uh put that [02:00:30] out there a little bit farther obviously coming up i don't know when um but we'll be looking at zoning tax amendments to conform our zoning ordinance to the comp plan that we we adopted in in uh in december and part of that we'll be looking at ranges of housing ranges of commercial businesses a mix thereof you so you think that that's also going to influence where this goes in the in the coming years then right um i mean this is this is geared more towards this is residential right so your commercial certainly where you put housing right i mean it's going to [02:01:08] to influence it um but this is really a factor of you know kind of assessed value is a factor of supply and demand right what what somebody's willing to pay in an arms lake transaction the closer you get to DC it becomes much more expensive as we've moved to a much more remote environment we are starting to see you know some businesses bringing people back to work but there's a lot more flexibility now for where people can live so I think you know the the areas farther away from the cities are now you know benefiting from some of that increased demand in their housing because people can live farther away from where they work and we are certainly becoming a larger employment center in terms of you know the tech industry and those other [02:01:47] targeted industries. You know, while we're still not the high rise, you know, D.C., Arlington, we have a lot more opportunities for businesses. Sure, absolutely. And then slide 20, just a couple ahead of this one. I think that's a really important slide for us to highlight because, you know, full disclosure, yes, we have seen the crunch on residents over the past couple years with inflation, some other issues that affect their pocketbooks very personally. [02:02:20] At the same time, as a county, especially in the last three, four years, especially this last year, we've had a sort of stabilizing and plateau of where we're hitting people when it comes to their taxes, right? [02:02:35] It looks like it's leveling out. And if things stay the way we are and this board continues to make decisions that we make, we're going to be in a much different situation than Arlington, Fairfax, Alexander, and even Loudoun, where everyone's been pointing Loudoun as the North Star that we should be aiming to in terms of how they do things with their tax rate. [02:02:52] But really, even though it gets a little funky once you start looking at their medium house income, which frankly, they're the most wealthy county in the entire country, basically, by and large. So we don't necessarily want to compare ourselves there, but where I'm going with this is that, especially looking at where everyone else is going in terms of their average tax bill going up, the fact that we're in double digits, we're the nearest person to us, is going up, what, 239 Alexandria, that's something we should be talking about. [02:03:21] And I think that, you know, the staff, what you guys have been doing should be committed for that, things that we've been looking at in terms of the vision of the board should be looking at. The fact that we're in this inertia point now where we're leveling off our average tax bill when so many other localities in the region are going up should be talked about. [02:03:38] So I really appreciate this slide with more of a comment rather than a question. So my question for you, and it's a question I ask you every year, Michelle, is what are we do with BPOL? Are you going to be looking at BPOL anytime soon to reform how we do that, change some of the thresholds? I know I ask you every year, and I'm going to ask you this year, too. It is on our list. As you know, during the budget presentation, we are recommending some additional staffing and tax admin. There's only so many things we can get to in a given year. [02:04:05] We were focused on the food and beverage tax, the cigarette tax, been doing a lot of work around data center and data center reporting and how we capture that. And so BPOL is on my list of one of those things that perhaps next year we would come forward with a proposal we certainly would entertain a directive from the board if you want me to bring one I will definitely bring one but that is it's something we're working through on our end as well so yes I think there are some alternatives to the B poll how it's how it's I've talked about the gross receipts and how when you hit five hundred and thousand and one dollar you pay taxes and at 499 999 you pay none the larger that number got it became more unfair from two businesses sitting [02:04:45] side-by-side earning a dollar difference and so I you know an exemption threshold might be something that would be more palatable or everybody gets the same amount exempt but we would have to work that through to see what that revenue what revenue it would derive how we make it revenue neutral it might mean we need to raise rates on on some of the categories still being competitive with our peers so those are all things we will be looking at and formulating a proposal and talking through with mr. shorter and then figure out whether we bring it forward from there. Yeah I've been harping on it for years now and I feel like it's something we need to do and what I mention every year I'm going to mention again for the public is it's also a way for us to track the business sets that we have in the county because we have folks [02:05:24] that frankly to behold the threshold they don't really need to submit very much so we don't even know necessarily they exist in a fundamental way which that means that they miss out on you know educational flyers from Christina Wynn and her camp the small business help that we provide to businesses that have been really instrumental especially in the last couple years in light of COVID. So to me, it's just, there's a lot of benefits there. And I feel a directive coming on here and there at some point, but I've been harping on it enough. It's not going to happen today, but I just wanted to throw it out there again. And my final question is due to the meals tax. You mentioned it a couple of times. And I see that it actually grew more than your guys' [02:06:04] initial projections back when you first adopted it. Are you going to start trying to have more projections over time to see how that's going to grow over time. Because frankly, for all the talk of us being a bedroom community, we still have a large restaurant industry that they took hits during the pandemic, but they're bouncing back. You know, we have all the folks still, I still use DoorDash, even though that was a relic from the COVID. You know, so there's a lot of growth there from the meals tax perspective. So my question is, do you see that growing steadily and strongly over time and two are you guys going to start having better projections of where that's going [02:06:40] to go over the years sure so this first year was really about getting the businesses notified and getting them on board so i think they're still businesses not paying um we will have to you know try to locate them to get them on board with paying the tax um and that will come through compliance efforts so that piece is starting to kick in now we will certainly have more data um to look at your seasonal fluctuations in in revenues um to be able to better project that long term we went with a very again fiscally prudent amount again not knowing COVID and not [02:07:12] wanting to over project but we do believe that we have a fraction of of the businesses filing based on what we know and with you spoke about being able to know what are all those businesses that you have I think you're referring to like a business license fee so that's different than BPOL you would pay one or the other if you're not subject to BPOL you could pay a business license fee to register and get that business license we have many small businesses that get that license even though they're not required to have people because they want to hang that in there you know whether it be a barbershop for example they might want to hang that that they're licensed so by having that [02:07:51] that license in place it would be a way for us to track all of our businesses in the county and I do firmly believe that there's probably a lot of home-based businesses that now could be over that 500,000 BPOL threshold that we don't know about right um and so that would be a way to um educate our businesses it's better for us to be proactive in letting them know what taxes they may have to pay than finding them later and then they're hit with penalty and interest um it's much more better to educate them on the front end um so they can be in compliance and not be um hit with those those fees that could can rack up over [02:08:25] time sure and so then my last point here is to put it all a bow on it we we've done quite a few things over the past couple of years to diversify the tax base. And we're setting ourselves up to do that even more with the growth of some of these things. And it would be helpful for me that in the future that we begin to track more and we be able to find ways to keep track of these businesses because, you know, back when we first adopted the meals tax, you had a really great slides that put up information on, frankly, how much folks that you project are from outside the county that pay into certain corridors of the county in terms of that meals tax. [02:09:01] Things like that where when we're talking to our constituents about why we're trying to diversify the tax base and why it matters and how, frankly, some of these tax initiatives are ways to bring in revenue from other counties that are, frankly, still using our roads, they're still shopping our businesses, and what have you, giving them a stake in paying into the infrastructure in our county that they use each and every day, I think is impactful. [02:09:22] So I appreciate that. Thank you, Supervisor Bode. Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Supervisor Lawson, for highlighting some of the obvious things throughout this presentation, but also, Supervisor Bode, I, too, believe that, speaking of directives, I might be thinking of a directive myself, and this more, Michelle, pertains to slide 20 through 23. [02:09:44] We don't have to go through all of them because they all pretty much contain the same data. I already raised concerns at our previous board meeting about comparing ourselves to these other localities, when, in fact, if you talked to anybody that we represent on this dais in Prince William County they believe that they have more in common with Stafford and Falk here right across the Prince William County line than they do with these other jurisdictions and so I understand why we want to make those comparisons you know but I take issue with it because this board has taken issued with outdated policies with outdated practices and the response that we got last Tuesday was that this is how we've been doing things for the last 20 [02:10:21] years and so it benefits those that want to generate and get more tax revenue but when we talk about the taxpayers of the Prince William County it doesn't benefit them so at some point I do think that a directive is warranted when it comes to these numbers because I don't believe that it represents fairly or paints a fair picture for our county residents when we're talking about our budget so in regards to slide 25 I don't know if you recall that I spoke to you Michelle about what the lowest possible real estate tax rate for surviving spouses of military service members killed in the line of duty would be and you kind of gave me a ballpark number [02:10:59] granted it was a ballpark number so I'm not holding on to it it was about $336,000 I believe and so we have a county that actually implemented that five weeks ago and so my question to you is have you looked further into this and if so do you still believe that it would be around that that number that you gave me we don't really have a great way of capturing you know who these people are um we we did that based off i believe we we got i think it was fairfax that has implemented it we took their numbers and based on population sort of estimated a same percentage um so yeah i think [02:11:35] it'd be in that ball i don't think it would be a significant amount okay so we really we really have no way of definitively are you going to still continue to look into it so it would be something if the board were interested in that we require an ordinance um and so the board would i think issue in a directive for us to bring something back in terms of a proposal okay thank you and my next question slide 32 I believe we don't have numbers through January 1st 2023 if I get back one second sure and the reason I say bring a directive is I look at my role as a steward of our taxpayer dollars and so I'm not sure that it's my role to recommend to you to relieve taxes [02:12:14] I get it I get why so I think that should come from the board and so that's why I say I would entertain a directive and then we would bring back a proposal okay i'm sorry which slide 32 so we don't have um numbers through january 1st of 2023 so this is fiscal 23 okay um so these will be revenues through june 30 of 23 so that's why it's preliminary right i will tell you these numbers we reproduce this chart usually about twice a year and you may notice if you go back to prior years sometimes they change and that's because our tax our tax system is tax year based [02:12:54] So if we collect dollars from a taxpayer who didn't pay, you know, back in 2015, and now suddenly they're paying, it's going to change those numbers in any given year. So that's why it does change. But, yeah, 24, no, because we haven't entered that year. Obviously, we have a model, but it's not broken down specifically by industry. [02:13:13] It is more so on the real estate side. We're projecting square footage. We know what some of those drivers are on the business tangible. That's self-reported January 1, and so we're making a lot of assumptions on the commercial overall. So when can we anticipate to get those numbers? [02:13:28] So you would get those as fiscal 24 comes into being, and we start collecting that when we bill. When we bill for the taxes and they file in October's business tangible is due, that's when we have a reporting of all, you know, whether they had their servers and their computer equipment and all those things in there on January 1st, or do they wait until January 2nd? [02:13:47] Because if they wait until January 2nd, it's the next tax year. Got it. Okay. And so then now looking at the increased revenue from this tax, it looks like it's about $36 million from 2020 to 2022, yes? To date, yes. Yes. Okay, and so with that number, Michelle, as data center revenue increased, did the average residential tax bill increase or decrease during that time? [02:14:08] Did the average residential tax bill increase every year? Okay. And so, you know, we hear it all the time that somehow with the generation of all of this revenue that's going to come because of data centers, why is it that this revenue that we've received so far, why is it that that hasn't lowered the residential tax bill? [02:14:31] So the tax bill, the tax rate was lowered by the board? Yeah, but I'm talking about the tax bill. So you have a property, there's two pieces, appreciation and tax rate. And so my question, though, is why hasn't it lowered any budget this board has passed? [02:14:47] There's lots of revenues that play into the whole budget adoption. Specifically pertaining to the data center industry, though. So I guess what I'm saying, I don't apply a particular revenue against another revenue source, right? I propose an entire, the county executive proposes an entire revenue budget, and that budget has to support an entire expenditure budget, and the board makes choices on their tax policy, and we carry out those policies. [02:15:12] Okay. Thank you. And I just want to go back to, if we didn't have the data center revenue and we kept on having the budgets that we've had, the average bill would be six hundred and twelve dollars more so 13 cents on the real estate tax bill equivalent equates to about six hundred and twelve dollars in fiscal 23 and about six hundred fifty dollars in fiscal 24 okay just just to be clear do you understand okay good okay next is supervisor angry thank you manager thanks michelle great presentation um first question i'm just [02:15:49] really curious. Our current commercial tax base is 35%. What is that? About 16% commercial. If you lump apartments in there, you could argue they're assessed like a commercial property. That's another 5%. And then public service is your utility. So if you took the three of those [02:16:26] combined you know you're up over 20 percent okay 35 you're probably thinking back to that old strategic plan old goal to get to 35 commercial and the reality is we have so much you know housing unless you're going to start knocking down houses and replacing it with commercial you're not going to we wouldn't have got there and and thank you for that because i think uh the realization is we're never going to have a residential tax that's going to be lower than commercial tax base but but what we have done is created a commercial tax base that [02:16:59] has allowed us to at least get down to 97 cents uh what i'll say on the taxes another just real quick question um you know what that slide the one you handed us the here's what i would like for you to do michelle because i think if you could just give us a housing 101 so when people come to me and they say you know my housing property is going to go down because you you're building something my my value my house will go down and then the other side is everyone loves that the value of the house goes up okay because if half goes up then you can sell it for more if you want to sell but if you're not selling doesn't really help you much so then you're left [02:17:38] with having to pay your property tax which is what everyone says is going up right is that i just kind of want to give you a if you could give us a one-on-one and i'm pretty sure this board already knows this but i think for the community maybe maybe that process isn't fully understood of of the residential taxes and then your property your assessments on your house and what that really means sure so every january 1st the code charges us with assessing property values and so we are looking at on the residential side we're doing it sort of by neighborhood right we're looking at the sales that have occurred in a particular neighborhood throughout the prior year so calendar [02:18:17] 22 dictates the 1-1-23 assessment so we're looking at those sales that took place in a neighborhood over a 12-month period with heavier reliance on the last three months because that's closer to 1-1-23 and you know we look for outliers right if there's a short sale or foreclosure that's gonna be an outlier we're looking at those sales and square footage and what's in a home you know in terms of does it have a garage does it not have a garage is a pool not have a garage those things that add value and adjustments are then made to come up with it come up with the value. We obviously don't visit every property. We don't have the manpower [02:18:56] to visit every property, but we do rotate through. So every few years we are going out to neighborhoods, we typically will knock on the door, leave a flyer for them to fill out, have you finished your basement? We don't have a way of knowing that. If you finish your basement, that adds value to your home. You can command a higher sales price by improvements to your house. [02:19:16] And so that value then is what drives your tax bill. Each $100 of assessed value, tax rate is applied to. Okay. Thank you. I'm glad you love your job and what you do because these numbers, you know. Just my last one, I'll ask you, Madam Chair. [02:19:33] When we implemented the whole out-of-state driver's program, you know, the whole identifying those, is that in here? Was that? It's in your other. Okay. In the scheme of things, it's a smaller piece of revenue, so it's part of the other. But, yes, it is in there. [02:19:49] Okay. and and I was I was talking to some other localities who had never heard that program before and uh so they wanted to find a way to do what we were doing and implementing that because I know we we made some revenues off of that that are good but more importantly we got people to do or getting folks to uh be a part of Princeton County and not you know I missed that bill because other people are paying it too so just wanted to highlight that one so thank you thank Next is Supervisor Lawson, then Supervisor Weir. [02:20:20] Thank you. So, Michelle, I've gone back and written down some things I wanted to ask you previously. I think I know this, but I want to confirm the tax exemption or tax relief for disabled veterans are disabled vets that are 100 percent? [02:20:38] You have to be 100 percent totally disabled as declared by the VA. Okay. There's no income limits on it, though. So it doesn't mean there's no asset limit. Like the tax relief for the elderly and disabled, there are income limits, we use the HUD limits. Right, right. [02:20:54] Okay, but all the veterans, do we have an idea of how many, like do you have a number of how many disabled vets that qualify for tax relief? And this would be tax relief on the real estate bills? Do you have the slide number you want to, by chance? [02:21:11] Oh, I do. I have it right here. It's slide 24, I believe. Okay, yep. The number's on here, yeah. Oh, you know what? I think I just found it. Yeah, I thought it was on households relieved. [02:21:27] So, wow, we have 3,600 households that qualify for that. And their average release is 6,283, so higher than the average tax bill. And do they have to go through an annual – once they're in your system, is it something for as long as they're in that house, or do they have to annually apply? [02:21:48] I do believe we do some kind of verification now. One thing we did start doing is they only are entitled to relief on one home. And so there are some that own homes in multiple localities, and we're getting a few. We're getting tax relief in more than one locality. [02:22:04] And so we do now require, when they apply for it, that they also provide their tax return because that lists primary residence. So we know whether their primary residence is in premium or somewhere else. Okay. All right. Good to know. I think elderly and disabled, that's the one that's every year because it's income and assets. [02:22:23] Right, exactly. Yes. Yep. Okay, and then cigarette tax, I noticed, actually, Supervisor Weir and I were having a side conversation about it. It's not on your graph. Is that under all other? Yes. And do you know what it generated? [02:22:40] Yep, about $4 million. Yep, that's exactly, he's good at math, that's for sure. No, it's in the. That's what you said. It's in the schedule. Oh, I just assumed you calculated it. I'm trying to give you credit for your math skills. Just pull up the budget and look it up. Okay, all right. [02:22:56] Maybe it was last week, I mean. Okay. Let's see. My next question is probably along the lines of slide 20, but it's regarding the comparisons with our neighbors. Do we embed a cost of living adjustment in these comparisons? [02:23:17] So we have the average median household income, but not cost of living. i know supervisor vega has raised this and i'm going to repeat her that's really important if we're going to compare we need to we need to be a fair comparison because we all know that the housing market in arlington and fairfax is higher than here so i think it's it's worth noting as well that their cost of living is going to be more as you move further into dc would you all agree with that i'm certainly housing values are more expensive housing values i would say [02:23:53] restaurants anyway i think that's i think that's worthy of pointing out um and then the last question i have michelle is on slide 13 kind of back to supervisor angry's question so in tax year or calendar year tax year 2021 we were at not quite 76 for residential and then 76.14 in tax year 2022 right so that can can you assume that that would have been more more new housing came [02:24:31] online it's probably more a factor of the appreciation okay i was just gonna say or is that because the housing market yeah so between 21 and 22 that was when we had 12.8 percent residential real estate appreciation so that pie is going to change really with with okay appreciation what was the appreciation value i think it's 12.8 percent it's on okay this one okay point okay sorry that's okay i will say this when i first started on the board um we were at [02:25:07] about i think around 80 percent so so we've grown our commercial revenues and i would this just my last point not necessarily a question um for a suburban county we're we're going the residential is going to be the lion's share of how we make this county run day in and day out as you become urban you diversify and grow even more but you're right that strategic goal that we set i included i i regret that we made it so you know ambitious we called it the moonshot but the reality of it is [02:25:45] it wasn't feasible i remember deputy county executive chris price saying we would have had to, as you just said, bulldoze neighborhoods and redevelop with commercial industrial. It was just, frankly, we had bad advice also. But balance is obviously what we're aiming for. And I think that we move that needle in the right direction. And I would also say without going into the rural area. [02:26:15] So I'm just going to take a point of privilege. You know, we were talking about the land book and the percentage of the land book and that's not when we were talking about the 35 percent of revenues so that's a little different because we're trying to bring in commercial revenues that aren't necessarily only associated with real estate and that's what that moonshot had to do with not get 35 percent of our land book at commercial so that's sort of apples and oranges [02:26:43] is what you're saying. Right. Revenue, not land book. Yeah, because that's, the slide you had up was the land book, and that's residential values and commercial values of real estate, but there are other revenues we can bring in not associated with real estate, and that's really what's most important that we're trying to increase. Understand? Oh, yeah, yeah, but I just want people to be [02:27:17] confused. Supervisor Weir. Okay. First off, in response to Supervisor Vega's question, the answer is because we increased spending faster than we increased revenue. Mr. Treat, average tax bill is necessarily a function of rate versus assessed value, correct? So in a jurisdiction where assessed values on average are lower than another jurisdiction, the key to understanding who's paying the most on a per dollar valuation basis of their real estate is the real estate tax [02:27:53] rate full rate just it's the two combined that make up the tax bill so if you're going to give the real estate tax bill wouldn't you also provide the real estate tax rate in those corresponding counties as well so that you can get a more accurate picture just a suggestion for the future provide that um i do have a question for you i think i know the answer uh has the average residential tax bill increased in prince william county over time faster than the rate of inflation I would have to do that calculation, and we can provide that. [02:28:27] At some point in time. We have the tax history. Slide 24. You've got the parcels that have tax relief. Under the religious charitable category, is that 354 parcels, or is that a percentage of income? [02:28:47] Parcels. Parcels. Yes, that's accounts. Do we know how many of those are – or could you at some point in time get us a breakdown of how many of those are religious versus how many of them are otherwise 501c3s? So we can tell you, I think you had asked if we could provide the number of charitable organizations. [02:29:07] We don't have that. These are ones that are, we have the number of tax-exempt organizations that aren't paying taxes. So there are a few charitable organizations that were grandfathered in. The board put a moratorium on tax relief and exemption for charitable organizations. [02:29:23] So there are some that are exempt by state code. The rest are all, the lion's share of those are going to be religious organizations, churches. When was the moratorium instituted? At least, I want to say 10, maybe 10 years ago. [02:29:39] Well, I have to find out. It's been a while. Okay. Maybe longer than that. A couple more quick ones. So what was developed, if I may, it was the community partner program in lieu. So now we have an application process through the budget process for charitable organizations to turn in an application for funding from the board as a community partner. [02:30:03] First, and they could then use it, you know, they could, money's fungible. You could use it to pay salaries and then free up salaries to pay your taxes. I would suggest that's an apples and oranges equation. But that's the program that replaced. Yeah, I will address that in the future. Transient occupancy tax. [02:30:19] Are we having, I know they've changed the regulations again, are in the process of changing, did change and are changing, third-party processors and their share of TOT taxes. Are we having an issue collecting from, I'll just throw one out there, Expedia, for example, or that type of entity? [02:30:40] And is there an accounting for the difference between what the hotels reimburse on TOT and what the third-party processors' percentage is? [02:30:57] Does anybody look at auditing that function to make sure that the total is being paid or potentially being overpaid? So I believe we would have to start first with a local ordinance for third-party processors. We do have some third-party processors paying TOT. [02:31:13] We do not have an audit team, a compliance team, or anything around third-party processors for TOT today. Perhaps this is a question from Ms. Robel, but I thought that last year they changed the collection practice on TOT where third-party purveyors were required to report and pay. [02:31:32] We're looking into that with finance. Okay. uh cigarette tax um this is your first year of cigarette tax correct correct okay uh your two second year second year second year first boy yeah we implement it in january so i would i would suggest the following just based on experience from having levied a cigarette tax for a long period of time it's a very volatile tax um up until covid it was a like most regressive taxes [02:32:07] it was consistently decreasing year over year, and then something weird happened. COVID hit, cigarette tax sales or cigarette sales went through the roof. I suspect it has something to do with people telecommuting, not having to go out to the lobby of their office building and smoke and smoking more at home. [02:32:30] I don't know what it is, but I think it's just something to be wary of in the long term and just kind of temper any expectations based on year over year growth that it could cease or diminish rather quickly and return to its historic norm? If I may, we use the Northern Virginia Cigarette Tax Board to administer and collect that tax. [02:32:50] And they're stumped, too, as to the reason for it. Yeah, and they do provide monthly reporting that we analyze and will pay attention to. You know, if there is a change that's needed, it would be through one of our quarterly reports. Okay. And then lastly, Madam Chair, I believe it's a dangerous proposition to engage in, to what is me as a straw man argument by trying to pull out data center revenues. [02:33:16] Quite frankly, it's intellectually dishonest to take the budget that we've got now and then try and go back and retroactively eliminate a tax without considering what would have taken its place, how would that lack of revenue impact your spending patterns, what impact would that have on other tax rates at the time. [02:33:42] It's a hypothetical that just doesn't work because there's too many moving parts. You can't say because we wouldn't have this data tax, this data center tax revenue, your real estate taxes would be X percent higher or X number of dollars higher. You just can't do that calculation. [02:33:58] You can't go back and change reality because, you know, if you take that particular aspect of your revenue stream out, it's going to necessarily be replaced by something else or you would have had to dramatically change your spending progressions and your spending tactics. [02:34:19] So, I mean, it's a canard to me, and I just appreciate not going down that road because it's an unanswerable question from a revenue side and from an expenditure side. That's all I got for the moment. [02:34:35] You don't have to go down that road. That's okay. I mean, I choose to go down that road. everybody's entitled to their opinion so um next is supervisor bailey and i think we're been doing this for a while but it you know if we can you know sort of wrap up our questions madam chair members of the board i looked in the county code and it looks like the moratorium on the tax exemptions by designation was effective december 13 2011 thank you miserable i was looking through my email for that so thank you very much supervisor did i say bailey you did i did [02:35:12] Supervisor Bailey thank you so much I thank you Michelle for your detailed presentation as usual I got two questions one just for the interest of as we go forward one is do we know what the vacancy rate is for our 55 plus developments is that something you can I might have to get with developments we'll see what we can find out yeah I'm not sure that we just bring it back a source or send me an email I just I'm just interested to know that as it relates to housing and then but the question that I really had was with the [02:35:48] the CNI the potential CNI revenue piece you know it's I find it interesting and I find it as an opportunity but with that and I like the number that you attached to the 18 mil it is it something that we need to as we as we consider that? Is it something that we need to attach to a certain project or a certain place where we want to put that revenue? Because I find it interesting and something that's an opportunity for us. But how do we look at that in terms of rolling it out? The code restricts it for [02:36:25] transportation. So it would have to be used to improve transportation or it could be used for the debt service associated with the geobond, for example, expanding transportation. A little bit details like for the so does that mean when you talk about transportation does that mean not just actual mobility but it doesn't mean roads does it mean signage what you know you know what I mean how does that roll out so it's new capacity service or access and the associated operating costs do you have something you want to add to that Michelle just hit it on the head the key [02:37:01] is increasing mobility capacity okay either through roads or public transportation okay so this is something in consideration of this that would kind of offset if you will what we have in place yes so here are the facts in in the proposed five-year plan the mobility referendum projects that debt service is going to be hitting the county's budget in approximately two or three years it starts out small but over the next five years it gets larger and larger and larger. We have the Potomac Rappahannock Transportation Commission that is [02:37:40] recommending or requesting sizable increases in the county's local subsidy, not just in fiscal 24, but also in fiscal 25 based on their own projections. We're going to have a work session with that on the board in April. Combined, there are some pretty significant transportation and mobility commitments or asks that the board needs to consider not necessarily now as part of the FY24 budget but in the future this is a potential funding source to meet those requests. So this [02:38:18] would be a proactive opportunity for us as we go forward. As Michelle and Mr. Shorter have said this is not a recommendation of staff in the proposed budget the FY24 budget it is a future consideration the reason why i highlight it is because i turned it off the reason why i i mention is because in going forward we have to be proactive as we consider our budget opportunities and i know we've been a little reactionary in the past years so i'm i'm just saying it's not [02:38:53] considered now but as we go forward we need to be more proactive in how we plan it really is um comes down to diversification you know i can't stress how important diversification of revenues is if you go back to that chart with that big dip that 29 percent decline in residential values to the extent you have other revenue sources it helps buffer from you know the hit that because we're predominantly residential and so if there is a big another great recession you know it will hit us hard in that that piece of the pie and so to the extent we can diversify that's a good thing it's certainly a good thing from the rating agencies you know at the end of the day bond holders want to get paid they want to make sure you have the revenues to pay them we're triple [02:39:31] triple-a so we're in good position to pay our bondholders but that just further strengthens that triple-a jurisdiction by having that diversification and there's very you know we're dealing real estate there's very limited places where we can diversify our revenue sources we can't just make up taxes you know we have to have authorization from the general assembly and so the diversification pieces are running out what's left you know there's a plastic bag tax that's that's more about deterrence right that's not that's not a diversification it's not going to generate huge amounts that's going to be meaning meaningful amount it's more about you know the environmental practice um and so cni is really your you know food and beverage was your largest [02:40:10] one cigarette tax was a smaller one but the cni would be your next largest sort of diversification piece to to raise diversify the revenue and raise additional revenues to offset thank thank you supervisor bailey supervisor bode yeah just a one quick point and then a question um i appreciate Supervisor Bailey, you bring up the C&I tax. [02:40:32] What I would say is, you know, understanding, again, to be very clear, that's not proposed in a 24-budget. None of us are saying that, what have you, so everyone understands that. What I will request, though, is that if staff starts to think about doing that in a future budget year, one, give us a heads up, but two, I think it would be a really great idea to start talking to the business community ahead of time, way before we start really hitting the books hard with programming that even into the five-year plan. [02:40:58] And why I say that is because we don't know what we don't know in terms of the grand magnitude of this, right? You have projections right now, but like with the food and beverage tax, we're still working through that. And very frankly, right before COVID hit, there were a group of business owners that came to my office and said, hey, we actually think this is a good idea for X number of reasons because infrastructure costs, what have you, help businesses as well. [02:41:23] But we want you guys to be very methodical, very thoughtful, and engage a very diverse set of stakeholders from the business and industrial community on that. So I wanted to leave that for staff, for food for thought, that if we ever start going down that road, which it sounds like there's some interest that we do, that we hit and we engage the business community well ahead of time to start getting their thoughts and their considerations as well. [02:41:48] My question goes to a completely different direction is based on the tax relief. on slide 10 you have that uh we're close to sort of the cap or i shouldn't say cap but what you had provisioned for that at 34 million we're at 33.1 um my question i know yeah my question is is that so we're close on this not for this fiscal year um do you foresee in later years you know increasing that since we got we're getting so close for this fiscal year so that's something thing that we'll be looking at for recap we actually did we had increased it [02:42:27] during COVID right by like 10 I think like 10 million we dialed that back in 23 and so now we're sort of looking at it yes again what's that we try to look at sort of the five year on the average over five years has been about six million in the exoneration piece the tax relief we've been I think it's exoneration pieces where we've been less accurate the tax relief has been pretty close. So, you know, we allow for kind of growth year over year. If you look at like elderly and disabled, it typically ranges right around the same number. People come in, people [02:43:02] leave. The piece that's growing is the disabled veterans because that's people coming to the community sort of intentionally for that relief. And the last thing I'll add to that, and that's right, is as the husband of a disabled vet who's not at 100% yet, she's close. Sometimes it's folks that live in our community that frankly haven't gotten there yet because there's some threshold there and i know my my colleague to my right service bailey can talk about this too that there are thresholds there that frankly the ba doesn't grant certain things that they should to hit that hit that percentage you know my wife uh she she suffers from debilitating migraines as a result of her time in the service but for whatever reason they don't weight that to her current percentage so [02:43:42] we're working on that because it's frankly something that they should but just wanted to put that out there that yes you're right there are folks that come to the community that that that choose to live here and they are 100% when they come in there's other folks like my wife where she comes in at 60 or 80% like she is right now and she may eventually get 100% based on the review of the VA so that's also something for us to think about in not going years thank you so much madam chair thank you supervisor Bodie supervisor Franklin you want to wrap us up sure um I would just like to say I guess um with regards to the discussion on the CNI tax um and I'm sure at some point you know we'll discuss you know whether that's something uh we [02:44:19] want to look into within the the next several budget years but I've said this last time and I'll say it again you know we do need a permanent funding source for transportation I will say that I don't know that the CNI tax is the way to go because quite frankly I think our general assembly and state ought to be providing those resources you know I think in a few years we're going to find ourselves in a in a dire state with regards to transportation and infrastructure particularly on the transportation side though i mean nationally we've been talking about infrastructure but we've [02:44:55] seen federal funds help provide relief for infrastructure but you don't see a lot on the transportation side and i just think that our state should do a better job and particularly the general assembly should be required to come up with solutions for localities and i'm not talking about allowing us to implement a tax on people right like they should be coming up with ways that they can specifically give localities funding resources to help us mitigate and provide transportation services ongoing transportation services and permanent transportation funding and i don't want to call any particular agency but obviously we're looking at their their budgets [02:45:35] now and quite frankly what we're seeing is a little shocking in terms of what some of these transportation commissions are asking for um we can't continue to rely on localities uh to fund such a massive source like transportation transportation is probably the most expensive thing that we do here in the county um and so you know i don't know if the cni is the way to go because i i just think that the state um should be paying for it 150 million dollars to wamana anyway but yeah from uh supervisor lawson added on now yep madam chair thank you uh supervisor [02:46:14] Mr. Franklin, you took the words out of my mouth. Yeah, 10 years ago, the General Assembly passed the 2013 transportation bill, and Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican, signed it, and it was supposed to be the be-all, end-all for all of Northern Virginia's transportation woes. [02:46:35] And it's clearly not. Otherwise, county staff would not be proposing a commercial and industrial tax in future years. And folks, this isn't my first rodeo. [02:46:51] That means if it's being presented as future, that means that they will be forced to come back here and propose it. So I agree with you. I don't think that commercial and industrial tax, you can call it diversification all you want, but the eight of us have to make decisions or whoever the eight will be sitting up here next year. [02:47:13] And I would say the 2013 transportation bill from 10 years ago, which significantly increased the sales tax, was supposed to be NOVA's fix. So if I'm the business community, I don't like the idea of this board talking about a C&I tax. [02:47:33] So, Supervisor Franklin, I think you and I are on the same page. Thank you, Supervisor Lawson. With that, Ms. Adshried, I think we're done. Thank you very much. We look forward to you coming back at recap and giving us other numbers. Thank you. And if I may publicly recognize Lily Jo Crest, Tim McClair, and Indora at home and her whole team, they are rock stars in putting this whole model together. [02:47:56] Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Okay, so that brings us to supervisor's time. I think yesterday, last time I started to my left, this week I'm – thank you. [02:48:13] Yes. Could I get a motion on 9A through 9D? Second. Motion made by Supervisor Bode, Vice Chair Bode, seconded by Supervisor Bailey, 9A through 9D. Is there any discussion? [02:48:30] Supervisor Weir. Madam Chair, would you mind dividing out 9D for the purpose of an abstention? Sure. So could we get then 9A through 9C? So moved. Second. [02:48:46] Motion made by Vice Chair Bodie, seconded by Supervisor Bailey. Please vote on 9A through 9C. Vote unanimous. If I could get a motion on 9D, please. So moved. Second. Motion made by Vice Chair Bodie, seconded by Supervisor Bailey. [02:49:04] Any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Supervisor Weir abstaining from vote. Okay, thank you. I'm just going to start to my right. Supervisor Franklin. [02:49:20] Okay, just very quickly. On the second, I had the opportunity to participate in Read Across America at Kilby Elementary, and so thank you to their principal and to Vicki Castro, who invited me. [02:49:38] On Sunday the 5th, I attended the 140th anniversary celebration of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and so I want to say congratulations to their membership, and thank you to Reverend Lundy and his wife, Ms. Jacqueline Lundy, for this major milestone. [02:49:53] We learned a lot about the history of the church and really of this community, And it was a wonderful celebration. Last night, I, along with the representatives from the police department, VDOT, and the Prince William County Department of Transportation, met with residents of Belmont Bay to discuss traffic issues on Belmont Bay Drive. [02:50:14] There was a traffic study performed, and on at least one side of the road, it did show that there were issues. And so we did, and we are in the process of providing mitigation for that issue. upcoming events i'll be hosting an affordable housing town hall on march 27th at 7 p.m i believe that's in conjunction with the coalition of 100 black women on tuesday tuesday march 28th i will also be co-hosting a women's history program with supervisor bailey at 6 p.m at the forlazo building and this year our dumpster days in the spring and the fall will be may 13th from 10 a.m to 2 p.m [02:50:52] at Fred Lynn Middle School, and September 30th, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. And then just very quickly, I have two directives I would like to issue without objection. I've been talking a lot about kind of cleaning up the roadway on Route 1 in North Woodbridge. [02:51:11] As the road was widened, the plantings there did not last. And, again, quite frankly, it just looks kind of horrific, and we've been getting a lot of complaints from residents in that area. So I would like to direct county staff to research and make recommendations in coordination with VDOT concerning the installation, maintenance, and funding of additional landscaping projects along state, primary, and secondary roads in the county, including the northern section of Route 1 located between the median from the bridge to Annapolis Way and the median from Annapolis Way to Gordon Boulevard. [02:51:48] Such recommendations should include a proposal and costs for increasing the effort and frequency for litter pickup on state, primary, and secondary rows in the county for consideration by the board. I hope that's without objection. And then one more. We've been dealing with some dredging issues with some of our marina owners, and I've been meeting with them over the past couple of months to figure out kind of how to help mitigate. [02:52:13] You know, they are looking to basically remove dirt from dredging, but they need a place to dispose of it. So we've been working with Public Works, but would like to direct the county to research and make recommendations in coordination with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Marine Resource Commission, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a location and facility to dispose of silt from navigable rivers and marinas in the county. [02:52:40] Local, state, and federal funding opportunities should also be explored as part of this research, and alternative sites for disposal and funding sources should be developed for consideration by the board. and I hope that's also without objection. And then the last thing, I just want to make a notice of intent to reappoint J. Michael Hill to the Board of Equalization. [02:53:03] Thank you. 40 seconds left. Supervisor Vega. I have nothing, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Vega. Supervisor Angry, I'm just going to circle around you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I want to thank Judge Irving for, I toured the courthouse with her and see all of her challenges they have going on over there. [02:53:24] So thank you for the tour. It was a very well informative session. And I also want to congratulate our social workers who we just recognize here today. Thank you for all the work that you do. I know it is a thankless job. [02:53:42] And so as you well know, we all thank you. And so this Saturday is the Manassas St. Patrick's Day Parade from 11 to 1 in Manassas City. I don't know where you're going to park, but just come on down. and that's where we will just have a good time, okay? [02:53:59] Also, Dale City Volunteer Fire Department, Station 13 off of Hillandale Road, is going to be having a Red Cross blood drive, and that day is actually Tuesday. It is next Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., so I hope you can make it out. [02:54:19] And then I just want to say to the folks who may take our awesome bus system here, You know, we've been striking here for probably going into a month now. We haven't reached the resolution yet or an agreement yet, but I want you to know that buses are slowly getting back online. [02:54:39] There are some routes that have been added. So if you need more information, please email my office, email this board. I send out an update on what's going on. And so we want to hope that we can get this thing to a close and get all of our operators back online and get them everything that they deserve. [02:54:55] I just wanted to give an update to let you know we understand, we hear concerns, we're working. You know, we don't have a say in that. We have a third party that kind of runs our operators. So hopefully they'll get an agreement there soon, and we'll be back to status quo. [02:55:11] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Angry. Supervisor Weir. Just a quick note to the Gainesville residents. We should have an office next week, and hopefully that will be the end of it. That's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor Lawson. [02:55:26] Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to give my notice of intention to support Sam Snow or reappoint him to the Board of Equalization. I think the clerk has his information already. And then I have some serious bragging rights in Brentsville District. [02:55:44] Let me tell you. Yeah, here we go. Brace yourselves, everybody. I'm going to start off with the black sheep. Look at that. everybody i believe has been to the black sheep um and marcus silva texted me this with great excitement the other day so man i think it's man versus food is that the name of that program i haven't seen it yet but i've heard about it anyway he was highlighted in a um competition a national competition and the black sheep uh came in top 10. how about that so um if you have not [02:56:21] Ben to the black sheep I highly encourage you to go what Marcus did with that old dilapidated barn that the county used to own is truly a work of art so congrats to the black sheep and then let's talk about basketball Wade did you know that Brentsville District High School girls are competing the basketball girls are competing on Friday for the state championship I think it was last year it was the woodbridge girls that won right but that different class a different class [02:56:56] we're class 3a um so hopefully we'll have the brentsville state championship team in here i'm going to go down to the game on friday at 12 30 at vcu and then i'm going to stay i'm going to have a day on friday in richmond because friday night the patriot boys play for the state championship So, we've got two high schools in Brentsville District that are premier athletes, I might say. [02:57:24] Anyway, super excited about that. I have a restaurant suggestion. Stop. I'm not going to take any restaurant suggestions outside of Brentsville District. Okay. So, oh, you're talking about in Richmond. Yes. I got you. Sorry. My head was still in Brentsville, Supervisor Weir. [02:57:40] Okay. And then, Mr. Shorter, I am requesting a directive follow-up from December 3rd. 13th um i i asked staff to get back to me uh and the board on a historic district that was in the first staff report of of the principal and digital gateway and then it was it was disappeared removed from subsequent reports i asked for information regarding from the planning staff why this early report in 2021 was not shared with the board who made the decision to suppress [02:58:17] that information what were the qualifications of the of that person it's it's all documented so if you could follow up with miss Horner on that I would greatly appreciate it and then madam chair I have met with Stanley Martin regarding the Devlin project I have met with the community I was hoping to continue working for some type of compromise. [02:58:44] As everybody knows, we were supposed to vote on Devlin. It was rescheduled from February 7th. We deferred it to today. That's not going to happen. They have indicated that they want an indefinite deferral, and I said, well, what does that mean? [02:59:01] And he said post-election. That's not what I have intended. What I have intended is a post-election. let it linger out there indefinitely. So I'm asking you who handles the schedule with the planning department to reschedule this application to be heard by the board in May. [02:59:21] We have land use votes in May after the budget. I don't think it's fair to the community to leave this lingering indefinitely until post-election, whatever that means. So I'm asking you to reschedule it for May. [02:59:38] So I usually don't schedule things when applicants don't want them. if they're going back and making changes and thinking about things. So I'd have to think about that. But thank you. So as long as we're having the discussion, you wanted it, the night of February 7th, when Supervisor Bodie moved for deferral, you may recall that you actually suggested that we have the deferral the following week on the 14th. [03:00:06] So at that time, you clearly thought that there could be something fast-tracked. I don't think it's fair to the community or fair to anybody, specifically the community, to have this linger indefinitely. I would prefer that we have a timeline. I think two months is more than adequate for me, Stanley Martin, and the community to find a compromise. [03:00:29] I encourage you to participate in that as well, and that's why I'm asking you to set it for May. And if you want to get back to me in short order, I'd appreciate that. I will talk to the applicant, see what their plans are. [03:00:47] I've talked to people, and, you know, the date's certain. The reason I wanted it the next week was a date certain because I wanted to make sure we had a date certain because we didn't have to go through the public hearing. At this, if it's going to be changed, it looks like we'll have to go through the public hearing again. So that's why I suggested that next week. [03:01:04] No, the public hearing's closed. You closed the public hearing. But if they substantially change it or change it, then we will go back. Sort of like Klein, I think Klein is going back to the planning commission. So it sounds like you and I then need to get on the same page because that's not my understanding. [03:01:21] I was ready to start discussing the substantial changes, and it was clear to me that there wasn't an interest. If an applicant doesn't want to bring something forward, I'm not sure that it's in my nature to just make them do that. Well, it's certainly in my nature to protect the interest of the board and the community, and I don't think that the applicant should be driving this indefinite, uncertain timeline, especially when it could be lingering for months and months. [03:01:51] Meanwhile, the community is expecting to meet, and the board made it clear that they wanted some compromise to happen. It does nobody any good for this to just linger indefinitely. Well, I've actually spoken to other people in the neighborhood who are glad it's indefinitely postponed, and they're happy with that as opposed to having any changes at all. [03:02:11] Well, I tell you what, then, why don't you and me in the community have that meeting? Because that's definitely not the message I'm getting from the community. I know you've gone out and walked the property with a couple folks, but they're certainly not excited about the idea of this being postponed, quote, indefinitely, and as Mr. Young said to me in the office, post-election. [03:02:33] Under consideration. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple things, and I have a directive that I gave people a heads up on. To piggyback off of Supervisor Angry, we have made strides at PRTC to get more routes done. You know, we got an announcement today that starting this afternoon we have more routes going out. [03:02:53] Commuter service has been restored between Pentagon and the Horner Road lot with 10 trips leaving the Pentagon between 2.15 and 8 o'clock p.m. tonight. And on Wednesday, expect a few more routes to be opened up with trips between Horner Road and the Pentagon. [03:03:09] So we're finally starting to see more trips go out past Springfield. I know that's been sort of the barrier that we've had thus far. So I'm glad to hear that we're making some progress with that. And I just want to make sure that people who might be still listening hear that there is progress being made. [03:03:25] Second, back on Sunday, like some of my colleagues, we did attend the 140th anniversary of Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was a really, really great event. It's actually one of the first times that the congregation has come together in person in a big way since the pandemic had started. [03:03:44] So it was really great to see everyone back in person. A quick factoid is in May of 1914, Ebenezer Baptist Church had a mass baptism in the Occoquan River. Forty people were baptized. [03:04:00] It was the largest annual baptism of the church's history. and the Occoquan River. So just thinking about that. We don't really do that anymore, obviously, but just a good factoid about their history and just really wanted to highlight how much that church has been woven to the fabric, not only the Occoquan district, but throughout the county. [03:04:19] So again, congratulations to your 140th anniversary. So I do have a lengthy directive that I gave everyone a heads up on. So I'm not gonna go read the entire thing. I'm gonna read piece by piece so people know what we're talking about and so people can ask questions and have objections. as they may. Without objection, I would like to direct the county executive and county staff to research the following items aimed at increasing the use of solar and other renewable energy sources throughout the county, including, here's the first one, identifying locations where solar panels and battery storage backup power could increase sustainability of county services. [03:04:56] Two, scaling up the county's building energy efficiency program to meet the climate mitigation and resiliency target of county-government operations achieving 100% renewable energy by 2030. Was that different? [03:05:15] It's different. It's different. Building efficiency. All right. Well, I'm not going to object to any of these. I just want to make sure I understand all of them. But some that have the cost associated is a different discussion. [03:05:33] Right. And obviously this is all just asking for information. We're not telling them to do anything yet. So that's the second one. So the third one is implementing solar power on county-government buildings slash property through a third-party purchase agreement or PPA or purchase of renewable energy certificates, RECs. Fourth, potential ways to encourage new data centers to consider purchasing clean energy through PPAs and RECs, which are consistent with applicable law. Fifth, engaging with SolSmart Virginia to help make solar permitting faster, easier, and more affordable [03:06:07] for businesses. Sixth, scaling up residential solar by encouraging county residences to participate in the Solarize Nova program. Next one, requesting that the Virginia Department of Energy conduct a SolSmart consultation and identify county-owned buildings where installation of solar panels and additional energy efficiency measures would be cost-effective. [03:06:38] Next, potential proposed amendments to the zoning ordinance and or DCSM, which are consistent with applicable law to encourage the use of less carbon-intensive or carbon-neutral backup systems or diesel or petroleum-powered backup systems, so backup generators. Next, coordinating with the Virginia building code officials associated to determine what strides could be made towards clean energy implementation from a statewide code perspective, including but not limited to considering and proposing changes to the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code. We're almost done. [03:07:12] Incentivizing the conversion of existing diesel or oil backup power systems to low carbon or carbon neutral systems. And finally, researching programs such as community choice or local aggregation, which may allow the county to procure renewable and other alternative energy on behalf of residents, businesses, and other government or operations while still receiving transmission and distribution service from existing providers. [03:07:35] And so, such research should, where applicable, include timelines, fiscal impacts, and other pertinent impacts for consideration for the Board of Supervisors. When the research is complete, the county executive and county staff should report back to the Board with research, recommendations during a board meeting, or by memoranda, where appropriate. [03:07:53] So, are you done? I'm done. So, just a point of clarification. That was the fast-track items from the Sustainability Commission. I just think everybody needs to know that. That wasn't Supervisor Vice-Chair Bodhi's list. And so, you know, the Sustainability Commission had asked that we looked into doing those, and so we're asking that the county, you know, staff evaluate them, which seems it's just sort of initiating, and they'd want us to bring a resolution forward. [03:08:20] And I will point out, you know, we do have an energy manager in the budget, and the offices of sustainability, so they can do all that come July. I'm just saying, I mean, it's good to get started, but, you know, we are putting those in place, and I think it's great to highlight all the great things that the Sustainability Commission recommended fast-tracking that we're trying to think about doing. [03:08:41] I don't know if we'll do them all, but anyway, I have no objection. Anybody have any objection? Just having people look at it. Sounds great. And the reason why I didn't mention that is because I was short on time, but yes, All of these are resolved, passed, almost unanimously, if Supervisor Weir can correct me if I'm wrong, unanimously passed by the Sustainability Commission on recommendations they made to us. [03:09:02] Yeah. Yes. And so I just want to give kudos to the Sustainability Commission, kudos to my appointee, Chair Randy Freed, for all the work he's been doing with them to help make sure that we've been to the store. Thank you. Supervisor Bailey. Chair? [03:09:19] Supervisor Bailey, objection? Supervisor Bailey is going to graciously give me a few seconds because I forgot. Yeah. We help each other out. You're giving her some. Okay, start the clock. [03:09:38] No, she's just being gracious and letting me. I got one more athlete to brag on, folks. Oh, you do? One more athlete I forgot. What about the cheer people, too? Did you mention the cheer? I'm sorry? The cheer people. Was that in your area, the cheer people that are going to the states? Don't know about the cheer gals. but I don't know the cheer team but we're early today we got time but Mr. Hugh from the front seat reminded me um of the of a Brentsville gal making uh news Brentsville May Collier I hope I said her name right paves the way in becoming the county's first official girls state wrestling [03:10:14] champion at 145 pounds and there she is on Inside Nova and thank you Supervisor Bailey for letting You may have a few seconds. That's impressive. No, shut up, Kenny. No, thank you so much. [03:10:30] So happy Women's History Month, and I just wanted to congratulate Congresswoman McClellan for being the first African-American Congresswoman from the state of Virginia to be elected, and I'm very proud of her, so I just wanted to say that. [03:10:46] On March 1st, thanks to the Prince William Living for honoring five influential women in our county, in our community, for the great work that they do. And one of them was, I just wanted to say, is Dr. Vanessa Gattis, who helped us so diligently with our food insecurity during COVID. [03:11:08] On March 2nd, I had a great meeting with Lakia Graham at Ditlake, and we talked about all the great work that they're doing here in the county and the partnership opportunities that the county has provided for them, and they're looking forward to the new county exec's opportunity and becoming a community partner. [03:11:27] So I just thank her for, again, for Ditlake, for all that they do. On the 5th, along with my great, we went to church together, So the colleagues went to church together with Representative Abigail Spanberger. And we had a wonderful time, as Supervisor Franklin has said, at the historical Ebenezer Baptist Church for their 140th church anniversary. [03:11:48] And they do a great job in supporting the county's efforts in the Occoquan District. So thank you for joining me and allowing me to join you. My notice of intent is to appoint Jacob Geovia to the Design and Construction Zoning Ordinance Commission. [03:12:06] And then upcoming events on March the 7th, I'll be participating tonight in the swearing-in ceremony, but that's – sorry. On the 9th, looking forward to participating in another event as we're looking for the community to know. [03:12:21] We're looking to shore up in my district, FBI is in my district, and we're looking to shore up FBI headquarters in the Northern Virginia region. So just partners in what we're saying, pairing in what we're saying about partnership with the region, Fairfax and Loudoun County. [03:12:40] And so that'll be a great opportunity for our region. On the 28th, as Supervisor Franklin has said, I'm looking forward to partnering with her as we acknowledge Women's History Month with the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. That's going to be exciting. [03:12:55] And then I just want to remind folk in the district on the 30th, we have having another community town hall meeting. at the Potomac High School from 6 to 8 p.m. where we'll be talking about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. [03:13:11] And thank you to staff in advance for your support of that event. And that's all that I have, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Bailey. I just want a note on Wednesday, March 1st, I was honored to go to the retirement party for Stella Kroll, who, you know, Stella had a 21-year career with Prince William County, And 18 of those were in the chair's office. [03:13:35] And then she moved around after we shut down during the pandemic. But I just want to congratulate her on her retirement. And I don't know if the supervisor, but he mentioned Ella's 101st birthday. Did you mention that? We went to Ella's 101st birthday over at Westminster at Lake Ridge. [03:13:54] And that was really wonderful, a special accommodation. I got to speak with the arts news host, host Vase Hayes. paint while I was being interviewed. That was really difficult to paint while I was being interviewed, but it was a lot of fun. I got to attend the Parks and Rec Tourism State of the Parks. Mr. Hendler-Boss did a great job on that. A lot of people there, a lot of great information on the parks, really. I'm hoping that's an annual State of the Parks because it really was really, really useful. I also got to attend the 140th anniversary of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Wonderful congregation uh you know they've moved around and it was it was a lot of fun a lot of fun to sit [03:14:33] with my seat mates um two more things i want to remind people that they can subscribe to my weekly newsletter the wheeler report and you can do that at at the my county website chairwheeler.com um and the first thing that pops up is subscribe and uh and i wanted this is in the brentsville area but i wanted to note burnside farm being noticed as one of the the top one like top tulip destination or or in the united states it was absolutely fantastic um i don't know if anybody's been out there i know that tickets are already on sale um for that it's out in the noakesville [03:15:07] area on kettle kettle run um and it really is just a wonderful agritourism event um and they're able to and no one wants to hear me say but but it really is it's a wonderful um you know they they leased that land and uh they they finally found a home there and it's a wonderful thing every year when they plant millions of bulbs so i encourage everybody to look into that so um with that uh we will now convene for closed session it's five of five and when we finish closed session we will [03:15:41] report out and then we will adjourn because we do not have an evening session thank you we are back [03:16:26] from closed session ms madden do you think we're we're okay we are live very good we are back if i get a motion to certify closed session? So moved, Madam Chair. Second. Motion made by Vice Chair Bodie, seconded by Supervisor Bailey. [03:16:41] Any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. That's good. We have three items to report out. We'll begin with Supervisor Vega. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we terminate purchase and sell agreement for 25 acres at 8129 Prince William Parkway in the Coles Magisterial District. Second. [03:17:00] Motion made by Supervisor Vega, seconded by Vice Chair Bodie. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Bailey. Yes, Madam Chair, I move authorization for the First Amendment to deed of lease agreement with 14041 Worth Avenue Holdings, LLC, for 14041 Worth Avenue, Woodbridge, Virginia, 22192. [03:17:26] Second. Motion made by Supervisor Bailey, seconded by Vice Chair. Any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Vote unanimous. Move to adjourn, please. No. Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that we remove Supervisor Yesley Vega of the PRTC Commission as a regular voting member and replace her with Supervisor Bob Ware. [03:17:50] Also, moving Supervisor Yesley Vega to the alternate at-large member position and effective date of April 2023. Also, with the VRE, I move that we appoint Supervisor Kenny Bodie as the alternate member with the same effective date of April 2023. Second. [03:18:17] Made by Supervisor Angry. Seconded by Vice Chair Bodie. Okay. Any further discussion? Please vote. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Weir abstaining from vote. Move to adjournment. [03:18:35] Second. Motion made by Supervisor Weir abstained by Vice Chair Bodie. Any discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Oh, you've got to give me just a minute. I'm not that fast. Sorry. There we go. Quicker reflexes. vote unanimous we are adjourned before 6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com