Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Retreat — part 2 (Audio Only), Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 5h 32m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3429
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 2026-11-02. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] We are going to resume our session from yesterday. Thank you, everyone, for being on time. - Thank you, Margaret. - Margaret, yesterday, me.

[00:00:16] - Not calling anyone out, but I guess you related. What is the first, it kind of quietly came in, you know? Oh, no. I guess the first, what is the first order of business, I guess, is resuming. I know Yezley did her interview with me. Is that how people want to begin today? Yeah, let's go ahead and do that icebreaker so you can just bake a bristle.

[00:00:38] I'm going to sit by Mr. Sunshine this morning. All right, Yazley, are you ready? Sure. I'll make bacon. It's too early for this. All right, let me do the same treatment.

[00:00:55] Give you the same treatment that I gave you. Cuddly bear, mushy bear here. Mushy bear. We're going to call him mushy bear. Yes. So this is DaShondra Lynette Jefferson. She's been living in Prince William County for nine years and a total of 13 years in the state of Virginia. She is also from Texas. I did not know that. Dallas, the Fort Worth area to be exact. And a fun fact about Chair Jefferson is that when she was a little girl, she wanted to be a Cowboys cheerleader.

[00:01:30] Describe two items that she would grab out of her house if they were on fire and everybody, including relatives and pets, were safe. She said important documents and her Mac computer, her laptop. Mistake that you've made and learned from, not taking people's support for granted.

[00:01:47] Describe the funniest thing that has happened to you while campaigning. Apparently there was something in the Potomac District and the Potomac Shore area with the men. Just get it out. Just call it. So I guess they were trying to get out of chair Justin.

[00:02:05] You can't just go Justin and Potomac Shores. Did you get some numbers? I hope so. Supervisor Franklin, I don't know if you got some numbers. How many can you get? I, I, I. I'm a black phone book. I'll call you, I'll call you.

[00:02:22] A hobby or passion that occupies her time when she's outside of work. She likes to work out, in particular doing yoga. and something she wished more people knew about her is that she's quite funny humor so we actually share that in common chair jefferson because that's what supervisor president said about me ladies and gentlemen chair jefferson

[00:02:43] yes y'all can take over all right um we just wanted to show you and one of us came in this I was tired.

[00:03:03] You guys put me out. Well, yes, when we look at what you all were able to do yesterday, Charles and I were very impressed. So let's go through this. First, we reviewed the roles and responsibilities and talked about it. We looked at leadership styles, specifically the important styles of representation and facemanship.

[00:03:25] We analyzed the effective challenges of governing as a team versus being created by a master community. And we reviewed two social skills, active listening and recovery. We reviewed the important and mysterious role of norms of behavior, and then we identified your desired norms among yourselves as colleagues. We reviewed your current code of conduct, you call Alternatives from 1996. And then we identified concepts and language to evolve the current code. We

[00:04:03] review your board rules, and we consider board information flow on how your board's agenda is built, and we just had our icebreaker, and today we're going to continue our information you use for policymaking. We're going to discuss the planning process, best practices, we're going to work on your vision for the town, and then we're going to identify priorities that you see ahead so that later this year you can actually write a specific strategic plan

[00:04:42] for those of you new to the board it will probably encompass your term

[00:05:08] all right so we wanted to uh start by just having a little bit of overview about boards committees and commissions we're going to look at a couple of different issues First, the internal possibilities that I know some of you discussed with the county executive and the county executive discussed the opportunity for board committees.

[00:05:38] Just sharing some things from the other localities and what we see, and this is for the county citizen towns across the commonwealth. Very, very common that there is a committee structure, because not all localities do committees for governing bodies sometimes. They just need the committee as a whole for work sessions or whatever it is, so they can do some more detailed nuances, whether it be budget.

[00:05:59] Capital improvements and other signature items through the year. But the finance is typically a committee that a lot of boards and councils have, and also maybe capital projects or some sort of construction type of related community is not unusual as well to sort of have a lot of debt things before it gets to the entire governing body.

[00:06:17] Obviously there's an audit committee here, and a lot of communities have that as well. It usually involves staff, officials, and sometimes even citizen members of the non-committees you'll have for community members, part of that transparency process. Some other examples we see from communities across the Commonwealth include these types of committees as well, so community development, some legislative, county liaisons, obviously, you guys have some towns here in the county, and some places have rules committees as well, but we sussed out a lot of rules and procedures yesterday, so you guys are in pretty good shape there.

[00:06:52] The purpose of those committees is typically to make recommendations to the entire governing body or maybe come back with a report on a specific project, working along with staff and others. As the county executive mentioned yesterday, if the board does decide eventually that this is a route I'd like to take, there is some capacity and other resources that have to be addressed at the staff level to make sure that those committees are resourced with staff appropriately.

[00:07:17] And then there's also the issue about roles and responsibilities of staff versus board in that committee and the committee's role. Jamie, can you go to the next? We also look at the foreign community's commission based on what you all have for appointees.

[00:07:36] Obviously, an accounting attorney is going to talk about this a little bit yesterday. She can wax co-edit on this in much more detail and accurately than I can. There's parts of the code that we can specifically talk about, for example, planning issues. We talk about malfeasance and other things. There's very limited reasons for you to remove somebody from the board.

[00:07:52] So it's codified there. Same for the economic development authorities. boards of zoning appeals the state goes very clear on what the authority is for those types of entities and what they can do it's a little bit less murky quite frankly and a lot of other more customized committees that you know communities have for the board it's usually addressed in policy much like what you all have we went through yesterday we've done a few localities that have a code of conduct for our appointees on some of these boards so it's obviously they do work at your pleasure as the county attorney mentioned yesterday but it's not a bad idea that's the guidelines for us folks so you do avoid them and they start to roll with us

[00:08:31] and expectations beyond just showing up uh what they're supposed to be doing and reporting back to you i think that's for a lot of things we're getting off translation sometimes in communities and other communities uh is making sure that everyone understands why we're there we don't teach this stuff in schools right people don't know what more supervisors are what city councils are you know this is not a k-12 exercise this is not covered in the great civic so we've got to take the onus to make sure that people that are interested in serving our communities know what their vision is for what they're supposed to be doing um one of the other part that we learned about the locality and just our early experience besides that is the onboarding

[00:09:08] and orientation process a lot of communities there's a there's a conversation maybe between the elected officials that might be involved in a you know select that person or a governing body But I think there's something like this, it would be nice to have an on-the-brew process, communication process, something.

[00:09:25] Obviously, some of these type of committees, it's never required, but it obviously helps if they take advantage of professional certifications. Particularly, there's some things like planning commissioners, Florida's own appeals. There are programs that these people can go through to get certified so they can make the best decisions possible to make recommendations for you all on these important issues.

[00:09:44] So we highly recommend that. Communication with these appointees I think is very, very important. One of the things I think we've heard during the interview process is talking about, and James, you might be able to help them articulate this better.

[00:10:00] Planning Commission in particular and some other things. There's anything that you would add to that if you want to learn about communication between board members and appointees, all those types of things. Expectations of staff before we talk about that and then sort of those relationship the communication norms for the institutions and things.

[00:10:21] Anything you would add to that, Jane? Yes. Actually, I think drawing back your attention to what we discussed yesterday, appointments apparently are very important to you, filling those vacancies. But also, what do you do if one of your appointees is either not attending, and therefore not representing your district or the county in the way that you've asked them to, or you don't agree with now they're on a particular committee or position, you don't agree with what they're doing, what are your options as far as replacing that person?

[00:10:55] So you even discussed that yesterday. Can we give them the next? Oh, I'm sorry. So one of the things that you have, as well as some of our other counties and cities that are large, is you have some staff.

[00:11:19] And that's a great thing. There are lots of smaller counties, cities, certainly our towns, where the elected officials have no staff except perhaps the clerk or the voice directly to them, the clerk or the voice. So how can you make attractive use of your staff?

[00:11:36] You probably already are, but let's go through some best practices with our larger jurisdictions in the Commonwealth that can help you with this information flow and feeling that you are All of a sudden, you have to do an awful lot in the first quarter of time once you get the agenda for it.

[00:11:56] The first thing is, in tracking your projects, I think it's probably fair to say that your county executive gives you reports about things that are down the line. So making sure that your staff is paying attention to that so they can track the major projects for you.

[00:12:13] Sometimes they happen when they're supposed to. Like, for instance, if I were your county executive and I came to you in January and said we have a big contract for the landfill coming up, and so we're going to want to take some action in the fall. But then you have a lot of landowners petitions that take all that oxygen out of your wartime.

[00:12:33] That might get moved, but your staff will be on top of that for you to figure out when you're going to need to be more expert in terms of your landfill needs.

[00:12:45] Checking in with your counterparts, we heard that it has been a quick practice in the past, and it has been abandoned, perhaps COVID-19 or not, that the chiefs of staff, the week prior to the board meeting, so if the agenda comes out on whatever day it's going to come out on Tuesday or Thursday, they would get together, even in the past on Friday, and talk about, so that there are no surprises, remember those norms where everyone's coming from and if they need more information or you

[00:13:21] need more information so they can come back and greet you so if you want to you could talk about either informal checking in or asking your key counterpart to leave with the rest of uh key counterparts so you can communicate that communication protocols we did hear that sometimes people are confused as to whether your staff is speaking to you or whether they're speaking for themselves in your best interest. So can they actually go to the staff for you and making sure that those protocols are clear among all of your staff so that when you're

[00:14:01] working with capital professional staff, nobody's tripping over each other. Onboarding is a very key thing that came up in interviews, onboarding your staff so you know that they know what's going on. Is there a program for that? Is there some protocols for that? Is that something you'd like to design? Comfort resolution skills, they're your front line dealing with constituents.

[00:14:24] And also, if they're seeing all those emails, if some of them are very concerning, you know, their emotional health, so how can they learn to deal with that better? Consituent service customer service. Some come to it naturally.

[00:14:40] Some have had experience in it and other jobs have had in it. So some need to know some of the best practices as far as how you answer those emails. How do you deal directly with constituents so that they're in your best case folder. And probably the most important thing as far as saving you and not knowing what's going on too close to the board meeting is tracking your planning commission for You may all be doing that, asking your staff to do that, but if you read those minutes, if you look at their screen, you will know an awful lot about projects that are coming to you.

[00:15:19] And so you may already be doing all of this, or you may want to think about and incorporate it. Anybody else want to talk about their staff and ideas for best practices in terms of going to be the most prepared, but like the efficient you can be?

[00:15:35] I just want to say I have a new chief of staff, Virginia Douglas, who joined my office last week Monday. She's going to resume the chief of staff meeting. I know, yes, yes, you're the little one who met. I know, you know her. You might know her.

[00:15:51] But she's going to start resuming the, you know, I don't know if it's going to be monthly. It might actually be weekly or every other week. It's going to be monthly. Did you warn her about my chief of staff? No. Let's see. I'll have her come down. from your office. I will say, I don't want to be long with it, but you know, I think everybody knows my Chief of Staff, Kelly Easley. The dynamic there of Kelly Easley is that I call her Institutional Knowledge. So she came from John Jenkins, she was his Chief of Staff,

[00:16:27] and she remained on when I got in office. The key to that is the historical knowledge is all the things that happened yesterday that when you come in new you don't know and it's not that staff may not want to tell you these things but oftentimes staff is moving forward and not thinking backwards so if you don't know this stuff and you can't challenge these things then you know we find ourselves in a harder challenge of trying to move forward but I see that to say like for all of our offices it's not about like who has the best chief of staff or best office it's the best practices that every office can really lean into,

[00:17:05] which is why I absolutely love the chief of staff meeting because to me, since we all can't get together, they all can, and they can really be the other side of our brain, which is why I often refer to Kelly as. And trust me, I know her family very well.

[00:17:21] You know, Doug, her husband, her three kids, her two grandbabies, you know, Wednesday dinner, and kind dinner at the house. So we're all very, you know, tuned in to everyone in my office. But I always say that she manages that office and I manage the board and the desk and the county because it's a big county.

[00:17:40] And although I don't know everything about everyone's district, I need to know what's going on in these districts because when that vote comes, that's what we're voting on, which is Prince William County. And oftentimes this is why I have some difficulty and challenges when folks say you should just listen to the district supervisor because I think we all should pay attention to what's going on in the county so that we're actually doing the best thing for the county.

[00:18:03] Makes sense. Good to know that he may be setting that back up in practice. You know, to what Victor is saying, Kelly is very seasoned, very seasoned. And I agree with him that institutional knowledge is very important, just for another reason, the administrative piece.

[00:18:24] That's very important. Just how do you get things done quickly? Who do you go to so you're not making a lot of calls, you know? And I think we need to do more of that. So I'm very happy that Virginia will be bringing back the chiefs' calls, you know.

[00:18:44] And because I think that's really important. I have a new chief now. And, you know, the elephant in the room is I've had a lot of turnover in my chief's department. And I'm, you know, but I've worked with the chiefs that have left. I've worked with projects in the community with them. So it wasn't adversarial, but it's that the job is hard.

[00:19:04] It's hard. And when you, it depends on the chief that you hire, like, you may not want to have a very seasoned person or a person that's not seasoned because there's a lot of moving parts, you know, and everybody can't handle that, you know, particularly in a county that is growing and moving forward.

[00:19:26] And so that, so the right fit within the group is very important. And then having a process also of onboarding is real important Because what I've found that when we first were elected in the offices, there were not a lot of processes set up for functionality.

[00:19:47] So that, you know, that was very important to me. And also, when we talk about county staff, how we do things and how we serve the community. To add to that, because I agree with everything that's been said so far, is, you know, as a practical matter, I have a nine-to-five job.

[00:20:06] And to be able to have professional staff and, frankly, achieve a staff that can be that day-to-day manager for my office, frankly, takes a load off that I don't know how I could manage being elected official and having a 9-to-5 job without staff, frankly. So just as a fact of a matter, it's the only way that folks that work can be able to do both because there's just no way otherwise.

[00:20:30] But the other part of that is what I found is a lot of this job, like with private sector, other jobs, is relationship-based. You have relationships with county staff, you have relationships with business owners, you have relationships with constituent groups, relationships with developers and other folks that work with the county or clients of the county.

[00:20:52] And having a chief of staff and a board staff who understands and is able to help be those relationship managers to those different groups when you can't, or for whatever reason, you probably shouldn't be the one that's taking that meeting directly, I think is very valuable too.

[00:21:08] Because what I've found is, you know, we talked a lot about yesterday how, you know, there are situations where in the past board members or whoever it is might try to do gotchas and surprises. More frankly, I've seen community groups and developers try to do that too, where they'll talk about having a meeting with a supervisor under one auspice, and then suddenly during the meeting, they'll surprise you with something else.

[00:21:35] And so, one, having a staff that understands that so they can try to vet that kind of information out of them beforehand, but two, if there's a pattern of that happening, their staff can say, "Hey, no, you're not going to be with the supervisor, but you're going to be with my peer chief of staff, and the rest of the staff, to make sure that everyone's playing above the board.

[00:21:53] Thanks. Thanks a lot. All right. Well, did you want to say one more thing, Andrew, before we move on? Yeah. I just wanted to say also, for the staff, that helps us also, because in our group, you know, in Princeville County, you know, the supervisors, we know a lot of people across the county, you know, and have had relationships before we became elected.

[00:22:18] So respecting boundaries in that regard when it comes to the staff, letting them manage that we have those relationships, letting them manage and we not be the oversight or try to manage. That's very key, and respecting those boundaries also with offices.

[00:22:34] And communicating with them. Thank you.

[00:22:55] So what we'll do quickly, we'll have Michelle come up and talk about the, so back to boards, committees, and commissions.

[00:23:16] Sort of give you a rundown of the Audit Committee and what that looks like and how that works and then we can facilitate a discussion with you guys about sports, committees, and commissioners in general just to see what your head is on this phone for actual committees that serve, that are made up for you all, that serve the board, and make recommendations board, and then also appointed committees, commissioners, saying anything we'll talk about there. So, Michelle, thank you.

[00:23:37] If I can, as Michelle comes up, So two things we wanted to do in terms of curating this conversation before you all share your thoughts, ideas about potential committees for the board. Let's first do this of what our presenters have done, and that is to sort of talk about what we've seen in other places.

[00:24:00] We wanted to give you an example of what we already do. We already have a committee, an audit committee that works really well. Michelle does a lot by way of staffing that committee, so I wanted to have her do that presentation. After that, would love to get your thoughts, ideas, and if there's a way forward around a committee structure, I wanted to kind of talk through that now.

[00:24:25] All right, so Michelle, turn it over to you. No, it's a whole lot of your time, but I did want to talk about the audit committee briefing. I think it's one of your -- the two audit committees, the Joint Audit Committee and the Board Audit Committee. We always have a forum to get a lot done, and I think it serves the county well and hopefully it serves you well.

[00:24:42] The second reason is the Audit Committee is really up there in terms of an important one of those things that is a best practice. There's a guide called "Elected Officials Guide to Audit Committees" that GFOA puts out, and I just want to read a couple sentences that they say.

[00:25:00] Reliable financial reporting is essential if state and local governments are to be fully accountable to the citizens to the citizens they serve. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the first recommended practice issued by the GFOA more than two decades ago focused on the need for public sector entities to conform to the highest standards of accounting, auditing, and financial reporting.

[00:25:20] While management is primarily responsible for financial reporting, it is the governing body that ultimately must ensure that management fulfills that responsibility. The audit committee is important because it provides a practical way to do a governing body to do so. So, in our pocket, I put together just a little bit of background information on the student committees.

[00:25:40] The first is the Joint Body Committee. It is a joint with the county board of schools because they are proposing this county roll-up into our financial statements. It is made up of four members, three regular members of the board of night supervisors and one alternate, and then two regular members from the school board and one alternate.

[00:25:58] The county board members served for the fatiguous term of your term on board type supervisors, and the school boards they appoint every year, so there's a lot of your terms. On the second page, Joint Office Planning has a stage of purpose. It was adopted by the board in 2020, originally adopted back in 2007.

[00:26:19] It didn't really define some of the purpose of that initial page, just to be booked opinions 2 and 3, and even going over page 4, We'll see there's about 16 enumerated duties, so very clearly defined roles.

[00:26:38] Think about boards and things and commissions. Think about a statement of purpose, like what is it that they do and how is it that they serve. As you know, when we have board-out-of-committee meetings or joint-out-of-committee meetings as well, we then end up coming to full boards with a summary and closed session. So there is a report that we're getting that feedback on those boards and committees and commissions on this case.

[00:26:57] The second one in here is the board-out-of-committee. And that was made up of four regular members with all of the survey as alternates that we do quarterly. It oversees the internal audit function. So while it doesn't have a defined statement of purpose, what I have included is the internal audit chart.

[00:27:15] So that is the function that it oversees. And, you know, we've outsourced to RSM. They have been a great business partner with the county. I think I've seen, you know, over the years the evolution of that function. What I will say is, it's really great to have an audit function where your departments are asking to be audited.

[00:27:34] They know where the risks are, and they're asking for that help to come in and look at this and tell me how I can do my controls. That's a sign that they love functioning, really, activity. So I commend you for keeping that intact. I think it serves as well. With that, I will take any questions.

[00:27:51] I did want to point up one point, I think you mentioned about, you know, on committees, how do you perhaps get rid of a member? I do want to anchor back to, I'll send you all the two audits that were done on boards of committees and committees. You can anchor those. One of the best practices that our auditors defined was there should be rotation.

[00:28:11] So sometimes if you have a long-term standing member, and it may be time to replace a member, actually, with the new set of eyes on the committee. So that's something you can anchor to as a reason. Questions?

[00:28:28] No questions, just comments. One comment. I learned so much from being on this committee. Because one of the things that, as an elected, that I get concerned about a lot is, am I following the rules?

[00:28:44] And how do we serve at a higher level from a constituent standpoint and give a better service? So that's what I learned from the audit committee and even from the joint audit committees, that there is a system in place and how it operates to make sure that we're given a higher level of service to our county.

[00:29:05] So that was important to me. One of the things that RSL that I appreciate when they interview the board and executive management department heads in developing their audit clean is they ask, what keeps you up in there?

[00:29:21] Right, because those things that you're thinking about at night that worry you, those are the things where you probably have risks. And so we do try to focus in on that, and it's nice that departments open up about this. You know, oftentimes we might be able to write that report, right? We know where that risk is, but having that input that says, well, I'm really coming in and saying what your issues are, and here's perhaps what it stems from.

[00:29:42] on how to solutions for us, you know, recommendation is quite helpful. Yeah, and it's been a model function in Louisville, Virginia. I've been in contact with, I've given many of, you know, references or information on our internal life function and how it functions.

[00:30:01] Because we did move, for those of you who maybe haven't been around in a long time, at one point it was an internal internal life. And while that was great, we all had expertise in civil rights, right? three or four or five staff and what we found was they were already paid cash yeah there's a risk but it's like 35,000 dollars um some purchasers right um procurement rights and that's a lot else um and so what we've been able to do out with the outsource model is bring in those experts to do penetration testing network testing to um just benchmarking right on how would they see across the nation with other localities so we've been able to much more leverage i think

[00:30:37] I wonder if you could talk a little bit just about the relationship between the committee and the full board just so we could get a sense as we enter this conversation about committee structure and your relationship to the board.

[00:30:55] So the committee, the board audit committee reports to you. RSM reports to you. I am a liaison. I help just make sure that they are getting contacts with the departments, getting things set up. I usually help facilitate the RFP process, which will be our agenda for this year.

[00:31:12] So we will have an RFP process, but we will bring recommendations to you. It will be ultimately your decision to put who you hire. We'll have the choice as to whether you take candidates at the end or whether you'd like us to just bring forward a recommendation. We will put out an RFP, again, these are utilizing best practices, but that they report to you.

[00:31:31] and so they often will go into closed session, there's an opportunity for you to ask them to leave the room if you want to during closed session. They work for you, they do not work for me, and that's the same with the Joint Audit Committee. They're responsible for hiring our external auditors that audit the financial statements.

[00:31:49] They do work, report to the Joint Audit Committee. Again, we facilitate the hiring, coordination of the audit, and those things, but they have a duty to report out to you and to the full report And just to add to that, what I've found very helpful is, and it goes back to a conversation we had yesterday about how sometimes during our normal board meetings, we have these very, very long presentations where we have to get into the nitty gritty.

[00:32:17] Yeah, some of that is for the public's benefit, but frankly, I've always viewed our board meetings as the sort of high-level, executive-level presentations, while, for example, the audit committee we go into really deep detail and deep dives and we have really substantial conversations that frankly there would be benefit there to the full board in some cases but other cases it's it's less hey you know this transparency it's more hey we're getting to the nitty-gritty about this thing that we can then just report out to the full board as part of just the

[00:32:52] recommendations from the joint committee if i may just expand a little bit with regards to closed session for the two. The Joint Audit Committee, 99% of the time, everything is done without a closed session. It comes to the Joint Audit Committee first. All board members are on it, either a regular or alternate, so all the information is shared. And then questions, full discussion occur at the Joint Audit Committee, and then the external auditors come to a board meeting and present, and then that's when additional questions. With the Board Audit Committee, It started many years ago, as Ms. Atreid was saying, we had an internal department.

[00:33:32] They didn't have the expertise. So the board created one, and it was three members. Some board members were like, wait a minute, these board members are getting more information than us. So it was morphed to be three regular members, but all five are alternates. So everybody is getting the same information.

[00:33:49] We do go into closed session on the draft internal audits. And then there is the discussion, oftentimes, as Supervisor Bode said, more in-depth, thorough discussion at the board audit committee in closed session on the draft audits. And that's really for the board audit committee to determine whether staff needs to do more work, does the internal auditor need to do more work before it's then passed forward to the full board.

[00:34:16] Because the board audit committee doesn't have the authority to take the final action on it. So it's more of an efficiency. The full board, as a regular or alternate, gets the information in time so they can review it for the board audit committee.

[00:34:32] If they want to show up and just observe, unless they're an active alternate, they would be sitting in the back. It was expanded to four members, four regular members and four alternates. And then what happens is there's the closed session.

[00:34:50] Once the Board Audit Committee passes forward the draft audit to the full board, then the Board of County Supervisors reviews it. It's often a less lengthy conversation in closed session. And then the board does adopt a resolution and finalizes and makes public that internal audit, if it can be made public.

[00:35:11] Oftentimes, the IT, the security ones, it's still confidential under the freedom of information. But it's just an efficiency process. This is a very important point because as we contemplate committees, we are not in any case sort of delegating to that committee the board's authority.

[00:35:34] The committee is really there to dissect, to analyze, and to go deep with staff and on a specific issue. All decisions and authorities still rest with the county board.

[00:35:51] So I want to make sure we made that very clear. And even in the case of the audit committee, it is still coming back to the board. So, Chris, is that word staff? I'm going to kind of start there with the committee. One thing, many things the audit committee does well, which is audits.

[00:36:10] All of the many departments that we have in the county, we have a lot going on in the county, a very big county, a lot of our programs. One thing that we had identified, which is our office staff, the other seven facilities around the county, now they had done an internal records check on each supervisor's office.

[00:36:27] One of the things, and I know this is one of those things where we're elected and we bring in our own staff, but I think that needs to be rolled under some of these audits and how we're looking at things. Things in our office to make sure we're above board and a lot of things going on that we're checking in the same different levels of accounting, you know, finance, facilities, maintenance, public service. I know we had discussed that one with Dan Alexander about ADDs and those

[00:37:00] medical packets in the facilities and, you know, I asked the question, well, are they checking, you know, our offices? the other seven facilities that we have, that kind of wasn't a piece. And so I know we worked on that and they're looking, but I don't know if that's this discussion that we should be discussing.

[00:37:17] Do we roll that under, you know, our offices under audits to be looked at like this, or are we doing that? Is that something that has been discussed? So we have the one audit underway on the reference retention piece. I think that's really for the next meeting to have the results of that audit.

[00:37:34] But certainly for the audit plan, there's two usually not internal orders. Leave two spaces for new audits identified during the year. And if you want a certain board audit committee to take up, if they're interested in having a more depth audit of other areas, you know, if you're waiting for the rest of other audits across the county.

[00:37:53] Right, and of course, I just bring that up because to me, I'm about, again, efficiencies and making sure that we're all doing the same thing. However, if supervisors don't want that, then, you know, speak now, because I'm simply saying that I think as we have an audit function, the entire, you know, when we talk about staff, I know we kind of split that into two.

[00:38:14] We say county staff and then our office staff, but honestly, it's really one staff, right? At least as we're trying to get everybody under an umbrella of doing the right things and processes and making sure that we're checking these boxes and everybody's on the same playing field, so.

[00:38:31] Yeah, definitely appreciate it. We are taking note. We'll certainly go back to RSM and talk through how it's included. Yeah, and I only say that because I'm only one person saying that. I don't know if they even want you to do that, but I just bring that up as what I see as something that I believe we could do better.

[00:38:50] So it's not me driving that I want you to do this. I think that's something for the board, but I don't want to throw it out there and you start looking and digging. And people are kind of secretly saying, I really don't want that. But, you know, so maybe that's something we will talk about separately.

[00:39:05] I'll sort of take it back to the rest of it. The records retention item came from a similar discussion, and ultimately we brought it forward and the board supported it collectively. So I will do the same thing. And we learned a lot from the records retention that we were not doing correctly.

[00:39:24] So that was a really good audit for my office. And if I may add, the internal audit calendar, that's all policy discussion. That's done in open session. So I just wanted to go back to what Chris said about the committee's piece because in our last meeting, maybe the meeting before, we had a discussion about, I made a directive about creating a committee for the mental health and CSB for the mental health, for the CRC, pardon me.

[00:39:59] And we had a little discussion about that, and some of the questions that Supervisor Vega mentioned was on point. You know, is this a commission or is this a committee? You know, and that was very appropriate and very necessary to answer.

[00:40:17] So your description of that really is very important because that is an authority of the board, you know, to do that. But I think sometimes there are needs when we create committees, and I'm just using the CRC as an example, where we do need subject matter experts and that kind of input, but us having the authority to put the stamp of approval on it is still our responsibility.

[00:40:46] So I think your description of that was very important for us to hear. And to thank you for that, Supervisor, I'll say ultimately here, any committee that comes out of this conversation will be a committee made up of you.

[00:41:02] So unlike a task force that I might appoint staff for some specific issue, this would be a board committee made up of board members that is specifically themed around a specific set of issues that will ultimately report to the board any work that is being done.

[00:41:26] So ultimately, I think we had a list of, if we're talking transportation and infrastructure, if we're talking health and well-being, appointments, budget, those are the kinds of committees that would ultimately, the work of those committees would come up to the board.

[00:41:46] I just wanted to make sure we were clear about that. Let's have a conversation about that, Joey. Any other questions for Michelle? I don't have a question, but I wanted to just add that with our current audit experts, they do call us and ask for our input when they're creating the task list and all that.

[00:42:11] And I thought that was impressive because most audit committees don't necessarily do that. Sometimes they assume, based upon the research that they've done in the organization, but our input is very important, so that collaboration is going on, and it shows when we are going to the committee meetings as well. It comes out in the committee meetings.

[00:42:32] Yeah, and I'll say they oftentimes, you know, there's areas that are always going to be kind of cyclical, right? Current, past selection, right? There's things they want to regularly audit because they're at high susceptibility. You have to walk away. Those are things where they always want to audit, but they always leave room not only for those audits, but they also have programmatic audits, and then they always leave room for political audits, right?

[00:42:56] There's some things that may not be real material to the organization, but they have political risks for you. And so they need room for those type of things as well. And that's why they talk to you. There may be areas that just, you know, political reasons you're interested in. It may not rise to the top on a risk level, but it has kind of interest.

[00:43:16] Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. All right. So I'd like for us to start with a conversation about what the county executive just mentioned. So in our preparation for this, some of the conversations we've heard in interviews from both elected officials and staff is the things that you might have interest to look into further.

[00:43:34] So staff after the day can go back and sort of look at some other best practices, but also some other localities, what they're doing. And, you know, I mentioned some of these examples this morning about localities and what they do. Very wide spectrum. So there's no right or wrong answers. It's what's best for this board.

[00:43:51] What helps you, we talked, we spent a lot of time yesterday about the efficiency and economies of going through your agenda is making sure that you have very business-like meetings and you're getting everything done. And you don't want to deal with it. So the committee structures are utilized by the localities, by the government bodies to sort of help mitigate that work like you guys do with the audit, whether it be finance, going through the budget every year, all those types of things, and vetting things, vetting grants and things that are going to come to the board at a later date, whether they're part of the consent agenda or if it's part of an action item.

[00:44:21] There's opportunities to have those types of discussions. so i'll open up the board for thoughts from you all and then we'll then we'll have a conversation about appointing things before we move on to some visioning uh discussion later this morning all right i just um have some questions more so um we talked about setting up committees um i think when i first got on the board and we just never did it because i think pandemic social unrest everything but i guess i'm curious as to what type of committees will be created and what will we do

[00:44:59] in these committees versus what we do on the dais i'm assuming and i'm just making an assumption so i would like clarity like for when we get the mobility um presentation is the purpose of the committee to review things like that ahead of time so that we don't have to go through the presentation on the board or is the committee supposed to make recommendations to the full board i guess that's what i'm seeking clarity on well let me say uh so part of what we're

[00:45:31] listening for certainly what i'm listening for is kind of what your desire is we will go back based on the notes taken and what i hear and we'll actually come back with a recommendation on what, in terms of scope, what the committees could do for the board.

[00:45:51] And that would be the intent that the committees are helping the board in the administration of your duties. So in Supervisor Vega's comment yesterday about the quarterly update that we get from transportation, yes, a Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, While they would certainly help with some of the capital project oversight, agencies need a place to get the board's awareness on a lot of the work that's being done.

[00:46:23] So, yes, I would probably recommend that we use that committee to do some of that work. It would replace the need for transportation to come to a full board meeting with an 80-slide presentation. Yeah, you go, because I know you got it.

[00:46:41] That's efficiency right there, is that key we're talking, because it pulls it away from us at the board, and when it comes in, we no longer have to go through that piece, and it's not like it's been missed, because there's been. In my mind, we're going to be talking about our strategic vision, and I think out of that, a lot of answers will come, like, how are we going to implement this vision?

[00:47:04] Because as I was reading through the previous strategic visions, And then I was looking at, well, we didn't do this, we haven't talked about that. So just even looking through that, it's just like, you know, was this a document we created and just put on a shelf when it was done?

[00:47:21] Or did this truly act as a guiding document for us as accountants? And I think as we work through that strategic plan, that strategic vision, from that we can look at how are we going to ensure implementation of this? You know, if everything we're dealing with on the dais at a board meeting is very, you know, this is what has to be done right now, it sort of becomes very tactically focused, right?

[00:47:51] So looking at it from what the committees could do was kind of help keep the strategic in focus in working out what are the, because as, you know, as we come up with this strategic plan, one would think that that's probably going to have to result in some realignment of staff.

[00:48:08] It's going to have to create some realignment of priorities. So how are we going to shift our governance and our county staff to be able to help us affect that and achieve those goals, right?

[00:48:28] So in my mind, we may be putting the cart a little bit before the horse until we actually get to that strategic plan. And then from there, we can say, what are the things, what committees can help us implement this?

[00:48:44] And so that kind of keeps us on task, moving forward, rowing together. That's at least what's rolling around in this frame. Kenny. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Tom, I really appreciate you saying that because I actually viewed it in a very similar way.

[00:49:00] That I've always felt, unfortunately, that a lot of our board meetings, whether they be land use nights or even just our afternoon meetings, are a lot of reactionary, like, hey, these are drop deadline things that we need to do, whether they're, you know, applications for grants by transportation or applying for certain things or with the land use cases, just how the docket is going through the planning department and the planning commission.

[00:49:24] And so I just feel like unless we are constantly putting directives on the table and doing things that have scheduled things out, a lot of it's just as it's coming through and as that fire hose is coming at us. So to that point, I've always viewed an idea of having the committees be that proactive step where the committees get to set their agenda on what they're going through.

[00:49:46] Just like we do as a board audit committee where every year we have an audit calendar that we review with the auditors and we're saying that on a more proactive basis. You make a good point with the strategic plan, and I actually viewed it from the other direction in that the current realignment of the county government that we have was a reflection of the strategic plan that we all adopted last time.

[00:50:08] So at least as an interim step before we do that, we can have committees set up along the ways of the current strategic plan's quadrant. Safety and Security Committee that can have all the areas of government that fall into safe and secure communities. Land, Use, Mobility, Economic Growth and Resiliency Committee can be the current mobility, economic growth and resiliency quadrant. Operations, performance and innovation, same thing. Human resources, environmental stability, same thing. So to your point I think that there could be a lot of alignment between how the committees function and the strategic

[00:50:45] plan and considering that our current quadrants of government are informed by the existing strategic plan, that's a great way to sort of begin that transition of what you're saying. I agree. That's one of the things that we've heard in some of our conversations. I think there was, there was some, and this is both elected officials and staff, you know, trying to sort of suss out what that might look like in the committee structure.

[00:51:06] Is it quadrants, because you guys have set that up already in the green folks, and then the other portion is, or is it something very specific, so just to sort of use the context. In one of the previous localities I managed, we had a government block that had two standing Each committee had two elected officials on it from the governing body, and then the staff supported them as they went through a monthly agenda.

[00:51:27] The finance committee that they set up, it was basically an opportunity to go through quarterly revenue projections and make sure, hey, we're on track. There's a very high level, you know, to say here's where things are going, making sure things are good. Also, anytime we were ramping up for anything with bond obligations, there's debt service.

[00:51:45] We can have some time to focus on that at the committee level and get down to your point, get in some details about that and sort of go through the other, you know, again, I think I'm just going to be a brand, some of the things that come before the entire board. It's a great way to sort of, anyway, get down in the weeds on those issues before it comes to the entire government.

[00:52:01] The other standing committee that that particular community had was sort of a catch-all of transportation, infrastructure, and capital projects, the big picture stuff. And so while, you know, I was serving as a deputy city manager, and that city manager and I were there in a room. Quite frankly, the person who was sort of leading the meeting was the city engineer or the chair, obviously, from the governing body that served as the chair of that committee, but the city engineer would bring in projects and give them moments and everything going on so they could see everything in the community where it was, whether it was a federally funded project or a locally funded project.

[00:52:31] It was a preliminary engineering, all those types of details. You guys just don't have the time or ability to go through in a business meeting in the entire board. And so it was a great way for staff to go, okay, well, yes, As two members of the entire government body, we've had very much probably a recommendation, to your point earlier, of what is the purpose of the committee.

[00:52:47] I think the recommendations of the board, like the Planning Commission would. It was a great way to at least have a look, from staff to have some perspective, okay, we feel like we're going in the right direction. We've got a little bit of preliminary feedback from this committee. We know it's going to go to the full government body set. So I just want to walk through what that sort of looks like from other communities' perspective.

[00:53:04] Again, there's no right or wrong answer. It's what's best for this board and this community. Thank you for that description. I appreciate what you said, Tom and Kenny, because for me, it just creates order for us in terms of and it's the next level of where we want to be in our governance and our serving to the people.

[00:53:28] And it also helps our communities understand where we are, because one of the things that I remember in the first term is it was like a haberdashery. We had a method to our madness, but the community didn't understand the method to the madness.

[00:53:47] And so, Prince William County is a pristine county. And so, as we are growing with this now half a million people and more, we have to put in techniques or processes of growth to help serve at a different level.

[00:54:10] And so that, for me, it was very unsettling as a leader for that not to be handed to me from a population group, something to be handed in terms of that I can read, understand, digest, and give to my constituents.

[00:54:28] So for me, it's a level of excellence, if you will, that we are moving towards in this growth. And I think it's needed. And I think, Margaret, your question about, okay, so what does that mean? And the interactions that I've had with our colleagues in other counties, they moved to it immediately because of the growth that was happening, and it's functional for them.

[00:54:52] And I'm not trying to compare us, because we're our own entity, we're Prince William County, but I think it's another level of growth that's needed to execute better. Those are really good points, and I really appreciate you talking about other colleagues and other communities.

[00:55:07] I think while after today, staff can go back and do some homework on these types of recommendations to go with board committees. I think it's incumbent upon you all as individuals to reach out to your colleagues, your elected officials and other localities, and get their opinions on what's worked for them, committee structures, how does that help them get through business in an efficient manner.

[00:55:25] So I would really encourage the board to do that. Now, I was going to say, I'm actually meeting with Chair Randall, hopefully. Fairs cross later this week when we're down in Richmond. I, in general, because I know we briefly talked about it, Chris, you know, like a committee structure.

[00:55:42] I'd like to learn more and see what other counties are doing, and Fairfax has it. I'm not sure about Loudoun. And Loudoun is more, yeah, they're more equivalent to us in terms of population and size. I mean, Fairfax is behemoth. You know, they have over a million folks. But I would love to hear more about what is going on in Lund, what they're doing, and see what we can handle it.

[00:56:01] My thing is that let's steal good ideas from our neighbors, you know. I think you can look at the Hampton Roads as well, the city's there, I think we compare with you all, just the type of business they do population wise. So Kevin, don't forget about your friends down in Malibu, you can be some of those places as well.

[00:56:23] So we're in a safe space with us. Because I don't like that word, you know, let's take it from us, locality. Reality is we should look at some form of committee. And, Charlie, I think you hit the nail on the head, which is we don't need 10,000 of these things.

[00:56:41] There's current areas in this county, transportation being one, budget being another, where we know these committees will be effective. But I think the structure of the place, the question now becomes, how do we lay that out and where do we go next to make this happen? Seriously, like, I don't think we need to explore what Loud is doing.

[00:56:58] Yes, they have committee. You know, we need to explore what Fairfax is doing. Yes, they have committee. Maybe we can watch some of their sessions and see how they flow because I think to your point, Margaret, what does that look like? What are they discussing? How does it all play out? How does it get back to the board? What is the board doing when it comes out of committee?

[00:57:15] Pretty much voting or moving forward. So I think you can look at the structure, but the reality is I think we should be trying to discuss where are we going next? What's the next step? How do we put this in place? And what are the committees that are most important? How many does that look like?

[00:57:32] I would say two personally, but, you know, there could be something else y'all want to discuss as a committee. And then who are the eight of us, seven of us, I don't know if the chair sits on one of those, that are making up these committees? These are subject matter experts, right, who want to be in this.

[00:57:50] I mean, I already know where you're going, Tom. I already put you on the spot. I got you already, Nate. Two, Kenny. If I could bring you something, a quick reminder of something we talked about yesterday. The county executive was mentioning, you know, about quadrants and trying to, again, efficiencies, keeping the school, and so you guys have information you need.

[00:58:06] You know, doing, there could be a possibility of them switching to the board reports and bringing those things forward to the board. So, like you said, there may not be a need for all these things. You don't want that structural extent. If you guys are getting enough information from those quarterly reports from the quadrants, Then you might have to narrow down what should be the absolute focus of this board on the committee structure to help y'all do business.

[00:58:26] So what I'm hearing, and I just got this email from you. So we were fortunate last year to realign in a way that it was informed by our strategic plan.

[00:58:43] So the quadrant structure as it is could certainly be a model. it is aligned with our outcomes it will certainly help drive the things that are important for our community these committee meetings will be open to the public uh i'm not i don't want to commit that they will be televised because i just don't want to look at andrea so just want to just want to offer that when we think about outcomes the things that we want to drive if we did go with

[00:59:23] a Safe and Secure Committee, or a Land Use, Mobility, and Economic Growth and Resiliency Committee, agencies will come to that committee to report out on progress, to hear from you questions about things that we should be doing more of, and where there was action needed, we just bring that action to the board.

[00:59:45] If the board, and I just want to make sure that our peers directly wants us to come back the recommendation on a committee structure that modeled the quadrant structure I'm certainly happy to do that and into maybe you know get the board's feedback on what that looks like it it supervisor angry it gets to your point of us sort of taking the stand around what we think is our important outcomes for our community and in us making a recommendation of what that

[01:00:22] I mean, I just wanted to see how other people feel, because I'm comfortable moving forward. Any objections? Okay, we can move forward with a recommendation. You know, the only pause that I have is, and I don't think it'll be too much of one, is we do need to talk about what our strategic plan is, because that's going to also inform what we decide to do next.

[01:00:47] I'm sorry, I missed that. The strategic plan. Oh, I'm sorry. As Tom was saying, I think it's a good point. that ultimately there probably will be some realignment of it if our strategic plan is substantially different than the one that we adopted four years ago, but I think that it's still a good interim step to at least start that process. My feeling right now, and folks may disagree, is I don't think that we're going to have a strategic plan that we're adopting later this year that's going to be wildly, bombastically different, egregiously different than the one We adopted four years ago, but at that point, some flexibility in there, I think, would help.

[01:01:24] You know, one of the things that, the questions I keep asking, we talk a lot about affordable housing, right? How do we track this? If this is going to become an intentional thing, and we've been given a lot of direction from, like, COG and from organizations like Baja on how to effectively do this, And yet, how do we sort of prioritize that, incentivize that, and sort of, you know, if it's a priority, it's something that we must work towards and we must push it, right?

[01:02:02] It can't just be a passive approach to it, given the need. So when you tie that into sort of the economy piece of that, because you also, there needs to be jobs, there needs to be, so it's just, you know, I think part of the challenge is sometimes we, you know, our agencies and even our commissions can become very silent in what they're doing and there's not cross-pollination work.

[01:02:33] And so maybe these communities can help work to ensure that there is that cross-pollination so that one's not working against the other or that they're just working in isolation and so that it helps us better attain those priorities and those goals as we move forward.

[01:02:50] So that is just another thought. I do want to mention, I'm sorry, real quick because I think you mentioned yesterday. If we do have any structure, we may need additional staff, correct? Yeah, correct. And that's something I think with the recommendation option to, you know, what level of staffing will we need. And I mentioned this issue too, just to refer back to the discussion around the agenda. You know, if we were to get the packet or, you know, the agenda a few days prior, do we need additional staffing for Congress? Those are things I want to look at.

[01:03:25] You know, I guess I totally support it, but I want to hear from my other colleagues before we make a final decision because, you know, it's important that we do. This is a one-voice thing for me, and Bob, I just heard you say that's for sure.

[01:03:44] I want to know how you feel. You're one of the newer members of the team. How do you feel comfortable moving forward? It's a recommendation. Well, no, I just, I understand that, but I want, as we get a recommendation, I want to make sure that we're moving positively in the right direction.

[01:04:02] That's the only reason I want to say that, don't you? You good? Good. Okay. I will, before we move on to a conversation about appointed boards, committees, and commissions, I would ask the county attorneys to give you all some benchmarks and best practices from a legal standpoint.

[01:04:20] Thank you. Regarding board committees. So the Virginia Code says that a governing body of any locality may appoint such advisory boards, committees, and commissions as indeed is necessary to advise the governing body. So if you are creating this VCC and it is coming back and providing you recommendations and advice, it's a public body.

[01:04:41] If Mr. Shorter wants to gain information from various stakeholders out there to have them get together and provide recommendations to him, and then he provides it to you, the committee that Mr. Shorter has created is not a public body as defined by the Code of Virginia.

[01:04:59] If you have a public body of two people, the two of them cannot discuss the public business of that public body without being properly noticed three business days in advance. If it's a public body of three, two cannot discuss together.

[01:05:17] So if you have a public body of four, so if you're thinking about creating, if the board wants to create a committee to provide you advice and recommendations on moving forward, it's a public body, you may want to look at a body of four or more. Because then you still have the three or more rule with regards to discussing.

[01:05:36] That's my concern. Yes, and you know, that's my concern. we keep talking about being efficient um is this really being more efficient is it another layer that is not necessary we're talking about bringing in new people i want to know what the dollar figure is going to be attached to that um and is it redundant um i think that what michelle just stated kind of takes away from some of the interests of my colleagues that they want to be a part of it but then that also brings with it a lot of challenges that i quite frankly don't think we need and i i understand you i think at this point we're just going to get a recommendation

[01:06:16] we're not going to vote on anything we're not going to make any final it's great i'd like to have more information than not so we'll see what this looks like we'll hear from chris and his team we'll see you know if there is an additional need for you know full-time employees um so i'm comfortable if everyone else is because it's just going to be a recommendation we will have another discussion to see if this is something we want to move forward with but i would like all of that to be included in whatever is brought to us so that we're not left with more questions and then having to send you to go back and figure other other things out to bring that to us and then you need

[01:06:51] any staff implications how many ftes cost it's budget season and so if we're talking about adding positions or growing things you know i'm going to be a hawk when it comes to that have you balanced my checkbook for me yesterday. Well, Victor says, can we do it in-house? So maybe you bring in like other options if we don't want to, you know, create. Well, let me say, I mean, so in the case of a land use, mobility, economic resiliency committee, if that is the direction we go,

[01:07:26] know that we're going to have wage, transportation, planning, really staffing that committee. The challenge on the clerk's side would be posting the agenda, getting, you know, making sure that any minutes associated or actions that come from that committee are properly posted.

[01:07:45] So it's the administrative work that the agencies do already do the work of getting this, getting prepared with the courts, getting things out to the public. So I don't necessarily know on the agency side if this is going to create a capacity challenge.

[01:08:03] It'll be administrative if there's a challenge. And so that's what will be reflected in anything that I bring back to you. And as an alternate, before I go to you, Andrea, we may just have a couple of committees for things that we know there's a need for more specialty.

[01:08:22] I'm hesitant to say budget because I want everyone to be really briefed and have input on the budget. But that is also another thought. If people have specific issue areas, they feel that it might be worth having. Like transportation, for example. Transportation is a huge issue in this county.

[01:08:39] Maybe that's worth having. Maybe affordable housing or housing in general. You know, that's something I also, I don't know how people feel, you know, may want to consider. Because if we move down this route, we should know what all of our options are. I don't know. Andrea, do you have to?

[01:08:56] Yeah, I agree. I'm sure that was my reason for saying, I know it's a recommendation, But I wanted to hear voices. And Yesley's voice, I appreciate what you were saying, you know, that we do have to be focused on that because we are going into budget season.

[01:09:12] And I think that's important, you know. And I know Bob has been in government a long time, but, you know, it's a change, you know. It's a recommendation for a change, though I think it's a healthy change. I just wanted to, you know, hear voices, and I don't want us to be siloed in how we make decisions.

[01:09:31] That was my reason I didn't say that. Madam Chair, if I could, I just want to close, at least for my part of commenting, Chris, for us to really be mindful of county staff, you know, it's always the same folks, and I know that when I reach out, my office reaches out to ask for assistance with whatever it is, we're already stretching folks pretty thin in my opinion, and when we talk about incorporating additional tasks, we have to keep them in mind too, because we're always going to the same folks.

[01:10:06] I know that there is a lot of relief coming from the planning office because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that we're finally fully staffed. And so, you know, just one, just praise the Lord, that's right. Just one example, right, where we have one department that is finally getting that wiggle room to be able to breathe.

[01:10:25] And so if we're pulling department heads and tasking them with more things, is it really being productive or are we then going to have additional gaps develop because now we're asking more of them so just for you to be mindful of that and for us as a board to be mindful of of our demands to staff as well i appreciate that very much what i'll say is as always i won't bring anything forward to the board without staff sort of giving real feedback on what that looks like and i'll also do a round with people before i bring it back i know margaret

[01:11:01] had a question well sure just more so a comment i would say that even in the recommendations i think for my part um just making sure if we're talking about efficiencies um perhaps not having so many different uh committees um making sure that we can probably plug in a number of different uh topics probably into one committee um i know it was mentioned about like i think affordable housing perhaps that's like a land use committee or do we even need a land use committee i have no idea i have no idea i'm still trying to wrap my head around the ideas of committees but just making sure that it's as efficient as possible because the other thing as a reminder to all of us we do

[01:11:40] sit on other boards and commissions um and so this is going to take an additional uh meeting or meetings um per month uh and so you know let's just be reasonable about what our capacity is as as well.

[01:11:59] You all know how I feel about sitting on those comedians. You know what? I wouldn't just think without you, actually. I know you all are looking at a weeknight at 7 o'clock where you just really want something else, somewhere else. Friday night at 7 o'clock. Who doesn't love that? No. Is there any other questions or thoughts or instructions of County Executive in this conversation?

[01:12:18] I think this is, I know you have a, I also want to keep this moving along because I feel like we've made our, you know. You never get my, because you always jump. I just want to say, us being on other boards and commissions, you know, just to expand on that a little bit, I remember one of our former supervisors saying,

[01:12:55] COG can't tell us what to do and and so but being on these boards and commissions but with that there are tools as we do we look at this recommendation and look at the staff that we're utilizing that helps us to minimize but you have those tools to help us with these committees so I'm just I'm just putting it out there because you know yes it's checking the box and putting it on our resume but we're there

[01:13:35] for a reason so I'm just

[01:13:51] directives or guidance you'd like for the county executive to look into this staff or for just some things you all might discuss a board a thing and regarding your other existing appointed boards committees and commissions so structures best practices we talked a little bit yesterday about you know the right person being the right fit on the board and what your options are if that ceases to be so I just want to have a conversation about boards committees commissions people you were appointed that are not board committees you know I'm staring at Margaret. She normally has something, but Kenny will be fine.

[01:14:27] I think both Margaret and Andre have talked about it both today and yesterday that we do have the audit committee's recommendations from RSM on how we structure those recommendations.

[01:14:42] So as long as those are going to flow forward to us at some point, I think that would be helpful as well. Any other thoughts on how you all appoint folks, terms, all that sort of stuff?

[01:14:59] Come on, Margaret, let's go, let's go. Well, yeah, and I've said this, I think, both publicly and individually. I know I've had a number of conversations with some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but I do think that we should take this fresh start to really think about our appointments and to appoint people that's really interested in the work rather than the political side of things, quite frankly, and this is what I believe, a great deal of the appointments that were made last cycle

[01:15:38] were, quite frankly, political appointees. And we can go back and forth about, you know, those individuals. You know, I'm sure some of the Republicans will say that we did that. I can tell you none of my appointees are political appointees.

[01:15:53] As a matter of fact, I've got some Republicans who are appointed, and I'm sure somebody will make a fuss about that. And they're very cool. I'm sure some people will make a fuss about that. But I just want us to be very genuine in appointing people that actually want to do the work instead of using those appointments to do the dirty work that we don't want to do ourselves directly.

[01:16:15] Because I feel like that's a lot of what happened last cycle. So that's the first comment that I will make, and I think, and I've said this also, the appointments that we make, in my opinion, will say a lot about our intentions, about how we feel about working with one another.

[01:16:32] Obviously, we had a big discussion about one particular appointee. We managed to work it out, but I'm paying close attention, and I'm very serious about how I feel about that. And so I just want us to be genuine and intentional about the type of people that we put on these boards and commissions.

[01:16:51] I want to speak to that because I had a conversation with this individual, and it was not a kind conversation. I told Tom I was very direct. I was more than direct. We are going to have to give each other grace in believing that the reason why you're appointing people is you feel that they will do the work for you.

[01:17:12] We also have to give grace to people in that we're not going to agree with everything. There are serious differences, you know, policy differences, value differences between us. We've got to work through that, and we've got to recognize that, and we've got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

[01:17:32] We've got to be comfortable. There are people who are going to challenge us in ways maybe we're not comfortable being challenged. They're going to ask questions we're not comfortable being asked. And this is what I said yesterday about having some self-awareness. Knowing what your triggers are, knowing for you what might be a difficult conversation.

[01:17:52] You know, I am going to, you know, with this person, you know, who was appointed, you know, and speaking with the supervisor, The supervisor believes that this person is someone whose opinion they trust, who is someone who can give them good guidance.

[01:18:10] And again, I was less in supervisory, I was less in charity when I spoke to this person and said, listen, this is what's at stake. You know, sometimes we have to give people grace and we have to, you can watch, but.

[01:18:26] And he's appointed now. Well, he's appointed. He has a lot of grace. You can still watch, but we have to also ask ourselves how much of it is them maybe versus us. You know, and I'm not just saying for you, I'm saying for everyone. I'm saying for everyone. I don't want to beat a dead horse.

[01:18:41] The person is appointed. You know, we'll see what happens. We'll continue to monitor, you know, and the supervisor who made the appointment is very well aware that the person is being watched and that credibility is on the line. I cannot stress enough, credibility is very important.

[01:18:57] You know, if we're going to start over, if we're going to not continue, you know, the tense environment from the last administration, you know, if we're going to say we're going to give people a chance, we have to kind of give them a chance, you know. We have to give people a chance. And if we're behaving in ways and doing things that are make people question our integrity, question our values, question our motives, then you lose that trust. And so this person is very well aware of it.

[01:19:29] You know, let's see what happens. Yeah, and I'll just say to that, yeah, I'm the one that started the conversation. So I'm well aware that he's aware of it because I'm the one that started the conversation. As far as grace, yeah, he's appointed.

[01:19:47] So he has that grace. Let's be clear about that. And then also looking at them versus us, like, you know, no need to get into that. But I will also say that it's about behaviors. It's about behaviors. It's not about policy differences.

[01:20:03] I've said that, several of you, I've said that to them directly. You can go toe-to-toe in policy. We do that all the time. This is about behavior and character. So the people that we appoint will have the opportunity to display their character and will show their behavior in their actions on these boards and commissions.

[01:20:27] So this is not about feelings being hurt, being sensitive, whatever, whatever. Several of us can roll with the best of them. This is about behavior and character. Now, this individual and many more will have the opportunity to serve and certainly will have the grace.

[01:20:44] If you get appointed to this board, that's the maximum amount of grace you can get. And so I just want to be clear about that in that I'm just making a point generally about the people, the types of people that we put on these boards and commissions. They need to really reflect the work that we're trying to do.

[01:21:04] I just want to say that we have to be careful because we've made a big deal about this one person. And if we're going to talk about character, I can sit here and pull receipts out of some appointments that were made during the course of the last four years that perhaps those people should have never been appointed.

[01:21:19] But it's been the tradition of the board to honor the supervisor and who they're recommending as an appointee. I do want to say that we don't need yes men and yes women. We appoint people to these commissions and to these committees so that they can be thorough, so that they can challenge things, so that when it comes to us, we know that whatever proposal has been discussed has been fully vetted.

[01:21:39] That is the whole purpose of appointing people. So to sit here and, you know, be under this assumption that moving forward, there's not going to be some pretty animated debate. I think we would be lying to ourselves because I don't think that that's the point of our appointees.

[01:21:56] Now, I'm saying everything within reason, everything within respect. But that is a whole purpose of having people sit in these committees, commissions to do the things that, you know, perhaps we might not have enough time to do. and then they come to us and they brief us. But I don't want to rehash or relive what's happened during the course of the last four years.

[01:22:14] It's a new term. I think that people have been very passionate, whether it be land use, whether it be the budget, whether it be transportation. But I don't want us to fall in this place where what Supervisor Bailey may perceive as dangerous behavior might not be dangerous to half of the board.

[01:22:33] And what actions do we take? We have to be very careful because we don't want to set, you know, we don't want to open that door, if I will. I will bring this up because I think it's important and it falls within this conversation. And you all know this.

[01:22:50] Twice, twice in the course of the previous term, I was talked about being censured. For what? And we can go back and forth. But I bring this up, but it doesn't matter.

[01:23:06] The point is, is that when you're going to make, you know, those those threats, you better have solid ground to stand on. Don't threaten somebody that you're going to take action when you don't have solid ground to stand on. So what I don't want is because yesterday we were talking about if somebody is not behaving accordingly or if somebody is doing, you know, something that you might find offensive by my appointee or Victor's appointee, what action is this board going to take?

[01:23:30] Right. And so that's what I want to caution us as a governing body is what are and how, how do what guiding, you know, parameters do we have to say, you know what, Victor, you're appointees stepped out of line.

[01:23:46] Therefore, we're going to call, you know, this into closed session and discuss it because action needs to be taken because I because then that can turn into he did it to I did it to him. I'm going to do it to her. And it's going to cause a lot of problems within our board that we don't need.

[01:24:01] And so I do think that we need some sort of guidance as to how we move forward and how we can identify, you know, those behaviors to bring together so that we can decide on something instead of sending the board 10 steps backwards, if that makes sense. You're reading my mind.

[01:24:18] May I have one context before you go, Bob? No, go ahead. One thing that I might suggest or at least ask the board today to consider and potentially give instructions to the county executive. I mentioned yesterday in one of our slides, I know it was a long day, that some communities, some boards do have standards of conduct for their appointees on these committees.

[01:24:38] And to address your points, I think there's some value at least in researching that and maybe having the county executive and his team with advice for the county attorney come back to you all. maybe some options there as well to keep some equity in how people are treated and all those sorts of things but also again setting expectations for new people you may put on the boards but also setting expectations for people who've been on boards in the past of moving forward with this board this is our expectation of how you're going to conduct yourself into that business I'm not talking about monitoring debate or minimizing conflict we addressed we want to embrace conflict yesterday right that's we're okay with that conflict leads to solutions but

[01:25:16] We want to make sure it's done in a way that makes sense. The other thing that I would suggest, too, I know Prince William is a very populous county. We've got a lot of people here, a lot of great, talented people to serve on these committees. That being said, one issue that a lot of localities have is, I know you've talked about political parties and things forward, but trying to build that talent pool of people to serve on all of these committees, I think, is something that every community struggles with, no matter how large or small they are.

[01:25:40] And so anything you can do to, whether formally or informally as an organization, try to build that talent pool whether it be through people going through citizen's academies or you know those types of things and then working the way up and tying that in just to introduce them to local government again we don't talk about this in schools we don't talk about this unless you're in this you don't know what opportunities are out there to serve your community and there's a lot so i'll leave with that um before i take this in a different direction with respect to code of conduct and code of ethics i've seen a bunch of them and i've refused to sign a couple of them

[01:26:14] because they sneak in what's essentially a loyalty oath either to the person that appointed them or to, in one particular instance, the mayor's vision. Well, I don't sign that crap. Whatever, and I wouldn't make my guy sign it. But I want to do a recap. As far as appointees go, I want to kind of dovetail in the previous conversation to take it a little bit of a different direction.

[01:26:38] We have three boards right now. Advisory plan, examiner board, which I can't remember the last time it met. The DCSM and the Commercial Development Committee, and what is essentially almost a majority of the members, sit on all three.

[01:26:58] So why are we sending stuff that has to go through all three, where they're essentially talking about efficiency, they're reaffirming what they did. One of the issues that I have with that, particularly with the DCSM committee, is, you know, the board may issue a directive, explore, you know, statement that the sky is blue.

[01:27:21] And by the time it gets out of the door after DCSM, it's the sky is green. And many of the people that have sat on those boards have sat on them since inception. So I think we need to kind of look back at who's on these boards and how long have they been on the boards?

[01:27:38] How many other boards that are set on that do similar things? Is there a requirement for all of them? That sort of thing. Because there's very little communication from them to the board, which is going to bring in my second topic.

[01:27:55] When I was on the Sustainability Commission, one of the problems that they've had and one of the problems that Planning Commission members have had historically is the refusal of this county to pay for their damn email address and provide them with a county email address.

[01:28:09] And I don't want to hear about how expensive it is, and I don't want to hear about seat licenses, but the budget that we've got, and for FOIA purposes alone, so that the stuff is accessible by staff and retrievable from a centralized record, we need to get at least some of these commissions with an email address so that everything can go to them in a fashion where they're not setting up new accounts.

[01:28:40] They're not responsible for, you know, maintaining the emails. I mean, there's a reporting thing. But it seems to me we have an issue with both membership and with numerous committees doing, in essence, sort of the same thing.

[01:29:01] I've already mentioned the advisory plan examiner board. We just reconstituted the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Review Board. I don't know that it's met. And I don't think the county, or at least the people who are responsible for that, fully understand what their role is. They are not a, to my understanding, and perhaps Ms. Robo can expound on this, by statute and by administrative code, they are not a, what's the word, blanking on it.

[01:29:37] They're not an appeals committee. They make the decision. And you get into this whole issue of, you know, the staff is shooting an administrative review that they're not supposed, that they don't have the authority to do. And I guess for the last 10 years, the staff's position is we will grant all, we will determine all waivers ourselves. That's the express purpose of the board. We're in the Chess Bay area. So I've got issues with that.

[01:30:02] I've gotten complaints from members of the Commercial Development Committee, apparently when it was first initially created, it had a board member from each magisterial district, now there are no board members appointed to it. So we've got virtually no input, I don't know anybody, has anybody here heard from them?

[01:30:21] Yeah, I've heard. I've never heard from the Commercial Development Committee. They don't bother me. Why? See, we know why. They come in to my office and make the same complaints I just made, the same people are on it, the same, you know, that sort of thing.

[01:30:40] The Wetlands Board, I don't know how often they meet, but a miserable board, are they supposed to be meeting entirely by Zoom? I would have to be looking at them. They're apparently doing Zoom and team meetings only to issue decisions, which I'm going to have a problem with.

[01:30:56] But I think the greatest issue is, you know, we don't get much, at least I don't for some reason, they don't send me, I can speak to the rest of you. But I don't get reports from most of these guys, so I have no idea what they're doing, when they're doing it, what the agenda is. Although that's the problem.

[01:31:13] Some of them aren't my appointees, they're board appointees. And this gets to that whole thing about who is the board appointing, how is the nomination coming forward, what is their obligation to keep us informed, and I just don't see that in any way, sense, shape, or form.

[01:31:31] I'll leave it at that for the moment. I'm sorry, Andrea, before you go, come on, I just wanted to say something. I do like the, I don't know, because I know Andrea Madden has spoken about putting together a board packet and training for people, like, you know, and us, my team is starting to better track people who we have, who are on the board, who we are pointing, all their contact information, but I don't know if we have the standards of contact or is that something we talk, I think we talk about? Because that would be a great idea. That's a great idea. We don't, I don't believe have anything like that now. Know that I'm hearing the conversation and appreciate

[01:32:11] that we would be coming back talking about sort of how those representatives communicate with board members, attendance, things that are really about making sure that that commission is as efficient as possible and that they are properly doing work. So, you know, kind hear the concerns about not hearing from them and not hearing progress. I think this concept of appointees knowing that they should be in touch with their board member, giving them updates on a regular basis, I think all of that could be cleared up. So I'm happy to come back with some

[01:32:49] recommendations if the board would like on ways that we could maybe set out some, just again, creating expectations about what what they should be doing does that that sounds great and i would love that you know again not to put more work on audrey but you've done a fabulous job in the month that i've been here i think that if we can create a better process and you know for onboarding people for collecting information because i know that's an issue um that would be greatly appreciated so as part of this engagement we're also happy to go crowdsource some more information examples from our localities with the county executive in this team.

[01:33:28] So please note, we'll be continuing to provide resources for you. Gotcha. Yes, ma'am. All right. Before I turn it over to Andrea, I'm looking at the prom children corner. I'm going to go to Andrea next, and then Andrea. Thank you very much. But three things I had.

[01:33:46] One of the things that I want us to recognize from our last cycle is that we still are dealing with old procedures that had been instituted before we got there as a collective war. And so, to coin a phrase of what Bob has said, you're in the fire, take the heat, okay?

[01:34:05] We can take the heat, but we don't want our constituents to know that we can't take the heat, but we just have to start anew and put in new procedures. But it's a lot of, this is 20-year institutional stuff.

[01:34:24] So I just want to say that because we can't ignore that. And the more we ignore it and we blame, well, you did this and you did that. I don't think that's healthy, you know. I don't think it's healthy. But we have to acknowledge that there were two administrations before we came together.

[01:34:44] And so it's easy for the press or for our community to point the finger at us If we act like we don't want to accept that and put in some new, fresh things to overcome that. And that's important. That's just my leadership style.

[01:35:02] And so the other thing is I want some clarity on this because I just got confused yesterday and today about something. And it's okay to be confused because y'all get confused too, but you just don't say it.

[01:35:18] I have to say this. All right, wait a minute. See? See what I said? I'm never confused. Okay. So Bob keeps throwing stuff to Michelle in terms of, I'm trying to understand, is that legally, statutorily, as it relates to something like this? Because I'm trying to understand the boards are under Chris.

[01:35:38] So how does that work together? You know what I mean? How does that manage together? Because I want to make sure that when we get it from y'all, or we get it from here, or we get it from there, that we're following the right process. Does that make sense?

[01:35:54] The BCCs are under the board. The board creates the BCCs. Obviously, the county executive staff provides administrative assistance and policy guidance. How does that work together? That's what I'm trying to say. We work together to support the board.

[01:36:10] And the board is my main client. I provide legal advice to the board. No, I understand that, Michelle. But you have a million BCCs out there. I am not the legal counsel to the BCCs. They can often and sometimes do take positions contrary to the board.

[01:36:27] Ethically, I cannot have a client that is in contrast to my main client. I will work with the county executive and his staff that is supporting the various VCCs, and I will provide legal advice this way. Mr. Weir brought up an issue that is whether or not, and I wrote it down on my follow-up to-do list to see whether legally this body is meeting all virtually, whether they have the authority to do that i did not know that they were meeting all virtually i don't think mr shorter knew that they were meeting all virtually he brings up legal issues that he'd like for us just as the board brings up policy issues that they would like the county executive

[01:37:06] follow so for me in my head that was when i asked that question i'm thinking uh how we are reframing the boards how they're procedurally operating who we are appointing for me that's operational and you know serving the community if we are misusing a policy and not following what the state tells us to do then that's what he was bringing up he was like he was wondering whether they had the legal authority right 100 version and i wanted clarity on that because as we are going forward with these old things and moving forward with the new that it's clear how it's how it's

[01:37:45] procedurally done and then the other thing i'm almost done i'm almost done then the last thing is in terms of our appointees, I agree with Margaret, the appointees that collectively how it's rolled out has been very political, been very political. But as we move forward and as we grow and as we make sure that we're getting the work done for the county, we've got to look at that and see that what we do, yes, political, but what are we achieving as we serve? Because that

[01:38:21] That's key for me in being a part of one-eighth of this body. But if we're going to do a political appointee, let it be an astute political appointee to the board. And I'm saying that going back to the conversation that Tom and I had.

[01:38:40] In the Grace, when you talk about Grace, Madam Chair, we had a very in-depth conversation. And I said to my colleague, you know, intentionality, I'll use that word a lot, Tensionality means a lot, you know, but if this person is skilled and is going to bring to the table what we need brought to the table collaboratively, I get that.

[01:39:04] But you've got to understand from whence we come, because you weren't here. I said that to Tom, and that was the deeper conversation. So as we go forward with appointees, we've got to have those deep conversations. We can't do it in silos, and we can't do it in parties.

[01:39:21] We've got to do it across. We've got to be bipartisan. with it. So I'm interested in doing that as we go forward and make appointments. The last thing, Mary Chair, the last thing is that I need to be clear on and I'm okay either way before I say this is are we taking appointees from other districts other than our own and making appointees?

[01:39:49] Is that the practice? Is that a part of the process that we are putting together? I think it's something that we need to look at because I had an instance in the first term where I was about to make an appointee, two instances. I was about to make an appointee appointment, and then one of my colleagues took the person and put him in another assignment.

[01:40:10] So, okay, no harm, no foul. Then I had an instance where I made an appointment to the Blue Ways and Trails, and then one of my colleagues took the person and put him on the planning commission. So for that person, when you talk about time, when you talk about skill set, when you talk about serving, is that the most, how does that build relationships on the board?

[01:40:34] Well, I want to answer that first. Then I just want everyone to know, we're going to go to Tom, then we're going to go, were you a social red during Leadership Prince William County? I mean, Leadership Prince William County. Yes, I know that. But we're going to get to you, right, we're going to, I'm going to answer her, we're going to get, then you social red, then Kenny.

[01:40:50] I know last year, I know who you are. last year i know people did make you know there are people you appointed who lived in other ministerial districts i think it's just about having conversation because i realize we share something charlie grimes her his staff caught you know his chief caught it are you appointing charlie to um you know service authority i was like yes because they were making that appointment so i think it's just about also having conversations yes with the person like you know how many, is anyone else appointing you to something, what is it you want to do, having a

[01:41:27] conversation with the other supervisor about maybe, you know, I also want to appoint someone to something. I feel like, again, there needs to be a lot of conversation about that. Because there are some people who like doing multiple things. Yes. There are some people who are on two committees, and they have maybe the time to ban it. So for me, that, you know, is having more individual one-on-one conversations. I want to keep this going, so I'm going to go over to Tom Again, Tom, Social Red, Kenny.

[01:41:55] Right. Social Red. Social Red. Yeah. Clips. We want to talk about that later. First of all, I'd just say, you know, a lot of this is kind of, we set the tone, right? Yes. And I'm literally looking at my schedule for next week.

[01:42:13] I'm literally meeting with almost every one of my appointees to every board and commission that we have. So I can get to know them. They can get to know me. Because some of these folks, you know, we literally had to create a list, get it submitted so that we could keep the work of the county going.

[01:42:30] But I did not have a chance to meet with all these individuals in the short time frame that we had. I do want to caution us that we don't put one person under a microscope and not realize that other people could also be acting as bad behavior and not be looked at under a microscope.

[01:43:01] It's, you know, to put a target on someone's back. I know that, you know, I've learned the history. I didn't know the history. I've learned the history. But I've had the conversations. And it's like, look, the past has got to be the past.

[01:43:19] A new day is dawned. We're going to take a different approach. We're going to treat each other with respect. We're going to, as I mentioned, we've got to find forgiveness in all of this. And forgiveness does mean letting go.

[01:43:38] It doesn't mean, you know, I'm telling you I'm forgiving you, but I'm going to keep you under a microscope. No, forgiveness is letting go. And so, but again, I believe I set the tone and tenor for the people that I appoint.

[01:43:59] And so as I sit down with them, I do have that conversation about what my priorities are as a supervisor. about how I intend to lead and govern as a supervisor, and I'd hope that they would follow suit.

[01:44:18] I am not trying. There's no one that I'm looking at from any of your appointees that I've put a target on, that I'm looking. And I know that there's been some of my own personal colleagues that made some statements that were very inflammatory, upset a lot of people.

[01:44:36] Those people are still my friends. And, yeah, I disagree with what was said, but he's still a friend of mine. Different party, but he and I are friends.

[01:44:54] And so, you know, the opportunity for us to go forward in a different path, I think, is something that we all have to set the tone for, both on the receiving end and on the giving end. On the other side of that, my first meeting on next Monday morning is with the CDC.

[01:45:16] So, you know, I do talk to our guys from the CDC, and we do have a lot of issues there. There's a lot of challenges that they're trying to face, and I think it would be helpful for all of us to try to better understand the challenges that are happening, particularly within the permitting process, and I think the CDC has a lot of insights into that.

[01:45:38] And a lot of frustrations. And a lot of frustrations with that. To include being warrants out for people's arrests. I mean, it's gotten that bad. I've heard about that. You and I need to talk. Yeah, so it's the, but no, I appreciate what's been said, and I'm sorry of what was done in the past.

[01:46:01] And I am looking for good people. In fact, the spouse of the person who's been discussed today, who was also appointed to a commission, was literally out at a park last night trying to figure out why people, why there's trespassing going on and why there's drinking happening in the park after hours.

[01:46:22] And so, you know, these are people who are getting out there doing the job. They're doing the work and are proactively trying to solve the problem within our community. So, yeah, I appreciate what was said, and I appreciate the effort that was taking all the work that was done over the past couple of weeks in order to get to a better place than where we were in the past.

[01:46:47] And my hope is that we can continue that process going forward. And whatever hurts and pains we're experienced in the past is that there needs to be one-on-one conversations. And if you can't get to reconciliation, I'm happy to sit down and join that conversation to try to get to a better place.

[01:47:10] First of all, well, as long as it's just two-word numbers. and so and again that's where sort of a double-edged sword is is um we kind of get ourselves handcuffed a little bit when we're trying to fix the relationship pieces of this but uh but nonetheless i'm serious about that i care about this issue and i'll because at the end of the day none of us are going away one way or the other everybody's these people are going to still be around so but how do we move together better and and that's what i'm trying to get to thank you

[01:47:47] I appreciate that forgiveness is letting go. I mean, that's a good one. That is one, you know, that is a very good point. And I'm sorry, Vikarno, I'm picking on you, Mr. Social Red.

[01:48:00] Now, it's okay. I just want to really apologize to the group because I've really been checked out. So, you know, I don't know if you saw a 37-year-old killed on the building line this morning. It's not anything they ask for disarray. It's not a pedestrian walking across the street in dark clothes. Another kid, a 37-year-old, 1 a.m. in the morning. This is literally right out the street by my house. So my dog could have been driving. Your kids could have been driving. We could have been driving.

[01:48:30] There's no alcohol. There's no speeding. It's just a matter of we have pedestrian deaths that make absolutely no sense. So I'm trying to find out who's this identified suicide. Why are you walking? What can we do? So anyway, I apologize because I was a little checked out. So I don't really know what half the conversation we're all talking about. But I'm going to get back in the game. I'm really going to walk out and get a little air in the restroom and then I'll come back in and I'm going to let this part go.

[01:48:58] but i just want to apologize you all because i was not here i was really just no i i honestly i appreciate that i'm gonna make fun of you nonetheless with your capital we'll talk about that later yeah um you know i'll go hard on you but no it is hard that is an issue actually driving around my third the other day i don't know what was going on everyone was wearing dark clothes late at night and it's like come on folks you know this is not it's not safe so you know if you If you need to step out at any point, take a look, you know, that is, then we're going to go on to Kenny.

[01:49:34] Sure. I will try to keep this brief. I'll just ditto a lot of what's just been said. Understanding that there's the dichotomy between forgiveness and forgetting, obviously, right? And I think, and I hope I'm not speaking for you, Tom. I just want to ensure that as we move forward with this entire conversation about appointees to bring it back to the topic at hand, that we are being intentional and I'm going to take that from Supervisor Bailey about what we're trying to do with these outcomes because I know that a concern that Supervisor Franklin brought up is it was at least perceived that some of the appointments that were made last term were folks

[01:50:11] that were frankly appointed to disrupt the very body with which they were appointed to whether or not that was the intent of the supervisor or not that's what was the outcome that was perceived by the conduct and, frankly, get back to it, the decorum that we've been talking about. And I agree with Tom a lot that a lot of that tone gets set by the supervisor that appoints these people, and I really, really want to commend you and appreciate the fact that you're willing to do that work not only with this appointee in question, but, frankly, to all your appointees.

[01:50:37] And it's a conversation I've had with all my appointees, too, because I think that in the past, not with any specific supervisor, but I don't think there's a lot of accountability, That personal accountability, that personal responsibility for what our appointees do. There was a lot of, hey, I appointed that person, whatever they do, they're going to do.

[01:50:55] And I don't think that's the right tack to take, so I appreciate that. To get back to the overall point, though, that Bob made, I know that we do have, to the point, a few different PCCs here and there that either aren't meeting regularly, they're sort of on autopilot as regards to staff, and frankly, the jobs they have, aren't the ones where they should be going on autopilot.

[01:51:20] They shouldn't be ones where they just phone it in and have staff just tell them what's going on and there's nothing to see here, let's move on. Water quality is at stake with that, for example. So I appreciate the county executive looking into that and us being able to huddle because if there are differences, changes that we need to make as a board on the composition of those committees to make sure that they are being functional, they are fulfilling their intimate purpose, I think we should be able to have those kinds of conversations.

[01:51:47] The last thing I'll say about all this is that there is a lot of conversation about activists versus technocrats versus folks that came up through populism versus folks that are sort of just good policy folks that we appointed these commissions.

[01:52:05] And I think that there is a world in which, like a conversation we had yesterday, statesman versus representative, our district versus the county, we're at our best when we're having a good dynamic of both, frankly. And I want to commend Tom again because he took folks that, frankly, in my opinion, had some undirected energy to the slide that was earlier and is directing them towards specific purposes.

[01:52:29] And I think the more that we can do that with a lot of the anxiety that folks have, the distress that Madam Chair has talked about, and be able to help direct these folks in positive, productive directions to be collaborative with them versus adversarial, I think the better off we'll be as a county.

[01:52:46] So I think as much as we can to capture that energy, to feel, to know that there are folks out there that frankly feel like they've been out of the process for a long time and really capture it. Because I know that one conversation we all had, our board coming in four years ago, is that we represented folks that had never been at tables before and we appointed them for the first time for those tables and continuing that tradition as it was a feeling like we're battling each other out with these appointees.

[01:53:12] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. I feel like I think we've, you know, we have a couple of a blog. I think we've kind of exhausted this topic. I wanted to give you all some room to chat. Which I appreciate, you know, but I think we had a few hundred. Well, I mean, Madam Chair, let's be, I want to be quite candid. Yes, I do have one more thing to say.

[01:53:33] We have to talk about these things. We do. And we don't want to bring up old stuff, but we can learn from old stuff. And so, yes. And it's not one side or the other. It's not, you know, if you're wrong, you're wrong. If you're right, you're right. But we have to be collaborative together. And I think that's my intent.

[01:53:55] I agree, and not everyone's here for me to say, and I wish it worked. I have an issue. I'll be honest with you, I have an issue. Because we can all point fingers at everyone else, but people also need to look at their own behavior and what they're bringing to this. You know, I will acknowledge, and I've said this to some people, you know, the reason I stopped speaking at meetings after I won the general, there were a couple I wanted to speak, but it would contribute to the toxicity.

[01:54:18] It wasn't going to change anybody else. You know, I know this about myself. I know, you know, there are things that I contributed to. But we will be disingenuous if not everyone sitting up here does not acknowledge in some ways the things that they have done that have been toxic, that have contributed to the toxicity, or that have undermined their credibility on board members.

[01:54:41] And that's the one thing that is driving me crazy about our discussion, because we have people talking in circles about things, but not acknowledging their actual role in stuff. I know who I am, I know I can be petty, I know I can be mischievous, I know who I am, you know.

[01:54:58] You know, not everyone has a level of self-awareness, and again, it's easy to point the finger at folks. And that's the one thing that's driving me crazy, we have these circular discussions, it's like, you know, maybe people have, you know, a particular issue with somebody on the board, but they also have to look at their own behavior, and what they've done to undermine their own credibility.

[01:55:24] So that's just my one comment. I know you had something, Bob, that you wanted to say. I just, real quick. I second that mention. They didn't need a second, but I'm giving you my second. You're going to make the motion in the second. It's a resolution. In the same thing, I'm very well aware of who I'm appointed to what.

[01:55:44] I'm not reappointed to a bunch of people. Hey, because I haven't heard from them be to speak at the position. I think at the end of the day, what they ask to get in mind is, your appointee's behavior, that hangs on your neck, not theirs. Just saying.

[01:56:02] You are, by extension, responsible for any comments, actions, whatever they do, both publicly or in private. And I do not, have not, will not, unless something particularly egregious comes up, contest anybody else's appointments.

[01:56:19] At worst, I will abstain. But there are quite a number of people currently appointed to boards that have engaged in egregious behavior in public, not at the dais, but in public at other events, to the point where it's actually been reported in the paper.

[01:56:39] So just be aware. If I may, I think this is, I think all of you in your own way talked about this one way of shaping point, whether this be this conversation or previous yesterday. This is, you are setting the foundation as a new board.

[01:56:57] And it's a great opportunity to rip off the band-aid, go to your appointees, boards, commissions. This is the time to do that. Like I said yesterday, new dawn, new day. Yeah. Right? I'm about to start saying it. Okay, go ahead. Okay, I'll just quit. All right, go ahead. I want to say to Supervisor Vega, you said something that I had no clue about, and I apologize for that happening to you about being censored.

[01:57:22] I had no clue about that. They were just empty strides, but the point remains, you know? You weren't alone. You know, I'm just saying, we're all professionals and adults. And I'm sorry you had to experience that. So, a couple housekeeping, if I may.

[01:57:41] What I'm thinking is we can maybe take, right now, if we're ready to move on from this conversation, take a hard stop, break, about seven minutes or so, come back. We will hear from the county's demographer, which I think will do a nice job of setting the stage for your conversation about vision.

[01:58:00] All right. Awesome. Sound good? And we're going to do lunch at about 1230. No. I've got to hear the team. You know what? Maybe she is able to do it.

[01:58:31] Okay. Look at all the points here. But you are so loyal. You are so loyal.

[01:58:50] Oh my gosh. You're sucking. You're sucking. I'm sucking.

[01:59:22] I've never seen him like a regular restaurant. So I ate number seven. Oh no. Hey. I'm sorry. You are a class class.

[02:00:05] This kid is not a bit so much. This kid is not a bit so much. Oh, he got a lot. Thank you. He's definitely cute. My little kid is so much. He's got the shots on him. They can't, of course, get out of there.

[02:00:21] I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm just kidding. That's not a third brand. I want to be like, "Oh, my God." That's what I want to be like.

[02:00:38] I'm so ready to go. I don't know if that's what I want to go. I need to pick somebody back from my place.

[02:01:04] I know Chris is in the air like what? I don't know. He's trying to look it up. He's just feeling so good. I feel like I feel like Alan I was in the air.

[02:01:21] I feel like Alan I was in the air. Alright, that's me. Breakfast. Breakfast. What was wrong with that? I came back again. I'm talking about your family. Breakfast.

[02:01:37] Did he ask me? Breakfast. My man, he's talking about breakfast. I should charge my computer. There's one right here. Oh yeah, I'm coming over there. Let's move this box. That wasn't us. Watch this.

[02:01:54] No. Oh, that's me. Oh. Okay, you said that I was going to change your support.

[02:02:11] Oh. I might not be red, I might not think of red.

[02:02:29] So while I haven't taken that research, it seems to me that it's temperaments. And when you say temperaments? Yeah, it's about the whole temperaments with your color... about how you can deal with people and how you're organizing.

[02:02:46] - I almost think she's a great job. I think that she's very grown-up, she has a little grown-up. - So she's a grown-up, she's a grown-up, she's a grown-up. - Yeah, she's a grown-up, she's a grown-up. - I mean, you sound like that, too. But see, honestly, that's practical or strategic processes, like that means a lot, you know, and do shit.

[02:03:09] We are stuck at the tactical level right here. This is what we do all the time. We are not African-American, we react on board. We come in and beat you on board, you know, to keep up like many of these to me. We need some kind of stuff, 'cause they ain't gonna see it before, so they don't know what that looks like.

[02:03:26] Tomorrow's going, "Whoo, whoo, like, what are you doing? "It's all a cup of coffee, I'm gonna do it." The efficiency, our basic work is, all the information that we've been in, we're not going to be in the store. So it's really, I need to talk.

[02:03:44] That love of hearing that you come into a ring, You want to come here to tell the board that we're doing, the board needs to improve funding to finish our sidewalks. That's right. That's why it's safe to hear. You know what I'm talking about.

[02:03:59] We have to make a decision about what goes first. Because I think this is going to be a long way. We can know what we need to be doing. On that, that's what I'm talking about. We're trying to figure out, you know, based on all of this, as well.

[02:04:42] So, if we can sit back, but then it's up to us to make sure that we are, that everybody's helping us achieve the best.

[02:05:15] I think that's why I can't. And I think that's why I can't. And I think that's why I can't. And what control is that what I thought you had there? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think that's why I can't be sure of it. Thank you. Thank you.

[02:05:31] I thought I would have to make sure that you're on there. I thought I would have to make sure that you're on there. I don't even know about this one. I think it's right now. I'm definitely right now.

[02:05:48] Oh, yes. So, and that's the one that I do. Yeah. Who can do this? I don't even know what you're going to taste with.

[02:06:13] I don't know.

[02:06:32] There we go. What I'm saying is that, you know, the subject of the format that you can do is, it is incredibly I think he is right. Oh yeah.

[02:07:19] and I'm going to say, you know, next year, it's always going to be in. So you don't have to talk to them. They're going to watch, that's what we're going to do. They're going to box it to the same area. I'm going to ask them to do this, and then I'm like, no.

[02:07:37] They're going to watch you. So you don't like that. They're going to watch us. They're going to make sure they're doing it for us. You're not going to say, you don't want to like, you don't think you have any power. that's why you really see it, and that's the thing, we do it, and we live in these games for so good.

[02:07:57] Most of them get hit past, that's why you're here, because it doesn't say something. I love that. I love that.

[02:08:30] I love that. Yeah. Mark. Sir. This is the truth.

[02:08:40] I have to meet her.

[02:11:48] Now. The box.

[02:12:08] Yeah. I like the world. Yeah.

[02:12:18] Yeah.

[02:14:38] Is it so good? Is that it? No. Sit down, Kenny. so we'll just jump in um so as we for the afternoon start this sort of conversation

[02:15:17] around visioning your priorities for the county i had an opportunity through leadership prince william to see brian's presentation about trends associated with demographics and i was blown away by it and so was everyone else in my Buesha-Perzilian class. I thought that this would be a perfect segue into this conversation to sort of hear from him. So, Brian, welcome. He is a nominal member of our staff and just a great, great resource. You are probably going to have

[02:15:52] a lot of questions. So, Brian, feel free to take it over. Thank you, Chris. I'm setting my timer here

[02:16:02] that I leave you with questions. I'm chair of my members of the board. It's great to see you again and great to meet others. I'm Brian Engelman, County Democitor. I've been here for about seven years and before that I'm going to tread the line between non-profits and academia and my interests are in policy and geostation and information science which is the department I'm in. I'm in the department of

[02:16:34] technologies, geospatial technology services. So we do all kinds of mapping. It's kind of the basic purpose of it. But there's a lot more that goes on there serving customers and county agencies alike. So there's no county agency I really haven't worked with. So I look forward to working with you.

[02:16:56] Today, I'm going to brief you on what's going on in Prince William County as far as population and demographics, and of course where we're in, units that we keep track of here in the county.

[02:17:30] We apply average household sizes and occupancy rates that we update every year. I would say flirting with half a million is where we're at. Of course, here's our population density as a suburban community, and as a suburban community, mostly single-family detached in terms of our housing stock, with a rising stock and multifamily.

[02:17:54] So, you know, I'll show you a little bit with maps of that. In terms of our age, you know, we're a pretty young county. We have a lot of families coming around for decades. And, of course, like every jurisdiction across the country, we are aging, albeit not as quickly, and portion-wise, not as much as other jurisdictions.

[02:18:20] The makeup of our population in terms of race and ethnicity can confidently say we're a quarter Hispanic or Latino, but anyways, taking out Hispanic or Latino, we are 40% white, 20% black, American, down to about 10% Asian, and almost 5% two or more other races.

[02:18:44] Over the years, indicated by the Green Line, seeing some of the most substantial growth happening in the 2000-2010 time span, we gained about 120,000 residents in just 10 years, we gained another 80,000 between 2010 and 2020, and on our way to leveling off of it, because as a county, we can't accept growth exponentially.

[02:19:17] The interesting thing was we kept growing despite the impacts of domestic migration as felt by the pandemic and the shifting economy and the way we do work.

[02:19:33] So places like Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, the inner jurisdictions began to lose population after we just started the pandemic and into 2022. Prince William had the benefit of adding up a natural increase with migration, coming up with a net positive.

[02:19:56] So we kept growing, despite at a slow pace, into 2022. These numbers are produced by the U.S. Census Bureau, so these are not my numbers. Most of the data you'll see today are not my numbers, necessarily. So my estimate for right now is $4.95 compared to these numbers you're seeing.

[02:20:17] here. And you might see a lot of numbers if you go search for a publication. Sorry I mean this is a lot, you know, I'm trying to be quick that also make sense to you. These are the productions we do every few years with the council of governments. So we work with the planning department to look at build out based on zoning and future zoning. And we run statistical models to see where we're going to end up by, you know, 30 years out.

[02:20:54] Where we're thinking is, you know, more of a substantial leveling off over time, as we aren't obviously going to build out every square inch of the county, but we are building differently and in different ways all the way through 2050.

[02:21:10] So we might be close to 600,000 when it comes to 2050. a long way off. Where we're going to increase some, you know, hopefully a little bit more is our thinking plunge phase. And all these are, you know, wrapped into the policies and the data reports that are produced by, you know, people onto their website. This is part of the forecasting committee. So this is kind of cool because, you know, it kind of illustrates

[02:21:46] some of the data that we have access to and also gives you a sense of which areas of the county have newer and older housing. The darker blues and purples indicate some of the first developments in Woodbridge, the Marumstows, Dale City, the area west of Manassas, and those were built in the 50s the 1960s, Dale City being built in the '60s and '70s, and still housing being built today in the Western part.

[02:22:19] During the '80s is really where we saw, you know, housing a little bit more widespread in locations in the current districts of Lafayette, Coles, and Potomac. And then in the '90s and 2000s, before the Great Recession, we did see a lot of growth in the western part of the country.

[02:22:44] Of course, we still saw growth in these areas, but the western part of the county really established itself as a new population center during that time and drove a lot of growth in the recent decades. So population density, this is a map based on the forecast I just showed you.

[02:23:03] So where is the county going to accept more folks in a single area, a more concentrated area, between 2020 and 2050 and perhaps this is better illustrated by you know kind of switching here between population density in 2020 and population density in 2050. You know maintaining the same scale of colors and statistical ranges you know if we look at the county's new master plan we see

[02:23:41] areas of growth, concentrating in your transit and in areas of existing testing, talking about more mixed use, more corridor studies, more housing and developments aimed at reducing caraway.

[02:24:01] Similar kind of graphic with household growth for the next 30 years, concentrated all throughout the county, but focused on a couple areas, again, where the planning department has indicated that zoning and current circumstances can accept more housing and more events.

[02:24:24] And employment growth, you'll see focusing in on innovation areas near 66 and university, and then, of course, in some of our existing hotspots.

[02:24:43] So comparative demographics. You know, we can talk all about Prince William's numbers about where we fall. Talked about us being a young county, there are a lot of married couple households, a lot of married couple households with children, compared to the MSA, the state, and the nation.

[02:25:01] Along with the metropolitan area, very high non-white population, lower 65 plus population. We are an educated county compared to the state and the nation, lagging a little bit behind when it comes to the average percentage holding bachelors degree or higher in the entire national community.

[02:25:25] More and more in population, over a quarter of those in Prince William County, nearly 14% speaking language other than English at home, low unemployment rates, relatively high percentages of us striving to work alone, although that has gone down over the years, and has also changed due to the dynamics of new work from home and pandemic.

[02:25:54] We are extremely diverse. You saw the stats in one of the first couple of slides, right? Indicating the breakdown of race and ethnicity.

[02:26:15] I love this because the Census Bureau tabulated the probability of picking two people out of Prince William County, and the probability of those two people being of different race or ethnicity, is extremely high. And that kind of is illustrated by the fact that we are right behind extremely diverse areas in metropolitan areas like New York, Brooklyn and Queens, and California.

[02:26:42] race and ethnicity changes. Yes, we have changed a lot. We aren't always the way we are today. In fact, each 7.5% of Prince William residents were white, not Hispanic, and might compete compared to 38.4% today.

[02:27:05] Now these are all the decennial censuses. So there's a number of data sources like I talked about earlier. There's the American Community Survey, which has more recent data, and so most of the numbers I pull up from that, but for the purposes of comparing over the decades, I went using the decennial census.

[02:27:23] And you can see where the Hispanic population exploded between 2000 and 2010, where the Asian population really started to grow later, and where the African-American population grew earlier than the two African-American groups.

[02:27:42] So, yeah, it's really interesting to see these trends and, of course, the category of two or more races being claimed more and more over the years by folks taking census surveys. The makeup of those race and ethnic groups by age, the takeaway point here is the younger ages are even less white and, I would argue, more diverse.

[02:28:08] As you can see, just taking white alone from under 18, 30% compared to the county 38 and 18 plus 43. This illustrates the ministerial district that are in 2020 census before redistricting, white and non-new.

[02:28:36] So you can see the makeup here where Neashville, Woodbridge, and Potomac make up a lot of the non-white residents in Canada. But what happens when we take eight, when mine is going to be controlled by eight?

[02:28:54] We can see that a population under 18 in these districts, the white population drops even more substantially. If you look at, I like to refer folks to school enrollment data because that is more current and also illustrates these same points that I'm making.

[02:29:13] So if you go on to the Prince William County Schools Department of Planning website, you can pull enrollment demographics and you can see a lot of these trends in schools and there are rather lots of capital barriers. So how does Prince William County stack up?

[02:29:31] Well, yes, we are a high-income county, like I said, but we're not the wealthiest. I mean, we have extremely wealthy neighbors that put themselves in the number one spot. Laughlin County, Virginia, at 170,000, being in household income compared to ours.

[02:29:49] And we are kind of hovering around, I think, seven or eight in the metropolitan area. But still, number 27 in the nation compared to over 3,000 counties. We are a plugged-in town.

[02:30:07] 90.3% of households have a computer. That's the 22nd highest time in the country. Of course, a lot of our neighbors have the same love of economy. When it comes to professional scientific and management administrative jobs, we are number 30 at 19.3%.

[02:30:27] This is national labs, it's a little kind of bias, but you can see a lot of California counties and D.C. area counties I can go into also El Salvadorian and Bolivia backgrounds and put us in the top 10 in the country, but it was just a little too much data.

[02:30:53] So like we've spoken at home and more and more population, you can also see we rank highly compared to over 3,000 counties. counties, and of course, Wayne County, Michigan with certain backgrounds being a big problem.

[02:31:16] Notable changes. Let me just focus right here on this stat. So, the Census Bureau tabulates those who work from home, and like I said before, commute to work in a car, public transportation, et cetera. This stat has risen the most over these timelines. These are American community surveying averages between these five years and these five years, and we get statistically significant changes between these data points over time. And you can see pre- and post-pandemic,

[02:31:54] even though we have some pre-pandemic years every year, we are all the way at 50 percent, even higher, I think Dana's saying that 30% work from home, if you look at the one-year table points. You can see the white population dropping, those with retirement income increasing as our population ages, foreign-born population increasing, and of course, residents under

[02:32:28] 18, the proportion of which are shrinking compared to the population that's aging. If you did look at the school enrollment data, you will see some shrinking enrollment in the elementary grade level. Just to wrap up, sorry, if I overwhelmed you a little bit, I know there's a lot of numbers, but we can talk more about that.

[02:32:55] I wanted to bring up the districts and kind of what occurred with your districting, because Because it wasn't only the census data that came out, but we also redistricted twice since 2010, for example, having a very wide distribution of population sizes for the districts when we faced redistricting in 2010. That's when the county grew by 120,000. It wasn't that proportional growth. A lot of the growth took place in the western part of Atlanta that I mentioned. We balanced that out. We changed boundaries. That was a tough one.

[02:33:34] you know, losing a lot of population and land area. The redistricting file comes out in 2020. When does it show compared to after redistricting in 2010? I would say more growth across the board, not as biased in one part of the county or the other, although we do see still some heavier numbers in the West, but the East certainly keeping up.

[02:34:02] So, redistricting 2020, which I provided data support for, was my first involvement in redistricting. So, I provided a lot of the data that the Census Bureau already had for us.

[02:34:20] And the results of the redistricting by the board, you know, resulted in a loss in Landeer, for Brentsville and Coles and Gainesville and slightly for Riverage to balance out the population.

[02:34:37] So the population before and after, we saw Ogaquan with pretty large beans, Brentsville and Coles with pretty large losses, but that's to balance the population that is required by Coles within a 10% range.

[02:34:59] These are estimated trends, and I emphasize the word estimate, because I'm going to comparing the 2020 census after we redistricted to my current estimate. These are different methods, different surveys, different data sets.

[02:35:18] I included this here because colds did not lose population. Averquan did not lose cows' data. We can call it even data, break it even at that point. But in terms of my current estimates, how do they stack up?

[02:35:34] see some of the impacts of the developments of Shores that has taken place in just the last three years on districts like Tomek. Some of the developments out in Gainville still occurring.

[02:35:50] And of course, we have more homeless family coming online in Woodbridge. And this is just illustrating the change in housing units as they occur too, and you can see what they have grown.

[02:36:05] So, I think I'm right at the 20 minute mark, never happens, I'm happy with you today. My website is, you know, hopefully a repository for a lot of the data, a resource for staff and yourself, and it has even more than I talked about, even more massive and interactive.

[02:36:29] We have 10 minutes for questions. Did you send this around? Maybe you did. Was this emailed up? Um, I don't think it's fun, but I'm sure it will be. My only question, first of all, this is a great presentation, and I love seeing all the figures.

[02:36:44] I would love to see figures comparing us to Stafford County, because they are growing. And I would just like to see, and perhaps, you know, let's have fun. Let's look at maybe Pennsylvania and Fauquier, just other groups around us to get a better sense of where we fit in within the region.

[02:37:04] So that's a bit of a concern. Bob? To dovetail on that, population migration trends. We've seen that. Last couple of years, we're starting, people are migrating out.

[02:37:21] It's rapidly accelerating. People moving either to locations like Falkier, Mont Royal, Shenandoah, or moving completely out of state. We're seeing a lot of, you know, migration to South Carolina, other tax havens, that sort of thing.

[02:37:41] Just a note, so that I don't think your net positive migration over growth is going to last that long. I think you're going to see a serious plateau, if not a dip, in population over the next five to ten years. Which brings me to the cognacors.

[02:37:59] Their forecasts are for crap. There is no way we are going to achieve their mandated growth. It ain't happening. Not with the federal government starting to diversify.

[02:38:14] You've got agencies, agriculture, moving people to Omaha, moving on. FAA moving on to Oklahoma City, FBI moving up to Maryland. There's going to be a lot of changes. And since the Feds, especially with NTEU fighting for it, the Feds want to return to work.

[02:38:35] I don't know if you've been downtown, but K Street's a ghost town. And the Feds and the Fed workers are not going back to work. I visit the Patent Office on a fairly frequent basis, and that five-story, that five-building complex is a ghost town.

[02:38:51] They're working from home at 3 o'clock in the morning. Believe me, I get e-mails from examiners at 3 in the morning about, everyone, what the hell are you doing working at this hour? But I think we need to essentially throw those COG numbers out the window from a planning standpoint. And even if you look at, you know, if you look at, I can speak best to the Gainesville District, but the numbers where they're showing their projections for both residential growth and employment growth, because of the changes to the comp plan, because of what's been adopted in terms of rezoning applications,

[02:39:22] In the last five years, particularly in the last three years, there is no way that that prognosis, that that projection is going to occur in the areas where they've got it because the land uses have changed. Where people are going to work has changed. The number of jobs that are going to be created has significantly changed. So I think we need to go back to ground zero. And quite frankly, I see no value in that slide because it's a pipe joint. Just my two cents.

[02:39:55] First of all, just thank you for this, because I didn't know you did the demographer stuff here for the county, because I, with NBRC, Jill, do you ever work with Jill up at NBRC on this? Yeah. So this is usually a demographer.

[02:40:11] Oh, really? Awesome. Yeah. So thank you. Now, my question, and I love the data, and you have pulled out a little bit, and kind of Bob talked about it a little bit, too, with your housing piece, because regardless how the numbers go, But one of the realities are is that we are significantly way behind on housing, thus the pricing of all this.

[02:40:33] Do you track that? Do you do anything in the housing and what that looks like? Like, I'm always interested. You showed spots where we should probably be growing in the county. And I think as we were talking yesterday, I'll say for this board, we were talking about, you know, the my district versus Princeville County.

[02:40:49] Regardless of what you want to protect on your district, at some point we should be discussing where density is going to really go in all of these districts. I love what you showed about Neabsco District because although that's already a highly populated community neighborhood district, we're still growing.

[02:41:06] We're still building apartments, townhomes, few single-family homes, and yeah, people are screaming, but the reality is it's needed, and they're already sold, and they're not even done being built yet. So do you have a graph or a chart that goes into the housing piece of that discussion or something that we can work on maybe?

[02:41:28] So there's a couple pieces to that. You know, the housing projections are wrapped into, you know, what the COC forecasting committee has laid out for us out in 2050. And that's really the maps that I showed are based on, you know, where the planning department has indicated, you know, where the land use policies are currently going to allow the acceptance of more density.

[02:41:56] whether it happens or not, is kind of a, you know, it's rolled up the dice, so to speak. And that's why out to 2050, it's really maxing out those numbers. You know, what is our ceiling? Then there's different committees that COG has that fills kind of the housing piece in terms of, you know, which counties in the area are kind of filling their own populations affordable housing needs and overall housing needs and you know those are kind of wrapping to i think um housing and community development so it's not me directly um you know staff and

[02:42:35] housing and community development are on those committees like target as there's like a million committees yeah um who probably have data that i could get from you and i'll just say thank you for that because this is what's good about this discussion because this conversation we could be be having as this board with you trying to figure out all these committees connecting the dots and then what really are we doing back to the strategic vision and are we operating tactically or strategically like this all ties together to everything that we've been discussing and how we put it in progress going forward to achieve these goals without just having you give us numbers

[02:43:15] that we are not clearly doing anything with appreciate what you provided here But there was an organization in Northern Virginia that came out recently with sort of hot spots of poverty where it's growing within each of the different counties and localities.

[02:43:38] In one of the areas particularly, it kind of crosses three, you know, it's that Sudley Corridor. So you've got Gainesville, Coles, and Brunsville all there together. And in there, their analysis is based on indicators of, you know, lack of literacy, lack of speaking English, lack of high school diploma, lack of college degree.

[02:44:07] As, you know, as we're trying to mirror planning, we're trying to look at redevelopment, from my perspective, you know, it doesn't happen in just a vacuum of we need housing.

[02:44:25] We're also looking at areas that are, we're seeing crime increase, we're seeing poverty increase, we're seeing challenges. And so helping us have actionable data to help us figure out, okay, what is it that we need to do within these certain pockets, within these areas to try to address immediate needs and concerns based upon the trends that we're seeing as it relates to poverty, as it relates to literacy, as it relates to, you know, a whole host.

[02:45:02] Are you able to provide that level of data to us and help us kind of map a certain area so that when I'm meeting with a developer and I say, hey, guys, you know, I actually had this conversation with NAOP last week. I said, guys, look, you know, this isn't just about building facilities.

[02:45:21] As we're taking a look at, we're trying to address not just housing issues, but we're trying to figure out how do we create jobs here? Because we, you know, the numbers for jobs still don't look good. We're still sending 60% of our people out of the county every single day as going out.

[02:45:42] So kind of putting a holistic picture together to figure out, okay, If I'm going to operate somewhere between 66 and Manassas and I'm trying to get developers to help us address affordable housing, address job growth, address transportation challenges, helping us provide the data that says help us solve some of these issues.

[02:46:04] Yeah. Thank you for that. And over the years, I have divided the full disadvantage indexes. So I don't read about the wheel and the consistency. The Census Bureau got on board with that too. And they've created a community resiliency index that includes actually a lot of variables that look about because it's not just about positive, it's not just about improved, it's about the intersection of five, six, seven, eight different factors that create areas of disability.

[02:46:36] So there's a resiliency index, which is currently online, and it kind of started as a result of COVID and the increase in natural disasters over the years to help communities recover. Some of the other, you know, valuable data sources I would use are county hub zones and opportunity zones that are set by the federal government and kind of data points to, you know, kind of identify areas in need of economic revitalization.

[02:47:10] So, you know, that to me, which, or any exact area, you mentioned, you've seen the hub zones, the opportunity zones, and the roof on the corridor, some reaching into Dale City, and then home on the south. And, you know, we can look at maps of the resiliency index, we can look at maps of the hub zones, opportunity zones, and the state correlations, right?

[02:47:32] I can create my own index and building the same thing. So, yeah, we can provide that data for you. I think as we start to think about a strategic plan, there are certainly these areas that I think we have to be getting back to that word intentional. Because in some of these areas, that's where we're seeing crime increase.

[02:47:53] We're seeing more homelessness. So it's like, okay, how do we take a holistic approach to this area? And so having good data to help us figure out, are we hitting the right targets and developing a good plan in order to sort of change the center of gravity within that area.

[02:48:15] I think the newly formed public safety is also doing a lot of that as a target in areas of the enforcement and intervention. Crime is a lot of those areas. It's also, I'm sorry, not just crime, it's also how do we redevelop some of the communities that need redevelopment.

[02:48:37] Yes. That is an important part of land use that we need to have discussions around. Eventually, as the time comes, and speaking with developers, is how do we revitalize certain areas? You know, I think it's great when we talk about affordable housing, having some set-a-sides, you know, when they have new developments. But again, how do we revitalize the older communities that we know are starting to change and not going to happen?

[02:49:02] So that is definitely, I think, part of what Thomas is getting at. I know Andre, I didn't think that, I'm sorry, Kenny ended up. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was going to mention what you just said about revitalization because my area, and I know Supervisor Franklin has been focused on that too, I'm very interested in getting that data to make sure that I'm doing the right things because it is a very seasoned area.

[02:49:30] And then the other thing, you did an impeccable job in helping us with redistricting. You and your team, you did an impeccable job just balancing out the numbers. I think that was great in helping us to understand how to do that and why it may be done that way.

[02:49:47] And then lastly, what Tom was saying also about utilizing our resources and our funding appropriately based upon what the needs are, like with food insecurity. You showed in your diagram that there's not a big issue with food insecurity, yet it still exists in Princewood County.

[02:50:08] So how do we get ahead of that with the resources and the data that we have is very important in keeping our community whole. And it's across the county. It's not just in one spectrum of the county. It's across the county. And how do we, you know, reduce that number even more?

[02:50:26] Thank you for your attention. I think there's a lot of resources out there that folks don't know that. I'd be happy to kind of run a list of what I think are the official goods and resources. for example, tree deserts, areas of disadvantage as they are created by the intersection of sun rate value variables.

[02:50:52] I can create my index, but again, I don't want to overlap what's already been done and what I think are official sources of data. So I think if that's helpful, I'd be happy to do that when I share this presentation. All right, Kenny.

[02:51:08] Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to piggyback and dovetail off of what some of my colleagues have said, I agree with what you said. There are a lot of pockets of areas, and you spoke to a little bit, Brian, when you were talking about that, in some metrics, we're among the top-tier counties in the country, but then there's large disparities between, you know, not even east versus west, but what parts of the west versus other parts of the west, parts of the east versus other parts of the east, where your life expectancy is sometimes 15 years different based on what zip code of what district you're in. And that's obviously something that we've talked about before, food insecurity, food

[02:51:43] deserts, when we're talking about the comp plan. I guess my biggest question from here is, this isn't just a you, Brian, question. It's also the staff perspective. How do we begin looking at that data and us, especially with the implementation of the new comp plan from ZTAs and other things, trying to give us a supervisor but also the development community and partnership with them the flexibility and the tools to address those things because frankly what I've seen is a lot of the development community currently is still driven by where can they find cheap pockets of land to then develop regardless of what our strategic division is those areas of need what

[02:52:22] have you and I think that part of that is because in some instances we don't have the right tools in our toolbox to help them address that. Whether that's assemblages, I know that in the Suarez of Franklin's district, one of the very first things we did on the previous board, we were able to help give financing to allow for an assemblage to have a real premier development that we then approved four years later.

[02:52:44] But it's that disconnect between, we see that these areas of need, but how can we then focus those energies from the development community and grant those tools to allow for us to actually move that needle in the right direction. Supervisor Weir.

[02:53:03] I'm going to start calling everyone because I have to get used to doing it on the board rather than probably by your first name because I'm going to say Supervisor Weir or Supervisor Weir. Have you factored in what is essentially a new sort of twist and it's kind of a double-edged sword? You know, I have a lot of commercial industries come into the office and they've all got the same complaint.

[02:53:24] You know, we run a take-your-pick roofing business, plumbing business, whatever, out of an industrial space in the Gainesville District.

[02:53:34] And we're being forced out by our landlord because the landlord is essentially closing out everybody's leases and selling them to data centers for data center growth and expansion because the land value is so much higher than what they were achieving in the, that they would otherwise achieve either through sale for redevelopment or sometimes in the case of sale for just flat out regular commercial or residential use.

[02:54:05] You know, we're seeing significant pockets of the Gainesville District where it is now impossible to start or build a business because the land availability is so limited based on people speculating on sales to data centers.

[02:54:23] The flip side of that, and I've got several people, actually several applications of development in the Gainesville District, both commercial and residential, is that they are now buying quote-unquote distressed properties and essentially redeveloping on them because the cost to purchase those developed properties that are in some manner of just for bearish use has suddenly become much more affordable than buying green space because of the price per acre of green space.

[02:54:57] Are you seeing that or have you factored that in? Because it's a relatively new thing. I mean, we're talking the last 18 to 24 months where it's significantly changed the market, at least in my justice. I would say that's in my work.

[02:55:14] That would be something that, personally, I would ask the planning staff. So if you want, I can refer to that question because I don't really keep track of those trends. What I'll say, and I'll just sort of say this to Brian. So the great work that he does and some of the kind of raw data that you see informs so many of our plans.

[02:55:36] So we're going to talk in a bit about the intersection of some of those plans and how they are, you know, how they sort of inform some of the work. But planning actually reaches out to Brian all the time for this improvement for data and analysis.

[02:55:55] So does transportation. So does housing. So our agencies leverage this work in not just putting together plans, but even putting together reports, real-time reports for the board. I mean, things are just changing so rapidly.

[02:56:12] All right, Secretary of State Bailey. Yeah, they are changing fast. Brian, one of the things that I'm interested in also are numbers or data on the senior citizen population, because it reaches across the county and, you know, the needs and how we're serving and, you know, that kind of thing.

[02:56:33] So, not that you have it right now on hand, but that's something that I've heard. He actually does. Oh, I knew you did. It's kind of a bit speculating into something that I would include in longer presentations, which is kind of a demo of the website and what you can find there, one of which is demographic maps, and this is a map of where the population of 65 and over is concentrated.

[02:57:04] So for the census tracts, higher percent of residents stick to that over. Of course, you will see those concentrated in the retirement communities, huge ones in Wood District and out in Gainesville. That's absolutely outdated. Throughout, but you can also look at poverty, and we can get to some of those discussions about, you know, corridors of disadvantage and educational attainment, median age, all of those aspects, which you can find right here on the website, as well as my current population test.

[02:57:43] So, you know, anything that's not on here, that you need, I will be ready. And I would also kind of get into that list of data sources, which I may already have on the US Census Resiliency Index.

[02:58:05] I mean, it's right here in my late interactive data and maps. The resiliency estimates are really what I would recommend for the areas of concentrated disadvantage. And it seems like the Census Bureau is updating this every year.

[02:58:24] And if you zoom in, it goes beyond just money, which is very, very full. So that's kind of where we're at with a lot of these data sources. Well, yeah, sometimes they throw in age, and then age is coupled with income and poverty and public assistance, and that skews the index a little bit in favor of areas of ability.

[02:58:56] Yeah, it's a tricky scale balance sometimes. I'm sure. Yes. Not really to Brian, but you actually bring up an important point about affordability challenges for small businesses. We're seeing that also, I think, at least in my district, particularly up and down the Route 1 corridor, it's becoming much more expensive to start businesses. And one idea I had a long time ago that I pitched to Christina is, you know, we like talk about affordable housing but but some concept where we provide some type of resources

[02:59:33] or assistance to businesses particularly when it comes to leases um and i don't want to call it a subsidy because i don't know if that's what it is and and i don't want to have like a negative connotation but you know that's something that i think perhaps we can continue to think about like how can we help small businesses we already have our programs for those already up and running And I know Christina's working on, like, a micro-grant program.

[02:59:58] But how do we help businesses that already have leases that can't afford the increases but want to stay in the community? I think I don't know the answer to that, and I think that's something we should think more about. And that's the problem with what we're struggling with in Gainesville.

[03:00:19] And I suspect you've got the same issue in your district. You know, in your district, they're probably moving across the border in Stafford. In mine, they're going to Falk here, Culpepper, Orange, whatever. Or they're shutting down altogether. Yeah, and I don't know that there's a solution from, for lack of a better term, we'll call it a subsidy.

[03:00:42] If you can cure that with any sort of rent abatement, rent subsidy, that kind of program, And when you've got the landowner or property owner who's just not willing to do that because they're going to go for the short-term, big market gain, they're getting the hell out of the county as well.

[03:01:03] So how do you negotiate that with a lessor who has no interest in it? And that's the problem we're having. Madam Chair, I'm glad you said that because I've actually had that same conversation with Christine.

[03:01:23] I said, how do we come up with like an affordability program for commercial development? Because we have the industrial condos in the Hornbaker area right across the street from innovation. They're starting to empty out.

[03:01:40] And this also gives you, this is something else we need to talk about, these tipping fees and the increase in, I mean, we've got one, three buildings. Their trash fees are going up $18,000 a year.

[03:01:57] And that doesn't include the tens of thousands more they're paying intact real estate taxes. That they have to pass all this on to their leaseholders. And the leaseholders say, I can't afford this anymore. And your lease. So we literally are, it's death by a thousand paper cuts with a lot of these small businesses.

[03:02:23] And this is something we have to take a serious look at because we'll never get that job growth. We're never going to see those jobs get created if we can't keep the businesses here. Now, one of the things that we did during the comp plan is like you did show the Nokesville Industrial out there.

[03:02:39] We literally said, data centers, stay out of here, so that we can make space for small businesses to have a chance to get their feet under them in Prince William County. But they're already out there offering people money, regardless.

[03:02:55] I've got one application already trying to take it above the comp plan zoning to get to, with proffering nothing out, taking it to M1. And it's just like, that's a data center. It's coming. So I think part of it's going to have to be disciplined on our part on how we say, no, you're not welcome here because we've got to make space for these guys.

[03:03:19] And so it's a tough challenge. But I agree with what Bob was saying is if we don't, you know, the job problem is only going to get exacerbated as these property values keep going up and it just draws small businesses out of the county.

[03:03:39] If I may, in the purpose of being efficient and effective this afternoon, we have a few things I'd like for us to do post-lunch. It's okay. I'd like to pause this conversation now and move on to this conversation. We have a very brief special presentation we'd like to do, and then we will break for lunch.

[03:03:55] All righty. And then after lunch, you want to thank you so much for that information. I think we'll set up our conversation about visioning and strategic planning, and then as we close out this afternoon. Okay, and now we'll do our presentation here to bear with me just one moment to come in on out here and I'll turn it over to the county executive to kick this off. So today's this is a special day. It's the birthday of our chair.

[03:05:01] are collective bodies that work together to make decisions. In order to make effective decisions, locally elected officials need to consider the rules for decision-making, communities' needs and interests, the local government's long-term plans, staff information and advice. There are rules for local government decision-making. The Community Charter and the Local Government Act are the two key pieces of legislation that local governments must work with it when making decisions legislation and rules that apply to decision-making include

[03:05:38] bylaws and resolutions meeting procedure rules and ethical conduct policy and conflict of interest legislation political representative yes you shouldn't say what it is you want to say but when you're in the position of chair or a position of leadership that sometimes takes a backseat to making sure that good order and good processes are followed because it's those processes and expressing respect to those participants in the meeting, that's how you create the best kind of foundation for a good decision.

[03:06:13] As an elected official, you'll have numerous opportunities to receive feedback and input from community members at public consultations, council and board meetings, community forums, and other public events. Generally, local governments make decisions in areas such as land use, inner boundaries, sewage treatment, and recreation services.

[03:06:34] These areas are all within local government jurisdiction. Other areas, such as health, immigration, and fishing and hunting may fall under the jurisdiction of other levels of government. Local governments can work with other levels of government for action in these areas.

[03:06:50] What you want to do is make sure that you understand the context of the situation or the decision that needs to be made, so that you can make connections with the people who are probably most affected by any given decision. I think it's the first time that you have to deal with some sort of an urgent situation or a really important issue where you start to find the commonality and you come together and you realize that as much as you might hold divergent politics, you might have different ideas about the state of the world, when you're dealing with an issue with the water system or the sewer system or the fire department and it's right there in your community and you get to work together, it's really that sense of common cause.

[03:07:26] I think the first time you experience that, you start to respect each other as members in the same community it's having that patience to listen um you don't necessarily have to agree but it is good to try to understand where that person's coming from it's a lot of our job to make sure that we can conduct conflict in a way that's respectful and orderly because that's the essence of democracy the good decision-making process is one that involves all of the voices at the table there are a number of other plans and reports that will provide guidance to your council or boards collaborative decisions the annual report considers previous current and

[03:08:04] future year activities and priorities for the local government the official community plan provides the longer-term vision for the community and provides the basis for planning and land use management the local government's long-term financial and strategic plans will also need to be considered once elected officials make decisions it's the staff's job to implement those decisions. Elected officials aren't expected to know or understand all of the requirements of an issue or concern. It's local government staff's job to provide help and support to understand what they need to know. So in terms of good decision-making, I think it all starts with good

[03:08:43] information. So it's making sure that when a topic comes up, you end up making sure that there's enough time for staff to prepare appropriate notes, briefing notes, and information so that One of the important things in our experience and also working with other communities is, while this is sort of going down, they all should be working together.

[03:09:21] None of these processes should be done in an act. Just like your budget, your CIP, all these things should be connected to the tissue between the priorities and strategies of your community.

[03:09:37] And since the last time we did a strategic plan, uh there's three members of the board for this age and all of them one of their leadership so that's a lot of change you know uh so let's think about that um and now we're going to talk to turn over the county executive briefly just to talk about the strategies for the i'll say quickly and i think this is probably is a news to anyone um here you know we talked

[03:10:15] a bit about it while brian was presenting with the region forward plan with uh mcov The plan was just updated, really more about our physical growth in the county, our strategic plan, and our budget.

[03:10:34] All these documents certainly have an interplay. What I wanted to quickly say is in terms of our strategic plan, we plan to do a work session in February. We actually just secured a third party that's going to assist us in the strategic plan process.

[03:10:51] We heard a bit about it sort of last year, the last strategic planning process didn't necessarily produce sort of key performance indicators that we feel tied in all cases to the sort of elements of a strategic plan.

[03:11:07] We're going to really work hard this time to make sure that we are bringing that discussion to the board and involved in the community. So that third party we will introduce in February and talk about the strategic planning process itself. it. I'll also say, and we mentioned it in the agenda, futures report. So we haven't actually talked about that because that futures report, while it was produced in 2010 and it led us through 2030, it's really more about the quality of life in Prince William County. We are at that point where we need to be talking about whether we want to start another effort to do another

[03:11:46] plan, futures report, to talk about the vision that we have for our community. If the board, and I think we'll have some time to talk about it, or you can indicate to me now, if we want to start the process of coming back and talking through another futures report, then I would love to be in a position to bring some recommendations on how we do that and would be prepared in the coming weeks to say this is how we do that.

[03:12:17] can. The current futures report ends in 2030. And you may remember, for those who are familiar with the futures report, the group of community leaders that started with the government at that time started in 2007. So it took some time for that report to get completed and then get produced, or I should say dispatched, if you will, to the community. So if we're going to do it for 2030, it's probably best that we start sometime soon to formulate at

[03:12:51] least a process that we can use to get us there. So I guess I'll stop there. If there are any questions about kind of, you know, again, futures report, strategic plan, of course we're about to go through the budget process. I'll say what we're, in terms of your priorities and what we hear this afternoon, I know that I'm going to have individual conversations with you in the coming week and a half, two weeks, about the budget itself.

[03:13:21] It would be helpful, and I think this afternoon is going to be useful in you all hearing each other say what's important to you on this term. And so it won't just be coming to me and it reflected out from me to you.

[03:13:36] It will be coming from you directly to your colleagues. And so I'm looking forward to the conversation. And with that, we'll go back over. Any thoughts for your county executive before we get going? Just a walk down memory lane, because I remember this conversation with our strategic plan, and we were talking about all these great things we're going to do, and then the world shut down, right?

[03:14:01] Like, we got into COVID, and they were doing a lot of things via Zoom. So I just recall all that, because we always have to remind ourselves of all the great things that were happening. And we had huge challenges with COVID, the whole civil unrest, and it sent us into more defensive modes than finishing out this process.

[03:14:23] So I won't say that our strategic plan wasn't the best it could be. I think we got the best out of what we could from a situation that was just when we were playing with the hand and we were dealt. Absolutely. Mike, Kenny, I'm sorry, Supervisor.

[03:14:41] I guess I hate to answer a question with a crap question, for you, Chris, but currently, like you said, the future report doesn't get mentioned nearly as much as the comp plan, strategic plan, some of the other guiding documents that we have. Frankly, right now, how much does staff lift from the current futures report in the work that they do?

[03:15:02] Yeah, I think too, so I actually read a bit of the report in preparation for this conversation and the community had it. I mean, in terms of what they thought Prince William would feel like, look like, what the experience would be like in Prince William. They talked about a cultural arts facility.

[03:15:19] We have that now. And they talked about transportation within county, and that is a priority now. I agree with you. I don't know that staff generally references the Futures Report and the work that we do, but it certainly isn't out of line.

[03:15:39] So as I was reading through the report, it's not out of line with where we are now as a facility. So I don't know if that answers your question. It does, because in sort of thinking through the question of should we endeavor to go through another visions, another futures report process, you know, I read through somebody, too, and I read through someone who was involved from the elected official side, some of the organizations that helped inform it.

[03:16:07] I noticed that some organizations, which are now a lot more prevalent in all sorts of venues, weren't involved. And I don't know if they weren't consulted or they just didn't really see the value. But at least for my one, I do see a value in it. But I want to make sure that to the point that it does seem to be a much more community-driven visioning document, we make sure that a much broader set of folks is in that process and especially the public engagement part of it.

[03:16:34] 100% agree. I would say that I wouldn't necessarily recommend that we follow the same process. So if the board asked me today to come back with a recommendation, my recommended process for getting community feedback would be different than what the county did back in 2010.

[03:16:55] Appreciate it. Thank you. Both really good comments. Vic, I would say with what you said, we are seeing an unbelievable pipeline of need for a strategic thing right now because people that always had it in a good planning cycle, the jurisdictions that did, their plans got all messed up because of the next one of them.

[03:17:22] And then when you also bring up civil unrest, it just threw everything off in terms of the planning basis. So people are now, the electives are now catching themselves off with new, fresh plans. And that's exactly what you're going to do when you have your organization in place to take you through that process.

[03:17:43] And to expand on what you said, Kenny, how are these plans used? Are they being used? Do we go through these exercises in the cliche and then put them on the shelf? So you want to write a plan that is really living and actionable.

[03:18:03] And part of it is the KPIs, of course. And part of it is getting the discipline to go back to that plan time after time. Just like you go through the comp plan, you go back to the comp plan and have time to make your land use decisions. What we're going to do today with you is we are going to till the land, till your mines, and take from it, grow from it, your idea of vision for the county, and additionally, what your priorities are.

[03:18:36] This is not death by strategic planning today. We're not duplicating your process. When we get into the exercise for visioning, you will see that what we're going to do is create on what you give us a word map.

[03:18:53] And the more frequently you see a value or a sense of something, the more likely we'll end up in the draft statements that we write for you. We'll draft a couple of ideas for you. We are trying to get people that are involved with visioning for the communities to be sustained in their vision.

[03:19:13] Sometimes just a sense is on you, and we'll go into that in a minute. And then for your priorities, these are not your goal statements at the top of a good strategic plan. Your strategic plan advisor will help you with that. We want to know what's top of mind with you so that we can then take that and figure out what to convey back to you so that you're ready for your strategic planning process.

[03:19:39] And if you think we can do that this afternoon and get back to you, would that work out in your after-action report? So, let's go through a little bit about what vision is. What is vision and how is it used? Let's be more specific. How is it used by organizations or, in your case, county?

[03:19:59] I mean, vision is, you know, how we help to grow, how we see ourselves, and, you know, how are we going to get there, most importantly. I mean, vision is the end state.

[03:20:14] Is the end state? Is the end state. What is it? When it's all said and done, this is what we hope to achieve and look like when it's all said and done. Not that we're going to stop this story forever, but you pick an end date to say this is what you're seeing from others.

[03:20:31] When you read somebody else's vision statement, what are you thinking when you read somebody else's wrong vision statement? It's the descriptor, the staple of who that entity is, what that objective is, and it's who we are.

[03:20:53] Okay. How do you use the vision statement? Is that at the top of the strategic plan? Maybe on the safety of the marketing material? I mean, it can be, and frankly, in some cases, it should be an outward reflection to committee members, business owners, the region, on who we are, where our values are, but how it's used, frankly, for an organization, it's the North Star, right? It's that very, very high level, this is what we

[03:21:28] want to look like by this end date, and then everything, your other guiding documents are then the puzzle pieces that help you get to what that vision is. So it's, even though it's up here, It's foundational for all of the problems.

[03:21:47] So it is what you envision at a date certain. So often when you're doing a vision exercise, which is actually what you're going to do in a little while, you pick a date and you say, what do you envision your future is by that date?

[03:22:05] So you're here now, January 30th, 2024. Where do you want to be in? And then we'll agree on that date, so you're all using the same thing. It's, as Kenny said, it's looking out. It's not, what's your mission? Mission, of course, is how you're going to achieve your mission. Mission statement. We're not working on mission statement. That'll be in your comprehensive, under your strategic plan. But it's looking out. It's, why does Prince William County matter? And it's inspirational, but it's also well-written.

[03:22:42] When we talk about waving a wand, what does your county look like, it's got to be something that you actually could achieve if everything came together and you all moved in the same direction and you have the resources to do it.

[03:23:00] So if you were to go to Wall Street, if you were trying to take your private corporation public, if you were in front of an angel funding organization, you would probably hear their cliché, which is they're turning you down.

[03:23:19] there is not enough vision for us or me to get behind your mission. The vision and the statements, well done, are incredibly powerful. They inspire people to be part of what you are doing. Here's a look at this vision statement.

[03:23:39] That is a well-written vision statement. Does anyone know what organization wrote this on Amazon? Amazon? Amazon. Did they capture what they want you to know about them?

[03:23:58] We added their mission done. All I needed was the online. That's what gave it away. That's what gave it away. I'm not taking credit for this. It was written before I began to work with Charles. But look at that vision statement.

[03:24:14] Does that say what the Wilber Cooper Center is all about? It's tight, right? And it matches up nicely with the mission. Vision is out. The mission is how we're going to accomplish the vision.

[03:24:32] All right. So there are different ways to use a vision statement. It can serve many masters. Here's one that we like. All are out there and count best ambassadors. You're Southern County sales people. You will go to Vaco events and people say, what's going on in Southern County? If you do your vision statement, it's tight.

[03:24:59] You can say, well, we are the blah, blah, blah. We're working towards blah, blah, blah. It's a helpful way for you to be able to picture it. So, before we get started, just to get your minds in the right framework, what we're going to do is we're going to look at what a good elevator space is.

[03:25:16] Because in the end, your vision statement should be a very good elevator space. Your first step towards becoming a networking god!

[03:25:36] Good to see you, buddy! Good to see you! I'm Ruben, right? Yes! I've heard a lot of good things about it! Nice! So, what is it that you did then, exactly? Well, you know, I like merge all my talents together and just give it out to the world, like all my stuff inside me.

[03:25:56] It's like a mixture of stuff, like I'm a creative girl, people's person, obviously. I write a bit of comedy, I present, I get up to stage, talk to people, and I just know together I'm a creative idea for my whole team. That's not an elevator pitch, that's the ramblings of an unprepared...

[03:26:14] It's a sentence that sums up what you do so concisely that you can tell it in the space of the average elevator writer. If you were to write it down, it'd be about 140 characters, which is about a tweet. So, let's try that again, shall we? It's the CEO.

[03:26:31] Good to see you, sir. Good to see you. By a room, right? Yes, yeah. Oh, I feel a little good things about you. Okay, nice. So, what does it mean you do then? I'm a presenter and a comic. I host live events and I make online comedy videos. And I'm also co-founder of individualism.co.uk, which is the UK's leading men's star blog.

[03:26:48] Excellent. I've got a few events coming up in a week. Okay. Do your services. Have you got to come? I do. Yes, I do. There you go. That's up. Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice day. See, preparation has got me some potential work.

[03:27:07] The CEO is a whole company. Did you think I meant something? Remember, God. I'm the nut. All right. We're just about to get into the exercise.

[03:27:23] You are not expected to wear a vision safety. That's good. At all. What we want to know is what concepts should be in that vision state, and then we'll take it back and try to do some good worksmithing for you, and come back to you, and we'll see, perhaps, you can get it that way, or you can give it to your strategic planning process and test it there, if you wish.

[03:27:48] Currently, in your strategic plan, this is how you threaten what you're calling a vision and value statement. And you have a copy of your strategic plan there. Penisler County is a diverse community. Strong and happy, safe, and family with a thriving economy and a protected national market.

[03:28:10] So, it's got some good concepts in there. It's not particularly projecting out into the future. It sounds more like a statement of what you're proud of right now. That's Jay Z. But I wanted you to see what you currently have in writing.

[03:28:26] And then additionally, in your comp plan, you talk about seven key themes as part of your vision. You don't have a statement, per se, as you have themes.

[03:28:42] And these, and I think you have some information on there, a live work, a live work plan, an entire community, a citizen's sense of community, accessible community, infrastructure matches population.

[03:29:01] So definitely not a recent statement. May not even be that top of mind value statement, but that's what you're saying right now are your seven key things. So we're going to have you do a little work so we can get you into that envisioning in the future.

[03:29:18] I just need an agreement on how far in the future you would like to take this. Your comp plan currently takes you to 2014. So would you like to use that date as date certain you're here? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I feel like, and I'll be honest with you, because we have a few things.

[03:29:41] Like we're talking about the future's division report, which is going to go further out. I know our strategic plan is just for, I guess, our four years. The comprehensive plan is to 2040. I'm struggling to say this delicately.

[03:30:03] You know, when I've looked at some of our past work, strategic plan, even looking at the vision themes, I feel like we're just putting words on me. I don't feel like we're really, I mean, these things sound like great marketing buzzwords.

[03:30:18] I think my challenge isn't just looking at the date which we need. I mean, we can go to 2040. But we really have to think about what we want our community to look like and go beyond the marketing words. I mean, live, work, play, a lot of jurisdictions say that. And I want to know when people say live, work, play, what does that mean?

[03:30:34] Where can we really play here? You know, we have some great activities, but what else do we have? We're losing things to other places, like Spotsylvania got into a water park. We didn't get the USDA tennis center. You know, there were concerns about Jiffy Lube Live being sold to data centers.

[03:30:50] know live okay yeah people live here we're a bedroom community work what kind of work do we really have in this community we have telework we don't have major industry here we don't have you know i mean micron is in manassas but who are our major employers outside of the county we're the largest employer here you know what are we really doing to achieve these things so that's something i just want to get off as we're starting to think about this you know to me it sounds like These are some nice buzzwords, but it doesn't feel real.

[03:31:25] So, I mean, since our comprehensive plan goes to 2040, I think that might be a good way to peg things. But, yeah, as I'm reading this, like, let's challenge ourselves to really how do we want to live. 2040, Margaret.

[03:31:41] I think Tom had his hand up first. Oh, Tom, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. You know, as we were kind of going through the comp plan, I went back and I looked at our previous comp plan, and you used the term buzzwords, right? And you can literally date the document based on just the buzzwords because we tend to take what's hot now and build a plan around it.

[03:32:05] And I'm sorry, in 24, nobody's going to be using the same language that we used the last two years. And so in my mind, given the fact that we are here for four years, we can influence effectively, I think, out to about six.

[03:32:22] And given the fact that, you know, given where we are today and what's hot in our minds, what our challenges are, it sort of gives us the opportunity to not create something that will become, as people look back, it's like, wow, this is really old.

[03:32:39] This is really dated. But that gives us something that's manageable, something that we can influence and direct us at least over the next six years. So that whatever is written in that document maintains its relevancy rather than have a document that after about six years it's no longer relevant just because what was hot then is no longer hot.

[03:33:04] And you bring up a good point. This is an iterative process. When you have another election, you might have some new faces. You're going to want to look at this and see if it's really what that particular electives are very interestingly saying about themselves.

[03:33:20] and refresh that name if it's necessary. I hear you saying you're going to be for something like 20, 30, 6 years. 20, 40, it matches up with your comp plan. Any other thoughts about that? Supervisor Frank, I've got Supervisor Frank.

[03:33:36] Yeah, I was just going to point out, so for, just to put this into perspective, it's 2024. This is for 2030. So these are things for what we hope to be by 2030. It's going to take some years to get there.

[03:33:52] We just did our comp plan, which is 2040. It's going to obviously take some years to get there. So I don't know if I guess we should manage expectations with both ourselves and the community that these goals aren't going to happen overnight. To the chair's point, what are we doing to get to those things?

[03:34:10] I would argue that it's not that we're not doing them because we can point to a bunch of projects, particularly in my district, that we've done to achieve a lot of those things. And really other projects across the county. I think the bigger question is, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, is are we marketing?

[03:34:27] How are we marketing ourselves? And I think Christina Wynn is doing a terrific job of bringing Prince William County to a place that we've never been. And quite frankly, achieving a level of respect that Prince William County has never had, particularly from some of the bigger jurisdictions.

[03:34:48] So I would say that along with this discussion of how do we put pen to paper and really create some action items is let's make sure that we're continuing to work towards promoting Prince William County too because that marketing factor is going to be just as important.

[03:35:04] We have a lot of great things throughout the county that is already happening, but does anyone know about it? So using the information priorities that you've set and getting word out after that process. Sure. If I may just add to that, I was on one call several months ago.

[03:35:23] I forgot what it was and who was leading, but it was kind of the same discussion. Like, where do we want Prince William County to be? I think it was like different focus groups. And one example that I used was, you know, everyone else kept using the example of, well, we have two silos, we have, you know, all of that.

[03:35:44] And I'm like, well, that's great, guys. We know that we have two silos. None of my friends in D.C. know what Two Silos is, right? And so how do we promote some of the wonderful things that we have here in the county to where it's known in other parks? And the last example I gave was some of you on Instagram probably know the Instagram account Washington Problems, and they always rag on, like, who lives in Woodbridge?

[03:36:09] Who lives in Prince William County? Where is that? Why are we talking about Manassas? And I always comment, I'm like, please join us for a tour of Prince William County. But that's the joke. It's like, who goes to Woodbridge? So I think we need to, on the marketing side, we have a lot to offer.

[03:36:25] So are we sharing what this county has to offer? That sounds like something when we get into priorities, you have to think about percolating to the top as a priority. Just so we can get out of the vision, which I think is the point of this part of the agenda.

[03:36:45] Madam Chair, would you select a date, even by consensus or not? I will go at 2030. Alright. Your vision statement doesn't say by 2030. This is just so you all can mark a point in time to get your thoughts out about what you're seeing.

[03:37:05] Basically, you're a crystal ball. You're going to highlight what you envision What is the county's purpose? Describe the why of the county, which I think is probably what Mark is talking about.

[03:37:23] Why is Prince William's county? Why is it relevant? Why would you want to visit, spend money here or even move here? And then imagine the inspirational and grounded thing they have.

[03:37:39] Alright, so before Charles gives you an opportunity to pick your teams, let me just show you what I've done. So you don't have to flip back and forth between two plans. There's current vision statement, and there's your sheet plans here in your handout.

[03:37:56] And then all of these themes, talk about compare. And then you've got a couple of sheets of paper. I've had groups before who are teamed up together and choose one versus one versus not the other. So we have two seats here in each one with two different visions.

[03:38:14] Or you might have seen eye to eye with your partner, in which case one is fine. So Charles, you're going to have Margaret who you need to have. You're going to pick the names.

[03:38:30] We'll look at them first. Oh, you're not supposed to look at them? No, look at them now. I didn't see it. All right. Let's pick the first one. Uh-huh. Robert is picking that one for me. What do you mean, trust me? What is it?

[03:38:47] Not convenient. Bottom time. Oh, wow. What? What's that? He'll temper. Right? Honestly.

[03:39:03] Unless she bears fire. Unless she bears fire. All right. We've got a couple more rides. Supervice Bailey in the chair.

[03:39:20] All right. Ooh, right. Right. Right. In the report. In the report. Uh-oh. It's going to be like here. And you and I. I want to believe that. I'm going to go to it. I don't bet. There's no second.

[03:39:56] Do I have to hear what these chairs here so we're not? Yes. Did you say you were my daddy? Not my plate. Angelina. Angelina Jobe.

[03:41:32] You're asking me as chair-pro-town. Yes, ma'am chair-pro-town. Thank you. Mr. Bode is his vice chair, and Ms. Vegas doesn't say chair-pro-town, so she's her.

[03:41:53] Ah, that's okay. I'm getting her on this. Chair-pro-town. We'll do that for now. I'll apologize. I'm sorry, that's true. I don't care.

[03:42:10] You don't apologize to me. You guys are good. We're good. I put, yeah, I mean, the word. Check it in and make sure you guys are doing it. I'm not quite sure. I'm being distracted. I need to separate these pictures.

[03:42:28] I need to separate these pictures. Just distract us.

[03:42:29] I'm just going to pick up these two.

[03:43:35] You really feel like that? We are going to be assistive. We are going to be assistive. Oh, we are going to be assistive. Individual. Okay, individual.

[03:43:51] Alright, so we'll be interested. Yeah. Yeah, we're at least we can actually, we can at least know you're in your bus on here. But we can at least know you're in your bus on here. And it's still so bad. And in jobs, I find to keep medical care assistive.

[03:44:08] We're the social workers. We're the social workers. We're going to just do this. That's what I have. There's sports games. There's sports games. Yeah, there's no name. Sports and entertainment. Yeah, because honestly, I think...

[03:44:24] Okay, so... I mean, you all have that on the east end. Like, nobody's business. What's his name? He's always messaging me with the Arts Council. Yeah, you do.

[03:44:39] No, it's not. Do you see how many invitations we get Do you have any invitations we get with all their shows and plays and that's arts? No. That is jeans! That's Tom's District. Okay, so we agree with you.

[03:44:55] Hey, I don't know. What? You have all the art. We're stealing things. Because you have the Hilton Performing Arts in your district. Which is what you do. We have a gym, but we have a gym. Huh? We have more such like the arts, like the plays and the concerts.

[03:45:14] I think it comes from meetings and all their elections. And then we have to win with all of us. This is a good event. This is a good event. And I think we should keep doing better in this situation. I like that being that we have a highly involved citizen.

[03:45:32] No, we have a highly involved citizen. Yeah, they're very minor subset. What are we talking about? I think that's what we're patients are we're getting to touch on. I'd say we need to be able to say something like we've been growing. Yeah, we're growing. Or experience. So, you can't have a subject for it. It's not a matter of that to do it for you.

[03:45:58] It means we need more can you rate that people just literally like what about us? We're here at the paper, these are people who vote for a voter. This is what we didn't say, that you didn't say that. Just get in real quick. Your elected officials are important. Even if you don't want to go out, it's going to be right in jail.

[03:46:17] We always have this 24/7. We don't care. We don't have a lot of action. We can't based on where we are now today. They were just saying, you know, back in 2017, 2018, the age of significant...

[03:47:03] Well, Kimmy, you all can feel the same. We have a lot of people who need to have their safety. We're the only one of our students who need to develop an action that you need to do the role that they don't need to do. It's about to work only. Oh, we're in today. So she's going to work only. It's about to work only.

[03:47:20] that we agree that he's not agreeing that he's not agreeing that he's not agreeing that he's not saying whatever he should have like.

[03:47:38] It's working toward the rock. What? I don't think you've been thinking right. I would just replace the remarkable thing, which I believe is this thing.

[03:47:54] Anyway, we don't have any of those. We don't have any of those. And then do we just kind of have individual class? Well, we might want to change this, though. That's nice.

[03:48:36] Yeah, it's interesting that all schools made together and that was a good idea. Well, I mean, I like the photo of the university, content, but it was awesome. It's a great work together, the community takes advantage of the experiences, talents, and assets.

[03:48:53] So, it's all about your non-concepts, and I can't actually take advantage of the people. Yeah, I'll just say a picture of my school school, so it doesn't matter where school is. Yes, it's not good, the community-based support is the kind that has data-based initiatives and things like that.

[03:49:09] What's our field goal is working? I don't know how to make a note of that. But it's not a problem with the name, but we need to have it now. That means, maybe it's for 2030, right, just a social media.

[03:49:40] That was what, 20 years ago? Was that where it was? Where it was? Yeah, where it was. Yeah, where it was. Beat and surprise cake. Okay, so we're trying to be able to go into it. Yeah. All right, so, yeah, I'm like, you know, so this is what you do.

[03:50:00] It's just, you know, it's a good taste. Well, actually, there's one thing I would add to this. How's it going to be able to all make it to the end of mobility? So, if I had... But here, at you, it's going to be you that ability to love.

[03:50:18] That's right, we have a lot of folks that have mobility issues. No, I'm not going to be able to be able to house it. It's an awful mess on the floor. I don't think it's thirsty, but I'm just thinking I'm going to come. I'm going to try to cheat the code.

[03:50:33] I got to do all that right. I'm going to do all that right. I'm going to do all that right. Okay, so now, I'm going to do all this right. We're going to do all this right. We're going to do all this right. So I got to change the description. That's not the question.

[03:50:52] So, when I read, I read on it. When I read on it, I'm going to look like this is a dopey thing. Why are you guys looking at us? We're thinking. It doesn't go to the bathroom. She's making faces of the street. It doesn't go to the bathroom. Time to stop.

[03:51:08] Friends, friends, there's no rides behind me. We've known this all the way. We didn't know that because we didn't want to do that. Because we didn't have to put it at the streets for many homes. Where they live, a bus should go. I know you do.

[03:51:25] What do you really do? So that's our bus ride. Now we know this bus ride. We're putting these in the camp. Oh, I don't know. We're in the north. Well, they don't want to go out. But she says they need to do better.

[03:51:41] Which is true. Oh, y'all just had that too? We actually need to do better in the eastern too. We definitely did. You know, we have, what was the term we used? It's like, you know, the last mile. Yeah. We got buses that can't get into these, we've got deep communities that buses can't go that deep into because of how tight that, you know, we're out in homes.

[03:52:01] Buses ain't going down to the area. I mean, he was just waiting for an appointment. So, so, we got deep communities in the middle of the east and the buses don't go. I'm sorry. The walls do work. The walls? No, we're not building a corner.

[03:52:18] We're building a club. Ask Michelle, walls work. Look at this. He wrote this as he keeps, he keeps hanging and picking it out. Oh, do you have it? Yeah. Whoa. Whoa.

[03:52:52] Anyway, so five years, she's going to take you. You know, I'll be right here somehow. I'm going to get another coupon. Yeah, I'm going to take you alone.

[03:53:10] Five, six, five, nine, partnerships. It's a success. Get that camera on my face. Get that camera on my face. I'll tell you, I didn't talk to you. We did it the wrong direction. One of our groups wants to do more time, so you can do that.

[03:53:28] I can't believe you didn't need more time. You could even agree with that. *laughter* *laughter* This is how that's Dan Woll? *in the background* I mean...

[03:53:52] Okay, leading the way, let's get to that. *in the background* I mean the hell? Can I say anything?

[03:54:11] Well, can I say anything about that? Okay, a little bit. Thank you. This is what we're talking about. The technical piece is, the other latter performance are really in extreme.

[03:54:27] I should say, "re-gidden and playing" Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, do you want to change the way to regional? Regional, regional, regional media? Regional, regional, regional media. I like that.

[03:54:43] Everything. We need to accept that we're a part of the world, and that's the problem for us to catch up with the world, and we should get it, and they still want to fuck us, and I'm sorry, we have no honor that we can protect the world, and so we've got to do that, you know, and we love you from the world, because times and locations and areas, you know, that's the thing, I'm not telling you, I'm not disrespecting you, Did you move here to the home?

[03:55:20] Is there a park or still? This area was like... No, it's a park. It's a great park. I hope they get out of here and see the...

[03:55:36] In a pro-tem seat or something. I have the power that I really... Stop! I cannot. You want me to keep it?

[03:55:53] Yes. We should see it then.

[03:55:57] So just adding a place of learning from K through, we mentioned it in the conference

[04:09:30] plan, lifelong education, but I think we need to highlight it as a learning, as a key element to what we do as a community. So I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you.

[04:09:47] I may have to refine some of that. Well, as you did your narrative, I also jotted down some things. Okay, good. Anything you want to add, Bob? Just briefly. Okay. You know, we went back through each section of the Comprehensive Plan's vision, and it's one thing to have a vision it's one it's not quite another thing to state what's not true so if you're going to have a vision statement or seven key things you need to establish whether

[04:10:21] those are existing circumstances or whether those are your desired outcomes and the language in here is horrible. We scratch through most of it. You know, you have to be realistic in your presentation of what the circumstances are. Thank you. Let's see, Andrea. I kind of feel like I'm going to laugh, but I will. So, constantly agree on, we talked about image, you know, and yes, we don't have a

[04:10:59] great image. People don't know who we are or they don't necessarily like what they think we are. that's something we have to work through and so we said for image you know we need to what's great about us is that we're a diverse county we're growing and we want to make ourselves look like yes we're diverse we're growing we're vibrant and we're energized to become a leader in the region so that's how we would like to see ourselves um we would like to see a greater emphasis on revitalization i'm sorry um and for us that is focusing more on small businesses and focusing on our small area plans that we've created.

[04:11:37] You know, obviously we need big businesses, we need like a commercial tax base, but as you guys have said, we need diversify, it can't just be data centers. And also Andrea was talking about, because you know, she's done work on the crisis receiving centers, making sure that we're using targeted social services resources for the community to help, better help our community. So that's what we got.

[04:11:59] Thank you very much. Thank you. So we sort of just went one through seven, kind of like some of the other groups.

[04:12:18] And we took a much more optimistic look than the Bob and Tom group. Did you say optimistic? Yes. No, no, no. It wasn't perfect, but we made tweaks.

[04:12:36] So, for example, the first one, we said, hey, sports and entertainment need to be uplifted a lot. Because to the point, for us to really be seen as a destination, a place you drive to and not through, you'll need to know that there's actual fun things to do in Prince William County.

[04:12:53] To say that you're going to play here, but what does that mean? What do you talk about? It's fun, sports, entertainment. We have and we give rise to a lot of great athletes in the high school and college level, but we don't really talk about that much. So that's because, frankly, we don't have a lot of actual public facilities to help highlight that.

[04:13:13] So that's one thing we talked about. We talked about expanding what it means to be an active, engaged citizen. Because right now, you know, it's great that we have engaged citizens, but are we not hearing from a broader swath of people? Because when you talk about engaged citizens and a growing diverse community, that means that the engaged citizens should also be growing and expanding in their participation as well.

[04:13:37] not just the same subset of people that are engaged all the time. We should be seeing more voter participation, not stagnant. We should be seeing more people, or we're going to be talking about a broader variety of things, not just the same folks every single time. So it's that growing sense of engagement that diversifies as our community does.

[04:13:55] Sense of community. We didn't have a lot to change there, but we did talk about the fact that, you know, we have, as mentioned, Stonewall Jackson High School soon. Stonewall Jackson High School, no longer Stonewall Jackson High School, so just nomenclature there is important.

[04:14:10] But the idea that diversity is a strength that we need to embrace and benefit the community, we agree with that. So we didn't really make any tweaks on that. Accessible community, we like that, but we also wanted to add to the housing aspect of it, ability levels. Because, yes, we should have access to housing of all income levels, but all ability levels, too, Because we have folks with disabilities, we have an aging population, we have folks that have a cross-swath of ability levels, and we have far too many homes that you need to be able to go up and down stairs in order to access.

[04:14:45] We do a lot better now when it comes to public accommodations of our government facilities and even our businesses, but housing, frankly, should be accessible, too, to all people. So we talked about that. Vic talked a lot about, in terms of number five infrastructure, what that means.

[04:15:01] And to him, and I agree with this, means robust community transit. That means omni-ride buses. How can we make sure that no matter where you live in the county, there's some way to access an omni-ride system? So we talked about some places just frankly don't have a bus route at all right now. We can expand on that.

[04:15:18] But also there's places that have deep communities, these larger, older neighborhoods, and that have narrow roads. I know Sarasar Franklin jumped in on this a little bit. How do we get those folks connected, that connection network? Is it first mile, last mile, is it paratransit? All those things in order to get people more connected and infrastructure from a standpoint.

[04:15:37] How do we move people without being auto-centric? Partnerships for Success, we didn't really add anything there. Just the idea that as our community grows and becomes more diverse, so should our partnerships. So should the taxi groups that we're looking out to reach out to, to bring in, to be part of that.

[04:15:54] Because we know that government can't solve everything. Well, how do those partners help us do that? And the last one, leading the way, we like the idea of Prince William County becoming a regional leader, where we were sort of absent from some of this conversation in the past. So we just wanted to change it from leading the way to regional leader to encapsulate that fact, uplift the fact that, frankly, second largest locality in Virginia, and frankly in this really sweet spot between North Virginia Corps and the rest of Virginia, We have a unique role to play where we're connecting those two types of the region together.

[04:16:28] And to the point that Madam Chair made up, getting data on Stafford, Falkier, Culpepper, we should be that connection point, that gateway from those two sides of Virginia and really be a leader in that regard. Did I miss anything? Nope, you covered it all. I just want to give you two points for me because all of those are great.

[04:16:48] My biggest and main point is that, as Kenny said, for us to be the second largest county in the county of Virginia and the largest minority, majority county, I don't know if this percentage is true, but I know it's high.

[04:17:04] Probably about 80% of our people do not vote and don't play in this process. So the people we're talking about that's about this, the citizens who speak and the citizens who represent, I'm pretty sure you're missing that you consider that in that group that doesn't have a voice that comes in here and that's the kind of that it looks like that we are trying to carve the future for.

[04:17:26] And I'm just going to say this last thing. I don't have a problem with being dangerous in the capital world. I do have a problem with how do we turn that off. I do think it is enough and we're there now at some point and that we need to figure a way to shut that off so we can move on from that.

[04:17:42] But what's here is here because the buildings that are happening now are buildings from 2019 and prior boards. All that we did four years ago is not going to happen in three, four, five, ten years. And the vision that we're talking about now, literally this is starting to take shape from a previous board, previous to the previous board of this board, if you get what I'm saying.

[04:18:07] So I think when we look at this and we're calling it out, you know, those folks weren't bad people. They didn't have bad vision. They didn't have horrible words. What they wrote up was perfect for the time. And now we're here to look at whatever the time we're trying to look at because we're still going to be falling in line with decisions that were made 10 years ago.

[04:18:26] So I'll stop there. And you make a good point. What you put in place now, in your term, people will be dealing with or enjoying in the future. Or not. All right, let's hear from the last group. Okay, so we discussed each of the seven.

[04:18:47] And for number one, we agreed that Prince William County to specifically recreation. So we do believe that the county has a lot of resources for people. And overall, we agree that it's a great county to live, work, and play.

[04:19:05] There are three parts of the county, as we know, the western end, the mid-county, and the eastern end. And we think that each part is uniquely equipped to handle the various needs for a diverse community. For number two, we definitely agree that we have citizens.

[04:19:24] They have shown us that over and over again, even voting. So we do believe that this county has an active and engaged citizenry. For number three, so what we discussed was actually not everyone agrees that they feel a sense of community.

[04:19:48] And then we also discuss that we're putting out to the group, is this something that's even achievable? And so what does that look like? What does that mean? Is that even measurable? So that's something just for the group to consider. For number four, having accessible communities, we agree actually that there needs to be more attention on this particularly. We talked about on the eastern end of the county how it's more accessible than certain parts of the western end and how we need to continue to have that as a growing and evolving

[04:20:22] discussion. Number five, we just agree that we need to continue to make as a goal to have infrastructure match the population growth and then for number six partnerships equal success I put sure here for us because yes we agree with that if what we talked about is our different sides have different stakeholders and groups that we rely on for information and in perspective and And then for number seven, again, we leading the way.

[04:21:00] Of course, we all want Prince William County to be a leader. We think we are a leader in many ways. But again, is this achievable? How will we measure Prince William being leaders in certain areas? So that's another kind of discussion we pose to the group.

[04:21:19] A lot of great stuff here. Good work. Thank you. Thank you.

[04:21:26] So, back with you all to see if we have captured your thoughts and if you decide where you

[04:22:04] go with it during your strategic planning process. The last bit of work will be to identify your key or high-level priorities. Some people use the word goals. You don't have to use that word. And you don't have to be knowledgeable in the science of strategic planning.

[04:22:26] One of the jurisdictions we recently worked with, there was actually a professional strategic planner, as one of the electeds was a professional strategic planner. He was getting really frustrated. He was like, that's not a goal, that's an objective. No, no, that's a tactic. We'll take it all.

[04:22:44] We will be able to take the spaghetti and organize it into those things. So if you ran, we have a jurisdiction where the bypass around it, it was a hot issue. And one of the people that had been elected, that was the sole reason why they ran.

[04:23:03] It was the sole reason why they were serving. So guess what their top priority was? The bypass. Exactly. The bypass. On the other hand, other people have other ideas for that, so what we want to do is we want to get enough groupthink going that we're going to expand the groups a little bit, but not enough that we're just having eight talking about their ideas.

[04:23:25] That's for later. That's during your strategic planning process. So anyway, let's make sure we are... Does everyone feel comfortable with the word priority? That it's broad enough so that you feel you've got the freedom to think about that and discuss?

[04:23:43] Here are the priorities, the priority categories that came out of the last strategic plan. You are not bound by these. But, as someone said earlier in the day, you don't just take a strategic plan and throw it out all that good work that you did back to that.

[04:24:02] The only time you just totally get rid of the strategic plan is when, A, circumstances change so dramatically that you need a brand new one. Like the recession of 2008, which totally disrupted local government because finances went out the door and you had to reprioritize all of your spending.

[04:24:21] spending. That would be a reason to throw out a plan. Another would be if the population of your citizens said, "We don't like your vision in this county, and we don't like what you're doing, and we're going to throw all of you out, so when all you were new, you need a new strategic plan," because the citizens decided they didn't like where you were going. That's not the case here.

[04:24:42] So, we just put this up here, and you have copies. I'd like you to take those copies with your group in New York. This is to stimulate some thinking. If your top priorities aren't up there or all of them aren't, there's freedom to add.

[04:24:58] There's freedom to subtract. We'll be looking for that in the work that we produce. So get out of your strategic plans. And then this will also help because your strategic plan is not going to be written.

[04:25:16] It will help your county executive and his staff look at things in ways that you might want to guide them in. for the budget so you may be talking about some of these when we get this back to you for budget plan uh and possibly your staff so get out of your strategic plans charles is going to help

[04:25:56] You might want to move to a table. It's easier for me to talk. Thank you. Pick one. Pick one out and we'll have whoever it is.

[04:26:15] I suppose you want to talk. I think you're all going to be a great idea. I should like. Thank you. *laughs*

[04:31:00] the least hasn't provided for the lack of a drug, seven buckets, he only gave six, can then force them to spend the money that's allocated to each of those buckets on the things that are covered by those buckets, the answer is no, not in your one.

[04:31:19] I think that looks great. We have all the purples, all the black. If the school does not spend the money the way that we have appropriated and allocated Allocated appropriately, appropriately, you wear one shoes, a stick comes in your tip, you need to do this, you need to dance that much.

[04:31:37] You took money, you would be exploring, even the board, if you don't wear your serious hours, therefore, we're not going to give you less money as much. That should be an important priority, wouldn't it? Absolutely. There has to be, how can we fix it? So is this for a priority? What are your key priorities?

[04:31:54] What's your priority? What's the choice? What's the choice? What constitutes a party, we cannot have a constitution. It says "turns" look at it again. No, it says "constitutes".

[04:32:09] What is the same show? All three of you are off. What? What is "constitutes" a party? That's not true. What counts?

[04:32:25] What constitutes a party? What constitutes a party? That's what I'm saying.

[04:33:00] It's amazing stuff. Woo! It's not quite the path of it. Yeah!

[04:33:05] I'm sorry.

[04:34:09] Because the next door is just going to pop this door for me. You have a whole of an active adult community. And that's not that hard for me to connect those two other doors. That means that you're going to be a fight. And I don't think you're going to be a fight. And I don't think you're going to be a fight. I don't think you're going to be a disconnect.

[04:34:25] I'm not sure why that's a great thought. I don't think you're going to be a disconnect. I don't think you're going to be a disconnect. That's the best way it is. So we're trying to get a true argument. Just get creative. Because there is a possibility of a community where you have a lot of things happening within your area that supports our elder.

[04:34:54] Someone had to think of it and say, "Let's not do this." They'd be chatting with us. And I'll be honest with you.

[04:35:09] We probably have the core and housing. They're planning issues. Particularly with DABs. So there's any of which they operate. It's just all of these.

[04:35:25] We went into a, when I was on the school division by the committee, the guild announced, they had a client, and the planning was like, so he was like, go back and go, and we're like, what does this mean?

[04:35:44] Well, that's what we call the money for all the projects. What? There was no, there was no, there was no building. So when you think about housing, and we look at that, if you don't meet this top number, they're just going to take a bid on housing at the different .

[04:36:14] And that's going to continue to grow out as people are getting down to housing. And it becomes this individual thing that no one can afford. Because those are the deepest pockets, so the way I'm trying to communicate it with developers is that you need to get us a thousand programs.

[04:36:39] and then try to target that lethal 60% of the viruses and activities of course.

[04:36:56] Now I'm not sure if there are more people that need to transfer. that you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be like, you

[04:37:34] That's where, like right now, everybody has a sort of a Subway corridor, but then you've got you can go back to these guys and you're now looking for local housing. Amazon's killing all of that. Amazon's killing all of that, so that it's not necessarily, again, where it's a close price in it, and you're still at the train station, so that it's like more of a freaking partner, and that's where it's not trying to call sea change, and press it on there to It's the baby.

[04:38:06] Yeah, but you can still do this wrong. It's the one of two short hits. We're going to . You've either got it. Too many guys. I thought she's done wrong with it. All right.

[04:38:33] I'm still going to go out this morning. You know, they used to be off on the data centers. Now, until they had that $16 million. Now, this year, we're going to have 100 million dollars to get a stabilization point, because they see what's coming.

[04:38:51] Because right now, here's a lot of housing coming. Well, now, it's hard for them to do. It's not going to be the same, because the data center industry has changed its model. Talk to what's a specimen on a thousand houses, and the way they're doing it reduces the number of purge, and the work is that the thing they need to be talking about is because of the help of that in, A, my operation, I require them to use an operation, I don't think they're going to move together, right?

[04:39:30] I'm going to be talking about this one hour, but if you're using 40,000 more feet per A/I, you don't have to get billy or putting that on your foot.

[04:39:54] And the other thing is, how do we prevent you from getting to that? At least the first thing you really want, one of the big challenges is how do I re-identify, or what do we do, do we have things in place, and that's why we don't like it.

[04:40:10] There's a problem with the data center. It's not a problem. Yeah, that's once we do crisis. Right, and so everything's going to ramp up exponentially in the future. Because it's still the age of 10, it should be like, you know, it should be like that, but it's actually a big list.

[04:40:35] I saw a lot of them from trying to be resilient, but we have to fix the next big thing. And they don't want chocolate at me. You know, it's not going to be dope. I was thinking of that.

[04:41:11] They do. And now, with the hospital, they need to do more hospital time. I've got an opportunity to buy that. The box is going up here.

[04:41:26] There's 10%. So, we have to take a look at that. You say, oh, we got a hospital. Oh, we don't have really safe. So, you can't understand that. Because they're not taking the pill. Fire up for me. So, I mean, you still didn't. It's even down to, we've got to believe it.

[04:41:44] We've got to believe it. And then you find yourself like, you know. He hasn't, he hasn't fixed me off like the one, two cheap cigarettes.

[04:42:00] He came out and irritated me. What do you want to do? How do you overcome that? Keep hiring. Yes. But I do want to help close under that.

[04:42:18] You need to find ways to be a little more. I'm going to say physical, not in this market. And how do we get to go out there? I don't know. Actually, from the top down, we had replaced everybody.

[04:42:36] We only kept it. We really wanted to go into that. And we did that at the height, we couldn't have picked the worst time we fought.

[04:42:53] We put an ad out, we put an ad out, and we put an ad out expecting to get territory feud.

[04:43:06] I mean, you can get one military base, two military base, and they literally support you. We asked them all to say through the universalist, through the rule of interview. Why are you coming here? Why would you want to come here? We're all hands over takes care of the Arizona and the Arizona and the Arizona. We're going through the basis of the military. And as long as we're universally, we're wanting to go back to policing. And you don't want to worry about getting a shot at the toilet. We're wanting to write to murder.

[04:43:36] It's like, okay, what if we don't want to search the news down to a larger jurisdiction? We don't have to do it. We can go from Lisa Mannington to Prince Quentin to Dublin. It's literally sent through a million problems forward in the trust that we need to alter it to create this power. You're not going to do that in between.

[04:43:54] Right? Dynamic is different. You ride your bike for 12 years. You need to have some beer. Take a ride. You have some beer. That's about it. You just have a beer.

[04:44:05] So, once we have the notification, get everything connected, and we do not necessarily have to be inside, trying to communicate with us.

[04:44:40] So if you're, you know, we have a community of folks who have a community of folks who have a community of folks who are interested in, to have a community of folks who are interested in, to have a community of folks who are interested in, to have a community of folks who are interested in, to have a community of folks who are interested in.

[04:46:35] Yes, I was just going to say, that was pretty obvious. Give me my thoughts. So it goes pretty fast?

[04:46:56] I can tell you this, but it handles the way you use. There's no, there's no good care. But it's kind of a transom that's going on. What is that? What is that? Where are they going to build it? 28?

[04:47:11] I don't know, I just, you know, I see it.

[04:48:25] Yeah, I know it's this one and you hit the head of what we do about it is the main... Because it would be a good start for people to get this wrongish way of doing this. So the services, is this, you know what it's like. It's like a worm. It's like a war. It's like a war. It's like a war. It's like a war.

[04:48:42] The bounty hunting, the ball, it's a huge battle. So, I love the criminal damage. Oh, it's more criminal. I mean, they made it in Sydney a lot of people. Oh, yeah. It just moved into the natural sector and created a whole new system.

[04:49:03] Right, which is where we're dealing with the markets. At least when we move the old grid, we've got the management chain. We've got the management chain. And then you can't get past that because we told them long not congested.

[04:49:18] Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. We want to change. I want to change. I want to change. I mean, we should come out. And then we need that. And then we need that.

[04:49:34] We don't want to eat right now. It's a try. So, what are the other guys? You have to fuck them. Use that. I can't. We've got the little small. I can't do it.

[04:49:51] Anyway, that's not water. You want to spray water. You want to spray water. That's a piece of stuff. Then we can get some water. When I'm looking at it, it's like, it's reality.

[04:50:07] We haven't seen a tangent. We saw a little bit of an hour. We just lie. We just lie. Well, I, I actually see John, which lasts back to ten years since it's not too often here.

[04:50:34] That whole trip was never done, it's an issue. One of them, I really don't have a seat. They don't, because they weren't too big, but they're not dead. The whole I-66, they're going to have these computer walks. Right, they're race car, they're race car locks.

[04:50:51] And they're race car locks, that's the key to an enemy. Oh, yeah, they don't have a seat. They can't get the seat on the whole storage box. And I've said, "Success or happy that we should remain as a state government."

[04:51:09] I got it. It's about 18 miles. It's for you to laugh. 'Cause it's talking to these neighborhoods. You've got a problem again. I don't know if you're seeing it.

[04:51:26] You're having a barbecue. Why? Okay, I don't want to do that in the next five. So they don't have to break this up. Actually, I don't know what's going on. Or do you have that relationship safe? Uh, a group in this last fall. She's the elevation. He's trying to answer something.

[04:51:41] I have an idea. You know, who's got this in the last month? I'm just going to see if it kind of goes in here. Like, that's where I wanted him to do a 18-year-old a lot of events. It's like, "We don't need to follow you." That's what I'm saying, "We don't need to follow you." But, see, now, it's that process.

[04:51:57] So when we go to the stage and say, and this is what they can provide to the workers with person tax, and they know how many, how many people can't afford. And, if they don't, this is common. One of the things that I love that we've put up now with partners with them, they created a huge passport for the person, which meant that if you're a whole family, and if you're a whole family, you know what I mean?

[04:52:24] I can't go all for it. And so when we talk about how do we make it more accessible, it would fit up in the plan to do it.

[04:52:39] But doing it for the kids that aren't shooting. I knew about the compensation and the stuff, Visa beat 95, and if we ever make it part of the same plan. Now you've got to remember, there's a similar thing that originally was the Chippenham Bar years and years ago.

[04:53:05] Less than 10 years ago, they could use accident trails over in Texas, but I'm sorry. I just decided to belly up, but we haven't had to be on control.

[04:53:21] Because they had different nations, different accounts, and they had promised them for women that they ever took it off, and then they would eliminate the tolls, and they used to be in Richard Hughes and the Trump House, and I grew up, but you're not controlling. You're building relationships, and why are you rid of the tolls?

[04:53:38] They know that much. Oh, that's fine, right? I said, "I don't know what's going on this long." But, Georgetown's office? Yeah. You know, Georgetown's office? Mm-hmm.

[04:53:46] But it's not just this board that's the board, and by this board I mean

[04:54:38] That's the reason I made it back in, "I'm serious about what's wrong with it." They made it the rest of the country. God puts us on the same way, "I get what they're doing, I get what they're doing, I get what their lives are."

[04:54:55] You know, we're doing one, I'm X percent percent percent of our lives, and then a portion of 5 percent percent ignores their efforts in the first day. You know, "Harley, do you only get this? Well, let me just get different. And they just change them again, so they can absorb it against you."

[04:55:14] Yeah. But that's what we need to get to the culture. What? You're serious. It's a good thing. Yeah. We don't care. We don't care. It's a good thing.

[04:55:30] Because they're the old music. I'm sorry.

[04:56:01] Yeah. They weren't seen.

[04:56:05] I didn't see any of those.

[05:01:41] segments of population for homeless is baby boomers.

[05:09:35] So affordable housing is certainly a challenge for a lot of our senior citizens. And so we think that should become a priority. And just in general, housing, you know, we do need an absolutely diversified portfolio of housing to meet all economic levels.

[05:10:00] When we were doing the comp plan, it said we had a 35,000 unit deficit at 120% of AMI. If we don't address that, it's just going to put price pressures on all the groups below. So we've got to be very intentional at not just building the housing at the top level, but also ensuring that we're incorporating housing at all economic levels through development.

[05:10:25] We talked about healthy and active communities. You know, there's the health side, but there's the physical health. There's a mental health that continues to be a challenge. And leveraging outdoor recreational activities within our community to help focus more on the prevention side rather than, you know, just we have the crisis receiving center, but we, you know, if we can address it, you know, before we get to crisis, you know, just kind of looking at that from a healthy and active community perspective.

[05:11:01] it. We talked about safe and secure communities. Again, we can wait until just somebody commits a crime, and then we can have them arrested, or we can continue to walk that back a little bit, try to get ahead of that through a developing whole government approach to target areas within our community that are at risk, and be very intentional about that.

[05:11:29] We talked about a place for business investment. I think we've shared a little bit about the need for diverse businesses and ideas, and then we talked about economic development to include agribusiness and agritourism as a priority in there as well.

[05:11:47] And that's all we have. That was two and a half minutes. I'm timing you. I'll let you know right now. Yeah, you went a little over that, but that's a... 2.40. 2.40. That was a pretty good guess.

[05:12:03] Yeah, they did take her a couple seconds for time, so I think you're... So, in our discussion, we talked about quality education and workforce, and we talked about how we need a workforce development, a more enriched workforce development program in the high school with specific skills and funding for partnerships with organizations within the community that can provide that.

[05:12:39] We talked about establishing a summer job and internship program. I think the county exec is honing in on that, so we need to really, you know, make that happen. Make that happen because we want our kids to feel like they're part of the community also and to enhance what they have while they're in college or while they're in high school.

[05:12:59] We also talked about the revenue share agreement, and we talked about the opportunity for us to review that and look at the priorities as it relates to our teachers and our guidance counselors and what the needs are there. Because the revenue share agreement is a tool that we use to make sure we're supporting our schools, but there's many more opportunities that we need to look at as we grow our youth population.

[05:13:26] And then we talked about the potentiality and talking to our school board about having year-round school. And that will present an opportunity for increased salaries for our teachers and keeping them in the county and them not going to other surrounding counties to get jobs, whatever.

[05:13:45] And then we talked about building a stronger relationship with our school board to understand exactly what the non-traditional needs are as our population grows. I'm going to make one part, the year-round school possibility, that was just a thought for English language learners.

[05:14:02] Oh, yeah, yeah. Not everyone. Because a lot of them are learning English as they're taking other classes, which puts a lot of additional pressure on them. Perhaps there's a way we should break that up, so that's what I think. And we saw that in Brian's presentation today, so thank you, Madam Chair. And then the next category we looked at was the public safety and secure communities.

[05:14:20] And we talked about the possibility of implementing gun safety practices and what do they look like. And then Madam Chair mentioned that the clerk of the court provides gun locks, and so that's something that maybe the community is not aware of, and that could help us in terms of gun safety.

[05:14:42] We talked about better resources for additional staff for our police department and our fireman department and our emergency management department. They've been recruiting, but what does that look like in terms of actually supporting them, helping them to do so?

[05:14:58] We talked about having town hall engagement. I know that's something that most of us do now, but back in the day, that wasn't happening a lot. And so it has proven to be a great tool for our districts. And so that could either be virtual or in-person. But is there a funding mechanism attached to that?

[05:15:18] But looking more at our social media and what that looks like, even with paid advertising, what does that look like? Just improving or enhancing that. And then lastly, addressing the panhandling situation that we have on both sides of the county collectively.

[05:15:34] Am I almost done? You're over. No, she's not in five days. Thank you. You got a 147. 147. She said I'm going to leave it alone. Okay, communication. We talked about that. Establishing a communication slash marketing tool to tell the true story and engage our constituents, Whether the news is bad, good, or ugly, and not just having a one-sided perspective of how we communicate via media with the community.

[05:16:03] And then we need a robust, stronger, more enhanced, more a reflection of our county by establishing a marketing campaign to put us on the map as to where we want to be. And I think that's all.

[05:16:20] That's it. Is that it? Yep. Healthy Human Services. No, it's not. No, it's not. Health and Youth Services, doing more with the fentanyl and opioid education for our youth, more life skills and education from social services for our youth, and then looking at transitional programs for homeless and our veterans.

[05:16:41] Now I'm done. All right. Last group. Mr. Robert. Oh, I will be quick. We only have three. We do. And they're very, very short. Everybody's priority number one, education.

[05:16:58] And we have consensus revenue-sharing agreement needs to be either abolished or highly amended, realizing that it would like them to result in more money for the schools, but will have the opposite impact on county services budget and education, and the school board need more oversight on our part and accountability on theirs.

[05:17:25] Public safety. We only have three words. change pd policy question mark yeah it means change our focus and potentially change what our policy our shift from what we're doing now to what we think we need to do to address problems county-wide. That's going to be a group discussion. And then the last one is transportation. Essentially comes down to shifting the focus from rail to bus

[05:18:04] We don't like where we're at.

[05:18:24] Sure, so I'll elaborate on that a little bit. We talked about the fact that crime is an issue and that right now Now, there are challenges when it comes to police staffing or need to really address police staffing.

[05:18:42] But also, frankly, what we're working on, but also from a policy standpoint, are there challenges to what the police can and can't do? Is that affecting their ability to help curb and prevent crime?

[05:18:58] If that takes looking at some of the police policies, that was something we talked about as well. I know just a scenario, you know, we're talking about all of these vacant community lots we have now. What they're useful now is basically these little hot rock cars that do 360 donuts, but the police can't touch them.

[05:19:19] So even if they go there and see this, they just kind of fly off into the night because you can't really do anything about it. So what can we tighten to try to, you know, give our police a little bit more authority to enforce some of these petty crimes, you know, that you're seeing that, you know, we've kind of given a hands off approach, you know, you know, sitting at a red light watching five cars blow a red light, but the police car will go after them because, you know, it's not good policy.

[05:19:50] And I get that because it's through neighborhoods where people are still driving. So somehow, something and whatever we can do to help our police force in some of these crimes that we're seeing, that people aren't taking serious these days anymore.

[05:20:06] Got it. Thank you very much for coming. That's all. All right. Wait, did we move? Nope, nope. That's serious, right? Is that it? I can't be the timekeeper moving forward.

[05:20:28] I thought you had three minutes and that's why she went over. You still had two because she said five. Before we wrap up, just a quick thank you and good-bye.

[05:20:46] Can you help us talk to you more about while they are here in the meeting? No, I mean, I think, I know that this has been a lot, we've covered a lot the past, you know, a couple of days, which I think is great, because we have limited, you know, availability to have some of these in practice sessions, so I think we've given Chris a lot for you and your team to, like, chew on, think on, and I appreciate, you know, you guys, like, leading us through all of this.

[05:21:14] Thank you. So we're going to come back with a great report for you. Besides recapping on the experience that we had with you for the day, so that that's part of your record, we will capture detail on the norms that you are aspirational about having all of you agree on.

[05:21:43] Since you're not writing it down, we can write it down so you can refer to it. We'll come back with some ideas for your vision statement based on the word cloud that we got in that exercise that will help your strategic planner look at the beginnings of those conversations and to tighten up the language for the final plan.

[05:22:06] And then the key priorities will come back this last exercise. That's our commitment to deliver to you. And I guess what we would like to do is to thank you very much for having us.

[05:22:24] It's been an absolute pleasure to work with you. I'm going to say a few things, too, before we show this last video. It really does echo what Jane said. It's been a privilege work for you all. We really enjoyed it. You've all done great work for an amount of time. We've decided about the work of your staff on getting this incident into fruition and allowed them to move forward on bringing back some policy recommendations to you all.

[05:22:48] So thank you very much for all your work and time and time for the days. And thank you for working with us. Thank you. Thank you. We did some good work yesterday. And yesterday and the lesson pass is put it behind us.

[05:23:08] They're the desks. It's clean and slate. Let's think about how we want to work together moving forward. How do we put ourselves together as a team? These are the words out of your mouth based on some of the experiences we've had. And one thing that we know about groups that are making new relationships and moving forward is sometimes there are slip-ups.

[05:23:29] Remember when we said there was unintended violations of group norms? So I wanted to leave you with this video clip about teams and those sometimes unintended slip-ups. Do you want to say anything else?

[05:23:45] I'm good. I've heard enough from me.

[05:23:55] There are no failures, only lessons.

[05:24:47] There is only success in progress. And we want to believe those things. Do we? Mistakes. They happen on our team members. They happen from you. I don't like those mistakes.

[05:25:03] Those mistakes are messy. Those mistakes come with emotion. They come with judgment. That person is not on our side. Did you see what they did? Mistakes come with assumptions. If someone can make that mistake, just think about next time. They come with real consequences.

[05:25:21] Results are impacted. So how can we possibly trust that person again? These storylines build because we operate like a mistake will never be made. And that that mistake defines the final chapter of our story. That's what makes a mistake a mistake. What we did does not necessarily reflect who we are.

[05:25:37] It reflects what we did in a moment. Mistakes aren't the norm, or else we can't call them a mistake. We still get to define the next chapter. We made a teamwork mistake recently. I'm glad to say or admit, but it's true.

[05:25:55] And I can feel the debate in my head. It wasn't only my mistake. We're not the only one involved. But that thinking isn't serving my growth or the growth, it's not helping, it's judgment, it's assumptions. This needs to be involved. Fix it, not let it happen again, and recognize that another mistake is coming.

[05:26:15] The secret team or best teams struggle before they succeed. In addition, that also means the best teams learn to deal with their mistakes more effectively than the rest. So if you're watching this team, know that you'll make mistakes.

[05:26:33] Your teammates will too. That doesn't let you off the hook, that doesn't let your teammates off the hook either. Mission to make mistakes and keep going. So you teach other to give each other some racist grace.

[05:26:51] We have some unintended violations of the norm. We need to keep going forward. I think that I have every optimism that that's going to happen for you. I can't wait to see the great things you do as a new team formulated in the next couple of years ahead.

[05:27:18] Wait, hold on. Our next public meeting is going to be next week, Tuesday, on February 6th at 2 o'clock. With that, I already have a motion to adjourn.

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