Coraggio Consulting
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Place: Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 6h 28m (video)
Official meeting video (Prince William County, Granicus): https://pwcgov.granicus.com/player/clip/3454
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 2026-11-01. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:46:26] good afternoon everyone it is two o'clock on tuesday april 9th 2024 please join me for a moment of silence thank you all rise if you are able for the recitation of the pledge of allegiance

[00:47:02] all right we are on to our first agenda item and that is 3a to approve the minutes for march 19 2024 can i have a motion so move madam chair second any discussion all right let's let's vote. I love these easy votes. Vote unanimous. Supervisor Vega absent from meeting and all subsequent votes. Thank you so very much. We are now on to our accommodations and

[00:47:39] proclamations. We have four proclamations. One is to name April 2024, the month of the military child, and I'll be doing that with Supervisor Gordy. Another is to proclaim April 2024, Arab American Heritage Month. The third is to proclaim April 14th through 20th, Public Safety Telecommunications Week, and then the final one is to proclaim April 21st to 27th Crime Victims' Rights Week.

[00:48:09] So, I will be moving down to the podium. We are gonna start with the month of the military child. - Oh yes, that's true, yeah, I need to do that. - So move, Madam Chair. - Yeah, any discussion? I don't think so, let's go.

[00:48:28] I'm always like a runaway train, let's move. - Vote unanimous. - Now I can move.

[00:48:59] All right, if we have any representatives. And I'll turn the mic over to you, Supervisor Gordy. First of all, we are joined by Ms. Evan Freeman-James from Our Military Kids. Our Military Kids is a national 501c3 nonprofit offering extracurricular activity grants to children and teens of deployed National Guard, Reserve, or post-9-11 combat wounded, ill, or injured veterans in treatment.

[00:49:26] Our Military Kids activity grants build the children's self-confidence, enhance family wellness, and strengthen the shared sense of community. Since 2004, our military kids has proudly provided more than 88,000 activity scholarships worth $32 million to children and teens in all 50 states, U.S. territories, and District of Columbia. And I'm very proud to say that my daughter Sarah was one of the recipients of one of their scholarships in 2009 while I was deployed to Baghdad. And we're also joined by Mr. Joe Gilkerson, our Director of Human Resources,

[00:50:02] but he's also the Staff Director for our Veterans Commission. So come on down, Joe. Thank you. All right, and I'll read the proclamation. It says, whereas since 1986, the Department of Defense has recognized military children during the month of April because of their service, commitment and service to supporting the mission of the armed services, it is essential to honor and celebrate our military's youngest heroes, and whereas Prince William County is home to military service members and their families stationed in the county at Marine Corps Base Quantico and surrounding

[00:50:37] installations in the National Capital Region, with Prince William County Public Schools educating over 8,000 school-age military-connected students, and whereas the Month of the Military Child is an opportunity to remember children's roles in strengthening the military family and recognize the unique challenges military children face daily with courage and dignity beyond their years.

[00:51:00] And whereas whether it's enduring deployments, reintegrating into new states and countries, caring for wounded warrior parents, or coping with the loss of a fallen parent, the military child remains resilient, strong, and exemplifies a fantastic capacity to adapt. And whereas military children are a source of pride and honor, the month of the military child allows us to recognize the sacrifices and the central contributions made by them in support of their parents and thus the nation. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims April 2024 as the month of the military child. And I'd like to

[00:51:39] also point out that one of our supervisors is a military child, Supervisor Bob Weir, and we also have two military parents on the uh supervisor bailey and supervisor vega thank you for your victor angry sorry uh thank you for your uh both your military service and for your children's service and uh supervisor weir it explains a lot so uh actually i have to name the supervisor bode is married to a veteran so i'm just gonna okay so let's uh oh did you have you have an opportunity to say something to the community i just want to thank you all for this honor on behalf of our

[00:52:18] military children our military kids the organization but also personally i was a military child i have military children my spouse is active duty air force and i really appreciate this honor i think it means a lot personally to me but also to the organizations that support military children and families and thank you all for all of your service to the community as well madam chair as as you assemble if i may please thank you very much i there was no organization for our military

[00:52:54] children when we were active duty and so you are doing yeoman's work thank you so much No, no, you take that. That's yours.

[00:53:25] All right, next is Arab American Heritage Month. The representatives, please come up.

[00:53:43] All right. Whereas for over a century, Arab Americans have made valuable contributions to many aspects of American society, from medicine, law, business, and education to technology, government, military service, and whereas since migrating to America, men and women of Arab descent have shared their rich culture and traditions with neighbors and friends, while also setting fine examples of model citizens and public servants. And whereas Arab Americans have also enriched our society by sharing in the entrepreneurial American spirit that makes our nation free and prosperous. And whereas in 2017,

[00:54:22] the Arab American Foundation launched an initiative to formally recognize the achievement of Arab Americans throughout the celebration of National Arab American Heritage Month. And whereas in 2021, The United States Department of State recognized April as National Arab American Heritage Month to reflect on the important contributions of Arab Americans and take note of the importance of diversity and inclusion in the community.

[00:54:48] And whereas the celebration of Arab American ancestry and cultural heritage helps educate and counter misconceptions, harmful stereotyping, and discrimination, now, therefore, be it resolved that the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims that April 2024 will be recognized as Arab American Heritage Month in Prince William County.

[00:55:10] We encourage our residents to join in this special observance and to celebrate the culture and achievements of the Arab American community in Prince William County and throughout the nation. Do you have any words? Yes. On behalf of the Arab America Foundation and all the Arab American community in Virginia, we extend our gratitude to you and to all Prince William County.

[00:55:39] Your support is invaluable as we strive to raise awareness of Arab heritage, a goal exemplified by initiatives like the National Arab American Heritage Month launched in 2017.

[00:55:54] It is very important that the contribution of Arab America, of Virginia, and the United States are acknowledged and celebrated. Our mission is to increase public understanding about the rich history and complex identity of Arab and Arab Americans, which often misunderstood due to the stereotypical portrayal in the media.

[00:56:25] By addressing this misconception, we aim to foster a more accurate and inclusive representation of Arab American culture and achievement, Again, on behalf of Arab America Foundation, we thank you for this recognition.

[00:56:44] God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you. We are now on to 4C, Public Safety Telecommunications Week.

[00:57:19] Anyone who is associated with this, please come down to the podium. Y'all sit in the back. And y'all too, come on up. This is very important work, and you guys are all sitting in the back hiding.

[00:57:55] Come on, this is your moment. Come out of the shadows. All right, we are here to proclaim April 14th to April 20th as Public Safety Communications Week, whereas when an emergency occurs, the prompt response of police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical services is critical to the protection of life and preservation of property, and whereas the first responders are the public safety telecommunicators who are the first and most critical contact our citizens have with emergency services

[00:58:35] by answering 911 and being virtually on the scene, providing emergency medical instructions, other life safety instructions, and moral support to callers in distress while dispatching field responders and equipment to the scene. And whereas public safety telecommunicators of Prince William County Public Safety Communication Center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, and treatment of patients, And whereas the public safety telecommunicators exhibit compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their duties.

[00:59:11] And whereas this year marks the 56th anniversary of 9-1-1 service in the United States. And in the same year, Prince William County became the first community to offer 9-1-1 service on the East Coast. And whereas since 1991, Congress has proclaimed that the second full week of April shall be set aside as National Public Safety Telecommunications Week to salute them for their dedicated efforts on behalf of the public.

[00:59:40] Now, therefore, it be resolved that the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims the week of April 14th to 20th, 2024, as Public Safety Telecommunications Week, and join in honoring the women and men whose diligence and professionalism keep our county and citizens safe.

[01:00:02] Thank you. Would you like to make some comments? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much to all of you for this annual acknowledgement of our staff. This is a great opportunity for them to come out from behind the headset and be seen and acknowledge for all the wonderful work that they do as the first of the first responders, and we thank you very much for this.

[01:01:00] Then our last proclamation, if anyone's associated with Crime Victims' Rights Week.

[01:01:47] Here we go. We have so many important proclamations today. Whereas surviving a crime can have countless lasting effects on victims, including physical, psychological, social, and financial issues, And whereas we know that many survivors never tell anyone about what happened to them, and whereas each of us has a moral responsibility to participate in the healing of others actively, and whereas it is necessary to create safe environments for survivors of crime, providing not only support but also access to critical services and, above all, hope, and whereas victim service providers, community members, businesses, places of worship,

[01:02:27] Colleagues, neighbors, and family members are capable of providing victim-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive support. And whereas we must listen to survivors and be willing to create new options for support to ensure that all victims of crime can receive help and seek justice.

[01:02:44] And whereas we must do everything we can to show survivors that hope, the belief that the future will be better, is not just tangible, but within their reach. And whereas National Crime Victims' Rights Week encourages everyone to ask themselves, how would you help a victim of crime?

[01:03:02] And whereas the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney Victim Witness Assistance Program is dedicated to raising awareness of options, services, and hope for crime survivors, now therefore be resolved that the Prince William Board of County Supervisors hereby proclaims April 21st to April 27th, 2024 is Crime Victims' Rights Week in Prince William County.

[01:03:24] Do you have any words? - Yes, I wanna thank you all for your support and renewed dedication to this very important issue. And I'd like to extend an invitation to all of you to come spend some time with us, learn more about what we do, the services we provide.

[01:03:39] While many of the services we provide are mandated by state code, there's so much more to our program and I'd love to show you. So on behalf of my staff, thank you for your time. And again, above all, thank you for your support.

[01:03:52] - Let's go to Lincoln.

[01:04:47] all right we are now on to our consent agenda if there are any items anyone wishes to remove from the consent agenda or specific questions um or or does anyone have any specific questions before we move on madam chair can we pull 5c all right we can pull 5c anyone else all right

[01:05:19] so i would like to entertain a motion so move madam chair second for 5a b d e and f thank you Youth Supervisor Bodie, any discussion? Supervisor Franklin?

[01:05:36] I just want to point out for item 5F, the A.J. Fralazzo building, as one of the proposed sites. This is a site incredibly important, particularly for my district, in the Route 1 corridor, which this site will be able to service.

[01:05:54] so just want to flag for residents kind of on the other side of 95 to be able to use this site as a resource thank you all right supervisor bode thank you madam chair on that same note wanted to thank eric olson for all the work he did on on the work for this ordinance i know i had expressed some interest in us streamlining some things very early on last year with the special election that happened so we're being elected and also this year with the ongoing Congruities between primaries and general elections having two different sites, especially on the eastern end versus Ferlazo and DMV.

[01:06:29] I'm glad we were able to get a situation where people can now use both. It's consistent across all elections and really get a better bang for our buck of actually having places open throughout the county when most folks are actually going to vote. So I wanted to commend Eric on his work there.

[01:06:45] I want to thank staff for all their time on this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, would just like to thank Eric for his hard work and making sure that this happens. This is very much important to the citizens on the Eastern Corridor in that some of them don't have cars and they can take the bus and go exercise their God-given right of voting.

[01:07:07] And so this just gives them another opportunity down the Route 1 corridor from 123 all the way to Quantico Base and even to the west in the Forest Park area. So this is an answer to a prayer, and thank you so much for hearing our voices when we made the request.

[01:07:24] And to the citizens, thank you for participating in the voting process. All right, thank you so very much. Any further discussion? All right, let's vote.

[01:07:43] Vote unanimous. All right, we're going to go on to Resolution 5C, and that is to authorize an MOU between Prince William County Police and the Town of Haymark Police Department for the use of the indoor firearms training facility.

[01:08:03] And I was going to do a motion, unless you want to speak and do the motion, and then discussion. All right, any like to entertain a motion? So moved. Second. All right, discussion. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:08:18] I'm going to take issue with this the same way I took issue with similar agreement with respect to the towns of Quantico and the town of Occoquan. Those jurisdictions, their residents pay dual taxes both to the county and to the town jurisdiction. And as such, they've already paid for the shooting center.

[01:08:37] They're paying for the debt service on it, the operational costs and that. And I do not believe, even though it's only $2,400, given the supplemental assistance they give the county in terms of their agreement with the county police department, their mutual aid agreement, I just don't believe we should be charging the towns this fee.

[01:09:05] I understand the accounting process, but I just don't think it's proper for us to be hitting the residents of the town twice for the same facility, so I cannot support it. All right. Anyone else? All right. Let's take a vote.

[01:09:27] Motion passes 5 to 2. Supervisors Weir and Gordy voting nay. All right. We are now moving on to public comment time. We will hear in person and remote public comments.

[01:09:43] We will begin with in-person comments. Right now, we have one person who has signed up to speak. That is Ms. Teresa Vance. Just as a reminder, when you speak, please state your name and your magisterial district or where you generally reside.

[01:10:11] Teresa Vance, Potomac District. Once again, I want to thank law enforcement and first responders for all they do. And unfortunately, once again, due to something that just happened, I once again say the only person I have any confidence in is Supervisor Ware because you're double taxing these people in Haymarket, et cetera.

[01:10:46] But what am I to expect? That's all I've seen from this Democrat board. but yet they give themselves a 70 percent pay raise and then they bring in county exec who's getting 380,000 plus annually that's our tax dollars but hey you just charge us and you just tax us supervisor angry you made a claim you advocate for the vets well I happen to disagree

[01:11:25] with you. Why? Because you're a Democrat. Why? Because you support Joe Biden, Beijing Biden as I call him, and what happened to those 13 military that were assassinated in Afghanistan because of the corruption of leaving Afghanistan. So never tell me, I'm so sick and tired of hearing people say we support the vets, we support the vets, but you have them in harm's way. You are not there to

[01:11:57] be slaughtered. Those 13 were. And then we have the three military in Jordan who were also slaughtered. Boy, that timer's going fast. Now we have our open borders. Military-age men are coming across those borders. Why? To take us out. And I never hear anything about God, about Easter, or being a judeo-christian constitution on this board but i hear a lot from about after 9 11 how

[01:12:36] how did we get here how did we get here you support ramadan you support all of this other but you don't support god jesus christ yes and israel the jews are god's people you remember that. You will be in harm's way if you continue on with what's going on. And I support whatever

[01:13:08] Israel wants to do. They were the ones attacked. They were the ones. And Biden is the biggest racist. And it makes me sick that people do not check their history. You people would not be on this board if Biden had gotten his way. Biden is a racist. He does not like blacks. Remember that.

[01:13:31] have a good day thank you so much for your time we are now moving on to remote um comment time i believe we have two people signed up and i'm going to turn it over to supervisor voting thank you madam chair miss madden miss van shall we begin to get that one remote comment to go in

[01:14:08] sir we remember you have three minutes to speak please identify yourself in your district thank

[01:14:12] you so much and i believe you're muted it might be on our end still can't hear him okay let's tell

[01:14:59] Yep. We got you now, Mr. Kaczmarek. Please proceed. Okay. Mike Kaczmarek, Heritage Hunt, Gainesville. I have three issues today. First, I will briefly mention my support to raise immediately the computer and peripheral tax to $370. Any delay would only constitute a $50 million a year tax break to the data center industry. I will have more comments on this subject tonight when I talk in person. My second issue is to bring a problem to your attention. I want a clarification of the right of campaign volunteers at the Haymarket

[01:15:35] Gainesville Library. The librarian believes only she can decide freedom of speech rights in the library parking lot. During early voting in March, I was collecting petition signatures to get Dan Helmer on the June primary ballot for Congress. I was told by the librarian I could not collect signatures on county property. I was not allowed to speak to library customers. I told her I could do that because it was public property. So she walked away, but I also was told by the election

[01:16:10] officers that the library will not allow us to put up our canopies during early voting, which will start May 3rd. They said we damaged the grass. So I want to know what county, what are the rules that the county has for allowing us to, you know, we basically at the Haymarket Gainesville Library, we were not allowed to put up signs in the ground.

[01:16:40] That was fine. We covered them up. That's fine. We were able to then get around that by having a table where we could put our literature on it. We couldn't hang anything off the side of the table because that was somehow the same thing as having signs in the ground. So what are the rules that you guys have for the county and what rules, you know, and how How is the county librarian able to enforce limitations on freedom of speech during early voting?

[01:17:09] I mean, I really would like to have a clarification here. I mean, what's going on here? This is county property, and this should not be totally controlled by the librarian's whims. The last one is on electrical power.

[01:17:27] I mean, I still want you guys to really look at that issue. I mean, your approval of the Prince William Digital Gateway is going to affect the entire electrical grid for the entire state of Virginia and the entire U.S. East Coast. I'm hoping that the state government or the federal government takes that power away from you because you are not responsible.

[01:17:49] Anything over 100,000 homes, and this is 500,000 to 2 million homes worth of electricity, is going to be used at that site. So there has to be another way. Local governments just cannot worry about local taxes. They have to worry about larger issues.

[01:18:06] Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Kachmirek. I assume that's the last and only person we have. Thank you, Ms. Vann. Thank you, Ms. Madden. Back to you, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so very much. We are now going to move on to Agenda Item 7, County Executive Time.

[01:18:22] Mr. Shorter, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just two quick items for me. One, we know that the governor, as you were aware, made his amendments to the budget on yesterday just wanted to make sure the board you know was aware as we move into the presentation budget recap presentation tonight we are not taking into consideration what might be in the state budget as part of the budget recap presentation we will certainly do a reconciliation once the state budget is finalized and come back to the board with any changes from what the board considers and then approves also wanted to take this opportunity if I could

[01:19:00] Madam Chair and board members to recognize Michelle Roble. Some of you may know, over the weekend, she was recognized by the Prince William County Bar Association. Their most prestigious award annually is the St. Clair Professional Award. She received it for 2023, and I just wanted to just recognize Michelle and give her a big round of applause. Thank you, Mr. Shorter, Madam Chair,

[01:19:39] members of the board as i said during the awards presentation i want to thank the board for your faith in me and allowing me to be the county attorney to you it's an honor and a pleasure and obviously thank the best law office there is with the prince william county attorney's office and my family but thank you very much i'm very honored and humbled and grateful thank you mr shorn if you may have a couple people who want to say something supervisor voting yeah thank you madam chair congratulations again michelle for for all madam attorney for all your your guidance and help uh mr shorter we just had a as you saw a constituent raise an issue with regarding the games uh gainesville haymarket library i know it's not my area but it's still an early voting

[01:20:19] location and i keep hearing different stories from different folks about what's allowed there what's not allowed inconsistence that we have with other satellite voting locations considering we just passed an ordinance that was streamlined how things go throughout the county would love to get some clarity on the operations there making sure that everyone there is aware of what the rules of road should be. We will provide an update. All right. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:20:44] Dovetailing on that, I would ask you to take it a bit further. I'd like you to meet with the library board and the county attorney's office because this has been an ongoing issue with signage, limitations on where they can put them, assertion of rights to property they don't own, and now by allegedly precluding petition gathering on public property, they've taken it to new heights.

[01:21:11] I'm done with this from a bipartisan standpoint or nonpartisan standpoint. This needs to come to an end and needs to be addressed. Yeah, so two things. Of course, absolutely happy to provide an update to the board, but also happy to meet with the library board.

[01:21:33] I'll say that FFM, in conjunction with my office, puts out guidance to the agency and to all staff, all of our facilities about how we allow for signage, what we can and cannot allow on government property. I will make sure that we push that out again ahead of this election season to make sure that we are all clear about what is allowed and what is not. But that said, I'll still do as asked here and provide, again, provide an update to the board and meet with the library board.

[01:22:09] All right, before we go into Supervisor Franklin, I just want to offer some roses to Madam Attorney. I mean, now, I mean, I've always known Prince William County is the best place to live now. We could say we have an award-winning attorney, you know, representing us. Senior Advisor Franklin. Sure, and echo those sentiments.

[01:22:26] Congratulations to our county attorney. I think we all already knew that she was awesome, but glad everyone else knows it. And to Mr. Schroeder, with regards to those concerns about what is allowed, you know, we've seen a different site, for lack of better words, people making up rules on site.

[01:22:44] And so I think actually it's probably more appropriate to have the election board or the electoral board get involved in this discussion in terms of the training that they provide both to their staff and volunteers, mostly volunteers, and making sure that everyone at those precincts are also aware.

[01:23:06] And sometimes, you know, we have administrators at some of the schools that may not be necessarily clear on what's allowed and what's not. Most of the time they do, but I think that this is more so really something that the electoral board and for Eric to make sure that they are undertaking, because as you all know, the county is actually separate from the electoral board, and so they actually need to take this responsibility in making sure that everybody is trained at these precincts.

[01:23:35] It's been an issue at some other precincts in terms of, again, people making up rules, and so I think training will go a long way. I appreciate that. We will pull the Electoral Board in. All right, thank you, and Supervisor Bailey.

[01:23:51] Thank you. Congratulations, Madam County Attorney. You rock. All right, thank you so very much. Do you have anything else, Mr. Shorter? All right, we are going to move on again to our award-winning county attorney for her time.

[01:24:09] Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. This afternoon in closed session, we will have consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to the discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for public purposes, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body.

[01:24:28] There will be consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to the discussion or the consideration of the disposition of publicly held real property at Innovation, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body, along with consultation with legal counsel pertaining to legal advice regarding land use law and sale agreement law, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position, negotiating strategy, or litigating posture of the public body.

[01:24:56] These items are appropriate for closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A3 and 8 of the Virginia Code. So move, Madam Chair. Second. All right, so any discussion? All right, let's vote to authorize the closed meeting agenda.

[01:25:14] Vote unanimous. All right, we are now on to our budget work sessions. And the first presentation we're going to hear is for the fiscal 2025 budget presentation from Sheriff Glenhill.

[01:25:37] Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the board. I am Glenhill. I am elected for every four years to serve Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

[01:25:58] And my sincere thanks to the board for giving me the opportunity to come before you this afternoon. With me this afternoon is Chief Deputy Fearnley and our budget analyst, Whitney Brown. During my presentation, I will talk briefly about who we are, how we serve our mandated responsibilities, and our meaningful prevention programs that contribute to our safe and secure community initiatives.

[01:26:31] I will conclude with my FY25 budget request and answer any questions you may have. Our mission statement explains our commitment to our values, profession, and our community that we serve.

[01:26:54] I won't read all of that. I'm quite sure you have that on your slide, so I want to move along quickly to my next slide. The Prince William Sheriff's Office is the oldest and first agency established in Prince William County.

[01:27:14] We serve the people of Prince William County and the cities and towns within the county. This slide is a summary of who we are and our primary responsibilities and our mandated responsibilities and how we assist other law enforcement agencies.

[01:27:41] Upon request, when provided, we provide off-duty deputies for security and traffic control, and we also assist our police departments. And I must tell you now from the beginning, Madam Chair and the Board, we have an excellent working relationship with all our police departments within Prince William County.

[01:28:04] Next slide. The most important position on our organization chart is at the top. It's the citizens and community we serve. It allows everyone to see the chain of command and understand the structures and functions of our office.

[01:28:23] It also makes it easier for staff to make changes within the organization. I'm going to start out with our courthouse security. Our court services division is responsible for upholding the integrity of the judicial process.

[01:28:44] The Sheriff's Office provides 24-hour security in and around the judicial complex. Last year, courthouse deputies screened approximately 350,000 individuals who entered the courthouse. Approximately 90% of the people who entered the courthouse are there for court purposes.

[01:29:05] Some of them are uncomfortable entering and being in the courthouse. Deputies do an outstanding job greeting, screening, and assisting individuals entering the courthouse to make them feel comfortable. They also assist the physically impaired and ensure businesses know how to get to their destination.

[01:29:28] Deputies often respond to unusual circumstances and situations within and around the courthouse and are often the first responders when someone suffers a medical emergency. When requested, deputies often escort individuals and families to their vehicles to ensure their safe departure from the courthouse.

[01:29:57] Courtroom security. There are 16 courtrooms in the Judicial Center. Soon there will be 18. We are the second busiest courthouse in Virginia. A courtroom deputy provides security and maintains order in the courtroom.

[01:30:15] They also provide support to the judges and clerks, manage the courtroom jurors, and handle additional court-related tasks as duties as required. When there is a high-profile case, additional screening and staff is required, along with other restrictions.

[01:30:36] In the past year, we had 60 high-profile cases. The Sheriff's Office public safety to communicators dispatch calls for service in the judicial complex.

[01:30:54] They receive and process all the calls for my office. Our public safety communicators are required to complete dispatch basic training. Additionally, they are required to maintain VCN Level A certification throughout the Virginia Criminal Information Network.

[01:31:14] They monitor over 200 cameras to assist courthouse deputies. They monitor and dispatch 50 emergency alarms throughout the courthouse. They track the movement of inmates throughout the courthouse daily. All transportation, civil process, and other units communicate with the sheriff's office dispatchers.

[01:31:38] Deputies assigned to vertical deployment receive inmates from the adult detention center for court. Inmates are then escorted to and from courtrooms within the courthouse. Inmates remain in our custody and are returned to the adult detention center to serve their sentence, remain in custody pending a court date, all released.

[01:32:03] They also take into custody persons committed to the adult detention center and process them for transfers. In FY23, this section handled over 24,000 inmates. The live scan section is responsible for mandated processing.

[01:32:22] Persons committed of certain offenses are processed and DNA is collected and sent to the state forensic laboratory. Persons released by the police on a summons for certain minor offenses are processed by this section after their court appearance.

[01:32:43] They assist people requesting fingerprint for job applications. This section also conduct background checks for citizens applying for concealed weapons permits. In FY23, we conducted 6,754 background checks, and in FY24, we conducted 4,093 background checks thus far this year.

[01:33:11] The background checks are done to assist the clerk of the court in issuing concealed weapons permits. On to our civil process section. Deputies assigned to civil process serve legal documents within Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

[01:33:34] Most documents we serve are posted on the property, but some require personal service and oftentimes very consuming. That means that deputies sometimes have to go back to their residence and look for people on several occasions.

[01:33:50] In FY23, deputies serve 64,920 documents, and in FY24, deputies serve 49,358 documents thus far in FY24. When an emergency call comes for service, is dispatched, a deputy will respond to the call if they're in the area.

[01:34:13] In other words, we have deputies all over the county, and if a call comes out for service, they will assist the police officers and back them up. Deputies back up police officers during traffic stops when needed direct traffic at a crash scene.

[01:34:30] Civil process deputies are very busy. There are several documents we serve that require two deputies. Two of those documents are levies and evictions. In FY23, we executed 216 levies, and in FY24, we executed 134 levies thus far.

[01:34:50] In FY23, we executed 2,664 evictions, and in FY24, we executed 1,679 evictions thus far. Funeral escorts are not a mandated responsibility, but as your sheriff, I believe it is absolutely necessary to provide this service to our community.

[01:35:17] This office received many favorable comments concerning funeral escorts from the public. In FY23, this section performed 390 funeral escorts, and in FY24, this section performed 231 funeral escorts thus far.

[01:35:38] The method we provide and conduct for funeral escorts sends a message to our community and visitors about who we are as an agency in Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. Transportation to and from criminal justice facilities is a challenging daily event, mainly because of the distance to other jails and facilities within the state.

[01:36:11] Next, we have temporary detention orders. By Virginia Code, all persons committed to facilities for treatment are transported by the primary law enforcement agency in that jurisdiction.

[01:36:27] For Prince William County, it is the Prince William County Police. Before the law changed about eight years ago, it was the sheriff's office responsibility. If the person is in crisis, is a juvenile, and a temporary detention order is issued, and the juvenile is medically cleared for transport, Again, it is the police department's responsibility to transport that person who's in crisis.

[01:36:58] Because the person in crisis is a juvenile, a petition is issued. The petition is a subpoena notifying the parent or guardian of the hearing date and time and location. The petition is a civil document and can only be served by a deputy sheriff.

[01:37:21] Regardless of when this occurs, the sheriff's office agreed to do all the juvenile transports for our police department. By agreement, this office assists the police department in transporting persons in crisis.

[01:37:38] There are other times during the week this office agreed to do temporary detention order transports. Our agency agreed to help because I know the police department is busy and it takes two officers to do the transports.

[01:37:54] In FY24, we assisted the police department in doing 148 transports, totaling 1,943 hours spent thus far. By mandate, the sheriff's office is responsible for post-commitment hearing transports.

[01:38:14] In FY24, the section completed 38 transports, totaling 352 hours spent thus far. Please keep in mind, for cautionary and safety reasons, each transport requires two deputies.

[01:38:33] Deputies frequently travel to facilities and jails across the Commonwealth. Depending on what time deputies leave Prince William County and distance travel, they often stay overnight and return the following day, which makes it very difficult for them to work the following day.

[01:38:55] The warrant section handles all child support and post-conviction warrants. We work closely with the Adult Probation Office to apprehend and serve probation violations. We serve court orders violations and failure to appear in court violations.

[01:39:11] In FY23, we serve 1,159 warrants, and in FY24, we serve 1,094 warrants thus far. Court order executions are very powerful. For example, a child removal order requires at least two deputies and sometimes more to transfer the child to the custody of the other parent or guardian.

[01:39:37] Those situations can be very emotional, time-consuming, and it requires good communication skills and patience. Additionally, this section is responsible for out-of-state extraditions. In FY23, this section conducted 21 extraditions, and in FY24, this section conducted 15 extraditions thus far.

[01:40:00] Moving on to our Office of Professional Standards, we have our Human Resource Department responsible for recruitment and process of applicants processing.

[01:40:18] Training, all deputies are law enforcement certified and trained with our local law enforcement. Some deputies also certified in civil process, but all deputies are certified in civil process and courtroom security.

[01:40:34] Some deputies are jail certified. We have a trained civil defense unit, which we started in 2020 after we had the demonstrators at the courthouse, and of course, we were not prepared for the demonstrators that came to the courthouse, but today we are prepared.

[01:40:53] Hopefully, we'll never have to use them, but we do have our trained CDU unit. We were the first accredited Sheriff's Office in the Commonwealth, Virginia, and, of course, today we remain to be accredited. We have our Project Lifesaver program. We place bracelets on seniors with Alzheimer's and autistic children who tend to run away.

[01:41:13] The bracelet emits a signal on a frequency, and it has allowed us to locate a missing client. We use our tracking equipment to locate them. Currently, we have 23 seniors and 21 children in the program.

[01:41:32] Unlike some jurisdictions, we do not charge a fee to families to be on the program. So far, I haven't come for the board to ask for any equipment for the program. We provide medical alert equipment to seniors who cannot afford it, and we do that at no cost as well.

[01:41:53] Currently, we have 16 seniors in this program. Child IDs, we provide child and senior identification cards at our community events. Our gun safety program is a very popular program for children.

[01:42:09] Last year, this program was presented to 4,551 students. Last year, this program received the Virginia Association of Counties Achievement Award. We also have a rape aggression defense class that we conduct.

[01:42:26] Since COVID, we conduct about three classes a year. Unclaimed residents. All unclaimed residents are the responsibility of our primary law enforcement agency.

[01:42:43] Previously, it was the sheriff's responsibility until the law changed about nine years ago. Because I had a policy in place to comply with the law, I agreed to continue with this responsibility. Since I have taken office, I have been responsible for over 320 unclaimed residents.

[01:43:04] In FY23, we received 28 cases, and in FY24, we received 17 cases thus far. Each case requires about 20 work hours. Those hours include attempting to locate relatives to claim the deceased, working with the curator, and working with our attorney to obtain a court order to close out the case.

[01:43:30] We conduct two ceremonies yearly to honor and provide a dignified barrier for the deceased residents. This slide represents our agency basics, our FY24 adopted budget, our full-time sworn personnel, which is 93, our part-time sworn personnel, which is 4.5, our civilian personnel, which is 18.

[01:44:01] All nine auxiliary deputies are law enforcement certified and are required to work at least eight hours per month. Our FY25 budget request.

[01:44:25] The criminal justice system consists of three major institutions. Law enforcement, the judicial court system, the correction system. All public safety agencies within Prince William County play a role in the criminal justice system.

[01:44:43] Deputies play a role in all three institutions. In my presentation, I talked about how the Sheriff's Office assists our primary law enforcement agencies. We need to be competitive in the public safety labor market to attract, train, and retain qualified personnel.

[01:45:01] When a law enforcement agency calls for assistance, I want to send qualified personnel to assist. I am asking for pay parity because, as you can see, the gap has widened on the scale over the past few years.

[01:45:19] The pay scale I am asking for already exists. I'm asking for equity and fairness for our deputy sheriffs. Last year, Prince William County telecommunicators received a 15% market adjustment.

[01:45:38] Sheriff's Office telecommunicators received a 6% market adjustment. So I'm asking for a 9% pay adjustment for our Sheriff's Office telecommunicators at a cost of $25,000. Additionally to my budget request, I'm asking for a full-time deputy to work with our Project Lifesaver clients.

[01:46:09] This position is needed with the increased demand for the community and other law enforcement agencies for our guidance and equipment and training. I think so far we've already trained over 215 police officers with our Project Lifesaver program.

[01:46:28] The deputy will also work on the gun safety program. This position comes with a vehicle. I am requesting a full-time deputy to work with unclaimed residence cases and in human resources to conduct background investigation.

[01:46:44] This position comes with a vehicle. Lastly, I am requesting a full-time deputy to support the addition of the juvenile, domestic and relations court judge starting on July 1st. no vehicle is required for this position.

[01:47:04] Madam Chair and members of the board, this is my budget request. The parity pay, 1.2, 1,200,000. Telecommunicator, 25,000. Three sworn FTEs, 578,000.

[01:47:20] On-call pay. One of the most unpopular things I do, I have four deputies that are on-call each day. And as I mentioned earlier in my presentation, they're not on-call to do service work, but also to assist our police departments in those TDO transports around the state.

[01:47:38] And, of course, before we had signing bonuses, I think I was the only public safety agency in the county that did signing bonuses, and that was $3,000. Last year, the board approved $5,000 signing bonus for police and $10,000 for police and fire and $5,000 for sheriff and ADC.

[01:48:02] Today I'm asking for $150,000 for signing bonus increase for deputy sheriff to be hired by the sheriff's office. Thank you again for allowing me to come before you today, and I will answer any questions that you may have.

[01:48:21] Thank you so very much, Sheriff Hill, for your service to our community and for coming here today to present your budget request. First, we're going to hear from Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Sheriff, for coming out and helping us understand better about how the Sheriff's Office supports our community and also to give us insight into your budget request.

[01:48:48] There was one on the slide, on slide 12, one question I do have just for clarity. On the master deputy, the minimum pay on the police scale was $87,000 is what is listed there, but it seems to be sort of higher than people who would be of higher rank above them.

[01:49:10] I just want to clarify, is it 87 or should it be 67? On the sheriff's scale or on the police scale? I'm pretty sure it's 87 for the police, but it's 64 or 5 for us. Okay. Right. All right.

[01:49:26] Yeah, because I just want to make sure that I'm looking at the number because that's like a 37% difference in starting pay for those between your master deputies and the police master deputies. I think they have a master police officer right here. Yeah. No, I was at $64,000, and there was an 87-something.

[01:49:50] Yeah, but I just want to confirm that that 87 is the correct number, given the fact that it is larger than the sergeant and the first sergeant. Okay. Okay, thank you, thank you. All right. in terms of um the um what are the things we were looking at so in terms of your budget request in in terms of pay parity um so as i'm kind of looking at a lot of the differentials it runs anywhere from about a 7.8 percent differential on the minimum up to about uh on average about 11

[01:50:27] percent on the the police mac on the max side um and so in terms of looking at um if you let's say you were to get uh half the money would you apply that to um um a just a certain ranks or would you apply that across the board to all how would you try to go about applying that throughout your um to try to get to that pay parity i think if i understand you correctly what i'm asking for is the is the scale to be changed our shift scale to be changed

[01:51:07] to reflect the scale that's before you today. Okay. Right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, let me just thank you, Chair Field, for coming today.

[01:51:26] Last year, we didn't have the opportunity to go in-depth in your presentation and your requests this far and in-depth. And so I'm just very thankful for your presentation. It was very detailed. I also want to thank you for something that may go unnoticed in the community two things really one is and it has to do with the budget because it's something that you feel compelled as a community leader to do one is when you assist the churches on Sundays across the county you and your staff and I know it's on the volunteer basis but it really helps with the traffic with all of the churches across the county so thank you for

[01:52:05] that and the funeral services you've been doing that a long time and so that's just a staple of the high integrity and respect that you have for our citizens. The other thing that I wanted to ask you and that you're doing that can become an increased responsibility or accountability to our community, and that's for our senior citizens, the program that you have for them.

[01:52:34] And I know that nationally, that is a pinnacle program when it comes to those seniors that have Alzheimer's specifically. Could you just enlighten us a little bit more? Because we have, and not necessarily those that have Alzheimer's, but just our senior citizens.

[01:52:52] How can, what's the, what would you think or what would you say would be the next step in providing that level of service for our senior citizens as it relates to this type of program? Yes. First of all, if a person becomes missing, and of course the police department is called, One of the things that we do is tell the family to contact us and get them on the program because seniors do have a tendency to wonder.

[01:53:22] And so we go in and put the bracelet on. And one of the things that we do, we show the family a video of how to put the bracelet on. We also give them a tester in case the battery gets low. And we send them e-mails to make sure they check the batteries.

[01:53:40] So we engage with the families and do all that we can do to assist as far as making sure that if anyone wonders, that we can locate them. Do you think going forward from a technological standpoint that that might be an opportunity in terms of funding?

[01:54:00] Yes, because as I mentioned earlier, I have not asked the board for any funding for that program. We get a lot of donations for that program. The equipment for their programs is in all the police departments in the county. Also, deputy sheriffs carry equipment in their car.

[01:54:18] And so far, I have not had to ask the board for any funding for that program to buy equipment. We've been able to do it through donations. I had a golf tournament two years ago. We bought a drone and some other equipment as a benefit from the benefits that came from that golf tournament.

[01:54:36] Okay. Okay, and then lastly, I just wanted to really acknowledge the valiant work that you did in 2020. And I know that's four years back, but we still have to acknowledge the valiant work that you and your team did with the demonstrations that we had and allowing people to exercise their voice and their ability to engage in the political process as well as advocacy and what could have been something that was not good.

[01:55:08] You did a value job in making sure that people were protected as well as demonstrators and also teaching us, because Prince William County is not accustomed to that kind of activity, that it's no harm, no foul. It's a part of the political process.

[01:55:23] And so I just wanted to acknowledge that and thank you for the work that you and your team did during that time. Thank you, Ms. Bailey, for that comment. And I'll tell you, when we had that demonstration, that's the first time I felt as a sheriff and a supervisor that we were not prepared.

[01:55:39] And we got staff together, and we talked about it to make sure that we did not make any mistakes. But we've been through a lot of training since then, and we're in much better and much better condition and shape now to handle those situations. So, but thank you for the comment.

[01:55:55] You're welcome. Thank you. All right. Supervisor Angry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheriff, good to see you. Good to see you, team. You know, I remember when I thanked all of the police officers for all of that in 2020 with COVID and the whole civil unrest, and I got the grilling from you about our sheriffs and the fact that it's the same system, but it's too different because you're sworn officers and our police officers are more or less employed.

[01:56:24] And so that's where I'll jump in because, as we know, with Collective Bargaining and we've got our police association, They've done a lot, and I think as you talked about these numbers and what's really here, I couldn't agree with you more. And so we've got to find a way to make sure we're balanced in how we look at our public safety, especially our, you know, how do I say it?

[01:56:48] I don't want to say our police force, our security force, we'll call it, sheriffs and police, on how we're actually balancing that. I think the biggest thing I've seen here that really interested me and caught my attention was your on-call pay because I know that we do have a lot of on-call officers standing by waiting for these situations.

[01:57:09] And since the police have come in to really address that, I think it's very important that we address that here. So really, no real question. Just want to kind of comment and appreciate you bringing everything to you. I think your ask isn't that hard, if you will, at all for where we are with this.

[01:57:27] And I think that's something we can definitely do with this. So just thank you for the presentation. Thank you for taking the time to come in here and talk to us about it. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Sheriff, for coming by and giving us this presentation. As someone that was on the ground during one of those protests, one of those demonstrations, I know there was a tense moment where folks wanted to go farther and closer to the courthouse.

[01:57:53] There was some hesitance, rightfully so, because, again, like you said, that never happened before. But I will say I appreciate you all honoring folks' right to do that and getting to a place where people felt a lot more comfortable. I also appreciate you then for your fourth on saying, hey, this happened once.

[01:58:09] We don't ever want to be caught flat-footed like that ever again. Again, hope that it never has to happen that way. But again, knowing that you're thinking about that, I appreciate that. To go back to something that both Suresa Angry and Suresa Gordy said especially, knowing that there's a budget asked here, completely understand the police force has an association to advocate for them.

[01:58:28] You're basically right now they're faced, they don't have a union on the sheriff's side to talk through this stuff. Have you talked to our counterparts on either city council about this? Because to me, since we sort of all share you, to me the right sort of call may be for us to look at this as a tripartite basis versus just us funding the entire thing.

[01:58:52] You're asking, have I funded from other resources? Yeah. No, so I have not. Okay, understood. Again, not an extreme amount of money given the side of our budget, but just to me, especially since we had a conversation not but two weeks ago about us sharing costs of things that we all share between us, City of Manassas, Manassas Park, to me it would make sense for this to be a tripartite conversation as opposed to just us.

[01:59:16] But I appreciate your presentation here. Then my last question is sort of a forward-looking one, knowing that we have a lot going on at the Judicial Center. You talked quite length about what you already do there. Knowing that we have renovations going on, especially knowing that we have that master plan, I know that you're involved in it as well.

[01:59:34] Let's say five, ten years out, once that Judicial Center expansion is done, do you see yourself needing more staff and more folks to sort of accommodate the wider space? Yes, I will. Yes, I will. The judicial center that we have now was not built for security.

[01:59:51] So there's a lot of deficiencies in that building, which requires more staff. But certainly in the future, when we get a new facility, I know we will do that to make sure it is staff efficient. That was one thing that when I'm involved with those plans, I would make sure that is done.

[02:00:11] I appreciate that. You answered my implicit question there is, you know, again, like you said, It's sort of a hodgepodge building that got added on to over the years, and now we're still doing things on the inside. If we're taking the time to measure once and cut once, knowing that you're intimately involved in that conversation around security and making sure that we don't have inefficiencies or, frankly, safety concerns about that new space, especially knowing that your folks are the ones that are staffing it and keeping it safe every single day.

[02:00:38] All right. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. All right. Supervisor Gordy. This question goes to Mr. Shorter, and it kind of goes into your next presentation. There's one element for a compensation study for ADC and sheriff.

[02:00:57] How does that play into sort of what the request is here? Well, let me say in general that we've had great conversations with the sheriff's office throughout the budget development process.

[02:01:14] What we wanted to do in response to the sheriff's request to deal with the equity issues, compression issues amongst the staff and the sheriff's office was study it. And this would be consistent with what we are planning to do over the next two years in other public safety agencies to study the issue and make sure in those other cases that we are consistent with what we've committed to.

[02:01:45] So if the board decides to move forward with the sheriff's request, we may, you know, we will deal with the board's direction. If, on the other hand, the board decides to study the issue, then we will fund the study, and we will work with the sheriff's office throughout that period to deal with the study recommendations.

[02:02:09] Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm almost inclined to, since it's $200,000, you know, which takes a big chunk out of the 1.2, I'd go ahead and allocate it to the sheriff's department and let's find out how we get to the million dollars to get to that pay parity sooner rather than later.

[02:02:27] Again, we live in a very dynamic environment, in my view, and with other localities increasing pay, increasing sign-on bonuses, and we need to ensure that our sheriff is able to compete in this very dynamic environment. And so that's just my position on things.

[02:02:45] Thank you. All right. Thank you. Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Sheriff. Good afternoon. Got a couple of questions for you. What's your drop-dead date for hiring the new deputy for the juvenile court? When do you have to have that?

[02:03:03] The process goes on all the time. We're in the process now. I think I have five vacancies now, and I have four people in the academy currently. And I'm pretty sure we have about six or seven people that are in the pipeline now that we're looking at.

[02:03:23] So hopefully by July 1st, I will have those positions filled. If I get the three positions from the board, I will start working on filling those positions immediately. But when is the requirement? When is the juvenile court going to happen? The judge comes on on July 1st.

[02:03:39] Oh, this year? This year. Okay. Right, this year. And you've currently only got five vacant FTEs? Correct, right now, yes. Okay. Let's go TDOs for a second. It seems to me you're losing almost an FTE and a half over the course of a year simply handling the TDOs from an hour standpoint.

[02:04:09] Are those mostly on-call hours, or is that taken when they're on duty? I mean, how are we handling that? It all depends on when it happens. If it happens during the day, we can pull people to go on those transports.

[02:04:25] If it happens after 5 p.m., that's when the on-call people come in. So the people that would go before 5 p.m. would get overtime. And, of course, it depends on how far away the facility is and they don't stay overnight.

[02:04:45] There's a possibility they can come to work the following day, maybe for just a half a day, so they won't lose all the time. So I'm assuming that's being covered with overtime and not on-call since you don't have an on-call budget? Right, and keep in mind that a lot of deputies that work at the sheriff's office, they don't do just one job.

[02:05:03] They wear many hats. So they may be doing transports today, and they may be working in court the next day, or they could be on the law of distance transport the following day. So they wear plenty of hats. Sometimes we just have to adjust to what the requirements are.

[02:05:19] Okay. It just seems to me we're losing a good bit there. Do you know what the differential is between the on-call rate per hour and the overtime rate per hour for your garden-variety mid-range deputy? The on-call rate?

[02:05:38] Yeah. For the overtime? Yeah. Overtime versus on-call, or is it the same? It's the same. Right. Okay. Right. And then last but not least, I'm looking at this rather almost trivial amount of $25,000 for pay parity in the communications staff.

[02:05:58] Why wasn't that handled last year? Well, the reason why it wasn't handled is because we didn't ask for the funding for that. And, of course, I have to follow the county rules on how you pay personnel.

[02:06:15] Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Supervisor Franklin. Sure. I just want to thank you for the presentation. Certainly, the will of the board to support that ask, I would be more than happy to be supportive. Part of the challenge here, and I've talked about this before, are kind of the responsibilities of the state employees and the General Assembly doing their part, and particularly the Virginia Compensation Board.

[02:06:45] And I don't know the ins and outs of how that works, and you do. But part of what I feel in having this conversation also with the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office is we have to kind of push the members of the General Assembly to to do a better job with regards to the Virginia Compensation Board and making sure that they can play their role in their responsibility and making sure that their employees are getting the rates of pay that they deserve.

[02:07:14] And so here we are, the county and the localities, having to step up and help out our local law enforcement, even those who partially get payment from the state. So I'll start by saying that. The other thing, too, is one of the challenges with the comparisons of police versus the sheriff is obviously the police is 100 percent county employed.

[02:07:38] And so, you know, we can make sure that they're taken care of with regards to pay, with regards to resources, things of that nature, whereas the sheriff's department, you know, some of those employees are from the state. But, you know, I just go back to the general argument that we've got to push our General Assembly to do better and to do more.

[02:08:00] And we have a General Assembly now, particularly our delegation within Prince William County, that is supportive of our localities. And so I would just say to my colleagues, I think it's a matter of us, particularly with our legislative agendas, that we're making sure that we're including these type of discussions as part of that.

[02:08:16] We talk about the big items, transportation, housing, but very seldomly do we talk about employee pay and compensation. And so perhaps in the future, that's something we need to look at with regards to our legislative agenda and making sure that our General Assembly delegation understands that this is important, too, because you guys will always have to come to us to fill in those gaps.

[02:08:38] And we're going to step up and do it, but it's a challenge, as you know. Thank you. All right, and Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. just one last two last things one is very quickly you have been a good steward of the funding that you have had and and so I know that's why you're coming forth now and it's not because nothing happened last year and I appreciate your honesty of saying well I didn't ask last year so now you're asking and so thank you for taking us off the hook in that regard but I think that you've

[02:09:15] been a great steward of your of your funding the other thing that I wanted to ask was one of the things that I'm noticing in the fire department and in the police department and it could be because you have different accountability and responsibilities but they are starting cadet you know training with the high school students and things like that so is that in your vision is that in your future in respect to because I know you have a very seasoned staff experienced and seasoned staff.

[02:09:48] Supervisor Bailey, that was one of my budget requests, but I decided to forego that this year. But certainly the cadet program has been something that I think I asked for last year. I did last year.

[02:10:04] And this year I decided not to. But I want a cadet program because it's an excellent opportunity to engage with our youth, to get involved in law enforcement. But if I do get a cadet program, it would not be just for the sheriff's office.

[02:10:22] I would want that cadet and cadets to look at the ADC, to look at the police department, look at the sheriff's department, so they can decide what they want to do. The main thing I want to do is get them involved in public safety. Appreciate that, and that's why I brought it back to you so that you could say that, because I know that was one of your requests.

[02:10:42] Next year, you probably will see that. Okay. All right, thank you so much. And I had an opportunity to visit your office just yesterday. Yes. And to, you know, so I've heard this, and it was a great discussion. And I appreciate you raising your concerns then and coming back and presenting this budget to us.

[02:11:00] I know we have had a lot of budget requests this year, you know, more requests than we have funding right now. But I definitely would like to, and I've said this, work with public safety to make sure that we're working with you, that we're working with our law enforcement and other officials to keep our community and our county safe.

[02:11:18] So thank you very much for coming here today. And I don't think there's any other questions. So if you have any final thoughts before we move on. Again, thank you for allowing me to come before you today. And we serve a great community. So thank you. Thank you. And so for item 9B, we're going to get into a discussion on questions regarding the budget.

[02:11:38] I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Shorter. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt. If I could ask Supervisor Boating and Supervisor Angry to read their FOIA statements. Thank you. I was about to jump in there.

[02:11:53] Thank you, Madam County Attorney. That's part of the reason why you're award-winning, by chance. Madam Chair, before the board begins its discussion of the budget, I need to declare a personal interest in this matter. My wife is a school's employee. As a school's employee, my wife and I are members of a group which is affected by this matter.

[02:12:10] I will be participating in it because I am able to do fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, before the board begins its discussion on the budget, I need to declare a personal interest in this matter. My wife is a special education instructional aide with the schools.

[02:12:26] As a school's employee, my wife and I are members of a group which is affected by this matter. I will be participating in it because I am able to do so fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. So this budget work session is really an outproduct of the discussion that this board had just a few weeks ago and our desire to make sure that there is an opportunity for board members to ask questions openly.

[02:12:56] That said, I just really want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the great work that the staff have done. I understand from Dave almost 250 questions that have come into the budget office and to our staff from the community and from this board.

[02:13:13] So what I'd like to do to help facilitate this conversation is to first have Dave summarize some of the questions by way of theme that we have heard most often. I have asked the leadership team by way of our agency directors to be available to go into any detail, but this really is an opportunity for board members as we are in the last phase of this budget development process, an opportunity for you all to ask questions.

[02:13:45] I will also say that in all cases, what we have done in terms of budget responses, we have provided those responses on the budget portal open and available to the community to review. In cases where the questions have come in from board members, we have, in addition to posting them in the portal, we have also sent them to you directly.

[02:14:07] So in many cases, we have, well, in all cases, we have sent those by way of email to you all. And so with that, Madam Chair, I'm going to turn it over to Dave. Maybe we can cut off that mic and turn your mics on, and I'll jump in as needed as well.

[02:14:30] Good afternoon, Chair Jefferson, members of the board. Dave Sinclair, Office of Management and Budget. The county executive is correct. We've received nearly 250 questions, either through our question and answer database from the board as it relates to the proposed CIP, the proposed budget, the planning commission, has asked several questions about the CIP.

[02:14:58] We've also answered questions offline about how to read the pivot tables in the line item budget. So we're seeing a level of review on the proposed budget that I haven't seen before since becoming budget director seven years ago.

[02:15:15] A lot of the questions, if we want to talk about themes, around uh program shifts from one department to another if the board recalls uh there was an approval in our organizational structure last year and so we uh spent received a lot of questions about um why did tourism tourism's budget get reduced in parks and recreation and increased in economic development it was because of that organization shift um we also received a lot of

[02:15:50] questions surprise about data centers and i'd like to thank michelle latreat and her staff in helping us answer those questions in a timely manner for the board and and the community we've tried to be diligent in responding to questions uh sometimes there's a backlog and it takes us a little longer than we would ordinarily like i i apologize if um if it's a little longer than than you would have liked but we did try our best to to get back to you in a timely manner all right

[02:16:27] thank you i don't see anyone has teed up questions so i'm just going to start with a couple um development services how will increase permitting fees make the permitting process faster and more efficient so i think the the proposed uh development services fee increases are really about keeping up with employee compensation included in the proposed budget you're also seeing some additional positions to help the with the backlog not just in development services but

[02:17:02] also in in the planning office and maintaining those review times for development in the county all right giving plan ins consistent reliance on contractors over the past six years and the staffing shortfall it's been covering. Would it not make more sense to hire some long-range planners as FTEs for the same amount or less than possibly what we're currently paying contractors?

[02:17:30] So let me, if I can, on this. So we have included some additional FTEs, some as backfills, and some as new FTEs as part of this budget. That said, there will be, I think in planning, given all the changes that are underway there will be opportunity for very specific skill sets very specific expertise to come in and provide very temporary assistance to the county by way of updates to the DCSM or updates to other other ordinances so I think the question is certainly well taken

[02:18:07] the opportunity to grow the planning office's capacity we are absolutely taking up but but there will be an opportunity where we know we have a very specific need to bring in contractors and consultants to help us with that need. And then once that need goes away to have that contract end. All right. Thank you. Finance, Michelle. We love our tax dollars. What resources do you need to ensure compliance with tax assessments and codes among the industries that are more difficult to access, you know, such as, for example, data centers?

[02:18:47] And would this be, you know, solvable by FTEs, contractors, or both? Sure. So we are actually talking about that right now in prep for next year's budget. With some of the large area rezonings, it is taking a toll on the assessment staff.

[02:19:03] There's a lot of work, a lot of parcels to look at, a lot of nuances, and it's a new industry, too, a newer industry for Prince William County. So we are looking at putting together a staffing plan related to data centers. Fortunately, we did start to build out a staffing plan a few years ago, so we have a couple of dedicated team of people within real estate, treasury management, and tax admin that are working close together with development services, for example, economic development, to learn all we can about data centers and really plan how to forecast it in the future.

[02:19:33] But, you know, I do think there will be a need for some additional assessors in probably fiscal 26 perhaps as well in tax administration around business tangible all right thank you parks and redneck is um there's 99 000 designated for occoquan trails um is that part of a pre-existing plan or will that also give us more trail connectivity or do we need to request extra for better trail connectivity across the county oh i'm sorry um the money in the budget the 99 000

[02:20:10] designated for the aquacon trails um is that part of a pre-existing plan or will or you know um do we need to request additional money for trail connectivity around the county i actually would need to have seth come in maybe and talk and talk about this i believe that the trail funding is for maintenance uh and if so this is not to grow uh the trail but instead to there we go right on schedule while you're making it to the front um facilities and fleet they're requesting 25 new

[02:20:45] fleet vehicles are they electric or energy efficient do we know i don't believe they are electric um there may be some hybrid some uh plan to to procure hybrid vehicles but not fully electric gotcha and seth if you can come and answer i don't know if you heard my question regarding trail connectivity i did not manage here seth hemler voss director of parks recreation members of the board can you please repeat the question so quickly is the 99 000 designated for aqua one trails um is that part of pre-existing plan or will that help with other trail connectivity

[02:21:22] 99 000 in new proposed spending for aqua one yes my apologies i'm not familiar with that particular expense item well i am yes sir yes so that is directly tied to the project in the capital improvement program it's specifically for initial equipment and maintenance as new trail segments open up along that that particular system thank you i'm going to move on because i know i've ran

[02:21:55] on my first allotment in time supervisor bailey that was quick uh yeah it does um uh first thing i wanted to say is uh for the questions that was asked on the on the website of the responses that i've gotten from my community that uh i mean yeah the response that i've gotten from my community is that your responses have been very quick and succinct but immediate.

[02:22:24] And you need to know that because we haven't normally done that. And so it's working is what I just want to put that out there. For the transition team, and this is for the county exec, the transition team that you formalized last year, will there be, are we still operating with the vision of recruiting internal candidates and not fresh FTEs?

[02:22:51] Thank you for that question. Yes, that is absolutely the vision, and we will stay consistent there. We wanted to really utilize in-house expertise and talent to help us with the Transformation Management Office, and we are certainly doing that.

[02:23:08] What that has certainly meant is that as those leaders are moved to transformation management, other leaders emerge within the agency. And so we have seen a trickle-down effect, if you will, within the agency where we have a few dozen employees who are stepping in and stepping up and really in that receiving new skills, skills that we will utilize certainly as an organization as they learn new jobs and are utilized in different ways.

[02:23:38] So thank you for that question. And yes, we do not plan to hire outside the organization where we are reassigning from within. Thank you for that. And then the other question that I had is for Michelle and David, I think, but specifically for Michelle.

[02:23:58] The information that you are getting and collaborating with the school budget team, is it detailed enough for us to make specific decisions about the 57% and all other allocations that we're making?

[02:24:17] Is it detailed enough? We present the superintendent's proposed budget at a summary level in our proposed budget. To answer your question bluntly, no, we do not get that level of detail to provide an adequate review for the board.

[02:24:40] Okay. And could you explain to the board, not tonight, but can you come back to the board and explain what is needed in that? Because that helps us as we're making decisions. We do not review the school's initiatives in the superintendent's budget.

[02:24:58] We do not have the bandwidth to do that. We have a full dance card with the county government. Okay. Dave, I wonder if you could talk a bit about the supplemental document that the school sent over.

[02:25:17] I believe Supervisor, we were asked about this when the superintendent and the chair of the board were presenting. This is, to some extent, connected to what is going to be in my presentation later on this evening.

[02:25:37] There are, I believe, a, go ahead. Thank you. So, correct, as supervisor, we're requested. We sent out a slide from the school's budget markup session, not the county board's markup session.

[02:25:58] that is next week but the school's budget markup session specifically to what mr shorter just mentioned included in the the school's proposed budget is a child protective services liaison that is funded in the superintendent's proposed budget but not in the county's proposed budget at the moment. Um, the total cost of the position is, uh, a little over $100,000. It would be a position in the department of social services. Uh, 50% of the funding would be funded by the

[02:26:37] Commonwealth and the school's share and the County share would each provide 25%. Um, I think it's about $28,000 respectively. And I think you'll, you'll see that as an option this evening. thank you madam chair supervisor bode thank you madam chair and thank you to the county exec for giving us this open form to ask questions i know that it was a request that was given earlier on budget season i know it's not traditional so i wanted to obviously highlight that and get uh give you all kudos for that um going again back to the idea this i'm going to ask about themes

[02:27:14] so as a specific line items i know that's more questions for uh our budget committees and what have you um my what we noticed is as we sort of talk about the office of transformation management there are a lot of services and programs being offered especially on community services and dss that largely are very related um so homelessness prevention as an example emergency shelter services traditional housing aren't part of homeless services within dss they're a community they're under housing and community development there's also some other services under csb that all seem like they should be going under one house.

[02:27:52] So I guess my question for the county, except more than anyone else's, is that part of the scope of work for the transformation office to look at those things that are sort of decentralized now to maybe make efficiencies in the long run? Not generally. I would say not. In terms of scope, I really do look to the leadership team and look to the agency directors.

[02:28:14] We certainly have those conversations. but the restructuring of agencies I've not tasked the Transformation Office with. Your question certainly will have, I will go back to the directors who are implicated in what you just said and certainly have that conversation with our deputy CXO as well.

[02:28:37] But to be clear, no, I have not asked the TMO to look towards restructuring, the restructuring of agency programs um as yet appreciate that and my uh my next question is um under public health um right now it says that we're going to be continuing to fund maternal maternal and child health uh at a consistent basis but it's putting it below uh fy 22 levels

[02:29:14] um you know we continue to talk about public health and infant mortality rates especially among non-white folks um has there been any sort of uh forward look on us funding that more and if not sort of what's this disparity is there about that i would actually have to ask um the team to come in on this one um yeah do you mind asking that again sure disparity yeah um maternal and child health is funded uh consistently from last year fiscal year to this fiscal year however that's

[02:29:53] below FY22 levels and you know especially child mortality rates and especially among non-white folks in the community continues to be higher in disparities between them and and white mothers and children and so as we continue to have these conversations around especially public health is there a reason why we're not funding that more and more over the years so so less which is where we are right now I'm going to ask our deputy CXO Elijah Johnson to take that question Good afternoon, members of the board.

[02:30:29] Elijah Johnson, Deputy County Executive. Supervisor Bode, to that question, what we're going to be doing with the health district, they haven't put in place their new director yet. Once they get that person in place, we'll be having a better time to sit down with them, see what population health data they have, and see where those investments need to happen at.

[02:30:50] It's one of the things I'm talking with this COO about now. Appreciate it. And actually leads me into another question I was going to ask is, do we have a timeline? that because i i feel like dr answer departed a number of years ago and we haven't had that spot filled they they have had interviews as you've heard from the sheriff and other folks finding a candidate within their salary structure has been challenging appreciate that thank you and then my um my last question is not related to this at all so appreciate the the clarity elijah

[02:31:18] um is in regards to there it is um the narrative for the juvenile court services states that caseloads are expected to increase over the years.

[02:31:39] And we had a conversation with Amy Ashworth even last week about her seeing from her office standpoint an increase in juvenile-related crimes. At the same time, though, standard intensive supervision budgets are set to decrease for this fiscal year.

[02:32:00] Can we talk about those disparities, knowing that we're seeing more cases but less supervision being funded for those cases. I would need to get back to you on that. Appreciate it. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right.

[02:32:16] Thank you. And Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually want to dovetail on the school division budget issue because the longer this goes on, the more frustrated I get with the school division.

[02:32:33] They didn't provide us with their particular funding levels by bucket category, and now we get a markup that I didn't even see on TV when I watched the meeting. We get a markup a week after they give their presentation, so the presentation they gave us didn't have their full budget request.

[02:32:54] You know, it seems like every time I turn around, they're either seemingly unwilling or unable to give us a complete budget for the school system, which represents more than half the money we take in, and there's, quite frankly, not enough detail, and that's got to cease.

[02:33:13] We need to get a full-budget package from them next year with all of the information in a timely manner, and I think that needs to be communicated to them. I'm going to take these just in order that I've got them here. I'm talking about the Office of Transformation and what it is and what it isn't going to do or what the expectation is with respect to efficiencies, but I'm looking at the budget, and I'm particularly frustrated this year because I can't tie this year's budget very easily to last year because of all the movement within the budget, shifting of agency, FTEs,

[02:33:51] trying to figure out whose budget picked up what, who lost what, what the equivalent costs are, that sort of thing. But what has become relatively clear is that the Office of Transportation and the change to the quadrant model does not come without a price.

[02:34:12] And I'm at $1.5 million and growing. So if you're going to have an Office of Transformation, it would occur to me that part of the responsibility of the Office of Transformation would be to look for efficiencies within the agencies, whether it's in contractual costs, FTE costs, something like that.

[02:34:36] But if we're just going to rearrange the deck chairs and increase the cost, that really doesn't serve any real purpose to me. Getting into more fine, more granular, you've requested three additional FTE for procurement analysts, and I get what the general government staffing levels assessment says.

[02:34:59] The question is, can we do without all of them? Can you make do with one or two and see how it goes? Yes. No, I mean, so we requested, and I am very thoughtful and conscious, along with staff, to make sure that what we ultimately request as part of the proposed budget is what we need.

[02:35:23] And I think in terms of the response itself, it outlined what the standards are associated with the number of employees and what we are asking procurement to do, the procurement staff to do. Dave, you want to add to this?

[02:35:40] Yeah, I would just add for the board that the original request as submitted by procurement was for quite a few more positions than what you're seeing. I want to say it was either six or eight positions, and we came down to three, not just because of that study that was cited in the response, Supervisor Weir, but also the growth of the county CIP as well.

[02:36:06] It's a $1.3 billion plan, and with the advent of PPEA proposals, There's a lot of staff effort that goes into evaluating such things, mega projects, not just in transportation, but some of the largest capital projects, the judicial center expansion is going to be absolutely massive.

[02:36:33] I just wanted to add on to that for your consideration. And I'll say also, I'm looking forward to the work sessions to come for this year. It's an opportunity for the board to hear directly from our agency on the work that they are doing to reframe procurement services in this case, but all of our government services.

[02:36:56] So a lot of work ahead for procurement, and yes, I would say that all of the positions that are requested as part of the proposed budget and reinforced this evening are needed. Madam Chair, I'll continue on round two, given time.

[02:37:15] Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. With the shift of tourism from parks and rec to economic development, in the response that we received regarding that the transient occupancy tax would transfer from parks and rec over to economic development.

[02:37:44] However, in the briefing that we're going to receive tonight, we look at that $4.5 million seems to be going to be dedicated to PRTC. What are we losing on the economic development side if we transfer those funds to PRTC?

[02:38:06] That's an outstanding question, Supervisor Gordy. We should have, I should have expanded on that a little bit more. The local transit occupancy tax is 8%.

[02:38:24] Of that 8%, 3% by state code must be used for transportation, public transportation purposes. And that's part of the recommendation that you're going to see tonight regarding going to transit.

[02:38:39] Of the remaining 5%, 60% of what's generated by that 5% rate must be, by state code, used for tourism. And that's the piece that was transitioned from parks and recreation to economic development for the tourism program.

[02:39:03] Okay. And I apologize for that. The remaining, the 40% share of the 5% is treated as general revenue, and that's reflected in Michelle and her team's general revenue forecast.

[02:39:21] And it supports general county government, and the schools do get a share of that. on the transient occupancy tax you know we we implemented the food and beverage tax because we said it was going to help us gain revenue from people who were from outside the county i don't believe that that's been very successful in getting money from people outside the county i think it's actually a burden that's been an additional tax on our citizens and we're at a place now where we're taxing inflation because the cost of food has gone up

[02:39:58] so much and we're also seeing the trend back to pre-COVID food not at home had exceeded food at home which means people weren't buying groceries they were getting their food outside from outside sources from restaurants and then bringing it home and eating there and and that trend is as someone who deals with grocery in my civilian life we're watching that trend go back and so the more that families go back to go back to eating from restaurants the more of a burden that tax is on

[02:40:34] our our local families and so but looking at if we're going to try to get money from folks from out of Prince William County it seems to me that the logical choice is the transient occupancy tax could you Michelle maybe I don't know if you know this offhand or not but is there a comparison of how our transient occupancy tax compares to others or is it we pretty much limited by state code on how much that can be charged? I believe we are limited by state code on how much we could

[02:41:09] be charged. It's also factored by the hotel rates you know particularly for like governmental travel the closer you are into D.C. those rates are higher than Prince William County so that also would impact it. Thank you. All right Supervisor Weir. Could Seth and Rick come back in and I'll make a comment while I'm waiting for them. Similar to the procurement specialists, given the additional FTE and the cost of an assistant director of digital government, I just won't

[02:41:48] support this. I mean, that should fall within the scope of the employees we've already got, and if you've got a reorganization of the budget, then so be it. You know, let's take care of that internally, or at least, you know, play around with people's responsibilities. I don't think that we need to add another executive-level FTE just for covering digital government.

[02:42:08] That's just my personal feeling. Does he set the wall again? I've read the justification for the principal planner and the construction inspector. Why can't we use the county existing staff?

[02:42:23] Thank you for the question, Supervisor Weir. Seth Henler-Voss, Director of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, Madam Chair, members of the board. So the instruction inspector would be a dedicated position in order to provide oversight of our contractors for capital improvement.

[02:42:39] projects. It's a full-time job, and I'm not aware of any other inspector positions that would have the capacity to assist us. So unlike a plan reviewer or a specialty inspector, this is more of a general, think of it more as a general construction observer or construction administrator, if you will. I'm a little concerned that we didn't word it properly. So just to be clear, that's the purpose of the position. If there is a position and capacity available, we would love to partner with other agencies for sure. Well, it sounds like you're asking for a general

[02:43:14] contractor and not for an inspector. No, sir. It's construction observer, construction administrator. Some of these terms are interchangeable, but it's someone to provide oversight of the contractors to make sure that they are following the specifications and that we're basically getting the quality that the taxpayers deserve and to prevent issues with the project is going to require a correction in the future that'll be borne by the by the county so it's a very good investment in making sure that we're holding our contractors accountable will that obviate the need for close-in inspections using county inspectors or is

[02:43:52] something entirely different entirely different sir all right let's go back to the planner um the answer i got was the proposed principal planner will primarily conduct rezoning application reviews as well as assist with park planning projects and grant administration. Isn't that already being done by the planning office or are you talking just about your input? The latter, sir. The latter? Yes, sir. I'm not sure that we need a principal planner at that price for that.

[02:44:19] Has Rick come back? There he is. Rick, can we delve back into TOT? Does the loss of the TOT revenue that's proposed to be targeted to filling the PRTC funding gap, does that impact your transportation projects or your budget? Madam Chair, members of the board, Rick Canizos,

[02:44:55] your director of transportation. Supervisor Weir, thank you for the question. Anything that takes away from local transportation dollars impacts my budget. In the instance of TOT, 2% of that tax is supposed to go by code to public transportation. So that's something that could be given with PRTC with not a lot of consequence. But 1% of that 3% that we get for transportation is for any type of transportation use. So by giving up that 1%, you are giving up some of your budget that you could use for other transportation purposes. Does anybody have the calculation on what that is on a

[02:45:31] dollar amount, roughly? It would be about 1.2, 1.5 million dollars per percent. Percent? I believe, I'll have to. I'll wait. So the estimate is 3% generates 4.5, so each 1%, 1.5 approximately.

[02:46:04] Okay, so that's $1.5 million that would be coming out of your funding? Is that what I'm taking? $1.5, yes, sir. $1.5 total? From the TOT, yes, sir. For the fiscal year? For the fiscal year, yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Approximately. Getting back to, Seth, you don't need to answer this, but getting back to Seth's planner slash general contractor requirement, it seems to me that that sort of mirrors to some degree what's going on in planning with their additional FTEs for the community development program,

[02:46:40] and I think we could probably combine those two FTEs with four FTEs in planning, call it a day, and do it with four. This is going to be my suggestion, where you coordinate with each other and you share those FTEs rather than hiring six FTEs to be running on what are essentially parallel paths.

[02:47:04] If there's a construction issue, I think you need to go to development services and deal with that from an inspection personnel standpoint. But I think we need to scale back our total. We're just adding FTEs left and right here on similar paths that I don't think would have happened in prior years simply because we're getting adjusted to this new quadrant system.

[02:47:27] So that I would just, Mr. County Executive, I would ask you to consider that in the coming week if there's some sort of way that we could combine the FTE needs of parks and planning with respect to both planning and supervisory needs so that we can trim that FTE from 6 to 4 or possibly even less.

[02:47:49] And I will see I've run out of time, so I will leave it at that. All right, Supervisor Ingrid. Thank you, Madam Chair. So let me just say to the board, one of the number one problems I hear in this county from constituencies there's no nightlife there's no entertainment there's no venues and so when we talk tlt and revenues and even meals tax you're not bringing in anyone from the outside to be a part of that because this county is closed it's a closed county i have a simple question really is what is our hotel industries and do we know what hotels are in the pipeline to be built

[02:48:23] in princeville county probably not i'll just toss that out to maybe we could i don't know off the top of my head but we would have that built in our forecast so yeah and the reason i bring that up is as we talk about you know opportunities taxes for this county and really a lot of discussion here and here is we want to generate that from people coming through and is Seth still here he will note that and you don't have to come back but in 2020 2019 when we did that tough model race you know that that I don't know if you know those those generated numbers

[02:48:59] of the time for that one simple event but it was something unique and different for the county I say that because those are the opportunities that we need to be looking at for parents from Canada as we talk about these revenue streams that we don't want to continue putting on the burden of our people. And so that's the opportunity that I just want to mention that we should be looking at as we kind of progress forward.

[02:49:21] And I'll save the rest of my questions for the next round. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. I'm just thinking about nightlife. How many of those days really have the energy to be added? I'm just asking. I'm just wondering. our supervisor supervisor Bota thank you madam chair to go back a little bit to something else a community partners program I know that maybe it's been two years now where we talked about we're sort of revising the criteria for the community partners program so my first question is can we have an update on

[02:49:54] where we are in that process sure the the board and I talked about the revamp of the community partners program last year as part of last year's budget process we We are well on our way. I will say that the team has worked really, really hard to make sure that we are communicating out to our current community partners what those changes actually mean.

[02:50:17] We are also working internally to talk about which of the larger community partners that essentially provide services that shouldn't be open to an on or off switch and how we enter into contract and or MOU with those community partners.

[02:50:36] And so we are in touch with the larger community partners that will fall in that category. We've also named a selection committee of community and employees to help make selections around future community partners, which we committed to doing last year.

[02:50:54] And we are communicating out from that selection committee for those community partners for the small amount of funds that will be available for this year. Next year, we hope to be in a position where we have moved the larger community partners off of and out of the community partner program into actual contracts.

[02:51:16] And we will have a program of community partners that are the more competitive programs and projects that we know we want to fund based on our strategic plan. And that helped to meet our outcomes, the outcomes that we have committed to the community that we would meet.

[02:51:33] I appreciate that because, one, I appreciate the refresher on when we started that process and where we are because I've seen expenditures in the community partners program, especially this year, that kind of caused my eyebrows to raise. And also I saw expenditure for leadership Prince William to do small business liaisoning and training, which we have a couple different entities that already do that.

[02:51:55] So it just begged the question of how come they weren't given that. Why were they not applying for that under the community partners program? But if we're still sort of in flux, then it sort of explains that. So I appreciate the clarity on that. And my last question for this round and for the discussion just goes back to facilities and fleet management.

[02:52:21] There's a $223,000 expense for the now-called Mike Pennington Training Center. Knowing how much we just dropped in that facility to acquire it and everything else, why is there going to be another cost this year? So we thought we were able to handle some of the maintenance responsibilities in-house.

[02:52:41] This particular initiative in this proposed budget is for lead removal. We have to meet regulations and ensure the safety of our employees at that training facility, and that's why you're seeing it again, Supervisor Bodie.

[02:52:59] We make every effort to try to get the annual maintenance costs to come to the board one time for that. But just a little off the mark on this, we thought we could handle it in-house. We really need to bring in someone specialized for that specialized function.

[02:53:20] And my last question is more of a global question than that. Because, Dave, I appreciate that clarity. I know we don't do things like just acquire a building like that outright. we you know we've done that twice down last year or so the elite shooting sports and also uh the gander mountain site that we're going to be using for the crc my question is is are there any way that in the future knowing that we're looking at things like redevelop knowing that things like we're going to be looking at acquiring land and whatnot for us to look at being more proactive in really forecasting those costs we're not caught on the back end having to backfill those costs

[02:53:55] later yeah um that was a unique opportunity that that presented itself to the county as was the the crisis receiving center the acquisition of of that building um we understand the the timing and the urgency but that's all the more reason why ideally in a pragmatic fashion that capital project should really enter the cip in the fourth the fifth the sixth year and they march year by year because along the way we we learn more information available to help mitigate these

[02:54:34] type of situations and i'll also say and dave uh said it well uh we knew with the uh with the training facility that we would be entering into a facility that had some very unique maintenance needs uh i see uh matt here i don't know if you wanted to say anything else yeah madam chair uh Members of the board, Matt Villareal, Director of Facilities and Fleet Management.

[02:55:10] Everything they've said is correct. It's getting into that facility. It was new to us, and there were things that we just didn't calculate on that we now know that we have to get done in order to make sure that it's safe to be used. And the lead remediation is not cheap, and that's the biggest reason why we have those expenses.

[02:55:28] Appreciate that. And the last thing I'll say, and it's sort of related to Matt since he's here, It was a question that the chair asked is, as we look at the life cycle of our vehicles, our fleet vehicles, I know the larger trucks, things like that, we can't get electric versions of it, or it's just prohibitively expensive.

[02:55:48] But that said, the lighter-duty vehicles, I know that we haven't done a great job yet of tracking as those life cycles go through, getting hybridized vehicles at the very least. So as much as we can do that, I would appreciate us trying to do that more. Definitely appreciate that. And in a case where they are sedans for non-public safety employees, I think we are using it as an opportunity to do that.

[02:56:11] But I believe that this particular action is public safety vehicles, and we have not yet mastered getting public safety, particularly police vehicles, in the form of hybrid or fully electric.

[02:56:29] It's not to say we won't, but we are still marching towards that. All right. I just want to remind supervisor said we have two times to speak. I know some people want to go on round number three, but after you've had your two. So with that, I'm going to go to supervisor Bailey.

[02:56:47] This is my two, correct? Okay. Matt, don't go. Where are you going? Stay here, bro. Stay here. You thought you were out, man. Look, I wanted to, in terms of the maintenance piece, that's something that we've been talking. Let me start. No, wait, let me track back.

[02:57:05] One of the things that I love, the continuity and the trending of what we're doing as it relates to the budget. And one of those things is the maintenance piece with equipment and things like that. So that's a part of our budget as continuity.

[02:57:23] Are we at a place where we are catching up, so to speak? Or where are we? Are we in the middle, Matt? And I'm saying that, you know, without a firm number, but I know that that has been an issue from a continuity standpoint.

[02:57:39] Madam Chair, members of the board, Matt Villareal, Director of Facilities and Fleet Management. I'd say that we're always constantly in the middle of it. I think we're making a lot of headway. I think where the program is right now is where we can manage it at this point.

[02:57:57] I think there's always opportunities to do more, that's for sure, when you're maintaining the number of facilities that we have and the age as they are. Same with the vehicles. But honestly, I think we're kind of where we're at with what we can manage with our existing resources.

[02:58:15] But we're on a good track. I believe so. Okay. That's really all. And then the other thing, speaking of the CRC, I know we've not talked about that a lot in this budget cycle because it's on its way to where it needs to be.

[02:58:33] But I want to say with that, in terms of continuity, when we're in the budget cycle in the future, and I guess this is to the kindly exec as well, if we can bring forth just a little snippet, a little summary of the history of where we started from as to where we're going to, because we do have new members of the board, and I think sometimes in terms of us understanding why we're asking for FTEs, why we're asking for certain specific things, it might help us in digesting as we are asking questions and as we're going forward.

[02:59:10] Completely understand that. In fact, I would say that the team worked throughout the season, certainly as we were getting prepped for interaction with the board on fact sheets, and we'll continue on in that regard, developing some fact sheets around specific topic areas like the CRC where we know we've done considerable work and we want to make sure that the board is fully aware of the details before any decisions are made.

[02:59:36] Dave, did you have something else? If I may, Supervisor Bailey, I would just add and assure the board the maintenance and the utilities for the CRC was added in the FY24 budget, and we do not have any new initiatives in the proposed FY25 budget.

[02:59:54] Thank you. We're okay there. Thank you, Dave. I appreciate that. And then the other thing is, as it relates to the CRE and even to the school budget, one of the things that we discussed last week during the school board's presentation is the fact that the governor had not signed the budget yet, and they were still in discussion.

[03:00:15] And the majority of that funding, that educational funding, was coming from that. Am I wrong? I remember Dr. Lateef saying that. Am I wrong? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. So in terms of that piece and how we support that piece, we're still waiting for the governor.

[03:00:33] So that's all I got. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. And are there no other, I guess, no other speakers? All right. Madam Chair, just to comment on that previous discussion, I attended an event with George Mason University in their leadership program in Manassas.

[03:00:51] And they actually have developed a very robust tool for helping organizations determine their life cycle costs on programs for facilities. And that might be worthwhile, you know, seeing how we could leverage that tool to help us better our planning and management and our budgeting as it relates to any capital improvements that we're making as well as any other investments that we're making in terms of vehicles and such.

[03:01:21] So just something to think about going forward. All right. Thank you so much. And I'm just going to ask a couple more questions before we move on. One for Parks and Rec. But hold on. Since you're here, Matt. I had something.

[03:01:38] I just want to say, this is mostly a comment. I'll let Seth come in while I make a quick comment. Because it was brought up earlier about charging our towns for access to the police training facility i think maybe having a discussion around that you know i don't want people to feel or believe that they're being double taxed but i just want to make a note that should be something maybe we discuss at the board or is there a reason why we are if you can answer now why do we charge um counties and towns you know for access to the police facility uh madam chair members board matt villarell facilities and sleep management uh we charge

[03:02:10] essentially we're recovering the cost of using the laying time that the other jurisdictions or, you know, public safety organizations. So it's just to cover our operating costs so that we're not. But let me also, if I could add to that.

[03:02:27] So if we were talking about a government facility, a government building, and one of our agencies was a tenant in that building, our own building, we would still be charging that agency. And I would say that ultimately the cost of recovery is what I wouldn't consider a double tax, but just the cost of doing business or providing a service at that time.

[03:02:58] So we are certainly available to talk about it, and we'll make sure that we are making it clear if the board wants us to go in a different direction. We're happy, certainly happy to do that with the training facility, but we're using the same kind of approach that we use for any of our facilities in costing out utility, costing out other costs associated with being in the facility itself.

[03:03:24] All right, thank you. All right, Seth, while you're running up, only 20% of our planned maintenance is projected to be completed on schedule. I just want to understand why. Madam Chair, members of the board, Seth Hunter-Vos, Director of Parks and Recreation. Can you please repeat the question?

[03:03:40] It looks like only 20% of our planned maintenance is projected to be completed on schedule. Why? Of our planned maintenance. Can you provide a little context to that statement, please? That is what I had written down for our parks and rec and for our facilities.

[03:03:58] Okay. I need a little bit more context on that, Dave, or Mr. County Exec. I will email that one then later with additional context. In my notes, I just scribbled a few things down. What were the other questions I had? Executive management.

[03:04:14] Okay, Mr. Shorter. For our environmental sustainability office, why are we not hiring a new FTE? And what resources do we need for more of our projects to meet its goals?

[03:04:32] Sure. So we actually, as part of the discussion tonight, we will have an FTE identified for sustainability. As part of last year's budget, we included an FTE in sustainability's budget. We are, as you know, providing additional funding, I believe, was it $5 million as part of surplus?

[03:04:54] What was the amount there? $2 million? Yeah. But we certainly included sustainability as part of the surplus decisions that were made in December with the FY23 surplus dollars.

[03:05:10] If the board would like to certainly add additional FTEs or go further in terms of capacity and sustainability, we'll take it. And then my last question. I know it's going to cost a lot of money, but I just got to ask. A lot of people, you know, want the landfill to be seven days a week.

[03:05:29] And I know it's costly, but what resources do we need to bring it back to 100% seven-day-a-week operation? We certainly did talk about that throughout the season and in preparation for the budget season.

[03:05:45] We still have some work to do to the numbers as they currently stand are significant, partially because it is a hard-to-fill position and one that we have had trouble recruiting in the past.

[03:06:02] And so we know that the cost will be significant, but I want to make sure that we bring appropriate cost to the board at the time that we can. So if a seven-day-a-week schedule is where the board wants to go with the landfill, I certainly can bring information around how we are, how we've changed hours at the landfill to make sure we're accommodating customers.

[03:06:31] But if the board desires a Sunday opening for the landfill, then we could certainly bring back cost. The cost will be significant though. I appreciate that would love to see what the costs are Thank you so very much and this concludes our budget work sessions. So everyone breathe a sigh of relief We are going to move on to supervisors time. Thank you staff. Thank you. Mr. Shorter Thank you everyone who's come in and you know been in the hot seat. So yes, I just want to thank you for

[03:07:09] This was something new we've not done it before and I just want to thank you for the opportunity for us to express our needs from our communities open-ended to the to staff and agencies to you the county exec i think it was a great idea and so i just for me just to hear my colleagues questions as well it's very important so the socialization of this is appreciated well thank you i'm going to give the you know um to mr shorter for actually accommodating all of this and so yes we're moving on to supervisor's times we got supervisor time we got five minutes that means five minutes i believe since last time we said i need to do a better track i believe last time we started

[03:07:48] for the supervisor gordy so supervisor bailey get those papers in order because i'm coming to you first supervisor bailey you're going first i said no last time so what i'm doing i just want everyone to understand i'm alternating i will start with you then i'll go to him the next meeting and then we'll always come in and i go last i kind of thought it was my my turn but then I heard Gordy, but anyway, thank you very much.

[03:08:18] Good afternoon, everyone. On April 3rd, I attended the Prince William Association of Realtors meeting and gave them an update on the construction of the Crisis Receiving Center, and it was a great conversation with our Prince William Realtors Association regarding the CRC and our opportunity that we have going forward with affordable housing.

[03:08:41] So it was a great conversation. On the 4th, I attended a wonderful retirement for Colonel Kenny, or I call him Kenny, but Kenneth Dunn. It was held at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and Colonel Dunn is a retired Marine, but he is very much associated with the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and we appreciate his service.

[03:09:03] On the 5th, I had the honor of speaking for the National Foundation of Black Public Administrators, hall of fame breakfast and it was absolutely a wonderful and surreal experience to see nationally how our colleagues are navigating and operating after covet within our region and outside of our region and so congratulations to madam president stacy rogers for a beautiful presentation and had the opportunity to have dialogue with attorney benjamin trump trump

[03:09:42] excuse me crop and it was wonderful it was absolutely wonderful on the fifth uh thanks to my staff on attending the dumfries triangle quantico little league opening day and they had a great time they had a good time eating hot dogs and being with the little people and over 31 teams um from primary high schools um were there attending um this this opening day session. And it was absolutely beautiful. Can't remember the name right now of the person

[03:10:14] that threw out the first pitch, but it was a paraplegic individual. And so that had a brain tumor. Thank you, Ken. And so to see how life just breathes through our community is absolutely breathtaking. April 6, I attended the 20th anniversary celebration of the Creative and performing arts center and the theme was drama at the museum stepping into tomorrow and thanks to our own denise mcphail president of that organization for bringing the arts and her vision to the hilton performing arts center denise we appreciate you april 9th

[03:10:57] which was today yeah i'm looking at this congratulations to uh madam chair and to county exec and to our own Victor Angry for your vision for the county and expanding and receiving a $2.5 million grant. And I won't take your thunder with that. I'll just leave it like that.

[03:11:17] Prince William County is moving and we people want to live here. And so to Congresswoman Spanberger, thank you for your presence and understanding our needs. Please note April 7th through the 13th is National Library Week with the theme ready set library so take time again to get back and read reading is absolutely great for your mind and for your children lastly please save the date for our annual pwc mental health awareness walk saturday may 18th from 10 to 2 p.m it'll be held at local shade park with a rain date of saturday

[03:11:56] may 25th and if if you'd like to be a vendor please let us let my office know and that's all I have at this time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Rear. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd just like to remind the residents of the western portions of the county that the first community meeting on the Indoor Sports and Events Center will be tomorrow night at 6.30 to 8.30 at the Pat White Center off of Ben Lomond.

[03:12:21] If anybody's interested, I will be there to answer questions apart from staff. So I hope to see some people there. And then the only other thing I've got is I would like to thank Jay Lark for spending innumerable hours with residents of the West End discussing data center issues.

[03:12:38] I was thankfully banished from the meeting, so I didn't have to listen to it all, but I do want to express my thanks to Jay Lark for reaching out to the community and meeting with several groups. Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Bodie. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[03:12:54] Just a couple things from me. I wanted to also thank Congressman Spanberger for her help in getting us that $2.5 million. and to Rick and his team were constantly looking for other ways to get other sources of revenue for our high-value transportation projects, such as the Meneville Parkway Interchange Spooey project.

[03:13:17] This past weekend on Sunday, I was able to, for a little while, attend the Bluebell Festival. It's always a great time. I was able to go with my wife and our two youngest. Both of them have obviously never been, so it was a great time to show them uh another great large natural space in the county um getting in there now is a little bit difficult it's very very crowded i i talked to uh to ashley studholm who is the uh director for uh the conservation lines are workshopping brainstorming how to make that a little bit

[03:13:51] better but it's just a testament to to how popular that area is and and just sort of uh another reminder of the great spaces that we have in princeton county and how we should be promoting to have more of those in the future. A couple of upcoming events we have.

[03:14:07] On Thursday night, we will be having the Eastern Side proposed indoor sports and event center community meeting at Freedom High School in the cafeteria. I will be in attendance, so hear the conversation there.

[03:14:23] Heard a great presentation from staff recently about that. Looking forward to community input there. And last but not least, again, a reminder that this coming Saturday the 13th from 10 o'clock until 1 30 we'll be having our ocaquan district dumpster day at oakwood pool which is off of oakwood drive uh in the old bridge lakeridge community and in the future i mentioned this before we've been looking to do a charrette on the strategic plan with our youth so high schoolers college-aged folks we heard a lot from our more seasoned our our more established adult and aging communities but we didn't get a lot of feedback from our youth and our college-aged residents.

[03:14:59] So really looking forward to partnering with the school, some other partners, such as 4-H, to get some youth involved in our strategic plan and that process. And that's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. All right, Supervisor Ingrid. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, yeah, I will be joining my colleagues for both of these indoor sports discussions.

[03:15:18] So the more the merrier, please come out. Also, Wednesday at 2 p.m., from 2 to 3 p.m., we're going to do a Cloverdale Park rededication ceremony. we've done a lot of improvements out there as you know neapso district is 100 percent undergoing revitalization and this is just another step in that direction um and then lastly so actually let me let me say lastly their event is going to be the good time gospel event it's going to be held at dale city christian church this saturday that's a lot of old gospel groups if you like gospel i think you can still get in at the door with a ticket so just check it out and

[03:15:54] And then the last third thing I want to say is I want to congratulate my wife for staying married to me for 34 years. This Thursday will be our anniversary. So we're going to be at that concert as well. So, you know, coming out and have a good time with us. Oh, and I'm sorry, Supervisor Gordy, Commissioner Gordy, Supervisor Gordy, I'm going to be working with you because we really have a problem with 18 Wheelers embarking in the community.

[03:16:18] So I'm going to be working with you to try to have some ideas that I want to work with you first to bring to the support so we can actually try to get our hands around this sooner than later because it's becoming a really big problem. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, thank you, and congratulations.

[03:16:34] I mean, 34 years, that's beautiful. That's wow. All right, Supervisor Gordy. All right. Well, Supervisor Angry, thank you for that, and I look forward to working with you and we'll get together and come up with a game plan to try to tackle that issue.

[03:16:51] I want to first offer my congratulations to Michelle on her accomplishment over the weekend and that just makes us all so proud, and I get to have a lawyer sitting next to me all the time, so it keeps me, I feel like I'm in court, you know, I can just bend over and talk to my lawyer, so it's really nice. Last Wednesday, I had Dwayne Moore and his team from the Prince William County Soil and Water Conservation District come to my home and do a soil test to help me figure out what i can do with my land uh that we have out there and um the beautiful thing about that

[03:17:29] program is that you don't have to have acreage uh to take uh to enjoy the benefits of this free resource for our county um and they'll come to your house they will do a soil test free soil test for you they will tell you you know what kind of plants you can grow in your flower beds and And whether you have a townhouse or whether you've got 200 acres, they're here as a resource.

[03:17:54] And they have lots of free programs for children, camps. They have master gardeners who can help you figure out what types of plants are best for you. And so I just want to highlight them as a resource for our county.

[03:18:13] And so I really appreciate Dwayne Moore and his team for all the work that they're doing. And they're becoming more active. And so we should be seeing them more and more in the community and helping us make sure we get it right.

[03:18:30] We waste a lot of money on throwing things onto our lawns that maybe we don't need to. And, of course, that pollutes the waterways and creates a whole lot of other problems. and they have other ideas of how we can address those issues. Last night, I participated in a town hall with the Saybrook community off Linton Hall Road.

[03:18:52] They wanted to discuss development in the Brentsville area, so we had a great conversation there. I really appreciate Jen Donnelly for setting that up and had a great conversation with them. I would like to issue a directive. This is my first.

[03:19:10] So without objection, I'm directing the planning staff to provide the board with recommendations for the board's consideration regarding a corridor study for Vent Hill Road from its intersection with Route 28 to its intersection with Rollins Ford Road. Staff's recommendation should include but should not be limited to evaluation on design guidelines, intensity, mobility, schools, compatibility, etc.

[03:19:33] The recommendation should include a timeline with cost and should align with Prince William County's comprehensive plans goals for rural transects and incorporate recommendations from the county's rural preservation study. After staff provides the board with a recommendation on this proposed study, the board may then consider a resolution at a future board meeting to conduct such a study.

[03:19:55] Without objection. And then on behalf of Supervisor Vega, who was unable to be with us today, she asked me to read a proclamation regarding Scottish-American Heritage Month.

[03:20:11] So, whereas millions of Americans traced their roots to the Scottish Highlands, Midland Valley, and southern uplands, and whereas early Scottish immigrants endured several hardships to build new lives, and whereas they transformed our largest cities into centers of commerce and industry and made great cultural, spiritual, and economic contributions that exemplified the diversity of our nation.

[03:20:32] And whereas Scottish Americans played an important part in creating the fabric of our history through their service in the government and military, also through their faith and family values. And whereas today many Americans of Scottish descent continue to play a vital role in shaping our history and culture, enriching all aspects of our lives, and whereas the St. Andrews Society of Washington, D.C., the Scottish American Women's Society and many others who've become advocates in our community and afar now therefore be it resolved that the Prince William County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim the month of April 2024 as Scottish Heritage American Heritage Month. Thank

[03:21:09] you Madam Chair. Thank you and Supervisor Franklin. Sure thank you on Thursday April 4th I attended a public forum sponsored by Omega Sci-Fi Incorporated held at the 91st annual third district regional meeting. Just want to thank them for the invitation there. Had a great time fellowshipping with various members of our regional community here. I also on Saturday attended the 20th anniversary gala for the Creative and Performing Arts Center also known as KPAC. A wonderful event highlighting the work that they've been doing throughout Prince William County and really the region

[03:21:44] as they highlighted also several plays that they have coming up and highlighting the wonderful work that our youth and young people do with their organization so wonderful event 20 20 years and what is great about their organization is really they've done a lot of the work themselves over the years they have been able to get the help of some sponsors but most of that 20 years has been spent really really doing the grassroots level work themselves and I'm so thankful for their commitment to prince william county so thank you to denise mcfell for leading the charge on that and

[03:22:21] all of her board of directors and volunteers also earlier today i attended the presentation that congresswoman spamburger did in delivering 2.5 million dollars to prince william county to fund the prince william parkway and minneville road interchange we obviously appreciate any support that the feds give you all hear me talk a lot about making sure that the state steps up and quite frankly that goes to the federal government as well so this was a welcome a welcome collaborative event for us to be able to say that we actually have federal dollars coming into our district so

[03:22:58] thank you to the congresswoman for her work there upcoming events we have bike to work day on Friday May 17th at the Woodbridge VRE and dumpster day on Saturday May 18th at Fred Lynn Middle School You can find more information on our website and social media.

[03:23:13] And then lastly, I also want to do a notice of intent to appoint Dexter Montgomery to the Strategic Planning Committee. I was thinking about it. I'm not sure if we actually need to do a notice of intent. We do? Okay, so there we go. And, of course, we'll make sure that the resume is sent around.

[03:23:29] So thank you. All right, everyone. Thank you so very much. Again, I want to reiterate what I said earlier. I was at a check ceremony with Kariswoman Spanberg, Rick Gonzalez, regarding a $2.5 million grant. For Prince William Parkway and the Menoyville Interchange, whenever we can get federal dollars, I'll take them.

[03:23:49] I also want to note that on Saturday, April 27th from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., I will be hosting a town hall for our strategic planning session. This is my first solo town hall, so I'm very excited.

[03:24:05] Please, everyone, come on. Come all. Join us. I want to take a moment, actually, to address something that I've been hearing from constituents. We've been getting all of us, the board, collectively a lot of emails regarding the C&P tax. There are constituents who are saying that, you know, the highest rate that we advertise, 370, is just not enough.

[03:24:25] We need to do 415. We need to go to $5. I just want to be clear that that is not something we can do. That's not something we can do. And I also want to address that most of these emails are coming from people on the western end of the county because they have a lot of anxiety around this.

[03:24:44] And yes, this board as a whole, we make decisions for the county collectively, but we don't necessarily bear responsibility equally for the decisions that we're making for other people. And so the reason why people are really pushing for a higher C&P tax is because they're wondering, we have all this development coming to our community, our neighborhoods, what are we getting out of it?

[03:25:07] And one of my staffers, I have a wonderful team, asked a question, you know, to what end? To what end? When we are bringing development here, obviously we want the tax dollars, we want jobs, we want all these things, but we have to ask ourselves, to what end?

[03:25:30] When are people really feeling the benefit of economic development? When are people really feeling that this development is making my life easier or better, that they're actually seeing that they can touch what this development is bringing?

[03:25:46] I am going to be meeting with the Chamber of Commerce to discuss this next week. I have met with, you know, representatives from the data sender industry. There is a lot of concern that has been expressed to me that, you know, you guys are doing this so quickly.

[03:26:06] It's only been 90 days. And my counter is, this is an issue I talked about extensively last year during the election. This is something that I have signaled back then, and I want to reiterate right now. Fauquier County is hardly a bastion of liberal taxation.

[03:26:29] Yet they have a much higher rate than we do. And they did a really significant hike in one year. An industry representative asked me, she's saying, you know, for her it was about business integrity.

[03:26:46] You know, you guys made this industry a targeted, you made, you know, this a targeted industry. Now you're going back on it. You're switching. The people of Prince William County, in my view, have spoken. We've had a lot of data center development in this county.

[03:27:04] And it's like we've been putting all of our eggs or too many of our eggs in one economic basket. and I know that not everyone on the dais agrees with me. We are going to continue to discuss this and then next week we're going to take a vote on where we're going to go in the C&P tax rate and people can vote. I encourage everyone to vote based on their principles but I also have to name that if you have a problem with a significant tax increase for the C&P tax rate

[03:27:35] and if we have a significant amount of money at the bottom line out of principle people don't ask for votes for things that you want. I know that this is going to be a tough vote for people. I know that people are feeling pressure from, I know that people are feeling pressure from the industry, from people who've written campaign checks. But I'm going to say for me,

[03:28:13] this is not a vote that I take lightly. It's a vote that I'm going to take based on my own integrity. Because for me, integrity cannot be bought. And the people of Prince William County, the people who are particularly impacted by this development or disproportionately impacted by this development should have a disproportionate amount of say in what we're doing next so with that we

[03:28:43] are going to convene for our closed meeting all right um and i just want to be clear because i

[03:30:30] know we have the report out do i have the motion and then we report out certify okay so all right gordy bailey i don't think there's any discussion other than all right let's you know all right unanimous yay and then we have a report out no we don't oh yeah right sorry i thought we i thought we also we did all right never mind all right all right so folks we are just wanting to make notice that we the board is going to go out um to carabas for dinner between our meetings

[03:31:09] um do i need to make any any others that's it all right so we will reconvene at 7 30 for the

[03:31:18] evening portion of our agenda thank you so very much welcome back to the board chambers it is now

[03:32:44] 7 30 and we will begin the evening with a proposed fiscal year 2025 budget recap from our county executive mr shorter the floor is now your chair i don't know where supervisor angry is but i at least should read mine give me a second here thank you madam chair before the board begins budget recap and holds a budget public hearing i need to declare a personal interest in these matters my wife is a school's employee as a school's employee my wife and i are members of a group which is affected by these matters are you participating in them because i'm able to do so

[03:33:18] fairly objectively in the public interest thank you madam chair madam chair before the board begins budget recap and holds the budget public hearings i need to declare a personal interest in these matters my wife is a special education instructional aid with the schools as schools employees my wife and i are members of a group which is affected by these matters i will be participating in them because i am able to do so fairly objectively and in the public interest thank Thank you, Madam Chair.

[03:33:47] Thank you so very much. And Mr. Shorter, the floor is now yours. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Chris Shorter, your county executive. Quite an honor to be able to stand before you and be at this point in the budget process. As I always do, I want to take this opportunity to really acknowledge and thank the team.

[03:34:06] So starting out, as you know, Dave, Michelle, Quentin, really the entire team. I am also joined by and want to acknowledge the leadership team, many of whom are outside in the atrium area, for all that they've done, not just to get to this point, but really as we started in August in earnest.

[03:34:29] So really wanted just to acknowledge and thank them. As you know, we are here this evening just at this point in the process to end really my time and my point in terms of the budget development process and to officially turn the budget over to you.

[03:34:46] It has been an absolute pleasure to get around to each of you, and as you know, much of what is reflected in these slides are a result of the conversations that we've had individually and certainly that I've heard over the last few weeks from the community.

[03:35:04] We also heard a presentation just a few weeks ago from Michelle Attrey providing additional updates in terms of general revenue, And so all of that has gone into what we will see and talk about over the next few minutes. As you know, what we talk about tonight, and we will do this, I will talk about this at the end of the presentation, will ultimately get us to next week, which is the budget markup, where you will, as a board, have public discussion about what you want to see happen with this budget.

[03:35:39] With that, we will start where we ended the last time we were together on February 20th. And so this slide really is a result of, and this is a reflection of what we presented on the 20th of February.

[03:35:55] We presented a tax rate, advertised a tax rate at our current rate at 96.6. This, at the time, represented an average residential assessment of 5%.

[03:36:12] This represented $243 on average per resident. We also advertised and got approval to advertise a 7.2 cent fire levy. That was also consistent with what our current rate is in terms of fire levy, and that represented an average residential increase of about $18, again, at the time.

[03:36:39] When we were together on the 20th of February, we also talked about the computer and peripheral, the current rate at $2.15, and based on your direction, advertised at $3.70. At that time, based on the residential assessment, we believe that the nickel on the C&P tax represented $1.6 million.

[03:37:08] And, of course, that has changed since we presented it. Wanted to make sure we started here just, again, to remind the board and, obviously, our audience looking on that this is where we were on the 20th. In our conversations with you and certainly hearing from residents, it was very clear that we heard from you that one of the top priorities was to make sure that we provided for some additional relief for our taxpayers.

[03:37:41] And in that, we are recommending as a staff, as part of the budget recap priorities, that we move the residential tax rate from 96.6 at its current rate and that advertised to 94 cent per $100 of assessed value.

[03:38:00] And so what you could see on this slide is where we were in terms of the 5% average residential appreciation, where we went after Michelle, Attreet, and team presented to the board at 5.6% and where we would have been.

[03:38:22] And so on this slide in the second column at 270 is where if we had not moved the tax rate down to 94% and we kept it at 96.6, it would have represented on average $270 for residents in terms of a year-over-year increase.

[03:38:42] With this reduction to $0.94, it represents on average $132, and this is us mitigating, as you could see, $138 from the average residential bill.

[03:39:03] In terms of fire levy, we are recommending that the fire levy stays consistent. So we are at 7.2 cent, and we will talk a bit later in the slide about how we would use that additional revenue in terms of fire levy.

[03:39:19] We will also talk later in the slide about the 215, but as always, and it's consistent with what we did last time, we are not recommending to the board a change in computer and peripheral, but fully understand in conversations with you that that conversation will happen in earnest next week.

[03:39:40] All right, moving on. All right, so this is the general revenue update and where we are essentially now given the 94 cent tax rate.

[03:39:55] You could see on this slide that ultimately, based on the decisions we've made in terms of increases to the personal property taxes around vehicle, and Business Tangible, and the decrease, meaning we forwent $27 million, just over $27 million in terms of revenue.

[03:40:22] And when you add that to the amount received with vehicles and Business Tangible, that leaves us with an additional $8 million that we need to address as part of this presentation and that we will do in the next two slides, slide six and seven.

[03:40:48] What we certainly heard from the community and from the board was the need for us to address affordable housing. And so what we are recommending, as you know, what we have already done is set aside $5 million from the 23 surplus in December for the Affordable Housing Trust.

[03:41:09] We are recommending that we include an additional $2.5 million, As you know, for the Affordable Housing Trust, it's part of this budget, and we are also committing to bringing it back in FY26. So what this table shows is us taking into account the commitments that we have made up to this point, driving us all the way out through FY29.

[03:41:33] This will essentially give us, by FY29, a housing trust fund valued at $25 million. A very big deal for our county and one that I'm certainly proud of. In addition to the affordable housing commitment, we are also adding additional trails, maintenance FTEs.

[03:41:59] This was made very clear in a few of the meetings that we had here in the chamber, as well as a few community meetings where parks and residents were together, really emphasized the need for us to focus more on trails maintenance.

[03:42:17] And so what we have included here is a line item for some additional resources going to trails maintenance. This does not, so this includes three FTEs along with some one-time costs of about, I believe, $70,000 for vehicles and other equipment.

[03:42:33] This recap also includes additional funding at $200,000 for 311 digital services. This is to continue the work that we are doing around providing multiple platforms of engagement for residents with our government.

[03:42:55] Whether it is through phone, app, we are using these funds to help continue the work around our CRM. our customer relationship management system, and so funding there to continue that great work.

[03:43:11] We're happy to talk a bit more about that if needed and when the time comes. As we talked about earlier this afternoon, we are also recommending a compensation study for ADC and for the sheriff. You may recall that last year, this time, we used the Gallagher study as a foundation of the recommendations we were making to increase staff salary, especially the salaries for staff that were multi-year.

[03:43:46] These studies are critically important in order to make sure that we are staying at market with the investments that we are making and that our staff, we're seeing the benefit of that by better recruitment and retention of our employees.

[03:44:03] That said, we certainly heard from the sheriff earlier today, and we've heard from him throughout the budget development process, the need for us to make sure that we are clear about what compression issues and other pay issues might be in effect with the sheriff and ADC.

[03:44:22] I'll say as an aside, we are also working with ADC to use current fund balance to help with both the hiring bonuses and retention bonuses for ADC employees.

[03:44:38] So I want to make sure that we're clear that they have a fund balance, and we are going to be very creative in the year ahead with making sure that we use that fund balance to help solve some of the challenges around recruiting top talent and retaining top talent at ADC.

[03:44:58] We are also recommending additional funding for board offices. This is really focused on making sure that the board staff receive the same kind of benefit around market and merit adjustments that we have provided for staff through last year's budget and what we are recommending for this year's budget.

[03:45:26] And so this is really not focused as much on the increases to board salaries last year, but really focused on the increases to staff salaries last year. And so what we are recommending is a $15,000 increase for board offices and a $25,000 increase for the chair's office consistent.

[03:45:50] We are also recommending funding to continue the work around the sustainability master plan and integrating the master plan recommendations into the comprehensive plan. This is a one-time cost, and we are asking for the board's consideration there.

[03:46:10] And in this budget, recap budget, we're also including $30,000 to assist with licensing email accounts for boards and commissions that are required and being requested by the agencies.

[03:46:26] And this is based on an estimate. So where we are with these requests, the requests on slide 6 and slide 7, are just under $3.5 million in terms of additional expenditures. So where we are in terms of this slide, in terms of recap, Based on our general revenue at $0.94, this represented an additional just under $3.5 million.

[03:47:04] You may recall that on February 20th, there was right under $600,000 left on the bottom line for the board's consideration. We add that up, and we get just over $4 million in terms of additional resources.

[03:47:19] When you take out the expenditures that we recommended on the previous slides, we have on the bottom line what you see on this slide is an additional just over half a million this year, next year, and essentially five years out for the board's consideration and whatever the board may want to do in addition to the things that we have listed.

[03:47:46] All right. Last week, we heard from PRTC and received a very thorough presentation from PRTC about their needs.

[03:48:04] We were very clear. We heard very loud and clear that PRTC's request was just over $33 million. As you all know, what we are recommending as part of new funding to meet PRTC's request, is new funding from the grantor's tax for PRTC, new funding from TOT or the transit occupancy tax for PRTC, and adding that amount to what has already been provided for PRTC through the

[03:48:40] motor fuels tax. When we add these new funding sources together, 4.7 from grantor's tax, 4.5 from TOT, we are at $29 million, just over $29 million. While these are new funding sources, and clearly we are doing our best to support PRTC, this does not meet their full funding request. So there is still a gap of $3.9 million. We are certainly open to, and I'm sure we will

[03:49:18] have conversations about what that might mean for PRTC and the county, and we're happy to answer any questions about how we work with PRTC moving forward. Bless you. All right. All right. In addition to PRTC, what we also cover here on this slide is the plan to cash fund the Miniville Road-Prince William Parkway interchange versus debt finance. Really creative work on behalf

[03:49:51] of staff. If we debt financed the project, this would, well, I would say doing it this way saves us about $25 million in interest over the next 20 years by cash funding this project. Again, very creative work by staff to make sure that we preserve NVTA, that 30% revenue and that capacity allows, which essentially would have been the place where we financed the debt or pay the debt for the project, allows us to continue to use that for transportation

[03:50:26] projects year over year for the next 20 years versus using it for debt service. Okay, so we talked about the fire levy and what this means, what the additional revenue in terms of fire levy means. We are, and we're happy to talk a bit more about this, hoping to use that additional $2 million from the fire levy, which goes up from $18 on average to $20 on average.

[03:50:55] for residents, for breathing apparatus for fire and rescue that is both career and volunteer, that is the tanks, the breathing apparatus itself, and we're, again, happy to talk more about that, as well as radio replacements.

[03:51:13] We are also including, and this is being paid for through the remote access fee fund balance. As you all know, we are doing considerable work at the Judicial Center in terms of the facility and renovations itself.

[03:51:32] This necessitates us moving a lot of paper documents to digital format, and so this work in the circuit court clerk who is here is very much supportive of this work. This is essentially for that purpose.

[03:51:53] Here on the side, we also included a hazardous waste drop-off pilot program. This is a three- to four-month program. This is really a reflection of what we've heard from you all. This three- to four-month program, we intend and believe that it will likely transition into a more permanent program.

[03:52:13] This will be funded through revenue received through the natural gas line. This was approved by the board in March. We believe we will receive year-over-year additional revenue from the natural gas line at $400,000 up to $1.5 million.

[03:52:33] And we'll certainly, if we actually receive that much in a way of additional revenue, we will be coming back to the board for your guidance on how to utilize. But we are very confident that the funding, that the pilot program and permanent program will not require additional funding, that we need to get approval from the board on.

[03:53:03] In terms of phase three and phase four of infrastructure debt financing, this is really for the landfill. We are recommending that we debt finance versus cash fund this work. And in that way, we are, again, saving additional revenue and maintaining some cash on hand in terms of the Solid Waste Fund.

[03:53:30] This will hopefully help to resolve some future issues around the Solid Waste Fund and potentially the fee. Happy to talk a bit more about that. Okay, so we are going to move now at this point in the presentation to some of your ask and things that we heard from the board.

[03:53:57] These are things that the board, it was clear with us in our individual meetings and in session that you are interested in. I will say that we also included things that we've heard in these chambers from community. And at the end of this series of slides, we also talk a bit more about revenue adjustments, that is the C&P tax.

[03:54:20] Okay, so we are talking here first about the retiree health credit increase. As many of you know, for our current employees and retirees, if you are 15 years in, you receive $5.50 by way of health care credits per month.

[03:54:53] Actually, let me get that right. Let me read this from the notes because I don't want to get that wrong. I know a lot of employees are interested in that particular topic, so I want to get that one right. So under the current program, all full-time employees and existing retirees with a minimum of 15 years of county experience can receive $5.50 per month for each year of service up to a maximum of $165 per month for 30 years of county service.

[03:55:29] So with every additional $0.50 added, which is what the board's question was to staff, it would cost us an additional $257,000. We wanted to make sure we put that forward for board consideration.

[03:55:47] In addition to the retiree health credit increase, we have also included the Americans at Wartime Museum. As you all know, this item was included and is still making its way through a General Assembly, has survived at this point the governor's amendments.

[03:56:06] This would provide $5 million to the county for this project with a match requirement. And that match requirement is a multi-year requirement, so three years, at $2.5 million. And so you see here what we have done, by way of the math, is added $833,000, and that's what we would do over the next three years if the board chooses.

[03:56:35] In addition to those items, we heard from the Commonwealth Attorney last week. We have included the eight additional FTEs on top of the FTEs we have already placed in the proposed budget at her request.

[03:56:52] We have information about what those eight FTEs represent. If the board is interested, it includes three senior attorneys, two paralegals, one administrative assistant, and one human services specialist, as well as one interpreter.

[03:57:09] Again, we heard directly from the county, the Commonwealth attorney on that. Did I say that? Okay. All right. Commonwealth attorney. And so the next item is the $600,000. This is really for a consultant to help with the design construction standards manual.

[03:57:31] This is the work around the data center working group and all the work that they're doing. This is, again, a one-time cost, and we're looking for any consideration from the board on this.

[03:57:48] We heard from the board that there was definitely more interest in funding to support facilities maintenance for parks and recreation, so we've included that amount here as well. I sent a memo to the board about a month ago providing an update on our litter control or litter abatement program generally.

[03:58:11] Thanks to the great work of Public Works, we have been able to hire three additional employees to help with litter abatement. But based on the board's request, we are including here some additional FTEs.

[03:58:28] These four FTEs would essentially represent an additional crew for litter abatement. With the current funding, we already planned to do some contract work around litter abatement, and now we have a full litter abatement program with the recent hires.

[03:58:46] So this would certainly help if the board decided to go in this direction. We've also included $250,000 for county-sponsored community special events. This funding really provides support for those events that the county organizes, sponsors, and hosts, and certainly would be open if there are events other than these county-sponsored events that the board was interested in adding to this list.

[03:59:18] We are including one FTE to help end sustainability. We talked about this a bit earlier this afternoon, primarily to this analyst would assist with some of the analysis and tracking of, should I get that right as well?

[03:59:45] Yes, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable and fossil energy mix and climate resiliency metrics for the county. We've heard from some of the board members an interest from the public defender for interpretation services.

[04:00:04] We've included services here in hopes that we would be able to work with the public defender's office to provide for some either MOU or some vehicle for us to contract services to provide for more language access.

[04:00:24] We talked earlier about the school's interest in a CPS liaison and the county playing a part in funding that position. It is in the school's budget, and our portion, if we are interested, for the board's consideration would be $28,000.

[04:00:45] And again, we talked about that earlier and happy to go back into it if the board is interested. We did have a board member, and I believe Supervisor Bode did mention this last week, an interest in us talking more about Maritime Community Master Plan.

[04:01:02] The Economic Development Team has indicated that they are at capacity in terms of master plans that the board has indicated interest in, and so we would want to work with the board to figure out how we get this done if the board is interested. And then finally, the Purchase Development Rights or PDR program, we wanted to include on the list as well because we did hear from one of you that there was an interest in, actually a few of you that there was an interest in at least having a conversation about the PDR program and whether it is relevant for us now.

[04:01:39] Okay, and as promised and consistent with what we did last time we were in front of you, we are not recommending a C&P tax rate, but we are listing here options for the board's consideration.

[04:02:02] As advertised, we are at $370. Our current rate is $215 per $100 valuation. As you can see on this slide, what we've done is divided the C&P by the school share and county share.

[04:02:23] And what we do on the next slide, oh, and before I move to the next slide, this, and I may have mentioned this already, when I was before you on February 20th, every nickel of C&P represented an additional $1.6 million in revenue.

[04:02:45] And now it is up based on residential assessments up to 1.8. All right. Now, what this shows is the county's share of C&P. So I'll go all the way to 320.

[04:03:03] If the board decided to go to 320 in FY25, it would represent an additional $16.7 million by way of additional revenue. that falls to the bottom line and would be available for board consideration.

[04:03:22] All right, I am sure we will talk more a bit about the C&P. And finally, and I said this at the start, tonight and this evening really is about making sure that we delivered a sound budget to the board for board consideration.

[04:03:43] What we will plan to do over the next few days It's hear from you on what you want to see next week and how that discussion will go, ultimately resulting in what we hope will be a budget that is ready for adoption on April 23rd.

[04:04:03] All right. So in terms of process, we have gotten at this point to the point in the budget development process where the budget is now the board's. And we are certainly available to answer any questions the board has now or moving forward.

[04:04:22] All right. Thank you so very much for your presentation, Mr. Shorter. We have a few people already lined up to ask questions. I'm going to start with Supervisor Rear. I'll keep it short and simple to begin with. I'm assuming Mr. Sinclair can answer this question.

[04:04:38] At the current revenue levels in the amended presentation, at .94 and .215, what is the delta, if there is one, between the school board request and what their percentage under that particular revenue projection would be? Does it cover it entirely, or is there a shortfall?

[04:05:09] I don't know if this adequately answers your question, Supervisor Weir. I would perhaps go back to slide number five at 94 cents the schools would gain 4.6 million dollars in fiscal 25 i'm not interested in what they're gaining i'm interested in what their ask is and what if we made no changes and we had the proposed budget at 0.94 for the real property tax and 215 for the

[04:05:47] C&P, what would their share be, and would that cover their budget ask from us? Yes. So, I don't believe there's a delta between what we have proposed and what the school has requested.

[04:06:02] I don't... So, anything additional would be gravy? Anything additional would be gravy. Thank you. All right, Supervisor Franklin. Okay, thank you for the recap. I have several things, so please bear with me.

[04:06:20] And I'll start by the compensation study for the ADC and Sheriff's Office. Obviously, earlier today, we were presented the budget by the Sheriff's Office, and very good discussion. And obviously, their biggest concern is having parity with our police department.

[04:06:39] I have a strong interest in learning more about the Virginia compensation study and the board that on the state side gives state employees additional salaries and resources.

[04:06:54] As I think, as I've said earlier today, that they should be doing more of their fair share in addition to what the localities are able to do. So I'm glad that you are proposing that we're starting with this compensation study.

[04:07:11] That's exactly what happened with police and fire even before I joined this board. So I think that's a good next step. And I do believe that we'll be able to achieve pay parity for the sheriff's office. I'm going to continue to push that the state and the General Assembly does their fair share.

[04:07:28] And I think that that's going to come with understanding more with regards to how the Virginia Compensation Study works. So just wanted to highlight that. The second thing that I'll mention is particularly with regards to litter control.

[04:07:45] I think myself and several of my colleagues, I know Supervisor Gordy has talked about the litter that we've seen on some of our major roadways. Route 1, obviously, I'm always concerned about. We've been doing a really good job, and I want to give kudos to our team.

[04:08:01] They do the best they can. This is a large county, but I'm glad to see that we're putting more resources towards that effort. As I get calls about, in addition to housing assistance, transportation, it's litter. It's litter. People are very concerned. They love the communities they live in, and they want to make sure that it's clean.

[04:08:19] So I'm glad we're putting more resources towards that. PRTC, you know, there's still a 3.9 funding gap, but I do believe that the county with this proposed budget is doing the best that we can, and really we're going to have to have a discussion, you know, for those of us on PRTC about, you know, how to make up the rest of that.

[04:08:39] But I think the county is doing exactly what we should be doing and doing the most of what we can you guys have heard me say before again general assembly you know we need to make this a priority in terms of finding a permanent revenue stream with that being said cnp there's been a lot of discussion about increasing that to the max of that 370 i will tell you i will be the biggest advocate of both affordable housing and transportation and making sure that year to year if we increase to that maximum on cmp that we can get some dedicated

[04:09:13] funding in quotations for both transportation and affordable housing because quite frankly that's what we need. We can't wait for the state to handle our transportation needs even though I think that they should be responsible but I think if we do increase the CMP obviously we'll have more resources and that should be a priority transportation affordable housing. Going to affordable housing I do want to point out that obviously I you know I created the housing trust fund I think as one of my second directives on the board in my first term and I must say I thought

[04:09:50] that I was a big advocate for affordable housing but the United Tenants Workers and Voice you all have beat me down and you know I thank you for for your advocacy and like I said we I think we're in a good place with regards to where we're starting on the affordable housing discussion but certainly if we increase that CMP I'm definitely going to be coming back and asking for more resources towards the trust fund and I think that you know hopefully my colleagues can be supportive in that and then the last thing the child advocacy center you know we we were able to save some funding in the general assembly for that but it's my understanding that the governor still decreased

[04:10:29] I think by 1.4 million the amount that he's proposing we're still in discussions about what the general assembly will come back with but we probably need to have some discussions about the Child Advocacy Center moving forward about some funding mechanism going towards our own Child Advocacy Center. So I just wanted to point that out. Also, I just want to, you know, make clear that, listen, this board is going to have differences of opinions on votes. And so we need to make sure that we're respectful of each person's opinion and making sure that we don't take those opinions personally and making sure that we understand that this is going to be four long years

[04:11:07] of a lot of projects, programs, and we're going to have to figure out how to work together. And on issues where we can't come together, we still have to be respectful of one another and making sure that, look, we can disagree without being disagreeable. So I just wanted to point that out.

[04:11:23] Thank you so much, Supervisor Franklin. I'm sorry. Yep, just want to say that I think this is a fair proposal, and I'm hoping that those specific items that I mentioned we can pay more attention to. All right, thank you very much. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a question. When we budget for FTEs in the county and we go through the year and we have a vacancy in a position, let's say it goes six months without being filled, what happens to that money?

[04:11:56] We call it vacancy savings. In some cases, we actually bill budgets off of what we anticipate will be some level of savings around vacancies, and ultimately that funding falls to the bottom line and results in a surplus.

[04:12:19] So what happened in FY23 was by October, November, we had essentially gotten to a point where we audited all of our books for FY23, and we were ready to come to the board by November, December, to say we have this additional surplus that fell to the bottom line from FY23.

[04:12:41] And we made some recommendations on how we use that surplus, and the board considered those recommendations, and we made some pretty strategic investments in our organization with the surplus from 23. The better we get at hiring and filling our positions, the less vacancy savings we'll see, and the less surplus we'll see at the end of the year. I don't know if you all want to add to that. Yeah, sure. I would just add, Supervisor Gordy, that the FY25 proposed budget

[04:13:15] already bakes in 24 million dollars of vacancy savings that are assumed through standard attrition retirements uh just departures uh because we recognize that it does take you know two to three months to fill a position if we're lucky yeah do we have any measurement or any understanding of what number of folks that we potentially would see retire from the county over the next uh in

[04:13:45] within this fiscal budget? We do. HR usually keeps track of employees or workforce that is eligible for retirement. Obviously, we don't know. We try to keep our employees, but we do have information and can certainly provide it in terms of the overall percentage of workforce that is retirement eligible, certainly over the next three to five years. So I would imagine if we replace in those positions that we're probably going to hire somebody who's probably not going

[04:14:19] to be at the same level of salary um uh coming in at pretend you know if it's a i see where you're going here no i'm just trying to you know because i mean i deal with this in my civilian job with you know dealing with federal budgets and so it's about how do you you know kind of manage through this because staffing is is a you know it's constantly changing you're trying to anticipate the fluctuations within your employment but how do we it's like you said how do we get to that right balance and make sure that we're budgeting correctly and so uh yeah but i think we have i think we have some information i would just mention supervisor gordy and i i got a whole atrium full

[04:14:57] of department directors who would disagree with me but vacant positions revert and are budgeted at the minimum of the scale okay and if an agency chooses to hire above the minimum the agency has to absorb that. But, you know, there's literally thousands of transactions that occur during the course of the fiscal year between salaries and benefit enrollments and changes. And I like to think it comes out in the wash, but like I said, the atrium would disagree with me.

[04:15:30] Well, this kind of gets back to the comment that you made about the current fund balance for ADC. Could you kind of dive into that just a little bit more to give us, give me an understanding of where that fund balance comes from? Sure. So, and I'll certainly ask the team if you want to add to it. What we have presented, certainly over the last two to three budget cycles, is what has been a pretty significant vacancy rate at ADC. And this is partially why I mentioned the need for

[04:16:04] us to be very creative with hiring bonuses and retention bonuses over at ADC. So because we have had those kinds of sort of vacancy savings, what happens at ADC is that those vacancy savings go to a fund balance. And because they are not one of the agencies that report in through me formally, that fund balance builds. And so we would use some of that fund balance to be, again, creative about how we incentivize hiring and how we incentivize retention.

[04:16:37] Yep. Yes. Dave has some extra hand. I would add that at the end of the most recently completed fiscal year, that ADC fund balance is around $19.4 million. That represents almost 33% of their operating budget.

[04:16:57] Now, in fiscal 23, their expenditure savings was more than $6 million, And the board authorized staff to bring those savings back to the county's general fund. Otherwise, that fund balance would continue to grow and grow.

[04:17:15] And for comparative purposes, that was an 11% savings rate. If that savings rate was in the county's general fund, you'd be looking at $85 million of expenditure savings. And that's just not how we operate.

[04:17:34] Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. So now we're going to go to Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, County Exec and the team, to the recap and all the work you've been doing to gather our input, gather the input of the residents, which we'll also hear tonight at the budget hearing.

[04:17:50] I just have a question and some comments. So on slide four, Chris, if you could. Actually, five. Five, yep. The differences in the personal property taxes for vehicles and business tangible.

[04:18:08] The vehicles, that extra, what is that, $3 million extra? Yes. What is that coming from? Is that coming from higher values? Is that coming from more cars? Can you talk about that a little bit? It really is the culmination of knowing more about the number of cars.

[04:18:24] When we put the proposed together, really we're operating on data as of December, and so we have a couple more months of information of inputs coming in from DMV to project how many vehicles we think will come in and out of the county. So it's just a better estimate. We also have a more clear understanding of the current fiscal year, right, to build the trend date off of.

[04:18:42] So it's a combination of the two. So you can probably see where I'm going with it. We're not going to see sticker shock like we saw last year, folks hitting any hit with larger bills than they assumed with their cars. No, and at the last presentation, I think I had a couple graphs in there that showed pretty much every model year is depreciating, and you're also now comparing it 100% versus 100%, where the prior year we were comparing it at 80% to 100%.

[04:19:07] Even though things declined, it didn't bring the bill down necessarily in all cases. Appreciate that. And then the business tangible, that's $6 million. Is that from the data center part, or is there another piece playing into that? So it's primarily, yes, primarily data center.

[04:19:23] And, again, when we put together the real estate estimate on the commercial side, we don't have a lot of the I&E back we're still working through numbers and so based on what we've identified as additional data centers either under construction substantially complete we fine-tuned what we think the computer peripheral business tangible that will be that will be in there again we take a very prudent approach because if it's not there on January 1 it's a big miss but we do believe that we're comfortable bringing that up based on the number of new structures either complete or substantially complete appreciate that and so appreciate that the clarity on that because again I just wanted to make

[04:20:01] sure we had a better idea of where those numbers are coming from and Chris I also I appreciate you going from that 966 and the 94 I think that helps react a lot of what the board has been saying but also a lot of residents in terms of looking at that burden on the taxpayer while looking at different ways to help fund everything that was already in the budget as soon as we're went into we're still we're still now funding the schools even more so than we did with your your previous budget so i appreciate that um all else i'll say is on slide six um really appreciate you adding that 2.5 million to fy 25 f26 i'm going to say right now i'm going to advocate for more than that as we go

[04:20:39] into tonight and then next week want to see that doubled so we end up with five million this year five million next year that goes all the way out into us having 20 i'm sorry 30 at the end of those years maybe talk about you having a little bit more in those off years but i really want us to put as much seed money as we can and let this year and next year as possible because we adopt the ordinance in july there'll be a lot of movement very quickly after we adopt that ordinance and folks want to avail themselves of the trust fund so that that's my one eighth and the last thing i will say in this round um is that i do think that we need to get as as high as possible

[04:21:15] with the cmp tax i will just go out and say it now i'm i'm in favor of going to that max amount so we can get as much flexibility as possible to fund all these additional asks while also being cognizant that we should also be looking at lowering the tax rate a little bit more off of the real estate taxpayer.

[04:21:32] So that's me. I have something I'm going to present to all my colleagues here later on, but that's it for my first round. Thanks, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you very much, Supervisor Bodie. We're going to go to Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, thank you for this presentation and how detailed and succinct it is.

[04:21:51] I appreciate, like my colleague said, the fact that you did another scrub and got us to .94. I think that's very, very important. I want to go to slide six, several things on that slide.

[04:22:07] I, too, when we first met, our first meeting, I said to you when I did my Potomac District budget proposal to you, we talked about the housing trust fund, and I said, I want $35 million in that. and you said now and I said well not now I'll give you time uh you know and so I appreciate the total that you have there it's 10 million dollars short but we're not going to talk about that we're going to go to the fact that I too believe that that number for FY 25 and 26 should

[04:22:42] be at five mil and um I feel very strongly about that because it I feel like it must be compatible to where we're going with the affordable housing ordinance and how there's such a dire need in our county for housing.

[04:23:01] And we're a little bit behind the eight ball, but we're catching up. And so that will definitely be my desire as to how we can achieve that. And so that's one point, just to make you and my colleagues aware. The other thing is, could you explain to me a little bit more, I'm not clear on the 311 Constituent Digital Services.

[04:23:23] You probably said it before, but just remind me, please. Sure. Happy to take the opportunity to talk about customer relationship management. And so the team at DOIT, under the leadership of Director Haynes, are working really hard to make sure we move into the sort of next phase of resident engagement.

[04:23:45] And so right now, as it currently stands, you have to, you know, engage us by going online or coming here in person, in some cases on the phone. There are many other ways now for governments to engage residents to conduct business.

[04:24:01] And so we are working really hard and I will say have already created a lot of opportunities through our website and through 311 to engage residents. and we are continuing to develop a CRM, or Customer Relationship Management System, a digital way of making sure that we develop multiple platforms for residents to engage our government.

[04:24:26] And so, you know, happy to provide additional information to the board over the next few days about 3-1-1 and what we plan to do around a CRM system, but that's the gist of it. That's the essence of it. And thank you for that detailed explanation because one of the things we do as board members is constituent services is needed.

[04:24:49] It's absolutely needed. For example, if someone can't get to our offices, there has to be an avenue to resolve issues. And so I see that as extremely relevant. And I'll say, if I can, Madam Supervisor, I will say that one of the most frustrating things that a resident experiences with government is calling back a second time and going through the same process that they went through the first time. And so what a CRM does for us is it gives us the ability to recognize by way of phone number or by way of case number who you are so that we decrease the amount of time you have to be engaged

[04:25:28] with us on the phone or that we make the process of engaging us on your phone or via app much more smooth. And so, again, this is one that we are very excited about and will certainly increase and improve the customer experience, the resident's experience with us.

[04:25:48] Yeah, so I can definitely understand and support that. The last thing that I wanted to say was in reference to, well, that's two things. One is the compensation study, absolutely in concert with where the sheriff was talking about earlier this evening and in concert with how things are trending in terms of our level of support for the ADC and the sheriff's department.

[04:26:11] So I can certainly understand the relevance of that to get them to the next level where there is pay parity. I certainly understand that, and so I think that's relevant as well. Then lastly, what I wanted to say is about the computer and peripherals tax.

[04:26:27] And I appreciate the scale that you provided for us as a guideline i am more on the higher end and this is the discussion that we had also um and i've had some of my colleagues i'm on the higher end i think it's time that we are able to provide a level of funding in our community to give the taxpayer taxpayer a reprieve and to also elevate the level of services to our schools and to our county that's so deserving so thank you thank you all right thank you so very much before i know people are getting in for their next round of comments but i'd like to actually go to supervisor angry because he hasn't spoken yet for the first

[04:27:05] round thank you madam chair um so i'm going to start uh with this house and trust and thank you chris because i don't know if the rest is but i i talked to you about that additional five mil we got into this thing we didn't have anything in there for the next two years i like that we went to 2.5 to do that over two years and then work out getting the five mil and i just want to say, Princeton County is very new to this whole housing affordability in this chapter and where we are. So I'm not so sure we should be moving so fast to talk about what it is we need to be doing tomorrow when we don't understand the whole implications of where we are. So I love what

[04:27:43] you're doing with the housing office. You put an affordable division in there. We're moving in the right direction. I don't want to move so fast that we're sitting here just stockpiling money to figure something out. I need to know what it is we're trying to figure out. Just my 1-8. I'm very happy with the start of 2.5 for the next two years, getting to the 5 mil.

[04:28:01] I don't want to even talk about what additional money is coming to the county because I think that's just premature conversation. But thank you for doing what this group has come in and what I've spoken to folks about and what they've talked to me about, what they want to see. We had nothing in there for two years. We've got 2.5 for the next two.

[04:28:18] I'm very happy you started there. Maybe we'll see what happens with the rest of that. The next question I have is really on slide 7. The board committee commissions email 30K for that portion. What exactly is that? What are we talking about there? So as it currently stands, and I want to make sure that I get the number of boards correct.

[04:28:40] Well, I'll say generally we have a number of boards and commissions that are required by statute.

[04:28:56] And in some cases, I think specifically about the planning commission, they do considerable work. And as it were, some of them are interested in having a government email address so that they can conduct that work using a government email address.

[04:29:13] Those email addresses do not come free for us. There are licensure fees. So what we are doing here is creating criteria so that we are very clear about who would be eligible to receive government email accounts. And with the board's approval, we would move to create those accounts.

[04:29:32] and in some cases support the ones that have already been created. So let me be clear here because it's going to sound humorous. Because I'm a Democrat, and I know that's only $30,000, $30,000. It's still taxpayers' dollars, but we're going to spend $30,000 on something.

[04:29:48] And, you know, I'm supposed to be the Republican conservative. I just want to pull that out because I think at the end of the day when we look at this, is this something that we really need to invest in? I could say it's only $30,000, but that's still taxpayers' dollars. And as my former board member from last year would have said, it's all taxpayers' dollars.

[04:30:06] I just kind of want to pull that out to say that. I want to comment on the board office, the $130K and the $15K to each office and what that is. Thank you for working with the board offices on the fact of creating this that really helps us bring into line our staff as far as what we've done with compensations adjustments for the rest of the county, for the 5,000 employees.

[04:30:32] So that piece is very important. I think it should be important to all of us for the benefit that it's helping bring our staff in line with a study that really pulled it out. The last thing I just want to say for now really is the PRTC funding that we've been discussing. And really that is to ask, have you received and has the board received what a shortfall looks like and what that means for, you know, what does it mean for PRTC?

[04:30:59] I know you get the presentation. What services, what routes, what would be cut if we don't do this so that we can actually make an informed decision of what we want to be with, what we're talking about here? And I will agree with my colleague, Supervisor Franken, that we have to get the state involved in trying to figure out how we're going to really pull the funding and work on a new funding stream that works for PRTC and the system that is basically managed by Prince William County.

[04:31:24] It is our bus system, and that's why we manage it as well as we do. Madam Chair, I'll stop there and just get ready for the next round. Thank you. All right, Supervisor Weir. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to start off with an easy one, sort of.

[04:31:41] Mr. Sinclair, would it be possible before next week, and I'm not sure this is even appropriate, to determine how much of a surplus, given the current vacancies there are in the Sheriff's Office and the ADC, how much that will generate by the end of the fiscal year,

[04:31:59] And if that would be enough for the board to then roll over on July 1 or shortly thereafter and take that bonus and cover the cost of both the signing bonuses requested by the sheriff for FY25, as well as the 200K for the compensation study, rather than spending the money, not spending the money and then reallocating it, just repurposing monies from last year, if there's that much there.

[04:32:28] We could certainly provide, you know, sort of provide the number, the analysis. That's all I'm asking for. Okay. I just want to know, if it's a conceivable option to take it, instead of putting a one-time expenditure, in the case of the compensation study, if we can fund it with FY24 instead of FY25 and just simply, for lack of a better term, reducing next year the FY24 surplus, I think that should just be a cleaner way of doing it.

[04:33:03] The only caveat, Supervisor Weir, is that in some cases what the sheriff was recommending is ongoing cost. Understood. I'm only talking about two things. The signing bonus, and I'm only looking at that here in a one-year window. We can readdress it next year, but the compensation study will certainly be a one-time expenditure.

[04:33:22] I'm going to say it because I'm me. PRTC, their ask is unprecedented.

[04:33:42] And quite frankly, given their presentation, some of the assertions they've made in conjunction with the six-year lookback I did on their budget and some revelations that we can't disclose publicly, I don't view their stewardship of the county's money very favorably.

[04:34:09] And I think I've made this pretty clear to the CXO at PRTC. In my view, the response that was emailed to us in the last couple of days amounts to nothing more than a threat.

[04:34:32] So at this point in time, I want another option because I'm not willing to, for my one-eighth, underwrite that $13 million ask that's going to come on the backs of the taxpayers. Let me own them.

[04:34:47] And further, I'm looking at the grantor's tax and the transit and occupancy tax transfers that are going to negatively impact the Transportation Department, and I am loathe, as many people know, to defend the Transportation Department in the last couple of years, but I'm not doing that for my 1-8th.

[04:35:06] So you, Supervisor, would like to see what... Other options and a lower percentage of their ask. If we're taking out the 4-7. Sure. No, I'm not even going to bring it up.

[04:35:29] I'll leave that be for the time being. That's it, Madam Chairman. All right, Supervisor Franklin. Sure, yes, thank you. Just very quickly, one thing I didn't get a chance to address was low-income housing.

[04:35:45] I know we've been having a discussion about affordable housing over the past several years, but admittedly, we haven't had enough conversations about low-income housing. And I know, and Elijah is going to get on me about saying this, but I've asked for an additional housing trust fund of sorts, in addition to what we did with COVID, to make sure that we can put real dollars in the hands of our residents to make sure that they can pay their mortgage, rental, utility assistance.

[04:36:14] For those that really need it are in an immediate bind. So I'm hoping that that's something that we can figure out soon enough. It may not be this budget cycle. I hope that we can figure it out. I know we have a housing proffer fund. I know the county attorney is looking to see what the legal parameters around that is.

[04:36:33] But just do want to highlight the importance of low-income housing and making sure that we're having that discussion and we're figuring out what that looks like in the future. I know we have a lot of mobile home communities, particularly in my district, and they have their own communities. They kind of keep to themselves, but they would love additional assistance from the county as well.

[04:36:54] So the ordinance is great. Housing trust fund is amazing. We need to also figure out how we can focus on low-income housing. So I just want to put that out. Thank you. All right, Supervisor Bode. Thank you, Madam Chair. Not too much more from me on this and for this.

[04:37:12] I just wanted to highlight that I appreciate the work that you all did in trying to get us to help fund PRTC. I will echo a lot of what my colleagues have said as well. You know, I've said it several times. We are now acting as a regional hub and transit when it comes to PRTC.

[04:37:30] And, you know, if Dr. Schneider gets his way, we're expanding into Front Royal and all sorts of other places. So we do really need to get, as my colleague said, to get the state to step up. Unfortunately, that won't come for at least another year or two, depending on how the state does. But I do have concerns about, if we don't, us losing services for some of the folks that need it the most.

[04:37:52] You know, we haven't heard, I know Surizer Gordy in particular has asked what that specifically looks like, but we won't know what that looks like until it actually starts happening, start getting calls and emails from our constituents asking us, you know, why isn't there a bus going from so-and-so place to so-and-so place anymore?

[04:38:08] So I still have concerns about that. Now, I'm not nearly as worrying to go for us to use a bunch of our grantor's tax, a bunch of our TOT tax to fund it. So I hope we can find other ways to do it, especially in the out years. But I did want to highlight that piece as well.

[04:38:25] And finally, I'll just say, I am interested in eventually getting the retiree credit higher. I know we've been talking about that since the early part of the budget. I know we are also now talking about the ADC and the sheriffs. You know, we have to look after our own.

[04:38:41] We have to look after our employees, even those that we share with the state and other jurisdictions. Again, I would love for us to, in the time it's going to take to do that study, talk to the city of Manassas, Manassas Park, about how we can tri-fund some of those asks by the sheriff, understanding that we share that sheriff, we share responsibilities, and we should be having those discussions openly, such as we reopen some of our other tripartite agreements with them.

[04:39:09] If I could say, Subvisor, in terms of the health care credit, completely understand where the board might be on this. I will say that if the board does not decide to provide guidance on a health care credit for this budget cycle, do know that we are about to enter in the next year or so negotiations with labor, where I would prefer all benefits discussions happen in a more sort of organized way

[04:39:46] so that we are doing it where all of our employees get to be at the table and to talk through what this might mean by way of financial impact. Fully understand, though, if the board is ready to do it now, then we will certainly do it now. Appreciate that.

[04:40:02] Knowing that, yeah, it might be an ongoing process, it might take a few years, but I think we should definitely get into it. The last thing I'll do is I'll hand out for consideration for next week, for recap, just something I put together, wanting, again, understanding that we should be raising that computer and peripherals taxes as quickly as possible and knowing that we still have a lot of needs in the community.

[04:40:23] You know, affordable housing was talked about, you know, PRTC, mobility with bike-pedestrian connectivity, trails and other things, sustainability to implement the CSMP, a PDR program, land acquisition, and I know that Surazer has talked about this as well, a data center stabilization fund.

[04:40:42] Basically, we can stand to have the computer peripherals tax from the data centers pay their fair share finally in this community. And there are a lot of communities that have been long overdue to be funded. And we know that for each year that we don't raise this tax, which is going to even at 370s be much lower than our jurisdictional peers.

[04:40:59] We're literally leaving money on the table by some of the richest companies in the world. And to me, it's time we righted that. So pass it out for my colleagues' consideration. I'd love to have conversations with everyone between now and markup and also on the night of markup so we can continuously have real serious conversations about making sure that the computer's peripherals tax and the day center industry finally pays for more of what they should in our community.

[04:41:23] Thank you, Madam Chair. Supervisor Gordy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to go back to the retiree health credit increase, I appreciate you providing that insight. Because I also had concerns that maybe we need, my question was, what is our plan to initiate this?

[04:41:39] Because my understanding, it's been quite some time since this has been addressed in terms of increasing the rate. But it sounds like you have a plan in place through the negotiations in order to address that.

[04:41:55] We will include it, yes. On the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, we've been asking developers to put proffers in for affordable housing uh for as long as i was on the planning commission the last two years and it was going into the housing preservation trust fund and we've been looking at how do we transfer that or how we use utilize that funding for um the affordable housing trust fund could you remind me the balance that's currently in that fund it's a great question uh if we don't have that on hand i could certainly send that out okay thank you um because i mean there's a lot of money from my understanding it's

[04:42:34] it it's a hefty sum uh that's already sitting there that that um that people that like i said uh developers have already been contributing to this fund um at the request of the planning commissioners as well as the board members uh to go ahead and get this going uh long before um we had the uh so you said it's 500k that's what you think it is all right um okay thank you um on the um license for the uh uh emails for boards and commissions um that are legally required i will just say this as a planning commissioner

[04:43:14] um i had to have my own email i have to keep those emails that i had for the last two years um and during that time we were dealing with some major cases such as digital gateway i had to go buy extra memory because bill wright jammed up my email and as well as all the other people along pageland lane getting 400 emails a day it seemed like and i'm still paying for that um so um they they are uh this does come at a cost to our commissioners especially on the planning commission

[04:43:51] when we're dealing with these massive planning cases and we've got hundreds and hundreds of people sending multiple emails uh in regards to those cases so um i i appreciate you taking a look and again we have to have those emails and maintain them by law under foia so i can't get rid of them i can't just dump the emails i have to maintain them for quite some time so um i see this as as to help those who want to volunteer and be a part and help us address the the needs of this community. I see this as, yes, it is taxpayer funds as a Republican, but it's a

[04:44:30] cost of doing business, and this is a big part of what our county does. It's land use. It's those types of things, and we're asking people to take this on as volunteers, and I think this will go a long way to help them maintain that, so I do appreciate that. Let's see. One other thing that I had, no, I've hit them all.

[04:44:56] Thank you. All right, and Supervisor Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, on page 13, I really do appreciate your just lining out for the retiree health credit increase.

[04:45:13] That's important. We've got to take care of our employees. But the other thing that I had on that page was the Americans at Wartime Museum. And the reason why I'm addressing this is because it has a similar template to another organization that we just supported that was receiving funding from the state budget, from the General Assembly, $5 million.

[04:45:38] And then we did a match from the county. And the concern that I have, because I'm looking at this 833K, that would be our responsibility, correct? Yes, ma'am.

[04:45:54] Yeah. So my concern is before my one eighth is before I take on that responsibility, I would like to know what would be the responsibility of the organization as relates to managing the money, as it relates to allocating funding for to serve the community and the purpose thereof, because that is an additional responsibility that will be on our taxpayers to take on.

[04:46:26] And so I want to put that out there because it's an additional responsibility that we've not accounted for. It's an ask, and it's a fair ask. But I think that learning from the last opportunity that we had with a similar template, we need to have a practice in place to bring along the organization so that the funding that the taxpayer is paying for, for this service, is managed well.

[04:46:56] Yes. And so when I look at $833K, when we look at inflation, that's going to be a meal for us to take on in our pockets. And so what does that look like, you know, as we go forward? And I'm presenting that because it's a very worthy cause, but is it necessary now?

[04:47:19] And if so, how do we manage that so that we don't repeat with a worthy cause organization that we just experienced, you know, in the last, in this first quarter? Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate that.

[04:47:37] By way of directive, I wanted to make sure I was responsive to the board by making sure that this appeared at the budget, this part of budget recap. That said, this is a three-year match requirement. So if this item continues down the positive path it has been going in terms of the General Assembly and the governor's amendments, we will have three years to make the match requirement.

[04:48:05] So if we decide, if the board decides not to, for example, dedicate any funding this year, we will still have two additional years, and maybe during this time we could really work with our partners who are really leading the way on the Americans at Wartime Museum to make sure that they have what they need to continue beyond the Prince William County in the state investment and raising the funds needed to make the project a successful one.

[04:48:36] Yeah, and having a process in place with our finance department to make sure that that's going. Because I think that's critical. You know, we're talking about something like taking ownership for something like that. And then on page 14, I definitely support the public defender's interpreter services.

[04:48:55] That's absolutely needed, just primarily based on what they do in the community. and how they serve in the community um so i i understand why that's there the other thing is the um the litter control crew um we have been talking about that for about two years yeah so that's absolutely necessary as well and then lastly that the child protective services liaison for the school that that one fte uh small amount but necessary amount because when the school board

[04:49:31] came and presented to us last week there was an issue and a concern and a discussion about truancy and so this position will support that concern that the school board has with truancy that was said by the school board chair and by the superintendent so i just wanted to bring that to the fore and so thank you for making that a part of budget thank you all right thank you guys and thank you everyone on the dais for questions um you know i first actually before i begin my comments. I want to acknowledge we have two elected officials in this room. We have the clerk of the

[04:50:07] court, Jacqueline Smith, with us. We also have Delegate Roja Henson. So thank you guys for coming to the meeting tonight. This is a very important discussion because the budget is a statement of our priorities. We're talking about how much funding we're giving for our future, which is, you know, our school system, our education. You don't hear Democrats talk a lot about tax cuts, but residents, you know, one of the things I've heard when I was out knocking doors, particularly on the eastern end of the county, is that people are feeling the county is becoming less affordable. We have a lot of development coming to our county. For those of you who missed

[04:50:46] the two o'clock session, to what end? To what end? And the people on the western end of the county, I'd like to emphasize what I said earlier, are bearing the brunt of that development. And I see a lot of people here tonight, people who have spoken out against Digital Gateway, people who have spoken out against Devon Line Technology Park. And I know what y'all are going to say, you're going to ask about the C&P tax rate. That's what's on everyone's mind. We have a lot of needs in our county, but if we want to get serious about meeting them, we are going to have

[04:51:25] to have a meaningful raise in the C&P tax rate. And everyone has their Christmas lists of what they want to see, what priorities they have. But I have to reiterate, we're going to have to have a meaningful increase in the C&P rate if we are going to get the things that we want. Again, To what end do we have development in this county if we're not going to leverage it on behalf of our residents, if we're not going to see a meaningful difference in the quality of our life?

[04:52:04] It's easy to take votes on things when you bear no responsibility to the electorate. I'm looking forward to the next four years. I'm looking forward to this, to working with everyone on this dais, to working with the people out there.

[04:52:21] I'm looking forward to the next four years because we have a chance to really change the direction of this county. And more importantly, we can do some bold and innovative things. I've said this many times before, I am competitive. I'm looking over my shoulder at Loudoun and Fairfax.

[04:52:40] How do we keep up? How do we be the ones that people are watching? How do we be the regional leader? I'm also looking behind, you know, at Stafford County because they're trying to come up with some heat. Prince William County is my home, and I love this community.

[04:52:57] And I want to give back to this community. So next week, you know, we're going to be taking some votes, and I'm going to be speaking to people and getting a sense of where they are. But I think, and also my comments from the 2 o'clock meeting, stand. This is a vote on our principles.

[04:53:17] And if people are nervous or scared about a meaningful tax increase, then your principles should hold when it comes time to ask for what you want in this budget. I think it's that easy. I think it's that easy. So thank you so very much for your presentation, Mr. Shorter.

[04:53:38] I appreciate you for coming up here. I know this has been a long day. We are getting, and I want to thank all my colleagues because this is my first budget season up here, you know, and we're making it through. But I, you know, anticipate next week we'll have some spirited discussions about our different tax rates.

[04:53:56] But I just want to go on record. I want to be very clear to what end, to what end. We have to look at how are we going to make things easier for our residents, the people who invest in our community, the people who live in our community.

[04:54:15] So thank you. And so now we are going to move into our public hearing. Oh, there's going to be more. Woo-hoo. All right. We are on to public hearings, and we have nine items this evening.

[04:54:32] There are no presentations associated with these items. I'm going to open the public hearings on items 13A through 13I. I have the list of speakers. I'm sure there's going to be more. We have at least 15 people who are signed up to speak.

[04:54:50] I'm going to call speakers up five at a time. Each speaker will have three minutes to share their views and opinions on items 13A through 13I. And also, I just want to be clear, this is different than public comment time. We ask the public, the speakers, state their name, their magisterial district, or where they generally reside at the beginning of the remarks.

[04:55:10] We have Natalie Zalaya, Annabelle Cobar, Dr. Keith Savage, Carol Fox, and Liz, I apologize for mispronouncing your name, Elizabeth Matarana.

[04:55:29] You are our first group of speakers. If you could please come up to the mic.

[04:55:52] All right, ma'am, we're ready when you are. Good evening, Sherwoman, Vice Chair, and Supervisors. My name is Natalie Zelaya. I'm a community organizer for Tenants and Workers United. TWU is a 30-year-old grassroots organization, and our mission is to directly organize working class...

[04:56:10] Wait, I apologize. Hold on. Is the mic on? Because someone was asking if the mic is on. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you. As I was saying, TWU is a 30-year-old grassroots community organization, and our mission is to directly organize working-class communities of color.

[04:56:34] We work with immigrants, women, youth, and low-weight workers to build power so people can become involved in their communities and in government processes so they can work together to create the changes they would like to see in their communities and improve their quality of life for themselves and their families.

[04:56:51] For more than eight years, our organization has done work in different parts of this county. And today, I will speak on behalf of our community's concerns and our ask for the budget 2025. I'm here today on behalf of our organization to highlight the need for funding for housing.

[04:57:10] We want to thank you again for your support using the $5 million surplus fund from last year to address the housing challenges in this county. This is an important first step. Our families are still struggling from the long impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the longstanding issues of the high cost of living, increasing rent prices, widespread evictions, limited health care access, low wages, and other issues that affect our low-income families in this county.

[04:57:40] One thing we know for a fact is that we need more affordable housing for all types of families, and we must create policies to create the housing supply for everyone. We need to also think about preserving our families earning less than 40% of the area median income.

[04:57:58] Those families that work in the retail industry and cleaning industry or child care providers, those earning Virginia's minimum wage, which is only $12 an hour. Individuals with fixed social security income and many others.

[04:58:14] These families need an investment of an additional $5 million in the Housing Trust Fund in the 2025 budget. And we need annual investment in the fund, perhaps from the revenue generated from data centers. We also need community and stakeholder engagement for the guidelines and policies of Housing Trust Fund.

[04:58:35] Let's continue making progress for all families. We all have the right to live in a safe, dignified, and affordable housing. Housing is a human right. Let's continue creating an inclusive county where we all can live, work, try with dignity. Thank you for your consideration.

[04:58:52] Thank you, Annabelle Cobar. Hola, buenas noches, Presidenta y Supervisores del Condado. Gracias por darme la oportunidad de hablar esta noche.

[04:59:10] Mi nombre es Annabelle Cobar. Vivo en el distrito de Woodbridge desde hace seis años y soy miembro de Inquilinos y Trabajadores Unidos. Vivo con mi familia, mi esposo que trabaja en construcción y mi hija de un año. Estoy aquí como miembro de la comunidad y representación de todas esas familias que se les hace difícil hacerse presente y hablar públicamente en estas reuniones.

[04:59:36] Nuestra más grande necesidad es la vivienda. No contamos con vivienda de bajo costo. Ustedes saben que la renta va subiendo a pasos agigantados y nuestros salarios son los mismos y muy bajos. Por esa razón, mi familia y yo nos hemos visto en la gran necesidad de compartir vivienda con otra familia para poder solventar los gastos de renta y necesidades básicas que se generan en el hogar.

[05:00:06] Quiero recalcar que en este condado no solo vivimos personas con salarios altos. Nosotros, los que trabajamos en ventas, limpieza, parques, restaurantes, limpiando casas, cuidando niños, también somos parte de este condado y queremos seguir siendo parte del desarrollo y crecimiento.

[05:00:28] Creemos firmemente que si ustedes crean una estructura donde todas las familias tengan acceso a una vivienda digna, accesible y en buenas condiciones, nuestra comunidad tendrá menos problemas.

[05:00:43] de salud y en general de salud mental nuestros hijos tuvieran una mejor vida emocionalmente y con un mejor desarrollo académico ya que nosotros pudiéramos dedicarles más calidad de tiempo en vez de trabajar dos y hasta tres trabajos les pedimos por favor que pongan como prioridad a las personas más vulnerables y con mayor necesidad especialmente para aquellas que ganamos por debajo de 40

[05:01:16] 40% del ingreso promedio del área para que podamos tener viviendas dignas y accesibles. Nuestras peticiones son las siguientes. Pedimos que se asigne 5 millones a un fondo fiduciario de vivienda para este presupuesto 2025 y que sigan trabajando para crear el sistema de vivienda que tanto necesitamos.

[05:01:42] Esta es nuestra realidad y confiamos en ustedes para crear cambios positivos para nuestra comunidad. Gracias.

[05:02:19] I am as a member of the county community in representation of those families who find it difficult to present and speak publicly at these meetings. Our greatest needs is housing. We do not have low-cost housing. You know that the rent is increasing at a rapid pace, and our salaries are the same and very low.

[05:02:41] For those reasons, my family and I have found ourselves in a great need to share a home with another family to be able to cover rent expenses and basic needs at home. I want to empathize that not only people with high salaries live in this county. We who work in the sales, cleaning parks, restaurants, and house cleaning, taking care of children, are also a part of this community.

[05:03:09] We want to continue being part of this development and growth. We firmly believe that if you create a structure where all families have access to decent, affordable housing in good conditions, our community will be fewer health problems and mental health.

[05:03:24] Our children will have a better life emotionally with a better academic outcome since we could dedicate our quality time with them instead of working two or even three jobs. We ask you to place the priority on those most vulnerable, especially those of us who earn below the 40% of the areas meeting the medium income, so that we can have a decent, accessible housing.

[05:03:56] Our requests are the following. We ask that $50 million be eligible to a housing trust funds for the 2025 budget and that they continue working to create a housing system we also desperately need. This is our reality and we trust you to create a positive change for our community. Thank you. Thank you so very much. Dr. Keith Savage. Dr. Keith Savage, I am a Coles district resident. I'm also the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Manassas, and I am the

[05:04:36] voice co-chair. To Chair Jefferson, to fellow supervisors, County Executive Shorter, and the entire staff, good evening, it's good to be here with you. Research and experiential evidence shows that government plays a vital role in either alleviating or perpetuating patterns of segregation, divestment, and housing insecurity among its citizens. And right now, we're all seeing homeowners and renters face higher housing costs.

[05:05:03] Since Voices' 2008 inception as a 501c3 organization, we've conducted listening sessions with thousands of everyday Prince William County residents to understand our neighbors' top priorities. From then until today, there's been a growing urgency for public and private investment to address the longstanding divestment in addressing the affordable housing needs here in Prince William County.

[05:05:26] We are faith and community leaders who deal daily with increasing requests coming to our congregations desperately seeking help with rent and other vital needs. We recognize there is no one solution that will alleviate this crisis, yet I implore this board to remember this quote, it is better to be a stepping stone than a stumbling block.

[05:05:47] And so let us stand together as people and politicians, as voice allies and county board, to add to the fiscal year 2025 housing trust fund budget that will support the soon-to-be-created trust fund an additional $5 million, which will bring the total investment into the initial trust fund to $10 million.

[05:06:07] dollars. Why is that important? Because housing trust funds, as we are learning, are key tools in the creation and preservation of affordable housing as neighboring jurisdictions have used them to support housing for decades. Supporting the housing trust fund at a higher level year one makes this a priority, as the chair said, in Prince William County. It serves more people who desperately need access to affordable housing. The larger 10 million dollar fund creates an incentive for non-profit and for-profit developers, making it more likely Prince William County

[05:06:40] will effectively utilize funding in real time and not have undue delay trying to catch up once all the ordinances and things are in place. It's better to hit the ground running. And so initially, the trust fund can support the creation and preservation of affordable rental housing, and a critical need lies from what you've heard with residents who fall within that 30% to 50% area median income categories.

[05:07:06] Finally, a dedicated source of funding for the housing trust fund could come from allocating a portion of an increase in the computer and peripheral tax we support to $3.70 or other revenue sources at your disposal. The funding mechanism should be an approved policy statement and included in the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance under consideration.

[05:07:28] We thank you for listening and prayerfully acting on this request. Thank you. Thank you. Carol Fox. Good evening, new board.

[05:07:45] Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. I'm Carol Fox from the Gainesville District. And at this time of year, all we hear about are taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes. We hear about real estate taxes. We hear about car taxes.

[05:08:00] We hear about taxes that are coming out of Richmond. And we hear about the government tax. The government, the federal government tax, you say? What's that? That is the inflation that you pay every time you walk into the grocery store to buy milk, to buy eggs, to buy bread.

[05:08:17] All of those things are things that people buy all the time, and that has gone up considerably all over the whole country. So taxes are a real thing for real people. I am pleased to find that you are going to lower the amount of the percentage on our real estate tax from 96.6 to 94.

[05:08:41] That was a good thing. I would like to see that go just a little bit lower because every time you increase real estate tax on homeowners, you also increase real estate tax on businesses. You increase real estate tax on rental properties.

[05:08:58] Now, the real estate tax on homeowners just affects them. But when I go to a store to buy something and their real estate tax has gone up, I'm going to pay more in whatever I buy. When the real estate tax goes up on rental properties, That means the rental cost is going to go up for the person who is renting.

[05:09:19] So whenever you increase that, you increase it and you add more taxes to all of us all over. One of the things you want to think about as far as the car tax is concerned, everybody needs a car to get to work. This is not a locality where we can totally rely on those wonderful buses that will come around.

[05:09:40] They're not always very reliable. They're not always there, and they're not always making it very profitable for us in this county. I would also like to see some of the other counties other than Prince William County help support the PRTC because they also use them.

[05:09:56] We also need to think about the affordable housing and the rent that they are going to need to pay. How is that rent going to be offset? Who's going to offset that rental property monies? So when we're thinking about taxes at this season and we are going to look at the budget and we're going to pass the budget, keep in mind everybody that is in this room is going to pay whatever you increase the budget by in some way or another, whether they go to the store to buy it, whether they pay it to you directly, they're going to pay more and it's all going to come out of our pockets and we already have dry pockets.

[05:10:34] Thank you so much. Have a good evening. All right. I'm going to call up, before you go to the mic list, I'm going to call up the next group. Bobby Kelly, Mike Ketchmerick, Bill Wright, Marilyn Karp, Irene Magnini-Kelly.

[05:10:54] And you want to use the... Al Maltz, please. Yep. Elizabeth Martirana, Gainesville District, Prince William County resident for almost 48 years.

[05:11:15] Like Chair Jefferson just said, I love Prince William County, too. My husband and I raised our two children here. They went through public schools here. My husband worked for the County Service Authority for about 40 years here.

[05:11:31] So we have a big investment in this county. We've owned three homes here. This picture is from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership website. It shows the data centers here in Virginia. I guess we're supposed to be proud of this, but I don't feel very proud of it.

[05:11:51] So I then wanted to focus more on Northern Virginia, so I enlarged it. That's Fairfax, Prince William, Loudon.

[05:12:11] There's 39 companies mentioned there. You're talking about raising the computer and peripherals tax, and some of you are afraid. You're afraid of what the data center industry is going to say to you, and I don't know why.

[05:12:28] I feel like a board or two before you got us into this mess, and I think it's up to you to resolve this mess as far as the taxes go. If we're actually getting data centers built here that are federal government and we're not going to be able to tax them, we should be at least taxing the data centers that should be properly.

[05:12:51] The 370, to me, starting immediately sounds like a no-brainer. So those companies up there are very, very big, wealthy companies. For instance, Microsoft's net worth is $3.15 trillion, with a T.

[05:13:11] But yet we give these companies in Virginia all these wonderful tax incentives. And we have Amazon at $1.92 trillion. Google, $1.191 trillion. Verizon Media, $181.94 billion.

[05:13:29] Equinix, $75 billion. Digital Realty, $44.76 billion. Vulcan Materials, you know, the Vulcan across from the mall, $35.55 billion. NTT, $19.19 billion.

[05:13:47] Align Data Centers, $2.3 billion. Stanley Martin, Devlin, $2.1 billion. QTS, $6.01 billion. Compass data centers, $1.87 billion. Please don't be afraid to raise their computer and peripheral taxes.

[05:14:08] Thank you. All right, next we have Bobbi Kelly. Good evening. My name is Bobbi Kelly, and I am from the Gainesville District. For the past few years, many of us have voiced our well-documented research and concerns over the industrialization of Prince William County, and more specifically, the widespread explosion of data centers, especially where vacant land previously existed, on top of dense residential areas, schools, national parks.

[05:14:42] We spent many nights and long hours pointing out this data-driven truth. However, those outcries seemed to be overshadowed by the unspeakable goal of wanting Prince William County to become the largest data center capital in the world and to generate this pie-in-the-sky revenue.

[05:15:00] It was not to keep up with the Joneses, but it was to surpass the Joneses. Yet while this county was in a feeding frenzy, other counties were evaluating their results and putting on breaks based on their lessons learned.

[05:15:16] So let's keep up with the Joneses and use their results to avoid the same pitfalls. This is common practice in designing and implementing programs and businesses, benchmark, and learn to achieve success. In addition, the overinflated revenue was going to lessen the residential tax burden.

[05:15:37] We do have operational data centers in the county. Can we say we've realized that? Rhetorical question. As we pointed out, the revenue projection analysis was fatally flawed. I'm not an accountant, but I do know I cannot rely on my income without taking into account my expenditures, right?

[05:15:56] Massive revenue is not forthcoming for many reasons, and I just listed one. So you have a golden opportunity here to keep up with the Joneses and fix one fatal flaw. Approve a reasonable prevailing computer tax rate on the data center industry.

[05:16:13] To do less is yet another travesty in this continuing ongoing horror story. And I agree with you, Chair, that we do that on the backs of the western Prince William County residents. So here are the Joneses tax rates.

[05:16:31] Loudoun, 415, Fairfax, 457, and Fauquier has proposed 415. So your mission should be to choose to accept it, to charge a competitive tax rate to existing and new data center companies in Prince William County.

[05:16:47] I would propose 415 because I'm a proponent of matching prevailing rates and salaries, compensation, and data center taxes. On my Christmas list would be, if you don't need the revenue right away, then stop building.

[05:17:04] Because the whole point in building these data centers was to get revenue. If you don't charge the maximum rate, you don't need to build new data centers in Prince William County. Stop the proliferation. Thank you. Thank you. Mike Hatchmerick.

[05:17:22] Mike Hatchmerick, Harry Chun, Gainesville. I totally support immediately raising the computer and peripheral tax to $370. Any delay would only continue the $48 million a year tax break to the data center industry.

[05:17:40] Thanks to my supervisor, Bob Weir, I know that Prince William County current tax revenue from data centers for the C&P tax was about $66 million on a $215 tax rate per $100 of value. That makes the tax break $1.55 compared to the max rate of $3.70, which is paid by all other businesses for furnitures and fixtures.

[05:18:05] There is only one reason to phase in any tax increase, and that is for supervisors to leverage this tax break to obtain political contributions. The data centers will be glad to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations when they will be getting tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks.

[05:18:25] It is the best rate of return any business could ever get, a 100-to-1 ratio. These supervisors who voted for the Prince William Digital Gateway know how to maintain their own political leverage to get political campaign donations.

[05:18:41] But they were not concerned at all about maintaining leverage for Prince William County government and the residents. They never were interested in negotiating the best deal for Prince William County. I am a strong Democrat. I was the former chair of the Gainesville Democratic Committee.

[05:18:58] I would never support the three supervisors who voted for the Prince William Digital Gateway and the one who abstained for any office because they just cannot be trusted to do what is right for all residents in Prince William County.

[05:19:15] But this is your opportunity to make amends to your community by voting for a 370 tax rate now. No delay at all, no phase-in, 370. And then even then, you can even propose even higher taxes by targeting the data center industry as Fauquier County has done, but right now it is limited to 370.

[05:19:43] Also, I would suggest that any additional tax revenue be split 50-50 between residential tax relief and any new proposals. This is your chance to really make a change. Thank you very much. Bill Wright?

[05:20:02] My name is Bill Wright, and I live in Gainesville. I advocate raising the data center tax to the maximum permissible level. A Prince William Times article of April 25, 2018, reported that then-chairman Corey Stewart proposed raising the data center tax to $3.70.

[05:20:21] Six years later, after all the controversy and consternation data centers have caused, this board is still contemplating the same action. Fast forward to February 21st of this year, when an Inside NOVA article reported, Some Democrats wanted more time to meet with data center companies to see how they could make the hikes as painless as possible.

[05:20:41] Are you telling me a six-year heads-up was not enough time for these information technology giants to react? Maybe they should try genuine intelligence instead of the artificial variety. Loudoun County's data center tax rate is 415, Fairfax County's is 457, and Falk here just proposed 415.

[05:21:01] Why are we worried that raising our data center tax rate to only 370 might not be as painless as possible to big tech behemoths whose massive presence in northern Virginia has already been fueled by generous taxpayer-subsidized incentives? Warren Buffen said that secretaries should not pay a higher tax rate than their billionaire bosses.

[05:21:22] Yet that is precisely what is happening in Prince William County. That situation should be rectified immediately, not gradually. Fauquier County just passed an ordinance to decouple the data center tax from other tax rates to enable them to tax data centers at a higher rate than personal vehicles.

[05:21:39] Prince William County should consider a similar ordinance. Additional revenue could be used for an affordable housing trust fund or to eliminate the regressive meals tax. Equitable tax policy should be embraced by both parties, but it would be particularly hypocritical of Democrats to keep coddling wealthy corporations who are destroying our environment.

[05:22:00] The BOCS has repeatedly promoted data centers as a panacea for Prince William County taxpayers. It was used as justification for devastating our landscape, poisoning our air and water, draining our electrical power, and ruining our residents' quality of life. Exactly when do citizens get the meager compensation you promised for putting up with all you have inflicted upon us?

[05:22:24] Maximize the data center tax rate and use the resultant proceeds to lower residential property taxes. That's what you've been promising for years. Thank you. Marilyn Karp? Marilyn Karp, Gainesville. I'm here today to ask you to give us some hope.

[05:22:45] I am hoping you will realize we need to generate as much tax revenue as possible and that you will raise the data center tax rate to the highest amount possible. How about five dollars? I am here today in hope that you will listen to the people of Prince William County and realize that we are in a power crisis and that you will realize we have to stop all data center approval until we

[05:23:17] get a better handle on what is happening here. I am here today hoping you will create a data center financial model that will give you information on the revenue to expect, and even more importantly, on the amount you have to spend on the infrastructure to support these data centers.

[05:23:41] I am here hoping that you will fire Chris Shorter and hire a county executive that will put a process in place that ensures the county collects all the data center taxes from co-location data centers that it is entitled to. I am here today in hopes that you will realize that with data center companies paying four million dollars an acre that you are going to be hard pressed to find

[05:24:17] companies that want to build housing. I am here today in hopes that you will realize you must set the tax rate as high as possible so that there will be enough money to pay to soundproof Pace West and Tyler Elementary. These schools are 300 feet from nine data centers under construction across the street. Pace West is a school for children with severe learning disabilities.

[05:24:54] I am here today in hopes that you will listen to me and the other constituents and do as we are asking. Vote to maximize the data center rate and use the resultant proceeds to lower our property taxes. That's what you've been promising for years. Thank you. All right, before our next speaker, I want to call up my next group, Neal Kelly, Donna Gallant, Laura Mahoney, Teresa Menz, Allie Stoker. Hi, everyone. First of all, I came earlier because my husband wanted to make sure we

[05:25:34] could sign, say our piece and get home. But in so doing, I want to applaud you because I learned a lot more about the difficulty of your doing all of the needs of the county and it really shows when you see it on the board. It's not an easy task and I just want to say thanks for trying and I really do believe each one of you when you started out in your career you're looking to help the people around you in your communities. So I have a couple of thoughts. New York City girl here

[05:26:12] don't do 3-1-1 you're wasting your money you can ask me or my husband when we lived in new york city and we called 3-1-1 we had a problem with the the waste or the problem with something else going on and i'd get some momo on the phone saying well you know i i i think you should call that department well it's like what then what am i doing with 3-1-1 other than having my taxes pay for your salary and everybody else who answers 3-1-1.

[05:26:43] Don't go there. But I did like his idea of if I'm calling and I get a reference number so that somebody can tap right in, that's two thumbs up. That works well. Even private corporations do that.

[05:27:01] All right, let's get to the other part. Separate the taxes. You know, gosh darn it. I'm just sitting home paying for a car. New York City, I didn't have to pay for a car.

[05:27:17] My brother says, move to Virginia. The taxes are lower. Duh, he is so wrong. Because now I'm saying to him, holy mackerel. I paid all those taxes when I bought my car. Now every year I have to pay all these other taxes. Give me a break, would you please?

[05:27:34] Thank you for cutting down the homeowner's tax. That was a real one thumbs up. But, okay, here we go. I'm going to be looking over here. Oh, yeah. And then when Mr. Shorter showed up there and it said there was going to be an increase to the millions of dollars from the data centers, and I'm thinking, what?

[05:27:53] Stop the boat. $16 million? Really? In how long? When all of those data centers were pushing $800 million. And in how many years? You could take $800 and divide it by $16. I'll be dead in the grave by the time that $800 gets reached.

[05:28:11] So it's like, come on, raise up their taxes, please. Go the full Monty on them. Don't just raise their taxes. I thank you for your time, and I thank you. And it's going to be, yes, Chair Jefferson, you go.

[05:28:30] It's like change the whole environment for our whole community. Thank you. I just have to ask, where in New York are you from? Where in New York? Because I, which part? The one they make fun of in all the cop shows. When a cop goes bad, they want to send him to Staten Island.

[05:28:47] Thank you. Next speaker. Wow, that's a hard act to follow. But I do it every day. And I will continue to do it every day. That's my lovely wife. Neil Kelly from Gainesville.

[05:29:03] And I want to say thanks for inviting everybody down here today. Although I'm going to quote the philosopher of baseball, also a New Yorker, Yogi Berra, say this is deja vu all over again. Because here we are. We're down here. We're pleading our case. We're helping people listen, and we want people to understand that we're residents of this county now.

[05:29:20] No matter where we were from before, we all live here now. And we have concerns, and we have things that we'd like to share with you. I would like to say that I am in support of raising the computer peripheral tax to the advertised rate of $3.70. As we have now found out, the county needs to compile an accurate list of the current data centers.

[05:29:40] Who is operating them, and who is operating within them? Thanks to co-location and NDA loopholes, even if you know where a data center is, you don't know who or what is using how many peripherals in that center. So let's try to work on that.

[05:29:56] Fairfax County is having a lawsuit now dealing with that issue. So let's try to get out in front of that before we have to go the same route and get a lawsuit on it. Otherwise, it's going to be money lost. It's inexcusable that the county does not know who owes tax revenue for data centers but has the resources to have the blue book value of every vehicle in the county known.

[05:30:21] It's why are you looking at my car when these data centers were supposed to be the goose that laid the golden egg for this. The board should also pass a resolution to decouple the data center tax rates from other rates. This would allow you to lower or keep the taxes the same on a lot of other issues, but yet continue to raise the computer peripheral only within the data center operation.

[05:30:45] We'd be able to align our rates with neighboring counties. And now that we're becoming the data center capital of the world, they will produce revenue beyond our wildest expectations. We should be reducing property taxes and eliminating the Wheeler-era tax on the meals. I'd love to take my wife out for dinner right now, but it's going to cost me an extra 4%.

[05:31:04] Thank you, Board of Supervisors, for that one. A recent news report dated February 21st, 2024, in the issue of Inside Nova, reported that some Democrats wanted more time to meet with the data center companies to see how they could make hikes as painless as possible.

[05:31:20] If true, that statement is insulting to the county's residents. I would like to know how you plan on making an increase in property taxes in addition to the car tax and the Wheeler-era meal tax as painless as possible for residents. I think it's time to put the county residents first.

[05:31:36] And from what I've heard tonight, I am hearing a little bit of a ripple effect coming from you folks, and it's starting to look like that might actually happen. So please raise the peripheral to $370 so we can get the most we can out of these people. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Three Cements, Potomac District.

[05:32:04] This board, not Chair Jefferson, gave themselves a 70% pay raise, not even finishing their first term. So here you are talking to me about the budget and everything. Not only did they do that, at the very beginning of their time here, they, the Democrats, had an illegal meeting excluding the Republicans.

[05:32:29] The Democrats, not Chair Jefferson, were taken to court. This Democrat board used taxpayer money to defend themselves. Yes, you used our money to defend yourselves. This I call self-serving.

[05:32:50] You do not work for us. You work for data centers. You work to destroy Prince William County. This board has proven they are not good stewards of Prince William County tax dollars. Our county exec, Shorter, gets an annual salary of $380,000 plus a year, and he's not even from here.

[05:33:15] No wonder this Democrat board wants to inflate our taxes. With our borders wide open, no wonder Dems want to destroy the middle class and welcome illegal aliens over legal Americans. This board, this Democrat board, have created several divisive programs, one of them being racism and social justice, a George Soros group, anti-America.

[05:33:47] And Supervisor Franklin calls for showing respect, showing respect. When she is the last person to show respect, she looks at us like we are a money tree. And yes, to this Democrat board, that is what we are.

[05:34:06] We are a money tree. And there's another thing I want to know. I'm sick and tired of hearing Supervisor Angry and Bodie saying they belong to a group, but they can be objective. I want to know the name of that group.

[05:34:22] I want to know what I am up against. And I tell you what, I no longer donate anything because of this Democrat board. And if I could send all of you home and keep supervisor aware, I would do that.

[05:34:38] I wish I had that power. And you, angry, supervisor angry, you're talking about tax breaks. You were only sucking up to John Jenkins' wife, Ernestine Jenkins. Yes, she hasn't seen you in action.

[05:34:55] You guys have destroyed Prince William County. And I recommend people, do not retire here. Do not retire here. Because if I could change it, I wouldn't be here. Next speaker, please. All right, good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

[05:35:23] Chair Jefferson, I've been watching you from afar. I haven't been here. This is my first meeting since you have taken your position on the dais. So congratulations. To the rest of the board, you know, I was going to write this big speech, and I was like, why?

[05:35:40] Are they going to listen? So I'm going to put my book down, and I'm going to talk to you like a person. I'm not going to yell at you. I just want to talk to you. Hold on. Speak into the mic more, Donna, because I can't hear you so well. You can't hear me? I'm trying to be quiet and relaxing.

[05:35:57] You're from New York. Jersey. Jersey. Whatever. I'm sorry, Jersey. It's like Maryland. So I'm not going to sit here and yell, but what I am going to say is I'm not sure how I feel about how the conversation went this evening. Not sure how I feel about what I heard this evening.

[05:36:16] So I'm going to put a couple things into perspective. The statement about some of the members of this board want more time to meet with the data center in jurors industry to kind of lessen the blow. I have to say to myself, you've got to be freaking kidding me.

[05:36:35] When all of you sat up there, Chair Jefferson, you're exempt, Commissioner Gordy, Supervisor Gordy, you're exempt. The rest of you that sat up there and you were making the decision to destroy my life and my community by surrounding my neighborhood with data centers. Then you did Devlin. It's the double whammy. Did any one of you have the common

[05:37:07] courtesy to lessen the blow and talk to me before you made the decision? Nah, you didn't. Shame on all of you. Your job on that board, you were, have you guys seen your org chart? Have y'all seen your org chart. Who sits at the top of the org chart that you have posted at the county website? Who sits there in the block at the top? Can any of you answer that? That's me. It's called the residence.

[05:37:39] You work for us. Organizationally in an organizational structure, you work for us. So here's the way it needs to go down. Why should I pay $3.70 tax rate on my car, but the data center industry pays $2.15? I'm going to call the bullshit card, okay? You need to tax them equal to, if not more than, what we pay. But because of the way we have the taxes coupled, you can't right now. So here's the actions. One, immediately raise the tax rate. Not slow rolling,

[05:38:19] not slowly phasing it in, immediately. Two, figure out what your true tax revenue is at $3.70. cents. Three, lower the real estate tax rate. Four, lower, separate the property tax for the vehicle and the peripherals tax, and then raise it up to $5. Sorry, time is up. That's okay. I'm just going to go over a couple more minutes more because that's what Supervisor Franklin did when her time was. Just give me a minute to wrap. So that being said, and I appreciate that. So that

[05:38:58] being said, you have a job to do. Look at your budget. There's too much wasteful government spend. cut your budgets, get your revenue under control, raise your tax rate, and give the residents back the destruction you've done. Thank you. Next speaker. God bless. Have a good night.

[05:39:18] Good evening, Allie Stoger, Gainesville District. I want to start with something that Ms. Mims said about the salary increase you all got. I might disagree with her. I think that you all deserve the salary that you get but i'm sorry yeah but imagine if that salary was slow rolled like what donna just said okay we'll give you a thousand this year and three thousand next year and we're

[05:39:54] just going to slow roll that no you got that seventy thousand all at once so at fifty percent that's just seventy percent but yet you're not willing to do that for this reticence of this County because of the sole role that Executive Director Shorter talked about? I don't understand it. I really appreciate Chair Jefferson talking about the sacrifice that's being made by Western Prince William County. This is a real sacrifice. I want to know if any of you has driven over to

[05:40:33] Catopin and 55, and looked at the size of the new NTT data center, the concrete shell. I believe it's 750,000 square feet. Supervisor Gordy's shaking his head. It is the biggest thing I have ever seen. I can't believe the size of it, and there's going to be three more buildings just like that. I think one of them a tiny bit smaller, and it's across the street from Village Place, which is probably what lost Chair Wheeler the election when that went into the pictures

[05:41:10] nationwide. So we are really sacrificing. And the chart that was shown about the tax rate, I believe that only shows the first year revenue. Don't forget, it's the first year that's $3.70.

[05:41:30] After that, there's a steep depreciation. So we're really talking a lot less, less money. And as someone who was in business in Fairfax County and Prince William County for the last 25 years, I paid that computer peripherals tax. So it really bugs me that those co-locution data centers aren't paying what I paid.

[05:41:52] But the reality is that business owners, we don't replace our equipment every three or four years, so I hated that tax year one. But I generally kept my computers and my medical equipment and so forth for eight to ten years. So the cost is spread out more for business owners than for data centers.

[05:42:14] But to give data centers this type of discount just doesn't make sense. Because if you give them this discount, what you are saying is we have to build twice the data centers as Loudon does to make the same amount of money. Thank you. Thank you.

[05:42:30] And Laura, before you go, I'm going to call up. We have two non-residents. We have Jill Norcross and Seth Yeboah. All right, you may go now. Good evening, board. Congratulations Chair Jefferson, congratulations Supervisor Gordy on your new positions.

[05:42:51] Good evening the rest of the chair members and supervisors. My name is Laura Mahoney and I'm in the Brentsville District. And I guess just listening to the conversation tonight, I'm a little surprised just hearing the staff kind of say that there was extra numbers that came in about the data centers.

[05:43:10] Those numbers seem to kind of surprise them if that's what I kinda understood out of that. I don't understand how we don't have a better handle of what we have in the pipeline, what's being built, what's come online, as far as providing that into the budget numbers.

[05:43:28] And I'm here supporting the $3.70 tax rate. I'm also supporting that to be implemented immediately. As previously mentioned by other people up here, This has been discussed for at least six years, raising the tax rates.

[05:43:46] The writing's on the wall with the data centers. They have plenty of money. We're talking about multibillion-dollar companies. And for residents of Prince William County to be paying the same tax rate on their car as what a data center is, it's a slap in the face to the residents that are living here.

[05:44:05] And time and time again, we appear before the board, and they say that, you know, our tax rates are going to be less. they aren't gonna go up because the data centers are gonna be paying their fair share. And now is the time. The time is now for them to be paying $3.70, especially since our Loudoun and Fairfax and Falk here have much higher rates.

[05:44:28] $3.70 is still way lower. There was also a comment saying that they didn't wanna move fast on the budget for the affordable housing by one of the supervisors. I find that kind of interesting because we seem to be moving at a breakneck speed for data centers.

[05:44:46] I don't understand how data centers are popping up. We make such quick decisions, but then certain things we're dragging our feet on again. And also regarding the comments about landscape changing in the West, it is.

[05:45:04] Not only are the data centers ugly to look at, there's hardly any buffers for the residents that are living nearby, But the land value is being sold at such a high rate that I feel that it's gonna be running small businesses out of the area, which is gonna be paying less tax dollars.

[05:45:26] And we're gonna be then depending on the data centers even more so, and also taxing the residents more. So I'm asking you guys to please implement the $3.70 rate. Also, on a side note, I've already seen talk with realtors not wanting to move and have their clients look at our neighborhood.

[05:45:48] Devlin hasn't even broken ground yet, and this is what you guys are doing to some of these communities. So, thank you for your time. Next speaker. Good evening, Chair Jefferson and members of the Board of Supervisors.

[05:46:08] My name is Jill Norcross, and I'm the Executive Director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance. Our mission is to promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities that meet the diverse housing needs of Northern Virginia residents. I'm here to provide comments on the FY 2025 budget, and I first want to thank you for your leadership in addressing some of the complex housing needs in the county by including first-time investments in the Housing Trust Fund from last year's FY24 surplus, the issuance of a draft ADU ordinance, as well as investments in staffing and office facilities.

[05:46:41] I have the privilege in working in all Northern Virginia jurisdictions, and I have been truly inspired by what is happening in Prince William and to see the growing awareness of the affordable housing issue as well as a true commitment to finding solutions from a diverse group of stakeholders, including yourselves, county staff, industry partners, residents, nonprofit organizations, and advocates who share the need for more policy tools and financial resources to address the county's housing needs.

[05:47:06] While the need exceeds the proposed investments in local resources, you have the opportunity in the data center tax to help fund additional housing production. Therefore, we support the full C&P tax increase of $3.70 to provide a dedicated funding source of $5 million for the Housing Trust Fund in this year and future years.

[05:47:26] Along with our advocacy partners, Wellington Development, Tenants and Workers United, and Voice, we agree the county's priority must also be to address the desperate need of available, accessible housing for those who are at or below 60% of the area median income, and especially those at 30 and 40% of the AMI.

[05:47:45] I know you have heard from your nonprofit human service and homeless service providers who are struggling with increased need for shelter, food, and other essentials for the clients they serve. Housing trust funds have been used nationally and by your neighboring jurisdictions to subsidize the construction of new, deeply affordable housing developments and to help preserve existing affordable communities.

[05:48:06] As you know, making financial and policy investments in affordable housing is not only the right thing to do, but it's the smart thing to do. Affordable housing benefits us all from an equity perspective as well as an economic development perspective. Local resources for affordable housing is an investment that you make in your community for your community.

[05:48:25] And access to affordable housing helps all residents thrive to reach their full potential. We look forward to continuing to be a partner with you in this work and are excited to collaborate to create financial tools and policies that incentivize housing development and industry partners, address your county goals, and most importantly, serve Prince William County residents who all deserve a home that's affordable.

[05:48:46] Thank you for your time. Next speaker. Hi, good evening. I want to register my comments to increase the C&P tax to the full $3.70 and use a portion of the increased revenue to fund the full $5 million for the trust fund for FY25 and FY26.

[05:49:06] I appreciate all the Board of Supervisors members that have spoken in support today. I also want to thank their staff members as well as county staff that have listened to us. Quickly, I'm sorry, Seth, if you can say your name and where you're from. Oh, sorry about that. My name is Seth Apokoyaboa. I work for Wellington Development Partners and Affordable Housing Developer, and I'm based in Arlington.

[05:49:24] Again, I want to thank members of the board that have spoken in support today. I also want to thank their staff members as well as county staff that have listened to us and have been great allies throughout the process. I'm glad that we're all part of providing that ladder to current and future residents. I appreciate how quick the momentum has been around affordable housing over the last couple of months and look forward to continuing to be a resource.

[05:49:44] Part of why I'm here and have been advocating so much over the last couple of years is that I've benefited from naturally occurring affordable housing growing up. My parents, who are immigrants from Ghana, benefited from not having to spend so much on rent, working blue-collar jobs. that allowed them to save for a house as a result, and then my dad, not having to overwork, leveraged those extra hours to upskill and be an entrepreneur that allowed us to move to a good neighborhood in Prince William County and a good school district so I and my siblings could graduate from Osborne Park High School and reach the heights that we did.

[05:50:14] My family would have qualified for some of the developments that would be funded via the Housing Trust Fund earlier on in my life, and within that same family is my sister, who is right now one of two Osborne Park graduates at Harvard. So I don't see that same opportunity now for people like my parents and sister. And I'd like to make sure that I create those same opportunities because it made a difference in my life and theirs.

[05:50:34] And glad that you also recognize that important. So thank you again. All right. Thank you so very much. We will now move on to remote speakers for items 13A through 13I. I believe we have two people signed up to speak today for remote public comments this evening.

[05:50:54] I'll now turn it over to Supervisor Bodie. i'm seeing shakespeare had andrea do that okay gotcha all right so then this back to you madam chair all right that's quite fast all right so we are now closing i guess before i um we have one one more uh for the public hearing i'm sorry we have one remote speaker for public here all right

[05:51:21] so for public hearing okay so shall we begin yes your speaker is sandra painter miss painter you can now unmute yourself. Sorry about that. My name is Sandra Painter. I live in the Gainesville District. I'm saying that this is a far cry from the last time spoke in person there. I like it

[05:51:56] three o'clock in the morning. So I want to thank you for this opportunity. I'm speaking as she said with regard to the 2025 budget and I'm pleased to hear that there's a lot of support for raising the peripheral tax on computers to $3.70. I understand that with companies, data center companies, it's hard to figure out how much money you're going to get on those because the buildings and lots are paid through real estate tax and you don't know what company is going to be leasing

[05:52:35] to put in equipment so i understand it's difficult but the 370 should be done immediately and in the future please segregate the property fees property tax fees from residents from from the computer peripheral tax i wanted to also suggest that if you are worried about dedicated funding for low income and affordable housing i heard mention that developers have been

[05:53:07] donating to that through their proffers. If we stop giving all the data centers all the incentives to come here, because they're knocking down our doors as it is, and charge them for those fees for the low-income and affordable housing, that might give a dedicated source.

[05:53:28] Also, I am a senior who eats out four times a month for social activity. As a senior living alone social activity is very important to my health and i am paying an average of an extra 40 a month to pay that four percent meals tax beverage and uh food and beverage tax um that's a lot on a fixed retirement income so i'm requesting serious consideration be given to either reducing it or hopefully eliminating it um and i thank you for your consideration thank you and good luck thank

[05:54:03] you miss painter thank you miss fan back to you madam chair we have um concluded speaker time for those signed up for in person and remote comments um anyone in the chambers who wishes to comment on this public hearing please approach the microphone all right so then i will now close the public hearing on items 13a to 13i um do we have well this isn't we don't really do i need to approve agenda items i don't think so yeah i do okay no all right because someone's telling me

[05:54:42] that's what i was thinking all right so um we are going to go on now to um 14a and we have a public hearing on that which is to propose effective real property tax increase there is no presentation associated with this item this evening so i will now open the public hearing on 14a we have thus four or five people who are signed up to speak in person. Mr. Jay Hart, Ali Stogra, Elizabeth Martirana, Marilyn Karp, Donna Gallant. Each speaker has three minutes to share their views

[05:55:18] and opinions on item 14A. We ask that speakers state their name, magisterial district, or generally where they reside at the beginning of their remarks. Mr. Hart, you're up first. Good evening.

[05:55:37] My name is Jay Hart. I live in Potomac Shores. I am here to petition the Board of Supervisors to hold the current year assessment values for real estate at the 2023 level, not the new level of 2024. And I'm going to tell you why. It really has to do with the way the appraisal system is working and based on the lawsuit with the National Association of Realtors. So this is a report off the web. Basically says traditionally the commissions of buying and selling houses have

[05:56:12] been a baked-in market expectation. The standard operating procedure wasn't something appraisers needed to untangle because of dealing with these costs have been standard practice, okay? Now with the NAR lawsuit potentially altering how buyers, agents, commissions are perceived, possibly treating them as concessions, the realm of property appraisal faces new questions. So basically what this means is homeowners, I think, will see a different level of fees when they go to buy or

[05:56:50] sell. The days of a homeowner having to pay 6% commission, those are probably long gone. So if the seller paid all commissions on when you buy or sell, let's say the seller pays all the commissions. That commission was roughly 6% of the sale. Maybe you can negotiate down to four and a half or five if you were lucky six percent was the standard so if you're like me and you went you were going to sell your house and your house is valued at six hundred thousand dollars that's six percent thirty six thousand dollars where are you coming up with that money i certainly don't have it so i'll tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to roll that six percent in my house and my

[05:57:26] house isn't going to go on the market for six hundred thousand it's going to go in for 636 And I'm going to basically have the buyer artificially pay that through the sale of the house. With appraisals now being low, with the fees being lowered, instead of maybe doing 6%, I would do 1% or 2%.

[05:57:51] Let's take a 2% raise. If it was 2% on $600,000, my house could be listed as low as $612,000, a $24,000 difference in the value of the house. Why is this important? When I sell that house, whether it's at $612,000 or $636,000, it goes on the appraisal system from the county and MLS as to what the sale price was that house.

[05:58:17] Not what it's worth, what it sold for. And so the $24,000 difference would affect all properties across the board if everybody did that. So this year, since that system is no longer valid, I'm not entertaining the idea of a property value increase this year.

[05:58:37] And I submit to the county that you hold off on any property value increases until that is better known in the future, or county residents will artificially pay more for their homes. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

[05:58:53] Thank you. Next speaker, please.

[05:59:03] Elizabeth Martirana, Gainesville, Prince William County resident, almost 48 years.

[05:59:21] I'm back. This paper here that you're looking at is off the county website. It's my house. We moved into this house in 2020, and as you can see, every year, the land value increased, the home value, the residence, increased, and the total value increased since 2020.

[05:59:44] I get that. We're in a high neighborhood. This is my retirement home. My husband and I are both retired. This is a resident out of the Pageland Assemblage.

[06:00:07] I want to know why, how it happened that their residence is now valued at $100. I want to know if there's a county ordinance stipulating that things change when they have a rezoning.

[06:00:25] I want to know if there's a state code, a statute. I think every single citizen in this county should be made aware that this has happened just about to maybe 99% of the people in the Pageland Assemblage. Why?

[06:00:42] Does this mean for the next two to three years that we're in court battling this rezoning mess, that they're living in a house valued at $100? it makes no sense to me because my house today the residence is valued at 381,900 dollars how is that fair to me or anybody else in this county you know it really sucks i'm sorry but it does who did this who's responsible the buck stops here somewhere is it chair jefferson is it county

[06:01:17] eternal county attorney roble is it our executive mr shorter where does the buck stop in this county to tell the residents exactly what the hell's going on. NDAs are one thing, but when you have secret things going on behind the scenes that we citizens don't know about, it's not fair to us.

[06:01:41] I don't want to live in my house and pay taxes on it when they are not paying taxes but only $100. I will send you all an email asking for this information. I hope someone gets back to me.

[06:01:58] Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Karp, before you go on, Ms. Stoger, you're on the list as well. Did you want to speak or are you good? You're good? All right. Ms. Karp, you're up next. So, guys, I think the jig is up. The first thing I wanted to say is where the hell is the water study that you are doing all this building and we know nothing about the water supply in Prince William County, okay?

[06:02:31] Do you realize that if you allow these data centers to keep going, that what they are going to do is run their diesel generators? You are going to make it unlivable in Gainesville because we won't be able to breathe the air.

[06:02:53] As an 82-year-old person, I won't be able to go outside. But enough about that. You are a bunch of damn bureaucrats. You never think outside the box.

[06:03:12] I read and went to the meeting about the Affordable Housing Ordinance. It's a great idea, but it is another bureaucratic morass that you are going to build, and you have to have all these people working on it.

[06:03:30] You have people who today, right now, are desperate for money to pay their rent. Gather money and tomorrow set up a fund where you can help people pay their rent instead of being bureaucrats who are going to study this and maybe will do it two years from now.

[06:03:54] We live in a world that is moving at incredibly fast pace and you are all still there, I think you are all very unsuited for this job.

[06:04:10] Prince William County is like a very large business, and you want to do business with a bunch of high-powered, greedy corporations, and you have to learn how to stand up to them, not to kowtow to them, not to bend to their will.

[06:04:34] Make every data center that is built have to put $5 million into the affordable housing fund. You could get away with that because $5 million is nothing to them. It's like 25 cents to you.

[06:04:51] That's how much money they have. So please, step out of your comfort zone and do something that will make some of us feel like we have some people that are human beings that actually care about the people who live in this county.

[06:05:08] Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Gallant, you're on the list too. Did you want to speak? Yep.

[06:05:23] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I believe we're on 14A. Can you please confirm? I just want to make sure I'm speaking on the right thing. Yes, 14A. Thank you, ma'am. So I had the pleasure of talking to this fine young lady over here to better understand the framing of 14A. She was gracious enough to explain it to me. So let's talk about it. Our real estate assessment. I'm sorry again. We know who you are, but you still have to state your name for the record and where you generally reside. Oh, Donna Gallant Brentsville. Thank you. You're

[06:05:59] welcome. Sorry. I'm out of practice. I'll get better. So when I got my tax assessment bill, you know, kind of a little bit of heart attack, a little bit of palpitations. And I was like, wow, this is ridiculous. My assessment went up exponentially. So what does that mean? My taxes are going to go up exponentially. Well, I already got that exponential increase for my personal

[06:06:32] property tax. Remember, the data center industry doesn't get that. And now I'm going to get a potential impact, massive impact for the real estate tax. So here's what I'm going to say. To offset the astronomical increase in our assessments, and there's some credence to what the gentleman was saying about overinflated cost of homes based on rolling in the buyer-seller commissioning, so it's something to be considered.

[06:07:03] So we either have to do one of two things, leave the assessments at 2023 and keep the tax rate at the 2023 rate, or take on the new tax rate or the new assessments and lower the tax rate to .90.

[06:07:19] that will offset and not impact and then you can recoup the tax deficiency from the increase in the data center taxes and actually really give the residents something for their suffering we have all suffered exponentially i walk out of my deck now and the construction from mango i get this wonderful wafting god-awful diesel smell every day that's my new life that's my new reality i I listen to construction noise from 6 in the morning till 10 at night.

[06:07:56] That's my reality. That's what you all have done. So do something for the residents and charge the data center industry what's needed to offset and lower the cost of the tax rate to the citizens in this county.

[06:08:14] You work for us. Do something right for us. And just because you get revenue from more taxes doesn't mean you go on a frivolous spending spree and go oh we have all this money now let's spend it chair wheeler or excuse me chair chair jefferson i so apologize we look exactly alike people not at all the time i am so sorry we have well and much nicer significantly better astronomically better you have the next

[06:08:49] four years to make tremendous change in this county for the greater good of all you're behind you thank you miss mensage did you want to speak on 14a well date your name where you're generally from three cements potomac district and trust me chair jefferson we never want to insult you like

[06:09:28] that oh oh that's what i'm trying to tell her you didn't mean it because wheeler was nothing but a nightmare and you have been a pleasant change and i do believe you want to work for the county but for us for the citizens and let me remind this board up here your job is to work for the citizens okay and quality of life is very important we're paying taxes on these proper

[06:10:05] on our homes on our property and when you have taken away our quality of life because you put data centers before our quality of life. That is unjust. That is unjust. And all of you that received, oh gosh, donations from the data centers, I hope you choke on it. I really do.

[06:10:34] But it's sad that we are paying taxes and we are not getting representation. And I recommend, you know, you want to come to Prince William. If you're a Democrat, this is where you want to be because this is what our Democrat board has given us.

[06:10:56] And I am not speaking of Chair Jefferson. She's just been a pleasant change. I just don't know why she's a Democrat, though. So, no, this is quality of life, which is important, and we shouldn't be paying taxes when you're robbing us of that, or at least there should be a decrease, a major decrease.

[06:11:25] And these taxes shouldn't be for your pet projects, which is all that supervisor franklin has given us pet projects and she keeps grinning and that's okay i know you don't respect us so all of you have a great day and god please protect chris william from this nightmare all right we are now going to move on to remote speakers for item 14a

[06:11:58] i think we might have one person signed up to speak i'm not miss van do we have any folks signed up for 4a 14a sorry we do not we just have someone for public comment time all right back to you madam chair thank you so very much if anyone else wishes to approach the microphone for item 14a please do so now all right seeing no one i will close the public hearing on item 14a um all right

[06:12:32] then we're going to move in now to public comment time all right please note that this is public comment time is for items not listed on today's agenda as the public hearing item. We will now hear in person and remote public comments. We will begin. I have three people signed up to speak.

[06:12:52] Marilyn Karp, Donna Gallant, Teresa Benz. Each of you has three minutes to share your views and opinions on matters before the board. Please state your name. I know you've spoken before, all of you, but please state your name again, your magisterial district or where you generally reside. And also, too, Ms. Ernestine Jenkins, if you want to approach the microphone as well.

[06:13:23] Donna Gallant, Brentsville District, my trifecta for the night. So I'm going to just read something to you. Taxes land. Taxes bed. Tax the table at which he's fed. Taxes tractor. Taxes mule. Teach him taxes are the rule. Taxes work. Taxes pay. He works for peanuts anyway. Taxes cow. Taxes goat.

[06:13:49] Taxes pants, taxes coat. Taxes ties, taxes shirt. Taxes work, taxes dirt. Taxes tobacco, taxes drinks. Tax him if he tries to think. Taxes cigars, taxes beers.

[06:14:07] If he cries, taxes tears. Taxes car, taxes gas. Find other ways to tax his app. Tax all he has, then let him know that you won't be done till he has no dough.

[06:14:27] When he screams and hollers, then tax him some more. tax until he's got good and sore. Tax his coffin. Tax his grave. Tax the sod in which he's laid. Put these words upon his tomb. Taxes drove me to my doom. When he's gone, do not relax. It's time to apply the inheritance tax. Accounts receivable tax. Building permit tax. CDL license tax. Cigarette tax. Corporate income tax. Dog license tax. Excise tax. Federal income tax. Federal unemployment tax.

[06:15:05] Fishing license tax, food tax, fuel permit tax, gasoline tax, grocery seats tax, hunting license tax, inheritance tax, inventory tax, IRS changes, IRS penalties, tax on top of tax, liquor tax, luxury tax, marriage tax, Medicare tax, personal property tax, property tax, real estate tax, service charge tax, social security tax, road usage tax, recreational vehicle tax, sales tax, school tax, state income tax, state unemployment tax, telephone excise tax.

[06:15:37] Telephone federal tax. Telephone federal state and local surcharge tax. Telephone minimum surcharge tax. Telephone reoccurring and non-reoccurring charges tax. Telephone state and local usage tax, utility, license, watercraft, well permit, workers' compensation. Still think it's funny? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world we had absolutely no national debt had the largest middle class in the world and mom stayed home to raise the kids what the tech what the heck has happened can you spell politicians

[06:16:15] i hope this goes around the u.s at least 400 545 times that's it thank you next speaker please i am ernestine jenkins and i represent 11 of the most wonderful

[06:16:49] organizations that make up the dell city parade committee first i want to say thank you to all of you and i would like to single out my supervisor supervisor sorry victor angry who i know in my own mind that he does what he feels is best for the Neabsco District, and I know that in my own

[06:17:23] heart, so I know he doesn't get swayed by Ernestine Jenkins. He is a good supervisor, and he serves Prince William County and the Neabsco District. Well, thank you, Victor. Thank you so much, and Now, I just need to let you know, I am here to ask you, board members, all of you, and I want to thank you for all of your service, because I know what you go through.

[06:18:01] I've been there, and I know that long hours sometimes is 2 and 3 o'clock, and I want to thank you all for making Prince William County a better place to live and raise our families so thank you i just needed to say that and so i'm here to ask you to support the 54th annual dale city parade this is a community event that has been offered to the residents of prince william county for 54 years many of you have walked in the parade as candidates

[06:18:40] and as elected officials the parade attracts more than 5 000 spectators which is is just a wonderful thing because they come from all parts of virginia to to come to be in and see the parade the parade is put on by a group of volunteers the dale city civic association is a vehicle that the parade committee has used as a means of securing necessary items for a parade, such as the insurance

[06:19:18] and the banking. So generations have stood along Dale Boulevard and cheered the fire trucks, honor guards, churches, community and religious organizations, political organizations, civic organizations like the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, the sports team, and of course the school bands, which we all love. As I said before, the parade has 11 community sponsors, including the Dale

[06:19:54] City Fire Department and the Dale City VFW Post 1503. And these sponsors are really to cut their money's really covered ma'am i apologize but your time is up the additional cost to the temporary activities fund so i'm asking your support aboard to support if you will please support the parade

[06:20:26] this year and show your support and vote for us thank you and god bless you thank you next speaker please three cements potomac district i want to thank law enforcement and first responders for all they do they they are always in harm's way and chair jefferson thank you for replacing queen anne

[06:21:02] oh gosh so and i do stand by everything i said tonight okay and i do have a request i hope the board's listening to me can we do something about these highly tinted vehicles because it's not fair to our Prince William law enforcement that have to make these stops because I can't see in these windows. I can't see how many people are in the vehicle. Are they armed? I can't tell anything.

[06:21:38] So this is what our law enforcement deals with day in and day out. You all are not the ones that are dealing with this. If we could do something about these tinted windows, I surely would appreciate it for them now we have another sad situation our borders are wide open and military age men are coming across those borders and another sad situation is people don't even know what is happening down at the border and people are not even paying attention to who

[06:22:15] the history of joe biden okay because joe biden was the biggest race it still is the biggest racist ever and if you did if you paid attention to Mark Levin he's the best one that's reporting it right now but it's there because you started the what do you call it racist and social justice well that's very hypocritical because one you're using our tax dollars for all of these pet projects

[06:22:49] including the mental health because the people that have spoken they've been devastated by what you've done to them with the data centers you you don't represent prince william county you represent yourselves i you know it's just sad but no joe biden he's the enemy to america and are we teaching our children the constitution bill of rights declaration of independence probably not

[06:23:20] we're probably just teaching them to be sexual objects to oh am i a girl no i'm a boy or am i an it or an if. Let our children grow up to be children. You know what? I don't know what your life was, but I hope it's not what you're doing to these people, these children. So you are not

[06:23:47] serving us. I can say nothing more. Marilyn Karp, Gainesville. So having the last word, I believe. You know, the people who live here in Prince William County, like me, born and raised in New York City, lived there for 60 years. This is a most incredible place. I love Prince William County and most of the people that I know love Prince William County. And you have the opportunity

[06:24:23] to make Prince William County the most famous county perhaps in the world. And you can do that because right now you are destroying its reputation. In article after article, they mention the citizens of Prince William County and what we have done to stand up to the data center industry.

[06:24:49] And you guys now have to also stand up to the data center industry and you have to stop development. Today, Elon Musk, who probably has the biggest mouth in the whole world and reaches the most people, said we probably are not going to have more data centers because we are running out of power.

[06:25:11] If you keep allowing them to build, we're going to have a bunch of empty, monolithic buildings because it's all going to become miniaturized. I just bought a pair of glasses that I can take a picture with.

[06:25:31] I can make a video. I can get a phone call, I can listen to music, I can send a text, because they learned how to miniaturize the technology so that it fits into the frame of the eyeglass.

[06:25:48] And this is exactly what the data center industry is going to have to do. And so you should not, under any circumstances, keep going with allowing more data centers until we understand what's really happening and what data centers are really going to do for the citizens. Thank you and good night. All right, thank you so very much. Now we are going to move on to remote public comment time and I believe we have one speaker. Ms. Vance, shall we

[06:26:19] begin? Yes, your first and only speaker is Jessica Grove. Please, Ms. Grove, please proceed. Good evening. Thank you. This is Jessica Grove. I reside in the Gainesville district. I'm a lifelong Gainesville resident. Marilyn it looks like I get the last word tonight but I had meant to sign up for public hearings and it just didn't happen so I recommend that the board consider raising the tax for data center peripherals to the highest rate possible to provide some of the previously hyped

[06:26:56] up advantages of our massive blood of data center construction had purported to guarantee. I also recommend the county put forth an effort to research and find an alternative method of measuring these data center tax liabilities possibly based on energy consumption or another alternative method over current unverifiable quantities of hardware across our pwc data centers if prince william county dares to be innovative while selling out the rest of the citizens in the county then we must be innovative in measuring and collecting the tax revenue these massive energy hogs are supposed to generate we should not pity the data center industry and worry about their

[06:27:33] bottom line while taking a bath on the revenue the citizens of this county have been promised They are the wealthiest corporations on the planet. They will survive a modest tax increase. We hear complaints that we're losing teachers and first responders to other counties because of PwC's lower pay.

[06:27:51] In business, you must raise the top-line revenue to offset increases in costs. Now is your chance to get to par with Fairfax, Loudoun, and Fauquier. Thank you. Good night. Thank you, Ms. Grove. Thank you, Ms. Van. Back to you, Madam Chair.

[06:28:09] All right, our next meeting is on Tuesday, April 16th at 7.30 p.m. Now let's have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right. I don't think there's going to be any discussion. Let's vote.

[06:28:29] This concludes the April 9th meeting. Thank you all for coming out. Have a very great evening.

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